SLICE OF LIFE
Today was one of those beautiful spring days, real shirt-sleeve weather. Everyone at the office was in a good mood, including me. We just started planning for our new Florida office and we’re all excited.
The office manager’s phone rang. (It’s one of those creepy rings that sounds like a cat meowing.) It was […]

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THREATS
Is he just stupid, or stubborn?
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - President Bush insisted Wednesday that public opinion is leaning his way on his proposal for a Social Security overhaul and hinted at political problems for lawmakers who oppose him.
Notwithstanding a host of recent polls showing waning public support for his proposal, Bush cited only the part […]

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YOUR BLOGGER’S VOICE

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THE LAW OF UNEXPECTED CONSEQUENCES
Interesting information:
Dr. Sean Morrison, a professor of palliative medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, said it’s hard to predict what would happen if the tube were reinserted because it’s highly unusual to do that after life-prolonging treatments have been stopped.
He said that if her kidneys […]

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EXPERTS: ELECTION FIXED
Of course the election was stolen. But it’s nice to hear the experts agree.

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BIRDS OF A FEATHER
Mark Kleiman:
I see Nat Hentoff and Jesse Jackson have joined the feed-Terri forces, which already included Ralph Nader, Randall Terry, Rush Limbaugh, Bo Gritz, Sean Hannity, and James Dobson. Now if we can just get Alexander Cockburn and Al Sharpton to join in, we’ll have a left-right coalition embodying the very cream […]

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AGE BIAS
Good news:
The Supreme Court made it easier Wednesday for any worker over 40 to allege age discrimination, ruling that employers can be held liable even if they never intended any harm.
About 75 million people — roughly half the nation’s work force — are covered by the decision. However, the ruling makes it clear that […]

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DAZED AND CONFUSED
Not too bright, is he?
BOZEMAN, Mont. (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow said on Wednesday he was confused by resistance to the Bush administration’s plans to overhaul the Social Security system, while protesters blasted the proposed private retirement accounts during his stop in Montana.
Snow, in remarks to the Chamber of Commerce […]

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FUBAR
Yes, I’m looking at Moveable Type. Now repeat after me: “Blogger SUCKS!!!”

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THE ROTTEN APPLES ARE AT THE TOP OF THE TREE
I figured this guy was hiding something:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top U.S. commander in Iraq authorized prisoner interrogation tactics more harsh than accepted Army practice, including using guard dogs to exploit “Arab fear of dogs,” a memo made public on Tuesday showed.
The Sept. 14, 2003, […]

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CONSERVATIVELY SPEAKING
I wish someone would explain to me exactly what a conservative is. Higher deficits, international interventionism, meddling in people’s private affairs - doesn’t sound like any conservatives I ever knew.
Conservative leaders are crafting plans to launch a public campaign to defend House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas).
The move follows a meeting last week among […]

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Finally, some blue sky today. 

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SQUASH THE BUG
Time to kick when he’s down:
Democratic officials in the House and Senate said that news coverage of DeLay’s travel and ties to lobbyists, and his high profile in the congressional intervention in the Terri Schiavo case, has given them an opening to use him as more of a foil. They said that until […]

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HOW VERY NICE PEOPLE DO EVIL
From Fred over at Slacktivist:
For the sake of argument set aside — as these millions do — the question of what Schiavo would have wanted. There is a noble impulse at work here. These folks would be willing to give, even to give sacrificially, for the sake of another. That’s […]

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HACKDOM
Billmon makes some cogent points about the National Press Club blogging panel (not the least of which, it’s simply the Beltway version of the same tired bunch of retired PR hacks that used to belong to my own local press clubs):
My point, to the extent I have one, is that Gannon/Guckert is going to fit […]

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I know what you’re thinking, but I wouldn’t wish pneumonia on anyone:
LYNCHBURG, Va. - The Rev. Jerry Falwell was hospitalized in critical condition Tuesday, battling his second case of viral pneumonia in just five weeks, hospital and church officials said.
Falwell, 71, was admitted to Lynchburg General Hospital shortly before midnight Monday suffering from “respiratory […]

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MUST… HAVE… COMMENTS…
[Via Spanglemonkey.]

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MERCURY RETROGRADE
In case you haven’t noticed, Blogger is completely screwed up this week; you can only get in to blog maybe five minutes out of every two hours. These server problems only affect blogs with more than 500 posts, so that’s why most of the old-timers are down, too.
The retrograde ends April 12th. Can’t wait!

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GUERRILLA GATHERING
By the way, I’m planning the next SG get-together for Friday, April 22nd. We really had a lot of fun the last time, so I hope y’all can make it. (Sometime closer to the event, I’ll ask for RSVPs.)

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PERSPECTIVE
Max on “nekkid pix“:
There aren’t any, so you’re not going to see any, not that anybody in his or her right mind would want to. If there were, perhaps I would be invited to yet another panel on blogging that does not include any political bloggers, but that does include faux journalist and even faux-er […]

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PHILOSOPHY IS EVIL
Damned interesting article from a philosophy professor targeted by conservative students:
To reiterate the charge: Ah yes, poor conservatives are being terrorized and victimized by the Big Bad Liberal Teachers. How so?
Considering the lecture on Plato, you’d think that conservatives would be on Plato’s side since Plato is a Moral Absolutist. Plato argued […]

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WE ARE SHOCKED
Clearing things up:
DENVER — The U.S. Secret Service on Monday said it was investigating the claims of three people who said they were removed from President Bush’s town hall meeting on Social Security last week after being singled out because of a bumper sticker on their car.
The three said they had obtained tickets […]

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IMAGINE
Off the beaten track, but I really enjoyed this article on imagination as a real-world tool:
Sigmund Freud might have been on to something in 1908 when he wrote that “every child at play behaves like a creative writer, in that he creates a world of his own.” In fact, there are striking similarities in behavior […]

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LIFE EVERLASTING
From Harper’s. a thoughtful essay. Read it all:
Like the religious right, I believe in moral absolutes. At the very least, I believe in two that were articulated some years ago by the theologian Paul Tillich, those being “the absolute concreteness of every situation in which a moral decision is required” and “the command not […]

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SECURITY
Something bad about BushCo I didn’t even know yet:
Nuclear watchdogs in this country, however, warn that the Bush administration is fueling a new arms race. They contend the government is violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the 1970 international agreement that states that countries with nuclear weapons must work toward disarmament. The Bush administration, they charge, […]

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