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Category Archives: Politics

East 18th Gets Thrift Store that Lakeshore Spurned

I noticed today that an Out of the Closet thrift store is about to open on East 18th Street, in the space that Hollywood Video used to occupy. Employees who were there setting up the shop told me that the grand opening is on Saturday. I normally wouldn’t write a long post about the opening […]

The Trouble with Washington Political Reporting

The New York Times had a brief write-up last night about James K. Glassman being appointed as the founding executive director of the George W. Bush Institute, an “action-oriented think tank” which will be part of the GWB Center at Southern Methodist University. Glassman is a former journalist and pundit who also served in the […]

If You Build Community, They Will Come (a corollary: If You Raze It, They Will Leave)

They came on foot, on scooters and on skateboards. They came on scraper bikes and fixies and longtails. They came in strollers and buses and, yes, some of them came in cars. However they got there, a lot of people came out to enjoy the Lakefest held on Oakland’s Lakeshore Avenue on Saturday and Sunday: […]

Lessons from the Obama Campaign for Prop 8 Opponents?

Today’s New York Times has an article about the debate among supporters of marriage rights over whether to pursue a reversal of Proposition 8 in 2010, or to wait until 2012 when there will have been more time to recruit large donors, shift public support, build a broader grassroots movement, and so on: Marc Solomon, […]

Seriously?

Andy Rosenthal, the New York Times Editorial Editor, had this to say in response to an online question about why the Times has no “serious” female columnists: I would be the last person alive to suggest that Maureen Dowd and Gail Collins are not serious columnists. They are indeed, very serious. The last time I […]

What passes for a “news analyst” at NPR

I’ve mentioned before that I try to avoid NPR as much as possible. It’s mostly the tone that bothers me, rather than anything about the content or political slant. If you want to hear someone peddling conventional wisdom in a self-congratulatory tone of voice, then NPR is for you. (Yes, I know that this is […]

Fair Use

Okay, so it’s a bit rough around the edges. I’m no artist — or lawyer, for that matter. (In case anyone is unfamiliar with the legal jousting between the AP and Shepard Fairey, who created the iconic Obama “HOPE” posters, you can get up to speed here.)

Now Daschle away, Daschle away, Daschle away all.

So Tom Daschle can now return to earning a fortune as a lobbyist, and can use his close relationship with the President of the United States as a way of influencing public policy, while being subject to none of the scrutiny, oversight, conflict of interest rules, or other safeguards that are in place when one […]

Criminal Injustice Systems at Home and Abroad

I finally got around to reading Samantha Power’s article on Gary Haugen in the January 19th New Yorker. Haugen is a Christian human rights lawyer whose organization represents impoverished and abused people in Cambodia, Kenya, and other countries.  Like most of Power’s work, the whole article is worth reading, but one set of statistics snared […]

Not Much is Really Sacred

From Steven Pinker’s op-ed in Thursday’s NY Times: Though the ungrammaticality of split verbs is an urban legend, it found its way into The Texas Law Review Manual on Style, which is the arbiter of usage for many law review journals. James Lindgren, a critic of the manual, has found that many lawyers have “internalized […]

Never Mind the NPR, Here’s the Sex Pistols

Today I woke up early and went out to walk the dog and get some coffee. When I’m out walking, I often listen to KALX, the Berkeley student radio station, but the first thing I heard when I turned it on this morning on was “Anarchy in the UK” by the Sex Pistols. Don’t get […]