Posted 5/3/2003 08:48:33 PM by Edward Driscoll
I'LL HAVE A LARGE DIET COKE, hold the swastikas. Found via Reason's Hit & Run blog.

Posted 5/3/2003 08:29:07 PM by Edward Driscoll
MARSHALL, MARSHALL, MARSHALL! A brief look at how the Marshall "stack" amplifer was born. Another recent post of mine from Blogcritics.

Posted 5/3/2003 08:27:01 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE PROBLEM WITH MUSIC: Steve Albini, the producer of Nirva's hit album, In Utero, looks at the recording industry, and does not like what he sees. Via a recent post of mine on Blogcritics.

Posted 5/3/2003 08:23:55 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE HARDEST WORKING MAN IN SHOW BUSINESS, the Godfather of Soul, Soul Brother Number 1, Mr. Dynamite, James Brown, is 70 years young today. Happy Birthday JB!

Posted 5/3/2003 08:07:06 PM by Edward Driscoll
ANOTHER MASS GRAVE FOUND IN IRAQ: Charles Johnson has the details.

Posted 5/3/2003 01:42:22 PM by Edward Driscoll
MONA CHAREN has some domestic good news.

Posted 5/3/2003 12:03:05 PM by Edward Driscoll
CROSS YOUR FINGERS: American and Russian astronauts will return tomorrow from the ISS via a Russian Soyuz capsule that will land on the barren Kazakh steppes. AP reports that Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit "will be the first NASA astronauts to land in a foreign spacecraft--and in a foreign land". UPDATE: They made it back just fine.

Posted 5/3/2003 11:50:05 AM by Edward Driscoll
IN DEFENSE OF BILL BENNETT: Andrew Sullivan take on the recent gambling allegations against him. Over the years, the left has given Robert Byrd, Ted Kennedy, Jane Fonda, Woody Allen, Al Gore and (last but not least) Bill Clinton a pass for their various crimes and misdemeanors (to coin a phrase), most of which are more severe than excessive gambling. So why is Bill Bennett suddenly being smeared?

Posted 5/2/2003 04:07:34 PM by Edward Driscoll
EVERY WAR IS VIETNAM UPDATE: Eric Olsen writes:

Ancient socialist, peacenik, and folk legend Pete Seeger has recorded a new version of his Vietnam War-era protest song, "Bring Them Home" (seems kind of moot about now) with help from Steve Earle, Ani DiFranco, and Billy Bragg. I would expect nothing different from Seeger, who at 84 is as crusty and pissed off with the establishment as ever.

Of the anti-war left, Olsen asks, "Pete Seeger will be 84 tomorrow: he is allowed to live in the past, but what is your excuse?"

Posted 5/2/2003 04:02:33 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE ENDLESS OWENS FILLIBUSTER: Senate and Congressional Republicans send a "Warning to Senate Democrats: 'Don't Mess With Texas'".

Posted 5/2/2003 03:34:34 PM by Edward Driscoll
INTERESTING BOOKNOTES ON C-SPAN THIS SUNDAY, as Brian Lamb interviews Dorothy Rabinowitz, the author of No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times:

"No Crueler Tyrannies" recalls the hysteria that accompanied the child sex-abuse witch-hunts of the 1980s and 1990s: how a single anonymous phone call could bring to bear an army of recovered-memory therapists, venal and ambitious prosecutors, and hypocritical judges -- an army that jailed hundreds of innocent Americans. The overarching story of "No Crueler Tyrannies" is that of the Amirault family, who ran the Fells Acres day care center in Malden, Massachusetts: Violet Amirault, her daughter Cheryl, and her son Gerald, victims of perhaps the most biased prosecution since the Salem witch trials. Woven into the fabric of the Amirault tragedy -- an unfinished story, with Gerald Amirault still incarcerated for crimes that, Ms. Rabinowitz persuasively argues, he not only did not commit, but which never happened -- are other, equally alarming tales of prosecutorial terrors: the stories of Wenatchee, Washington, where the single-minded efforts of chief sex crimes investigator Robert Perez jailed dozens of his neighbors; Patrick Griffin, a respected physician whose life and reputation were destroyed by a false accusation of sexual molestation; John Carroll, a marina owner from Troy, New York, now serving ten to twenty years largely at the behest of the same expert witness used to wrongly jail Kelly Michaels fifteen years previously; and Grant Snowden, the North Miami policeman sentenced to five consecutive life terms after being prosecuted by then Dade County State Attorney Janet Reno who spent eleven years killing rats in various Florida prisons before a new trial affirmed his innocence.

Posted 5/2/2003 03:19:44 PM by Edward Driscoll
"TAPE SHOWS EXHAUSTED, CONFUSED SADDAM": Was this his last speech, or the last speech of a Saddamalike? By the way, incredible timing: contrast how a Saddam who looks "exhausted, at times confused and seemingly resigned to defeat", with the BSD who arrived on the Abraham Lincoln yesterday must be playing in the Middle East:

The landing thing was supposed to be third world, its for Al Jazeera and Co. Bush is remembering to talk to the rest of the world here, its his bit for those that don't dig the nuances of 1st world foreign policy. Quick translation: I'm the "swingingest" alpha male on the block, all that stuff about American cowardice by Al Queda, et al was as accurate as Bagdad Bob's press conferences.

Anybody know what Al-Jazeera is saying about all this?

Posted 5/2/2003 02:50:02 PM by Edward Driscoll
"INCOME RISES, POVERTY FALLS, FOR BLACK FAMILIES IN THE 1990s": Jesse and Al, call your offices.

Posted 5/2/2003 02:31:11 PM by Edward Driscoll
"BUSH TOUTS TAX CUTS IN SILICON VALLEY": "In your face, Gray Davis" sounds like the subtext of where he chose to give the speech.

Posted 5/2/2003 01:23:40 PM by Edward Driscoll
DESPITE HER DAD'S LAWSUIT, Michael Newdow's daughter recites the Pledge of Allegiance regularly.

Posted 5/2/2003 01:06:50 PM by Edward Driscoll
IT'S GOING TO BE A LONG SEASON FOR THE JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS: Quarterback Mark Brunell was just told by owner Wayne Weaver that he's a lame duck this year.

Posted 5/2/2003 12:36:12 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE BUSH/TRUMAN CONNECTION: Gleaves Whitney on George W. Bush's landing and speech on the U.S.S. Lincoln, and its historical precedents.

Posted 5/2/2003 10:50:18 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE CADBURY CHOCOLATE CONTROVERSY: David Frum writes:

While Donald Rumsfeld takes his victory lap in Iraq and Americans celebrate the capture of yet another al Qaeda creep, the British media are consumed by a controversy over ... chocolate. It’s worth paying attention--because a similar story will in all likelihood be coming on this side of the Atlantic very soon. * * * During the battles over tobacco, skeptical conservatives used to wonder--what’s next? Attacks on cheese and chocolate and cola makers for causing obesity? (There’s a funny scene in Chris Buckley’s Thank You for Smoking in which a tobacco lobbyist indignantly insists that a single cheddar cheese cube is much more dangerous than a single cigarette.) Well guess what? That is exactly what is coming next.

Frum has some interesting observations as to why. And speaking of the battles over tobacco, its recent ban in New York bars isn't doing much for the city's quality of life.

Posted 5/2/2003 12:36:02 AM by Edward Driscoll
CAREER DAY: with special appearances by Buck the Marine, Tom Daschle, George W. Bush, and Donald Rumsfeld. Let's listen to Donald telling a class of first graders what he does:

A Secretary of Defense must thirst for blood. He must love nothing more than to see the enemy cower before him, begging for mercy. But you must not be merciful. The enemy will see that as weakness, and we must never show weakness, for we are the United States of America." "Hoo-rah!" Buck added. "Are you going to kill and eat us?" asked a scared little child. Rumsfeld considered this for a little while. "Not at this time," he finally answered.

Read the whole thing, class.

Posted 5/2/2003 12:22:55 AM by Edward Driscoll
IS THERE A PRO-MARXIST SLANT TO ABC NEWS? One retired correspondent says yes.

Posted 5/2/2003 12:05:45 AM by Edward Driscoll
TOM WOLFE'S UPCOMING NOVEL: R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. offers a sneak preview, and a close-up look at the man in the white suit.

Posted 5/2/2003 12:03:18 AM by Edward Driscoll
FIDEL'S GOETTERDAEMMERUNG: Ernesto Betancourt writes of the coming crisis in Cuba.

Posted 5/1/2003 08:22:51 PM by Edward Driscoll
WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE TO LAND A JET ON A CARRIER? Check out these comments from somebody who used do it.

Posted 5/1/2003 01:22:26 PM by Edward Driscoll
"NAVY ONE" HAS LANDED SAFELY.

Posted 4/30/2003 10:34:44 PM by Edward Driscoll
LANDING ON THE GREASY SKILLET: Tom Wolfe once wrote a terrific article on what it's like to land an F-4 Phantom onto a Navy aircraft carrier. In one memorable paragraph, he wrote that the pilots referred to it as landing on constantly heaving greasy skillet. President Bush will be landing on the deck of the USS Lincoln in an S-3B Viking tomorrow. Patrick Ruffini has the details, and a description of his own landing, onto the deck of the USS John F. Kennedy.

Posted 4/30/2003 10:02:01 PM by Edward Driscoll
SLUGGING THROUGH COMMUTER LANES: Terrific article by Radley Balko on how the free market system is beating bureaucratic communist, err...commuter lanes. For my take on the evils of commuter lanes, check out this article from April of 2001.

Posted 4/30/2003 09:42:02 PM by Edward Driscoll
WHERE HAVE ALL THE MEN GONE ON CAMPUS? Orrin Judd has some thoughts--but not a brainstorm. Definitely not a brainstorm!

Posted 4/30/2003 08:25:17 PM by Edward Driscoll
DEEP WITHIN THE LAND OF THE ROCOCO MARXISTS: Steven Den Beste writes of academia's pomo crowd:

It's hardly surprising; after 20 years of intellectual masturbation they didn't produce any babies. Their ideas were revealed as being empty. What they mostly reaped was ridicule. Their proposals didn't pass the horselaugh test.

Curiously enough, as Jonah Goldberg recently wrote, it's slowly, very, very slowly--painfully slowly--beginning to dawn on them on just how ineffective their work has been.

Posted 4/30/2003 11:36:20 AM by Edward Driscoll
SHELF LIFE: How the Rick Santorum story played itself out in the press in seven days.

Posted 4/29/2003 11:22:01 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE INTERNATIONAL ED DRISCOLL! I can't read much of it, but someone at CNet Japan has picked up on my Tech Central Station column on Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Arigatou gozaimasu! (By the way, if anyone wants to organize EdDriscoll.com Live at Budokan (or simply live at a good Tokyo sushi restaurant), talk to my agent--I'm sure we can work something out.)

Posted 4/29/2003 09:09:17 PM by Edward Driscoll
YOU MAY HAVE SEEN Glenn Reynolds' link to this survey of blogs and bloggers, being offered by two professors at the University of Tennessee. They're still looking for people to participate in it, so if you haven't yet, click on over, and tell them how you feel about Weblogs, and news on the 'Net in general.

Posted 4/29/2003 05:28:30 PM by Edward Driscoll
PAGING DR. ORWELL: Check out this bit of Clintonian parsing from John Kerry:

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said Tuesday that his controversial wartime comment saying the United States, like Iraq, needs a regime change was intended as a lighthearted remark. ''It was not about the president, and it was not about the war. It was about the election,'' Kerry said during a campaign stop in Alabama.

Say what? If it was about the election, then by its very nature, wouldn't it be about the president? Dale Amon of Samizdata wrote in November that "Political Correctness is not a matter of what is said; it is a matter of who says it. The annointed are 'allowed' freedoms of speech unavailable to the hoi polloi." Fortunately, I'm not sure how annointed Kerry is these days. UPDATE: "Sen. Daschle's Fate [in the next election] Rests on War Comments"

Posted 4/29/2003 05:10:00 PM by Edward Driscoll
SOME DETAILS ON THE LATEST BOMBING IN TEL AVIV, that you probably won't see covered by AP. UPDATE: And here's their Web site.

Posted 4/29/2003 02:39:03 PM by Edward Driscoll
"FIND WMDs OR ELSE": Congressman J. D. Hayworth writes:

What makes the left's "find WMDs or else" argument even more curious is that for months we were told that the president was constantly changing his rationale for war, going from WMDs to Iraq's link to 9/11 and terrorism to human rights to regime change to introducing democracy into the Arab Middle East and back to WMDs again. The fact is, it was all those reasons, and yet the critics can now remember only one. Furthermore, British PM Tony Blair continually and persuasively made the case for invading Iraq purely on the grounds of the gruesome and threatening nature of Saddam's regime. Does that imply Bush has explaining to do but Blair doesn't? That U.S. credibility is lost but Britain's isn't? That Basra was legitimately liberated but the rest of Iraq wasn't?

What would have today's left thought about 1776? How much sniping would they have done about that war, its causes, and its aftermath? Fortunately, the Weekly Standard fired up their Tardis, and found this.

Posted 4/29/2003 02:27:04 PM by Edward Driscoll
HEY, I THOUGHT THAT WAS REUTERS' SCHTICK: The BBC also likes to refer to Bin Laden as a "Saudi-born dissident". Or as Andrew Sullivan writes, "Sakharov, Walesa, bin Laden. That's the mind of the BBC."

Posted 4/29/2003 01:56:35 PM by Edward Driscoll
TIME MAGAZINE REPORTS ON an "Iron Maiden Found in Uday Hussein's Playground", writing:

In his capacity as head of Iraq's Olympic committee and also of its soccer federation, he is known to have ordered the torture of athletes who performed below his expectations. A bad day on the field for a player on the national soccer squad could result in savage retribution: Players had their feet scalded and toenails ripped off for failing to win tournaments. Allegations of torture had even resulted in investigations by international sports governing bodies, most notably soccer's FIFA, but these had failed to produce conclusive evidence — hardly surprising, since no player would dare admit to suffering such abuse, for fear of even worse.

We wrote briefly about Uday's sadism on one of the first days of the war. (Time article found via Charles Johnson.)

Posted 4/29/2003 12:07:15 AM by Edward Driscoll
ANOTHER BLOGCRITICS POST: "B-Bending Away The Blues". And yes, that's my guitar in the close-ups.

Posted 4/28/2003 11:57:19 PM by Edward Driscoll
NUMBER 47 ON YOUR SCORECARD: "The former Iraqi oil minister, Amir Rashid Muhammad al-Ubaydi, has surrendered to the U.S.-led coalition forces, the U.S. Central Command said", according to AP, who reports that Al-Ubaydi was listed as Number 47 on the coalition's list of the 55 most-wanted officials from the Saddam Hussein regime, and was denominated as the six of spades in the deck of cards issued to coalition forces to identify top regime members. Awww--and it was Saddam's birthday today, too. Sorry old chap!

Posted 4/28/2003 09:51:50 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE NEXT NEO-CON SUPPORTED INVASION: Another exclusive by Scott Ott.

Posted 4/28/2003 09:11:34 PM by Edward Driscoll
CONSPIRING TO AID THE TALIBAN: That's what a former Intel engineer has been charged with by federal prosecutors.

Posted 4/28/2003 06:52:13 PM by Edward Driscoll
EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS: Just posted a long essay on Blogcritics, on the documentary version of Peter Biskind's 1999 book, which debuted on the Trio cable network last night.

Posted 4/27/2003 03:46:01 PM by Edward Driscoll
FORD KILLS THE NEW T-BIRD, "and not on a Friday", according to Mickey Kaus, who asks, "Is 'Retrofuturism' a thing of the past?"

Posted 4/27/2003 03:22:25 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE LITMUS TEST: "A crackdown on terror will be the real litmus test of the new Palestinian government, a senior advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said on Thursday", according to CNSNews.com.

Posted 4/27/2003 02:45:03 PM by Edward Driscoll
GREAT MOMENTS IN NFL DRAFT HEADLINES: "Bengals take drive-by shooting victim in fourth round".

Posted 4/27/2003 12:28:41 PM by Edward Driscoll
WHAT A SCOOP: Right Wing News has an exclusive interview with Condi Rice! (Hmmm...I've never played Barry White in the background when interviewing somebody. But it really seemed to work, more or less.)