…seems to often exclude the pitfalls...

…so here’s one Airing Of Grievances…

….over schools?

It doesn’t sound right and readers of the Raleigh News & Observer didn’t think it looked right…

Some people need to get with the program.

This is a holiday weekend (duh) but nonetheless we will be offering regular postings throughout the weekend, some of them perhaps a bit more personal than usual. Today’s posts will begin a bit later than usual due to some complications last night that required TMV’s time away from his keyboard. New posts will be on this site throughout the day. This was supposed to go on at 9 pm tonight which is Saturday on the east coast. It will be redated for tomorrow’s blog later tonight.

We had a reference to it in our Around The ‘Sphere below, but it’s just such an achievement in a political turnabout, such a quick dumping of previous allies after a finger held aloft in the wind detected a different direction that he beat out Majority Leader Bill Frist. And so: The Moderate Voice awards its highly coveted Plastic Wrap Political Transparency Of The Year Award to Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum: Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) withdrew on Thursday his affiliation from the...

…John Cole to a lot of folks.

Just think about how it’d be if you had a relative who had a truly hated name and how you’d cope with it? Here’s one way to get your message out: Osama bin Laden’s niece, in an interview with GQ magazine in which she appears scantily clad, says she has nothing in common with the al-Qaida leader and simply wants acceptance by Americans Everyone relates me to that man, and I have nothing to do with him,” Wafah Dufour, the daughter of bin Laden’s half brother, Yeslam...

So how has the TV/radio talk show culture changed families in the United States and the way family conversations are conducted? A lot, concludes actor-blogger Wil Wheaton in a provocative essay in Salon which you can read here. (You have to watch a brief ad to get to the essay but it’s WELL worth it). In case you were on Venus the past 10 years, Wheaton the talented actor morphed into Wheaton the talented non-political blogger and book writer. In fact, he now has one of the biggest, most successful...

The Blogometer looks at 2005 from the standpoint of Blogtopia: If 2004 was the year that blogs broke into the mainstream, 2005 saw an acceleration of this trend — even without a presidential election to focus on. Unlike 12 months ago, the word “blog” itself is almost a household name. Those annoying wire stories that reiterate the fact that “blog is short for web-log” are definitely on the way out…. As a community, blog participation appears to be growing at an...

The wife confesses to the murder….

…like John Gibson. (Make sure you click on the link WITHIN that post to watch the original video and judge for yourself)

Yesterday at The Reaction I mentioned that the Supreme Court of Canada (SCOC) was set to rule on a high-profile case involving: – abortion? – the death penalty? – church and state? – police powers? No: swingers clubs. That post, which includes some background to the case and my own take on, well, swinging, is here. ********** The ruling is in. SCOC has upheld the rights of swingers to do as they please, more or less, within the confines of their clubs — see here. (I...

President George Bush has this new LIST…

Or, rather, the (non-Letterman) Top 10 Signs…

If you thought 2005 was a nasty year with growing polarization, festering political rage on both sides, politicians going after politicans, parties going after parties and bloggers going after bloggers….well, then, you better brace yourself: Newsweek‘s Howard Fineman makes the case that the worst is yet to come: As best I can tell — and this really isn’t my beat — the only people who knew about the NSA’s new (and now so controversial) warrant-less eavesdropping...

I didn’t either…but she does…

Recently, I’ve defended the media against any inherent bias over at Donklephant. I think the media do the best job they can in real time. Yes…it’s a difficult job bringing the world story after story, day in and day out. This hasn’t always been my view, but it most certainly is currently. And now a Donklephant contributor, Callimachus, weighs in on what constitutes bias in the media… People on the left say the media has a conservative prejudice and conservatives laugh...

The ripples over President George W. Bush’s secret go-ahead for domestic spying, and his subsequent defense of it, have morphed into a bigger wave with the announcement that a federal spy court judge has quit in protest. The Washington Post reports: A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of President Bush’s secret authorization of a domestic spying program, according to two sources. U.S. District Judge James...

I attempted to discuss that question this past summer at my weblog Random Fate, and in light of Joe’s post below discussing the founding of The Moderate Voice it seems appropriate to review my personal view of what constitutes a “moderate” and how that is not the same as a “centrist”: What is a moderate? A short addendum to “What is a moderate?â€? You will not always see centrist positions taken by me either here or in other venues where I write, but I do try...

Some thoughts from Centerfield….

…according to Roger Ebert (I can’t wait to see King Kong…)

Let’s call it The Pajamas Media Factor (uh, oh, O’Reilly will sue…).

A Miami seaplane crashes.