In the So What’s The Big Deal About That Department: MICHAEL Jackson’s young accuser and his family were offered a house and a college education in return for filming a rebuttal to British journalist Martin Bashir’s controversial documentary, a court heard yesterday. (The boy’s) stepfather, Jay Jackson, told Santa Maria court, California he feared the pop star’s aides were taking advantage of the family. He claimed one employee, Frank Tyson, had told him that…Jay...

Iran was a prime topic of conservations when President George Bush met Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon — with Israel continue to urge Washington to keep diplomatic pressures on to assure Iran can’t develop a nuke. According to the Israeli paper Ha’aretz: A source in Sharon’s entourage said that Iran is sensitive to pressure, “and it is still possible to influence it.” The Iranian issue was the main point of Monday’s discussion during the lunch Bush...

The old-fashioned girls’ baby doll and boys’ action dolls are about to become outmoded with a new kind of doll — and if you don’t buy your kids one and they tell you to go to hell, you just might: NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – A talking Jesus doll is due to go on sale in May, along with versions of Moses, the Virgin Mary and David, as a teddy bear maker tries to find a market with churches and religious families. The foot-tall Jesus doll will be able to recite five Biblical...

Law professor Glenn Reynolds, on his MSNBC site, takes a look at the firestorm among GOP social conservatives over the judiciary. Read it all but here’s a key quote: Now the activist fringe of the Republican Party is out after the judiciary. Have they gone crazy, or is there method in their madness? Maybe a little of both. Perhaps they think that this sort of noise will intimidate the federal judiciary — as Roosevelt’s court-packing plan did. Or perhaps they’re just trying...

I mean, you DO have to wonder sometimes how people get the jobs they have: It’s the kind of spat that flares thousands of times a day in schools all over the country. But at Public School 34 in Queens Village, Assistant Principal Nancy Miller’s ghastly way of handling a minor scuffle between two Haitian fourth-graders has sparked fury. According to parents and students, Miller, who is white, chose to punish all 13 Haitian pupils in the school’s only fourth-grade bilingual class...

A MUST READ posted by Patrick Belton on Oxblog — their latest long, detailed and highly compelling letter from their Afghanistan correspondent. A small excerpt, on his conclusion: This bears emphasis, in contrast to the unwarranted hysteria of some of the commentary I read on Afghanistan (”an electoral-narco-gulag-permanent-base dependency,” passim). Many people still don’t understand just how bad things were in Afghanistan, or how hard it is to find the traction to begin...

Maybe they don’t like him as much as the most critical thing in the Jewish religion (Chinese food), but there are are signs President George Bush has made some inroads to Jewish voters — and by that we don’t mean paths to gated communities in Florida. According to the Los Angeles Times: Before the election, some analysts predicted that Bush would make substantial gains among Jews because of his strong support for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who met with the president Monday...

For some perspective on weblogs in addition to what Joe Gandelmen presented here at The Moderate Voice, you can find it in some “Navel-gazing“. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.    -William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616), Hamlet, Act 1 scene 5

Sorry: we could care less how people jump through mental hoops to justify it, but this is just one more sign of the brutalization of society — always couched with an intellectual justification…but there are some of us that’ll be resisting this one by signing petitions and writing letters: Cat lovers might be outraged by the idea of allowing hunters to stalk their furry friends, but some naturalists say pet owners ought to take the proposal as a wake-up call to be more responsible. The...

Each day the Michael Jackson trial seemingly has allegations sleazier and more troubling. And it has weird twists and turns…such as the latest bulletin that the mother of the current victim may choose not to testify — thus possibly putting the prosecution’s case at risk. Or will it? (Choose your theory) Recent compelling testimony is a result of the judge allowing truly shocking pattern evidence in — including this latest: The mother of a boy who received a multimillion-dollar...

The Christian Science Monitor has (as usual) a superb piece that suggests that in both terms of historic and current trends Tom DeLay is in increasingly boiling political hot water. The boldfaced sub head gives part of it: From Jim Wright to Newt Gingrich, powerful House leaders have become targets of opposition. And then there’s this paragraph which we’ll boldface: In public, most Republicans say that what’s driving the criticism of the House majority leader is politics, not...

A couple of readers asked for us to repost the MSNBC appearance yesterday, so here it is. Go to The Political Teen here then click on the Connected screen and you can see the blog wrapup and TMV. Also, in answer to your questions: the segment was done from a studio in downtown San Diego rented by MSNBC. This wasn’t discussed as a permanent commentary feature by TMV but was done to help them out yesterday. We have been especially pleased by the emails saying TMV looks just like Brad Pitt (oh:...

Our periodic round up of great posts from around the Blog-0-U-Know-What. Posts are NOT selected due to political ideology and viewpoints vary. Viewpoints do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Moderate Voice or his Gifted Guest Bloggers. A BIG CONTROVERSY OVER A NEW GROUP OF BLACK CONSERVATIVE BLOGGERS called The Conservative Brotherhood is unfolding. Visit Booker Rising which has some other great links and explains: Also check out commentary by Cobb (who founded TCB), Ramblings Journal,...

As if conservative columnist Robert Novak being absolutely shocked at how Op-Ed pages work wasn’t enough, now we have liberal investigative journalist Sy Hersh saying it’s OK if he lies to audiences who pay him big bucks to speak. Is there something in the water (or bourbon) that these guys are drinking? We dealt with Novak below and now — JUST when we THOUGHT we caught our breath — we see this: Since the Abu Ghraib story broke eleven months ago, The New Yorker’s...

There’s been a big fuss over this Bob Novak column and it makes you wonder if he’s been hiding under a rock all these years when he’s been such a profilic reporter, columnist and just plain journalist: On March 24, former Congressman Bob Livingston was sent an e-mail by a New York Times editorial page staffer suggesting he write an op-ed essay. Would Livingston, who in 1998 gave up certain elevation to be House speaker because of a sexual affair, write about how Majority Leader...

We JUST got back from doing the appearance on MSNBC’s Connected Coast To Coast. You can see our appearance by clicking HERE which will take you to the segment posted by The Political Teen. The Political Teen also has the links to the individual sites and posts that we mentioned, so you can explore those as well. This was quite a day. MSNBC called in the morning and TMV did the show, which was a new experience. He also just had a progressive group cancel a Blog Ad on this site, which was also...

I’ll be appearing briefly on MSNBC’s Connected which airs at 5 p.m. EST today to do a brief segment on some stories blogs are writing about. Read the great posts by our Guest Bloggers below (when I come back later this afternoon I’ll fix some technical glitches on one of my posts etc. but I’ll be busy getting ready the next hour or so).

President George Bush is telling Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to cool it in the case of a key Jewish settlement if he truly wants peace in the Middle East. That’s the bottom line of their meeting, as the AP notes: CRAWFORD, Texas – President Bush, concerned about the progress of negotiations toward peace in the Middle East, asked Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon both publicly and privately Monday not to expand a key Jewish settlement in the West Bank. “I told the prime...

This past weekend’s anti-American demonstrations in Baghdad speak to the growing influence of Muqtada al-Sadr as the Iraqi people become less tolerant of US occupation and influence. I will admit, the size of the protests was surprising. Of course, there’s disagreement on the exact number of protesters ranging from “tens of thousands” to “>300,000, but, regardless, it shows that Sadr has retained influence and can call upon his supporters to stage events at whatever...

President Bush has a great reputation for “sticking to his guns” on key issues – a quality that’s grudgingly attributed even by those who disagree with his policies. Some political minds are beginning to wonder if his low approval ratings might have to do with his selection of sticking points.

We’re holding our second post on the Stanford conference and other posts until later this morning to go get some ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. Check back!

NOTE TO READERS: I moderated a panel discussion at Stanford’s Bay Area Law School Technology Conference Saturday and below you’ll find the text of my prepared comments. There were some ad libs that went off this script, but I stayed close to it since I had been asked to moderate in my role as someone who was in the middle of the other great blogger panelists. Also, I wanted to frame the issue highlighting a bit of what others might raise and try and get the pot “boiling”...

TMV is back from Stanford. We’ll be posting his comments to the conference panel he moderated soon, plus another post with a link to antoher presenter’s full comments (his really livened it up), plus some excerpts from some of the other talks and Q& A sessions very soon. There will be at least two posts based on the conference. UPDATE: Due to having just gotten back, these posts will be on this site at 9 p.m. PST which is 12 mindnight EST. The actual date (since Powerblogs is on...

Supporters of Howard Dean usually have the stereotype of hard, uncompromising stances on the issues of the day – war, taxes, health care, etc. – but a new Pew poll shows they are more likely than Democrats in general to shift their positions on arguably the most important issue of last year. Matt Yglesias explains: Not surprisingly, Dean folks are essentially unanimous in their view that invading Iraq was a bad idea. More surprisingly, Dean activists are much more likely than Democrats...

Convicted murderers get new trials for all sorts of reasons, but this is the first button-related reversal I’ve heard. Not surprisingly it comes from the 9th Circuit, whose decisions over the years have been “novel” to say the least.