TMV will be winging his way back to San Diego from Stanford University very soon. When he returns to San Diego he’ll do TWO posts on the blogging related panel he moderated at a conference here. One will contain some of the highlights of the presentations by the other three members. The other will be the prepared text of his own presentation which he intentionally made more blunt than usual to help move the discussion. If that’s posted it’ll also have a list of the criticisms made...

With every passing day, it seems as if House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is in more political trouble — so can he counter it with “the best defense is a good offense?” Amid continued news reports that DeLay’s supporters will soon launch a big campaign painting to opposition to him as merely coming from liberals and a biased media, a prominent Republican has moved to put a BIG distance between him and his Congressional leader. “He is an absolute embarrassment to me and...

…but it can also be very interesting.

QUESTION: Isn’t it time for President George Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney to crack down on or completely repudiate the unprecedented verbal extremism that is making the GOP seem like a party teetering on openly calling for violence against judges whose decisions some partisans don’t like? Answer: It most certainly is. And the latest evidence of verbal excess that seemingly invites every nutcase out there who doesn’t like a judge to whack someone in a black robe comes from...

In the wake of the death of Pope John Paul II, not all is in harmony. The wounds from the sexual abuse scandals involving Roman Catholic priests in the United States, particularly in the Boston area, have still not healed.

…after this rather terse story on CNN.com: Ailing WWII veteran finally gets medals Saturday, April 9, 2005 Posted: 2041 GMT (0441 HKT) ROSEMEAD, California (AP) — A gravely ill World War II veteran who was wounded in the Normandy invasion has been honored with a Bronze Star and other medals more than six decades after he stormed the coast of France. “I’m bewildered, I’m excited. I’m confused. I’m not used to talking this much,” former Army Pvt. Manuel...

The New York Times has a baffling piece on a gay Republican political consultant marrying his partner in a civil ceremony in Massachusetts. By most standards of the newsworthy – time to pull out your first-year journalism notes – this story has no reason for being. The wedding was in December; he lives in Massachusetts, so it wasn’t a trek; his sexuality has been known for several years at the least (40 years with the same partner); he’s a self-described libertarian who...

Just a small affair today in Windsor: Charles and Camilla have had their wedding blessed in a ceremony at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle. About 800 of the couple’s family and friends attended including the Queen and Prince Philip. Earlier, Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall, as she is now known, were married in a private civil ceremony at the Guildhall in Windsor. — During the service, the couple made their pledges, including a promise to be faithful to each other. Earlier,...

Prescription painkillers seem to be falling by the wayside in the FDA’s wake, but how do regular users feel about their most effective drugs getting pulled?

There are aspects of the recent “Schiavo talking points” imbroglio that make a strange mirror to the Dan Rather/forged National Guard memo affair.

…it might be wise to take some time and consider the effects of rhetoric, appearances, and unintended outcomes.

Now we KNOW Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is a fast-study in Washington power techniques and is aiming for The Big Time (White House) with the news that his administration has hired a local newspaper columnist to shill his policies: Governor Mitt Romney’s administration has awarded a $10,000 contract to a Boston Herald op-ed columnist to promote the governor’s environmental policies. The columnist, Charles D. Chieppo, started working yesterday with the Executive Office of Environmental...

Bad news for President George Bush and Congress: a new poll shows many Americans think you are effectiveness challenged. Don’t quit your day jobs. Oh, wait: those are your day jobs…The poll numbers: President Bush’s standing with the public is slumping just three months into his final term, but Americans have an even lower regard for the job being done by Congress. Bush’s job approval is at 44 percent, with 54 percent disapproving. Only 37 percent have a favorable opinion...

The T & A agency….we mean the TSA Agency…is going to be stripped of its powers and dismantled, according to reports. The agency that has come under fire for various high profile bungles, allegations of stealing, messes over a no-fly list and humiliating pat downs of women (including grandmas) will apparently be no more: The Transportation Security Administration, once the flagship agency in the nation’s $20 billion effort to protect air travelers, is now slated for dismantling. ...

I can think of alternate uses for this personal technology. Fortunately I’m not an early adopter.

TMV is here at Stanford University getting ready for the panel discussion tomorrow (see our post below). We’ll be doing a report on it most likely late tomorrow afternoon or evening. Regular posts WILL appear on this site all this weekend. (This photo and other great photos of Stanford can be found here.)

Reporters Without Borders, a press freedom group on my blogroll, just released nominations for freedom blog awards. Jeff Jarvis has two bones to pick with them: only one Iraqi blog, Riverbend, which doesn’t do reporting and is very anti-American: Now if they want to nominate her, that’s fine; I get it. But then for Reporters Without Borders to not nominate the many bloggers who have actually reported news in Iraq — but aren’t so anti-Ameerican — is ridiculous…...

Like an avenging angel of the Internet, a judge has ruled that a spammer must spend 9 years in the slammer for cramming countless email boxes with millions of junk messages: However, Loudoun County Circuit Judge Thomas Horne delayed the start of Jeremy Jaynes’ prison term while the case is appealed, saying the law is new and raises constitutional questions. A jury had recommended the nine-year term for the Raleigh, N.C., man. Jaynes, 30, who was considered among the top 10 spammers in the...

…we can turn to CNet News, where in an article on weblogs the following is offered: The growth rate of blogs is impressive. Technorati, a search engine that monitors blogs, tracked more than 8 million online diaries as of March 21, up from 100,000 just two years ago. A new blog is created every 7.4 seconds. That adds up to 12,000 new blogs a day, 275,000 posts a day and 10,800 updates an hour. “At its most basic level, it’s a technology that is lowering the cost of publishing”...

Is the Tim Allen grunting oaf popular again with women? (And am I the lamest 25-year-old for using Tim Allen as a cultural reference?) A new poll – fittingly commissioned by Dodge Trucks – gives mixed and somewhat ambiguous results: •75 percent of women said their ideal man buys his grooming products at a grocery store or drugstore, not a salon. •72 percent of women said their ideal man spends his free time doing home-improvement projects. •41 percent of...

…and the scenes in the courtroom more and more dramatic. And a pattern seems to emerging. More very bad news for Michael Jackson. UPDATE: 5:30 pm PST and the GREAT new tabloid site SPLOID offers this story about testimony touching on (literally) former child actor Macaulay Culkin. (Remember: Michael Jackson contends this is happening because he’s black…)

…abortion, that is. My college newspaper colleague Steve Barnett, now a law student in Oregon, describes his Con Law session on abortion law: We went silent because we knew blood was going to be shed. We knew after that day some of us would no longer would be friends. We knew passions would boil high, and our voices would be the piercing whistles telling others that we had reached the boiling point. But to his surprise, the discussion stayed civil, the professor kept him on his toes when...

And you think YOU have problems with your sick relatives, bills, flooded basement? And you think Michael Jackson has problems with his trial? All of those are mere trifles compared to what this guy faces. Writes Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson: Imagine you’re a 56-year-old man, famously unemployed. Your mother is a domineering executive consumed by her work, your father a dour martinet who inhabits a little surviving time bubble of the 19th century. Your first marriage was such...

Tom DeLay is providing just too, too much work for journalists (and bloggers) and may be trying to enter the Guiness World Book of Records under “Scandals” — so Slate helps all of us out with this wrap up…a kind of Sleaze-O-Rama. Enjoy!

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the movie star governor put in office with the votes of thousands of independents and Democrats, has just suffered his first major defeat. His plan to overhaul the state’s pension plan has bombed and he has taken it off the table — for now, he says — for an overhaul: SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Under pressure from firefighters and police officers, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday backed off, for now, his plan to privatize California’s...