Events

A gentile goes into a clothing store and says, "This is a very fine jacket. How much is it?"The salesman says, "It's $500."The gentile says, "OK, I'll take it." Two gentiles meet on the street. The first one says, "You own your own business, don't you? How's it going?"The other gentile says, "Just great! Thanks for asking!" Two gentile mothers meet on the street and start talking about children.Gentile mother 1 (said with pride): "My son is a construction worker!"Gentile mother 2 (said with more pride)...

Sometimes it's sad reading the morning papers. The President is reacting to public disclosure of illegal surveillance programs disgracefully: President Bush offered an impassioned defense of his secret international banking surveillance program yesterday, calling it a legal and effective tool for hunting down terrorists and denouncing the media's disclosure of it as a "disgraceful" act that does "great harm" to the nation. See, it's the surveillance, wiretapping, eavesdropping, and leafing through bank...

I changed the thumbnail for the blog just now. Here's a larger version: For comparison, here's the old one: Yes, I'm sitting at the same table at Jack London's Pub in Carmel by the Sea, Calif. (Here's the original post.)

In this month's Washington Monthly: About the only failure more pronounced than the president's has been the graft-filled plunder of GOP lawmakers—at least according to opinion polls, which in May gave the GOP-controlled Congress favorability ratings in the low 20s, about 10 points lower than the president's. This does not necessarily translate into electoral Armageddon; redistricting and other incumbency-protection devices help protect against that. But even if many commentators think that Republicans...

The Requiem performance used Robert Levin's 1993 edition.

The Daily WTF: http://thedailywtf.com/

Ma Bell, risen from near death like the hydra, now says they own your phone records and will disclose them however they see fit: The new policy says that AT&T—not customers—owns customers' confidential info and can use it "to protect its legitimate business interests, safeguard others, or respond to legal process." The policy also indicates that AT&T will track the viewing habits of customers of its new video service—something that cable and satellite providers are prohibited from doing. Moreover, AT&T...