Dispatches

Pentagon Slogans Put on Soldiers' Graves
08.23.2005 12:47 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
I really hope this isn't what it seems like. That is, I really hope no one is using soldiers' graves as an advertisement to build support for wars: Unlike earlier wars, nearly all Arlington National Cemetery gravestones for troops killed in Iraq or A...

Buy Your Way Out of SUV Guilt
08.22.2005 09:58 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
Really, this is service has been a long time coming: If you're feeling guilty about driving your giant sport utility vehicle (but not so guilty that you'd ever give it up), salvation is at hand. For a yearly fee of around $80, a company called TerraP...

Party of National Security
08.22.2005 09:51 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
Who served in the military, and who didn't? The list is

Who Won the 2000 election?
08.22.2005 09:34 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
It's the sore question that just won't go away. Conspiracies abound about Ohio in 2004, and they may or may not have some basis in fact. But as more and more people look at Florida in 2000, there seems less and less doubt that Al Gore actually won the sta...

Miller Denied Journalism Award
08.04.2005 11:07 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
From Editor & Publisher: The board of The American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) has voted unanimously to not endorse an earlier decision to give a Conscience in Media award to jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller, E&P has learned...

Super-Hannity
08.04.2005 10:57 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
It seems, after seeing this, that there may well be nothing more to say. Ever. A new comic book is coming out. It is set in a dystopian future (2021) when liberals have seized control of the world, Michael Moore is President, Chelsea Clinton is Vice Pr...

The Idiot Watch
08.04.2005 10:39 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
Two cases of idiocy, one more dangerous than the other. 1. Gorgeous George Galloway, the ragingly left-wing member of Britain's Parliament who warmed the hearts of liberals everywhere by tearing Norm Coleman limb from limb in his Senate testimony, yes...

Santorum - The Phantom Menace!
08.03.2005 11:45 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
Ever notice how some right-wing pundits (and to be fair, some left-wing pundits) cast aspersions on entire groups by attributing statements to them that were seemingly made by no individual? Christopher Hitchens is rather notorious for this, blaming vario...

Baseball and Iraq
08.02.2005 10:25 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
Does Baseball demand more accountability than government. Eric Alterman makes the case: Great Quotes in History or, Why Can't Life be More Like Baseball? "I have never intentionally used steroids. Never. Ever. Period." The guy who said t...

War and Moral Hazard
08.01.2005 09:25 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
From today's Washington Post: Who's Paying for Our Patriotism? By Uwe E. Reinhardt Monday, August 1, 2005; A17 President Bush assures us that the ongoing twin wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are worth the sacrifices they entail. Editorialists aro...

Miller Time
07.29.2005 14:00 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
Amid the Supreme Court nomination, the London attacks, and the continued violence in Iraq, some of you may have forgotten that New York Times reporter Judith Miller continues to languish in jail. Miller has managed to put herself at the heart of both the...

Apocalypse Soon
07.27.2005 10:20 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
I encourage everyone to wander over to Rapture Ready, a website that "scientifically" tracks the return of Christ and the final fight between good and evil. The group's Rapture Index uses 45 separate variables (among them floods, false Christs, cond...

Stolen Election, Part Deux
07.27.2005 10:02 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
A correspondent directs me to Black Box Voting, which apparently has a wealth of information about how voting machines can be rigged by a very small (4-5) number of people. Again, I'm far from convinced that the election was compromised--although it c...

Stolen Election?
07.26.2005 12:35 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
The current issue of Harper's has an article by Mark Crispin Miller about irregularities in the 2004 election. I am not convinced that the election was stolen, and neither, for that matter, is Miller. It's entirely possible that the election went off perf...

The George Miller Animal House
07.25.2005 12:29 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
The Los Angeles Times has a nice profile today of California Rep. George Miller, who--in addition to being one of the more liberal members of Congress, also runs a boarding house for other Democrats who need a place to crash during the week. Miller i...

Department of Improbable Research
07.21.2005 16:33 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
Physicists in Hungary have performed a series of quantitative analyses to explain the dynamics of the wave. Not the wave as in the ocean, but the wave as in the vaguely annoying ballgame ritual that forces you to stand up every few minutes while hopefully...

What if John Roberts were John Kerry?
07.21.2005 10:33 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
The Daily Kos runs an excerpt from blogger Billmon, who fantasizes about how a Karl Rove-led campaign against John Roberts might unfold: Blasting Roberts as a corporate lawyer is an excellent smear tactic. People hate lawyers. They dislike and mistru...

Peak Oil and Economics
07.20.2005 16:26 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
It's an old story: geologists, biologists and engineers proclaim the impending depletion of some vital resource, and speculate as to the various catastrophes that might ensue. Economists yawn and tell everyone to relax. So far the economists have been...

The Effectiveness of Foreign Aid
07.20.2005 09:26 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
The folks at the Marginal Revolution point us to the current New Yorker, where James Surowiecki makes the levelheaded case for aid to Africa. Yes, money is often stolen. Yes, aid alone is insufficient to end poverty. But no, this does not mean all forei...

Valerie Plame - Desk Jockey?
07.20.2005 08:43 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
More than one conservative pundit has said so, the implication being that her outing just wasn't that big of a deal. Now, however, a bipartisan group of 11 former intelligence officials has released a letter vigorously disputing those claims. The grou...