Dispatches

Flying Spaghetti Monsterism
09.14.2005 13:08 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
The Intelligent Design movement continues to press ahead, determined to undo the theory of evolution, which is quite simply the greatest intellectual achievement of humankind. The theory of evolution has allowed us not just to explain our own origins and...

The Case Against Rebuilding New Orleans
09.14.2005 12:53 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
Jack Shafer makes the case here, at Slate. New Orleans, he points out, was not exactly a shangri-la of beignets and jazz clubs. For most people it was pathos masquerading as a city. A sample: The police inspire so little trust that witnesses often re...

Michael (why didn't you?) Row the Boat Ashore
09.14.2005 11:23 | RUSS WELLEN
From the Dossier of an Ex-Patriot. As by now everyone knows, thanks to Knight-Ridder, Michael Chertoff, "not Brown was in charge of managing the national response to a catastrophic disaster, according to the National Response Plan. . . a power which h...

Where There's Smoke, There's. . . Water?
09.14.2005 10:21 | RUSS WELLEN
From the Dossier of an Ex-Patriot. In response to a request for confirmation from Representative John Conyers that Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco had followed procedure, lawyers of the American Law Division of the Congressional Service did some res...

White House Death Cult
09.10.2005 08:08 | RUSS WELLEN
From the Dossier of an Ex-Patriot. Jonah Goldberg, the, er, provocative National Review Online editor-at-large, took a lot of heat for his letter to those taking refuge in the Superdome. It said, in part, "Hoard weapons, grow gills and learn to communicat...

Have the Democrats Finally Discovered the Killer Within?
09.09.2005 11:26 | RUSS WELLEN
From the Dossier of an Ex-Patriot. "Knock him out!" progressives scream as Iraq and the price of gasoline have given President Bush a heavy battering at the polls. But when it comes to legislative and vocal opposition, most Democratic congressmen have...

Future Assessments of Administration Cold Comfort
09.05.2005 12:49 | RUSS WELLEN
From the Dossier of an Ex-Patriot. Regarding President Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina, William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and chairman of the Project for a New American Century, said, "Almost every Republican I have spoken with is dis...

Poker Loco
09.04.2005 08:12 | RUSS WELLEN
From the Dossier of an Ex-Patriot. Taking a brief break from Katrina... The upside of the current TV and Internet craze for Texas Hold'em Poker: It's made math and mnemonics cool. The downside: It's siphoned off some of our best minds...

Failure of FEMA, Part II
09.02.2005 10:39 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
Kevin Drum gives the agency's recent history. His summation: A crony with no relevant experience was installed as head of FEMA. Mitigation budgets for New Orleans were slashed even though it was known to be one of the top three risks in the country....

Katrina Just a Test Run?
09.02.2005 04:43 | RUSS WELLEN
From the Dossier of an Ex-Patriot. Bet the administration was as ill-prepared for the media backlash from Hurricane Katrina as it was for the hurricane itself. My colleague Mike Manville has provided a comprehensive overview of the media's reaction...

The Failure of FEMA
09.01.2005 13:26 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
The national government's response to New Orleans has been appalling. I copy here from Brad Delong's web page. He has scanned the blogosphere and assembled the roll call of incompetence: Laura Rozen is surprised: War and Piece: My lord, the guy head...

The Future of New Orleans
09.01.2005 09:40 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
The situation now is terrible--the Red Cross certainly needs more donations. For a rather horrifying ongoing commentary from the city, see here. But most of the heavy lifting needs to be done by the federal government: the Army Corps of Engineers needs to...

Politics of Intelligent Design
08.31.2005 10:07 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
The American Prospect has a nice article on the roots of the Intelligent Design movement, including its connections to a number of evangelical Christian groups, and its to some prominent Republicans. A nice sample: ID proponents have also teamed up...

Has peak oil arrived already?
08.30.2005 08:46 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
James Hamilton of UCSD offers a slightly technical but enlightening discussion of the recent Cambridge Energy Associates report on oil supply and production. He concludes that wemay have hit the peak, but points out that the "peak" is likely quite differe...

Astonishing Stupidity
08.29.2005 17:49 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
This is quite possible the stupidest thing I have ever read. I can only assume that the new mission of the Washington Post is to make everyone who reads it incrementally dumber. I can think of no other explanation for why such an exercise in illiteracy ma...

Rolling Back the Blowhards
08.29.2005 10:32 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
Christopher Hitchens met his match last week when he debated Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. Hitchens trotted out his usual good-vs-evil-liberals-hate-America routine, and Stewart called him on it. The video is here. The most telling part is the end--Hitch...

Food for Oil
08.29.2005 09:50 | ALEXANDER ZAITCHIK
Forget, for a moment, how much it's going to cost to fill up your tank and heat your home this winter. The rising price of oil poses a bigger but related problem: Food. As it begins to dawn on Americans that the energy question--and bad U.S. energy po...

A New Way to Increase Tolerance
08.26.2005 12:01 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
Peter Gordon of USC points us to this item from the Wall Street Journal, which is just one more reason to find Scandinavians earnest and loveable. "Not a Swedish Joke" If you find yourself in Malmo, Sweden, and happen to see a homosexual, an ima...

The Evolution Debate
08.26.2005 11:27 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
There is no evolution debate. There is a debate about whether creationism or Intelligent Design (which is Creationism's better-disguised descendant--yes, even Creationism evolves) should be taught in high schools. I say it can be taught in theology class,...

Fox Media Ethics
08.25.2005 17:24 | MICHAEL MANVILLE
This is nice. LA HABRA, Calif. - A couple whose home was wrongly identified on national television as belonging to an Islamic radical has faced harassment, and police are providing special protection. After the report ran on Fox News on Aug. 7, p...