Throwing Sister Souljah Under the Bus

Publius thinks it's time to ban the phrase "Sister Souljah" moment, not just because it's hackneyed but because it has been misused. The more benign interpretation is that a Sister Souljah moment occurs when a candidate criticizes some group or idea nominally aligned with that candidate. In short, it’s criticizing your own coalition – or some idea valued by your coalition ...

Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama’s Cohones

Jesse Jackson's statement that Barack Obama's "talking down to black people" makes him so angry that he "wants to cut his nuts out" has caused quite the stir. Charles Hurt of the NY Post has the most concise report: In a vulgar tirade caught on tape by Fox News, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said he wanted to "cut his [Barack Obama's] nuts ...

Quote of the Day

"What I fear most are affirmative actions of sober and well-intentioned men, granting to government powers to do something that appears to need doing." – Robert A. Heinlein

Chinese Terror Cops Get Segways

This story is a few days old now, but Noah Shachtman's post is the first I've seen it: Chinese elite anti-terror police officers are wheeling into action ahead of next month's Beijing Olympics on two-wheeled scooters.  Members of the country's armed police unit practised on the Segway models that have been re-named 'Anti-Terror Assault Vehicles' in the eastern province of ...

Obama’s ‘Sweetheart’ Home Loan

The Manufactured Outrage of the Day comes to us from Joe Stephens and his page A3 piece for today's Washington Post, "Obama Got Discount on Home Loan." Shortly after joining the U.S. Senate and while enjoying a surge in income, Barack Obama bought a $1.65 million restored Georgian mansion in an upscale Chicago neighborhood. To finance the purchase, he secured a ...

Wire Service Theft

Bernhard Warner brings an interesting perspective to the fight between the AP and the blogosphere over copyright law. In attempting to bolster the AP's case, he actually weakens it considerably. To understand where the AP is coming from with this caveman approach to copyright enforcement, you have to understand what it’s like to work for a news wire. When I joined ...

AP Announces Excerpt Fees

Just when it appeared that the Associated Press had come to its senses, they've now announced an exorbitant up-front fee for even short quotations of their works, Tim Conneally reports for BetaNews. They've created a handy-dandy online form to calculate what we owe them. Hmm. Well, surely, an organization as large as the AP, which goes around ...

Supreme Court: Gitmo Detainees Have Habeus Rights

Terrorist suspects detained at Guantánamo Bay (and presumably, anyplace else under American jurisdiction) have the right to file habeus corpus petitions in U.S. civilian courts the Supreme Court ruled today in a 5-4 decision. Further, Congress could not pass a law waiving these protections absent rebellion or invasion. Justices Rule Terror Suspects Can Appeal in Civilian Courts (David Stout, NYT) “The ...

Jim Webb: Modest, Too!

Ezra Klein's long-awaited (a day's forever in Internet time) American Prospect piece, "Is Jim Webb Too Good for the Vice Presidency?" is out. The lede: In his new book, Virginia Sen. James Webb quotes T.S Eliot and Rudyard Kipling. He alludes to his past as a boxer and marine. He recalls his "four times great-grandfather," who served as an ...

McCain Not Bush on Foreign Policy

Dan Drezner argues, persuasively, that John McCain's foreign policy is not, as critics charge, simply a continuation of George W. Bush's. Essentially, while McCain has strong neoconservative tendencies (i.e., he's quite willing to intervene militarily based on morality alone even if there is no compelling U.S. security interest at stake) but that's he's much more aware than Bush that ...