blog.shrub

We already know MSNBC doesn’t like Bill O’Reilly. Neither does CBS. Instead of the usual softballs, O’Reilly got mocked by David Letterman.

Why Farhad Manjoo still watches The West Wing:

The show is a fiction, certainly. There isn’t a politician in the world like Jed Bartlet, an exceedingly smart, (mostly) honest man with principles, who doesn’t govern by politics, who takes counsel from the cooler, calmer heads on his staff, and even from his opponents. Today in politics, you won’t find anyone half as good. And that’s precisely why I watch: Some people might look at “The West Wing” under the Bush administration as a fantasy. I look at it as a blueprint. We should be so lucky to have a real White House like that. And maybe, one day, we will. Until then, it’s nice to have it on TV.

A dental student at Marquette University got in a bit of trouble over a blog posting.

I’ll let the Marquette Warrior sum it up:

But this is the first case we know of (there probably have been many we don’t know of) when a precipitous and emotional reaction from University administrators led to a punishment that, if it stands, will ruin a student’s career.

Offended at blog statements that were ill-considered, but did not clearly (and probably did not at all) violate any ethical or professional norms, they imposed a tough sentence.

When the student had the temerity to ask for the hearing he had every right to, they ignored the expert testimony of their own ethicist, refused to hear the testimony of a faculty member who could discuss the prevailing norms of student blogging, and came down on the student like a ton of bricks.

The entire process did not look like the adjudication of a case of student misconduct. It looked like a vendetta.

On The Streets Of America 3: Americans on the street decide who/where we should invade next.

As Jesse points out: Old MacDonald had a farm. Here a subsidy, there a subsidy…

Canadian Immigration Minister Joe Volpe has expensive taste and poor judgment:

A day after failing to explain how he had managed to spend C$138 on pizza for two, Canadian Immigration Minister Joe Volpe was roasted in Parliament on Wednesday for spending C$207 on pizza for three people at the same establishment.

Volpe charged both meals to his expense account, prompting opposition Conservative parliamentarians to accuse him of wasting taxpayers’ money. The ruling Liberals are trying to overcome the damage done by a government patronage scandal.

Listen to People Look Around.

Keith Olbermann writes:

Last Thursday on Countdown, I referred to the latest terror threat - the reported bomb plot against the New York City subway system - in terms of its timing. President Bush’s speech about the war on terror had come earlier the same day, as had the breaking news of the possible indictment of Karl Rove in the CIA leak investigation.

I suggested that in the last three years there had been about 13 similar coincidences - a political downturn for the administration, followed by a “terror event” - a change in alert status, an arrest, a warning.

Bush Thanks Soldiers in Rehearsed Talk:

Paul Rieckhoff, director of the New York-based Operation Truth, an advocacy group for U.S. veterans of Iraq and
Afghanistan, denounced the event as a “carefully scripted publicity stunt.”