Thursday, November 14, 2002

PERMALINK

Democratic regrouping, redux After the election I wrote about the need for the Democrats to accept that one reason they lost the election was the paucity of ideas emerging from their camp. Several readers and fellow bloggers wrote in with pointers and comments, plus the debate in comments on that post was extraordinary. One point my colleague Joan Walsh makes -- which I'm hoping she'll elaborate on in a piece she's now writing -- is that the Democrats have plenty of think tanks and plenty of ideas, but there seems to be a problem getting the ideas into the mouths and heads of the party's leaders. The One True Bix points to this article from The Hill about Democratic think tanks. Dave Johnson wrote in to recommend the new Web site of the Commonweal Institute. Several people wrote in to point to the Apple "Switch" ad parody at Working for Change. Clever as it is, it feels rather more desperate than funny to me. comment [] 5:56:06 PM | permalink

Wyman vs. Wyman Our old colleague Bill Wyman -- formerly arts editor here at Salon and now at the Atlanta Journal Constitution -- always took his share of ribbing for the name he shared with a certain bass-playing Stone. But this takes the cake: A lawyer for the other Wyman sent Bill a cease-and-desist letter for using his own name. Bill used the opportunity to write a funny piece. comment [] 3:15:04 PM | permalink

Big Brother redux William Safire's must-read column today reprises the reporting John Markoff did last week on the government's plans for a master database of personal information. You thought online marketers were bad? Admiral John Poindexter (of Iran-contra scandal fame) is spearheading a plan -- it's currently a part of the Homeland Security Act, which is seemingly on the verge of passage into law -- for "Total Information Awareness," a centralized federal spy database with dossiers on every U.S. citizen. It's significant that the outcry against this plan is hailing not just from the left but from civil-libertarian conservatives like Safire. Safire, of course, served as a speechwriter in the Nixon White House, where routine abuse of FBI files on American citizens was the order of the day. That era's rampant and hideous misuse of government surveillance for private political ends should stand as a reminder of the perils in Poindexter's plan. (Different Strings has posts on this issue here and here, as well.) comment [] 9:55:43 AM | permalink