THE ENRON WHISTLEBLOWER who wasn’t.
Archive for 2007
October 12, 2007
HOW THE UNITED STATES BECAME SWITCHBOARD TO THE WORLD: The accompanying illustration explains why it’s so useful to the NSA to be able to intercept calls among foreigners that pass through the United States.
GREG MANKIW HAS THOUGHTS ON academia’s growing diversity problem.
A HOME FIRE-SAFETY CHECKLIST.
A NOBEL PEACE PRIZE for Al Gore. I think he makes a fitting addition to the pantheon of Nobel Peace Prize holders.
UPDATE: Big Gore roundup here: “Al Gore’s got an Oscar, an Emmy, and as of today a Nobel Peace Prize. And the ‘Draft Gore’ movement thinks they’d all look good on his desk in the Oval Office.”
October 11, 2007
IRANIAN STUDENT PROTESTERS: “We wish we were Columbia students!”
MICKEY KAUS: “This isn’t the first time kausfiles hasn’t met Drudge’s journalistic standards!”
JIM GERAGHTY: “One of Hillary Clinton’s lawyers from Whitewater was in charge of reviewing copy at the Enquirer?! What are the odds of that?”
READER ALLEN ROBERTS WRITES: “So, given your air travel woes, are you still as down on those who travel by private jet?”
Hey, I never said they were stupid. I just don’t want them to lecture us on greenhouse consciousness.
UPDATE: How should air travel look? I wrote about that a while back in this column. And don’t miss this article by James Fallows.
WELL, THE POPULAR MECHANICS FOLKS FOUND US A HOTEL, so we’re set up. Thanks to all the people who emailed with offers of help. On a trip where we actually only spent one day doing what we came to do, we’ll have beein in airports on four separate days. Air travel needs work.
I can’t really blame Delta for this. It’s weather, apparently. But the fact is that air travel can’t be counted on to get you where you need to go when you’re supposed to be there. It’s a dysfunctional industry, and needs major fixing.
FLIGHT CANCELLED. No more flights until tomorrow. No airport hotels available.
Remind me not to fly again.
YES, WE’RE STILL STUCK AT LAGUARDIA: The Delta folks are now claiming that our 3:25 flight to Knoxville will depart at 6.
PHILIP LEVY ON FREE TRADE: “As the Bush Administration and Congress gird for battle this fall over four newly signed free trade agreements, one could be forgiven for thinking that these FTAs must be economically momentous to merit the looming conflict. But one would be wrong. While the global political stakes are huge, the domestic economic stakes are penny ante.”
A WALK THROUGH RAMADI: Video from Michael Totten.
BRAD ROURKE: “Have we forgotten what it’s like to make an effort for anything?”
SO I PUT UP THE POST ABOUT AIRPORT DELAYS and a minute later my cellphone rang. It was Hallerin Hill, who’s teaching a class in communications for the MBA program at UT. He wanted to know how I was blogging from the airport — I explained it was via the Sprint wireless card. Works great, even where there’s no wi-fi.
UPDATE: Hallerin texts that it’s the UT “Executive Development Program,” not the MBA program. See how fast we can fix errors in the blogosphere!
IN SALON: A look at Bill Clinton’s influence in a Hillary Clinton administration:
Laws designed to minimize real or perceived influence peddling limit the activities of a sitting president. But campaign and election law attorneys say nothing prohibits Bill Clinton from continuing to accept big checks made out to him or his foundation, even if his wife is elected president. “I don’t know of any law that would restrict that,” said Meredith McGehee, policy director at the Campaign Legal Center in Washington. “The spouse is not exactly a federal employee.” . . .
But if Bill Clinton raises and makes money in 2009 the way he has in recent years, it will be at a blistering pace. He started his William J. Clinton Foundation in 1997 to fund the construction of his presidential library in Little Rock, Ark. But the organization has since expanded to encompass an umbrella of nonprofit initiatives to fight HIV, assist developing countries and combat climate change. Donations have increased exponentially. He has accepted hundreds of millions in donations to date; tax records for 2005, the most recent available, show Clinton raised more than $80 million for his foundation in that year alone.
Foundations are not required by law to reveal the identities of donors, and the former president has resisted showing where the money for his is coming from.
Read the whole thing. (Thanks to Walter Shapiro for the link).
AIR TRAVEL SUCKS (CONT’D): Flight to Knoxville is currently showing a one-and-a-half hour delay.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION UPDATE: “Here’s how the Democrats “drained the swamp†and ended the Republicans’ ‘culture of corruption’ on Capitol Hill: Roll Call recently reported that three top Democrats on the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee got more than $100 million in earmarks for clients of the PMA Group, an Arlington-based lobbying shop run by their former chiefs of staff. The earmark recipients coincidentally (we are supposed to believe) donated $542,350 during the first half of this year to the ethically challenged trio.”
I believe that my modest hopes for the Democratic congress — that it wouldn’t be any worse than the crooked GOP congress we had before — were nonetheless too extravagant for reality.
THE INSTAWIFE was interviewed by CNN on what to do if your job is giving you a heart attack.
IN THE MAIL: Stephen Colbert’s I am America! (And so can you!)
GOOD NEWS: “All branches of the Armed Forces met or exceeded their recruitment goals for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, and the Army expects to accelerate its expansion in the next two years, top brass at the Pentagon announced Wednesday.”
DEREK LOWE on the latest Nobel prize in chemistry.
MARK LEVIN ON FRED THOMPSON: “This ‘senior moment’ and ‘Fred Thompson-is-lazy’ stuff is really starting to irk. I remember hearing the same comments about Ronald Reagan in every campaign in which I participated — 1976 and 1980.”