Columbia Journalism Review’s Campaign Desk blog sent one of its staffers, Zachary Roth, out on a bus with the press covering Dick Cheney’s tour of Pennsylania. I fell into conversation with Dusan Neumann, a reporter/commentator/cameraman/producer for the BBC World Service. (“It’s cheaper if they just get one guy to do it,” he said ruefully.)

. . . → Read More: May your higher power bless and keep the BBC

THE JW COVER GIRL: Nikki Ziering is not only drop dead gorgeous, but she knows how to braid challah.

It’s Jewsweek’s (sadly abbreviated) hotlist for 2004. Also included is Matthew Miller, a Jewish reggae singer who combines “the sounds of Bob Marley and Shlomo Carlebach.” I have no idea who Shlomo Carlebach is, but . . . → Read More: I’m beginning to like this magazine

Bill Safire’s all purpose phrase is the spiritual foundation of this editorial from Arthur Chrenkoff in the Wall Street Journal’s online Opinion Journal. As Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby writes, “The press tends to emphasize what’s going wrong in Iraq because of an inbuilt bias for the negative–only the plane that crashes, not the . . . → Read More: Nattering nabobs of negativity

From the Village Voice: Is it just us, or are these scary stories about anarchists plotting mayhem at the Republican convention starting to read like a preemptive hit? Just today the Daily News led with “Police Intelligence Warning: Anarchy Inc. Hard-core troublemakers a threat to the Republican Convention.”

This kind of coverage sets . . . → Read More: Rent-a-Riot

I haven’t seen anyone talk about the obvious implications of “free speech zones,” the holding pens set up for protesters at vasriou sevents around the country, including the Democratic convention in Boston, but the clear implication is that if the people inside the pen have free speech rights, then the people outside it don’t. . . . → Read More: What’s the opposite of a Free Speech Zone?

Every now and then I drop a note to Jim Romenesko of Romenesko’s Media News. It’s a measure of my obscurity that I’m elated he finally posted one, regarding the Jack Shafer column I mentioned a few posts ago, in his letters section.

The interview isn’t online yet that I could find, but Reuters quotes the New York Times as saying that Bush* acknowledged he’d made “a miscalculation of what the conditions would be” in post-invasion Iraq. Not a mistake, but that’s awfully close. However, the president immediately retreated to neverland. But he insisted that the 17-month-long . . . → Read More: “M-m-m-m-m-m-miscalculation”

Larry Diamond was recruited by Condi Rice in January of this year as a senior advisor to Iraq proconsul, Paul Bremer. He left three months later in a thoroughly corroded mood. By the time I arrived, the signs of insecurity were pervasive. Iraqi translators and drivers at the palace where the CPA has its . . . → Read More: Another pinko betrays Bush*

Things in Iraq are obviously far worse than is generally being reported. No one is in control. Saboteurs have attacked about 20 oil pipelines in southern Iraq, reducing exports from the key oil producing region by at least one third, a top oil official said Thursday.

The cluster of pipelines was attacked late . . . → Read More: Iraq fall down go boom