If George Bush wins the election tomorrow, we’ll see an outpouring of anger unmatched since the days of the Great Depression.
Oddly, though, the primary source of the anger won’t be Democrats, who will be too depressed to fuss right away. It’ll be the Zell Miller branch of the Republican party, incensed because the Democrats actually [...]

Stung by criticism of its demented missile defense policy, the Bush administration has promised action to deal with the technology’s persistent flaws.
Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, who assumed command of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency in July of this year, said that the agency intends to classify an increasing amount of information related to the missile [...]

The “suppress the vote” effort begins in earnest now. Just go vote.
In Michigan, “someone” is placing automated phone calls (robo-calls) in heavily African-American districts, which are traditionally not gay-friendly, suggesting that a vote for Kerry is a vote for gay marriage. And “someone” else is placing phone calls telling voters that their polling places have [...]

The outcome of a US presidential election is always important to the rest of the world, but this year the anxiety abroad is almost as pronounced as it is here.
Election monitors from numerous non-governmental organizations have poured into the country, including those invited by the State Department from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in [...]

Associated Press has a reporter blogging the election from a precinct in West Bloomfield, Michigan. Blogging has officially arrived.
The New York Times Op-Ed page has prognostications or something similar from several prominent bloggers. For some reason, they picked the most annoying ones.
Blogs to watch today:

Daily Kos (Left)
Eschaton (Left)
Hullabaloo (Left)
The Corner (Right)
Instapundit (Right)
Talking Points Memo (Left)
James [...]

The New York Times has an interactive Electoral College map that presumably will be updated as results come in. The map includes data for Senate and House elections as well.
Nationmaster has a chart comparing US voter turnout to other countries. Scroll down to number 93. Presumably we’ll do better this year.
Don’t forget the Election Protection [...]

Dick Cheney’s last-minute trip to Hawaii seems to have persuaded 10,000 or so Democrats to hit the polls, giving John Kerry a nine-point win here. Either Cheney just needed a break or Hawaii’s Republican governor, Linda Lingle, served up some of the state’s famous pakalolo brownies to GOP pollsters on her recent mainland excursion.
Senator Dan [...]

George W. Bush won his first presidential election yesterday, effectively ending the threat posed to the US by reality. Only Osama, Iraq and a hard winter remain.
Opinion is divided as to whether Mr. Bush will continue to steer the moderate course dictated for his first term by a narrow and disputed victory in 2000.
Some [...]

Postal Service, the collaboration between Death Cab for Cutie lead singer Ben Gribbard and beatmeister Jimmy Tamborello, has a new sponsor: the Postal Service.
Advertising Age says that the USPS has signed a cross-promotion deal with Gribbard and Tamborello’s record label, Sub Pop, after initially attempting to part the duo from their project’s name.
The members of [...]

Supporters of Mr. Bush have been posing that question all day to those of us who were and are less than enthused about his election to high office. Presumably the question is limited to US citizens.
The answer, of course, is yes.
The expectation seems to be that those opposed to Mr. Bush should, by virtue [...]

A quick cruise around the lefty blogs yields a couple of election themes: first, that the Kerry campaign didn’t distill its message sufficiently, and second, that it’s more important to feel marvelous than to look marvelous or be marvelous, existentially speaking.
Aside from his John Edwards obsession, Slate’s Bill Saletan actually comes closest to articulating what [...]

Newly elected president George W. Bush pledged today to cut the budget deficit in half by the time he leaves office in 2009.
At the same time, he promised to increase spending on education, not to cut either defense or homeland security, create a privatization option for Social Security, reform the tax code and turn [...]

Yasser Arafat has survived assasination attempts, bombings, a plane crash in which only he lived, brain surgery, and a transition from terrorist to politician. The press has been poised to deliver his obituary on several occasions—some did, in fact, when his plane went down in Libya—so it’s worth remembering that at least as of this [...]

The BBC reports that the Nazzal Emergency Hospital in central Falluja has been destroyed by US air strikes, along with an adjacent storeroom.
While religious conservatives in the US celebrate their success at banning gay marriages in eleven states, somewhere between 60,000 and 150,000 Falluja residents, those who can’t or won’t leave the city in advance [...]

Liberals wishing to reach across the cultural divide to their red-state brethren may want to do a little homework first as jubilant right-wing Christians draw up their wish list for a second Bush administration. Among the priorities are a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and an end to rules threatening the tax exemptions of churches [...]

When William Jennings Bryan took on the prosecution of John T. Scopes in 1925, he acted as much from social conscience as from his sense of religious propriety. He saw Darwinism as the antithesis of the progressive causes he championed.
Today’s opponents of Darwin are cut from a different cloth.
Bryan was a passionate advocate for women’s [...]

Iris Chang, author of “The Rape of Nanking,” killed herself yesterday. She was 36 years old, a passionate and successful writer and lecturer and the mother of a two-year-old son.

Former US representative Helen Chenoweth was pulled aside for a pat-down last month as she was about to embark on a one-way flight to Reno from Boise City, Idaho. She wound up driving because she refused to submit to the body search without being shown the regulation authorizing it, and security personnel refused to show [...]

Moderate Republican senator Arlen Specter (left, with the ears) has to appear in front of a senatorial Office of the Inquisition to prove that he is incapable of exercising any independent judgement before his Republican colleagues will allow him to assume the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Specter was slated to succeed senator Orin Hatch [...]

I thought John Bolton would get the nod to replace Colin Powell, but I was wrong about him and Freddy Krueger too. Apparently the position calls for someone a little less independent than my top choices, so the fearsomely intelligent and utterly overmatched Ms. Rice it is. Maybe the odds on getting Bolton or Krueger [...]

Go here and read all about the Post’s recent advertising supplement. If you’re not able to view the Adobe Acrobat documents, check back here in a bit. I’m converting them to web-viewable graphics.

I should have a piece up on Jay Rosen’s PressThink site sometime soon. Rosen is the chair of New York University’s journalism department, and I’m seriously flattered that he’s allowing me to jump in on his blog.
Working on that piece and another one headed elsewhere hasn’t left me much time for posting here, but I’ll [...]

My piece on the herd instinct of malnourished political reporters is now up on Jay Rosen’s PressThink site. The general idea is that, not content with simply blowing coverage of existing stories, much of the political press went zombie-walking after the bogus “moral values” narrative while simultaneously rending their garments for being out of touch [...]

Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?
   —The King to the Duke, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Between now and January, the Bush administration will have to decide whether or not to take the last dignified exit from Iraq.
   —William Lind, director of [...]

Every now and then I get to thinking nothing makes sense any more. Then I run across something like this, and I know I’m right.
You come across on screen as one who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Are you like that in real life?
I’m not sure I would d eosers ljeksakf t nd &ooitn [...]

No doubt they’ll be clean soon, but meanwhile …
If you missed it, we took the liberty of preserving the item in question here. Note the “Browse Similar Items” link on the left of the page. On the original, the link led here.
Heads-up courtesy of Micropersuasion.

Josh Marshall posted this evening about the idea of making all federal legislation readily available for public scrutiny at least three days before a vote is scheduled. The notion seems so obvious that I can’t imagine no one has thought of it before now.
I’ve been as exercised as anyone by the increasing degree to which [...]

Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine has the scoop on Canadian efforts to infiltrate and corrupt our news-gathering organizations. Or, more precisely in this instance, our news-presenting organizations. The particular case even involves the apparent use of an alias.
I pick up the Globe & Mail on the way back and find that John Roberts, the likely successor [...]

Jim Nabors is doing a Christmas concert here sometime soon. Apropos of nothing.
In January of 2003 I posted a measured rant on the Slate bulletin boards that I think is worth reproducing now in connection with my post at PressThink and in light of my continual bitching about the institutional amnesia of the press.
I [...]