While Sibeni declared that Bill Clinton had been more dangerous to America than Osama bin Laden, Chen defended the ex-president's economic program. "Without him," Chen argued, "we would not have had globalization. He took a Republican idea, used it as a Democratic idea, and used it to become the most popular president of all time."

Chen seemed so mild and centrist that at one point I called him a closet Democrat. Taken aback, he replied: "How am I a closet Democrat? I'm racist, I love guns and I hate welfare."

Michelle Goldberg attends a college Republican convention for Salon.com (click through ad to view article for non-subscribers).

"What is lacking in the Pentagon and the White House is not intelligence (or not, at any rate, of the kind we are considering here), but receptivity. Theirs is not a failure of information, but a failure of ideology." America as religion.

Michael Moore - darling of the left, populist hero, fat-man muckraker in a trucker hat. But he's been getting a lot of backlash lately, and a lot of the criticism against him seems to have some weight. This article runs down a lot of the cirticism against him, explaining why he sometimes he seems to be moving towards becoming the Ann Coulter of the left. The article reveals a lot about Moore the person, but for someone whose work so consistently trades off his identity, some investigation seems valid.

Personally, I have liked some of his work, though watching his second movie The Big One, the title being his nickname for the USA, it seemed really to be all about him. And no, that is not a fat joke.

More examples of the way America treats its youth like prisoners. Actually, worse than prisoners.

Apparently, Virginia is only for a certain state-approved kind of lovers.

Rearranging an Ad Jingle So That It Now Jangles--a fine musical product from Cleveland (Lakewood--a first-ring suburb), OH, our neck of the woods. From the article: ...more than 30 audio artists captured speech and music samples from commercials, public service announcements, campaign ads and other promotional spots, then rearranged them into short sonic collages that often subvert the source material's original message. Good work, Mr. Kennedy. (NYT; user: opensewer; pwd: iswatching)

Keep up that happy face, soldier. Those fighting for freedom in Iraq have to be careful not to speak too freely.

The FBI investigates a dangerous reader in Atlanta. (thanks to reason.com for the link)

Shooting Ourselves in the Foot - Grandiose Schemes for Electronic Eavesdropping May Hurt More Than They Help by Robert X. Cringely. More fun reading on the American government spying on Americans.

Tom Ridge has a new plan: to pervert Homeland Security from its antiterror mission to an unrelated one: "The initiative, dubbed Operation Predator, will target pornographers, child prostitution rings, Internet predators, immigrant smugglers and other criminals."

The New York Times just isn't the same when Paul Krugman goes on vacation. Thankfully, he's back. nytimes login:opensewer; password:iswatching

This week from Nat Hentoff: Could Ashcroft Pass a Quiz on the Constitution?

"But there's the problem with President Bush. It is not the moral immaturity of the texts he reads. Like his callow statement in the National Cathedral, they are written by someone else. When the president speaks, unscripted, from his own moral center, what shows itself is a bottomless void." (thanks to mefi)

Everything is set for a new Pentagon program to become perhaps the federal government's widest reaching, most invasive mechanism yet for keeping us all under watch. Not in the far-off, dystopian future. But here, and soon.

A Fairbanks judge ruled the Alaska Constitution guarantees a local man the right to possess marijuana for personal use in his home. First Canada and now Alaska. Does cold weather promote tolerance and reason?

Big Brother in your grocery cart - reminding us that Ashcroft and Bush aren't the only ones spying on US citizens these days. One scary tracking technology is focused on here:
The European Central Bank is quietly working to embed RFID tags in the fibers of Euro bank notes by 2005. The tag would allow money to carry its own history by recording information about where it has been, thus giving governments and law enforcement agencies a means to literally "follow the money" in every transaction. If and when RFID devices are embedded in banknotes, the anonymity that cash affords in consumer transactions will be eliminated.

If you're feeling politically active today... or if you're not.

I’ve been so occupied lately with my family—my wife, my new son—that I haven’t thought much about my disdain for “branded” America. The concentration on my family is good for me, as it would be for anyone. I’ve spent so much time thinking about what’s positive in this world, rather than what’s negative.

Then I think of the things from which I want to protect little Max, I think of the values I want to instill. I think of a boy whom I hope can have self-confidence without material, who can have self-acceptance and pride without feeling the need to place himself within a certain caste, created by the brands of clothing and possessions he owns. With that mindset, I applaud UnbrandAmerica.org.

I'm sorry my president's an idiot. I didn't vote for him.

- American Apology Shirt

More on the US trend of making schools more like prisons. I guess the goal would be to make students more like convicts?

The attorney general claimed, in his testimony, that the president does have the power to arrest citizens on any American street, designate them "enemy combatants," and imprison them indefinitely, without access to lawyers or their families.

Senior US Officials Cozy up to Dictator Who Boils People Alive
the kind of disappeared news that is often archived at the memory hole