Author Archive

UK Law Enforcement Works Again?

Posted August 10, 2006 By Dave Thomer

I noticed that the first sentence of the Reuters story on the potential terrorist plot revealed in the UK today is:

British police foiled a plot by would-be suicide bombers to simultaneously blow up several planes flying to the United States, arresting 24 people days before they could attack, officials said on Thursday.

British police foiled a terrorist plot, eh? I can’t help but recall that a certain vice president said a few years ago that

an intelligence-gathering, law-enforcement . . . approach has been tried before and proved entirely inadequate to protect the American people from the terrorists who are quite certain they’re at war with us.

I discussed this in a Policy piece a few years ago, but it definitely looks like there’s another piece of support for the potential effectiveness of intelligence and law enforcement.

As Josh Marshall said at Talking Points Memo today:

President Bush just said the events in London are “a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists.”

Also a pretty stark reminder that President Bush’s War on Terror, the way he’s chosen to fight it, is at best irrelevant to combatting this sort of danger. These are homegrown Brits apparently trying to blow up planes over the Atlantic. Good thing we’ve got a 150,000 or so troops in Iraq to take the fight to them.

Laws Against Sore Losers?

Posted August 9, 2006 By Dave Thomer

I would say that Joe Lieberman is making an ass of himself one day into his run as an independent candidate for the Senate, but then again, the reason Lieberman has to run as an independent is that he wasn’t enough of an ass in the first place.

(As in donkey. As in Democrat. As in, yes, I’ve been working on that joke all day.)

Now, after seeing Lieberman talk the last 24 hours, I’m more sure than ever that I want Ned Lamont to win this Senate seat. And I’m more sure than ever that Lieberman is failing as a leader of the Democratic Party by making this run. One thing that is interesting to me is how this story is intersecting with two other stories that are big in the news this week to highlight something I hadn’t really thought a lot about before, the idea of “sore loser� laws – laws that prohibit a loser in a primary from running for the office on another ticket in the general election. Connecticut doesn’t have one, but other states do.

In Ohio, Congressman Bob Ney says he’s abandoning his re-election campaign. The idea was for the Republican committee to appoint Joy Padgett to replace him. But Padgett ran for lt. governor in the primary, and Ohio has a law that prohibits people who ran for an office in the primary from running in the general. There’s some speculation about whether this disqualifies Padgett from running for a different office in the general. (And there’s a second Ohio law that prohibits anyone from running for a state office and a federal office in the same year.)

In Texas, courts have ruled that the state Republican Party can not declare Tom DeLay ineligible to run for Congress based on his declared change of residency (because the only residency requirement applies to the day of the election and there’s no conclusive evidence that DeLay won’t be eligible that day). DeLay can withdraw, but if he does, the Republican line on the ballot will stay blank. DeLay has said he will withdraw anyway so that the Republicans can back a write-in candidate. But the write-in candidate can’t be anyone who ran in the primary for the seat.

I’m trying to figure out if I think these laws are a good idea. There’s something that doesn’t seem right about getting to take a second bite at the apple. On the other hand, if a candidate is able to get enough signatures for an independent run, or mobilize support for a write-in bid, why shouldn’t that option be presented to the total electorate in the general election? In a primary, all you’re running for is the right to represent the party, to have their ballot line and access to their resources. Just because the party voters say they want to give those resources to someone else, I don’t think that makes a loser ineligible for office.

Now, most of the time, if you try to run in the general, that shows a disloyalty to your party. And I certainly think party officials and voters should try to punish the sore losers in those cases. But the Ohio and Texas cases demonstrate how sore loser laws can actually prevent a party from picking a candidate it may want to pick. You gotta love the irony.

Severe iPod Envy

Posted July 24, 2006 By Dave Thomer

Pattie got herself an iPod Nano this past week, and we went up to the Apple Store at the King of Prussia Mall on Saturday. Quite a crowd there. Which is kinda funny, given that the store doesn’t exactly have a huge array of products. There was one display counter, about two or three feet long and a foot or so wide, and on this counter were four iPods. That’s it. Talk about making use of space.

The heck of it is, despite the fact that I have an MP3 player, I now find myself talking myself into getting an iPod. And I’m still not exactly sure why.

The Power of Irony

Posted July 18, 2006 By Dave Thomer

Monday night: I set up the sprinkler and water my lawn.

Tuesday night: A severe thunderstorm watch kicks off what looks like a week of on and off storms and showers.

And for my next trick . . .

Funding Still Matters

Posted July 17, 2006 By Dave Thomer

The first essay I wrote in the Public Policy section here looked at the disparity in spending between Philadelphia and the neighboring suburban districts, in order to illustrate the idea that it’s not reasonable to expect a district to be competitive with a fraction of the resource base. Almost six years later, Chris Lehmann at Practical Theory brings up a similar point. Like me, Chris looks at the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Report Card on the Schools series. Unlike me, Chris has the experience of working to launch a new charter school in Philadelphia to provide more specific, vivid examples. So go check out his post. It’s great that Lehmann and his team are committed to doing the fundraising work necessary to make their vision for the Science Leadership Academy thrive. But how much greater would it be if they could put all that energy into actually educating kids?

Public Policy Archive Updated

Posted July 17, 2006 By Dave Thomer

The Public Policy articles from the HTML and phpBB versions of the site have now been brought into the current WordPress edition. For the most part I have not gone through and rechecked all of the links in those pieces, so there are probably some dead links and stuff that’s behind subscription walls right now. But if you want to see what we were talking about from 2000-2004, you can go take a look from the Public Policy link on the sidebar. And if you’re like me, you’ll marvel at how much it seems like the country’s talking about the same things in 2006.

National Journal, Daily Show On Net Neutrality

Posted July 16, 2006 By Dave Thomer

The National Journal has a really good article summing up the context and current state of the debate over net neutrality. The article did a particularly good job of explaining how it was the words of a telecom executive that really set things off, implying that AT&T and other companies wanted to be able to charge content providers like Yahoo to transmit data over the Internet, beyond the normal charges for bandwidth.

And as Jon Stewart points out, when Congress gets involved in this kind of thing, it’s not always pretty.

Sci Fi Friday on a Diet

Posted July 15, 2006 By Dave Thomer

So Sci Fi began its summer season last night. It looks like the network is trying to expand first-run dramas to more nights of the week, and run shows during more of the year, because they’re spacing things out a little. Last year they ran three shows on Friday night, now they’re only running the two Stargate shows. I’m kinda curious as to how that will affect the ratings.

As for the shows themselves – I still have not gotten into Stargate Atlantis, but I was there for the tenth season premiere of Stargate: SG-1. It’s kind of interesting the degree to which they’re resetting the status quo, with Earth the plucky underdog against the overwhelmingly powerful godlike foe. I’m hoping they have enough variations on the theme to make it interesting, but I figure the selling point will remain the cast and main characters. I know I’m hoping Ben Browder has a solid run on the show. I’d hate for the guy to be typecast, but the guy just belongs as the leading man on a sci-fi action show.

Get Me Rewrite

Posted July 14, 2006 By Dave Thomer

And from the god of comedy setup lines comes this corker of a story:

Terrell Owens claims he was misquoted in his autobiography.

I tell you, the Owens fiasco is one of those things that really reminds you how much a sports fan can rationalize. I remember thinking to myself, “Well, hey, maybe it’ll all work out here.” Turns out, not so much.

I guess I just have to hope that Dallas discovers the same thing, and even sooner than Philly did.

Too Many Shiny Round Things

Posted July 13, 2006 By Dave Thomer

In my effort to re-listen to my entire CD collection, I’m getting down to the discs I haven’t put on in years, discs that I might have only listened to once or twice. I wonder if this is a relic of a different period. Thanks to online services like Rhapsody, I can listen to an entire album before I decide if I want it, so I won’t get fooled by a particularly solid single. (And I can just buy that one song I like if that turns out to be the case.) And if I buy an album or a song electronically and decide I don’t like it so much after all, it doesn’t have to physically stick around and take up space anymore.

Then again, I’m still somewhat attached to having a physical disc that I can bring from place to place if I want. But in a few years we’ll probably just carry our iPods around and stick them in whatever docking stations we have around. The CD tower manufactures must be crying in their beers.