J. Goodrich

BUYING THE WAR. Karen Tumulty on the Swampland blog gave a short assessment of Bill Moyers‘ recent PBS documentary, and also pointed to another blog post by Jim Poniewozik who says something quite interesting: Moyers is bringing a lot of threads together here, and there are angles I would have liked to see more of. […]

THE TOOTHLESS FDA. Perhaps melamine could be used to make it some dentures? The recent pet death debacle has taught us that melamine is a fairly routine ingredient in Chinese animal fodder, added to raise the apparent protein contents of the fodder and therefore its price. This has caused concern in the United States and […]

BACK TO THE EIGHTIES? Jonathan Martin on the Politico blog quotes a survey which finds that Republicans don’t think that George Bush at all resembles Ronald Reagan, the current idol among the conservatives pining for the good old eighties. What a relief! This means that all the Republican presidential contenders can now brush up on […]

THE FOURTH WORLD CONGRESS ON FAMILIES. This sounds like something the United Nations might have arranged, one of those long talk sessions where worthies meet. But it isn’t quite that. It is a very socially conservative, right-wing meeting of like minds. On the agenda: Next month’s fourth World Congress of Families is to include sessions […]

AND THEY SAY BLOGGERS ARE NASTY. Michael Smerconish, the kinder-and-gentler-but-still-shocking replacement for Don Imus, had Camilla Paglia on his show to chat about the possible motives of the Virginia Tech assassin. Remember Camilla Paglia? I do, but don’t ask me what would make her an expert on this particular topic. In any case, the conversation […]

ON HOG FARMS AND MELAMINE. Now melamine has been found in pig urine at a California hog farm. The earlier melamine findings were all concentrated in pet foods, but this case brings out a connection to the human food chain. The newest theory about how melamine (think of kitchen counters) ended up in wheat, rice […]

PARTIAL DEATH OF CHOICE. I agree with Dana, Scott and Ezra on the implications of the SCOTUS decision. It is also useful to look at the wider context of this decision: It is about a rare abortion procedure only used in cases where the woman has not otherwise planned to terminate the pregnancy, where the […]

MEANWHILE, IN IRAQ. Steve Fainaru‘s article in yesterday’s Washington Post on the American private contractors and their hired guns in Iraq is well worth reading. What Fainaru describes is a subsociety where odd jungle versions of laws apply. Because Paul Bremer granted private contractors immunity from Iraqi laws in 2004 and because military laws don’t […]

APPLES AND ORANGES. To add to Garance‘s earlier post about Markos‘s comments on the Kathy Sierra case: Markos is talking about oranges while the Sierra case and Web-misogyny are all about apples (a few rotten ones?). Markos writes: Look, if you blog, and blog about controversial shit, you’ll get idiotic emails. Most of the time, […]