Radley Balko fisks Tom Tomorrow.
Both the Whiskey Bar and The Voice Unheard are serving fried rice.
At Armed and Dangerous, Eric Raymond, slices and dices Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Robert at Conundrum defines democracy at its best as nearly anarchy. Hmmmm….
Silver Rights is skeptical about the new segregated school opening in New York City.
Good Night!
James Joyner, Outside the Beltway, thinks this “may be the strangest story of the year”:
The Pentagon is setting up a stock-market style system in which investors would bet on terror attacks, assassinations and other events in the Middle East. Defense officials hope to gain intelligence and useful predictions while investors who guessed right would win profits.
Maybe not so strange when you consider the folks behind this. Just imagine the opportunities to line the pockets of selected investors. Of course, the current administration would never consider something like that.
Hmmmm, how much would someone need to bet invest before they were incented to hire lobbyists; make campaign contributions; or perhaps hire a hit squad? Just imagine the possibilities….
Phone users in Baghdad had a brief interlude of phone service until corporate America’s managers realized that it might reduce the value of the monopolies they planned to create:
The U.S.-led authority in Iraq — which wants to hold a tender for three regional mobile phone licences — asked Batelco to shut down. A renegade service provider could throw a spanner into its plans for a tender for the licences, among the most potentially lucrative contracts to be offered in Iraq.
Iraq was frozen out of a global boom in personal portable phones by Saddam’s secret state. But mobile phones sprang unexpectedly to life a week ago, delighting cellphone users who could make and receive calls around the world.
Hmmm, also the military may want to maintain the ‘secret state’ for a while more.
Via David Marston at Catallarchy.
What person in their right mind would want to be governor of California given the current mess there? Well, maybe a Republican who would like to have a short tenure in office. As this San Diego Union-Tribune article reports there will be no free ride for someone who might replace Gray Davis:
A new Republican governor would face monumental challenges, ranging from the need to organize a government at warp speed to dealing with a hostile Legislature dominated by Democrats.
Sure, the upside of success could be the White House. More then likely, though, any Republican replacement will be a short timer and simply set the stage for another Democrat.