Chez Nadezhda :: Stop and rest awhile as the caravan moves on
Praktike's Place
Old Fashioned, Reality-Based Blogging 
 
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View Article  What's up
praktike has now moved to Cairo to study Arabic, and I can report first hand that Cairo seems to agree with him. He's looking decidedly content and healthy. He's now blogging primarily at American Footprints, where I can also be found with a number of other bloggers.
Note: We've finally, after much grousing and snark from the multitudes, changed the name to American Footprints from "Liberals Against Terrorism." The old address will still work, but the new one is http://americanfootprints.com

View Article  Speaking of Cairo
Recent Google search that brought a visitor to this site: Cairo female escorts.

Maybe it was prak's Egypt photo gallery from last September that did it. Though as far as I recall, there's not a female in sight among all the magnificent architecture and scenery. Google sometimes moves in mysterious ways!
View Article  As the Establishment Turns
Yet another sign that The Party is intent on imposing its will:

WASHINGTON, May 1 - The Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is aggressively pressing public television to correct what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias, prompting some public broadcasting leaders - including the chief executive of PBS - to object that his actions pose a threat to editorial independence.

Without the knowledge of his board, the chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, contracted last year with an outside consultant to keep track of the guests' political leanings on one program, "Now With Bill Moyers."

In late March, on the recommendation of administration officials, Mr. Tomlinson hired the director of the White House Office of Global Communications as a senior staff member, corporation officials said. While she was still on the White House staff, she helped draft guidelines governing the work of two ombudsmen whom the corporation recently appointed to review the content of public radio and television broadcasts.

Mr. Tomlinson also encouraged corporation and public broadcasting officials to broadcast "The Journal Editorial Report," whose host, Paul Gigot, is editor of the conservative editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. And while a search firm has been retained to find a successor for Kathleen A. Cox, the corporation's president and chief executive, whose contract was not renewed last month, Mr. Tomlinson has made clear to the board that his choice is Patricia Harrison, a former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee who is now an assistant secretary of state.

It's really hard to see this as benign, as Tomlinson claims. It may be time for me to get shrill again.
View Article  ?
"The reason we had judicial review is because Congress didn't stop them."

-Tom DeLay, Constitutional scholar

Damn you, Chief Justice John Marshall!

(via Atrios)
View Article  Is This Thing On?
Don't know if anyone is still reading this website, but I just wanted to flag this Scott McClellan moment for future use:

Q Have you been tracking these ethics allegations against Tom DeLay? Do you think he has some explaining to do, or as Congressman Shays says, should he step aside?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think you've heard from the President, what he has said on the matter, that Majority Leader DeLay is someone the President considers a friend, and he is someone that he has worked closely with to get things done in Washington. And the President looks forward to continuing working closely with the Majority Leader to get things done on behalf of the American people. And that's what we will continue to do. We support the work that he is doing on behalf of the American people.

I'm sure this will come in handy later.
View Article  Here's a thought
Does Todd Zywicki believe in the efficient markets hypothesis?
View Article  I Miss Republicans
It's been said before, but it's worth expressing again as we, along with such estimable elephants as Episcopal Minister, former Senator and UN Ambassador John Danforth, contemplate the last gasps of responsible conservatism. Kevin Drum, a braver man than I, has apparently been poking around the Heritage Foundation's website and finds that the Lysenkosphere continues to encroach upon the Laffosphere. Michael Lind tells in Up From Conservatism that his moment of departure from the "conservative movement" was when the rightist punditocracy refused to stand up to Pat Robertson and his paranoid ravings about the "New World Order," which borrowed if not plagiarized outright from a 19th century anti-Semitic tract. It was already clear to Lind at that point (the book was published in 1997) that principled conservatism was dead, consumed or subsumed by angry populism and low-church fervor. In Lind's mind, the Republicans had already become the party of William Jennings Bryan, where they had once been the party of Lincoln.

By the way, I hope Billy Kristol enjoys his new team. It looks like even David Brooks is hinting at his discomfort, but the once-readable Weekly Standard is headed in the opposite direction. A pity.

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg, meanwhile, is not worried about Republicans, though as far as I can tell he doesn't make a convincing case that conservatism is intellectually healthy and coherent. See also Matt Y's comments.
View Article  Giant Lobster Freedom on the March
Freedom is contagious. And it's not just Pittsburgh anymore, the Washington Post reports today.

View Article  Scraping Bottom
Wow. Is this really the best they can scrounge up?

President George W. Bush today announced his intention to nominate one individual and designate one individual to serve in his Administration: The President intends to nominate Timothy D. Adams, of Virginia, to be Under Secretary of the Treasury (International Affairs). Mr. Adams recently served as Policy Advisor for the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign. He previously served as Chief of Staff at the Department of the Treasury. Prior to joining the Administration, Mr. Adams served as Policy Director for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign. Earlier in his career, he co-founded and served as Managing Director of The G7 Group, a Washington, D.C. based consulting firm. Mr. Adams also served as Deputy Associate Director of the Office of Policy Development at the White House during President George H. W. Bush's Administration. He received his bachelor's degree and two master's degrees from the University of Kentucky. The President intends to designate Arnold I Havens, of Virginia, to be the Acting Deputy Secretary of the Treasury.

At least John Taylor had a PhD.
View Article  Dirty Secret
The Moose is disturbed, as am I, by Congress and the President's flagrant abuse of power, logic, medical ethics, and federalism in the Terri Schiavo case. He declares conservatism dead as a result. But here's the thing: there is only a small minority of people in the United States who care about means rather than ends. Democrats generally want to find ways for them government to be used for ends that their interest groups support, and Republicans are the same way if not worse. That's theoretically why we have a government set up to limit abuses of power through checks and balances and so forth. This latest power play does, however, seem more destructive of because it implies that Congress can just come in and call a "do-over" to satisfy a determined interest group, even one that doesn't make any sense.

UPDATE: Alternatively, just read Sam's healthy rant.