I'm heading out to New Orleans Friday and will be off duty for a handful of days. So try to survive without me.
Meanwhile, I couldn't help but hiccup over this little dandy item: The publisher of the local, second-rate, third-tier newspaper has issued a dress code edict, talking to his already demoralized and historically underpaid [...]

When the tallies of Campaign '08 are finally written, it's now certain that McCain will have won. He will have beaten out Bill and Hillary Clinton in the category of just who most belittled him or herself during this election cycle.
McCain's latest ad is neither aggravating nor insulting. It's just plain pathetic how someone considered [...]

What a grueling week this past one has been trying to follow the presidential campaign. It was wall-to-wall "don't believe your lyin' eyes" if you were paying any attention whatsoever to the media chorus.
My god.
Did Obama do what he had to do? Was a crowd of 200,000 to big or too small? Wasn't that [...]

In his illuminating book, Here Comes Everybody, NYU's Clay Shirkey recounts a marvelously ironic and relevant anecdote dating back to 1492. The printing press was already a half century old, and the ancient profession of being a scribe was in the process of being expunged. The invention of movable type had robbed the small circle [...]

So says the foreign editor of Der Spiegel after Obama's speech to nearly a quarter-million Berliners today:

Anyone who saw Barack Obama at Berlin's Siegessäule on Thursday could recognize that this man will become the 44th president of the United States. He is more than ambitious -- he wants to lay claim to become the president [...]

Yes, it's true.
My Brilliant Daughter has fired up a new blog... and it's already blazing hot. Bookmark it, quick! Before it's all gone.
P.S. It ain't for the squeamish. Only the smart.

Been traveling. Indeed, posting this from an airport. But wanted to point your attention to this piece just out in The New York Times extolling the growth of our OffTheBus reporting project.  Think about joining up with us.

Judge him as you please, but it would be difficult for anyone in good faith to deny the sheer brilliance of Barack Obama's current world tour. And isn't even half over.
Watching the AP video footage of him in Afghanistan, it was really difficult not to notice how many of the troops standing behind him and [...]

If you happen to be passing through downtown Los Angeles and you swing by the intersection of Second and Spring, you'll notice a blood-staned banner hanging from atop the L.A. Times building reading "Mission Accomplished."
Potty-mouthed billionaire junk yard operator Sam Zell has pretty much finished the hatchet job on the local newspaper. All papers [...]

And fast.
Make that very fast.

I really, really tried to take the last few days off and let the blazing Southern California desert sun blot out my rational consciousness. I swore off TV, limited Web stuff to the bare minimum, didn't pick up a newspaper, didn't listen to or return phone messages, put the BlackBerry on charge mode, and [...]

Here's my fourth and my fifth and final debate round with Patterico on the future [sic] of the The Los Angeles Times -- or what's left of it.
Seems like this week The Terror has truly been unleashed. Robespierre would be impressed with the pace and severity of the head-choppings. The blood splatter is reaching out [...]

There's a whole lot of people angry tonight at Barack Obama for his Senate vote Wednesday immunizing the telecom giants against legal action for their role in what was clearly lawless and warrantless wiretapping.
My position on this has been clearly on the record. As mentioned before, I am was one of the plaintiffs in [...]

Is posted here.

Patterico and yours truly do Round Two.

John McCain re-re-re-launched his sputtering campaign Monday with a rather pathetic "budget speech." Josh Marshall pretty much smashes it to smithereens with a single blow.
McCain, indeed, offers exactly no numbers -- no tangible path to his stated goal of a balanced budget. Worse, his choice of issues only reveals how clueless he continues.
This new focus [...]

I'm spending this week in a daily tit-for-tat online  "dust-up" with conservative blogger Patterico over the future of The Los Angeles Times (and of newspapers in general).
The first round can be found here at LATimes.com .  Join us and leave a comment or two. Heaven knows the poor things over at Tribune Company need your [...]

I'll  be on KPCC 89.3 FM in Southern California area from around 11:00 to 11:30 Pacific talking about the state of the race with Obama now showing a big national lead.
Click on the link to hear it live or catch later the Air Talk archives on the same site.
Also, beginning today a week-long one-on-one "dust-up" [...]

Not sure that too many outside a small circle of friends cares very much, but the geniuses who run The Los Angeles Times announced today they will be cutting another, staggering, 250 jobs by Labor Day -- 150 of them editorial positions. The paper will also be cut 15% in the number of pages and [...]

There’s cold fear in the blogosphere. Liberals from Malibu to Madison have broken out into hives. Hands are wringing and knickers are twisted. Turns out that Barack Obama might be a centrist! Or even worse, it seems.

“Obama Veers Right!” screams a headline on the leftist Counterpunch web site, as socialist blogger Alan Maas frets [...]