My God, this Palin for VP thing is like those mint M&Ms at Christmas: I just cannot stay away. And the more I think about it, the happier I am. There is no upside for McCain in this. Here's why: First, McCain's VP pick was going to dominate yesterday's news no matter who got it, so all the grudging praise being heaped on McCain for managing to upstage Obama's speech is misguided. Upstaging Obama's acceptance ...

Last spring, Bill Carney of the OCLC joined us as a panelist at the Center for Intellectual Property's Annual Symposium to talk about an endeavor that was, at the time, still in development. Well, his Copyright Evidence Registry [OCLC] launched last week! The effort promises a big step forward for those struggling to come up with ways to identify works for whom owners cannot be identified or located -- orphan works. The effort also enables ...

I first met Sidney Blumenthal in the early Seventies when we worked together on an alternative weekly newspaper in Boston. In the 35 years or so since then, Sidney has carved out a dual career as one of America’s most astute political commentators and a political adviser. As a journalist, he has written for The New Republic, the Washington Post, and the New Yorker, and, more recently served as a columnist for Salon.com and The ...

The traditional media thinks the Palin pick means Roe v. Wade is now part of the presidential debate. It always has been -- McCain wants to reverse Roe (although the punditry often overlooks that extreme view.) The real question isn't Roe. We know how the GOPers feel about that. The bigger issue is birth control. Remember how freaked McCain got when he had to answer a birth control question?Roe is based on the holding in ...

What sort of executive is Sarah Palin? The newly elected mayor of Wasilla has asked all the city’s top managers to resign in order to test their loyalty to her administration…. She’s also been criticized by the local semiweekly newspaper for a new policy requiring department heads to get the mayor’s approval before talking to reporters. An editorial in The Frontiersman labeled it a ‘gag order.’” “Wasilla’s new mayor asks officials to quit,” Daily Sitka ...

Luckily, Ezra's take on Palin strikes me as the right one, thereby saving me the trouble of writing it myself. The choices were all bad. Tim Pawlenty was a lightweight. Joe Lieberman was a liberal. Mitt Romney was a Mormon. Over the past few weeks, it became clear that John McCain couldn't pick anybody for vice-president. And so he didn't. Instead, he picked Sarah Palin.There's nothing wrong with Sarah Palin. Indeed, she's a perfectly normal ...

The “New” Face of Affirmative Action When talking about Obama and any Affirmative Action advantages he appeared to your pea brains to have, just drink a tall, cold glass of STHU. Especially after John McCain went out and picked Alaskan Barbie as his running mate. Obama gets the nomination and the GOP starts whining about Affirmative Action. Get the Hell out of here. Especially since it’s becoming more and more known that the ones who ...

McCain's selection of Palin is opportunistic, disingenuous, cynical, and an egregious insult to women in that it suggests women are: A) interchangeable; B) monolithic; and C) too unsophisticated to cast a vote based on issues.Also for the record: Water is wet.

I've always struggled with the inherent solitude that comes with being a writer. Decided this was a good time to finish Walden. Was looking through this morning and came a line that defines my entire approach to journalism and to life. Dig this: I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, ...

So good that he's getting the halo treatment,which is usually only reserved for the GOP.My favorite pix from last night are below the fold.* * *

Top 10 list in support of ebooks. From the Writers Handbook Blog. 10 Reasons Not to Write Off Reading From A Screen Over the past few months there has been much discussion of an impending digital revolution in the way we read books. While much of this is hyperbole there has been incredulity in many quarters that anybody would ever want to read from a screen. We are all attached to books and the idea ...

by Amanda Marcotte The handicapping of McCain’s campaign by the media is becoming brutally obvious during the DNCC. Between the lack of coverage for major speeches and puffing up the whole “PUMA” storyline to be a much bigger thing than it is, it’s becoming undeniable. Skimping on the Lily Ledbetter speech was especially irresponsible, because it was a great opportunity to educate the public about this under-covered story. Ledbetter, of course, is the woman who ...

The Needy Rich and the Unwashed MassesBy BatocchioThe New York Times magazine recently ran a lengthy piece on Obama's economic approach by David Leonhardt. I'll be interested to read more reactions, but it certainly comes off much better than some of McCain's offerings, and at the very least a President Obama would not sit in absolute silence as his Treasury Secretary talked to him, as The Price of Loyalty reports Bush regularly did with Paul ...

Reprinting an Andrew Sullivan post in its entirety ... The op-ed in today's WSJ by the McCain duo of Lieberman and Graham is far more important for this election, it seems to me, than parsing the dynamics of the Clinton-Obama marriage. What they are laying out in very clear terms is the agenda of a McCain presidency. The agenda is war and the threat of war - including what would be an end to cooperation ...

Reprinting an Andrew Sullivan post in its entirety ... The op-ed in today's WSJ by the McCain duo of Lieberman and Graham is far more important for this election, it seems to me, than parsing the dynamics of the Clinton-Obama marriage. What they are laying out in very clear terms is the agenda of a McCain presidency. The agenda is war and the threat of war - including what would be an end to cooperation ...

What a fabulous innovation from McGill University. They purchased a Kirtas APT BookScan 2400RA and will be digitizing rare materials from their collection to sell via print-on-demand. It’s fabulous to see a library embarking on a project like this, one that will bring income! Wow, the envy I have….. For the full story see the press release.

I have to admit that I feel a deep compelling need to knee the Republicans in the nuts until their eyes bleed. As a result I am not satisfied with what I've seen of the Convention to date. (Okay Deval Patrick is starting to get going -- maybe there is hope -- nope PBS turns him off to talk to some "historians.") I don't want to turn this into the Richard Cohen pages -- after ...

Gov. Mark Warner: "In four months, we will have an administration that actually believes...in SCIENCE!"UPDATE: "George Bush came into office on third base, and then went...to second base." ZING!

By Darryl James The so-called “Liberal Democracy” that America has been enjoying may be nearing its end. Two important signs that the current economic and political system may be breaking down are overproduction and underconsumption. I’ll deal with those in an upcoming column, but the fallout includes the widening of the gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots,” which is signaled by the erosion of the so-called middle class. Pay attention to the fact that ...