Upward Mobility

By now, I suppose, the cat’s out of the bag. As of next week, I’ll be blogging regularly at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen. Dispatches will remain in place, though I’m afraid I don’t have the time or inclination to write for two blogs simultaneously. My heartfelt thanks go out to everyone who has stopped [...]

Worthy Adversaries

So Katha Politt unleashed a broadside last week, taking the New York Times to task for daring to replace Kristol with another conservative columnist. She also criticized Ross Douthat’s liberal admirers, many of whom had the temerity to publicly applaud his selection. A few quick thoughts:

It’s a bit dishonest of Politt to not only not [...]

Moving/Car Towed/Other Stuff

Blogging, as they say, will be light.

Better Gatekeepers, Please

TNR has a fun piece on the decline and fall of the (in)famous Pajamas Media blogger network:
Instead, many of the laid-off bloggers have found a different way to express their angst about Pajamas Media’s business strategy: They’re calling the owners of PJM sell-outs. “The initial purpose was to support citizen-blogging as a counterweight to the [...]

Hats Off

Any site that has a bowler hat on the masthead gets my vote, but the newly-created League of Ordinary Gentlemen also happens to host several damn good writers. Check it out.

Judgement Day

I’m judging at a debate tournament this weekend, so blogging will be pretty light.

Carry me back to ol’ Virginny

Iowa is cold. I look forward to getting back on Sunday

Travel Plans

I hate to sound all grown-up, but I’m off for the next few days on a business trip. Blogging will be a bit sporadic until Saturday.

Institution Building

I think Matthew Yglesias is a bit off base here. I’m no fan of Michelle Malkin, but her comprehensive list of the conservative blogosphere’s original reporting contains a few impressive nuggets (see this article, for example). Cherry-picking the most outlandish conspiracy theorist doesn’t really disprove her broader point. A better objection would be to note [...]

Skimming

Alan Jacobs:
People who value acts like the reading of novels worry whether other forms of reading — especially quicker ones, like the quarterback scanning the defense, or a video-game player scanning the dangers confronting his or her character — are displacing the kinds of reading that require longer, slower kinds of attention. And this is [...]

Do They Know It’s Christmas?

On holiday hiatus for the next week or so.

Babes in Toyland

Props to Mark Thompson of Publius Endures for a great article on the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably aware that I’m a big fan of uninformed commentary, but Mark has actually done some serious legwork on this issue. The whole episode is a pretty interesting glimpse at our [...]

Linked In

There’s an art to highlighting an interesting link while blogging. Incestuous referrals are probably one of the blogosphere’s worst tendencies – and undoubtedly the subject of much derision among the dread Mainstream Media – but a good tip is worth a lot more than another boring long-form entry. Which is basically a long way of [...]

Yahtzee

Former (?) American Scenester Alan Jacobs has a new blog at Culture11. Color me excited.

Latvia Free Speech Blogging

I’ve belatedly realized that discussing the Latvian free speech crisis in the context of a post on democracy promotion misses the forest for the trees. And while I don’t want to inflate the severity of the issue, throwing an economic pessimist in jail for speaking truth to power fundamentally undermines the principle of free, unfettered [...]

Happy Thanksgiving

Blogging won’t be light per se – I enjoy writing, so it makes sense to blog intermittently over the holiday – but it will be sporadic. I hope everyone is enjoying themselves; Thanksgiving is a lovely holiday.

Rumors of the Independent Blogosphere’s Imminent Demise

. . . have been greatly exaggerated. Case in point: John Schwenkler – an independent operator – just got plucked from near-obscurity to write for the American Scene.
Also, his article on a return to federalism is quite good. Go read it.

Death in the Afternoon

Nicholas Carr laments the death of the independent blogosphere:
Blogging seems to have entered its midlife crisis, with much existential gnashing-of-teeth about the state and fate of a literary form that once seemed new and fresh and now seems familiar and tired. And there’s good reason for the teeth-gnashing. While there continue to be many blogs, [...]

Culture 11

I like it. With two caveats:

WTF does the name mean? Is it some tragically hip reference I’m just not getting?
As it stands, the editorial staff is like some bizarre combination of Townhall.com and The American Scene. Maybe this was intentional, but it comes off as pretty jarring. The Confabulum, for example, is populated by the [...]

Influence

Me, several weeks ago:
Given these facts, shouldn’t McCain argue that his healthcare plan kills two birds with one stone? If encouraging people to purchase health insurance on the open market drives down costs, it should also allow employers to use the money they would otherwise be spending on employee health insurance to increase wages.
Ross Douthat, [...]