“Newly elected New York City Council member Charles Barron has started off his term with a bang, decrying Founding Father Thomas Jefferson as a ‘pedophile’ whose portrait should be removed from City Hall,” according to a story in Monday’s Newsmax. The former Black Panther called for Jefferson’s image to be replaced with portraits of prominent African-Americans moments after his swearing-in two weeks ago, in an inauguration speech that received little

Here’s what happens when you offer Helen Thomas a forum in which to wax nostalgic: In this piece in The Lincoln Journal Star, she presents herself as a kind of world-weary love child of Yoda and Obi-wan Kenobe; the force — so strong within her — is a burden she bears with nobility and patience, even (alas, ’tis her curse!) as she’s able to recognize all-too readily the unfortunate flaws

Not content to let her recent Common Dreams essay correct the, uh … misperception, Barbara Kingsolver is contemplating legal action against the The National Review, The Wall Street Journal, and the The Weekly Standard for taking her infamous anti-flag screed “out of context,” The Boston Globe reports [link via A Dog’s Life and Balloon Juice]. Kingsolver has been pressing The Wall Street Journal for a correction, but a Journal spokesman,

“Secretary of State Colin Powell has asked President Bush to reverse the president’s position on al Qaeda and Taliban detainees and declare them prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention,” The Washington Times reports. “A four-page internal White House memorandum obtained yesterday by [the paper] shows that Mr. Powell made the request and that the president’s National Security Council plans to meet on the matter Monday morning.” ‘The secretary of

An upcoming issue of Vibe offers this delicious treat: Michael Jackson talks about September 11! ‘I was in New York [after performing at Madison Square Garden on September 7 and 10], and I got a call from friends in Saudi Arabia that America was being attacked. I screamed down the hotel hallway to all our people, “Everybody get out, let’s leave now!” Marlon Brando was on one end, our security

“The trial of Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes in Kosovo is on the verge of collapse because former aides have refused to testify against him,” Vesna Peric Zimonjic reports for The Independent. “The case hinges on evidence collected by Western intelligence officers rather than the UN’s own investigators, and some of the 90 witnesses who provided testimony against the former Yugoslav president have died.” Three weeks before it is due

A few more tweaks to the style sheet and some other changes and we’ll be set. Consider this post a test. for no reason, here’s a blockquote. (Well, the “for no reason” part is not really true; we are, after all, testing, and this blockquote is itself part of the test. He said, blockquoting. Umm. Who’s making waffles…? Must be this guy… [update: looks good in IE and Netscape 6;

Philip Chalk’s Opinion Journal piece, “Professors of Piffle,” takes aim at contemporary scholarship in the humanities: The scholarly periodical called Violence Against Women promises a righteous sense of mission, and it does not disappoint. It features ‘Boys Against Girls: The Structural and Interpersonal Dimensions of Violent Patriarchal Culture in the Lives of Young Men.’ And ‘Control and the Dalkon Shield,’ which begins with this grabber: ‘This article differs from other

For what it’s worth, Charles Krauthammer seems to agree with my assessment of the Gitmo-detainee situation. Of course, his analysis is far more forceful and precise. In today’s Washington Post, Krauthammer argues the distinction between Al Qaeda members, senior Taliban, and low-level foot soldiers that I could only strain after in my response to Bruce Rolston. Writes Krauthammer: You join al Qaeda, you join an outlaw army. You explicitly violate

I’m still working on our site revamp, but between all the cursing at codestrings and the (self-conscious) perusing of colorwheels, I read a nice critique of The Economist’s Camp X-Ray article by Balloon Juice’s John Cole.