24 December 2003 >> At the end of a year that recently saw Brain Terminal record its 5,000,000th hit, I realize that there are many things for which I should be grateful. One of them is the readership of this site. Judging from the e-mails I receive, you must be among the kindest and most informed people on the Internet. And that’s generally true whether you agree with me or not. More >>

17 December 2003 >> At some point, changing babies where people are eating food and drinking coffee became acceptable. For some reason, I was not notified. More >>

8 December 2003 >> When President Bush tried to help American companies by imposing surcharges on imported steel, some Democrats—as you might expect—criticized him. After all, the steel industry is not only business, it is big, as in big belching smokestacks spewing cancerous clouds that eventually end up absorbed in the lungs of small children and cute, furry animals. From the perspective of his opponents, this one move could be used to symbolize the entire Bush presidency: they could accuse him of helping his corporate fat-cat buddies get rich by polluting while giving the unilateral finger to Europe, whose steel suppliers were put at a disadvantage. More >>

24 November 2003 >> In response to Character Assassination by E-mail, several readers wrote in to comment on Snopes and to suggest additional websites for researching online hoaxes. More >>

20 November 2003 >> “Concocted quotes can make for compelling reading, especially if they’re designed to elicit an emotional response. The intensity of the feelings generated by an e-mail determines the velocity at which it travels; the passion stirred is what gets people to press Send. Therefore, because a rational dissection of fraud is less titillating than incendiary accusations, a clever hoax will always have a broader reach than an earnest rebuttal. And, because reading an e-mail requires far less effort than researching it, few will ever discover that they’ve been duped.” More >>

5 November 2003 >> Howard Dean says he wants to be candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks. Is this his Sister Souljah moment, and does it signal a larger “southern strategy” for Dean? More >>

3 November 2003 >> Mary Lou is an articulate spokeswoman for liberal causes. She is also an example of why so many on the left refer to President Bush’s intellect in derogatory terms: their standards are simply too high. It is unfair and unreasonable to expect that every candidate for elective office demonstrate the level of mental acumen shown in this speech. Watch, and you will see why Mary Lou is my new favorite protester. Video >>

20 October 2003 >> I was now completely encircled. When I tried to escape, the protesters then started smacking the camera with their signs, while others were shoving me from different directions. I started retreating, pushing my way back from the loudspeaker, all the while leaving the camera running and asking the protesters why they weren’t letting me film. Just when the scuffle between me and the protesters seemed like it was about to take a turn for the worse, I remembered that there were some cameras present from a few mainstream media outlets. I started yelling, “Why are you trying to censor me?” The idea was to attract the other cameras, thinking that the protesters would back off if their actions were captured by the news media. The gambit worked: we were soon surrounded by cameras. Video >>

16 October 2003 >> I was now completely encircled. When I tried to escape, the protesters then started smacking the camera with their signs, while others were shoving me from different directions. I started retreating, pushing my way back from the loudspeaker, all the while leaving the camera running and asking the protesters why they weren’t letting me film. Just when the scuffle between me and the protesters seemed like it was about to take a turn for the worse, I remembered that there were some cameras present from a few mainstream media outlets. I started yelling, “Why are you trying to censor me?” The idea was to attract the other cameras, thinking that the protesters would back off if their actions were captured by the news media. The gambit worked: we were soon surrounded by cameras. More >>

14 October 2003 >> A reader writes to share his experience with belligerent protesters in Las Vegas. More >>

13 October 2003 >> I spent Saturday filming a pro-Palestinian rally at Rutgers University. While there, participants and organizers alike tried to shut down my camera. For a while, they surrounded me and hit the front of my camera with signs to stop me from filming the rally’s speakers. Eventually, they backed off after realizing that cameras from several other media outlets—including NBC News, WCBS-TV, and Channel 12 New Jersey—were capturing their actions.

Update: Apparently, I am not the only one to have faced the wrath of protesters seeking to censor citizen journalists. More >>

4 October 2003 >> If Arnold Schwarzenegger really does admire Hitler, then all the previous misuses of the so-and-so-is-just-like-Hitler accusation may prevent people from taking it seriously against Schwarzenegger. And, if this charge is merely a cheap attempt to inflict political damage, then it just increases the probability that voters won’t pay any attention to legitimate accusations in the future. More >>

19 September 2003 >> The fact that liberals dominate the industry is even more significant given the recent changes in campaign finance laws. Michael Moore and his fellow filmmakers are free to embed their opinions in movies, but citizens who want to finance political ads will discover new limits to their freedom of speech. What would Mr. Moore have to say about this? To find out, I staked him out over the course of four days. Video >>

27 August 2003 >> “Stop the presses! Decades after retirement, Walter Cronkite can still break a major story. Saying he believes ‘most of us reporters are liberal,’ Cronkite is admitting what many on the left have denied fervently for years: that there is a bias in the news media, and that it tips to the left noticeably.” More >>

15 August 2003 >> A reader asks: “I was just wondering if there was anything about Bush you don’t like?” More >>

12 August 2003 >> Is the Bush Doctrine dead if it can’t be applied to North Korea? More >>

7 August 2003 >> A reader writes in to claim that “most of the world considers [the United States] the greatest threat to peace” and goes on to say: “If I do not wait until the physical threat has manifested itself, then I am the aggressor, not him, and I lose the moral high ground, and the status of victim. I am the criminal.” More >>

25 July 2003 >> Some in this country still want our intelligence analysts to err on the side of caution, because doing so could thwart future attacks and would therefore save lives. Others believe that no action should ever be taken unless every scrap of intelligence data is unimpeachable and unambiguous. But if you complain that the administration wasn’t vigilant enough in interpreting pre-September 11th intelligence, you can’t credibly claim that the administration was too vigilant in interpreting the data pertaining to Iraq. More >>

17 July 2003 >> In The Great Media Meltdown, I cited a Washington Post article stating that the number of artifacts missing from the Iraqi National Museum was 33. According to Internet journalist David Nishimura, that figure “represents items from the main exhibit areas of the museum” and does not reflect the entire body of missing artifacts. More >>

16 July 2003 >> The immediacy of Internet reporting can be a double-edged sword, as this reader points out: “The speed of dissemination occurs much faster than any attempt to monitor the accuracy of the information.” What is the basis of trust for the open-source media? More >>

8 July 2003 >> A reader wonders whether blogging will evolve beyond “personality-and-reporting” and the tendency to tear down existing institutions. More >>

3 July 2003 >> As errors and distortions plague the traditional news media, Internet outlets have emerged as an important watchdog, checking the power of the press and providing some much-needed media accountability. What impact has this new “open-source media” had, and what does it mean for the future of reporting? More >>

12 June 2003 >> Saddam and Osama must not exist. Why? Because they cannot be found. And, as we all know from witnessing the recent hyperventilation about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, if something can’t be found, it must not exist. More >>

30 May 2003 >> The same weekend that I filmed the original Protesting the Protesters video in New York City, Kfir Alfia and Alan Davidson assembled a group to infiltrate the San Francisco protest with signs mocking the protesters. The attention they received led them to start ProtestWarrior.com. Video >>

21 May 2003 >> The success of Apple’s new online music venture shows that people are willing to pay for things that they could otherwise steal. The trick is relaxing the restrictions that competing systems have imposed on paying customers. Will the music industry take note and completely abandon intrusive “digital right management” schemes? Let’s hope so. If they need any more convincing, they should heed the lesson learned repeatedly by the software industry: pissing off paying customers isn’t good for business. More >>

6 May 2003 >> “Just as friends who disagree often show their respect for each other by avoiding political talk, entertainers should extend the same courtesy to their audiences. If they remain unwilling, here’s something you can do to help change their minds: Become a waiter at a four-star restaurant in New York or Los Angeles. Whenever some Dixie Chick comes in, politely interrupt her as she lifts her fork. Let her know where you stand on the issues of the day. Do this repeatedly. After a while, she’ll begin to see how distasteful her behavior is.” More >>

4 May 2003 >> Hollywood free-speech advocates shut down website critical of Hollywood free-speech advocates / U.N. worries over looting in Baghdad, then does a little looting of its own / The tip of the iceberg? Iraqi documents discovered in Baghdad reveal al Qaeda ties, more evidence of the French selling us out to Saddam Hussein, and that a prominent anti-war British MP was apparently taking bribes from Saddam’s regime / 7 steps to stable, long-term freedom for Iraq / Slim Shady Saddam / Blair, Bush, Clinton in bizarre love triangle / Why it’s not possible to target more tax cuts towards lower incomes More >>

21 April 2003 >> Today’s New York Times contains a report shedding new light on Iraq’s weapons program. According to the article, an Iraqi scientist who worked on the weapons program for over a decade has been providing the following details:

“Iraq destroyed chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment only days before the war began.” Apparently, it was the threat of force—and not the threat of U.N. inspections—that finally convinced Saddam Hussein to dismantle his weapons program.

“[S]tarting in the mid-1990s, Iraq had secretly sent unconventional weapons and technology to Syria” and “more recently was cooperating with al Qaeda”. Still not convinced that Iraq was central to the war on terror?

Recently, Iraq shifted focus to “research and development projects that are virtually impervious to detection by international inspectors.” Perhaps Saddam Hussein sought to turn Iraq into a clearinghouse for weapons development information. This, coupled with the al Qaeda link, underscores the danger that Saddam Hussein’s regime posed.

If the scientist’s statements are true, it provides yet more vindication for those of us who supported action against Saddam Hussein.

11 April 2003 >> “It took three weeks for the media to declare the Afghan war to a quagmire, but it took them only a week to make the same proclamation about the Iraq war. Although the media can’t claim credit for accuracy, they at least deserve a pat on the back for increasing the speed at which they’re wrong by a whopping 200%.” More >>

4 April 2003 >> Anti-Israeli sentiment ran strong at the San Francisco protest, in some cases suggesting an undercurrent of anti-Semitism. Is support for a Jewish state the same as ethnic cleansing? Should the Israelis be shipped to Madagascar? Some of the protesters thought so... Video >>