President George W. Bush, of course, is on his way to matching Nixon in his willingness both to use presidential power for partisan advantage and to block scrutiny of his abuse of that power. For this, he earns an immensely broad and black hat, which he shares with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Gonzales, let’s just […]
Zachary Roth
Posted inPolitical Animal, Politics
More on the Patent Office
MORE ON THE PATENT OFFICE….Not to belabor this whole patent business, but it’s good to see the New York Times get into the game today, with an editorial that hits pretty much all the key points. Ironically, the Times also has a news story today that offers a near-perfect example of the harm that over-broad […]
Posted inPolitical Animal, Politics
Re-Writing History
RE-WRITING HISTORY I couldn’t help noticing something about one of Bush’s responses at his press conference this morning. Asked about FEMA trailers that were left sitting unused in Arkansas after Katrina, he said: “The taxpayers aren’t interested in 11,000 trailers just sitting there. Do something with them,” Bush said. “And so I share that sense […]
Posted inPolitical Animal, Politics
Even a Stopped Clock…
EVEN A STOPPED CLOCK….This is a couple days late but we’ve had a magazine to put out. Sunday’s New York Times features a pretty good op-ed on out-of-control patents by the science-fiction writer Michael Crichton. Say what you want about Crichton ? who’s lately begun leveraging his “scientific” credentials to carve out a second career […]
Posted inMagazine
Nuclear Waste
Residents were required to wear identification badges whenever they went out of the house, and the Oak Ridge high school football team played only road games. But there was good reason for the clandestine measures: By late 1943, Oak Ridge’s Y-12 plant was using electromagnetism to create the highly enriched uranium that would be used […]
Posted inMagazine
Labs Behaving Badly
The antagonism has its roots in the relationship between the two fathers of the atomic program, Edward Teller and Robert Oppenheimer. In the late 1940s, Teller began advocating the immediate development of a hydrogen bomb, in response to the news that Russia had built an atomic weapon. Oppenheimer remained more cautious, and Teller soon became […]
Posted inPolitical Animal, Politics
Patently Absurd
PATENTLY ABSURD….There’s been a lot of concern lately about the prospect that the BlackBerry might soon be brought down by a “patent troll” ? in this case, a small Virginia company, NTP, which holds a patent on wireless email technology and is now suing RIM, the BlackBerry’s maker, after it refused to pay NTP a […]
Posted inPolitical Animal, Politics
A Free Pass for DeLay’s Staff?
Is it just me, or is there something odd about the tone of this report in The Hill about how Tom DeLay?s staff can all expect to find new jobs without much trouble? ?DeLay was widely regarded as highly effective at promoting the Republican agenda,? The Hill?s Jeffrey Young tells us. ?His staff?s role in […]
Posted inPolitical Animal, Politics
Abramoff and the Democrats, Cont’d
ABRAMOFF AND THE DEMOCRATS, CONT’D….Two weeks after Jack Abramoff’s plea deal was announced, the press is continuing to fall for the GOP line that the scandal is somehow ?bipartisan.? In today?s Washington Post, Jonathan Weisman reports that ?Congressional Democrats yesterday laid out a plan to change what they called a GOP ‘culture of corruption’ in […]
Posted inPolitical Animal, Politics
Abramoff and the Democrats
ABRAMOFF AND THE DEMOCRATS….It?s now clear that the GOP strategy for limiting the damage from the Abramoff scandal is to employ the ?Democrats were doing it too? defense. And the press has been willing to help that strategy along. An Associated Press story, for instance, reported that a contribution to Democratic senator Byron Dorgan of […]
