Hyperbole and Absolutism: Italicized.

When judges insist on imposing their arbitrary will on the people, the only alternative left to the people is an amendment to the Constitution -- the only law a court cannot overturn. A constitutional amendment should never be undertaken lightly -- yet to defend marriage, our nation has no other choice.

A great deal is at stake in this matter. The union of a man and woman in marriage is the most enduring and important human institution, and the law can teach respect or disrespect for that institution. If our laws teach that marriage is the sacred commitment of a man and a woman, the basis of an orderly society, and the defining promise of a life, that strengthens the institution of marriage. If courts create their own arbitrary definition of marriage as a mere legal contract, and cut marriage off from its cultural, religious and natural roots, then the meaning of marriage is lost, and the institution is weakened. The Massachusetts court, for example, has called marriage "an evolving paradigm." That sends a message to the next generation that marriage has no enduring meaning, and that ages of moral teaching and human experience have nothing to teach us about this institution.

07/10/2004 10:14 PM  |  Comment (8)

'The oasis is infested with wind scorpions – or camel spiders – nasty things the size of my hand that urinate crystals and murder children': Some nice Tunisian travel writing from Michael Totten.

07/09/2004 12:58 PM  |  Comment (0)

Free Beer For Bloggers! All you have to do is show up to the Tulip Café, and say the word "blog" to the bartender. The catch -- Tulip's in Prague.

07/08/2004 09:23 PM  |  Comment (4)

Lincoln Town Car For Sale: Own a piece of musical history for just $1,000, OBO!

Yes, this is the beast referred to in the eponymous Corvids song. 1986 Lincoln Town Car, 230,000 miles, all smogged & ready to go, my dad’s the original owner (I think!), etc. More pictures here; send an e-mail if you’re interested.

07/08/2004 08:49 PM  |  Comment (1)

Take Part in my Presidential Election Poll! I'm trying to build some useful if unscientific data for an upcoming column, and as such I invite each and every one of you to take part in the following poll. Please answer each of the seven questions below in the comments (using a pseudonym if you prefer):

1. What, if any, is your current political party membership?
2. What has been your historical political party membership?
3. Is your state blue or red on the famous electoral map? Your county?
4. Who have you previously voted for president?
5. Who do you plan on voting for president this year, and how sure are you?
6. In 25 words or less … why?
7. Bonus question -- What was worse, Clinton's lies about Monica Lewinsky, or the lies by various Reagan Administration officials about Iran/Contra?

OK! Remember, answer the questions first, then hurl insults.

07/08/2004 06:55 PM  |  Comment (78)

The 'Fashion' of Kerry-Leaning Libertarian Hawks: Virginia Postrel notes the growing trend of libertarian hawks saying "I break with thee" to George Bush, and comments:

I have a sneaking suspicion that Kerry-leaning libertarian hawks (now that's a small demographic!) are simply kidding themselves in order to stay on the fashionable side of politics. They need to read a couple of recent NYT articles and think hard about their implications.

I am neither precisely "libertarian" nor "hawk," but I am planning to vote for Kerry, and I share enough in common with the people who Virginia describes to defend the tribe with two points: 1) If anything here is "fashionable," it's ascribing a political disagreement to some kind of baser motive. I don't care what Dave Eggers says, about anything at all -- I'm voting against Bush because I don't believe he's leading the country in the right direction in the War Against People Who Would Like to Kill Us. 2) Is it "delusional" to think a Democratic president who campaigns on "fiscal responsibility" might be a tad, you know, fiscally responsible? Maybe, but recent history suggests that a Democratic president with a Republican Congress (the likely scenario if Kerry wins) will care more about deficit reduction and ending "the era of big government" than the current Republican president with the current Republican Congress. And since managing the deficit and government growth is an important part of winning the War, this is yet another reason that I think Kerry-leaning libertarian hawks have a perfectly valid rationale for voting against Bush.

Who is "kidding themselves" more? Libertarians who think a Kerry presidency would expand government less, or libertarians who can't ever conceive of voting for a Democrat because Democrats are "the party of Big Government"? Whatever the answer, my vote (like most people's) is all about the War & America's foreign policy. And though I may be wrong (and in fact I hope I'm wrong), I think Bush's leadership on that Single Issue warrants a changing of the guard. If that's the current "fashion," then all I can say is that it would mark the first time in my life that my presidential tastes will jibe with the majority of voting Americans. UPDATE: Virginia digs a deeper hole:

Artists aren't the only ones who fashionably hate George W. So do academics.

Vote for Kerry if you must, folks. But don't pretend you're doing it because Bush's economic policies are insufficiently free market or fiscally responsible.

07/08/2004 06:37 PM  |  Comment (32)

America’s First Phonecam Art Show! Is opening this weekend at The Standard Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Brought to you by the one and only Xeni Jardin, tattooed love boy Sean Bonner, Caryn Coleman and the sixpace art gallery, the Sent exhibition includes cam-photos by such diverse contributors as Mark Cuban and Weird Al Yankovic. The L.A. Times has a story today.

I'm not the biggest art-geek or gizbot enthusiast in the world, but the conversations I've had with the organizers (plus the unexpected fun I've had with my Buzznet site) make me really excited to go. It's also nice to see this happening in Los Angeles, online creativity capital of the world (or at least of Southern California), home to such talents as Xeni, photo essayist extraordinaire Tony Pierce, and Buzznet founder Marc Brown. See you Saturday!

07/08/2004 04:13 PM  |  Comment (0)

Worth Reading….: Mark Cuban on letting Steve Nash get away (sample: "How can you not have a great time with and love a guy whose best friends include a guy named SmallBalls, and another guy who goes out with us wearing a shirt that says 'I F**ked Your Boyfriend'?"); Doug Arellanes on mushroom-hunting in the Czech Republic ("I don't know the history of the strange Czech competitiveness about mushrooms, but it's there in huge amounts nearly every time I go out. It's like the timid little accountants all day who turn into raging sociopaths when stuck in traffic. Who knows where all that rage comes from? It's there"); Tim Cavanaugh on the bizarre Saudi-U.S. Gitmo prisoner exchange ("where are the supporters of President Bush—a bunch not ordinarily reticent about condemning Islamists and their fellow travelers—when one of his flunkies makes a deal that at best appears highly unsavory and at worst is lethally contrary to American interests?"); plus Tony Pierce's 100 Greatest American men of all-time.

07/07/2004 01:44 PM  |  Comment (3)

Reminder -- Come out to the L.A. Press Club Panel on Journalist Visas: It’s tomorrow night, 6:30 drinks, 7:30 discussion; $5 members, $20 non-members; moderated by me. RSVP to info@lapressclub.org, or call 323-469-8180. More info here. You won’t be sorry!

07/06/2004 09:59 AM  |  Comment (0)

July 4, 1992, in Bratislava, Slovakia:

That was the debut and farewell show of Ken Layne & the Jersey Sluts, at The Cavern Club, to celebrate the opening of Prognosis' Bratislava bureau, which Ken began, Ben Sullivan manned, and I moved into for a year. Pictured from left to right: Rob McLean, Greg McIlvaine (playing my much-loved and long-lamented ’63 Fender Jazzmaster), the elbow of Jeff Solomon, Layne, and yours truly. Click on the picture for more gruesome detail.

I bring this up to creep out Mickey Kaus (who is still suffering the ill effects of looking at this photo), and also as a way to make an exciting musical announcement -- The long-awaited new record by Greg McIlvaine, The Many Sides of Gregory Vaine, is now available on Scrub Jay Records. It's a terrific piece of heartbreaking and heartwarming American music, acoustical and electric, and I urge you all to buy it today. At $10, it's a steal.

I would have cried the first time I listened to it, but I was in a room full of men, some of whom I would later have to pummel (it was a bachelor party at my dad's condo in Mammoth). Greg was already a regionally renowned guitar slinger when I met him 15 years ago, and since then he's expanded his heavy metal and blues chops with a huge country/Buck Owens/Jimmie Rodgers vocabulary (in fact he’ll be joining The Corvids on our August tour), and somewhere along the line his songs and his singing transformed from epic comedy about Vikings to subtle regret and defiant optimism about living the Rock dream despite the massive odds. The electric number 1992 hits especially close to my bones, because that was the year Greg & I and some other pals had about the best spring and summer anyone could ask for, playing 10 hours each Saturday on the Charles Bridge (you can see a funny picture on his History page). For an acoustical idea of what the new record's about, check out What Ever Happened to Dave. (The CD Baby page has more song snippets.) And for a new interview he conducted with himself, using song lyrics as questions, click here.

I can think of no finer way to celebrate the Fourth than by enjoying a little independently produced American music. And if you like this one, you'll probably enjoy his under-appreciated 1998 rock opera, The Ballad of Bobby McStone, featuring some backup singers you might recognize. Happy Independence Day, kids!

07/04/2004 12:10 PM  |  Comment (3)

A Fourth of July Reminder, From Bucharest

07/04/2004 11:17 AM  |  Comment (2)

So, Um, Why Exactly Was I in Romania, Then? Because the kind folks at the Mercatus Center, a free-market research/education outfit that specializes in development issues, gave me a Global Prosperity Initiative fellowship to go there and do a pile of reporting, which I am converting into a series of articles and columns for various publications.

They asked me to write a couple of what-I’m-doing notes from the field while I was there, and I responded with an extremely rambling and eminently fact-checkable stream-of-consciousness comparison between Romania and the other countries I’m familiar with, followed by a dry little account of researching the negative cycle of corruption and anti-entrepreneurialism; click here to read them, and don’t be alarmed by casual first-name references and such.

07/03/2004 06:11 PM  |  Comment (7)

Sucking in the ‘70s: Jesse Walker points us to this interesting-if-Eno-worshipping list of the top 100 albums of the ‘70s. So, what's left out? At the risk of exposing my massive musical ignorance (not to mention my overexposure to rock both Classic and Soft), here are 10 of my favorites that didn't make the list. Feel free to throw cream pies, and add non-lister suggestions of yer own:

Sticky Fingers -- Stones
Transformer -- Lou Reed
The Point -- Harry Nilsson
Moods -- Neil Diamond
Out of the Blue -- E.L.O.
In Through the Out Door -- Led Zep
L.A. Woman -- Doors
Innervisions -- Stevie Wonder
Some Girls -- Some Stones
Bridge Over Troubled Water -- Smith & Glunk

Hey, I said favorites, not best…. It's also interesting how many good records came out in 1980 -- Pretenders I, Los Angeles, Sandinista, The River, Remain in Light ....

07/03/2004 05:11 PM  |  Comment (16)

Welcome to South Fork, Romania!


This one's pretty fun, despite the low-quality photos.

07/03/2004 11:57 AM  |  Comment (0)

Spinsanity on Fahrenheit: For those of you who care about the factual accuracy of Michael Moore polemics, the Spinsanity kids have the track record and scrupulously bipartisan anality to have accumulated more credibility on fact-checking MM than just about anyone else. Their conclusion about Fahrenheit 9/11?

And fortunately, it appears to be free of the silly and obvious errors that have plagued Moore's past work, such as the claim in Stupid White Men that the Pentagon planned to spend $250 billion on the Joint Strike Fighter in 2001, a sum that represented over 80 percent of the total defense budget request for the year.

However, "Fahrenheit 9/11" is filled with a series of deceptive half-truths and carefully phrased insinuations that Moore does not adequately back up.

Saw the movie yesterday, and had a similar reaction to the one I had for Bowling for Columbine (though I liked this one better): Enjoyed it, laughed quite a few times, appreciated his use of music & images and also his value added (in this case, compiling some interesting footage; in Bowling, interviewing Terry Nichols' bro and Charlton Heston); groaned during the more blatantly propagandistic bits (the pre-war Baghdad paradise especially), winced at his continuing fetish for extended shots of wailing mothers, felt ever-less impressed with his ambush interviews, and left not unhappy that I spent $4.50. Regardless of other qualities or lack thereof, Moore is quite effective at what he does in his best medium (not unlike Rush Limbaugh on radio, Christopher Hitchens with the printed word, Atrios or InstaPundit online, or I guess Bill O'Reilly on TV). People searching for scrupulously factual and even-handed current-affairs programming from opinion commentators -- especially documentarians -- better have a lot of time on their hands.

Where I probably differ with Spinsanity is that it seems to me that the old gasbag is at least partly letting us in on the joke when he does another one of his arch, "or maybe there was another reason" leaps of logic. Perhaps it’s the cocoon talking, but I think people who enjoy Moore's movies are pretty aware by now that he fudges facts, edits misleadingly, and assumes the worst possible motives of his enemies, while usually failing to address his own political hypocrisies. I don't think Rush Limbaugh's fans confuse his liberal-bashing rants as the whole truth and nothing but; still, it can be enjoyable and even somewhat educational if you're into such things. Ditto probably for most political weblogs you enjoy. Does the enormous success of Moore mean Something Important And New about the Democrats, or for Our Nation's Very Discourse? I really rather doubt it. It's hardly news that opposition-party faux-populist bomb-throwers with a bit of talent and humor can become very rich in this country. The republic manages to stagger on.

James Glassman, for one, sees far more significance in Fahrenheit’s success:

As Iraq has moved closer to democracy over the past few weeks, the terrorist opponents of sovereignty, as expected, have grown more desperate and more violent in their counterinsurgency.

A similar pattern has occurred in the United States.

As Republicans have moved closer to consolidating power in all three branches of government, Democratic opponents of free-market conservatism have grown more desperate and more rhetorically violent in their own counterinsurgency.

07/02/2004 04:26 PM  |  Comment (30)

Come One, Come All, to a July 7 L.A. Press Club Panel on Journalist Visas and Enthusiastic LAX Border Guards: I’m moderating it.

WHERE: L.A. Press Club seminar room, 6464 Sunset Blvd., 8th floor.
WHEN: July 7th, Wednesday, booze begins flowing at 6:30 pm, panel starts at 7:30.
WHO’S ON THE PANEL?: John Heinrich, Director of the L.A. Office of Field Operations for the U.S. Customs & Border Protection; David Stewart, Consul General of the American Consulate in Tijuana; Michael Wolff, press attaché of the German Consulate; and a journalist to be named later.
HOW MUCH?: $5 for L.A. Press Club members, $20 for outsiders; the cost covers drinks and snacks.
WHY SHOULD I GO?: To heckle me. Also, anyone who does journalism or even blogging should care, either because A) they’re a furriner, and might be kicked out of the country, or B) they’re an Amurrican, and they might soon visit a country, like Brazil, that’s sufficiently pissed off to impose reciprocal rules. And as it stands now (though pending our panel cross-examination), European bloggers who aren’t professional journalists could by rights be stopped at the border, handcuffed, probed, and shipped home. Also, having two U.S. officials there should provide good fireworks, national-security context, and actual news.
RSVP: info@lapressclub.org, or call 323-469-8180.
HEY MATT, HAVE YOU WRITTEN ABOUT THIS IN THE PAST? Why, yes I have. Links TK.

07/02/2004 11:47 AM  |  Comment (1)

Post-Commie Nostalgia


Start here.

07/02/2004 11:26 AM  |  Comment (6)

Bucharest: Not So Bad!


A new Romanian photo essay; start here.

07/01/2004 10:17 PM  |  Comment (0)

If You Care About Yugoslavia, or the Way Governments Decide to Go to War, Buy This Book: It's called Be Not Afraid, for You Have Sons in America : How a Brooklyn Roofer Helped Lure the U.S. into the Kosovo War, and it's by my friend Stacy Sullivan, a terrific reporter who spent much of the 1990s in places where people speak Albanian and/or hold grudges about 600-year-old historical squabbles. She's been working on this important book for ages, and according to crack Washington Post war reporter Blaine Harden, the toil paid off:

Stacy Sullivan, who covered the Balkans for Newsweek, has pulled off an improbable feat. She has written an irresistibly readable book about the war in Kosovo

She is terrific in detailing the life of Florin Krasniqi, a Kosovar Albanian who emigrated illegally to the U.S. via Mexico in 1988, and took it upon himself to get the KLA off the ground once Milosevic's intentions (and the inefficacy of nonviolent resistance) became clear to him. Anecdotes of buying assault weapons at gun shows and taking them to Albania on conventional flights, of shopping for Stinger missiles in Pakistan and of the Muslim Krasniqi getting a great price on uniforms from Brooklyn Hasidim are as funny as they are unsettling. Snappily written with a keen eye for telling personal tics and crushing political ironies, Sullivan's book reveals that this crucial, underreported event of the late '90s was more multilateral than anyone imagined.

07/01/2004 12:07 PM  |  Comment (0)

E-mails All Fixed Now: Sorry to have bored you with this.

07/01/2004 09:55 AM  |  Comment (0)

Whoops! Looks Like I'm Going To Be on the O'Reilly Factor Tonight: Defending L.A., which Bill apparently sees as some kind of ungovernable babylon. Hopefully I won't get the jet-lags on camera. Any suggestions on why L.A. is better than everywhere (especially the awful East Coast) would be appreciated. UPDATE: Whoops! Looks like I'm going to do no such thing; they are "going in a different direction." He's obviously running scared....

07/01/2004 09:18 AM  |  Comment (34)

Some Romanian Photo Essays:

I will be publishing my Romania photos in thematic chunks of 10 over on Buzznet; the first little story is entitled Animal pals in the New Sour Cherry village.

07/01/2004 07:52 AM  |  Comment (0)

Debbie's Got the Runs: My old friend Debbie "Urlik" Beukema, a great artist and a good singer, and not the person who immediately comes to mind when you say the phrase “highly conditioned athlete,” is training to run a marathon so she can raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Click here to track her progress, and here to see how you can help.

06/30/2004 10:39 PM  |  Comment (0)

Exciting Update About My F***ing E-mails: Looks like I've deleted 99% of them on the server side, one by one, but for some reason I can't download the remaining 200. So I still haven't read anything, and chances are that any e-mails from strangers (and certainly a few from friends & colleagues) have been deleted Forever. For those anxious to hear from me regarding work issues, chill out for a few hours in the morning, and then I'll get right back to you.

06/30/2004 10:35 PM  |  Comment (3)

Newly Posted Reason Column From Me -- 'Only Money: Campaign Finance Reform Bites Supporters in the Rear': The main threat that was on the table at the time this column was published -- that the Federal Election Commission would apply the McCain-Feingold law to journalism-producing nonprofits like the Sierra Club and the Reason Foundation -- has been postponed since then, but as long as that possibility remains, it's worth remembering in detail how the FEC & campaign-finance reform can restrict freedom of the press, in addition to speech.

Two things I didn't mention in the column: 1) I used to be an enthusiastic supporter of McCain-Feingold & would dismiss the free-speech argument against, and 2) a commenter on this weblog, Andy Freeman, helped goad me into writing this when I was busy blathering on about the Sandra Tsing Loh flap.

06/30/2004 02:39 PM  |  Comment (2)

14,995: That's the number of e-mails that accumulated, after three weeks in Dracula-land. I've finally found access to them, via something called mail2web. If more than 100 are of any use whatsoever, I'll eat my hat. UPDATE: Well, Mail2Web doesn't work, either, nor does my new $49.95 downloaded version of Eudora 6.1, and now the non-Luddite member of the household is doing all kinds of unholy things to my computer, while I pray to the Romanian Patriarch that the whole thing doesn't explode. I know there are many editors out there wondering why the hell I'm ignoring their messages, and/or failing to send reports ... until further notice I will be attempting to climb out of the spam/computer death-hole, which hopefully can be accomplished before the day is out. In the meantime, I've added some Romania pictures over to my Buzznet page....

06/29/2004 09:55 PM  |  Comment (6)

Hi! What are you doing down here?