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In a guest column at the New York Times, Elizabeth Edwards rates the campaign so far: Bowling 1, Health Care 0 . Why this annoying emphasis on things that don't matter? ...every analysis that is shortened, every corner that is cut, moves us further away from the truth until what is left is the Cliffs Notes of the news, or what I call strobe-light journalism, in which the outlines are accurate enough but we cannot really see the whole picture. ...I was lucky enough for a time to have a front-row seat in this campaign — to see all this, to get my information firsthand. But most Americans are not so lucky. As we move the contest to my home state, North Carolina, I want my neighbors to know as much as they possibly can about what these men and this woman would do as president. Is it really too much to ask?

Over at the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan -- yes, Peggy Noonan -- had some time on her hands waiting to get through a TSA screening. in The View From Gate 14 she paints a fine portrait of what the current administration has done to America, and what Americans might be thinking about Obama: ...what about Obama and America? Who would have taught him to love it, and what did he learn was loveable, and what does he think about it all? And this: The reasons for the quiet break with Mr. Bush: spending, they say first, growth in the power and size of government, Iraq. I imagine some of this: a fine and bitter conservative sense that he has never had to stand in his stockinged feet at the airport holding the bin, being harassed. He has never had to live in the world he helped make, the one where grandma's hip replacement is setting off the beeper here and the child is crying there. And of course as a former president, with the entourage and the private jets, he never will. I bet conse...

(An occasional reminiscence on the events of 1968 ) On April 11 Defense Secretary Clark Clifford announced Gen. Westmoreland's request for 206,000 additional soldiers would not be granted. He set a ceiling of 549,500 troops in Vietnam, and a plan for Vietnamese military to take over responsibility for the war effort. Also that day, president Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which added fair housing provisions to the previous civil rights legislation of 1964: it prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin. In Germany, student leader Rudi Dutschke was shot in an attempted assassination. Riots broke out on the news. The Prague Spring was under way, since Alexander Dubcek had become first secretary of the Central Committee of Czechoslovakia in January. Novotny resigned as president the end of March and in April, Dubcek's reforms were launched. On April 20, Pierre Trudeau became prime minister of Canada, replacing Lester Pearson. On...

Over at Time Goes By , Ronni Bennett has set up a survey to find out more about bloggers over 50. Says Ronni: The goal is to find out what elderbloggers are like, how we may be similar and how we are different, how we relate to technology, how we came to be bloggers or blog readers, how we feel about it and what our demographics are. This is for bloggers and blog readers, so if you're in the age group and have any interest in blogs -- and you wouldn't be reading this if you didn't -- help out by taking this brief survey. It says it takes 20 minutes but I think I did it in 5. (I'd have posted the graphic link to the survey but Blogger isn't letting me upload images right now.) (Added later:) I love this, in an earlier post on Ronni's blog, in her 'Crabby Old Lady' guise: One of the pleasures of writing primarily for elders is they understand historical references or know how to look them up. A young reader emailed about yesterday’s post asking who Joe...

Can't do much better than Google ....

Well, not much more new this week, but here are some good ones. For more on what I've been doing, some photos from a weekend art/music festival in Dahlonega GA ( Bear on the Square ) on my other blog. The Mike Wallace Interview , great collection of late '50s personalities interviewed by Wallace on his show, collected at U.Texas. Truemors , fun news site. Statistical Yearbook of Latin America and the Caribbean , 2007 edition from ECLAC. Daily Source : news aggregator with human editors. Live Search News from Microsoft, similar to Google News but with local news in a sidebar.

Mary Mapes says what a lot of us feel about this presidential campaign about now, in Okay, Now I'm Bitter : I want my life back. This political junkie has just about had her fill of political junk food. I'll come back when there is something more substantial on the table. Until then, I guess I'll just cling to my guns, my religion and my long-ignored need to improve my bowling scores. Because this whole presidential campaign thing has gone into the gutter. Or, as this Onion news report says, all the media care about is bullshit.

Are you confused about all the new sources appearing that say you can search case law online, for free? Does it really work? Is it complete? Now at Virtual Chase, a copy of an article by Carole Levitt and Mark Rosch, Editors of Internet Fact Finding For Lawyers, Free Case Law Databases . The authors review several online case law sources, The Public Library of Law, the law portal at Justia, and Justia's online databases of Federal District Court Opinions and Orders, Supreme Court decisisions, Court of Appeals decisions, U.S. District Court's civil case filings and dockets, and Federal Regulations . They also discuss the service that is putting lots of case law online for downloading (but not searching), from Public.Resource.Org and Creative Commons. Useful.

So how did Ernest Hemingway develop that unique writing style? A lot of it came from his newspaper writing experience, at the Kansas City Star. The Star has put a stylesheet from around 1915 online, and they say Hemingway later remarked to a reporter that the admonitions in this style sheet were 'the best rules I ever learned in the business of writing'. Wonderful stuff. Much outdated, but could be adapted to current style thought: Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be postitive, not negative. ...Never use old slang. Such words as stunt, cut out, got his goat, come across, sit up and take notice, put one over, have no place after their use becomes common. Slang to be enjoyable must be fresh. ...Say luncheon, not lunch. There's a surprising amount of information on reporting drug use: The Star does not use 'dope' or 'dope fiend'. Use habit forming drugs or narcotics or addicts. It's too bad the PDF of this old docume...

Following up on yesterday's post on Washington Post researcher Julie Tate, there's a profile of her in City Paper: The Unsung Hero of the Washington Post . Nice takeout on what a great researcher provides to investigative stories. Note the story says she was involved in 4 of the 6 Post Pulitizer-winning stories, and has contributed to at least one previous Pulitzer winner. Is the Post's research staff going to take hits from the latest buyout plan? Downie says the unit is critical to the paper’s investigative work and is keeping a close eye on how it fares in the buyout. “The research staff is one that we wouldn’t want to short on resources,” says Downie. “What exact number that means, I don’t know. We wouldn’t allow it to be imperiled.” (Thanks to contributors to the NewsLib listserv.)

In the Miami Herald, a collaboration between long-time Herald Caribbean correspondent Don Bohning (author of The Castro Obsession: U.S. Covert Operations Against Cuba 1959-1965 ) and Jack Hawkins, paramilitary chief of the Bay of Pigs operation: Kennedy, Bush made similar mistakes in Cuba, Iraq . From Hawkins: Key high-level civilian officials of both the Kennedy and Bush administrations had similar characteristics which caused them to make serious mistakes in the management of the Cuba operation in 1961 and the ongoing Iraq War: They had little or no military experience but were inclined to make important decisions about military operational matters against the advice of experienced military officers. In both administrations, the Secretary of Defense tended to suppress the free expression of opinions by members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and to isolate them from the President, who needed to know their opinions first-hand and unfiltered.

Buried in the column by the Washington Post's ombudsman, Deborah Howell, praising the contributions of editors and other staff to some of the Post's six Pulitzers this year, is this: And one researcher, Julie Tate, was credited for important contributions to three Pulitzer-winning entries. This means researchers have been cited in at least a dozen, maybe two, Pulitzer awards in the last few years. Congratulations. Oh, and then there's this: Twenty-five Pulitzers have been awarded since Len Downie became executive editor in 1991, the most for any editor in history.

When I logged on to Memeorandum a couple days ago, the lead headline (from Powerline or Little Green Footballs or some other big deal conservative blog) was something like 'Is this the end of the Obama candidacy?' As if that one statement about small town voters was that important. It is too bad he limited it to small towns. Downtrodden urban residents have every reason to be bitter, too. Of course, it's not the choice of the word so much as equating religion with guns and anti-immigrant sentiment; but his later explanations certainly clarified that he meant that they vote on those issues rather than the important economic ones. With help from the constant feeding of those issues from the pundit/blogocracy. Some useful commentaries about this use of the 'elite' charge being thrown around: Robert Reich : Bitter? You ain’t seen nothing yet. And as much as people like Russert, Carville, Matalin, Schrum, and Murphy want to divert our attention from what’s really happe...

Knoxville News Sentinel had a feature story this weekend on Tellico Dam , since the anniversary of that controversial dam is coming soon. Interesting insight into the history of the 'snail darter' case and the economic effect the dam has had (including the Christensen Shipyards plant under construction near Greenback, where 220-ft yachts will be built). I was working in Washington at the time and the Tellico dam story was a big deal. Now living nearby, finally seeing the lake, 30 years later, and the big housing developments being built where there were once small farms, important Cherokee settlements, and the trout fishing on the beautiful Little Tennessee River , I think the opponents knew exactly what it would lead to.

I almost wrote a posting about the death of Newsweek investigative journalist Bob Greene the other day. When I read he'd died I remembered his speaking at the first IRE conference I went to and how impressed I was with it. In particular, I was struck at his description of an online repository of reporters' notes his investigative team maintained. Why wasn't everyone doing that? Today I'm just posting a link to Mark Schaver's post on Greene, Investigative reporting enters the era of chopped meat . Pretty much says it all, I'd say....

Derek Willis looked at the South Florida coverage of the Miami Dolphins draft, and discovered databases on the Sun Sentinel's and Palm Beach Post's websites (and the S-S's sister paper, the Orlando Sentinel). None at the Miami Herald. So, being a data junky, Derek made his own: Miami Dolphins Draft Database . What a wonderful exercise to show how easy it can be. Why isn't every newspaper doing things like this? (Because most papers don't have anyone on staff that knows databases like Derek.) It took Derek a little over an hour and a half to do this. Took me about 2 seconds to find a list of all Dolphins draft picks from Wisconsin .

Here's Twitter from the Senate Floor ; Twitter from the House Floor .

Erica Jong, in Huffington Post, on the snide remarks some members of the media make about Sen. Clinton: Misogyny, Momism and Militarism . Physical mockery ended in seventh grade, I thought -- but apparently not where women pols are concerned. ...We get mediocre male politicians with comb-overs and drinking problems rather than acknowledging that women have brains that might be put to use to save us. Goddess help the U S of A. (originally posted by mistake on HighlandsCam last night.)

(originally posted to the HighlandsCam blog at 7:10 last evening) ..this week at about this time, two C-130s fly over this tip of western NC in a South-North direction. Carrying troops? We've also seen flights of two in same direction earlier in the day a couple days this week, too. Is something going on? Last fall, we saw Ospreys flying around the mountains for a week or two, an unusual sight, but discovered a Marine Osprey operation from eastern NC was being deployed to Iraq for the first time for this aircraft, so it must have been flight practice in rough terrain.

Nice to see that the Miami Herald's editor Anders Gyllenhaal had a hand in the awarding of a special Pulitzer Prize to Bob Dylan , as a former Minnesota editor..... And, of course, great huge congratulations to the Washington Post's Gene Weingarten , who once was the editor of the Herald's long-gone Tropic magazine....although I never read the story that won the Pulitzer because the concept bothered me a bit.....but I had a dream about Gene last night: I called him 'Uncle Gene' and congratulated him. Hmm.

Lots of interesting postings on Hullaballoo recently, including this one on how John McCain's 'Biography' tour seems to be an appeal to show he's a descendant of America's Cavalier tribe: Courting the Cavaliers . Digby cites Ed Kilgore , but finds a further explanation in a 2001 essay by Michael Lind, America's Tribes . Interesting thoughts. Several years ago I read a book on this topic, too, probably Kevin Phillips' The Cousins' Wars : The story being that the old wars between the Puritans and Cavaliers in England led to the divisions in American society, the Revolution and Civil War. Lind calls them the Cavaliers and the Yankees. Seems calling the Yankees 'Puritans' makes more sense. At any rate, Republicans are now the Cavaliers (or the South) and Democrats are now the Yankees (North, of course), the reverse of the party lineup as it was just a couple generations ago. It's a stretch but it seems it may help us to understand each other. ...

Sometimes a random link stirs up an interesting memory and connections, like this one found on Resourceshelf: Terremark to host Library of Congress Web site . Manny Medina's Terremark company started out in Miami, in the building across Bayshore Boulevard from Monty Trainer's restaurant. In the late '80s there was a lot of interest when he bought Monty's. It was about the time the old Merrill Stevens boatyard was up for grabs to be developed into a boating/shopping destination, fears that Terremark would be involved ended up sinking one company's bid. (Via Google Earth, I see the old boatyard shop building is now a Fresh Market. Big change from when it was full of pigeons, cats, carpenters and mechanics....our 19-yr-old cat was rescued from there.) Terremark went on to build the NAP of the Americas , an internet backbone access point in downtown Miami, then moved on to Culpeper, Virginia . Now they're going to house the Library of Congress' web site. How t...

(An occasional reminiscence on the events of 1968 ) Saturday was supposed to be the big day of the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, but that had been canceled by now. Tourists were getting a peek at the riot areas, which were cordoned off by troops and police but could be seen on side streets in places. The worst parts, which we saw on TV and in the papers, looked like a scene from WWII, burned buildings everywhere. And fires were still breaking out, there was still sporadic looting, and some sniper incidents. The curfew started at 4 p.m. that day so downtown Washington was deserted by early evening. That night police arrested 600 for curfew violations, all over the city. There were 13,600 troops by Sunday -- Palm Sunday. Either Saturday or Sunday, we went out to see what was happening. We may have gone to the Tidal Basin to see the blossoms. But I took some pictures in the areas on the edges of the riot zone, probably mostly near our Mount Pleasant neighborhood but also in Meri...

On a topic I've posted about for years, great article in Slate by Jack Shafer, Links that Stink . According to Shafer, many newspapers and other sites' links lead to irrelevant pages, popup ads, or don't link at all: The extraneous links etched into most Washingtonpost.com stories, for example, make it look as though an insect rode a unicycle dipped in blue ink through the copy before you got there. There's no point in having links unless they point to something that's relevant. Which leads to another point: Why doesn't every newspaper Web site routinely link directly to the competition's work? If a competitor's story is good enough to cite in the copy, it's good enough to link to. Of course, for years I cringed when a great story in a competing paper was never even mentioned in the paper I read. Thank goodness they at least get mentioned, but, really, the link is important. Once again: Links make you relevant. Links are the currency of the Web. If...

(An occasional reminiscence on the events of 1968 ) Monday, April 1, started out as a normal work week. It may have been my first day in the Washington Post's library, although I might have started the week before. Whichever, I was in a strange new job working with people I was just getting to know, in a city I didn't yet know well. This week would be a defining time. In Vietnam, troops in Operation Pegasus began the fight to open the road to Khe Sanh. On Tuesday, April 2, the film 2001 Space Odyssey , based on writings by Arthur C. Clark (who died last week) had its world premiere at the Uptown Theater in Washington. General release --with 19 minutes deleted -- would be April 6. That day, Sen. McCarthy got 56 percent of the vote in the Wisconsin primary. On Wednesday, Martin Luther King returned to Memphis and that evening gave his 'I have been to the mountaintop' speech . Something is happening in Memphis; something is happening in our world....the world is all messe...

A couple of months ago it was looking like there wouldn't be any point of voting in the North Carolina primary this year, since by voting day, May 6, the campaigning would have been wrapped up. But, not this year. Now it seems North Carolina's Democratic primary might decide the race . so I will have to think hard about who to vote for now. There's lots of interest, from this posting with links at the Rural Blog, about how the area's congressman, Heath Shuler , a former Edwards supporter who hasn't decided between the two remaining candidates, will have a big effect on the results with his superdelegate vote, to coverage by our local weekly paper of Bill Clinton's speech in Asheville this week. A reporter and photographer drove the 110 miles or so to Asheville to cover this first visit by a candidate or former president to Western NC in years. There's lots more interesting coverage on the Rural Blog , from the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community ...