Aside

So when I’m not a journalist, I occasionally moonlight as a web designer. This started way back in 1997, when I worked on the Ch‰teau de Bossey webpage when I was 15 and living in Switzerland. (My Aunt Heidi was the director of Bossey at the time.) My design for that page was so good that they haven’t changed it in eight years — ok, either that, or they’re lazy. My latest web design gig is for Mark Kohut, a…

NYT: WASHINGTON, July 13 – President Bush said today that his nominee for the Supreme Court may be someone who has never sat on the bench before. “Would I be willing to consider people who had never been a judge?” Mr. Bush said. “And the answer is, ‘You bet.’ “

Muslims are speaking out against terrorism to anyone who will listen and from the comments: UK Fatwa to Call Bombers Unbelievers, If Proved Muslims: CAIRO, July 10, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) Ð BritainÕs top Muslim scholars are drafting a fatwa stripping those behind the grisly London blasts, if proved Muslims, from the right to call themselves Muslims, a leading British newspaper said Sunday, July 10. Signed by dozens of prominent Muslim bodies, mosques, Islamic scholars and community groups, the religious edict will…

White House Press Conference, July 11, 2005, 10:06 am Pacific: Q Does the President stand by his pledge to fire anyone involved in the leak of a name of a CIA operative? MR. McCLELLAN: Terry, I appreciate your question. I think your question is being asked relating to some reports that are in reference to an ongoing criminal investigation. The criminal investigation that you reference is something that continues at this point. And as I’ve previously stated, while that investigation…

Within the last 24 hrs, I’ve had readers from: Australian Trade Commission Disney Yale University Mogadishu, Somalia (via a British ISP?) Norway The Netherlands Canada Belgium Chile France Poland University of Utah and a bunch of people from somethingisawful.com, which I’m too cheap to buy a membership to. If someone wants to buy me a membership, I’d be eternally grateful.

My j-school classmate, totally r0x0r piano player and songwriter, and all-around kickass journo Jennifer Weiss writes in the latest issue of CJR about a dirty secret of journalism — where are the women? by Jennifer Weiss Bylines in the nation�s top intellectual and political magazines are heavily male, as shown by these ratios (male/female), calculated using the ProQuest database from October 2003 through the end of May. At several magazines, women writers were occasionally shut out of entire issues. National…

Support Judith Miller: I support the decision of Judith Miller to refuse to disclose her confidential sources. Journalists are not above the law, but must be independent and free from government control if they are to effectively serve as government watchdogs. Cyrus Farivar, Assistant Editor, Macworld

From San Francisco, and my recent trip to LA, with lots of food photos. Maria/Boyk, eat your hearts out.

I’m not normally one for conspiracy theories, but this is just damned weird: AP: JERUSALEM – Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was on his way to a hotel near the scene of one of the London blasts Thursday when he received a call to stay put, the foreign minister said. “After the first explosion, our finance minister received a request not to go anywhere,” Finance Minister Silvan Shalom told Israel Army Radio. Netanyahu was to have been the scheduled keynote…

Newsweek, July 18 2005: For two years, a federal prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, has been investigating the leak of Plame’s identity as an undercover CIA agent. The leak was first reported by columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. Novak apparently made some arrangement with the prosecutor, but Fitzgerald continued to press other reporters for their sources, possibly to show a pattern (to prove intent) or to make a perjury case. (It is illegal to knowingly identify an undercover CIA officer.)…