The terms “liberal” and “conservative” these days are thrown around so promiscuously that they are practically devoid of meaning, of course. But still, my understanding of “conservative” is a person who wants to “conserve” the “original” meaning of the Constitution. I think we can all agree on that.

But even there, I get pretty confused.

I won’t belabor the point that “neoconservatives” aren’t conservatives by any stretch; they are radicals. Cheney, of course, is advancing a truly radical definition of executive power, the “unitary executive,” that I can find in not a single one of the Federalist Papers. Bush’s unilateralist, pre-emptive war policy is basically imperialistic in nature, and flies directly in the face of the founders vision (George Washington, in particularly, would be appalled; Washington was an isolationist). Further, Bush’s huge expansions of government, such as the Department of Homeland Security and the Medicare drug policy are very much anti-conservative, pro-governmental (and thereby classically liberal) in nature. And the interventionist, nation-building exercises that we’ve been engaging in are hardly “conservative” (unless you consider Woodrow Wilson a conservative).

No, what confuses me is when people who are lionized by the “conservative” movement turn out to have heavily non-conservative impulses. Or when things that would seem to be as conservative as can be–sections of the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, say–are considered “liberal.”

For example, consider that lion of “Originalist Interpretation,” Antonin Scalia. Scalia has said, over and over, that hews to an interpretation of law that is what he views is the “original intent” of the Founders. (How he thinks he can know what fellows dead 200 years ago were thinking is beyond me, but never mind.) Even people who disagree with him feel that he does rule based on original intent.

Except, you know, when he doesn’t. Like in Bush v. Gore, where he tossed his original intent and federalist principals right out the window, and over-ruled a state court in a state matter. Or in Lawrence v. Texas, where his dislike of gays apparently over-ruled his desire for ruling based on original intent. (Although he was able to rationalize it pretty well.)

And in this, Scalia is similar to many conservatives; he blats on about federalism and small government and keeping the government out of your life, but when his moral outrage kicks in–in his case, it happens to be gays–he’s perfectly happy to toss his precious principals out the window and rule according to how he feels, rather than the law.

And conservatives, by and large, seem to have that problem. They want to keep government “out of your life,” except, you know, when they want to tell you what to do in the privacy of your own bedroom. My feeling is, if you’re going to be a conservative, be one; have a little intellectual honesty, for crying out loud.

Another thing that confuses me about conservatives is which principals they pick and choose as the “conservative” ones. “Defense” is a bedrock conservative principal. “Welfare” is a liberal principal. And this has always confused me, because of the following prose:

We the people, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

There it is, right there in the the Preamble, right after “provide for the common defense”: “Promote the general welfare.” I mean, how much clearer can you get? How much more conservative can a value be than one that is listed in the preamble, for crying out loud? And yet, this is constantly given as a liberal value. I just don’t get it.

Perhaps I am being too hard on “conservatives,” and folks think I should shine an equally harsh light on “liberals.” But during my lifetime, liberals have always been incoherent, basically a collection of pressure groups and single-issue people (labor, racial politics, gender politics, anti-war politics, what-have-you). While the classic definition of “liberal” may have a definition as strident as that of “conservative,” there has been no liberal “movement,” at least in the last 30 years, like there has been a conservative “movement.” And hence I am only focusing on the conservative ideology, because in my view, there really isn’t a liberal ideology per se.

Now, I am perhaps a little more cynical about politics than most. JFK was shot within a few months of my birth. By the time I was 7, Bobby Kennedy had been shot, Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot, Johnson had lied us into the mess in Vietnam, and Nixon had been elected. My formative years were covered by Watergate. Iran/Contra dominated my young adulthood. Is it any wonder that I’m cynical?

Even so, the whole “surge” seems cynically calculated, even by my low standards. It has always seemed clear to me that it is nothing more than an attempt by Bush to run out the clock on his disastrous war until January 20, 2009. First, he announces it in January, but it isn’t “complete” until June. 5 months to get the troops “in theater.” How convenient!

In order to manipulate public opinion to get his money, Bush sends out his cronies in the last few months saying that General Patreaus will give Congress an “update” on the “surge” in September. So we have a “new strategy” in January, which is not “complete” until June. In June, we get further stalling tactics until September. And in September, what will we get? The real information?

Don’t be absurd. A few weeks ago, Bush starting informing us that we would see escalated violence during the summer, i.e. between now and September. And Tony Snow has spent the last couple of weeks backing off of the Administration’s stance that we can expect to see any results by September. And General Patreaus himself has been lowering expectations for his September report right and left.

So what can we expect in September? There are three options:

• There will have been more violence over the summer, in which case the Administration will say, “This is exactly what we expected. This is proof that the surge is working. We need to stay the course.”
• There will have been less violence over the summer, in which case the Administration will say, “Violence is receding! This is proof that the surge is working. We need to stay the course.” (There will also be accusations that anyone who suggests otherwise is a coward, a traitor, or worse.)
• As General Patreaus noted today, it’s possible that the level of violence may remain the same, in which case the Administration will say, “Violence has stabalized! This is proof that the surge is working. We need to stay the course.”

There are no other options. This Administration will never admit that the surge is not working, or that the war in Iraq is lost, despite the fact that majority of Americans already believes that to be the case (57% in the latest poll, and trending upward). The Administration will continue to play the “surge” card until the noise from the election grows loud enough, and then they will play some other cynical card (Iran invasion? Another trumped-up terrorist plot? Syrian invasion?). And in the meantime, our brave troops will continue to die, manipulated like pawns.

(And yes I’m angry; I may not be in uniform, but my father was, my father-in-law was, and countless uncles, aunts, and cousins are and have been. They do not deserve to die due to a stubborn man’s inability to admit a mistake.)

The only way out of this I see–the only way–is for Congress to cut off the funding. And with a Presidential election coming up, I don’t think that will happen. So for the next 18 months, we will continue to see innocent Americans and Iraqis die. Because of Bush.

When I read about the current situation in Gaza, I feel two very powerful, completely conflicting emotions.

On the one hand is, not exactly schadenfreude, but vindication. Israel has taken it on the chin for decades (sometimes fairly, in my view) for how they have treated the Palestinians. We can talk about how the press has conveniently ignored how much more poorly the Palestinians are treated in places like Jordan and Egypt, where the press is, to put it mildly, not exactly “free.” We can talk about how Israel is held to a completely different set of standards than any other country in the world in how their treat their religious minority. But even so, I don’t think anyone can deny that the Israelis and Palestinians haven’t exactly gotten along in an area of the world that’s not much bigger than New Jersey. And the Israelis, being the ones in charge of the area, have taken a large portion of the blame for Palestinian behavior.

But the point here is, now the Palestinians largely have autonomy in Gaza and the West Bank. And there is, for all intents and purposes a civil war raging in Gaza. And one of my powerful, conflicting emotions as a supporter of Jews in Israel is, “See, all you people who have been harshing on how the Jews have been governing the Palestinians! They can’t even govern themselves!” Total vindication.

But counterbalancing that is an equally powerful emotion: sorrow for the Palestinians. And I am not completely ignorant of history. I am well aware the United State Constitution did not spring, lo, full blown from the brow of Thomas Jefferson like Athena from the forehead of Zeus. It was the product of generations of western thought, and Jefferson himself was the product of of years of education and debate, living in a period and a place that allowed him to midwife this incredible system. Not to denigrate the work of the founders; their effort was profound, and I personally believe that Jefferson and Franklin were–and I do not use this term lightly–geniuses. But it is absolutely critical to consider the period of time and the cultural matrix in which they were embedded.

And the Palestinians? Have the Palestinian leaders been going to their equivalent of Harvard or Oxford, and educating their children in the principals of democracy and abstract thought, for generations? Or have they been scrambling to survive (in some cases), or (in others) filling the heads of their children with fundamentalist ideas about paradise in the afterlife if they become revolutionaries or suicide bombers? Even if a Palestinian Jefferson or Franklin exists–and he or she probably does–does he or she have the leisure to sit and think Great Thoughts, or is he or she simply trying to get through the day alive without getting caught in a Fatah/Hamas crossfire on the way to the market?

And so while I feel strongly that the current chaos in Gaza helps show the world that perhaps the Israelis haven’t been the brutal bullies that the world press tends to portray them as, I simultaneously feel incredible sorrow for the Palestinians as they struggle to put together a nation. They don’t have generations of democratic thought to build on. They don’t have peace and prosperity to lean against. They have chaos; they have autocratic leaders; they have schemers and connivers who have been funneling foreign aid into offshore accounts for personal enrichment; they have the authoritarian rulers of neighboring countries, co-religionists who one would expect to help them, who are instead using them as a political football for their own countries’ purposes. And I feel nothing but sorrow for the Palestinians themselves.

Off and on over the last several years, I’ve read a number of opinion pieces that show that a majority of people my age (43) and younger get their news from online sources, or programs like The Daily Show or The Colbert Report, instead of newspapers or network news. The subtext of these pieces always seems to be, “Well, yes, I’m smart enough to know that Jon Stewart is being satirical, but do these dumb GenX people know it? I mean, what if they believe it? And those bloggers! My god . . .”

I’ll discreetly draw a veil over the absurdity of preferring news channels that highlight the “skills” of a person like Anderson Cooper, Paula Zahn, or Katie Couric over someone as obviously intelligent as Jon Stewart and his team, or as ballsy as Steven Colbert (one of the few people in the last 6.5 years to have the nerve to confront Bush to his face). Personally, I’d rather watch John Oliver or Aasif Mandvi’s faux analysis than yet more empty-headed sonorous pronouncements from Wolf Blitzer any day. But hey, that’s just me.

First, Jon Stewart can do something in under two minutes that the entire White House press corps seems to have been unable to accomplish in the last 6.5 years: call the Bush Administration on its lies and bullshit. And one of the beauties of Stewart and The Daily Show is that they actually call these people liars when they, you know, lie.

Also, you pundits? Are you seriously more worried that the folks getting their news online and via Jon Stewart–a demographic that skews towards the more educated and (obviously) computer-literate–is less-involved, less intelligent, and more likely to be fooled than people who only get their news from network TV, Fox News, or Rush Limbaugh? Really? Or are you just honked that you are losing audience?

I can’t speak for my generation–and heck no I’m not talking about Boomers, I’m talking about us what comes after the Boomers–but I know that for me, it’s a relief to be able to read and watch people who call liars liars, who write what they actually think instead of qualifying it with a bunch of weasly language. They may be biased, but at least you know their biases, and at least you know their opinions, which is often not the case with the high-profile pundits. (And this, I think, helps explain the boom in ratings for Keith Olbermann since he started venting. Now you know where he stands, and people like that!)

Our legal system confuses me utterly. It confuses me for any number of reasons, but the thing that confuses me the most is how stinking slow it moves.

Consider the Scooter Libby trial. Let’s leave aside the fact of how long the trial itself took, which was insane enough. (I mean, why does it take several days to select a jury? Am I the only guy who finds that absurd?) Libby was indicted on October 28, 2005. His trial started January 16, 2007. What the heck was everyone doing in the intervening time? Filming a movie? Writing a novel? Taking trips to Zanzibar? (On foot?) In the high-tech world, that’s nearly two software development cycles, and about one hardware development generation. That’s insane.

Libby was found guilty on March 6, and sentenced on June 5. What the heck was Judge Walton–who I actually have a lot of respect for–doing during those three months? In that time, I delivered the documentation for two major products, my kids finished 2nd and 5th grades (respectively), I had a new roof put on my house and a new ceiling put in in my living room, I re-read Shogun and all six of the Harry Potter books, and I watched (among other things) the entire first season of Avatar: the Last Airbender, the first four episodes of Heroes, and several movies on DVD. And it took all that time for Judge Walton to come up with “30 months?” (And these guys already have sentencing guidelines to abide by!) No wonder our courts are so backlogged.

When Judge Walton finally got a grip and the words “30 months” came out of his mouth after that three month wait, Libby’s lawyer said, “Yo, can he stay out of jail pending appeal?” Had the judge spent part of that three months thinking, “Hm, what will I do if they ask me to let this guy walk free pending an appeal once I pronounce sentence?” Nosirree! He said, “You know, I need to think about that one for a week.” And so he delayed judgment on that decision for another week, until today, at which point he said, “No, off to The Big House with you, Mr. Convicted Felon.”

So does that mean he’s off to jail today? No! According to the news stories, Libby “will be required to report to a federal penitentiary sometime within the next few weeks.” A convicted felon, whose crimes, one might reasonably presume, helped cover up even worse crimes higher up in the White House, and he gets a few weeks before he has to go to jail.

Somehow, I don’t think that if he was Mr. Random Bonehead, he would get those “few weeks.” Somehow, I think that Mr. Random Bonehead would already be dressed in an orange coverall and be riding a bus with bars over the window, heading off to the nearest Minimum Security Prison. Hey, call me crazy.

So to sum up, Libby was charged on October 28, 2005, and was finally told to go to jail on June 14, 2007, but he still hasn’t had to yet.

Like I say, our legal system baffles me. If those guys had been in the high-tech business, they would have been laid off a long time ago.

I’m a huge eBook reader, and this particular post is about my obsession. If you’re uninterested, skip now.

I love eBooks. With my HTC Universal (a 3.72″, 640×480 full color screen) and a 1Gb SD card, I can carry around a library of several dozen books (plus music). I can read in bed with the lights out, which makes my wife happy. I carry a gear bag with me pretty much everywhere I go (a legacy from my year as a stay-at-home dad), so I can whip out the ol’ PDA anywhere when I’m at loose ends (waiting at the pediatrician’s office, for example), and I have a book to read. It’s great.

One thing that’s unfortunate, though, is the spotty coverage of titles. You can buy Heinlein’s Double Star and The Puppet Masters, but not Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. You can get some Steven King, but not The Stand. Plenty of best sellers like The DaVinci Code, but none of the Harry Potter books. It’s weird and irritating.

People blat on all the time about preserving our natural resources. They’re changing all the stop lights from incandescents to those weird, LED things, and I’ve noticed that they’ve started doing it to car tail lights as well. More and more people are using those butt-ugly curly fluorescents in a lot of places in their homes (and all hotels seem to be using them), even me. Recycling is penetrating even the Great Unwashed. But here’s a great way to save paper and print costs and ink and all the associated mess of the printing industry, and you can’t even get the Harry Potter books–the best-selling books on planet Earth, for the love of God–in eBook form. It makes me nuts.

(And you know that it has to do with lawyers. Not money–I doubt Jo Rowling needs more money–lawyers.)

Okay; whining completed.

Sorry; more Hillary.

Look, I don’t–and probably never will–understand why some people think that Hillary Clinton is electable as President.

I tell you three times, and what I tell you three times is true: I think she would make a fine President. Certainly better than the current bonehead.

But how anyone could see her negative approval rating of 45%–45%!–and think that she can get elected is beyond me.

And how anyone could consider the results of these head-to-head matchups with the current crop of Republicans–who are a bunch of losers, in my opinion–and think that she could get elected defies the imagination. Consider:

• In head to heads vs. Hillary, Giuliani leads Clinton by 10 percentage points; McCain leads Clinton by four percentage points; and Romney leads Clinton by two percentage points.
• In head to heads vs. Obama, Obama leads Giuliani by five percentage points, McCain by 12 points and Romney by 16 points.

In other words, Hillary loses to all the current Republican candidates, and Obama beats all the current Republican candidates. How much clearer can it be?

So it confuses me why folks out there think they should vote for her in the primaries. And it stuns me that the Clinton camp–which is made up of really smart people–thinks that they can get her elected. They have access to all this information and more. How can they delude themselves so badly? I just don’t get it.

I have been talking (probably too much) about the iPhone over on Gear Diary, because I am a gadget geek and it looks like a cool new gadget. But also because I think that “place shifting” is an important new trend. (Not that the national media–or indeed hardly anyone but my wife–cares what I think about new technology trends. And even she may just be being polite.)

This last Sunday, the Austin American-Statesman (free registration required) had an article on the iPhone and what it considered its competitors.

Here’s why I think the iPhone will be so huge, if we consider the iPhone the first of a long line of personal media players (PMPs) that allow you to do place shifting: the iPhone has a 3.5″, 480×320 pixel screen, and 4Gb (or 8Gb) of memory. All the “competitors” listed have screens that are about an inch smaller, have those itty keypads, and have less onboard memory (although several of them do have extra card slots, which is a plus that the iPhone–stupidly, in my view–doesn’t have).

Now, I’ve tried quite a few PMPs, phones with teeny keypads, and convergent devices, and I can say without hesitation that anything that gives you a chance to have keys that are approximately the same size as your fingers is a Good Thing (tm). I don’t know about you, but I get tired of trying to work those tiny Treo buttons, or tiny Blackberry buttons. Heck, I even have trouble with the buttons on my Motorola v180. I admit to some bias: a nerve injury years back means that I have no feeling in my left forefinger, and very little in my left thumb, so tiny keypads are a problem for me. But I still believe there are plenty of people out there who don’t like those wee bitty things.

But the bigger reason, I believe, that the iPhone is going to be a hit for place shifting your media content is the screen size. On a device that’s only a few inches in size, a screen that is 1″ larger is huge. That’s 50%. It would be like moving up from a 36″ to a 52″ television. I mean, that’s a big difference, wouldn’t you say?

It may very well be that when I get one of these things in my hand, I’m going to hate it. It may creak and groan from poor workmanship. It may be slow. The screen may smudge too easily because you have to use your fingers instead of a stylus. Trying to use it as a phone may make me nuts. Who can say. But I really do think that, as a PMP, it’s going to have a big impact.

But, you know, I’ve been wrong before.

Joe Klein has been, shall we say, a bit on edge about how he has been treated by the “liberal blogosphere” lately. (Others might say he has been whiny, pouting, and bitter. Your mileage may vary.) Recently, he did a podcast with Ana Marie Cox (formerly Wonkette) on the Time web site regarding Klein’s recent take-down of left-wing bloggers. While listening to it, I jotted down a few (!) notes. If you’re interested, read on. If not, skip right on over this entry; it’s quite long.

It’s “Ahna,” folks, not “Anne-uh.” Just for your information. (Lucky for me “Doug” is so easy to pronounce. Unless you’re a native non-English speaker, in which case the mutilations are almost always amusing. Native Spanish-speakers: “Dog.” Native French-speakers: “Doog.” Native Madarin-speakers: “Duck.”)

I don’t think he has a whiny voice, as opposed to some of the commentors on Swampland. You guys must have sensitive ears. Or maybe you need to spend more time with Yankees; we all sound like that. Heck, some of us sound worse. (I sure do.)

Klein draws a comparison between the noxious atmosphere brought into Washington by Newt Gingrich and the online community. Joe, ol’ buddy: the online community has always been like that. Go look at the USENET archives, and remember Sturgeon’s Law: 90 percent of everything is crud.

Why he’s only focusing his ire on the left-wing bloggers strikes me as odd. Hasn’t he surfed over to Blogs for Bush or Little Green Footballs or Free Republic? Lefties may argue with him, but those people talk about things that are, well, nuts.

He’s only been a blogger for 4-5 months and the heat in the kitchen is already getting to him. Itty poo.

Am I the only guy who is not overly-impressed by Juan Cole? Maybe it’s just that his seemingly constant anti-Israel idee fixe makes me nuts.

Klein complains about Glenn Greenwald’s column on Klein’s reportage. Of course, Greenwald is hardly the only person to complain, but the important thing here is, Klein is missing the point, which is that Klein is relying on anonymous sources to “report good news,” and then asking us to trust him. After six and a half years of bended-knee reportage during the Bush administration, after the Clinton impeachment fiasco and how the press kept harping on that even when the American public continued to give Clinton high favorability ratings, after how lame the press was during the Reagan years, after Judith Miller and her “anonymous sources,” Klein wants us to trust his “good news” from anonymous sources because, well, because he’s Joe Klein, and he wouldn’t steer us wrong!

Um, Joe: fool us once, shame on you, fool us 3000 times, and we’re a bunch of utter boneheads.

His protests that news of less violence in Anbar province is “bad news for the Bush Administration” simply because it wasn’t al Qaida-specific is, well, pretty weak. If you don’t believe that Bush can spin an article you write about lowered levels of violence in Iraq as “good news,” al Qaida or no al Qaida, you’re deluding yourself, Joe.

He complains that people should push policy positions, and that Kos only pushes “tactics.” But if his arguments in favor of the Democrats backing away from facing down Bush over the Iraq war funding isn’t classic tactics, I don’t know what is.

He notes that readers won’t have a full understanding of his story because he couldn’t give them all the background because of “space considerations.” Joe, you have a blog! Point to it, and give your readers the background there! (Ana Marie Cox points this out.) Joe insists that he doesn’t have to do this; we should just trust him.

Again, he misses the point about what Greenwald was saying. The “drop dead assumption” is not that all “mainstream media” reporters are going to cocktail parties; the “drop dead assumption” is that “anonymous-sourced” stories should be treated with extreme suspicion unless proven otherwise, especially those citing “administration sources.” And Klein should further realize that when we, the great unwashed, see Richard Wolffe attending white-tie dinners at the White House with the Queen, David Gregory dancing with Karl Rove, Tony Snow hobnobbing with reporters who all agree what great people they all are, and Tim Russert’s absurd performance on the stand at the Scooter Libby trial, he needs to realize the the level of trust “the peepul” have for reporters–particularly those quoting single “anonymous sources”, is beyond low.

Joe: I don’t care that you’ve been reporting for 38 years. The mainstream media reporting class in general has burned all their “trust us” cachet in the last 10 years, and you personally burned quite a bit of yours with your totally absurd objections when people accused you (correctly!) of being the “Anonymous” author of Primary Colors.

Sorry, dude; it’s a new world. Trust in the media is at an all-time low. You need to rebuild it. Whining about how ill-treated you are by the online community is not a good way to start.

Personally, I don’t think the thing about Klein’s reporting about the Jane Harman vote is a big deal. A lot of people are bent about it, but I agree with Klein; it’s a minor point.

On the flip side, just a few minutes after hammering Kos for talking about political tactics rather than policy substance, here he’s talking about tactics himself.

If he mentions one more time he’s been reporting for 38 years, I’m going to fly to D.C. and whack him over the head. I’ve been a technical writer for 20 years, but I don’t go around mentioning it half a dozen time in every conversation.

Ah, now we’re going to hear about a major mistake that “the left” is making about “the war.” He doesn’t trust the fact that the vast majority of Americans want to get out of Iraq; he doesn’t trust the polls.

Joe notes that 4 million people read Time magazine, but only 4% read Swampland or visit Time.com. (We’ll leave aside for a moment the debate about whether, if their web site was well-designed, those numbers might not rise.) Two points here: his snide implication clearly is, why should I care about the online community when my audience is those 4 million people? (Answer: the online community is growing, and the print community and its revenues are shrinking.) Second: if you had links from the print version to your blog, that percentage might grow, Joe.

Ana asks an excellent question: “Is this [Klein’s article] a fair portrayal of the left-wing blogosphere.” Given that Joe has only been online for 4-5 months, the answer is, obviously, “No.” Joe totally dodges the question. Instead, he compares the left-wing blogosphere to the lies that the Bush administration has been pedaling for the last 6.5 years. Thanks, Joe! What a sweet comparison!

Another “I’ve been doing this for 38 years” comment. Let’s see: tickets from Austin to Washington, round trip, are currently running about $300 . . .

He doesn’t read the comment thread on Swampland “a lot of times.” Perhaps after time goes by he will, like a lot of us who have been online for a while, develop a filtering system that allows him to plow through a bunch of comments really fast, filtering out that 90% of crud (other than the ones he wants to read for, you know, entertainment value). He’s clearly a newbie. Over time, his skin should thicken. We can only hope.

Like many old-time mainstream media types, he has “doubts and fears about whether Time magazine should be hosting this type of thing” [the Swampland comments section]. I have seen lots and lots of old MSM types say the same thing. Typical online newbie thing to say. I understand how overwhelming online forums are at first. Get over it, Joe. Like exposure to cold germs in Kindergarten, it’s something you get used to. Keep remembering: 90% of everything is crud.

Joe talks about “those who relentlessly attack the mainstream media.” Joe, it’s the right-wing folks who do that more often than the left. Much more. They have been targeting the media since the Reagan administration.

Joe suggests that Glenn Greenwald “call him up.” Hell, Joe doesn’t even has his email address listed at the bottom of his blog, let alone his phone number; how the heck is Greenwald supposed to “call him up?” I’ve tried to contact any number of high-profile columnists (George Will, Joe Klein, David Brooks, David Broder, Maureen Dowd, etc.), and they have never responded. I don’t think Klein should get in high dudgeon about Greenwald not “calling him up.” (As an aside, the only columnists who have ever responded to me are bloggers as well: Andrew Sullivan and Dan Froomkin, to name a couple. And I am inveterate letter-writer, believe me.)

Besides, I’d bet $5 Greenwald tries to call him up now.

Klein states that he’s not going to read the comments on this article, and that he doesn’t feel that he “threw down the gauntlet.” I can’t decide if he’s being disingenuous, or stupid. I’ll spell it out, in the unlikely event he reads this: writing an article like that is throwing down the gauntlet, Joe. So read the comments, and read the blogs. Otherwise, you’re just a coward.

He finishes up by saying, essentially, that until we clean up our act, he’s not going to address us rude folks again.

Ah, Joe, you’re such a newbie! You’re probably right; you probably should take a few months off from the rough and tumble of online commenting to grow a thicker skin. It’ll do you some good. Log on to google and comment on the film forum or something, to get some practice in, is my advice.

Next post, I promise we’re back to my regularly-scheduled blather.

Time to give everyone a break from my political blather for a little geek blather. (You can read more of my geek blather on Gear Diary. My latest article is on the iPhone.)

King Kaufmann of Salon.com has an interesting article that talks about place shifting, a concept similar to time shifting, but where you shift the place you are watching your program, rather than shifting the time.

These days, everyone and his brother knows about TiVo and time shifting and the joys of not being forced to watch a particular program at a particular time (not to mention being able to record a whole series of programs and watch them in a row, sans commercials). In my case, it means I can watch Keith Olbermann after the kids go to bed, and skip the ads for Hughes Network and NutriSystems.

But I think King touches on something that has been available in a very moderate way since the mid-90s, that Slingbox has been capitalizing on and that the iPhone (in my opinion–Sorry, John C. Dvorak, I think you’re full of wind!) will help get going in earnest: place shifting.

These days, place shifting is really the realm of the nerds and the hard-core. Yes, you can buy a slingbox and watch TV on your computer, but if you’re like me, you probably spend too much durn time in front of your computer already. And while yes, there are some portable media players (PMPs) available out there–heck, you can watch videos on the iPod these days–the screens are either too small, they have a hard disk and so are more delicate and persnickity than you would like in a portable device, or they have other drawbacks. (See my reviews on Gear Diary, if you are interested.) In addition, it’s a hassle to convert movies from the DVD into a format that you can use on a PMP.

I don’t know how successful the iPhone will be as a phone, but as a PMP, I think it’s going to have a huge impact. Being able to download your favorite movies and TV shows easily and watch them (commercial free!) whenever and wherever you want, like on the commuter train on the way to work? While you’re sitting poolside in the summer while the kids are frolicking? While you’re waiting at the airport–interminably–before they let you on board, or let you push back from the gate, or let you land from that endless holding pattern? I think this is huge. And the iPhone has 4Gb or 8Gb of flash storage–no hard drive–a beautiful, 3.5″ 480×320 pixel screen, and no doubt the typically ridiculous high-quality iPod-level sound quality.

Yes, I think there will be some interest in having your calendar and music available, being able to make phone calls easily, being able to web browse while you’re sitting in the waiting room. But I think it’s the place shifting function that will make this device a hot seller. And I think that, just like with the iPod, you will see other manufacturers come out with copycat devices–perhaps without full phone/calendar/wireless functionality–that compete in that arena. A Slingbox-specific device, perhaps? Sony develop a device that converts DVDs for viewing on their own version of a PMP that has 16Gb of capacity? It’s a big, untapped market, in my view.

I’m waiting eagerly to see what happens after June 29, honestly. I could be wrong, of course; it might just be wishful thinking from a guy who’s tired of doing it all by hand. But I don’t think so, I’m dying to find out.