The Editor's Desk » 2007 » August

Scooped … ?

Scott Shackford — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 22:37:09 +0000

A Web site out there is reporting that Cuban leader Fidel Castro is dead. The site in question? One produced by Perez Hilton, a well-known (and frequently reviled, though very popular) Hollywood gossip. He’s not exactly known for his international reporting. Us mainstream media folks will have kittens if he’s right, though it’ll be hysterical if he’s not.

Needless to say, there’s nothing on our newswires about it, and we have no idea if this unusual gossip is true.

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Worth a thousand words …

Scott Shackford — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 20:25:34 +0000

Mike Luckovich elegantly and efficiently illustrates what I’ve warned about regarding presidential authority in an editorial cartoon of his we ran in the Desert Dispatch on Wednesday.

Luckovich comes to the paper from a pretty hard left direction (cartoonist Bob Gorrell, whom we also run, tends more toward the right, though he’s not a Bush fan these days), so it’s interesting for him to note the flip side of giving the president too much authority. No matter who you support now, someday somebody you don’t want is going to be sitting in that chair.

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The latest from the Department of Dubious Statistics

Scott Shackford — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 17:27:56 +0000

“Americans Willing to Forego Sex, Coffee and Sleep for Summer Shoe Comfort, Poll Reveals.”

Need I point out that this poll comes to us by way of a Web site selling shoe inserts?

And if you’re actually taken aback at the idea of people giving up sex for more comfortable shoes, the actual number of people willing to do so is apparently 7.7 percent. And only for a month.

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Training them here so we don’t have to train them there?

Scott Shackford — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 18:59:54 +0000

The commander of Iraqi’s own military forces was at Fort Irwin to attend Brig. Gen Dana J.H. Pittard’s assumption of command there, and made some interesting points.

He thinks Iraqi troops would benefit from the kind of training offered at Fort Irwin. It’s an interesting little twist — the military provides this training to help our soldiers understand what they’re going to be dealing with in Iraq. And now we have Iraq leaders saying their own military could benefit from this training.

It got me wondering whether this is an actual opportunity. The security risks are extremely high, but I can see some clear benefits. I need some time to cogitate; I’ll plan an editorial for sometime next week about it.

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