Joe Gandelman's Quote of the Day

Joe Gandelman points out that Larry Sabato tries to bring media critics down to earth by correcting the myth that we ever had a "Golden Age" of disaster coverage where reporting on major events wesn't full of early misinformation. Sabato's prime example is one of the best known post-WWII shocks to the United States in the 20th century.

Did NRA Supported Policies Impede the Boston Bomber Investigation?

David Cay Johnston at The National Memo thinks so. Given their paranoia about anything that involves tracking anything that has to do with guns and explosives the NRA doesn't have much of a defense against his arguments.

Alien Things

I will not bother with links to stories about the tragedy in Boston. I think anyone reading this knows about what happened there. They might not know that bombs still go off in Iraq and Afghanistan constantly. In those countries weddings, funerals and religious celebrations are popular targets. Now in the U.S. it is one of the most famous sports events in the world. I often see comments, whether in fiction or non-fiction that we are all capable of violence, that we don't know what we are capable of until we are tested in some way. But I do know that these people murder, maim and destroy with no true threat to them or theirs and no regard for who might be killed and that makes them as alien to me as any being imagined by the best science fiction writers I know.