Janice Rogers Brown, speaking to the Federalist Society at the University of Chicago Law School, April 2000:
“Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates, and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of […]

Daniel Okrent, the NY Times’ first public editor, is moving on, and in his final column “13 Things I Meant to Write About but Never Did” he notes problems at that paper. They are no news to anyone who regularly browses the web, but it’s still nice to hear someone inside the NYT say:
#2. Op-Ed […]

[photo credit: unknown]
[source: email submission]

Independent Sources apologizes for this story running 4 months late but in the process of cleaning up bookmarks, we rediscovered this story that had been set aside for blogging.
As reported in most major media outlets last year, but most graphically in the Smoking Gun, an Oklahoma judge is facing three felony counts of indecent exposure […]

Mickey Kaus has commented in his blog and in the LA Times (sorry, link gone) that what that paper needs is a good gossip column, like the New York Post has. But who needs that, when there’s Defamer? Some of our favorites:
“Pitt and Jolie’s Sexual African Safari Gets More Sexual“
“Jerry Bruckheimer: Enemy Of Words, Thinking“
From […]

We’re not revealing any major plot points by letting you know that at the end of the new Star Wars movie the audience sees a glimpse of the first Death Star under construction. Twenty or so years later, of course, Luke Skywalker destroys it just after it becomes operational. At the end of the movie, […]

Noted brilliant policy wonk, Jim Lampley, believes that Hillary Clinton does not have a chance in the 2008 Presidential Election.
How do we have such insight into what is going on inside Mr. Lampley’s head?
If you look at Mr. Lampley’s much ridiculed posting in the Huffington Post, Lampley puts tremendous weight in the ability in bookmakers […]

Just when you thought the Democratic picture post-Bush couldn’’t get any weirder, Al Gore 2008 websites are popping up promoting a 2008 Presidential run. Will the man with the only key to the “lock box” be making a comeback? (For the record, the odds makers don’t think so.)
Among the sites that have sprung up:
http://www.electgore2008.com/Complete with […]

Jerry Brown, tempered by years in the trenches as Mayor of Oakland, sounds like … us?
“”Development has its critics,” he acknowledges. “But blight is worse.”
… Brown finds himself caught between East Bay liberals who want to encumber developers with social responsibilities and developers who are quick to go elsewhere. Frequently, liberals end up complaining loudest […]

We are taking a break from our round the clock coverage of Antonio Villaraigosa’s 2009 campaign to talk about Cambodian Midgets.
If you haven’t received an email with a link to a story about the Cambodian Midget Fighting League, then just wait, you will. (I’ve received it 3 times already). It is a story of a […]

Bookmakers taking bets on the 2008 Presidential Election don’t like the odds of Hillary Clinton winning. As of this posting, they are over 5 to 1 that she’ll lose.
In betting parlance, “smart money isn’t on Hillary.”
But not so fast, at 5 to 1, Hillary is the current favorite of the Dems; last year’s losing […]

Okay, the LA Mayoral Race is over to a collective yawn of 3 million or so people. We tried to spice things up with the acquistion of www.antonio2009.com and www.villaraigosa.com but it was still a boring, dirtly election. In the end the “anyone but Hahn” bloc was the deciding factor.

Independent Sources’ crack research staff has discovered that just as the internet domains antonio2009.com and villaraigosa2009.com remained unclaimed as late as last Friday — when we bought them — the 2013 equivalents are still available to the first interested party with about $11 left on their Visa limit.
We thought Howard Dean advisor Joe Trippi showed […]

Ward Churchill has reponded to the University of Colorado’s preliminary investigation into charges of research misconduct. The actual document has not been posted anywhere that we we can find yet, but an article in the Rocky Mountain News provides some interesting tidbits. For instance, responding to one of the two major charges — that Churchill […]

Talk about the media not paying attention until late in a race — the LA Times has a new “Blogging the Mayor’s Race” site up as of 1pm Monday. It lists 29 contributors — of which seven had posted as of 9:30pm Tuesday. That would be ninety minutes after the polls closed and probably two […]