You Know You've Arrived When

You're in Snopes.

To some people, even-handed means "just and fair". To others, apparently, it means "anti-Israel".

Electronic Voting in Ireland

(via Crooked Timber)

Electronic Voting in Ireland: A Threat to Democracy?

Electronic Voting

The Internet Rights Forum ("Le Forum des droits sur l'internet") published recommendations about the future of electronic voting in France:

the report.

Are Police Constitutional?

ARE COPS CONSTITUTIONAL?

Police work is often lionized by jurists and scholars who claim to employ "textualist" and "originalist" methods of constitutional interpretation. Yet professional police were unknown to the United States in 1789, and first appeared in America almost a half-century after the Constitution's ratification. The Framers contemplated law enforcement as the duty of mostly private citizens, along with a few constables and sheriffs who could be called upon when necessary. This article marshals extensive historical and legal evidence to show that modern policing is in many ways inconsistent with the original intent of America's founding documents. The author argues that the growth of modern policing has substantially empowered the state in a way the Framers would regard as abhorrent to their foremost principles.

Read it.

Huh. I must admit the question never crossed my mind.

Gore Endorses Dean

Gore to Endorse Dean

Gore. The man has bloomed, really, into the role of wise elder, statesman emeritus -- who understands politics but doesn't have to bow to it anymore.

He's going to leave the kind of impact on our politics, our political morality, that will have historians writing books for 100 years.

The Blogsphere Ecosystem

Cool.

The Blogsphere Ecosystem at The Truth Laid Bear. (The scan this app performs is only on a blog's main page, btw...)

That's just...cool. I added my blog to the ecosystem and got 'sorted' -- the distribution ranges from higher being to insignificant microbe. I came up Wiggly Worm.

Pretty self-explanatory, don't you think?

And the WMDI -- Weblog MetaData Initiative seems very interesting.

Of course, I found all this because the ecosystem is what wizbang is using for categorizing awards, and I was looking at the group titles saying to myself, WTF is 'Best Ecosystem Slimy Molluscs Blog'?

Letter from an Angry Army Vet

Letter from an Army vet (Salon.com)

A disabled Vietnam-era vet visits a Minneapolis V.A. hospital and discovers that many fellow vets oppose the Bush administration's war in Iraq.