Bookworm Room

The Washington Free Beacon is a new online paper with an interesting premise:  unlike MSM papers, which treat liberalism as the norm, and conservativism as a headline grabbing abnormality, this publication gives the big scare headlines to the Left.  In other words, it’s not just that it reports the stories, but that it reports them [...]

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One of my new year’s resolutions was to try to make more money from my writing.  If I don’t start seeing some money coming in soon, there’s really no way I can justify pouring so much time and energy into my writing.  Instead, I’ll have to start trying to build up my legal work again, [...]

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My apologies to any of you who thought I was ignoring your comments, since I didn’t toss in any responding comments of my own. WordPress got a bit backed up and stopped sending me email notifications about comments. Because I seldom check the blog itself for comments, but rely instead on email notifications, I’d been [...]

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Every year, blogger extraordinaire Doug Ross publishes a “fabulous 50″ list of top blogs for the year.  I’m very, very pleased to say that this year’s list includes, not only my own Watcher’s Council (with the nice addendum that “All 2011 Council members are winners”), but several other bloggers whom I count as friends.  In [...]

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When I first saw the headline — “A $2.5 Million Libel Judgment Brings The Question : Are  Bloggers Journalists?” — I have to admit that I felt a bit queasy.  When I write something snide about President Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, or any of the other prominent Democrats I routinely criticize at this site, [...]

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Today, while I wasn’t looking, my site meter crept past the 2,000,000 mark.  Pretty cool — and many thanks to all of you for making it possible.

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We all met Navy One when he was just one of us — a guy who wrote delightful, interesting comments on my blog.  When Navy One decided to try his hand at blogging, he took that same charm and . . . well, the rest is history, as The Mellow Jihadi, launched just this spring, [...]

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I got an email from John Hawkins at Right Wing News (where I sometimes post things I think are worthy), and thought I’d pass it on to you directly: If you’re a fan of Ann Coulter, you will absolutely LOVE this list. It’s ultimate list of Ann Coulter quotes. The 50 Best Ann Coulter Quotes [...]

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I’m still working, so I checked in with my blog and saw that people from far away are checking in too: Welcome, friends!

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So many of you are superb writers, and I have wondered why you don’t start your own blogs.  Navy One finally did, and it’s become one of my regular go-to places.  He keeps it apolitical (he’s active duty), but it’s just a pleasure to read because he’s a wonderful writer and the kind of thinker [...]

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When I was in my local library the other day, I checked out The Complete Idiot’s Guide to WordPress.  It made sense to do so.  I’ve been blogging at WordPress for years now, so I may as well figure out what the heck I’m doing.  Reading it demonstrated that I’ve already bumbled my way, idiotically [...]

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My post about banning Zachriel garnered over 61 comments, all very thoughtful, including Zachriel’s own defense.  After a great deal of rather painful internal debate, I’ve decided to ban Zachriel.  Indigo Red, discussing a Zachriel-type commenter named Mudkitty, best sums up my thoughts on the subject: Some of my best posts and best comments involved [...]

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Bookworm Room is not a democracy.  It’s my forum or, you might say, my intellectual living room.  I can invite people in and, through the power of WordPress software, ask them to leave.  As all of you know, I am loath to exercise that last power and have only done so once in all the [...]

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Dear Bookworm Room readers: Can we talk?  More specifically, can we talk about Zachriel?  (Zachriel, you don’t have to cover your ears here.  I’m not going to say anything mean about you, although I will offer some politely stated critiques that you’ve heard before.) I have noticed that, in my absence, Zachriel’s comments have sparked [...]

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I’m definitely an internet addict, but since I’ve got an addictive personality, I’m not surprised. I’ve never been one for drugs, which are anathema to someone who is as much a self-control freak as I am. My addiction has always run to words. It was no surprise to me that I slid from being an [...]

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In the past week and a half, I’ve had a couple of vigorous go-arounds with Jesse Kornbluth regarding his sycophantic Andrew Sullivan article in the Harvard Rag, er, Mag.  My take was that Kornbluth either carelessly missed or, worse, actually supported Sullivan’s shoddy journalism.  Kornbluth, as you may recall, anointed Sullivan as the world’s “best [...]

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I’ve received a few behind-the-scenes emails politely commenting that, sometimes, our comments are getting less than polite.  One of the great virtues of Bookworm Room is that we feel passionate about the topics that get discussed here.   The downside of passion, though, is that it can sometimes lead to intemperate conduct.  No one here has [...]

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Jesse Kornbluth, whom I took to task for his Sullivan hagiography, has responded to my rebuttal to his defense of that same hagiography.  True to my lawyer’s credo, I’m trying here to have the last word, although I certainly don’t mean to preempt Kornbluth from doing the same, if he is so inclined.  As I [...]

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Much of what I write at this blog is my opinion.  When I have the facts and the time, I’ll hyperlink to support my argument, but sometimes I just talk.  As part of a larger article attacking the truly execrable Paul Krugman (whose inchoate, mean-spirited, inane opinion-writing helped speed me down the path from liberal [...]

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My blog has enriched my life in so many ways.  At the most obvious level, of course, it’s allowed me to engage in all the political discourse that would be inappropriate in my normal, suburban mom life.  Aside from the fact that I live in a liberal enclave, which makes political discussions very fraught, the [...]

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When I was a young lawyer, I worked for an attorney who liked me to sit in the room and just listen to him dictate his briefs into his little hand-held Dictaphone.  When I expressed concern that I was wasting client time, he assured me I was not.  I was, he said, keeping him honest. [...]

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As you may recall, a couple of days ago I asked why there had been no comment whatsoever in the conservative blogosphere about a New York Times op-ed piece in which seven active duty soldiers criticized the Iraq War. In updates to that same post, I was able to point to a couple of bloggers [...]

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On August 19, the New York Times ran an op-ed by seven military personnel, who were described as follows: Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. [...]

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If any of you bloggers are getting disheartened, don’t. The internet does matter, even if gains are slow and grudging. Case in point: the bombed out mosques in Baghdad. The story began in November when the AP reported that Shiite fights had destroyed four Sunni mosques in Baghdad and burned six men alive. Curt, at [...]

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One of the nice things about having a bit more traffic is that people sometimes find me to deliver interesting information.  I got an email today from someone who owns (manages?) a search engine called Compete.com, which also runs a blog about blog usage.  As far as I can tell, their blog culls computer generated [...]

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