Bookworm Room

Tweet We met Cyrus Massoumi three and a half years ago, when he got in trouble with the Tamalpais School District for a vaguely conservative rant that was mostly immature and non-violently antisemitic.  My take back then: Mostly, it’s a work that’s badly in need of an editor’s pencil, not a psychiatrist.  The kid is [...]

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Tweet The blogger known as Neptunus Lex was one of the joys of the blogosphere.  Informed, witty, often incredibly funny, fiercely intelligent — everything that makes one fall into the intellectual embrace of a person one knows only through his words. And now he’s gone. Here’s more. I am deeply, deeply saddened.  My thoughts are [...]

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Tweet We here at Bookworm Room have known Navy One for a long time.  He starting commenting here even before he branched off on his own to start a blog called The Mellow Jihadi.  He’s also a fellow member of the Watcher’s Council. I can confidently say that Navy One ranks very high, not just [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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.  [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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, [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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, [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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