War and the Press

A roundtable between Jay DeFrank, Greg Stene, Denny Wilkins and myself. It begins with Matt Taibbi’s column in New York Press.com this morning: “Cleaning the Pool: The White House Press Corps politely grabs its ankles.” You really need to read this first. So Dr. Denny Wilkins, our friend and colleague at St. Bonaventure University (no [...]

The Realpolitik of War

Sometimes the important stuff goes down via e-mail. Greg Stene and I have been having a pretty good back forth over the pending war, and what you have below is one of the e-mail exchanges. I apologize that things are picking up in medias res, but you can sort of infer what has been said [...]

Iraq: We’re Picking on the Wrong Guy

Anybody who knows me knows I’m not an anti-war type by design. As noted in my earlier piece, while war is a Bad Thing©, it is also occasionally necessary (see also, Harbor, Pearl). I do not, however, agree that the current “Showdown with Saddam” (“Hoedown with Hussein”?) presents us with a satisfactory case for the [...]

That Which Makes Us Safe Makes Us Free: Tech and Privacy

The following is reconstructed out of a running e-mail discussion I had with Greg Stene (my old roommate) the other day. Smith: I’ve been thinking about the question of freedom versus security a bit lately. 9.11 is obviously the impetus for a lot of what drives my pondering, but the fact is that 9.11 really [...]