Liberal Talk Radio

Things that don’t increase my faith in the seriousness of Hamas include calling suicide bombing an “act of self defense”:
Islamic Jihad issued a videotape in which it named the bomber as Sami Salim, 21, from near the West Bank town of Jenin.
. . .
Sami Abu Zuhri, the official spokesman for Hamas, said the attack [...]

It’s time to vote for the Washington State Quarter. Naturally, Mt. Rainier leads the way.

Kurt Andersen writes in New York Magazine that we’re ready for a third way:
We are people without a party. We open-minded, openhearted moderates are alienated from the two big parties because backward-looking ideologues and p.c. hypocrites are effectively in charge of both. Both are under the sway of old-school clods who consistently default to government [...]

A letter I just sent to the editor:
Knute Berger offers a rather fatalistic view of the future of our city. He claims that if we accept increased urban density, “our residential neighborhoods will lose more of their yards and open spaces to bigger or taller houses and condo complexes; families will continue to look [...]

Some props to my old friend Miguel (aka “the Count”). In an effort to ensure that I don’t slide too far into my decrepitude, he’s put together a blog for the sole purpose of writing about his favorite music.
Yours truly has decent taste, and I owe a lot of that to Miguel [...]

Exercise for the day: compare the Euston Manifesto with Tom Vilsack’s user-generated Ten Words that define the Democratic Party and tell me which one you think makes for a more inspired platform.

With the renewed calls from retired generals to fire Don Rumsfeld, I’d like to point out that generals disagreeing with SecDef is (a) nothing new, and (b) not necessarily a bad thing.
Don’t get me wrong, despite my occasional sarcastic Rummy-love, I think Bush should have accepted Rumsfeld’s resignation in 2004, when he offered [...]

Just in case it was somehow unclear, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took the opportunity to set the record straight about his take on Israel — no backtracking here! — timing it with Passover, no less:
The president of Iran again lashed out at Israel on Friday and said it was “heading toward annihilation,” just days after [...]

Curitiba, Brazil, is, interestingly enough, the leading city in the world when it comes to Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). BRT is being considered for several of Sound Transiit’s Phase 2 projects. So of course it’s interesting when the former mayor of that Curitiba comes to Seattle and sits for an interview.
Weird [...]