If you haven’t seen it yet, Captain’s Quarters has an extensive post on the NYT article for which he was interviewed, about the implications of the Eason Jordan blogswarm.

Check it out.

Before you propose to your girlfriend in front of thousands of people, you probably should have a pretty good idea she’ll say yes.

UPDATE: Welcome Backcountry Conservative readers!

UPDATE2: This was a hoax!!! Great stunt.

Local 6 News reported Tuesday that the proposal was a hoax — an Orlando Magic marketing ploy to spice up the NBA experience, according to the report.

UPDATE: Buy Raymond Kurzweil’s new book here, Fantastic Voyage, Live Long Enough to Live Forever.

Inventor Kurzweil Aiming to Live Forever

The famed inventor and computer scientist is serious about his health because if it fails him he might not live long enough to see humanity achieve immortality, a seismic development he predicts in his new book is no more than 20 years away.

The Open Society Paradox takes the upcoming break projection thing even a step further:

Personally I’ve also believed that in this century humans will decipher the software that runs the human body and ultimately fix all the bugs that make the system breakdown.

Oh, and before you go assuming Kurzweil is a total crackpot, In the Agora reminds us:

Some may doubt him, and justifiably so, but it was Kurtweil who in 1990 predicted the development of a worldwide computer network and of a computer that could beat a chess champion.

Wizbang has some opinions on KOS’s “we win!” and the comparison being made between the Eason Jordan resignation and the Jeff Gannon resignation.

A few lefties are trying to compare the Eason and Gannon flaps and say they are the same thing… Even Kurtz fell into this trap.

But there is a WORLD of difference.

Eason Jordan wrongly accused people of murder. Gannon asked a few puffball questions. Comparing the two is a fool’s game of moral equivalence.

The right hand of the blogosphere went after Eason Jordan because of his actions.

The left hand of the blogosphere went after Gannon because of who he was.

As usual, I’m glad to be on the right.

I have to admit to not having followed the Gannon thing hourly, but I have to take issue with Wizbang’s Paul on this one. While I do agree there is a world of difference, I think that there is a tendency among the conservative blogs to try to say that the liberal blogs are all over Gannon because he is allegedly involved in the gay lifestyle or tied to various other non-conservative activities. While it may be true that they used this to attempt to destroy him personally, there is a legitimate question here that I still have not seen the answer to. How does someone working under a pseudonym for a phony news agency whose main income is not reporting, get access to the White House press conferences? [UPDATE: I have since read a bit more about this, and so this deserves some clarification. Writing under a pseudonym does not mean he didn’t give the White House his real name. And the news org is not phony, just small and conservative]

My fellow conservative bloggers are not asking this question, and I’m not sure why. [UPDATE: Now I know… :-)]

UPDATE: In the comments for this post, Paul [very politely] takes me to task with a really good point.

The fact Talon news was selected is no great mystery. The Village Voice has (had) credentials and they are as lefty as they come. Being a bias news org is not an automatic disqualifier… Remember (unless I am mistaken) Talon news did not get the boot, they are still in there. Gannon resigned because of the attack on his personal life.

UPDATE 2: Secure Liberty has more.

Sorry folks, this is no big deal. David Gergen makes it clear that having a “ringer” is nothing new. So all this boils down to the fact that the ringer was a former gay escort. Is that it? Bill INDC has a nice roundup and I share his conclusion, and Jeff Goldstein’s.

There’s no comparison between wrecking Eason Jordan and outing Jeff Gannon.

And David Gergen on CNN, from INDC:

GERGEN: I am sorry, I really have a hard time getting excited about this story. I think it’s trivial compared to paying off journalists like Armstrong Williams or others and giving them money to go out and support you. In this case, the White House has had a lot of wild cards in there over the years, and you well know that. And various presidents — President Kennedy made no bones of the fact that there was a woman from Texas who was sort of — who was a liberal, and she was out there in the audience, and when he got in trouble on a question, he’d always find her. He knew where she sat. And he turned to her in press conferences because she’d get him off the took. This has been going on for a long, long time.

If you haven’t seen it, there’s “big news” today from various sources on Gannon, and it all does seem to focus on whether or not he is involved in the gay lifestyle. And this from the tolerant, inclusive left.

See more at Red State.

And Say Anything says:

Really, the sum total of the left’s problem with Jeff Gannon is that he’s a right-wing partisan, gay (apparently being gay is only “ok” if you lean to the left in your politics) and got White House press credentials.

UPDATE 3 (2/15): Captain Ed weighs in.

UPDATE 4: Just One Minute is on the case.

Fascinating bit of detective work going on by the posters at Captain’s Quarters.

Moral of the story: don’t do or say things online or via email that you don’t want the world to know. Nothing is truly anonymous.

UPDATE: Opinion Times has an open letter to Landay.

Popular Mechanics does a bit of debunking. It’s interesting reading.

To investigate 16 of the most prevalent claims made by conspiracy theorists, POPULAR MECHANICS assembled a team of nine researchers and reporters who, together with PM editors, consulted more than 70 professionals in fields that form the core content of this magazine, including aviation, engineering and the military.

In the end, we were able to debunk each of these assertions with hard evidence and a healthy dose of common sense. We learned that a few theories are based on something as innocent as a reporting error on that chaotic day. Others are the byproducts of cynical imaginations that aim to inject suspicion and animosity into public debate.

HT: Austin Bay

And remember, Howard Dean, the new Chairman of the DNC, came pretty close to giving validity to the idea that Bush knew of 9/11 ahead of time.

“The most interesting theory that I’ve heard so far – which is nothing more than a theory, it can’t be proved – is that he was warned ahead of time by the Saudis,” Dean told a caller to Washington, D.C’s “Diane Rehm Show,” according to a transcript obtained by Opinion Journal.com.

“Now, who knows what the real situation is?” the presidential conspiracy theorist cautioned. He then added, “But the trouble is, by suppressing that kind of information, you lead to those kinds of theories, whether they have any truth to them or not.”

UPDATE: I’ll echo MUSC Tiger’s sentiments. :-)

UPDATE: Interesting…Instapundit has pointed out that Popular Mechanics is now “welcoming” Instapundit, Austin Bay, and Tim Blair (he also had a link) readers. Hey PM! What about The MUSC Tiger? I’m sure we’ve sent at least…2 maybe 3 people your way! How about some recognition?

The Washington Post posts some gossip that Joe Lieberman (or “Leiberman”, for you who make typos in search engines and still want to find this info) might be on the list to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary.

Interesting implications to consider:

That would be convenient for Lieberman, whose term is up in 2006, and could give Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell (R) an opportunity to appoint a Republican to the seat for at least a few months before the election, inching the GOP closer to a filibuster-proof Senate.

From the Associated Press:

“We need to be proud to be Democrats,” said Dean, the kind of exuberant appearances he made during 2003 when he came close to winning the Democratic presidential nomination before collapsing in early 2004 in Iowa.

Taranto says:

That’s like saying a horse came close to winning a race before collapsing as he came out of the starting gate.

From Pittsburgh Live:

• A flashlight
• Fat-burner pills
• Personalized mud flaps
• Gag gifts, such as child support IOUs or a mock membership in the home pregnancy test-of-the-month club
• Tickets to the big fight
• A hamburger press
• A shower curtain

From today’s “That’s Disgusting” file comes this story:

Mr. Fascenelli spoke with a laborer then asked to use the portable toilet. After entering, he felt the toilet tip outward. It fell down a hill, causing unspecified injuries. In addition, “[e]verything was exhausted from the pot on top of me,” Mr. Fascenelli testified.

Could it have been the work of the Serial Toilet Tipper?

Benedict has a great quote from Ted Kennedy today:

KENNEDY: I think we have to understand now that we`re facing a very different challenge, and that is the issue of globalization, and we`re either going to get run out of town with the rush towards lower wages and outsourcing, or we`re going to embrace it and say, we are going to equip every citizen in this nation with the ability to be able to deal with the problems of globalization, and in that way ensure we`re going to have the strongest economy in the next 20 and 30 years, and we will have a national security that will be second to none. And we, I think, are pretty much dead in the water.

Via Taranto.

Some people get fired for blogging… but this guy got fired by a Miller distributor for drinking Bud Light.

Via Quinton.

Drudge splashes some underwear making just such a pitch.

UPDATE: In doing a quick Google for something interesting about Barbara Boxer for President or Underwear or something, I came across this piece by Irwin N. Graulich (self professed ex-liberal) in the National Ledger:

The only way that Kennedy, Boxer, Kucinich, Waters, Lee, Byrd and others on the left can defeat the opposition is to show that the Bush administration is akin to the evil of Saddam. For these elite Democrats, Saddam’s torture machine at Abu Ghraib was morally equivalent to the actions of 20 American soldiers in that same location.

To live with an anti-Iraq war position today, it is necessary to believe that America is as bad as the enemy. These politicians cannot face up to the fact that whether there were WMD’s or not, the invasion of Iraq was a necessary element in the war on terror. Or would the Pakistanis and Khaddafi have caved in to Al Gore’s charm?

There are senators and congress people who speak about underwear on Iraqi prisoners’ heads as if it were actual torture. This same group was silent about beheadings by the enemy, but outspoken Constitutional defenders of terrorist rights at Guantanamo, which of course trumps America’s safety. And have you caught the nastiness in the questioning by embittered old man Senator Carl Levin who seems ready to join his age and ethnic group in Boca Raton with the exorbitant pension he voted himself.

From our friends at the The New York Times:

Two Democrats in Congress are pressing for investigations into how a Washington reporter who used a pseudonym managed to gain access to the White House and had access to classified documents that named Valerie Plame as a C.I.A. operative.

The Democrats, Representatives John Conyers Jr. of Michigan and Louise M. Slaughter from Rochester, wrote yesterday to Patrick Fitzgerald, the independent prosecutor appointed in the Plame case, seeking an investigation into how the reporter, James D. Guckert, who used the name Jeff Gannon, had access to classified documents that revealed the identity of Ms. Plame

Protein Wisdom says it’s “grasping at straws.”

INDC says that “The Main Assertion in Gannonquiddick is thin and weak, given current evidence”… lots more analysis on his site.

Today’s “guy pretends to be a pretty girl when blogging to get more traffic” brought to you by Catallarchy, via Wizbang. Catallarchy had a few initial theories.

• Did one of LG’s enemies set up a fake profile on the Russian mail-order bride website in order to make LG look like a fraud?
• Did LG nab the photo from the Russian website in order to create a fake online identity and attract lots of horny male libertarians?
• Are LG and Viktoriya identical twin sisters, separated at birth, with the same taste in clothes, watches, and hairstyles?
• Are LG and Viktoriya the very same person, but with two different alter egos: D.C. policy wonk by day, desperate Ukrainian bachelorette by night?

Both of the previously mentioned sites have the photos side by side, as found on the Russian mail order bride site, and on Libertarian Girl’s site originally.

Here’s the real person behind the face of libertarian girl:

English: Level 3, Understands basic written text with help of dictionary, needs complex letters translated.

In own words: I’m a sociable, active lady. I’m fond of sports (swimming, volleyball), dancing and travelling.

Seeks Partner: I’m looking for a caring, patient, family-oriented gentleman, serious, non-smoker.

Seeks Partner: 25 - 45 years old

Her location: Kiev, Ukraine

Now, who is the face behind the person of the blog?

Well I may be an unemployed man without a wife or girlfriend still living with my parents despite being over the age of 30, but at least I’m not so stupid as to think that a gorgeous young girl would be the author of a popular libertarian blog. She’d be too busy having fun

This picture, he claims, is “closer to the real me”:

And he says:

I’m going to miss this blog. It was fun having a blog that people actually read, even though it only lasted for less than two months. I should have figured that the type of people who read libertarian blogs are the same type that read Russian brides websites. When I make my next hoax blog, I’ll make sure to use a more obscure photo.

UPDATE: Despite abusing my trackback’s lack of verification of reciprocity, Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey insists she’s really a girl. :-)

UPDATE 2: He’s looking for a real girl to partner with:

All you have to do is supply photos and be available whenever a real person is needed. Otherwise, I’ll run the blog and pretend to be you. But if you have an interesting personal life, a few posts along those lines would certainly increase readership.
…
This scheme was very successful for the 80s pop group Milli Vanilli, and I’m sure it will work just as well in the blogosphere.

Director of the World Editors Forum, Bertrand Pecquerie posts in the Editors Web Log here (note, emphasis is his, not mine):

Sad conclusion in the Eason Jordan affair … sad day for the freedom of expression in America and sad day again for the future of blogging: the defense of the US army honor seemed more important to some bloggers than the defense of reporters’ work (and sometimes life)! Nevertheless, there is one advantage in this story: masks are fallen! Within the honest community of bloggers, some of them claimed to be the “sons of the First Amendment”, they just were the sons of Senator McCarthy. And this is very worrying to see this new wedding between self-proclaimed citizen’s media and maintstream journalists scalps’ hunters. Fifty years ago, it was enough to be communist to be fired, today, it is enough to raise questions about the Bush administration policy in Iraq to be denounced as “anti-American”. Maybe the only difference is that you are not fired, but that you must dismiss! What’s my conclusion? Real promoters of citizen media would have to take some distance with those who have fueled and organised the Eason Jordan hatred. If not, the “new era of journalism” opened by the blogosphere will appear as the old clothes of American populism.

HT: LGF

Meanwhile, the Blog Herald notes:

James D. Miller, Assistant Professor of Economics at Smith College and contributor to online tech-site Tech Central Station (TCS) has joined the recently spate of blog bashing, with a post at TCS that warns that blogs may soon make many Americans afraid to speak their minds.

Except that the “blogs” that he speaks of are mostly written by Americans. And the “Americans” that he speaks of are mostly public figures who heretofore had little or no accountability.

By the way, want to adjust your preconceptions of “McCarthyism”? Read this book.

UPDATE: Welcome, Outside the Beltway readers!

Fascinating story from Wired News today:

The UCLA AIDS Institute scientists genetically altered HIV and folded it into an envelope made of another virus called sindbis, which typically infects insects and birds. That turned the altered HIV into a missile that hunted down metastasized melanoma cells in the lungs of living mice.

Recently numerous bloggers were celebrating the power of the blogosphere by causing the resignation of a man who said some terrible things, just think if the bloggers could come together and save a life.

-Bandwagon

If you’re in the region, consider showing your support at one or both of these events. Terri’s legal situation is not looking hopeful at this point.

EVENT #1

Wednesday, February 16, 2005
1:00 PM
Woodside Hospice
6774 102nd Avenue N.
Pinellas Park, Florida
(near 66th Street N and 102nd Avenue N)
An indoor meeting at 4:00 PM will follow for all of Terri’s supporters. Location of indoor meeting will be announced at the Hospice.

EVENT #2

Thursday, February 17, 2005
1:00 PM
Clearwater Courthouse
315 Court Street
Clearwater, Florida 33756

We will be meeting Thursday in front of Judge Greer’s courthouse for a Press Conference.

Your physical presence is needed at both of these events to help save Terri’s LIFE!

Please consider how a few hours of your time this week may actually help SAVE the LIFE of a precious human being.

Updates on Terri here.

Sometimes I wish I could do this at work. ;-)

Good news! Captain Ed’s wife Marcia is getting her pancreas transplant that they’ve been waiting for. He asks for your prayers.

Looks like he’ll be posting updates on his site, blogging from the hospital.

UPDATE: Things are going well:

9:30 pm CT [2/15/2005]: I just got home from the hospital, where the First Mate is still resting comfortably. The pancreas function is still excellent, and the prognosis still looks very good. She mostly slept while I worked on my article. I’m still working on it now, so I will sign off and wish you all good night.

Glad to hear it Captain!