This is the Washington Post bit about DeLay referred to below:

"For all of Tom DeLay's public espousal of Christian values, particularly his
deep commitment to family, he privately has nursed a terrible estrangement from his own mother and three siblings. After the 1988 death of his father and the rise of his career in Washington, DeLay cut off contact with all three siblings, and seven years ago he stopped attending DeLay family gatherings. He has not seen or talked to his mother, Maxine, in two years, even though she
lives about 10 miles away from Sugar Land; or did he invite any of them to his daughter's 1999 wedding or even mention his mother in the published wedding announcement."

Found on a surf for Republican rhetoric about family values for my Chimes piece: Tom DeLay's website shows pictures of babies and bubbles that "the strength of America, the true greatness of America, is in the moral fiber of her people, in the integrity of her leaders, and is revealed by how we treat those who are least capable of helping themselves." Which casts a dubious light on Republican Congressional policy on the rich and the poor...
http://www.majoritywhip.gov/featuredissues.asp?FormMode=Call&LinkType=Combo&ID=13&Section=1

Quip from P.J. O'Rourke (and I really try to be an equal-opportunity grouch, it's just the Pachyderms have raised my ire today):
"The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it."

One of the paragraphs I regretted being cut from my family values piece in Chimes on Friday:

"Other cultures, which Americans are trained to scorn, tend to have better family values than we do. People in Europe, Asia, and Africa, who typically admire, cherish, and include aging grandparents in home life, must be baffled to hear us Americans talk about family values and then stow away our elderly in homes like antiques in a closet, idolatrously obsessed as we are with youth. "

Call me an ogre: I actually opposed family values in my piece -- well, the Republican rhetoric about them, anyway...
http://clubs.calvin.edu/chimes/2002.04.26/per4.html

The recent accidental American killing of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan was sickening. Kevin Myers of the London Telegraph sees it as cause to reflect on Canada's place in the world, including its place in Hollywood:

"It is a general rule that actors and filmmakers arriving in Hollywood keep their nationality -- unless, that is, they are Canadian. Thus Mary Pickford, Walter Huston, Donald Sutherland, Michael J. Fox, William Shatner, Norman Jewison, David Cronenberg and Dan Aykroyd have in the popular perception become American, and Christopher Plummer, British. It is as if, in the very act of becoming famous, a Canadian ceases to be Canadian, unless she is Margaret Atwood, who is as unshakably Canadian as a moose, or Celine Dion, for whom Canada has proved quite unable to find any takers."

Printed in the National Post:
http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?f=/stories/20020426/39062.html

Some liberal I am: I'm taking money as a freelance writer from a corporation that has gobbled up the following mass of media:
http://www.cjr.org/owners/advance.asp

But hey, I have mouths to feed--my own, anyway...

The full scoop is at:
http://www.griid.org/mediademocracy-grandrapids.html

Missed, I think, in the ongoing debate about the journalistic importance of weblogs like this one is the simple fact that while much ado is made of the blogs' growing audience, blogs still function by linking to established journalism sites like the NY Times. Paradoxically, if blogs have no established sources to link to, they can't succeed in their supposed movement to supplant established sources.

Case in point: I'm linking to the Wash. Post for an article on this...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42177-2002Apr13.html

Our national pastime: railing against nefarious corporate owners ruining baseball. Which isn't far off when you consider the Chicago Tribune's stiff-arming of the Wrigleyville rooftop fans. Michael Miner writes that the Trib has a point in cracking down on the fans,

"... a point that might have led them to a larger point: to spite a handful of freeloaders who weren't actually costing the Cubs a penny by looking in, the Tribune Company had blighted the exquisite view that the 30,000 ticket holders in paid seats have always enjoyed when they look out."

http://www.chireader.com/hottype/2002/020412_1.html