Category Archives: Commentary

The Rules of the Game

11/14/2002 – 9:08 pm

What’s the difference between a terrorist and a criminal? The men who hijacked airplanes and flew them into buildings on September 11th were terrorists. The duo accused of the Washington sniper attacks – John Mohammad and Lee Malvo – are considered criminals. Or are they? We seem to have fallen into a gray area. For […]

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Can’t Blame Ralph

11/7/2002 – 9:06 pm

Having been a low-grade pundit for a few election cycles, I’ve learned not to make pre-election predictions. Good thing, too, because I would not have predicted these outcomes. I haven’t learned to avoid post-election predictions, so I may yet come to grief. Some things we know for sure. The first is that Democrats cannot blame […]

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Off We Go to War

10/31/2002 – 9:03 pm

These are heady days for a news junkie. The elections are less than a week away, Minnesota is still mourning for Paul Wellstone, the DC sniper has been caught, Kim Jong Il has a nuclear weapon (but we’re not going to war with North Korea), Vladimir Putin is gassing his own people (but we’re not […]

By floegel | Also posted in Iraq Invasion, Oil | Comments (0)

Look At My Face

10/24/2002 – 9:01 pm

What is in the mind of the Washington, DC shooter? What does he see when he looks though his gunsight? Apparently, he does not see a person. He sees a target. The shooter, I think, knows he’s going to be caught some day. He expects to be caught, even looks forward to it. On the […]

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Bang Bang, Baby

10/17/2002 – 8:59 pm

I saw a wire service report the other day that said military sharpshooters are upset that the Washington, DC serial killer is being referred to as a “sniper.” “Snipers don’t take innocent life,” one sharpshooter said. Is it just me, or is there a lack of perspective in play here? An armed assailant is killing […]

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All the Fish in the Stream

10/10/2002 – 8:55 pm

Every two years, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature publishes a “red list” of endangered species. This year’s list, just out, names 11,167 species, up 121 since 2000. One of the species featured on this year’s list is the saiga, an antelope native to central Asia. Ten years ago, there were over a […]

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It’s Come To This

10/3/2002 – 8:53 pm

Eliot Spitzer, New York State’s attorney general, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against five corporate executives for abuse of initial public offerings. Mr. Spitzer’s suit charges that the executives, from such disgraced firms as Worldcom and Qwest, gorged themselves on exclusive IPOs throughout the best of the bubble years, in exchange for steering millions of dollars […]

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