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It's not local, but it's so great, I have to say so: It isn't often that militaries pull off something truly brilliant. But the Colmbian military did. On Wednesday, the Colombian military, having stealthily infiltrated the leadership of the terrorist organization FARC, executed a flawless ruse, rescuing former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, three American contractors and 11 others--all of whom have been held captive by FARC for six years. If you've had trouble reaching a specific public official recently, I want to hear from you. Whether you're a member of the media or non-media citizen, if you know the name of the person with whom you need to speak and that person is in fact the person in charge of the area about which you need information, there is no sense whatsoever in wasting time and energy dealing with PR people who take it upon themselves to decide whether you really need to talk with that person or not. This is not the way that responsible and accountable governments do business. This is the way that people who don't want to face the public do business. It also seems to be the way that the Georgia Department of Human Resources does business, based on the latest round of phone-hockey I've endured. Members of the media, members of the citizenry, if you've run into the same wall of baloney, I want to hear from you. Email stephanieramage@sundaypaper.com Given Ireland's recent rejection of the Lisbon Treaty and subsequent news coverage that showed many of the Irish to be far less educated and articulate than their American cousins would like to imagine (some Irish voters claimed they voted against the treaty because it would infringe on local tax rights while others thought it might somehow affect same sex marriage laws), it might help to remember the poetry of William Butler Yeats and W.H. Auden, or the prose of Jonathan Swift, or of course the stories of that fabulously wandering storyteller, James Joyce. Yes, especially him. Today is Bloomsday, the significance of which derives from the novel, Ulysses, written by Joyce and published in 1922. The entire story takes place in Dublin on June 16th, 1904, and involves a protagonist named Leopold Bloom, hence the moniker, Bloomsday. So, Happy Bloomsday. Lift a pint, and share a passage or two. In the wake of the Democratic nomination race (that we never thought would end), we at SP have scoured campaign coverage to produce some interesting thoughts from both McCain and Obama. Both camps seem to be fairly optimistic as they hit the trail: "You think about all the people who had to knock down barriers for me to walk through this door, and the challenges they went through were so much more difficult, so much more severe, and the risks they took were so much greater that I will say, last night standing in that auditorium, it struck me that it was testimony to them."Sen. Barack Obama, while walking through a hallway in the U.S. Senate, just hours after he was named the victor in the Democratic primary. “What a welcome change it would be were presidential candidates in our time to treat each other and the people they seek to lead with respect and courtesy as they discussed the great issues of the day, without the empty sound bites and media-filtered exchanges that dominate our elections." Republican Sen. John McCain, on the prospect of holding a series of town-hall debates with Democratic Sen. Barack Obama prior to the 2008 Presidential Election. Yesterday, the New York Times published a story about GOP presidential candidate ("presumptive nominee") Sen. John McCain praising the heroism of Georgia congressman, and Obama supporter, Rep. John Lewis. It may have seemed a strangely non-partisan thing to do on the campaign trail, but it was typically McCainian in its candor: In reference to the African-American community, McCain said "there will be many people who will not vote for me." Today, Lewis responded as graciously to McCain as McCain had been to him. If you look at the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s page A5 story in the March 16 edition, “Five Years in Iraq: Soldiers Talk About How It Felt,” you immediately think that even soldiers currently serving in the armed forces oppose the war. That’s because the AJC shamefully misused and actually distorted quotes used as the pullquotes—the boldfaced quotes placed under the pictures of the soldiers they interviewed—in order to express the AJC’s own stand against the war. I'm thinking of getting together to play some D&D in memory of its creator Gary Gygax who died last week. However, I would have to re-roll for my characters since I haven't played in 20 years. As is so often the case, the Sunday Paper was way, WAY ahead of anyone else in reporting the pharmaceutical contamination of the water supply that the Associated Press is trumpeting today. We reported it in our July 15, 2007 edition. Here's the link to our story: The fact that the Drudge Report revealed Prince Harry's whereabouts in Afghanistan is absolutely disgusting. It's times like these when a good hacker could come in handy. But, getting the Prince yanked from Afghanistan won't diminish Harry's contribution to his nation's battle against extremism. As British writers Charles Moore and Jasper Gerard have put it so eloquently, what Harry has done is to awaken a nation to the sacrifice being made by its soldiers in Afghanistan--that brutal combat theatre that gets dismissed as "the other war." Readers of the story "The Divorce Party," in this week's edition of The Sunday Paper will notice no doubt, and given the permanent condition of indignation that seems to afflict some of our readers, may become enraged by the fact that I incorrectly attributed the GOP win of West Virginia during the Feb. 5 primaries to Mitt Romney. It was, in fact, Mike Huckabee who won the "Mountain State." More observant--or perhaps unhealthily obsessed--readers will note that I correctly attributed the win of W. Va. to Huckabee in the news story on th Super Tuesday Primary Challenge in the same edition. How did this happen? |