Category Archives: Almost Seven Wonders

The Almost Seven Wonders files

This Modern World dropped from Village Voice print edition

Posted on by

The Village Voice has dropped This Modern World from its print edition.  This amazes me; when I lived in NY, TMW was one of the main reasons I bought the paper, and I can’t be alone in that.

(This was long before Tom Tomorrow and I became friends, btw.  That was a neat surprise.  We crossed paths while we were both covering the 2000 GOP convention, and I must have sounded like a pissed-off penguin, because five minutes later I was hired for the cartoons.  Life is weird.)

Anyhow, if you live in the NY area or subscribe to the Voice from elsewhere, here’s a petition to get TMW back in the Voice.  Care to help a brother out?

Bush unilaterally declares the right to read your mail

Posted on by

Front page of today’s NY Daily News:

President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans’ mail without a judge’s warrant, the Daily News has learned.

The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a "signing statement" that declared his right to open people’s mail under emergency conditions.

That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it…

[snip]

"You have to be concerned," agreed a career senior U.S. official who reviewed the legal underpinnings of Bush’s claim. "It takes Executive Branch authority beyond anything we’ve ever known."

So that’s nice to wake up to.

UPDATE: This Salon piece is a bit more nuanced than the NY Daily News