The summer before we entered journalism school, the dean called us freshmen in for a pep talk.

Get out, he said. Now. The future is grim. Your chance of being and remaining gainfully employed in a low-paying profession is even grimmer.

This was 1977.

CNN didn’t exist yet, never mind the Internet. The bogeymen were newspaper chains like Gannett, and they hadn’t even launched USA Today.

We, of course, ignored the dean’s advice, graduated four years later, worked at a small community newspaper for eighteen months, and decided we’d rather run away and join the circus. And here we are.

And whenever we read thumbsuckers on The Fate of Newspapers in The Internet Age, we think of the dean. Nobody in the industry should act surprised. This has been coming for a generation.

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“Eliot Spitzer, a member of Kagan’s social circle at Princeton University, wanted to make the same point as Walzer. ‘I did not go out with her, but other guys did,’ he said in an email Tuesday night.” [Politico, via Political Wire]

Jason Carter (b.1975), grandspawn of Jimmy Carter, won a Georgia state senate race on Tuesday. Christopher Nixon Cox (b.1979), grandspawn of Richard Nixon, is running for New York congresscritter from Long Island.

“I think bringing up the 1970s is great if you’re sitting in a history class,” says Chris, brushing off grandpa’s dedicated service to infamy. We agree. So let’s make history more fun for the kids: What songs were Chris’s and Jason’s parents enjoying when they danced the beast with two backs?

Brad Goehring, Republican Congressional candidate for California’s 11th Congressional District, said yesterday that it was “opening day” of the hunting season for liberals.  Apparently inspired by Talibunny’s “aim and reload at Democrats” comment and map on her Facebook page, Goehring (unclear at press time whether any relation to Hermann Goehring) said on his Facebook page:

If I could issue hunting permits, I would officially declare today opening day for liberals. The season would extend to November 2 and have no limits on how many taken as we desperately need to ‘thin’ the herd.

Predictably, a “clarification” was posted a few hours later.

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Not everyone is endorsed by a frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.

[Campaign website]

We noticed this Monday, noticed it again Tuesday, and now we notice that few others seem to be noticing. Which makes perfect sense, given the source, but is also very odd — and for the same reason. So let’s start with the news, and take it from there:

Through key intelligence sources in Afghanistan and Pakistan, I have just learned that reclusive Taliban leader and top Osama bin Laden ally, Mullah Omar has been taken into custody…

At the end of March, US Military Intelligence was informed by US operatives working in the Af/Pak theater on behalf of the D.O.D. that Omar had been detained by Pakistani authorities. One would assume that this would be passed up the chain and that the Secretary of Defense would have been alerted immediately. From what I am hearing, that may not have been the case.

When this explosive information was quietly confirmed to United States Intelligence ten days ago by Pakistani authorities, it appeared to take the Defense Department by surprise. No one, though, is going to be more surprised than Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It seems even with confirmation from the Pakistanis themselves, she was never brought up to speed.

Well! Congratulations to all involved! But why isn’t anybody bragging about it?

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E. Power Biggs plays Harvard University’s Flentrop organ (made in Zaandam, Holland): hey – google this guy.  Nobody plays Bach better.  Trust me – I’ve been trying to find something better for 30 years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH10P42aaGY