First off, should bloggers face lawsuits for posting misleading information about political figures or anyone else for that matter?

In Britain, libel laws are so lax that bloggers and others in the media are effectively censored by the threat posed by potential lawsuits. Often just the threat of a lawsuit is enough to shut down a potentially controversial report. Whether or not Breitbart was right or wrong to post the video, should he face civil penalties for doing so? What repercussions might this have on the blogosphere and the American media writ large? What does this say about the state of free speech in America?

Second, Sherrod is very unlikely to win her suit in the first place. As a public figure making public remarks, suing for defamation becomes extremely difficult and with good reason. As Ed Morrissey notes:

Sherrod is a public official, which makes that kind of lawsuit darned near impossible.  Breitbart used the clip to criticize the NAACP, not Sherrod directly, although she certainly came into the line of fire.  People are allowed to criticize public officials in harsh and even unfair terms, especially when they make public remarks.

A court is not likely to look favorably on this for another reason — Sherrod’s public statements about Breitbart. She accused him of being pro-slavery, which is a ridiculous and demagogic attack.  Even if a court somehow found that Breitbart acted with malice specifically towards Sherrod to a level that overcomes the right to criticize public officials and that he lied about Sherrod specifically in doing so, under those same terms Breitbart would have a countercase against Sherrod.  Otherwise, Breitbart has become enough of a public figure that Sherrod’s statements about him would probably not be actionable, either.

Which leaves us with a whole lot of sound and fury. Breitbart will come out of the mess with more publicity and a stronger brand. Sherrod will have her extended fifteen minutes of fame. And the Obama administration will try to quietly navigate the sidelines, hoping desperately that the focus stays on Breitbart and not on the fact that it was the USDA that actually forced Sherrod out.

In the end, I doubt this will add up to anything more than some extra filler for the chattering class’s slow summer.

Columbus, Ohio. Image by SWolfeNI8W via Flickr

Well, hello, Columbus. ( Click here if you’re not a Philip Roth fan.)

Some people were surprised when Columbus, Ohio, appeared on the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) list of the top twenty-two energy “Smarter Cities,” sharing the spotlight with towns better known for their deep green glow. Places like Portland, Seattle, Boston and San Francisco.

One person who was not surprised was Michael Coleman, mayor of the city that in the 1990s still had the reputation as being just another bleak hole in the Midwestern Rust Belt. Coleman has led efforts to make Columbus a model of energy efficiency, one of the main priorities under a program called “Get Green Columbus.”

The program was already well underway when it received a huge boost from $7.4 million in federal stimulus funds. More than a score of city fire stations and several other city buildings are getting energy efficiency make overs. Businesses and homes are given incentives to lower energy consumption.

Well before the infusion of cash from Washington, Columbus had already completed its first energy efficient affordable housing, called, fittingly, Greenview Estates. The city also developed a recycling program, an initiative clean up air pollution and an infrastructure overhaul to ensure that residents had clean, safe water.

Energy efficiency has been at the core of the Columbus revitalization, however, which is why the NRDC included it as one of the 22 “Smarter Cities” for 2010.

The other cities, grouped by size are -

Large:

Austin, TX

Boston, MA

Chicago, IL

Columbus, Ohio

Dallas, TX

El Paso, TX

Long Beach, CA

New York, NY

Oakland, CA

Portland, OR

San Francisco, CA

Seattle, WA

Medium:

Berkeley, CA

Fort Collins, CO

Huntington Beach, CA

Reno, CA

Springfield, IL

Santa Clarita, CA

Small:

Beaverton, OR

Denton, TX

Dubuque, IA

Santa Cruz, CA

To lean more about how the NRDC picked these cities from among 655 considered, visit the Smarter Cities site.

Image by Lincolnian (Brian) via Flickr

Retirement village? Assisted living? Co-housing? Age-restricted or aging-in-place communities? Inter-generational cooperative? This space has explored many of the growing varieties of housing choices for boomers and elders when the time comes to downsize, rightsize, clear out or economize. Here’s a new one that’s making the news: think global.

Even with (and sometimes because of) today’s grim economy, increasing numbers of Americans are choosing senior housing overseas. Some are returning to former homes in countries with lower costs or better health care, some are finding bargain housing in inexpensive areas where they have friends or a support community.

But many are just making housing in another country life’s last great adventure.

According to Boomers Abroad, an ambitious online community/social network, the number of Americans and Canadians living abroad, already about 7 million, is expected to double and then some within the next 10 years — and you’re invited to join them. The site links to the top five locales listed in the just-released September/October issue of  AARP The Magazine the best of what Mexico, France, Panama, Portugal and Italy have to offer—”castles, palm trees, rain forests, grilled lobster—in their unique and unparalleled retirement experiences. ”

A debate has been raging here, in the comments section, as well on the blog of Mark Adomanis about what is a Russophobe and what is Russia’s trajectory and do one’s thoughts about the other make one a Russophobe or a Russophile? Addressing the question before my hop to another platform seemed especially fitting.

To kick off the discussion, I wanted to offer commenter yalensis’s taxonomy of a “Russophobe”:

To my mind, the term “Russophobe” mostly involves a constellation of assumptions (stereotypes?) about that person’s political views, i.e., they believe that: (1) Russia was on the right course towards democracy under Yeltsin, but then Putin came along. (2) Khodorkovsky was shafted, he should be released from prison and given his oil company back (3) hopefully during the upcoming Kasparov administration, but (4) none of this matters anyway because Russia is doomed due to low birth rate, alcoholism, and Islamic insurgencies. (5) The thought of Russia’s demise makes the Russophobe feel happy, because Russia has been so mean to the Gruzians and Chechens; however (6) Russians will not go gently into that good night because they suffer from “neo-imperialist” ambitions and want to restore their lost empire, so (7) it is up to the noble West to confront them and keep them inside their shrunken borders…. etc etc
I could rattle off a lot more cliches, but I think everybody gets the point.

I would say it’s a helpful one, except it isn’t. First, there is the fact that yalensis outlines what is basically an alternative political view. How having a different vision of Russia qualifies for hating Russia is unclear except it does reinforce the stereotype — since yalensis went that way — of the Kremlin brute who knows no truth but his truth and sees any alternative view through the sight of a rifle. It also is uncannily reminiscent of the thought process we saw in our mercifully unseated president, George W. Bush, as well as his spiritual heir, Ms. Mama Grizzly.

Furthermore, yalensis offers for our consideration a man made mostly of straw, a collection, by his own admission, of cliches. Because who really believes in the virgin peachiness of the Yeltsin era? Who really thinks Kasparov or his cohort are a realistic choice to lead Russia? And really — and this is a question for all the commenters who accuse me of subterfuge and of preparing the ground for an imminent American invasion of Russia — really who is rooting for Russia’s demise? Who? To be brutally honest: no one in the world give that much of a shit about Russia to actively want America to take over. Maybe you’ve heard about how insular and navel-gazing Americans are? And maybe apathy is a more apt definition of a “Russophobe,” but then it isn’t much of the toothy ogre you’re looking to beat your chest about and make you feel once again to be the fulcrum of world history, is it?

A gallery of agitprop from Seliger, the summer camp for pro-Kremlin youth, really snapped a lot of the comments I’ve seen into focus.

Especially this one:

This is a caricature of Viktor Suvorov, a KGB spy who defected to the West and wrote books about Soviet history as well as its security aparatus. Here’s what the poster says about him:

Way back when he left the USSR and nursed a grudge. Works on the orders of international intelligence agencies. In his books, turns Russian history on its head, calls into question the results of the Great Fatherland War.

It sounds so familiar, doesn’t it? Because I’ve seen it here, under so many blog posts I’ve written and in the comments section of Inosmi when they pick up one of my pieces — except without the virulent anti-Semitism.

Julia Ioffe emigrated and has made a career of hating and defaming Russia in order to justify her decision to leave and betray her homeland.

Right?

Or, better yet:

Julia Ioffe wants to see Russia fail, collapse, become the 52nd American state so that she really, really feels justified.

A Western colleague last night asked me about my “line” and accused me of hating Russia. (That’s right, the Western media in Russia is not monolithically Russophibic, whatever that means.) It was a stupid question. I don’t have a “line.” I have the news and my sources on the ground in Moscow and when something happens I talk to them and then call it as I see it. If it’s in the format of a blog, I get cheeky and pick only the funny things. The hard work I leave for my published pieces. I don’t hate Russia, given all the friends and family I have living here. And I’ve never had an editor enforce “a line,” have never had them turn down a paid assignment because they didn’t agree with “my line” or wanted something more anti-Putin. I don’t get orders for articles except as vague “Can you write about Phenomenon X?”

It’s just stupid, simplistic, and it brings me to Mark’s very apt question about what one believes is Russia’s trajectory. And despite the nuance of his question, it still boils down to this: if you are optimistic about Russia, you are not a Russophobe. But what are you if you — if you had to venture a guess — were to predict that Russia would continue, like any other country, along a sinusoidal path of ebbs and flows, ups and downs. Does anybody really still believe in linear, Hegelian trajectories? Russia’s path, given its history and its present, is likely to have more height in those highs and more depth in those lows. Steps forward, steps back while time passes and Russia changes in ways we cannot predict, not all of them good. You know, like any country, but more pronounced — and, like any other country, with its aggregate of tiny, hilarious, absurd details I’ve tried to chronicle here. That may not be optimistic, but it sure is realistic. Does that make me a Russophobe?

With True/Slant in its final days, I’ve decided to forego the sentimental (at least for now), and share a few more pieces with readers before the lights are turned off. Of the dozens of would-be posts in my publishing queue (and there are many), I’ve been wanting to post this short film, called Borderland, for weeks now.

With the drama coming to a head this week in Arizona over the attempted passage of SB1070 (careful, that’s a PDF), the bill that proposes a crackdown on illegal immigration, a film like this is more timely than ever. In Borderland, filmmakers Drea Cooper & Zackary Canepari (California is a Place) take a nuanced look at border security and illegal immigration from two very personal perspectives:

Dick is right. “Every American should see this.” It is real and it is striking. In some places it stands 18 feet tall and looks like the gates of Mordor. In other places, it is barely 10 feet tall and looks like it was put together with a stapler. It runs from the Colorado River directly into the Pacific. It is big, intense and intimidating. And it is unfinished. Gaping holes are everywhere. Physically it’s confusing. Politically it’s puzzling. Ideologically it’s complicated. But for Dick and Ron, who both live within a few miles of the border, defending it is simply a matter of protecting themselves and preserving their own beliefs. Drug smugglers don’t come to the United States to make an honest living. As the recent killing of Border Patrol Agent Robert Rosas shows, the border is more than a moral line in the sand. The fence is real. We recommend a visit. (via California is a Place)

Watching this film made me feel closer to the issue than any of the television coverage, or the endless ranting blog posts. Hope it helps lend some shred of insight on what’s become a severely divisive issue.

Image via Wikipedia

There’s something kind of vampirish about Anne Rice’s faith dilemma as it plays out. To wit:

Anne Rice, on Facebook, Wednesday at 1:36 pm:

For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.

Anne Rice, Chapter 1, Called Out of Darkness in 2008:

If this path to God is an illusion, then the story is worthless. If the path is real, then we have something here that may matter to you as well as to me.

And so, it’s worthless and we can all move on. But wait (Facebook):

As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

In the name of wha… But maybe we could see this coming (Called Out of Darkness):

Is it not possible for us to do with gender, sexuality and reproduction what was long ago done with the stars? To realize that…new sources of information on them may be as valid as the information given us long ago?

Probably not anytime soon with the Catholic Church, so (Facebook):

My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn’t understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become.

But of course (Called Out of Darkness):

…my concept of God came through the spoken words of my mother, and also the intensely beautiful experiences I had in church.

Which leaves us with a Body that once sustained Anne, but is now dead to her. However, the life source of the Body has somehow been extracted. So is it still real? Or is it an illusion? This can get a little creepy if you think about it late at night.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Anne Rice: “I quit being a Christian” (beliefnet.com)
• Anne Rice and Christ/ianity (hackingchristianity.net)

Image via Wikipedia

Amir Khan and Timothy Bradley are generally regarded as the best 140lb fighters in the world. Both brim with confidence and both believe they have each others number — and both aren’t afraid to talk a little smack. Check out this hilarious twitter war between the two junior welterweights that has got the boxing world buzzing about a potential fight. Here’s the transcript of the juicy bits:

Bradley - Amir Khan said he will knock me out. Bring it on baby I will fight you next! If your a man face me next and not [Juan Manuel] Marquez.

Khan -  Your turn will come, just get in the que. I want to face a better bunch of opponents first.

Bradley – Until you face me you will never get the respect…period! So who you [are] going to face next then?

Khan – Tim Bradley is dying for a pay day. Tell him get in the que of better opponents and wait his turn to get KO’d.

Bradley – Dude what you talking about? Believe in my own hype? I’ve beaten [Kendall] Holt, [Lamont] Peterson, [Junior] Witter, [Nate] Campbell. I deserve a pay day.

Khan – Remember one thing, I’d beat everyone who you beat. I’d KO them. Infact, you avoided [Andreas] Kotelnik and [Dimitry] Salita. Who’s the bitch now?

Bradley – I avoided Kotelnik and Salita?? Please explain how I avoided them? I think you’re the ducker. Who’s your mandatory? [Marcos] Maidana.

Dude I highly doubt you would have beaten Kendal Holt in 2009, maybe now but not when I fought him.

If you face Maidana next fair enough, he’s your mandatory but if you face Marquez you know there will be a backlash against you about. You gotta be a man and tell Richard Schaefer you wanna face legit 140 pounders not blown-up lightweights.

Khan – Maidana has a bad back. I wanted him. You say you want to fight but indirectly you don’t. You overprice yourself and say I’m scared…come on!

Bradley – You paid Maidana step-aside money. You’re the ducker son!

Your ego is too big. Humble yourself before someone shatters your glass jaw!

Overprice myself? What are you talking about? Gary Shaw and Richard haven’t even discussed financial details.