Dear Moveon.org,

In one of your recent emails, “Turning every Prius into a Hummer,” you speak of legislation that could allow congress to “double the amount of greenhouse gases in the US.” But where is the legislation citation? While I will grant that citing or quoting actual legislation may not inspire anyone, I think it is important for Moveon.org not to be viewed as a shrill liberal organization operating on people’s emotions and fears rather than the facts. To a certain extent, Moveon has certainly substantiated its claims as to how much damage liquid coal could do as a fuel source, but how can we, readers, be certain that the legislation is the problem?

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New Economist pointed the way to an interesting article by Richard Reeves in the RSA journal titled “The New Intellectual”. The long and the short of it is that there’s no room in media for reasonable intellectual debate. John Stewart would likely agree. But after his initial point, Mr Reeves generalizes the point and heads down a disappointing path. Read more…

A common debate is raging across the web. It is a debate about credentials and who is allowed to provide and distribute information. Should bloggers be considered journalists? Is wikipedia a trustworthy source of information? For that matter it is a question of who should tell us about our wars, the Pentagon or our soldiers? This debate is also about who can provide what services. Can a loosely-knit group of programmers provide software of equal quality to large corporations? And can independent artists and filmmakers and musicians gain the popularity of the mainstream entertainment? This is largely a debate about expertise and it won’t likely be settled by a debate at all but by the rules of an emerging medium. Read more…