He is in home territory for sure, no question about it. And that’s where he wants to be. He doesn’t enjoy naysayers and critics and opposition. Never has. And right now, he needs that nurturing cocoon that he is in. He is not calling people who didn’t support him. He is calling people who supported him, those 14-year-olds.

—Bruce Buchanan, a presidential scholar at the University of Texas, on George W. Bush’s new neighborhood.

…behind a massive steel door secured by an elaborate lock with a narrow connecting hallway lined with shelves filled with communications equipment.

—Cheney’s secure, undisclosed location was a secret hideaway in the VP residence.

Lens, the New York Times' visual journalism blog, looks nice

Clean design that highlights the photos well. I like the forward/backward hinting and the full screen mode in particular.

Newsweek is framing links to external sites/partners with their very own DiggBar

I have no clue if this is a previously agreed upon partnership thing or if they’re treating all external links like this but it looks pretty lame.

The world has spoken and it prefers inflatable gorillas to giant American flags. A commentary on American imperialism, perhaps?

Forgive me

Someday, I’m gonna be as funny as Dan Wineman

Frank Bruni is moving on from restaurant reviews

Will now write for the New York Times magazine and publish his memoir later this summer

The browser, quite simply, makes the operating system much less relevant to the computing experience. This is why Apple and Google continue to invest heavily in their respective browser initiatives: the browser is the key to operating-system disruption.

For this same reason, however, both would do better to invest in Firefox, the “Linux of browsers.” In some ways, the browser efforts of Apple and Google are much like the Unix efforts of IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun Microsystems: they threaten to splinter the browser counterattack on Microsoft rather than solidify it.

—Matt Asay arguing that Google and Apple should abandon WebKit in favor of Firefox and (presumably) Gecko. Reading this, I’m reminded of a saw from my Unix days - ‘Linux is for people who hate Microsoft, BSD is for people who love Unix’. If Firefox truly is the ‘Linux of browsers’, WebKit is BSD. [via Gruber]

This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl. It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.

—

Sheriff deputy A. J. Lowenthal on the Boy Scouts of America training kids as young as 14 in law enforcement.

I spent most of my youth as a Boy Scout, achieving the highest rank, Eagle Scout. It’s the one accomplishment from my adolescence that I carry proudly into adulthood. And I can say, unequivocally, that I find this despicable. There are many positions that the scouts take that I find hard to square with my adult life, from the required religious oath despite their tax exempt status to their stance on gay leaders. This, though, takes a step far beyond all of that and is, frankly, shameful. The psuedo-militaristic posturing of the scouts is somewhat tolerable when tempered by leadership and discipline, this near fascistic line crossing is unacceptable.

Defining a “true blooded American” as someone who plays soldier and chases down illegal immigrants is a singular, narrow minded view of patriotism. The scouts would do well to encourage other virtues, like thoughtful dissent.

People are judged by what they do under pressure, not what they do at the company picnic. If being a leader was simply a matter of doing the right thing, when it’s easy to do the right thing, then anyone could lead. Of course, they think they did the right thing. Which makes me wonder why they keep bringing up context.

—Addendum to Cheneyism [via spratt]