Thanks for the more prominent MP3 link, Blue Yeti.  It had been bothering me too.

The problem here is with the conditional if.  With the snarky soundbite, few people other than those who agree with us will ever see the bigger context.  Snark sells.

I agree wholeheartedly with Peter Robinson about Berlin 1961.  It's a fantastic book, even if you're a Cold War history buff.  Even bought a copy of it for my friend to read, and he really enjoyed it too.

Speaking of which, since I'm looking forward to Peter's book ... What are his favorite Cold War books?

I usually don't bother getting in political arguments, but I do recall one time at a bar where I was talking with another regular and he was bemoaning how we're destroying the environment and, more specifically, how we're tearing down all the trees.  When I pointed out the simple fact that there are more trees in North America now than there were in 1900, since they're a renewable resource, and -- go figure -- companies that sell you tree products want to make sure they have more trees around to sell you later, he said something to the effect of, "Well that all depends on what a fact really is."  I thought that an appropriate signal that any attempt at serious conversation was over.

I'm with Tom Kirkwold as well.  Issa is presumably trying to get at substantive information.  Instead, he took a rather petty swipe, and he had to know that Holder wasn't going to take it lying down.  Now the entire testimony is reduced to a soundbite of Issa accusing Holder of nefarious activity with no direct evidence, and Holder quite understandably (and predictably) fighting back.  To those not already carefully following the story or familiar with the testimony that was given, it just looks like Issa being a jerk and Holder being defiant.  And, despite whatever complaints you might have about media bias, it makes for good TV.

Thinking Holder is hiding something is understandable; it's perfectly reasonable to suspect it.  But the point here is to prove it.  You don't do that buy giving the other team an easy lay-up.

There's some editing talk left in at about 0:31:00.  I assume that's the Blue Yeti's voice.

I do wonder, though ... If this story finally gets legs (and I do mean if), perhaps the Obama administration will try to hang this around Hillary Clinton's neck.  That could result in a fight to see.

Sorry to say it, but I'm skeptical anything will come of this.  If the media wasn't interested before the election, and wasn't interested after the election, why would they be interested now?

Okay, but this doesn't really explain why he did nothing.  Perhaps he thought that once the election was over people would lose interest and forget.  But he couldn't be sure the media being so uninterested before the election that many wouldn't have heard of it.

The "I suppose" in your conjecture is even stronger for the before, rather than the after.  Granted, of course, we know that the media (largely) wasn't interested in pursuing the story before the election.  But the administration couldn't have counted on that; if the media had reported the story pre-election, the administration would have looked worse.

Well said, Troy.

Even trying to put the details of his politics aside, I always thought he was overrated.  His reviews tended to be predictable; if you knew the premise or subject of the movie, you could pretty accurately tell whether he'd like it or not.  He'd often review the subject of the movie, not the movie itself, sort of defeating the purpose for deciding whether you want to see the movie.  Sometimes he'd focus on tiny little things and ignore the bigger picture, something which we all do, but come on, he's supposed to be a professional movie critic.  His taste is wildly unpredictable:  As a simple but telling example, he hated Die Hard, but loved Die Hard 2 (what?!).  And, of course, there was the infamous episode where he published a (scathing) review of a movie he hadn't even seen and had to apologize for it.

His negative reviews could certainly be funny (his review of North probably being the most famous), but to be honest, when I found out he had won the Pulitzer, I realized that the Pulitzer wasn't really what I thought it was.

Still, RIP.

I really enjoy these podcasts.

Peter was more feisty than usual.  Must've been the cold.

I'm juggling back and forth between Storm of War by Andrew Roberts and Lorentzian Wormholes by Matt Visser.

Sure, none of the protections or privileges in the Bill of Rights are unlimited.  No one disputed that, and it's hard to see how it's really relevant.  I wasn't talking about bazookas or tanks or nuclear weapons, I was talking aboutfirearms.  I am a strong defender of the Second Amendment, but it's hard to see how it's not blatantly obvious that firearms are objectively far more dangerous than video games.  As I said, there is absolutely no evidence that video games lead to violent behavior.

If firearms don't kill, people do ... then singling out video games is a bogeyman.

It's curious because firearms are actually dangerous if used improperly.  Whereas, especially for video games, there is zero evidence that playing video games, even violent first-person shooter/simulation video games, leads to violent behavior.  Correlation is not cause and effect.

And, as I said, there is further zero connection between pornography and video games.  (Peter invoked pornography as an analog to video games as something he wants to ban, but that doesn't mean it follows or had anything to do with what he was arguing.)