Jumping the Gun

Maybe I'm jumping the gun here, but I've been thinking about Karl Rove and, if he is punished for leaking Valerie Plame's name, what should happen to him. I think this is one of those situations where simply removing him from the administration would actually be doing him a favor. He'll still have access to the president. He'll still be just as valuable a political advisor. Simply put, taking away his job will do nothing but put Rove in a situation where he could make many millions of dollars in the private sector while continuing to do what he's been doing (minus a security clearance, of course). However, an indictment would certainly get Rove's attention. If he were actually faced with jail time, that would counter the notion of Rove being rewarded for his behavior. Of course, I doubt he'd serve any serious jail time, as Bush would likely pardon him. But a felony conviction would disqualify Rove with respect to many opportunities he would have open to him if he were dismissed from the administration and relegated to the private sector.

Fitzgerald is certainly in a tough position. Politically, he doesn't have much to gain from this situation. Prosecuting Rove would end his days as a Republican. Doing any less would earn him condemnation from the left and from many moderates as well. Hopefully, he'll wrap up his investigation soon so we can start learning about any critical facts that haven't yet been released (or leaked) to the public.

Yes, I know I'm jumping the gun here. Rove hasn't been tried and convicted. But unless something comes out in the investigation that resolves him of responsibility, I think he put national security (and a woman's life and career) at risk to achieve a political objective of the administration. I guess we'll see.

Podcasting Update #2

Well, we recorded a podcast last night - about 40 minutes of pure delight. I was worried about running out of recording room, but Audacity said I could have talked for another 78 hours if I had wanted to. Great stuff. Unfortunately, we had some difficulty with the signal level of one of the microphones, and it resulted in one person's levels coming out much lower than everybody else's. Selectively amplifying her voice has resulted in a lot of noise.

I've emphasized that last night's recording was simply a trial run, to give us an understanding of how long it takes to put a podcast together, get me familiar with the editing software, and basically find out how much time and effort it would take to put together a regular weekly offering. Had we not had the level problem, editing this thing down and adding effects, music, etc. would have taken less than a half hour. So I think it's worth it.

If I can turn last night's recording into something that doesn't sound horrible, I'll post a link here. Stay tuned.

Egosurfing

My column today in Mediapost used a real-life example to demonstrate the extent to which the blogosphere can influence natural search results. I gave the example of how my cousin Susan has overtaken this site in the listings for search term "Hespos." A lot of that has to do with some papers she's written that have gotten a lot of play on certain blogs. The main idea for that column was basically "Hey - here's another reason your business might want to invest in a blog. It can improve your natural search results." Of course, I've taken some good-natured ribbing from a few folks in the industry, both in posts on the Spin Board and in private e-mail. Just some half-joking suggestions that perhaps I wrote the column to boost my own Google juice for this site.

Not a bad idea. I guess if I wanted a flurry of traffic here, I could have seeded the article with a bunch of links back here. I wish I had thought of it at the time.

Muslim Condemnation?

Jeff Jarvis asks whether or not we should be seeing more condemnation of terrorist attacks perpetrated by Muslims from the mainstream Muslim community. Well, sure. And to be fair, we often do. But there are a few important things to remember:

1) There's no central Muslim authority. In other words, there's no Pope for Islam. That's one of the things that many non-Muslims seem to have a problem with - Islam tends to be decentralized.

2) Would you blame mainstream Muslims for thinking that they're less connected to these terror strikes than outsiders might believe them to be? I mean, I'm a Christian and I don't see the need to go around apologizing to non-Christians for Fred Phelps and his GodHatesFags.com website. I doubt you could say fundamentalist Islamic terror groups are "a Muslim problem" any more than you could say fundie Christians bombing abortion clinics are a Christian problem.

3) What makes you think widespread condemnation from mainstream Muslims would make any difference? The fundies are going to interpret the Koran any way they want to, and the influence of anyone who interprets it differently probably amounts to diddley squat.

It sounded to me like Jarvis was toying with the idea of painting Muslims with an awfully wide brush. But I know he's smarter than that.