It’s nice to be back. I used to think that Iowa was unusually well-mown for a state, but it appears to have become well-landscaped, too, since my last visit in 2004. Des Moines looks buffed and polished, full of new buildings and even loft-style apartments, with a new bridge and entry into the city that provides a wonderful vista onto what now looks like a living modern city, and no longer just a 19th-century grain-state capital.
I’m in the airport in Chicago waiting for a connecting flight to Des Moines, and, I have to say, there are few experiences that feel more quintessentially American at this moment in history than watching news of a potential new terrorist attack on an airport in Glasgow break on the Fox News channel at the Fox Sports bar and restaurant in Terminal E, surrounded by blonde families who’ve momentarily put down their oversized burgers in order to gape in slack-jawed worry at the flames on the bank of TV screens, four of six of which continue with their uninterrupted sports coverage.
The scene on L Street NW at 6:20 p.m. today. The phones went on sale at 6.
Dogster, a.k.a. Friendster for Dogs. For when the dog park isn’t doing enough to help Fido — or you — find that next playdate.
Time‘s Scott Macleod has an excellent round-up on how pro-democracy activists in the U.S. and Iran tried to warn the U.S. State Department that its new funding for Iranian civil society groups was going to hurt their efforts:
The Bush Administration had trumpeted its $61.1 million democracy program, including Farsi-language broadcasts into Iran, education and cultural exchanges and $20 million worth of support for “civil society, human rights, democratic reform and related outreach” as an important effort. However, sources tell TIME that several key Iranian reformers had repeatedly warned U.S. officials through back channels that the pro-democracy program was bound to expose them as vulnerable targets for a government crackdown whether they took Washington’s funds or not.
Iranian civil rights activists contacted by TIME say that the cases against the Iranian-Americans have fostered the most repressive atmosphere inside Iran in years, making democracy advocates terrified to work or even speak on the telephone….
TIME’s sources, who do not want to be identified for fear of retribution, say that they repeatedly warned about the negative consequences in informal talks that have been taking place for several years between figures in the U.S. and Iran who are close to their respective governments. Similar warnings were delivered to U.S. officials by others, including Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council. “We had talks with the State Department and with lawmakers,” Parsi told TIME. “We pointed out the dangers. Our advice was not taken into consideration. Things have turned out worse than we expected.” Parsi says that, in the past, individual democracy activists have been arrested without a pretext, but that the Bush Administration’s program gave the regime an opportunity to go after as many as 10,000 non-government organizations and their memberships.
The reverse-Midas touch of this administration is really a thing to behold.
–Crossposted from Tapped.
This time with data! The Washington Post reports on new research suggesting that felines “domesticated themselves.”