lukegilman.com : High on the Hog Blog

Purveyor of Idle Observation

No really, that Al Gore… on twitter. I find this vaguely unsettling.

Dr. Richard Murray, the University of Houston’s éminence grise of Texas politics, is blogging at Prof13, doing everything from taking readers questions to teasing out the trends from the voting data. It’s worth keeping an eye on through the campaign season.

If you live long enough you will see interesting things.

• David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal’

• Video: Changes – Presidential Candidates feat. Bowie

Ah…. internet will you never cease to entertain?

Fascinating. Nothing I’d ever heard of before. Visit the BBC site and listen to the entire radio segment. Realplayer required.

Document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by a group of right-wing American businessmen. The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression. Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy.

BBC Radio 4: The Whitehouse Coup

The Washington Post has just concluded a four part series on Vice President Dick Cheney called ‘The Angler’, playing off the code name given the Vice President by his secret service detail. Cheney is in fact an avid angler – one of my roommates once had his afternoon of fishing in Montana interrupted by a small armada of secret servicemen escorting the VP along the river.

Staff writers Barton Gellman and Jo Becker engage in the kind of long-form journalism few publications seem to have the resources or the interest in pursuing these days. Here are the links to each of the parts in the series:

1. ‘A Different Understanding With the President’
2. Pushing the Envelope on Presidential Power
3. A Strong Push From Backstage
4. Leaving No Tracks

Gellman also appeared on Charlie Rose a few days ago to discuss the piece, a conversation worth watching in it’s entirety below.