Brad Rourke

Brad Rourke’s Blog

  • The Myth Of "Procedure"

    I laughed out loud when I read that, last Monday, The New York Times (which may be the most overvalued brand out there in news — but that’s another post) had egg on its face when it admitted that it had published a fake letter to the editor. A big boo-boo in the newspaper world,…

  • The Myth Of "Procedure"

    I laughed out loud when I read that, last Monday, The New York Times (which may be the most overvalued brand out there in news — but that’s another post) had egg on its face when it admitted that it had published a fake letter to the editor. A big boo-boo in the newspaper world,…

  • Inauguration Day Should Not Be A Holiday

    The other day I got a letter from my daughter’s school describing a dilemma that the headmaster had faced, one that his counterparts in many other schools faced too: Whether to close up shop on the day Senator Barack Obama takes office as president of the United States. The school has not in the past…

  • My Posts Are Too Long

    My posts have been getting longer and longer. Must. Stop. Why? Because people want things in bites! Half the time, my ideas are only worth a bite anyway. More to the point, blogging traffics in speed, snark, and brevity. I can do two out of three (I’m not into snark). So I need to get…

  • Watch Where You Stay

    My friends at the Silver Spring Penguin have a great recap of the complaint filed against a pair of hot-sheet motels in Silver Spring that truly seemed to be dens of iniquity. We’re talking rampant prostitution, drug overdoses and sales at a Days Inn and a Travelodge. One commenter says they “feel bad for out-of-towners…

  • Senator Kennedy: What Do We Know And When Will We Know It?

    My friend Steve Clemons has written a great piece that well describes my misgivings as I watch the Caroline Kennedy train gathering steam. It’s not that she is not the right person to take the open Senate seat of Hillary Rodham Clinton — it’s that we don’t know yet, and we have not had much…

  • Cruising For A Bruising

    The groups poised to capitalize on president-elect Obama’s sympathy for their causes — are liable to be sorely disappointed. Peter Levine points this out here. Now comes word that pro-life pastor Rick Warren will be delivering the Inaugural invocation. And here is the disappointment (outrage, really). So many people have poured so much of what…

  • How Will Civic Groups Stay In The Game?

    Monday night, a decent and good proposal for a new source of affordable housing in my neighborhood got defeated in our town’s City Council. I was personally in favor of it and spoke in favor of it (which a rarely do). In fact, fifty of my neighbors spoke one way or another on it —…