Wednesday, July 21, 2004

DOING THE RIGHT THING. Sandy Berger stepped aside from John Kerry's presidential campaign almost immediately yesterday, which shows that he understands the seriousness of the charges against him. Even if his removal of highly classified documents from the National Archives was inadvertent - even if he didn't stuff them in his socks - he's nevertheless made himself radioactive to Kerry's presidential hopes.

This Washington Post story, by Susan Schmidt, is much tougher and more informative than Eric Lichtblau's effort in the New York Times.

Fortunately for Kerry, the Republicans may already be overplaying their hand. According to Schmidt, Georgia senator Saxby Chambliss, who won his seat in part by impugning the patriotism of triple-amputee war veteran Max Cleland, is charging that Berger supplied stolen documents to the Kerry campaign. His evidence ... well, he doesn't have any.

TENSION CITY! As Bush 41 used to say. Or was that Dana Carvey? Last night I went to the local Apple store to pick up my iBook, which had blown its logic board the previous week. The hard drive had been (gasp) reformatted!

Supposedly the drive had been completely backed up at the store before it was shipped out. It says so right on the receipt, which I have been staring at with the hopefulness of a child staring up the chimney on Christmas Eve. But the guy who waited on me had no way of checking that out. So I find out this morning whether I've lost any data, including several years' worth of photos.

Yes, I should have a better backup strategy, but such things are expensive. Not as expensive as this, though. Media Log's fingers, toes, arms, and legs are crossed. And if Steve Jobs spares me, I promise to get an external Firewire drive.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It would not certainly not come as a surprise if the Republicans wildly overplay their hand in l'affaire Burglar. However, the Dems carping about the timing of the leak is so over the top and so choreographed that I can't help but think that they themselves leaked the story to minimize its impact. More important, however, is finding out what exactly Berger lifted from the Archives. The fact that Berger's attorney has made so many admissions already - as well as having played the old "the focus of the investigation" misdirection - is not promising. Maybe Berger is just a slob with classified documents, but at this time the (very flimsy) reporting suggests there's more to it than that.

Sorry about your computer, DK. I have yet to figure out an easy, fail-safe, and reasonably economical back-up system. I'm pretty much resigned to the idea that I will lose unique and irreplaceable data every so often.