FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog

Mike Krempasky over at RedState.org has posted The Online Coalition’s official response to the Federal Elections Commission:

The Online Coalition is pleased to release our official comment to the Federal Election Commission in response to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking regarding political activity on the internet. This comment will be transmitted to the FEC this afternoon.

You can read the full comment below - in both a full-featured paginated HTML format (useful for cutting and pasting), as well as the standard Adobe PDF.

(pdf)

(paginated HTML)

Read Flap’s FEC: Draft Rules to Regulate Political Blogs which contains many links to help understand what is at stake and an ability to join The Online Coalition.

Republican officials have announced that President Bush will nominate nine-term California Representative Christopher Cox R- Newport Beach to be Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The official announcement may come as early as tomorrow, anonymous Republican sources told the Associated Press.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman William Donaldson, who was picked by President Bush to restore confidence in a stock market shaken by a wave of corporate scandals, announced Wednesday, June 1, 2005, that he will resign from the agency at the end of the month.

Read both stories here:

Cox, 52, was first elected to the House from the GOP stronghold of Orange County in 1988. He served as chairman of the House Policy Committee from 1994-2005 and is chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security.

Cox has been a longtime advocate of repealing the estate tax, the capital gains tax on savings and investment, and taxes on dividends. He also has supported banning taxes on Internet commerce.

A Republican and Bush family friend, Donaldson was an activist who often clashed with traditional GOP business allies. They chafed over what they perceived as an excessive regulatory zeal during Donaldson’s tenure.

Donaldson, who turns 74 on Thursday, told the president that “the time has come for me to step down and return to the private sector and my family.” He said Wednesday he would leave the agency on June 30.

Flap congratulates fellow USC alumni and classmate Cox, who was a cheerleader for the Trojans during Flap’s undergraduate years.

Representative Cox later went on to Harvard Law and Business School for a joint JD and MBA.

Chris is right on the issues and an excellent choice.

Now, who will run for this open and safe Republican Orange County Congressional seat?

In an old news clip the Huffington post has video of John Bolton criticising the United Nations:

Click here for the Quicktime Clip

At the end it asks a question.

The answer is a definite YES.

Flap wants a U.N. Ambassador that represents the United States not a Left-Wing One-World community.

David M at his blog asks the question: Is Victor Navasky, the Editor of the Left Wing Nation magazine running the Columbia Journalism Review - America’s Premier Media Monitor ?

David M seems to think so:

Imagine this scenario: A supposedly unbiased publication is being run by someone with a clear political bias, and that person is not listed on the publication’s masthead. It’s just the type of story that media watchdog Columbia Journalism Review would love to uncover.

Only in this case CJR is the perpetrator.

This blog has learned that Victor Navasky, publisher, editorial director and apparently co-owner of iconic left wing journal The Nation, is running CJR; however he is not on the masthead.

CJR’s Blog is here and no word as of this posting regarding this non-disclosure.

Paul over at Powerline has these comments:

CJR-gate?

Blogger David M reports that Victor Navasky, “publisher, editorial director and apparently co-owner of iconic left wing journal The Nation, is running the Columbia Journalism Review; however he is not on the masthead.” CJR purports to be an unbiased media watchdog publication. Yet David M’s reporting suggests that a major left-wing polemicist is calling the shots at CJR without any mention on the masthead. According to David M, the Journal’s executive editor has admitted that he answers to Navasky. And Navasky himself, while downplaying his editorial rule, appears to have acknowledged that he provides some editorial direction.

Our most direct contact with CJR occurred when it a ran piece on Rathergate which maintained that bloggers were at least as blameworthy as CBS for the whole affair. The story was called “Blog-gate.” John’s demolition of that piece is worth another look.

David M continues:

Reached by phone at his office at The Nation, Navasky confirmed for this blog that he was playing a role at CJR. He downplayed the role, stating, “I’m trying to help them out. I’m hoping to provide more editorial direction down the road, but I’m focused now on improving the finances. ” He also stated that he had been “given the dean’s green light to do what needed doing.”

Commenting on why he is not on the masthead, Navasky said it is too soon since he is still working out precisely what his role will be.

Asked if he has been providing any editorial direction to CJR, Navasky said that he feels free to provide editorial direction to anyone he wants, including the New York Times or anyone else.

Indeed, then why are you afraid to be on the masthead?

Update #1

Apparently Navasky will be on the masthead soon as Chairman and will have little or no editorial control.

The Editor and Publisher has the story about Victor Navasky’s involvement with the CJR here:

Victor Navasky, publisher and former editor of The Nation, has been working behind the scenes in a key, if uncredited, role at the Columbia Journalism Review, CJR executive editor Michael Hoyt told E&P Wednesday.

“It’s been gradual,” Hoyt told E&P. Nicholas Lemann, dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism (where Navasky has taught) “asked him to take a role because we have both a Web site we’re trying to develop and a magazine we’re trying to get over some financial hurdles.”

Navasky, whose name does not currently showup on the CJR masthead, told E&P today that he will appear there next issue as “chairman.”

He has been meeting with staff “on Fridays to talk business side for a few months,” Hoyt said. Hoyt told E&P that he and CJR publisher Evan Cornog report to Navasky, who in turn reports to Lemann.

As for whether having the longtime editor of a magazine with a famously political (liberal) bent involved in the administration of CJR, Hoyt said appearances might not match with reality. “It could give somebody an opportunity to make a connection, but the connection is not there,” Hoyt said. “He doesn’t push anything editorially.”

Navasky said: “I’ve made clear to the dean and everybody else that if there is any conflict with the Nation, I will recuse myself from any considerations or anything that has to do with it.

“I raised the public relations part of it with Nick when he asked me to do this,” he said, noting that some people may forget his pre-Nation history at The New York Times and elsewhere. He would not have taken the job, he said, “if I didn’t think I could do it fairly.”

Right, then why the subterfuge in the first place?

Update #2

Still no acknowledgment from the CJR Daily. Heh.

Update #3

David M has today’s follow-up on the CJR story here.

The Digital Dentist is recommending a number of scanners to scan dental radiograph (x-rays) films into a digital format to be used by image management software:

The industry standard for many years has been the Epson 1680 Professional. The Professional model is the only one with the Transparency Adapter, which is necessary for scanning x-rays. Some offices have been getting the newer Epson 4990 lately. The concern with this scanner is that it only scans 8″ X 10″ transparencies, which is often too short for some pans and many FMX series in their mounts. The 1680 can scan up to 11.7″ (their web site incorrectly says 10″). Other models that should work for dentistry include the Microtek 9800 XL and a few of the UMAX models.

A scanner is a “must have” especially since many dentists are just now converting to digital formats.