Politics Rumsfeld pans bureaucracy
Donald Rumseld tells us about the bureaucratic explosion in Washington of the last twenty to thirty years:
I suppose the two things that leap to mind -- one is the interaction between the Congress and the department has changed dramatically since the 1970s. Back then the -- as I recall, the authorization bill was about 50 or 60 pages. Today it's 900 pages. The degree that the committees of the Congress -- the staffs have blown up by many, many multiples on the congressional committees, with the result being that there are just an enormous number of requirements and inhibitions and restrictions and prohibitions that are imposed on the department. We're up, I think, in the 900 level of reports that we send up there. I don't even know who reads them, but we're killing trees all over the globe. And it's -- they get put into the law and then people just keep doing it. If we just could knock off half of the reports and cut the rest of them in half and use a single color -- (laughter) -- like black and white -- (laughter) -- and then put them on the computer and give them the electrons and let them make the paper, we could save so much time and so much effort.
· Laughter [DefenseLink]

Trading Fiction's Comfort for a Chance to Look Life in the Eye
Amy Bloom writes about the difference between writing fiction and nonfiction. Writers lie. As a fiction writer, this doesn't bother me. It comforts me. When I write fiction, I only have to be true to myself and my imagination, to the characters I create and the events that I, and they, cause. In fiction, I'm God, without quarreling apostles, without competing deities, without any foot-dragging villagers.
· Blooming [New York Times]

Those With Political Bent Avid to Make Point in Print

The business of politics and the business of publishing are once again locked in a tight embrace.
· Tight Embrace [New York Times]

To: Premier Carr

From: Margo Kingston

Sir,

I refer to the press conference you gave at midday today in Parliament House and the interview with you broadcast on 2GB at 12.30 pm.

At the press conference you falsely accused me of having written in The Sydney Morning Herald that the victims of the Bali bombing were to blame for their own deaths.

You said: "To blame the Bali dead for the bombing is a disgrace and you are a parody of a journalist."

You also said: "What happened in Bali was the murder of innocent Australians, not people who were guilty because they were celebrating in a third world country as you argued in the Sydney Morning Herald. Not that at all."

Despite my denials, you broadcast a variation of this damaging slur against me to a much wider audience on 2GB. You said I had written a column "attempting to argue that it was Australian tourists who provoked the Bali bombing, words to that effect". You later said in the same broadcast that you had read my piece, which said "it was something in the way Western tourists behaved in Bali that invited the bombing".

Your allegations are false and baseless.

For your information I enclose everything I have written about the Bali bombing. I invite you to find one instance where I have blamed the Bali dead for the bombing, or said that Australian tourists in Bali provoked the bombing.

In the event that you are unable to do so, I expect a public retraction and apology. Given the vicious nature of your attack upon me, I do not think it is unreasonable to ask your office to respond within 24 hours.

Sincerely,

Margo Kingston
· Will no one rid me of this turbulent Margo [Werb Diary]