Ed Morrissey's latest post explores similar ground--and it focuses on a state (New Jersey) whose fiscal and gubernatorial woes were the subject of one of our very first podcasts.

Update: This comment underneath Ed's post crystallizes the opinions I've heard from several of my friends and family still in New Jersey.

That's a brief excerpt from Mark Steyn's article-length introduction to Pete Vere and Kathy Shaidle's new book, The Tyranny of Nice, on Canada's "Human Rights Commissions", and their patented show trials to purge all doubleplusungood thoughtcrime from Airstrip Canada.

How weird do those trials get? And could similar such weirdness be coming to the US? Tune in to my 40-minute long interview with Kathy and Pete over at Pajamas Media.

• PJM Political host Steve Green--fresh off his usual soiree into debate drunkblogging, plus:

• James Lileks.

• Glenn Reynolds.

• Jennifer Rubin.

• Produced by your humble narrator and multimedia maven.
  

Tune in here to listen!

Seriously--be sure to check out the latter two items: Steve Green energetically ties together the disparate elements of this week's PJM Political, and Austin Bay interviews General David Petraeus, who phoned in from Baghdad.

(For any podcasting boffins in the audience, here's some gear talk: because of the poor phone connection, Gen. Petraeus initially sounded more like a call from here until I applied a massive amount of Izotope's RX audio restoration plug-in, followed by compressing the daylights out of the recording with their Ozone mastering plug-in.)

Jonah Goldberg and Hugh Hewitt discuss CNN's Virtual Reality during last Wednesday's GOP YouTube Debate. Also on the show:

Host Bill Bradley discusses the surprising surges of Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee.

Mary Katharine Ham explains how she made the leap from the newspaper to new media.

James Lileks uncovers the Huckabee/Hanna-Barbera connection.

Joe Mathieu tells Pajamas' Austin Bay what makes the POTUS '08 Channel tick.

Produced by Ed Driscoll.

Join host Bill Bradley for thoughts on yesterday's GOP YouTube/CNN debate, plus:

Pajamas CEO Roger L. Simon and Bob Owens of Confederate Yankee interview Sen. Fred Thompson regarding the future of America's War On Terror.

Should Thompson not get the nomination, Ed Morrissey and Duane Patterson (producer of The Hugh Hewitt Show) discuss his chances as a GOP vice presidential nominee.

Glenn Reynolds and Dr. Helen Smith discuss the upcoming Supreme Court case involving the Second Amendment with Robert Levy of the CATO Institute.

Liz Stephans and Scott Baker of Breitbart.TV on the role of YouTube and viral online video in the 2008 presidential election.

Produced by Ed Driscoll.

For extended versions of each of today's segments, and the video of the Thompson interview don't miss this week's PJM Political "Director's Cut Interviews."

I threw them all into a suitcase before heading to Vegas just as a lark, but I was astounded at how clean the audio was, even with the roar of Vegas Convention Center crowd all around, which is why I ended up doing so many interviews there. The trick, I think, is the Shure SM58s. There's a reason why so many rock groups use them on-stage and on live recordings--their cardioid input pattern makes them great at focusing the loudest sounds (which normally should be the person talking/singing/playing into them) and de-emphasizing the background noise.

Tune in here--no iPod required; virtually any computer with broadband can stream an MP3 file.

Related: Maybe Brian Williams should take a listen!

And speaking of Live Earth, Tim Blair writes that the party to fight global cooling continues!

(No iPod--or even iPhone--needed; virtually any computer with a broadband connection can tune in and listen.)

From my point of view in the producer's chair, I think the sound quality on this one is the best yet; I've been very fortunate to have the time to experiment and fine-tune things. So please have a listen, here.

This week’s podcast features Jeff Goldstein and Neo-neocon on the inexorable attraction of defeat in Iraq, America’s penchant for self-flagellation, and finding meaning in a chocolate Jesus. Why does doom sell, and why are we so susceptible to the pitch?

Hosted by Austin Bay, and produced by Ed Driscoll. Brought to you by Volvo USA.

Update: Found via Gateway Pundit, Ace explains to Reid the proper spin.

I also asked Robin if this was still flying on the walls of his former workplace.

It's a 20 minute long podcast (no iPod required--any computer with broadband and a soundcard can play an MP3 file), so please tune in and listen.

Bill Roggio talks about the surge, security in Iraq, and holding our ground in Afghanistan with host Austin Bay in this week’s podcast. Roggio says that even though “we lost a lot of ground” in 2006, “There’s a very good chance of success for this plan.” Bill is currently filing several reports a week on Iraq that can be found at the Weekly Standard. Produced by Ed Driscoll. Brought to you by Volvo USA.

The anti-liberal message of The anti-liberal message of identitarianism and collective thought are on the table for this week’s podcast. Are the two sides of the political spectrum existing in parallel realities with their own facts and narratives? Protein Wisdom’s Jeff Goldstein, Neo-neocon, and host Austin Bay find the whole mess doubleplusungood. Ed Driscoll produces.

The world’s longest horse race is underway for the American Presidency. On Blog Week to discuss it are Glenn Reynolds, and author and screenwriter Katy Wright of American Thinker. Glenn and Katy disagree on whether the unusual length of the campaign season represents an important political fight or an exhuasting and wasteful marathon for voters and candidates

The panel also tackles the plight of imprisoned Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Soleman and what his case means for the future of free speach and the internet in the Middle East. Austin Bay hosts and asks the questions. Ed Driscoll produces. Brought to you by Volvo USA.

And for lots of other thoughts on the topic, stop by the great Regime Change Iran blog.

Eric Umansky and Glenn Reynolds exchange views on the “shake out” in Web 2.0 start-ups and President Bush’s State of the Union Speech. Are Google and Yahoo gobbling up the Web? Find out. Austin Bay hosts and asks the questions. Ed Driscoll produces. Eric and Austin also discuss the benefits of civilian universal national service.

Brought to you by Volvo USA.

This week’s program is a Blog Week special, with John Hinderaker and Scott W. Johnson of Power Line. They talk about how and why they created their successful blog; the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report and its historical perspective as compared with Pearl Harbor, whose 65th anniversary was commemorated last week, and they predict next week’s events. As usual, Austin Bay hosts and moderates; Ed Driscoll produces.

Panelists Tammy Bruce and Glenn Reynolds discuss—what else—the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. Neither finds the report encouraging.

Also discussed is whether America remains the most optimal place to do business.

Finally, the panelists, along with regular host and moderator Austin Bay, predict the upcoming week’s top stories.

Ed Driscoll produces.

At the beginning of last August, Ace of Spades brilliantly predicted the scandals involving Jamil Hussein, and his immediate predecessor, Adnan Hajj, Reuters' bumbling would-be fauxtographer:

The American media is setting itself up for a massive scandal. One day, it will in fact come out that they are guilty of willful blindness and a deliberate avoidance of asking their stringers tough questions to maintain their own plausible deniability.

And they'll have to answer some hard questions, such as, "If you're so vigilant against being 'used' by the American government for its 'propaganda,' why are you so blithely nonchalant about being worse-used by America's enemies?"

Many of Steven Glass' colleagues looked back and wondered how they'd been fooled by his fabrications for so long. Apart from the outlandishness of some of his stories, he also had an uncanny knack for getting the Killer Quote that tied together a piece or summed it up in one pithy, bullet-point sentence. We should have known no one gets that lucky so consistently, they said later.

The American media seems to be an employing a possible Army of Steven Glasses, and yet they're more than willing to pretend they don't know what's going on so long as those suspiciously-dramatic front-page pictures keep coming back from the foreign stringers.

The latter is, arguably, even more important than a compressor or the mastering software: I've heard a number of noisy podcasts, and in the months I've been doing the Pajamas Blog Week In Review podcast, I've done everything I can to tame that noise, which is inherent in telephone recordings. The Soundsoap Pro software samples the background noise of a recording, then filters it, and adds a noise gate to further reduce ambient sounds (such as hiss, hum, and ground loops) between audio. It's not going to make a telephone sound like a $3,000 condenser microphone, but it will go far towards enhancing the quality of any recording.

Prelude to a Power Change? Perhaps. Panelists Tammy Bruce and Glenn Reynolds analyze the 2006 midterm election, dissect Senator John Kerry’s “botched joke” and focus on the Internet Governance Forum which was held in Athens, Greece this week.

Austin Bay moderates; Ed Driscoll produces. Brought to you by Volvo USA.

(Only a handful of Klingons and Cylons were harmed in the making of this podcast.)

Sex, courtesy of the Foley scandal, is more interesting than nuclear threats issued by North Korea’s perennially threatening dictator Kim Jong-il, if both the Big Media and the New Media are any indication; Pajamas Media’s Gerard Van der Leun and Richard Fernandez discuss the reasons thereto. Additionally, the panelists take a look at Australia’s new initiatives to integrate Muslim immigrants into the country’s larger society, with the most notable program involving a new community board composed of 100 Australian imams. An example of moderate Islam in action?

Austin Bay moderates and Ed Driscoll [Who?--Ed] produces.

The book itself is exceptional, and I've been devouring my review copy. As Hugh Hewitt suggests, it's one of a handful of essential books for understanding the War On Terror, why we're fighting it in such a polite, reserved-style when compared with previous wars, and, as the title suggests, why America--along with, currently, a handful of staunch allies--is increasingly on its own in an ever-more appeasement-crazed world.

The other big news is that Blog Week In Review is now sponsored by Volvo. But does this mean we risk being named in Bill Lockyer's lawsuit against seemingly every automobile manufacturer on the planet...?

Update: Bumped to top of the page.

But then, it's the reason we all went into blogging, isn't it...?

the evidence of recent weeks is that journalism is rife with fakery, and that we're seeing more of it now mostly because it's easier to spot now that lots of people can examine the evidence and compare notes.

* * *

Context is key. And one of the lessons of these various affairs is that neither the photo, nor the purveyor of the photo, should be given unquestioned authority. Instead, we have to think for ourselves, and make up our own minds. Because it turns out that we can't trust, well, much of anyone.

You can hear me discuss these issues further with bloggers Charles Johnson and Dean Barnett on this TCS Daily podcast. And yes, that's really us -- not faked voices. Trust me.

Update: In a related post, Betsy Newmark and Jeff Jacoby explore Photoshopped diversity in school textbooks: "when reality conflicts with political correctness, reality gets the boot", Jacoby writes.

Ward Churchill--airbrushed or otherwise--could not be reached for comment.

Elsewhere, Q and O looks at the most pliable medium of all--text--as AP truncates the quotes from Donald Rumsfeld's latest speech virtually to the point of Dowdification.

It's the first of a two-part series. The second part features an interview with three ra^ther prominent members of "The Fifth Estate", which you won't want to miss.

Update: Power Line's Scott Johnson also has some thoughts on Professor Cooper's new book.

Don't miss my podcast interview with Radley, online today at TCS Daily.

Update: Here's one impact of the Long Tail on TV: Last week was "the least-watched week in recorded history for the four biggest broadcast networks".

Another Update: Today is the launch day for Anderson's book; click here for media reaction and additional interviews.

But it's no substitute for reading Chris's book itself though, which Amazon says is due out on Tuesday. Chris is having a launch party the following day in New York, and he's having a drawing on his site for tickets, if you're in the area and would like to attend.

And the latest Blog Week In Review is up, featuring Glenn, Eric Umansky of Slate, guest blogger and Advice Goddess Amy Alkon, and hosted by Austin Bay.

You can hear both podcasts, by clicking here.

In other words, don't miss this week's Pajamas Blog Week In Review!

Update: Once a closely-guarded secret of anchormen everywhere, Jeff reveals the method of obtaining great-sounding Professional Pundit-Style vocals.

Today's editorial on the NSA in the LATimes is an example of why I no longer waste any time on the newspaper (Food Section excepted, of course). The drones at the LAT wrote the following:

The secretive NSA (an abbreviation, Washington wags say, for "No Such Agency") has overseen a domestic surveillance program whose existence is known only because of media reports and whose exact contours remain a mystery even to most members of Congress.

Apparently the fellas at the LAT have never read the best-selling The Puzzle Palace (copyright 1983! and all about the NSA) or heard of the Echelon program, which has been running through several adminstrations. All this "Ohmygod, whatistheNSAdoing?" nonsense is so much propagandistic crap. Anyone paying the slightest attention has known for years what the NSA's brief was. What are all those satellites supposed to be for,anyway? The level of hypocrisy in all this is staggering. If you don't want an NSA, say so. But the obvious question is - where have you been for the last several decades?

Update: It's online, here.

I'll let you know when it's up--or just keep checking the Pajamas motherblog.

Update: Click here--it's now online.

(Note that no iPod is required; virtually any computer can download and play this MP3 file.)

Update: Blogcritics has a review of Revolutionary Wealth.

With the first Blog Week In Review safely ensconced on the server buried deep within Pajamas HQ, I'm off to Dallas for about a week, starting here. Watch for regular posting to resume tonight or tomorrow.