Joe Conason

The Slate music critic Jody Rosen has a simple question: "In purely statistical terms, do the articles in the Montgomery County Bulletin amount to the greatest plagiarism scandal in the annals of American journalism?"

You might ask: The Bulletin? What's that? Also, why is Jody Rosen participating in media reporting?

Well, the story begins like this: Mr. Rosen was tipped a few weeks ago by a reader that a Jimmy Buffett profile he wrote in 2007 had been copied and repurposed under a different byline for an alt-weekly in Texas called the Bulletin earlier this year. Mr. Rosen had never heard of it, but after a little research, he discovered why.  read more »

Joe Conason says Fox and the Bush administration can't handle Bill Clinton's dose of truthiness, and Steve Kornacki looks at the impact of the former president's publicity blitz on Hillary, Gore and the rest of the 2008 contenders.

Jason Horowitz writes about Al Gore's sleeper cells of presidential donors and operatives, still waiting for the call.

Niall Stanage says that John Bolton deserves an up-or-down vote in the Senate even if his UN colleagues find his behavior upsetting.

Matt Schuerman reports that the city's plans for the Sunnyside rail yards could make a guy named Michael Bailkin into New York's next big development kingpin.

Tom Scocca gets rebellious LA Times boss Dean Baquet to say meaningful things about his birthday cake.

And here's an insider's account of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's noisy visit to New York from writer, music exec and Farsi translator extraordinaire Hooman Majd.

-- Josh Benson

Standing Up to a Stand-Up Guy   To the Editor:    read more »

Standing Up to a Stand-Up Guy

To the Editor:  read more »

If I Can Make It There …   To the Editor    read more »

Jason Horowitz writes about Mike Bloomberg's relationship with the Hasidim.

Nicholas Von Hoffman writes about the right to privacy.

And Joe Conason writes about the Murdoch Method.

In The Observer's political pages,I take a look at who's trying to start a Bloomberg '08 buzz, and why, and entertain the notion semi-seriously for a few paragraphs. (Um, Happy Birthday, Mr. Mayor?)

Also, E.J. Kessler is underwhelmed by Pat Manning and Joe Conason writes on Dick Cheney.

Elsewhere in the paper, Jason Horowitz looks into the Met's antiquities problems and Matt Schuerman finds a controversy on Brooklyn's Fulton Street.

I profile David Paterson, and find a certain sloppiness with the truth.

Joe Conason doesn't buy Bush's tough new talk on oil.

Chris Lehmann says the GOP is over.

And Jason Horowitz strays from the City Hal beat to take a Christian singles cruise. Of course.

Jess Bruder and I argue that Hillary's current campaign is of a piece with her run for President, noting that observers find it hard to imagine her spending the kind of money she set out to raise in New York alone.

Tom Scocca and his crew delve into the Miller crisis at the Times. And here's Joe Conason's take.  read more »

Nicholas Von Hoffman writes that a Miers appointment might not be the worst thing for liberals.

A producer called me a while back asking if I wanted to be interviewed for The Hunting of the Presid  read more »

On the great scale of seriously dreaded events, a visit to the Department of Motor Vehicles office h  read more »

In a sense, the Hillary haters quoted in my colleague Joe Conason's column last week have it right.  read more »