The “Hi” in the title should clue you in, this is my welcome post. I’m David, the newest blogger at Legal Insurrection.
For those who don’t know me, I used to blog as Soccer Dad.
After I retired from blogging at the end of 2010, Prof Jacobson offered me his blog as a new home if I ever wanted to get back into the game. I believe I’m ready to take the jump now.
Once upon a time a Carnegie-Mellon study determined that Soccer Dad was the 22nd most influential blog in the universe. Given the other blogs on the list, I was very surprised at my appearance on the list. Soccer Dad’s traffic wasn’t in the same class as most of the other blogs. It must have been that I was big linker to others.
First of all I founded Haveil Havalim, the Jewish blogging carnival. (A blog carnival is a periodic – usually weekly – enterprise which links to blogs associated with a single theme.) Over the years other bloggers have taken over administering and contributing to Haveil Havalim; the current administrator is Esser Agaroth.
Also I was a member of the Watcher’s Council. The Watcher’s Council is a group of about twelve (mostly) conservative bloggers who submit and vote on the best posts of the week. Currently, my pal JoshuaPundit serves as Watcher. (Nearly four years ago, Legal Insurrection won the non-council voting for his post, Which city would you sacrifice? Given the recent controversy over Zero Dark Thirty, the post still has resonance.)
My biggest blogging interest is Israel and the Middle East, specifically through the lens of media bias. I’m also interested in politics and how conservatives/Republicans can get their message out past the gatekeepers in the media. For the past two years I’ve been producing a daily (most days) e-mail focusing on news from the Middle East, called the Mideast Media Sampler that a number of sites ( Israel Matzav, Daled Amos, Meryl Yourish and the GLORIA Center) publish.
Anyway that’s a brief introduction to me. I am honored and look forward to contributing to Legal Insurrection.
Oh, there’s reason for the odd title.
I recall that the boss is a fan of Dean Friedman. Dean Friedman once attended the same school I did, so I figured I’d reference his biggest hit.
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Comments
Welcome and Freilichin Purim!
Welcome David. If Professor Jacobson endorses you, then your aces with me before I even read your first missive.
Welcome, David.
Any man who remembers the water fall is OK in my book.
Hey, welcome. Never heard of Soccer Dad, never read your blog, but if Wm thinks you’re good enough, I’ll say hail, fellow, well met.
Great to see the fingertips here, David.
Welcome, David. And from the title alone I immediately knew you were a must-read.
Ariel. The original Manic Pixie Dreamgirl Song.
Thanks Joan. For those who don’t know (and I didn’t) this is what a Manic Pixie Dreamgirl is. If she were someone’s girlfriend, I suspect that Phoebe on Friends would qualify. Certainly, Samantha on Bewitched was!
Not to worry, David. There is a cure.
Home is where you hang your hat (or keyboard 🙂 ) Welcome.
I have never been to Israel, but I am a staunch supporter of any democracy in the middle east, and currently I count…..um…..one (Not withstanding the nascent democratic machinery of Iraq, I’m not holding my breath on that).
I also am a firm Christian, and believe in the Judeo-Christian underpinnings of western society. So your interest in Israel and mine overlap which is good.
What is your take on DebkaFile? It seems to me a very good source of information about the goings on. But I like to get all sides of the stories. The Prisoner X media gag incident has led me to wonder if we’re getting everything that needs to be gotten.
Paul, I’m not fan of DebkaFILE. People who know a lot more than I do say that they aren’t careful with what they publish. Michael Ross, a former Mossad agent, I think, has had two of the better articles on Ben Zygier. The biggest problem was how the early reporting tried to make it seem like Israel had breached legal norms with Prisoner X. Subsequent reporting has shown otherwise. There’s a still a question why Zygier wasn’t watched better.
Thank you for the reply. If not Debkafile, then which Israel oriented news sites do you prefer? I’ll probably still keep tabs on Debka, as I have for a while now, but it’s always good to cross reference with other news providers.
As a followup to Prisoner X (Ben Zygier), I found this at Debka file, but there is nothing about the controvesy of his imprisonment. Interesting read though:
http://www.debka.com/article/22762/The-dark-labyrinth-of-straw-companies-in-which-Ben-Zygier-worked
Hello David — I look forward to hearing your thoughts via these posts.
Ya, the DebkaFILE site is a tool for propaganda and mis-information, or so it seems, but certainly more trustworthy than a host of UN NGO’s such as Human Rights Watch or Rueters News.
Really, what is the world going to do or say when Israel expands her borders in accordance with the Promise given Abraham in Genesis? I think we’ll see this with our own eyes! I smile in anticipation of their victory!
Welcome back to the fray, David. It’s a target-rich environment and I look forward to your Mid-East insights, esp. with John Kerry at the helm. Still think of you and Attila everytime I read a Scott Wilson post….fish in a barrel.
Wow. MC great to hear from you again! I’ll probably write about our dysfunctional state too.
Welcome, David! You were missed – I used to read your blog and look forward to doing so again.
Nice to hear from you, JoAnne. Always nice to know I had readers I wasn’t aware of before.
Looking forward to your posts, David!
MSNBC picks up David Axelrod (as Greenwald says, “I wonder: does someone who goes from being an … Obama campaign official to being an MSNBC contributor even notice that they changed jobs?”) and LI picks up David Gerstman.
Advantage LI.
Thanks Luke. Kind of funny, Howard Kurtz thinks this is a question not a statement.
I was wondering when I would be seeing you pop up again, David. I have missed your blogging.
GW, welcome back to blogging to you too. And Happy Birthday! (a week or so late.)
Your submission to the Watcher’s Council last week (?) was great. I retweeted it.
Reading the posts here, late, and backwards. Welcome, David!