I got interested [courtesy of Instapundit] in Eugene Volokh's criticism of Slate's "Bushism" transcript quote, mainly because I deal all the time with stenographic transcripts. You know, depositions and such.

So I called a friend who is a court reporter/stenographer, and asked for an opinion of the "offending" transcription. My friend's response: stenographers often use their judgment when there is a misstatement or "space marker" in a particular bit of testimony. Thus, if a word is cut off, or if the speaker says "uh," the stenographer often will cut the blip, if it does not appear to be substantively significant. I can say that such non-substantive cuts are done routinely, in almost every deposition transcript I have ever read.

My review of the president's statement suggests -- to me -- that cutting the following: "the c--" changes the substance of his statement not one whit. My friend agrees, and concludes with the comment that whoever is wasting their time criticizing the corrected transcript should "get a job, because he needs to be doing something important."

I agree, especially because I have just spent 45 minutes thinking about this, talking to my friend, and posting this comment. I guess I'm one of those people to whom my friend was referring.

UPDATE: I fixed the two grammatical errors correctly identified by the commenter. I'm embarassed by them, especially because I hate it when writers wrongly switch off "there" and "their." My only explanation is that I was posting in a hurry, and Blogger is not the easiest interface for proofing. Apologies to all, and thanks to the commenter for pointing out the goofs.

Tom Hayden tries to sound like a statesman, but ends up looking like a dupe:

But the roots of this virulent spiral of vengeance lie in the permanent occupation of Palestinian territories by the overconfident Israelis. As it did in 1982, Israel now admits that the war is not about prisoner exchanges or cease-fires; it is about eradicating Hezbollah and Hamas altogether, if necessary by an escalation against Syria or even Iran. It should be clear by now that the present Israeli government will never accept an independent Palestinian state, but rather harbors a colonial ambition to decide which Palestinian leaders are acceptable.

"Palestinean territories"? Define, please. What idiots like Hayden continually fail to understand is that to the Arabs, "Palestinean" or "occupied" territories means all of Israel. Their complete rejection of the 2000 Camp David proposal, resulting Intifada, rockets from Gaza, killings and hostages from Gaza, rockets from Lebanon, and killings and hostages from Lebanon all prove to anyone actually paying attention that the Arabs don't want peaceful co-existence; they want Israel GONE.

All they've got to do is leave Israel alone, and all would be hunky-dory. Israel is no more imperialistic that WE are.

This blogger just got fired as a lawyer from the big firm of Reed Smith. While she denies that her blogging was contributory to her termination, she does say: "But there's more to talk about here than just the easy answer. Kevin O'Keefe's client base and several thousand others notwithstanding, Evan Schaeffer is probably correct when he says that 'outsiders' (including most of the legal profession) 'remain skeptical'" about blogging.

As a small firm lawyer/administrator, I'm always interested in new and different ways to market. The continuing question for years has been whether Internet usage has reached such a critical mass as to make it a potent marketing tool, i.e., driving cases to the Internet advertiser/marketer. Here's a fascinating new tool for marketing, and a young criminal defense lawyer who apparently is using it to her advantage.

She's also got a blog, apparently, and has been positively reviewed by Professor Bainbridge.