Friday Hope Blogging

A short installment this week, but a sweet one. POGO has a great story about a successful example of "anonymous activism," in which current and former employees of the International Boundary Water Commission (IBWC) brought down the crooked Bush appointee who was running it into the ground:

They mounted a sophisticated campaign to expose how the new head of the commission, Arturo Duran, abused his public office -- everything from hiring his crony friends to buying a Cadillac Escalade with "shale nuance leather seating surfaces" on the taxpayer dime. They did it all ANONYMOUSLY.

Now the El Paso Times reports that President Bush has asked Duran to resign.

The exceedingly good folks at POGO, by the way, published a book a while back called The Art of Anonymous Activism. Looks like an ideal gift for any friends you might have in high places!

A comment on the POGO story alerted me to Anonymous Blogging, a nicely designed new site whose mission is

To produce and translate comprehensive instructions on processes and tools for blogging anonymously and to distribute them to the five countries that are the most dangerous and difficult for bloggers.

Have a look, and help out if you can.

In other news, climate change deniers look a wee bit more stupid than usual today, as we learn that one of their major pieces of "evidence" against global warming turns out to be an artefact of sensor placement. This discovery has temporarily reduced at least one group of anti-environmental lunatics - a class of people who are very seldom at a loss for words - to sullen silence.

Mark Herlong of the George C. Marshall Institute declined to comment. The group, financed by the petroleum industry, has used the data disparities to dispute the views of global warming activists.