Capital Punishment, Presidential Bubbles, Wikipedia Authors and Iraqi Elections

The midnight Monday execution of former gang member and convicted murder Stanley "Tookie" Williams (today's second most-discussed blog personality) forced a focused but short-lived discussion about the death penalty (which was today's No. 28 key phrase). Law School Unconfidential agrees that clemency should not have been granted; the Christian Prophet blogger finds hope and forgiveness for Williams and others elsewhere.

A BlogPulse trend graph looks at blogger references in past months to two difficult social issues: "torture" and "capital punishment":




The Bush Bubble?
Politics takes some weird turns today, with Newsweek's look the boy-in-the-bubble phenomenon applied to President Bush (today's 13th most-shared link). The blogger at Studio Dave calls it "an excellent study of the president's insularity"; Professor Bainbridge offers insight into groupthink mentality and how it plays out in protective environments like the bunkered White House.

Wikipedia under scrutiny
And remember John Siegenthaler, a former USA Today editorialist who discovered a fake biography about himself on Wikipedia? The writer of that fictitious biography has been discovered...and fired (today's 16th most-shared link). He's Brian Chase, no longer an employee for a delivery company in Tennessee. In a letter to Siegenthaler, he said he thought Wikipedia was a "gag" site and that he'd written the fake biography as a joke. Guess who the joke's on?

And attention turns to Iraq
A blog called Iraq the Model shows up among today's blog posts (No. 4) as Iraqi voters again go to the polls to elect legislators. Today's second most-shared link discusses an ABC poll of Iraqi citizens which shows a desire for unity but deep divisions still within the war-torn country. And speaking of tensions, another hot story today involves Israel's intentions toward Iran.