Slain Pakistani governor retweeted my brother in law

I was reading the Twitter feed of the fearless, assassinated governor of the Punjab province, Salman Taseer. He seemed like quite the technically-savvy politician.

Just three days ago, Taseer retweeted a status update from my brother in law, David Swanson, sent on New Years Day:

@SalmaanTaseer Salmaan Taseer
And not iin 2011 either RT @marvisirmed: Sweet na! RT @davidcnswanson: The United States has not launched any new wars all year

Pakistan’s increasing instability worries me greatly, and the U.S. military has lost whatever clout it used to have there. I fear Pakistan’s troubles will boil over in the next few years. Time to try a different approach, and fast.

Smoking in Parks interviews


As I mentioned yesterday, I did two interviews for the Smoking in Parks (in addition to the News and Observer’s).

The News 14 interview with Jessica Cervantez was posted yesterday afternoon and came out nice with the exception that my name was not mentioned during the interview.

The WPTF interview came out well, too. The interviewer took perhaps 3 minutes of my time to discuss the issue and didn’t ask any biased questions. I spoke calmly and with authority, which I think conveyed that this issue is no big deal. I was even impressed that our Voice over IP phone connection sounded fantastic. The clip aired during their next top-of-the-hour news update, where their newscaster repeated nearly everything I had said verbatim before playing the clip of the rest of what I said.

I laughed when the newscaster twice referred to me as “Councilman Turner” on the air. I admit I liked how it sounded, though!