Over the past week I posted an expanded and rewritten version of the speech I gave at Susan Vass’s fourth annual Commenter Conference this past August — Four Illuminations in the Life of an Online Scribe. I am afraid I enjoyed it more than readers did could easily have expanded it to cover the four trials featuring Somali defendants that I have covered over the past ten years. They too have also produced illuminations for me. In case you missed any of the scintillating parts, please check them out:
• Illumination 1 (the Star Tribune)
• A Digression (Barlett and Steele)
• Illumination 2 (Rathergate)
• Illumination 3 (Keith Ellison)
• Illumination 4 (Ilhan Omar)
“Illumination Rounds” is the title of a chapter in Michael Herr’s the Vietnam War reportage Michael Herr collected in Dispatches (1977), still in print after all these years. I read the seven chapters of the book as they appeared in periodicals back in the day. “Illumination Rounds” was first published in New American Review #7 (1969).














