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<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="http://blog.newsweek.com/utility/FeedStylesheets/rss.xsl" media="screen"?><rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/" xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"><channel><title>The Filter: August 15, 2008</title><link>http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/stumper/archive/2008/08/15/the-filter-august-15-2008.aspx</link><description>A round-up of this morning's must-read stories. CONVENTIONAL NONSENSE (Jack Shafer, Slate) Why do the parties throw their meaningless conventions? As Andrew Ferguson wrote in the Weekly Standard four years ago, the no-news extravaganza of a convention</description><dc:language>en</dc:language><generator>CommunityServer 2.1 SP2 (Debug Build: 2.18)</generator></channel></rss>