Unqualified Offerings

Finally catching up with McClatchy’s reporting. According to their report yesterday, “American soldiers confiscated perhaps as much as $10 million in U.S. currency from the compound, where the bodies of dead cultists still littered the ground.”
My emphasis.
This being McClatchy, you get more real detail than you do from pretend news organizations like the NYT or [...]

Patrick Cockburn’s writeup of what we should maybe call the First Whatever of Najaf brings the counternarrative most of us learned from Healing Iraq to a wider audience but adds only one intriguing smidge of news for obsessives:
The Iraqi authorities have sealed the site and are not letting reporters talk to the wounded.
Interesting. The Independent’s [...]

posted by Jim
The Republican Party sucks.
The Democratic Party sucks.
Getting played by your sources, so you can say you HAVE sources, sucks.

By Mona
I never thought I’d live to see this. A major party candidate for president — other than a former Libertarian Party member like Ron Paul — waxes aggressively anti-prohibitionist at his campaign web site:
My position on this issue is to face it directly, though other politicians run away from it. I [...]

By Mona
Heartening, that’s what it is, to learn that President Bush pats Congress on the head and permits the poor dears to believe they have some actual authority on the issue of whether and when the United States will go to war. No doubt the citizenry also takes comfort in the [...]

Zeyad has much much more recounting and analysis of local sources on the Najaf . . . whatever it was. Including some tentative stabs at what scarequote-really happened. Excerpt:
Another story that is surfacing on several Iraqi message boards goes like this: A mourning procession of 200 pilgrims from the Hawatim tribe, which inhabits the area [...]

By Thoreau
Contary to what people have been telling us for several years, it’s actually possible for the regular court system and law enforcement officials to deal with ideological fanatics plotting to use bombs. And you don’t even need to use torture! Can you believe it?
I noticed this story in June of 2006, and [...]

By Thoreau
OK, 24 was awesome tonight, for the simple reason that I was left on the edge of my seat wanting more.  Last week I was like “OK, this is weird.”  The week before, I was like “What, nukes again?”  But now they’ve got mysteries, they’ve got multiple storylines being juggled, I was left shouting [...]

Oy. Every, er, Emm Ess Emm report seems to feature: 1) yet one more variation on the identity of the “cult leader”; 2) a characterization of the forces at the orchard that is incompatible with all other accounts; 3) utter credulity when it comes to the statements of Iraqi spokespeople. It’s like the media has [...]

Dagnabit, I got back from the Y just late enough to miss the all-important HOW Peter Petrelli hooked up with the Invisible Man and WHY he seems to think IM can teach him power control. Otherwise, a lot to like in this episode, including the big “get the secret data off dad’s computer” scene.
Also, if [...]