Unqualified Offerings

Prediction: If the White House runs true to form then, once Paul Wolfowitz finally leaves the World Bank, the President will nominate Shaha Riza to replace him.

Who predicted that Atrios would have the most generous “Falwell’s dead” post by a liberal? I wouldn’t have done half so well.

By Thoreau
In my thread about the war czar, Leonard pointed out the similarity to the drug czar.
I’m going to make a prediction: If the war czar is destined to be as successful as the drug czar, then jihadists will soon be setting off bombs in our cities with impunity.

By Thoreau
The latest issue of PLoS (Public Library of Science) Biology is out. A couple of highlights:
1) A critical look at environmental education.
2) A discussion of life and the second law of thermodynamics. In a nutshell, there’s no contradiction between life and thermodynamics.

By Thoreau
We’re all familiar with the idiotic opposition to FDA approval for HPV vaccines*: Supposedly, allowing teenage girls to receive a vaccine against a potentially deadly STD (HPV is implicated in a significant number of cervical cancer cases) will cause them to become promiscuous. Because, really, who doesn’t remember being told by his [...]

By Thoreau
We now have a war czar.
President Bush has chosen Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, the Pentagon’s director of operations, to oversee the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan as a “war czar” after a long search for new leadership, administration officials said Tuesday.
In the newly created position, Lute would serve as an assistant to the president [...]

By Mona
A host of DoJ lawyers — including then-Attorney General John Ashcroft — nearly resigned. Because they believe in the rule of law.
It might be recalled that when in December of ‘05 the NYT revealed that the Bush Administration was engaged in eavesdropping on the electronic communications of U.S. persons without [...]

Jacob Hornberger reiterates a prescription so basic that too often I don’t bother to issue it:
That’s why the libertarian paradigm on foreign policy and civil liberties is so critically important. By restoring the principles of a limited-government republic, libertarianism provides a way out of the morass into which the pro-empire, pro-interventionist paradigm has plunged the [...]

By Mona
If Bush-worshipper and GOP mouthpiece John Hinderaker is correct that: “[Chuck] Hagel is widely despised within the party, and the last poll I saw had him at 1% among Republicans,” has it not dawned on this marvel of political sophistication that the reasons hardcore Republicans hate Hagel would also explain [...]

First Lieutenant Andrew J. Bacevich Jr. is dead. He was the son of Andrew J. Bacevich, retired lieutenant-colonel and fierce critic of the Iraq War specifically and militarism generally. The indifference of the world can look like cruelty. Please spare a thought for Professor Bacevich and his and his son’s family today.
(Thanks to Matt Barganier [...]