Unqualified Offerings

Surely we can do better!
The Totalitarian Temptation from Heraclitus to Hudson Trail Outfitters
The Totalitarian Temptation from Plato to Piggly Wiggly
The Totalitarian Temptation from Aristotle to Anthropologie
The Totalitarian Temptation from Lucretius to Lane Bryant
The Totalitarian Temptation from the Venerable Bede to Bailey Banks and Biddle
The Totalitarian Temptation from Epictetus to Eddie Bauer
The Totalitarian Temptation from Marcus [...]

The Stiftung writes about “the incomprehensible scale of wasteful, stupid, possibly illegal if not illegitimate contracting that has gone on” within the intelligence community in general and the Department of Homeland Security in particular.
IOZ writes about “the CEO president.” (Remember him?)

By Thoreau
This week’s science news involves those adorable creatures known as penguins: It appears that 36 million years ago the tropical areas of Peru were populated by giant penguins, standing taller than today’s Emperor Penguins (subjects of “March of the Penguins”). Penguins do exist far north of Antarctica today, but they’re smaller, and this [...]

By Mona
.
Americablog has video and sums up NBC’s David Gregory, who tsk-tsks that one simply needs to learn to understand that Ann makes oh-so-very serious points, and it is short-sighted for Elizabeth Edwards or anyone else to focus on Ann’s hateful rhetoric:

Because, you know, if you strip away the fact that [...]

By Mona
.
HTML Mencken reports on a very special football game, in which my personal fave of all the depraved neocons, Michael Ledeen, throws a penalty flag, and Andy McCarthy rends his garment jersey whilst declaring the End is Near.

BTW, the hot rumor is that Sheik Rishawi has vamoosed, Chalabi style, with $75 million in American funds intended for the Anbar Salvation Council. I haven’t seen this reported from multiple sources, though, so I’m not sure I believe it yet. I never believed that Baby Sadr fled to Iran over the winter either, but [...]

More on the Higazy case, the storm-petrel of everything since.
Joanne Mariner on Findlaw. The article dates from August 2002. At that point the judge told the FBI to stop dragging out its internal investigation and report results by Halloween of that year. Your nut graph:
Higazy claimed that the FBI agent conducting the interrogation threatened him. [...]

It’s a sin of pride, but rereading that 2002 item I have to ask:
WHY DIDN’T YOU PEOPLE LISTEN TO ME?????????????

LizardBreath finds an officer willing to call bullshit before he’s safely out of the service. Way back in January 2002, I wrote
The right question is not, Are terrorists ordinary criminals? They question is, Are terrorist suspects terrorists? Clearly, the answer will be Yes sometimes and No some other times. Note that this is exactly congruent [...]

Sullivan: “But what marks conservatism is extreme prudence in initiating conflict, a principle I foolishly rushed past in the wake of 9/11.”
I’ve said many times I wasn’t going to make a fetish of mea culpas. This one is entirely sufficient for my purposes. If I were a real liberal I’d probably still be personally cheesed [...]