Unqualified Offerings

Dueling statements. The Standard. TNR. The Standard again. What we don’t have is an on-the-record statement by a named military official or by Beauchamp himself that Beauchamp has signed a sworn recantation. So we’re not even in a position to speculate whether the recantation is truer than the original stories because we don’t know whether [...]

The Stiftung has opened a virtual gallery to house the permanent collection of his web graphics. At some point I learned not to read The Bunker through Google Reader because, usually, the images did not convey, and they’re a genuine bonus.

Meanwhile, let me be the first to predict that Mike Huckabee will be the Republican nominee for President – or close to the first. He scores high on likeability. He’s conservative as such things are defined today, with a longer track record of support for Christian Right issues than the current front-runners. The Mormon and [...]

I think Kevin Drum is right:
The audience for presidential debates is still small, but obviously it’s growing as we get closer to the primaries. And a lot of people who have vague, media-fueled recollections of Hillary as a conniving, ball-busting uber liberal, are starting to watch these debates and realize that…..she seems pretty reasonable. Pretty [...]

One benefit of the glorious mess that is John From Cincinnati is, it’s got me listening to Joe Strummer’s post-Clash music with the Mescaleros for the first time. It’s good stuff! Surprisingly, well, jammie – hell it’s not too far from the 18-minute “Minstrel Boy” to a cut on the Tales from Topographic Oceans tribute [...]

For UO readers who are still committed to party politics, The Editors names a bunch of Dem representatives begging for primary challengers next year. While there are a fair amount of red-staters, including some Deep South districts, there are also some intermountain, northern-tier and coastal-state reps as well.

By Thoreau
Two interesting articles to mention today:
1) A Pakistani physics professor offers a critique of the state of science in the Islamic world. I’m not sure that broad-brush critiques are completely fair and applicable, even when they come from the inside, but it’s an interesting read, and many of his points seem accurate. [...]

By Thoreau
The Washington Post starts off a story on Basra with this headline:

As British Leave, Basra Deteriorates
Violence Rises in Shiite City Once Called a Success Story

What they don’t get is that if the absence of violence was contingent on foreign occupation then it was never really a success story! A successful city is [...]

By Thoreau

Ed Albaugh,
Elevator Repairman
“You won’t need to eavesdrop to hear this: I voted for you assholes because you said you were against shit like this.”
Furthermore, as another Onion commenter pointed out, the NSA will get to listen in–for free–on phone sex that he’s paying good money for.  Totally not fair!

The OC Register’s Alan Bock, who has been jousting with the national security state for many years longer than I have, is finally doing it on a blog. Welcome, Alan: We’ve been waiting.