Unqualified Offerings

By Mona
It’s old news by now that Republicans are fair weather federalists. But it is still useful to point out their gross hypocrisy; the drug war in general, and medical marijuana in particular, spotlight these GOP snakes for the statists (and sadists) they are. Correctly concludes Balko, my emphasis:
Giuliani and Thompson claim [...]

By Mona
Sayeth Cole:
Blogging just got easier.
No, with Alan Keyes announcing a presidential bid, blogging just has developed even way more entertainment potential. But that “fish in a barrel” thing will mean competition for best humor, not necessarily “easy” blogging duties.

Two radicals start out with some “the problem is that Henley . . . ” talk and go on from there.
The bigger problem appears to be . . . Tom Hayden.

By Thoreau
Browsing through a short article in the latest print edition of Reason (sorry, can’t find the article on their website yet) I discovered something that may be old news to the rest of you but was new (albeit not surprising) to me: A former Dateline NBC employee is blowing the whistle on unethical [...]

AQI/The Islamic State of Iraq are officially claiming “credit” for the murder of Sheik Abu Risha. From the American perspective, they’re the folks you want to be behind it. All the other possibilities – tribal rivals; Shiite factions; Iranian spies; neo-Baathists – were worm-can-openers. The last thing Iraq needs now is one more war to [...]

I tried the Steamy Kitchen steak-tenderizing method tonight. The test meat was a thick chunk of certified-humane center-cut sirloin from Whole Foods. In some ways this isn’t a fair test, since the cert-humane meat is already tenderer and more flavorful than your typical factory-farmed beef, but damn Michael Vick – he pricked my conscience but [...]

Leila Fadel has a Ramadan dinner with the staff of McClatchy’s Baghdad bureau. Most tellingly to me, Iraq’s comedians are recycling Soviet jokes. Worth reading.

Soccer makes you stupid.
Via Yglesias and Kleiman.

As a standard of comparison, a couple of recent cases of American soldiers performing brilliantly, by my estimation:
1) The performance of American special forces in Afghanistan during Fall 2001. Quickly and successfully moving to coordinate Northern Alliance maneuver on the ground with Air Force and CIA (Predator-drone) air support had an impressive difficulty factor to [...]

I realize that it seems like the race is fairly static, but that’s only because nothing has happened yet.
Alex Whalen being dry, via Sullivan.