Unqualified Offerings

Jim Macdonald provides many Blackwater stories for you in one convenient place.
As to the source of this item’s title, I’ve always liked the transition best:
His comrades fought beside him
Van Owen and the rest
but of all the Thompson gunners
Roland was the best
so the CIA decided
they wanted Roland dead . . .
The suggestion that excellence itself infuriated [...]

Sometimes I think Kevin Drum is the internet’s greatest libertarian blogger without realizing it.

Bill Clinton looks old! But he’s very good on the “bait and switch” of the Boo-Hoo-Hoo-Someone-Called-a-Grown-Man-a-Name kerfuffle. Why is he so much better on the topic than most currently serving Democrats? Maybe because he doesn’t have to worry about losing votes.

Sullivan finds data rebutting the contrarian “Does pork really liberate local knowledge of local needs?” notion I floated a couple weeks ago.

By Thoreau
I’ve sometimes said that if the government is big enough you can blame it for anything. You can find a policy that, if taken in isolation, would produce effect A, and then find some policy that, if taken in isolation, would produce the opposite of effect A.
I wonder if we could find a [...]

Brain-eating, unstoppable amoebae in lakes.
I say, it’s just over two people a year in the entire country. Since lake swimming is a hell of a lot of fun, and a good way to avoid swimming-pool-induced asthma, I’ll risk it.
Via Polliwog. (Get it? It’s a yolk!)

By Thoreau
We’ve just killed another major Al Qaeda leader. The funeral will be held tomorrow, and will be a double burial. The other deceased being mourned is the latest Spinal Tap drummer, who tripped over his own foot.
Osama Bin Laden is currently advertising for another #3 guy, and said that he seeks an [...]

Maybe the key passage in “A Student’s Guide to Hosting Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week”:
Distributing a petition is an excellent protest tactic for several reasons. First, it is a very easy and cost-effective way to draw attention to the issues at hand. Second, a petition can serve as an advertisement for other events, such as film screenings [...]

Andrew Bacevich chooses the nice way:
The general’s relationships with official Washington remain intact. Yet he has broken faith with the soldiers he commands and the Army to which he has devoted his life. He has failed his country. History will not judge him kindly.
Well, nicer. Passage I should complain about before Silber and IOZ do:
Petraeus [...]

Alex Tabarrok writes about the demonstrated merit of Direct Instruction as a teaching system that doesn’t rely on the sort of star teacher Hollywood makes heartwarming movies about. But he doesn’t seem to extend his analysis of the star teacher problem far enough:
We are supposed to be uplifted by these stories [of heroic teachers] but [...]