Unqualified Offerings

One of the things I thought Peter Beinart’s recent essay, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” might do is point liberals, Jewish and otherwise, toward a truer and possibly more productive critique of Israel than the “public-relations argument” – that aggressive Israeli policies “only make Israel less secure” by isolating the country from allies [...]

By Thoreau
I support the brave troopers in the field. Fighting them on Tatooine so we don’t have to fight them in New Orleans.

Adding to what Atrios says, we’ve actually reached the point where “Every day is Memorial Day.” You pretty much can’t get through a day of radio, TV and internet without multiple messages that so-and-so “honors the sacrifice of those who serve.” The message might come from the station, from a car-dealership, a personality, or a [...]

By Thoreau
Here’s 23 war casualties to remember.  And here’s another 10.
Honor the dead in uniform, but honor all the other dead as well.  War kills the uniformed and non-uniformed alike.  They all wind up dead because powerful people thought that guns and bombs were an acceptable way to solve problems, and they didn’t care how [...]

By Thoreau
Gary Coleman and Dennis Hopper have both gone to the great casting call in the sky, and they always go in threes.  Who’s next?
Related to a recent topic, I’ll note that of all the excellent actors playing villains and adversaries in the first season of 24 (and the casting of villains was really what [...]

By Thoreau
So, with Rand Paul doing his best to destroy the last tiny little scrap of public respect that libertarianism may have once thought it could pretend to have, I have to join Jim in evaluating my label.  We could start by asking what my vision of utopia is, since libertarianism as a philosophy certainly [...]

By Thoreau
I love everything that Greenwald said here.  Including the 3rd and 4th paragraphs.  If I should ever become President, I’m nominating Greenwald for SCOTUS.

By Thoreau
So, Jack Bauer’s 8 worst days are done.  Let’s talk about the politics of it:
First, I could make a plausible argument that in most seasons (except 4, when America was at the height of crazy) torture was actually not portrayed quite as simplistically as some think:  Often it didn’t work, often the bad guys [...]

By Thoreau
I’ll have a more complete follow-up to the 24 finale later, but for now let me just say that it figures that Charles Logan would manage to screw up even on something as simple as shooting himself.  OTOH, when you’re already brain damaged, I guess it’s easy to mess up even the simplest things.  [...]

Larison sticks up for Paul the Lesser’s ant-war (here and abroad) bona fides:
Paul is not as absolute as his father in criticizing U.S. power projection and anti-terrorist measures. But he remains a staunch opponent of the intrusive government powers typified by the PATRIOT Act and the invasion of Iraq, and he is generally skeptical of [...]