Unqualified Offerings

Fanboy Rampage among others has linked the call for submissions for Uncle Sam Comics. Not a trick! Not an imaginary tale! as we used to say.
The obvious thing to note is that these things are really going to blow. The American culture that draws foreigners is not the stuff with the stink of propaganda about […]

Forget finding an honest man. I want him to track down one person who either accepts or rejects the conclusions of both the ad-hoc grievance committee’s report on the Middle East Studies Program at Columbia and the report of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (pdf). […]

This kind of talk makes me nervous, because these days someone’s likely to go and seriously push for it as policy. I think it’s a pretty good whack at what would “work” against obesity. Jane goes very light on the plan’s likely horror-show side effects, a sharp rise in eating disorders and compounded general female […]

Terri Schiavo. We hardly knew ye barely begins to cover it.

Hesiod, obeying the strictures against off-topic comments to the letter, e-mails the link to an International Herald Tribune story about the torture of prisoners in Iraq. I suppose the good news is that it’s not by us:
The Iraqi government’s unprecedented admission that its police officers tortured and killed three Shiite Muslim militiamen while they were […]

Oh no! The Republican Party came in Glenn Reynolds’ mouth!
Republicans like to point out that you have to stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything. The leadership, at least, of the Republican Party has abandoned the principles of small government and federalism that it used to stand for. Trampling traditional limits on governmental […]

In his “Iraq: An Exit Strategy” column yesterday, Justin Raimondo writes, among other things,
Success depends on recognition of the central problem: that the Iraqis are in danger of becoming dangerously dependent on the American military presence. Just as recipients of U.S. government largess at home – welfare recipients both corporate and individual – become part […]

Thomas Nephew is among the most successful. He has the stomach to follow details of our nation’s ongoing commitment to ‘using “coercive techniques” that could “shock the conscience” ‘ and an energy in reporting on them that I just don’t many days. It’s worth making Newsrack a regular stop.

Functional Iraqi democracy is still downloading. Still can’t confirm a mismatch in the codecs, but so far the software will not play on their system.

You fuckers should try going to MIT if you wanna find out what real unhappiness is! Why in my day, we were unhappy 20 miles through the snow uphill - both ways! We didn’t even have dorms, just tarpaper shacks made out of whatever unhappiness sheets we scrounged from the banks of the Charles. We […]

Mothers Against Peeing Standing Up. Via, I hesitate to mention this, Mrs. Offering.

As to the link in question, I feel compelled to say
1. I firmly believe in the moral worth and psychological necessity of tasteless humor;
2. I’m not the author.
Note: If you choose to wade into the comment threads, I can’t help you.
(Via Brain|Crab.)

Destroying the village in order to save it.
UPDATE: The revolution devours its own.
UPDATE: More on our pro-life torturer from Atrios. This part really stands out:
Tierney’s methods of ascertaining this location were rather unconventional. “I would ask God and just get a sense if something was valid or not, and then know if I needed to […]

This could be important. Remember those photos of Giuliana Sgrena’s car that showed it as largely undamaged? They’re all from the front, driver’s side. That’s interesting, because Antiwar.com blog points to an interview with Sgrena in which she says the car as shot at from behind.
Some comments. This does not prove that US troops tried […]

Gary Farber finds a Baltimore Sun story (try “bugmenot90@mailinator.com/bugmenot”) in which
Diana Schaub, a Loyola College professor and adviser to President Bush, is convinced that cloning and embryonic stem cell research are evil. She says this belief was formed, in part, by watching Star Trek.
This is important, for two reasons. First, this is the same “Gary […]

I confess it. Show me a news account of a “joint Iraqi-US operation” and I’ll assume that the US forces did all the heavy lifting, with the Iraqis functioning as either window dressing for very junior partners, most likely either as spotters or perimeter guards. I actually believed that cockamamie story about the Saudi pilot […]

The best caption ever, from the splash page of the Batman story in Detective Comics #37:
THE BATMAN, HAVING LOST HIS WAY ON A LONELY BY-ROAD, STOPS BEFORE A LONE HOUSE TO ASK DIRECTIONS.
Also, man does the early Batman use poison gas a lot. Nonlethal mostly (one vial is described as “deadly” but it doesn’t seem […]

“The theme of the television series, 24, is that our country’s security is in the hands of a bunch of assholes.”
I used to be pretty good at those “The theme of . . . is . . . “essays in ninth grade. Useful skill.
Also, I know that “chatter” is a term that’s been used by […]

If I were in charge of Hell, my top priority would be acquiring the fury of a woman scorned, because that’s my competition.

Gratn Morrison of The Filth, Invisibles, We3 and New X-Men fame has launched a new project for DC called Seven Soldiers of Victory. The high concept is that there will be two “group” issues bookending seven four-issue miniseries, one for each hero. Johanna Draper Carlson somewhat nervously avers that the inaugural issue of The Manhattan […]

I believe I have found the Primordial Plot Hole, in Detective #27 (first appearance of “The Bat-Man”).
Page 4, Panel 3, caption:
JENNINGS, STRYKER’S ASSISTANT, CARRIES ROGERS TO THE BASEMENT OF HIS LABORATORY . . .
Page 4, Panel 6, caption:
. . . AT THAT MOMENT THE “BAT-MAN” LEAPS THROUGH AN OPEN TRANSOM . . . […]

I finally got sensible enough to start following Deadwood this month, and it occurs to me that it makes an interesting bookend with Downfall. Deadwood is about, among other things, the formation of government, and Downfall is substantially about its persistence. You might almost subtitle the movie, “Where anarchy doesn’t come from.” The Nazi regime […]

I’ve insisted that we not rush to judgment on whether Syria was behind the assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafiq Hariri. But the just-released UN report certainly counts as evidence in that direction. It doesn’t settle the issue by any means, but if the reported threats against Hariri by Bashar Assad are accurate, it tells […]