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Maddie on The option - the option - the public wants options!
Thomas Nephew on “Law and the Long War,” by Benjamin Wittes - a blog discussion
Bill Day on “Law and the Long War,” by Benjamin Wittes - a blog discussion

Last Chance for Health Reform (Starr, The American Prospect)

Starr claims that "[n]either the progressive nor the anti-abortion House Democrats are making any sense in threatening to kill the Senate bill."

Palin Crossed Border For Canadian Health Care (Stein, HuffPo)

"We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada," Palin said in her first Canadian appearance since stepping down as governor of Alaska. "And I think now, isn't that ironic?"

The Limits of Rahmism (Baker, NYTimes Mag)

“I’ve been in a White House before when we lost both the House and the Senate in ’94,” he said, according to notes taken separately by two people in the room. “In about 12 hours, we’re all going to be stupid. Like Axe says, you’re never as smart as they say you are when you win, and you’re not as stupid as they say you are when you lose. We were smart before. Now we’ll be stupid.” Focus on the "I've been in the White House before when" part: Rahm was stupid then, he's stupid now, he's been stupid all along.

FPL Experiments With Solar Thermal at Gas-Fired Power Plant - NYTimes.com

"When it is completed by the end of the year, this vast project will be the world’s second-largest solar plant. But that is not its real novelty. The solar array is being grafted onto the back of the nation’s largest fossil-fuel power plant, fired by natural gas. It is an experiment in whether conventional power generation can be married with renewable power in a way that lowers costs and spares the environment."

Cops vs. Kids in New York City Schools (Herbert, NYTimes)

"These are all incidents that are familiar, or should be familiar, to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who went out of his way to demand control of the public schools, and Mr. Kelly, who is in charge of the police and the school safety officers. But we don’t hear much from them about the abuse of children in the public schools. They’ll crow at the drop of a hat about crime going down. But when the abuse of innocent children is up for discussion, their silence is something to behold."

Who Would Want Credit For Iraq? (Larison, The Am.Conservative)

"It is bad enough that our government unleashed this hell on people who had never actually done America any harm, but it is unconscionable that any of us celebrate what has been done as if it were something good and worthwhile."

How Facebook Was Founded (Carlson, Business Insider)

"But, naturally, the possibility that the hard drive contained additional evidence set inquiring minds wondering what those emails and IMs revealed. Specifically, it set inquiring minds wondering again whether Mark had, in fact, stolen the Winklevoss's idea, screwed them over, and then ridden off into the sunset with Facebook." (He settled for $65M, so what we're learning is the Winklevosses may have settled for less than they could have gotten.) But Zuckerberg also proved willing and able to hack people's accounts using facebook data -- 5 years ago, but still.

Courting Fear (Alexander - Slate review of Courting Disaster by Marc Thiessen)

"But if you're not an expert on a subject, shouldn't you interview experts before expressing an opinion? Instead, Thiessen relies solely on the opinions of the CIA interrogators who used torture and abuse and are thus most vulnerable to prosecution for war crimes. That makes his book less a serious discussion of interrogation policy than a literary defense of war criminals."

Rove Protects the Rear (Corn, Mother Jones)

"Mother Jones has produced a timeline that lists the false Bush administration assertions. And to remind Rove—and book reviewers—here's a limited sampling of notable whoppers, reported in my books and elsewhere."

The revision thing: A history of the Iraq war, told entirely in lies (Sam Smith, Harper's Magazine)

"Once again, we were defending both ourselves and the safety and survival of civilization itself. September 11 signaled the arrival of an entirely different era. We faced perils we had never thought about, perils we had never seen before. For decades, terrorists had waged war against this country. Now, under the leadership of President Bush, America would wage war against them. It was a struggle between good and it was a struggle between evil."

“It’s an absurd situation”

Posted by Thomas Nephew on July 2nd, 2009

Via Larisa Alexandrovna (”atLargely”), I learn that former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer thinks the only way we’ll be safer is if many of us die. Media Matters provides this clip of newly confirmed psychopath Scheuer’s remarks to known psychopath Glenn Beck on FOX News.

SCHEUER: It’s an absurd situation, again — only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary.

BECK, nodding: Which is why I was thinking this weekend that if I were him that would be the *last* thing I would do right now.