A lovely bit of news to start your day

Embattled Attorney General Resigns.

You know, I remember when Ashcroft resigned, that I wondered how exactly the administration was going to find someone worse. It didn’t take too long to find out — they hired a replacement whose biggest qualification had to do with writing memos justifying the use of torture. And this guy has really lived up to that; he’s spent the past two years expanding executive power beyond what King George ever claimed, aiding and abetting the administration to evade and ignore the law, lying outright to Congress whenever not under oath, and when under oath telling things which have only the most technical relationship to the truth, and working tirelessly, day in and day out, to dismantle the Constitution and replace it with an unquestionable single-man rule.

Published in: on August 27, 2007 at 09:37  Comments (16)  
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Basic investigative reporting

posted this lovely little find:

An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she says hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City. At least 175 people were slaughtered on Tuesday and more than 200 wounded when four suicide truck bombs targeted people from an ancient religious sect in northern Iraq, officials said. (AFP/Wissam al-Okaili)

So, What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Actually, there are two things — one obvious, one subtle. See if you can catch them both.

Why source-checking is important

Published in: on August 15, 2007 at 14:28  Comments (2)  
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Sheesh.

In order to counter allegations that his foreign policy stance is naïve, today Barack Obama threatened to invade Pakistan.

Boy, he sure countered that allegation. Does he intend to conquer and hold a country of 157 million people, largely in hard-to-access mountain regions? Or is the plan simply to invade hostile areas like Waziristan, so that we can drive the people there slightly further into the mountains (which they’ve practiced holding by guerilla warfare for the past three thousand years or so) and in the process destabilize and delegitimize the central government until Musharraf’s fragile grip on power fails, and the increasingly strong Islamist movement in the Pakistani military takes over?

I do like him as a “fresh face…” but seeing him on the last debate, he came across as an amateur. If he wants to get serious support in the primary, he’s going to need to fill in his foreign policy background with some real understanding, not half-assed grandstanding.

Published in: on August 1, 2007 at 12:16  Comments (8)  
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