This one may wind up in the print version at some point. I did a speaking gig out at Lancaster Christian School last week, which might not be as strange as it sounds; it’s actually the second year I’ve been out there, one of the teacher reads the strange things I write in the newspaper, […]

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For the rock and roll historians out there, Crawdaddy! magazine has made an online comeback, where you can even read some classic pieces by founder Paul Williams. Williams, among other things, wrote the liner notes to the Beach Boys boxed set “Good Vibrations,” one of the best pop/rock reviews I think I’ve read.
(h/t Metafilter)

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Vice President Dick Cheney gave a commencement address to cadets at West Point last weekend and said something stone amazing. And in doing so he articulated a sentiment that I think is widespread on the right, one which we might hope is not widespread among the people in his audience.
“As Army officers on duty in the […]

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Via Ross Douthat (himself via Brink Lindsey), a campaign commercial the Democrats might run with a few minor tweaks in ‘08:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5fE2tXxBOw

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Building on this information from earlier today, Josh Marshall puts his finger right on it:
Talking about drawdowns in late 2007 or by the end of 2008 is basically a joke, in other words. Countries can really only think on forty or fifty year horizons. So what this means is that the US military presence in […]

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See, now, this type of thing is enough to turn me into a cynic.
Officials in East Hempfield Township, who frankly have enough to worry about within their own borders, are getting all bent out of shape over the possible construction of a shopping center in neighboring Manheim Township. Well, I suppose they have to get […]

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This isn’t exactly the kind of thing that fills you with confidence, is it?

Caption: State police Sgt. Greg Riek leads a team of state police cadets down Peach Lane this morning, before beginning a final search of the grounds around the Haines’ home and their neighbors’ yards in Manheim Township.
(Richard Hertzler, New Era)

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Bush envisions U.S. presence in Iraq like S. Korea:
President George W. Bush would like to see a lengthy U.S. troop presence in Iraq like the one in South Korea to provide stability but not in a frontline combat role, the White House said on Wednesday.
The United States has had thousands of U.S. troops in South […]

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USA Today:
The federal government recorded a $1.3 trillion loss last year - far more than the official $248 billion deficit - when corporate-style accounting standards are used, a USA TODAY analysis shows.
The loss reflects a continued deterioration in the finances of Social Security and government retirement programs for civil servants and military personnel. The loss […]

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File this under something I didn’t know:
SDS is back.
That’s SDS as in, “Students for a Democratic Society” - the outfit which, in the 1960s, represented maybe the apogee of left-wing student radicalism. It dissolved in acrimony about 1969 - though not before giving birth to the Weathermen - but now it is being revived, and in […]

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I’m not quite sure why this is turning into Winger Tuesday, and I certainly wish it weren’t. Nonetheless…
A colleague sitting across from me received a phone call from a right-wing reader today. Actually, it was a ranting, two-minute-plus right message left on her voice mail (”plus” because the rant exceeded the amount of time available for the message) […]

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This one’s for you, usedmeat…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZHVkJ1wVFM

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Dowd nails it (TimesDelete):
The president is on a continuous loop of sophistry: We have to push on in Iraq because Al Qaeda is there, even though Al Qaeda is there because we pushed into Iraq. Our troops have to keep dying there because our troops have been dying there. We have to stay so the […]

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Spoke with Steve Huff from CrimeBlog last weekend for the story on the continued spat between the DA and the coroner. Interesting guy; has been following these kind of crimes for quite a while, and when you do that you develop a certain perspective, perhaps a certain type of expertise.
I won’t reprint his hunches here, […]

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Gavin at Sadly, No! on the “Christian terrorist” who apparently planned to bomb the Westboro Baptist nuts at Jerry Falwell’s funeral:
Honestly, in contemplating Fred Phelps getting blown up by a right-wing terrorist while waving anti-gay placards at Jerry Falwell’s funeral, ‘a tragedy averted’ is not the phrase that comes most readily to mind.

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Interesting. The New Republic (registration required) suggests the future of the Republican Party is Rudy Giuliani - specifically because “cultural conservatives” are fading, and are being tossed overboard by a GOP elite that always viewed the issues of abortion and gay marriage as “distasteful but necessary tools to win elections, easily disposable once they no […]

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“Enhanced interrogation techniques”:
A reader writes:
You asked
“Second, of course, the hideous term: “enhanced interrogation techniques.’ I’m not sure where exactly this came from…”
Well, “enhanced interrogation techniques” is a fairly decent English translation of the Gestapo euphemism “verschaerfte Vernehmung” which was the code word for torture in the Third Reich. Look it up.
The dictionary confirms […]

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This comes by way of Steve Clemons’ “Washington Note” blog, which is well-written and well-connected. Though in this case, we’ll hope maybe its connections are wrong.
Because Clemons yesterday reported something many have long suspected: That it is vice president Dick Cheney who is the administration’s leading advocate of war with Iran, in this case to the extent […]

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Those who, on LancasterOnline, worry that the media in this county has been manipulated in terms of how it/we have reported the convention center issue might enjoy reading Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com (you’ve got to sit through the commercial, well worth the wait); he consistently addresses the same subject on a broader level, and had a […]

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Andrew Sullivan parses some amazing numbers from NY Times/CBS News poll:
I don’t think even the GOP alarmists expected this:
More Americans — 72 percent — now say that “generally, things in the country are seriously off on the wrong track” than at any time since the Times/CBS News poll began asking the question in 1983. The […]

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