This photo, published in Newsweek this week (accompanying this story), pissed me off.

This is Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman in Iraq late last month, recreating John McCain’s “nonchalant” stroll to a Baghdad market, which is supposed to show us how things in Iraq are improving.
Note helmet, flak jacket and phalanx of soldiers surrounding the good senator.
Lieberman, […]

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Hat tip to Pericles, one of my most persistent critics, who in the thread on the smoking ban said this: “I have to give you credit on this one. You surprised me.”
Thanks, but I don’t necessarily know why that would be.

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The state Senate today passed a smoking ban now being criticized as too soft, too full of compromise. It should have been tougher, proponents say.
It shouldn’t have been passed at all.
I suppose as a good liberal I’m supposed to support smoking bans. But here’s an instance (one of many, actually) where I’m not liberal at […]

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E-mail yesterday from Bill Dedman, the investigative reporter who did the piece for MSNBC on journalists who give; three of the journalists profiled in his article have gotten in trouble for doing what they did.
One, a TV reporter from Omaha who not only supported a local congressional candidate but posted photos of her standing with […]

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So speaks talk radio, which drives the GOP bus.

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With Rita Bishop’s departure, the School District of Lancaster begins yet another search for a superintendent. My guess is that they will do what they did prior to hiring Bishop; look for a rising superstar.
That may be the wrong approach.

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TNR’s Johann Hari cruises with the National Review crowd and watches the neocons dis their elders:
“Aren’t you embarrassed by the absence of these weapons?” Buckley snaps at Podhoretz. He has just explained that he supported the war reluctantly, because Dick Cheney convinced him Saddam Hussein had WMD primed to be fired. “No,” Podhoretz replies. “As […]

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Seems to me the really interesting thing about Darth Cheney’s recent claim that his office isn’t part of the executive branch is the degree to which it confirms something we’ve suspected all along:
Cheney runs this show, not Bush.
All along I’ve gotten a laugh out of those who took seriously the notion that Bush was somehow […]

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You knew Fred Thompson’s marital deal was going to be campaign fodder - because really, if he were of the “Democrat Party” Fox News would have been yapping about his “trophy wife” long ago. And, what does that say about character - or his “Hollywood values?”
But now Thompson’s first wife has gone on record supporting […]

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Sullivan on the Washington Post’s excellent investigation showing how Torture Yoo and the Veep “pushed the envelope” on presidential power, including the right to torture:
The only defense by Bush and Cheney against charges of war crimes is that a president definitionally cannot commit war crimes, if he’s acting as he sees fit in the […]

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Every bad guy we fight is now automatically al Qaida.

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Summertime was time to see the Dead. U.S. Blues in Buffalo from July 4, 1989, just two months after my own first show…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOL2ZS0zKmk

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Along Good Drive over the course of the past week, there’s been one of those digital roadside speed indicators - tells you your speed as you pass it. I got sort of a chuckle out of it because I drive Good Drive probably on average once a day, and speeding is almost never an issue […]

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Props where props are due - flanagan posted this in the TalkBack News forum; Rita Bishop is out of here, back to Roanoke where she came from - indeed, she kept her house there while working here in Lancaster, according to the story on Roanoke.com.
Talked to one long-time critic who said she was “ecstatic” at the […]

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Even Jimmy Carter fared better:
The new numbers—a 2 point drop from the last NEWSWEEK Poll at the beginning of May—are statistically unchanged, given the poll’s 4 point margin of error. But the 26 percent rating puts Bush lower than Jimmy Carter, who sunk to his nadir of 28 percent in a Gallup poll in June […]

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Better than nothing, I suppose. But does anyone really think this is going to be enough to stop determined folks who know the future is better here than there?

Caption: National Guardsmen of the 1058th Transportation Company of Massachusetts drive along the U.S.-Mexico border near Calexico, Calif., Thursday. The company finished installing barricades along four miles […]

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I’ve been a gamer for most of my life. I was about 10 years old when we became the first family on the block to have “Pong.” Owned an Atari after that, sort of got out of it during the college years, but picked up a Sega Genesis around 1993 specifically because my brother had […]

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Whatever you think of Michael Moore, it’s clear that his upcoming movie “Sicko” is about to kick-start a major debate over health care in this country. On a related note, I’m told - no link yet - that Pennsylvania Rep. Kathy Manderino, D-Phila, is seeking co-sponsors for a single-payer bill, the “Family and Business Healthcare Security Act,” […]

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…Must… resist… urge….
 Can’t. Turn the volume up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Y73sPHKxw

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Glenn Greenwald, one of several bloggers I read every day (the others being Atrios, Andrew Sullivan and Talking Points Memo), has a new book out in which he examines the impact of the Bush administration’s view of us vs. them, good vs. evil on the administration itself, on the country and on the world.

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