The poor conservatives. They spent eight years defending the surveillance state, and screaming that anyone who dared say something against it had something to hide and was probably a traitor.
Now they are the targets of that surveillance. And wouldn’t you know - their opinion has changed!
So what’s the problem?  As the National Review/Bush-following-Right has been telling us […]

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Been getting this one from my winger correspondents all morning: See! Al Qaeda is taunting Obama!
Yes, I think we safely say that if we had elected an old white guy president, Al Qaeda would not be calling him a “house negro.”
The insinuation here being - if we had elected a BIG STRONG MANLY REPUBLICAN, Teh […]

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This isn’t the doctrinaire liberal opinion, of course, but it appears Obama is thinking about retaining Defense Secretary Robert Gates, at least for a while; and on the surface, at least, I think it’s a good idea.
I like the idea of an Obama presidency being all about competency, regardless of party. Keeping Gates, as Spencer […]

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Teh awesome!!!
Glenn Greenwald’s been all over this one for a while, this was always going to happen. In a strange way, I can see the “necessity” of the telecoms cooperating with the administration in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when everyone remained jumpy, and rightfully so. But after a short while, all of this should […]

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Wow. Shell Oil CEO sends a note to all Shell employees - and obviously intended for wider distribution, as well - in effect conceding that peak oil is well on the way, and suggesting the coming decades are going to be very interesting indeed:
Regardless of which route we choose, the world’s current predicament limits our […]

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Great piece by Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek, which actually ties into what Noonan wrote in today’s WSJ, below:
Then came 9/11. Ever since the attacks, the United States has felt threatened and under siege and determined to carve out maximum room to maneuver. But where Americans have seen defensive behavior, the rest of the world has […]

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Juan Cole:
What is clear is that Dick Cheney’s desperate bid to grab Iraq for US petroleum corporations and for proprietary contracts to supply the US is backfiring big time. Instead of reducing the importance of Saudi Arabia, Cheney and the Neocons have magnified it. Instead of bringing online a big new supplier (Iraq) they have […]

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A second history class last evening, with the discussion focusing on the Missouri Compromise, the role slavery played in the crisis and how these were perhaps the first tears in the national fabric that would lead to civil war.
It’s fascinating stuff for a lot of reasons, not the least of which being that when we’re in […]

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The print version last week, of course, was a recycled version of something first appearing in this space, a depressed/depressing assessment of the undeniable fact that no matter what happens in Iraq, whether the “surge” is actually working or not, we are going to keep on surging, we are going to stay the course, regardless.
Oh, […]

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Where’s a Republican when you need him to warn this guy about socialized medicine and advise him to buck up, the economy’s doing great?

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

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Sullivan on what’s going on in Britain. A touch of panic in his voice:
The truth is: it’s amazing we haven’t had more of this kind of thing, especially in the US. When it comes, we need stamina, stoicism and calm. And it’s coming.
Maybe. We’ve kicked over the hornet’s nest, which was a damned dumb thing […]

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