Digby (catching up)

Liberation

The video is shaky, but the brutality is clear.

A slender, black-haired girl is dragged in a headlock through a braying mob of men. Within seconds, she is on the ground in a fetal position, covering her head in her arms in a futile attempt to fend off a shower of stones.

Politics and Pleasure

Watching James Sensenbrenner whine about the cost of this "fishing expedition" (Goodling's testimony)and say "when I was chairman I never issued a subpoena unless I had to" is just too rich coming from one of the rabid impeachment circus managers who promptly went into a coma for the first six years of the Bush administration. Indeed, it's quite a show watching all of those mighty House Managers who were once warriors in defense of the "rule 'o law" when illicit sex was involved now being very, very disturbed by the prospect of this DOJ "witchhunt" against fine upstanding Republicans.

Risky Business

I've been reluctant to write about the Iraq funding "deal" because it's just so depressing --- and yet so predictable. Democrats don't have the votes, which we always knew. But they apparently also didn't feel the desire to fight it out over the summer anyway and keep the pressure on those GOP moderates in difficult races. I honestly don't think it was that risky. Bush's approval ratings keep going down, down down and this way is getting more unpopular by the day. And even if there is no chance of a veto-proof Senate, you have to keep advancing the argument in an environment like this.

Shhhh

I know we're not supposed to bring up this topic, but it's becoming so common that I think we probably need to have a little public chat about it.

From Rick Perlstein:

Stop it, stop it right now. Stop pretending Islamicists - or environmentalists or animal rights activists (which are, ridiculously, federal law enforcement and non-governmental terrorism-watchers' next most obsessive concern) - are the only imminent terrorist threats to our nation. We now know that students at Liberty University were ready to napalm protesters at Jerry Falwell's funeral. One of the suspects is a soldier at Fort Benning. [UPDATE: Falwell gave the kid a scholarship.]

Welcome Back To Bizarroworld

The more I think about this the more stunned I am. Back in 2002 I wrote somewhere else (can't find it unfortunately) that there was no margin in any of the presidential contenders voting for the Iraq resolution. I understood they were leary of doing it after the first Gulf War went so well and they all had egg on their faces for opposing it --- some of them had been unable to run in 1992 because of it. I got it.

xxxx