In the most recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll, Democrats are still favored to reclaim the House this November. Here’s how it breaks down:
Not surprisingly, 81 percent of self-described liberals said they would vote for the Democrat. Among moderates, though, 56 percent backed a Democrat in their district and almost a quarter of conservatives � 24 percent [...]

Part of me wants to see our self-restraint maintained; we have the keys to Hell’s door, a Pandora’s Box that is best kept shut. Another part of me wants to see our civilization’s enemies mercilessly vanquished. We can’t have it both ways forever.

The Plame Game…it continues…
From the AP:
WASHINGTON (AP) – The CIA officer whose identity was leaked to reporters sued Vice President Dick Cheney, his former top aide and presidential adviser Karl Rove on Thursday, accusing them and other White House officials of conspiring to destroy her career.
In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court, Valerie Plame [...]

Greetings. My name’s Tom Strong, formerly of The Yellow Line and wheat think, and I’m here to write about food politics and agricultural policy.
Food politics is a hot subject nowadays – consider the recent success of Fast Food Nation, Super Size Me, and The Omnivore’s Dilemma. It’s also a great point for examining [...]

Jose Padilla, the alleged “dirty bomber” who was held for three years as an “enemy combatant”, has been given permission to personally view classified documents so he can plan a defense in his upcoming trial.
I was all set to write an interesting post about the tension between security and defendant rights in terrorism cases, until [...]

“We could also electrify this wire with the kind of current that would not kill somebody, but it would simply be a discouragement for them to be fooling around with it. We do that with livestock all the time.”
- Rep. Steve King (R-IA) talking about his border solution.
(Watch the video)

I’ve heard quite a few people, both here and elsewhere, say that economists across the board are against raising the minimum wage. Well, here are 562 (PDF) who think it should be increased.
Also, here’s a minimum wage issue guide from the Economic Policy Institute with links, facts and figures.
Read some of this over and tell [...]

Oh yes, it’s our “blogiversary.” What an awful word.
Not many of you may remember back in the olden days, but Donklephant started out as a blog in the now defunct Weblog Empire network. Under the watchful eye of blog impressario Duncan Riley, we were launched to much fanfare (press release, links on Instapundit and Yahoo!, [...]

Hezbollah guerrillas stage rocket attack within Israeli territory in response to Israel’s bombing of a Beirut airport.
Two rockets struck the northern Israeli port of Haifa Thursday as the crisis over the abduction of two Israeli soldiers deepened.
The missiles were fired from inside Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces said, in a sharp escalation of [...]

Says AMac from Winds of Change, on this thread at Mighty Middle — reversing his own earlier opinion, that the SWIFT revelations in the New York Times et. al. had damaged national security, after reading what a respected finance expert at the Counterterrorism Blog had to say.
As Michael points out, the news here isn’t only [...]

The political operatives on both sides who are founding Hotsoup.com, a glossy attempt to co-opt the anti-partisan groundswell, must have ulterior motives. And they do: to create a clubby atmosphere in which to reach out to “opinion drivers” —
Hotsoup’s founders estimate there are 30 million such opinion drivers scattered across the country [...]

The British health minister, Caroline Flint, included the idea among others proposed in a review of health regulations.
Health Minister Caroline Flint told MPs she was minded to introduce a “clear and specific ban” on the use of new techniques to choose one gender of baby.
Allowing parents to pick sex for reasons such as “balancing” the [...]

The General Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, released a report yesterday assessing the U.S. strategy in Iraq. You can read the abstract online, and download the full report in pdf format.
Their conclusion: it’s a mess, and we’re still following a plan based on assumptions that haven’t been true for awhile: that security would [...]

Answering one of my worries about the sudden embrace of the Geneva Conventions by the Bush administration, there’s some good news.
But first, some context.
The detainees are not being afforded the full protection that a uniformed soldier would get from the Conventions. What they do get is Article 3, which mandates certain minimum standards that must [...]

… exaggerated?
Whose demise is being conjectured?
Castro’s that is.
So, whether rumors of Castro’s death are true, this time or not, the question really is …
What happens when Castro really does pass away?
Is it a case of where a larger than life character (and sometimes caricature) is removed, the cause goes with [...]

Just curious …
Is the Plame Game still viewed as real news?
What I’d really like to know is how much the entire investigation cost taxpayers — now that would be real news :- )

Althouse has a post on Title IX and the new phenomenon of men being in the minority on college campuses. When colleges add or emphasize sports teams to attract more male students, they can be accused of violating Title IX, not providing equal athletic opportunities for women. There are many interesting comments. [...]

Late Breaking News …
Train blasts in Indian financial capital of Mumbai.
U.S. officials said the blasts followed a pattern of initiated by two Islamic terrorist groups — Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed — who focus on the territory of Kashmir, whose control is disputed by India and Pakistan.
Kashmiri separatists were blamed for twin car-bombings that killed 53 people [...]

Leave it to the Times to take positive economic news and put a negative spin on it.
What starts out as subtle needling i.e. Bush announced the news versus a lower level official …
Bush himself announced the deficit — a task that has in the past been left to lower-ranking administration officials. The figures show that [...]

While it’s very easy to say “too little, too late,” I think this has the chance of really turning around the WOT. Not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon…
From the Financial Times:
The White House confirmed on Tuesday that the Pentagon had decided, in a major policy shift, that all detainees held in US military [...]