How in hell do we allow this to happen?

Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan’s room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through [...]

Historian Niall Ferguson, whose most recent book is The War of the World and who is currently the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard, takes Senator Obama to task for introducing the “The Iraq War De-escalation Act,” which would mandate “a phased redeployment of US forces with the goal of removing all US [...]

Even the New York Times and, less surprisingly, the Washington Post have come out in opposition to Representative Murtha’s hair-brained and possibly unconstitutional scheme.
From today’s New York Times editorial:
We fear that clever maneuvers like the one proposed by Representative John Murtha, reportedly with the backing of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to dress up a reduction in [...]

Over at my blog, Neomugwump, I am wondering why there is no “Euston Manifesto” on the Right and Center-Right. With conservatism as defined by the President and his allies, there needs to be a gathering of the faithful who can spell out a conservatism that is for things like gay rights, civil liberties, and [...]

You want a Congressional achievement? Here’s one.
The spending bill passed by the Senate on Wednesday contains not one shred of new pork. And the bill is not accompanied by a report, which in the past is how many earmarks found their way into the budget.
It’s not that simple, of course. Sen. Tom Coburn charges that [...]

No, but that’s what the polls currently suggest…
U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman would win easily if he ends up facing comedian Al Franken in Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race in 2008, according to an exclusive 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS/SURVEY USA poll.
The poll shows Coleman getting 57 percent of the vote and Franken getting 35 percent.
The poll also looked [...]

I think they should. The justices don’t.
Who will win?
“Televising our proceedings would change our collegial dynamic,” Kennedy said, asking the Senate Judiciary Committee not to introduce “the insidious temptation to think that one of my colleagues would be trying to get a sound bite for TV.”
Kennedy was making a rare public appearance on Capitol Hill [...]

Lawrence J. Haas, former communications director for Vice President Gore and now vice president of the bipartisan Committee on the Present Danger, says that Democrats should beware of the post-Vietnam syndrome:
Reading the polls, congressional Democrats are racing to distance themselves from the war in Iraq, competing over who has got the best proposal for a [...]

See my post at American Future.

The Wall Street Journal blasts Congress for the non-binding resolution opposing the Iraq troop surge. The Journal’s opinion is pretty straight-forward:
1) the resolution emboldens the enemy by signaling that the U.S. Congress expects defeat.
2) it’s a cowardly move to rhetorically oppose the mission but effectively do nothing to stop the surge.
The most convincing argument:
[I]f Congress [...]

I hailed this guy’s election to the House of Representatives. Now? To hell with him. The nation’s first Muslim Congressman has a stick up his butt.
Cross-posted from sidewaysmencken.blogspot.com.

Three points I’d like to make for any Democrats who may read this blog.
1) The party is overreaching on Iraq. I know it looks like a ’slam dunk’ that Iraq will still be a disaster say, 20 months from now, but it isn’t. Yeah, the odds are it will be. But maybe not. Maybe it [...]

Al Franken was once a funny man. Then he became a self-righteous blowhard. Now he’s completing the metamorphosis and becoming a full blown politician. That’s right, he’s running for Senate.
Hey, my hat is off to him. It’s easy to sit behind a mic and act as if you have all the answers. It’s much harder [...]

Overwhelmingly…
Military members are skeptical, too. A Military Times poll released in December revealed that only 35 percent of military members approved of the president’s handling of the war – despite the fact that 46 percent of them are self-identified Republicans (down from 60 percent in previous Military Times polls) while just 16 percent are Democrats. [...]

Our President not caring that the top Iranian leaders may not be behind Iran supplying the IEDs in Iraq or once again marching down the war path with intelligence that appears to be faulty?

TPM Muckraker points out the strategy behind this message…
Three things are significant about this. First, it’s deliberately an argument by innuendo. Without [...]

Boy, does this speak volumes…
The best thing you can say about this deal is that it’s so incomplete, and that the North Koreans may yet save us from ourselves by overreaching. They violated the 1994 agreed framework because they want to have it both ways. They want to keep the nuclear program and get these [...]

He looks the part, but is he really presidential material? After all, he’s abandoning a lot of his past views on social issues, and it screams of political opportunism. But he wouldn’t be the first to do so, nor the last. The Dems have their fair share of opportunists this time around too.
From one of [...]

Can you guess which color is which religion?
Shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.