Liberal Talk Radio

I have to say that “Don’t ask, don’t tell” is a stupid policy. I think most people would agree, and there’s been some effort in the House and Senate to repeal the policy. Both Kevin Drum and Steve Benen note that the number of discharges invoked under the policy has gone up 11% this year, [...]

Time to size ‘em up for orange jumpsuits. CNN is reporting that Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling have been found guilty on all counts except Skilling’s insider trading charges.

Enterprising South Koreans reconceptualize North Korea as an ironic T.G.I. Friday’s: At the Pyongyang Moran Bar on a recent Friday evening, a large video screen showed uplifting images of rocky mountains and an open blue sky. A slogan appeared at the bottom: “Kim Jong Il, a man who comes along only once in a thousand [...]

My favorite blog comment of the day is the first comment to this Kevin Drum post. Responding to Kevin’s praise of DNI John Negroponte, “Cap’n Phealy” writes: I dunno, he’s still got the whole “Death Squad” thing to overcome….he’s still a net loss as a human being, IMO. I don’t know why, but that almost [...]

Yesterday’s interesting column by Times business writer David Carr portended possible bad times for the Philadelphia Inquirer: [I]n March, The Inquirer was sold by Knight Ridder to the McClatchy Company, which promptly put it back on the block because even though it makes $50 million or so a year, it is not growing at a [...]

A report on CNN this morning featured This company which claims that they can add water to your car’s gasoline and boost fuel economy by 50%. Of course, you’ve got to always take these things with a grain of salt. A quick Google search turns up this Free Republic thread which casts some doubt. Say [...]

In a word: regulation. The simple fact is that without drug legalization, users are subject to the vagaries of a market that does not have their best interests in mind. Legalization ensures that this market and its products can be regulated and inspected, preventing quiet tragedies like the one that’s happened among heroin users in [...]

Reading this article on the life and times of Al Qaeda “architect” Mustafa Setmariam Nasar is scary, no doubt. But it’s also reassuring, in its own way. The reason this guy got as far as he did was basically because no government cared enough to track him: Although Nasar attracted the notice of Spanish police, [...]

This is my favorite sentence in the big Hillary-Bill relationship article: “Over time she came to consider Chappaqua home, too, and she likes spending time there with the president when they can find the time,” said one longtime friend of the couple’s, who was granted anonymity because the Clintons did not want this person to [...]

Just finished reading All the Shah’s Men, an account of the CIA sponsored coup that in 1953 overthrew a nascent Iranian democracy and reinstalled the Shah as a despot. Fascinating. Among other tidbits, turns out General H. “Stormin’” Norman Schwarzkopf’s papa was one of the men who built the Shah’s police force, and Kermit Roosevelt [...]