Liberal Talk Radio

Lede of the day: The first rule of public health is one most of us learn in kindergarten: Don’t eat poop.

It’s true that history will judge what’s happening now (and also true that the Future will be left to pick up the pieces). And I’ll give you that it’s a sour, sour pickle that we’re in. The biggest issue, IMO, remains: there’s very little agreement on first principals. In some sense, by quibbling over the definition [...]

How did all of us miss this* the other day? Life actually imitates South Park: Osama bin Laden has more on his mind than just the destruction of the United States — the world’s most wanted terrorist is obsessed with Whitney Houston, so much so that he’s even mulled a hit on her hubby, Bobby [...]

Tom Friedman just got his next op-ed idea: The carpeted room is full of children in skullcaps crouched on prayer mats, reciting verses from a holy text. Some mumble the words under their breath; others sing them out. They rock back and forth as they chant, their disparate voices blending into an ethereal melody. The [...]

Juan Cole writes about al Qaeda’s general absence from direct confrontation with Israel: …Bin Laden always avoided investing in an area where there was already an active insurgency. He also could not join in with heretical Shiites like Hizbulah. Ayman al Zawahiri today made a change in both policies. He wants al Qaeda to pile [...]

A ship carrying 5,000 new cars is about to flip over in the North Pacific. Creepy. Rescue efforts have been, um, error-prone: Earlier Monday, a Coast Guard plane dropped three life rafts, but roiling waters pushed the rafts underneath the dipping port side of the ship, AP reported. Doh! Rescuers tossed an additional raft along [...]

This s**t is getting Brechtian: Sources close to the White House said Monday that Fox anchor Tony Snow is likely to accept the job as White House press secretary, succeeding Scott McClellan. The sources said they expect him to announce his decision within the next few days. A source familiar with the discussions said Monday [...]

From the administration that brought us “we can’t see the WMD, but we g*ddamn know they’re there and you’re a pinko commie p*ssy if you don’t believe us” comes another salvo in the escalating War o’ Words with our good buddy and pal, Iran. “Tehran has been responsible for at least some of the increasing [...]

Everyone is talking about the big Iranian Holocaust Cartoon Contest — can’t wait to see the results of that one! But hey, why can’t we match them comic for comic? A comic showdown. The best illustrators of the West vs. the best illustrators in Persia. It’s knock down. It’s drag out. It’s . . . [...]

On Friday we asked who benefited from — and most likely was behind — the UBL truce tape. Today we have an answer: A Brooklyn-born writer said yesterday he had “no problem” being quoted by Osama bin Laden in his latest diatribe and added he shares the arch-terrorist’s opposition to American foreign policy. “I wasn’t [...]