the leftist gift that keeps on giving to the John McCain for president campaign:

One unhappy Republican: ....So there's the dilemma, fellow Republicans. Do we buy the pap Miss Rice dispensed and ignore the incompetence that sees Michael Chertoff.... Or do we gag, say enough, and demand that President Bush and Miss Rice begin telling Americans bluntly that their country is in a heck of a fix in the Islamic world made much worse by the Iraq war...

Fortunately for America, the Reid-and-Dean-led Democrats are irrelevant to our decision. They are too busy describing U.S. soldiers as Nazis and keeping the shackles on their slave empire of one-issue groups long enough to lose the presidency in 2008.

--Michael Scheuer.

[A 22-year veteran with the CIA, Scheuer created and served as the chief of the agency's Osama bin Laden unit at the Counterterrorist Center. He is also the author of "Imperial Hubris."]

I don't think Marek should have apologized for this comment; I thought it was excellent.

Re: "A Possible Declining Trend for Worldwide Innovation" now gone to archive.

See Hope for Hungry Children, Arriving in a Foil Packet
by Michael Wines from Maradi, Niger for the August 8 NYT:

....At this epicenter of Niger's latest hunger crisis, Plumpy'nut is saving lives....Plumpy'nut, which comes in a silvery foil package the size of two grasping baby-size hands, is 500 calories of fortified peanut butter, a beige paste about as thick as mashed potatoes and stuffed with milk, vitamins and minerals. But that is akin to calling a 1945 Mouton Rothschild fortified grape juice.   Since the packets came into the hands of relief organizations during the Darfur crisis in Sudan, they have been revolutionizing emergency care for severely malnourished children who are old enough to take solid food, by taking care out of crowded field hospitals and straight into mothers' homes.

"This product, it's beyond opinion - it's documented, it's scientific fact," Dr. Milton Tectonidis, a Paris-based nutrition specialist for Doctors Without Borders, said in an interview here. "We've seen it working. With this one product, we can treat three-quarters of children on an outpatient basis. Before, we had to hospitalize them all and give them fortified milk."

P.S. Graham_72 might like the story, too; serendipity included. More excerpts (and beautiful photo,) after the jump.

When an editor disagrees with, or would like to add to, something which a member has posted as a Diary entry or as a News Queue item or as a Comment....answer after the jump

This excellent original piece was placed in News Queue and elevated to the front page. Question on it after the jump.

On the old Agonist Bulletin Board, there was sort of an unwritten rule for a while that everyone went along with, because they wanted their news "straight up" and it went like this: For the News Board, use the headline from the source; any comments you have, put them after the article citation.

Take a look at this item in News Queue which was elevated to the Front Page and then answer after the jump.

'Bombers, racists, the law: they're all out to get Muslims'

The Observer July 24 - ...Almost one in four British Muslims sympathise with the motives of suicide bombers, according to a YouGov poll published in yesterday's Daily Telegraph. More than half say that, whether they sympathise or not, they understand why some people behave in the way they do.

The research also showed that nearly one in three thinks that Western society is decadent and immoral and should be brought to an end. Sixteen per cent of British Muslims told the survey that they do not feel loyal towards Britain and 6 per cent went as far as saying the London bombings were justified....

Strange thoughts on that: I believe that many of the 1/3 of American society that is conservative also believes that Western society is decadent and immoral, and that the world is going to hell on a handcart. (So do some of the more paranoid variety of liberals, who not coincidentally, think "old liberal" ways are best.) Conserve the old ways = fear of the future, fear of CHANGE....continued after jump

Senator Arlen Specter | Washington | July 24

NYT Op-Ed - What to expect when the Senate meets Judge John Roberts.

Note: Specter, as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, will be in charge of the hearings.

Matt Steinglass | July 24

NYT Magazine- The leading advocate for prostitutes in Cambodia has little patience for aid groups that seek to liberate them from their work.

Zev Chafets | July 24

NYT Magazine - Yechiel Eckstein is an Orthodox rabbi and a registered Democrat, so why has he built an empire for Jewish causes on the contributions of Red State born-again Christians? The Christian Right's favorite rabbi.

Gary Shteyngart | July 24

NYT Sunday Book Review - In his memoir of his experience in Iraq, (War Reporting for Cowards, Atlantic Monthly Press,) Chris Ayres revives the tradition of comic war reporting.

Note that a link to the first chapter of the book is available.

Richard A. Posner | July 31

NYT Sunday Book Review Essay - Consumers' limited interest in the truth is the key to understanding why both left and right can plausibly denounce the same media for being biased in favor of the other.

Photo caption: HURTING AMERICA? Tucker Carlson, right, James Carville, left, and Paul Begala on CNN's "Crossfire."

No my date's not wrong; Posner must have turned it in early so they put it up on the website even tho it's for next week's paper.

more on the ivory-billed woodpecker sighting story.

Now that many of us finally got that a href html code thingie down, after a year or so, I found this on Daily Kos' instruction page:

1. Type a left bracket: [
   
   
2. Paste or type the text you want to use for the link.
   
   
3. Type one space.
   
   
4. Paste the url.
   
   
5. Type a right bracket: ]

Voila, Scoop's auto format will make you one of them fancy text links like those hoity-toity editors and regulars do.

Devlin Barrett | Washington | July 22

AP - Democrats need to reach out to voters who oppose abortion rights and promote candidates who share that view, the head of the party said Friday. Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, told a group of college Democrats that their party has to change its approach in the debate over abortion.

"I think we need to talk about this issue differently," said Dean. "The Republicans have painted us as a pro-abortion party. I don't know anybody in America who is pro-abortion."  Dean's approach echoed similar arguments advanced in recent months by former President Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.

"We do have to have a big tent. I do think we need to welcome pro-life Democrats into this party," said Dean.  Still, he added, "I think that we must be absolutely firm in being the party of individual freedom and personal freedom, which means that in the end the government doesn't get to decide, we do."

Julie Powell | July 22

NYT Op-Ed - Local-food devotees mistake good eating for good ethics:

....The first and most dangerous aspect is the temptation of economic elitism. Of course, food has always been about class....What makes the snobbery of the organic movement more insidious is that it equates privilege not only with good taste, but also with good ethics. Eat wild Brazil nuts and save the rainforest. Buy more expensive organic fruit for your children and fight the national epidemic of childhood obesity. Support a local farmer and give economic power to responsible stewards of sustainable agriculture. There's nothing wrong with any of these choices, but they do require time and money.  When you wed money to decency, you come perilously close to equating penury with immorality....

Powell is the author of the forthcoming "Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen."

It will go something like this: this has all the signs of a copycat incident because it is a copycat incident, created by surrogates for the Bush administration, planned by the Bush administration and the lap dog Blair, executed by the C.I.A and MI6 in order to: deflect attention from: the Rove investigation. (A nice side effect will be the ability of the Blair lap dog to further curtail the civil liberties of Muslims and to keep the English in fear.)

July 18

The New Yorker - This week in the magazine, William Finnegan writes
("A Reporter at Large: The Terrorism Beat, inside the city's defense command centers,"
available only in the print edition of the July 25 issue)
about what the New York Police Department is doing to prevent terrorist attacks.

Here, with Lauren Porcaro, he discusses the article,
the threat, and what the N.Y.P.D. may learn from London.

Lorne Manly | July 21 | Washington

NYT - Addressing the high profile issue of reporters and sources:

The Senate Judiciary Committee gave a generally positive reception to a bill that would protect journalists from having to divulge confidential sources.

David Rohde | Dhaka, Bangladesh | July 19

NYT - ....Bashundara City, a gargantuan new $80 million shopping complex in downtown Dhaka that bills itself as the Mall of South Asia. According to the Bangladeshi developers, the eight-story, 2,000-store retail colossus is South Asia's largest shopping mall.  "The whole world is getting Westernized," said Mr. Rahman. "Why should we be left behind?"

The mall, which took about six years to build, is not the only sign of prosperity and Western-style consumerism emerging in Bangladesh, a nation better known for epic poverty than epic consumption....

AP July 19 - Madonna Shows Vogue Her Reinvented Side.

Caryn James | July 19

NYT/Critic's Notebook - With tabloid journalism and reality television bleeding into each other, and with magazine programs indistinguishable from entertainment, films no longer bother making their case against journalists. "Crónicas" and "Paparazzi," the good film and the bad, simply assume that slime is a reporter's middle name.

The media's image has taken a long downward slide from the 1976 film "All the President's Men,"....It isn't hard to spot what's behind this erosion of the journalist's image. When Watergate broke, tabloid television wasn't a force and 24-hour cable news (all shouting all the time!) hadn't been invented. As the news media expanded, standards became as varied as the outlets, and the public's respect for the media steadily declined....

Chertoff wants to both steer a different course and rebuild the ship. "He is a smart man. He is a thoughtful man. He is a capable man," Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said Thursday on the Senate floor. "But when I read the statements he made this morning, I was aghast."

that secular fundamentalists so love to fear; they just seem like a rainbow coalition that wants to have some fun/joy to me.

A Church That Packs Them In, 16,000 at a Time

John Leland | Houston | July 18

NYT - To his flock, Mr. Osteen is to varying degrees spiritual leader, motivational speaker and celebrity.....Mr. Osteen's rise is an indicator of the growth and upward mobility of the charismatic branch of evangelical Christianity, and a rebound for television ministry after the sexual and financial scandals of the 1980's, said Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. Mr. Osteen avoids contentious issues like abortion and homosexuality, and he does not ask for money on his broadcasts.

"Osteen is the first to heal the scars in televangelism," Dr. Wolfe said. "He's very telegenic. He's in the tradition of Jim Bakker, but focused less on financial prosperity than psychological well-being." Joel Osteeen, pastor of Lakewood Church, says, "I don't get deep and theological."

My first Beheadings Thread has gone to archive and is closed to comments.

AP July 17 - Beheadings Raise Tensions in Thailand.

Elevated from Diaries

Whoa: Bush administration already reacting to Seymour Hersh article not out yet!

Plan Called for Covert Aid in Iraq Vote

Douglas Jehl & David E. Sanger | Washington | July 17

NYT - In the months before the Iraqi elections in January, President Bush approved a plan to provide covert support to certain Iraqi candidates and political parties, but rescinded the proposal because of Congressional opposition, current and former government officials said Saturday.  In a statement issued in response to questions about a report in the next issue of The New Yorker, Frederick Jones, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said that "in the final analysis, the president determined and the United States government adopted a policy that we would not try - and did not try - to influence the outcome of the Iraqi election by covertly helping individual candidates for office."

The statement appeared to leave open the question of whether any covert help was provided to parties favored by Washington, an issue about which the White House declined to elaborate.  The article, by Seymour M. Hersh, reports...

Seymour M. Hersh's article Get Out The Vote can be read here.~eds.