Month: June 2007

"Not that Scooter Libby has asked for my advice, but I also must say that that the ardor of his supporters — including, I believe, NR — has hurt him, and hurt the conservative movement, in very fundamental ways.  As to him personally, all this passionate rhetoric about his heroic service to the United States, how the investigation should never have happened, and how he got unfairly singled out and screwed (all of which I agree with) would be fine if it weren’t obscuring something fairly important:  Lying to the FBI and a grand jury is a very bad thing, even if we all think it was an unworthy investigation," – Andy McCarthy, NRO. Read the whole post.

Another Republican – even one working for McCain – sees the potential for Obama’s re-branding of America. Not great news for the Arizona senator, of course. But I hazard Mark McKinnon is fond of McCain and Obama for the same reason: beneath all the compromises, both men are decent in a time of indecency.

Major nerd discovers eighteenth century Koran.

Former clerk of the House, Jeff Trandahl, breaks his public silence on the Foley scandal. He reports:

"Foley was a ticking time bomb. His case shows how dangerous closeted gays can be for openly gay people."

If you think Hastert didn’t know all about this, you’re dreaming.

From the Atlantic archives, a first-person account of D-Day, the anniversary of which was yesterday:

"We saw no sign of fear in him. Watching him made men of us. Marching or fighting, he was leading. We followed him because there was nothing else to do."

TBogg is unimpressed with the Politico’s coverage of the GOP campaign:

How odd that a a dazzling urbanite like Roger Simon, who is wise in the mysterious ways of the Beltway, is so starstruck by the twinkly eyes and big shoulders of His Man Mitt, yet the good common sense Iowaians can see right through him.

An interesting nugget about online gaming:

It is three times more common that men choose to play women than vice versa.

The visual gorgeousness of nuclear destruction, in a music video. (Hat tip: Blowhards.)

Fallows reports:

I know my doctor’s name in Chinese, but I don’t see it anywhere in the all-Chinese signs and listings. So I send him a text message on my mobile phone saying that I have arrived. A minute later, a teenager wearing sandals, khaki pants, and an untucked shirt walks up – listening to an iPod. This is my doctor. We walk up the concrete stairs to a little anteroom on the next floor. He has me sit on a stool and he looks closely at my nose. "I think – electricity!" he says, in English. "I ask the surgeon." He disappears.

Diagosis: clinically privileged.