Who Is John Durham?

Marty Lederman on the DOJ counsel appointed to investigate war crimes authorized by the president. Paul Kiel has his resume. Encouraging background from the WaPo:

Durham is well known in New England legal circles as a tough, publicity-averse prosecutor who has specialized in organized crime cases.

Organized crime is good background for this, isn’t it?

Why Right-Wing Blogs Boom

Liberals are reading them:

I guess part of it is that I’m a glutton for punishment, but also find that my own beliefs – and my arguments to defend them – are strengthened when I understand where my opponents are coming from. Also, as you put it, I find their "internal battles" right now extremely engaging. My favorite is Malkin’s blog.  I’m a registered commenter there, and there is nothing more thrilling than dropping a perfectly sane, reasoned comment from a liberal perspective into a chicken little-esque thread and either 1) watching the thread come to a standstill, or 2) watching their heads explode.

The trouble with Kos’s "just-win-and-beat-the-right" philosophy is that it gets intellectually dull after a while. I’ve found Kos much less readable recently than it used to be. Bitter never sells. And Malkin is always entertaining in a hathetic kind of way.

McCain Attacks

A good new ad against the Plastic One. Ambers notes:

Mitt Romney’s attempts to dial back expectations aren’t too convincing.

To wit:

"If 50 percent of the turnout is evangelical Christians, it would be very difficult for us to finish first in that kind of situation," Doug Gross, [the chairman of Mitt Romney’s campaign in Iowa], said. "In that instance, I’d feel very good about a nice, strong second-place finish."

Malkin Award Nominee

"Thanks to McCain and Graham, our intelligence services have lost the ability to use interrogation techniques such as waterboarding that have a  proven record of securing vital information from hardened terrorists. Our government instead must now rely on techniques that have a record of failing to secure such information," – Paul Mirengoff, Powerline. A record of failing?