Category: The Dish

Here’s another interesting one from Montana: reframing the terrorism debate and defending individual liberty in wartime.

The president is kept from hearing about it; and he won’t read the papers. But that doesn’t mean we can’t understand more. this email from a soldier in Iraq lays out some brutal, hard truths. Read it. And repeat after me: Fire. Rumsfeld. Now.

Amsterdam, Holland, 2 pm.

"This scandal is like the Cliffs’ Notes version of a more complicated treatise on how the Bush movement operates. Every one of their corrupt attributes is vividly on display here:

The absolute refusal ever to admit error. The desperate clinging to power above all else. The efforts to cloud what are clear matters of wrongdoing with irrelevant sideshows. And the parade of dishonest and just plainly inane demonization efforts to hide and distract from their wrongdoing: hence, the pages are manipulative sex vixens; a shadowy gay cabal is to blame; the real criminals are those who exposed the conduct, not those who engaged in it; liberals created the whole scandal; George Soros funded the whole thing; a Democratic Congressman did something wrong 23 years ago; one of the pages IM’d with Foley as a "hoax", and on and on.

There has been a virtual carousel — as there always is — of one pathetic, desperate attempt after the next to deflect blame and demonize those who are pointing out the wrongdoing. This is what they always do, on every issue. The difference here is that everyone can see it, and so nothing is working," – Glenn Greenwald, calling it like it is.

(Photo: Lauren Victoria Burke/AP.)

One of the major Christianist senators, Sam Brownback, has put a hold on a federal judge nomination because the judge once presided over a commitment ceremony for two women. I have no idea how this has any bearing on the judge’s judicial competence or philosophy.

A reader begs for a caption contest. Here’s the Reuters photo. Put "caption contest" in the contents line of the emails, suggesting captions (or quote bubbes). Results early next week.

Kirk Fordham’s claim that Hastert’s office knew of the Foley concerns years ago is backed up by a new source. A story line seems to be emerging of repeated attempts to stop the behavior, an attempt to get the Speaker to do something about it, and indifference or negligence from Hastert’s and Reynolds’ offices. If that pans out – and that’s still a big ‘if’ – Hastert is in deep trouble, and this issue will not go away soon.

Robert Dallek speaks to the political necessity:

[H]istory shows that such tough personnel decisions can, eventually, prove healthy for an administration and for a nation, particularly in times of war. They force reassessments of long-standing policy; they help presidents stand back, evaluate and chart new directions.

Now, with little more than two years remaining in the Bush administration, the president can still drop his longtime defense secretary in favor of another who could bring fresh ideas and renewed credibility to the battle against terrorism and the war in Iraq. It’s not too late.

There are many of us who would like to support a new, far more serious commitment to winning in Iraq. But not with Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary. He has zero credibility. He must go after the election. Or we should leave Iraq. The status quo is intolerable – a sign of presidential weakness, not strength.

(Photo: Haraz Ghanbari/AFP/Getty.)

Stuff I didn’t know.

"Like the Catholic Church, the Republican Party in Washington guarantees its own future calamities in its enduring and steadfast habit of pretending that, unlike heterosexuality, homosexuality can be either denied or suppressed," – David Link, Boston Globe today.