By Patrick
Alexis Madrigal looks at the environmental impact of a regional nuclear war. It’s a small, small world.
Clinton On The Economy
Still Kinda There
"The title, the position of chief strategist tended to be one that drew a tremendous amount of attention. And, number two, yes, I will have more time. We will continue – Penn and Schoen will continue to do the polling and I will be advising, but the net of it will still be that I will have more time than I otherwise would have had so that definitely is going to be the case," – Mark Penn, in a conference call today.
Starving Billionaires
By Patrick
What Zimbabwe is doing about its world record inflation: "the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has rewarded the people of Zimbabwe with a new $50,000,000.00 bank note to reduce the number of notes they have to carry around."
Like “Building An Airplane In Flight”
Steve Coll notes an alarming SOS about the state of the military from the Army Vice-Chief-Of-Staff:
The Army is running on fumes, but Petraeus and his fellow surge advocates are driving flat out in Iraq, with no destination in sight. It hardly matters whether Petraeus would recommend keeping a hundred and thirty thousand or more combat troops in Iraq for a hundred years, or only ten. Neither scenario is plausible—at least, not without a draft or a radical change in incentives for volunteers.
The situation is much graver than the president seems to acknowledge. As if that could be a surprise by now.
Father Of The Nation
By Patrick
Joshua Keating has a round-up on Zimbabwe, where Mugabe continues to cling to power.
Drudge And HRC
He’s about scoops, and gets them. But once you realize that the Clintons’ tax returns and the Olympics ceremony boycott stories came from the Clinton camp, do you still believe that photo of Obama in a turban fell off a turnip truck?
Chait On Wilentz
A defense of democracy, playing by the rules, that kind of stuff.
Nine Points
Obama’s national lead over Clinton increases a little. Here’s the longer view, which suggests one of the longest periods of a sustained Obama lead since the campaign began. Still, they’ve been neck and neck since February:
Heat On Haynes?
More torture memo fall-out: a key member of the Bush administration’s torture-team, former Pentagon general counsel, William Haynes, has retained a top criminal defense lawyer in response to the Senate Armed Services Committee persistent inquiries about prisoner abuse. Isikoff:
Two sources familiar with the probe, who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters, say the panel’s investigators have grilled a number of key players—including Special Forces operatives and FBI agents—who were never previously questioned. The panel notified the Pentagon in early February that it wanted to question Haynes. Before receiving any response, investigators learned on Feb. 25 that Haynes was leaving for Chevron in San Francisco. "How often does somebody like that give two weeks’ notice and leave town?" said one government source familiar with the sequence of events.
