The Dish

A wild-eyed theory about the chief justice.

Some web-activists, a few paper flags, and a blog. It may make a few of you feel better.

A publisher caves to Islamist pressure.

More and more are openly gay; and more and more are being accepted as equals. The next generation is changing the world in ways my generation only dreamed of. And the courage taken to do this is occurring at a younger and younger age. If the GOP doesn’t understand this – and understand that their hostility to gay dignity is damaging them deeply among future voters – then they are facing a wilderness.

West Lebanon, New Hampshire, 2.30 pm.

The feeling is widespread, it seems:

I couldn’t agree more with your comments. After I graduated from college I worked in book publishing for a few years. Rather than get a normal 9-to-5 entry-level job sending faxes and fetching coffee, I stumbled into a handful of projects that let me do relatively high level work — specifically, editing book copy on a more or less freelance basis. But it didn’t add up to much income (evidence itself of how highly editing was valued) and I wasn’t on any clear career track. So I had a few people I’d gotten to know in publishing arrange advice sessions for me with about a half-dozen top NY editors. With varying degrees of vehemence, every one of them (including, ironically, Nan Talese) told me to get out of the book industry. One explicitly told me "Book publishing is no place for people who love books." Several of them said that, if they had it to do again, they’d go into another profession.

This was almost 20 years ago; everything I’ve seen and read leads me to conclude it’s gotten considerably worse since then.

Five people hang limply from the nooses after they were executed in Iran’s holy second city of Mashhad, 01 August 2007. Iran hanged in public seven people convicted of rape and kidnapping in Mashhad today, the latest execution of criminals arrested in a crackdown on thugs. The hangings were carried out in two separate locations in Iran’s second city in the northeast, on the exact spots where they had committed their crimes, the state-run IRNA agency reported. Meanwhile, a nineteen-year-old girl faces a beheading in Saudi Arabia. Photo: AFP/Getty.

Despite some incremental progress under sane counter-insurgency measures, the basic facts of Iraq remain as I outlined yesterday: no sign of a political settlement at the center, a sectarian-dominated military and police, profound corruption, continuing sectarian violence (almost 70 murdered today) and insufficient US troops to secure the entire country. As the Iraqi parliament disbands for the summer, a Sunni faction quits the ruling coalition:

Rafaa al-Issawi, a leading member of the Front, said at a news conference that the bloc’s six Cabinet ministers would submit their resignations later in the day.

Al-Issawi said the decision to pull out from the government followed what he called Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s failure to respond to the Accordance Front. It gave him seven days to meet its demands, and the ultimatum expired Wednesday.

Among the demands: a pardon for security detainees not charged with specific crimes, the disbanding of militias and the participation of all groups represented in the government in dealing with security issues.

"The government is continuing with its arrogance, refusing to change its stand and has slammed shut the door to any meaningful reforms necessary for saving Iraq," al-Issawi said.

"We had hoped that the government would respond to these demands or at least acknowledge the failure of its policies, which led Iraq to a level of misery it had not seen in modern history. But its stand did not surprise us at all," he said, reading from a prepared statement.

The incoming JCS chairman was candid yesterday:

The failure of the Iraqis to make progress toward political unity imperils Iraq, said the nominee, Adm. Michael G. Mullen, who said that unless things changed, “no amount of troops in no amount of time will make much of a difference.”

He said he believed that the American troop increase this year in Iraq had helped tamp down violence, saying security was “not great, but better.” But he also said that the United States risked breaking the Army if the Pentagon decided to maintain escalated troop levels in Iraq beyond next spring.

This is the reality that should be the basis for any decisions we make next month about the future.

The former drug war czar talks about Iraq.

Anoter YouTube recut trailer. This time: "Jaws: Two Men, One Shark, Lots Of Love."