Unqualified Offerings

Unless it’s an editing error in the job listing, the American Bar Association’s new Middle East Advisor for Iraq will be headquartered in - Jordan. It certainly seems safer that way, but not such an obvious sign that we’re winning the war.

This Drum question is astonishingly easy for our kind to answer, no?

In one phase, neos deny the United States is an empire. In the next phase, neos hold a symposium celebrating Empire’s essential goodness and urge the US to be mindful of its imperial burden.
The fact that it’s Event ID 1066 is perfect, apt without being too on-the-nose.

Heated as I may sound below, Matthew Yglesias is still a swell writer and nice guy who buys me drinks. And his attempt to find a Democratic Party tag line is interesting. From outside the tent here, I may or may not have anything useful or appropriate to say on the matter. Actually, I offered […]

Right Wing News has included me in a survey of “more than 125 left-of-center bloggers” on favorite columnists. You know what? I’m done fighting. If people want to think of me as a left wing blogger, let them. I’d like to flip the old Reagan quip and say, “I didn’t leave the Republican Party; the […]

There was a move afoot in the Texas legislature to name a stretch of road after native-son and country music legend Willie Nelson. Local members of the state’s Christian Democratic Party put a stop to that, though:
[Republican] State Sens. Steve Ogden of Bryan and Jeff Wentworth of San Antonio pointed out that Nelson has hosted […]

The big song lyric repository sites are full of popups and have the reputation of being spyware sources too. Avoid them this way:
Want to know the lyrics of a song? If you know the band, do a google search for the artist by name and add the words “fan site.” It’s almost certain that you’ll […]

Can we agree that when consequences fall on corporate radio weasels, that that’s a good thing? From a New York Times article by Jeff Reed, on the decline of “alternative rock” radio:
Some radio executives said that they made a fateful choice in the last few years to jettison the pop-rock side of their genre to […]

Matt wants to explain why liberals and conservatives accept paternalism and libertarians don’t, and chooses drug prohibition as his example. In the process he gets libertarian thinking on the issue more wrong than he usually does. (With Matt the problem is typically acceptance more than understanding.) He also gives paternalism more shine than it merits
Brief […]

Today’s Democratic blogger line is that President Bush and the Republicans have cooked up a fiendish plan to destroy social security by turning it into a “welfare program,” so it can be stigmatized and then eliminated. (See Atrios, Max Sawicky.) I realize this worry is just the flip side of what I understand to be […]

If you’re one of the handful of prominent bloggers who read this site, AND you have pull with Henry Copeland, AND you feel moved to see if you can get my blogads application unstuck, I would be very grateful. You can even tell me you did it and I’ll kiss your ass. Stanley Kurtz will […]

Go, Lord-God Bird! Discourse upon what suits you, as I am running behind this morning.

Okay, none of you tipped me to the miniseries repeat tonight. I mean, I still love you, but damn. Missed the first hour and a quarter.
The miniseries turns out to have been very good, though I detect a comparative flatness to the Cylon motivations, just a few hints of the gnarly theological drives to come. […]

Couldn’t the President have preempted coverage of tonight’s lamentable Wizards-Bulls game instead of whatever he’s cutting into tomorrow? Not that I was going to watch television tomorrow, but he’d have saved me some heartache in front of the tube this evening.

Chris Tallman’s Batman. Six megs of action-figure filmmaking you need to see. Via Balloon Juice.
Oh by the way, light blogging tonight because this week’s haul of comics turned out to be unusually good. Even a book I expected to stink turned out to be enjoyable.

The latest news from Japan is entirely too Life Imitates Cyberpunk somehow - private detective agencies, long known as the folks you go to if you want to establish grounds for divorce, have started a new line of business getting couples back together. Some of the explanation of how this happens makes my head hurt, […]

Retro McDonalds are opening. That’s pretty cool. I’m just old enough to remember non-retro genuine Golden-Arch outlets.
(Via Dynamist blog.)

In discussing Klarion the Witch-Boy last night, I should have said that Irving Frazier’s art has something of Edward Munch homage about it. See Klarion (pdf) and some representative Munch.

Found via a Crooked Timber thread, fontifier.com will turn scans of your handwriting into a font for your computer, for nine bucks.
The 21st Century kicks ass sometimes.

General Myers says that “I think [the Iraqi insurgency’s] capacity stays about the same and where they are right now is where they were almost a year ago,” per AFP. I am therefore inclined to predict the insurgency’s utter collapse within three months. But I can be a jerk sometimes.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Berlusconi sounds kind […]

I’m just gonna pull ‘em off the stack to my right and tell you what I think of them.
Great Lakes Avengers 1 of 4, by Dan Slott and Paul Pelletier. Black humor from a writer known for his light touch. GLA on one level is a spoof of recent trends in corporate superhero comics, specifically […]

Successfully resisted by Thomas Nephew and Phil Carter. Nephew, excerpt:
The officers, Pentagon officials, and Donald Rumsfelds who nudged and prodded soldiers at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere into abuse and torture with hints, memos, and yo-yo “policies,” deserve nothing but scorn and contempt. The investigative bodies, Donald Rumsfelds, and George Bushes who have seen fit to […]