Common Sense

Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize. I probably should have mentioned that before Tila Tequila.
John Dickerson wonders if this will make him rethink running for the White House. He hasn’t said definitively “no way,” but I don’t think he really wants to. It was such a harsh experience last time around, I can’t imagine […]

Timothy Noah over at Slate thinks that Bush’s veto of the S-CHIP reauthorization is bound to grease the wheels for those of us who want universal health care. I’m a little skeptical, but still hopeful, that he’s right about that.
S-CHIP has become a very important program for a lot of poor and middle class families. […]

Slate seems to be taking the approach that sex sells because they have several stories today about sex.
Probably the creepiest is William Saletan discussing lowering the age of consent. He breaks consent down between three distinct areas: biological readiness which is around 12, age of cognitive readiness which is around 16 and age of emotional […]

I spent four minutes just now watching our president speak about the surge’s success in Anbar and I swear if I hear about Anbar being a success anymore, I’m going to hit someone over the head with my cane!
You know how we drove out AQI (all 200 of them) out of Anbar Province? We gave […]

President Bush has decided, after sober assessment of our military and political victories on the ground in Iraq, that he can drawdown 30,000 troops by the middle of next year. I think, this is a reasonable move on his part.
Really, is it so hard to write the truth at the Washington Post? We all know […]

I wanted to write something beautiful and poignant about the 6th anniversary of the tragedy, but I don’t have the time or the inclination.
In truth, I’m still as angry and confused about that day as I was standing in the counselors’ office at MCC watching the events unfold live. I was livid that it was […]

Iraq isn’t so much a quagmire as it is a training ground for jihadists.
When the United States struck Afghanistan in 2001, “there were probably 3,000 core Al Qaeda operatives,” says [John] Arquilla of the Naval Postgraduate School. “We killed or captured about 1,000; about 1,000 more ended up in distant parts of the world. And […]

You can take that as a joke if you want to, but they are reporting that Afghanistan’s opium production is at “frightening levels.”
Afghanistan is now responsible for 93 per cent of global opium production, according to the UNODC.
“The amount of Afghan land used for growing opium is now larger than the combined total under coca […]

Alberto Gonzales has resigned, to be replaced by the Solicitor General Paul Clement as interim AG. As you can imagine, many Democrats and just about anyone who has not had a hemispherectomy are ecstatic. Here is the text of his resignation speech.
Of course, just because Fredo’s gone doesn’t mean that Congress is going to stop […]

Today several of the U.S. intelligence agencies released a report that paints a grim outlook for the future of Iraq… politically.
The assessment, known as the National Intelligence Estimate, casts strong doubts on the viability of the Bush administration strategy in Iraq. It gives a dim prognosis on the likelihood that Iraqi politicians can heal deep […]