• Despite the persistence of the amalgamated White Man's Burden* and misguided Pottery Barn sentiments to support continued Amerikan imperialist intervention in Afghanistan, those are indeed but pretexts to support Amerikan Warmongery on Steroids.

It's very moving to know that we have such enlightened, humane, noble, altruistic generals as McChrystal-- and everybody said that William Westmoreland's boots would be impossible to fill with anything but piss! This is what I've called the "Peace Corps with an attitude" policy, affectionately espoused by those who believe that in a reformed mission in Afghanistan.

Obviously, he's only thinking of the women brutalized by that horrid, horrid Taliban! And surely, we must think of the women as well as the children! (Not Mary Tillman or Cindy Sheehan, though; if they even show up, they're busted.) NATO is only in North Atlantic Af-Pak to help; it's our duty to clean up our mess, dontcha know.

* For the purposes of undertaking the White Man's Burden, Obama is as dazzingly white as a new-fallen snowdrift in the noonday sun.
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• "I want to support my president," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who changed her no vote to a yes.

This depraved whore is only spouting a conventional and even self-evident rationale. I'm sure she'd be surprised, then offended, by the news that some find it infuriatingly reprehensible and obscene.

Gotta support the team! Gotta protect the quarterback!

I for one see individuals in the U.S. government worrying endlessly and struggling mightily over ensuring the perpetuation of their prosperous careers, i.e. winning rich and powerful friends and influencing people to provide a lucrative lifetime income and ruling-class prestige.

Tangentially, the problem with Everyhacks like Schakowsky seeing themselves as Team Obama members first, and a member of an institution designed to check and balance the Executive Branch a very distant second, parallels the problematic professional relationship between Obama and Holder.

Glenn has repeatedly noted, correctly in theory, that the Attorney General most certainly is independent from the President, and ought not to defer to the president in any way, much less for political purposes, when discharging the responsibilities of his office.

Naturally, Obama himself, who apparently studied the US Constitution in college as an archaeological artifact-- as a professor of religion might study the Dead Sea Scrolls-- talks the "independent" talk. Holder, too.

The resignations of Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus during the collapse of the Nixon administration is often cited, again correctly, as an example of just that admirable independence and the consequences of being asked to compromise it.

Still, I think that's an exception. First of all, given this century's ascendancy of the Unitary Executive, I'm not at all sure that an AG would react the same way to an equally egregious violation of established law and ethics.

It seems to me that the current mind-set echoed by Rep. Schakowsky is universal, and that the DOJ's first response would be to turn to the present Yoos, Bradburys, and Bybees to rationalize whatever outrage the president is attempting to perpetrate.

Apart from that, I don't for a second believe that Holder and Obama avoid ex parte involvement in crucial issues. Obama just isn't someone whose left hand doesn't know what his right hand is doing. With all due respect to Glenn, I just don't see Holder taking off his Team Obama cap under any circumstances.

I didn't intend to veer into the AG independence question, but Schakowsky's stupidity is as good a point as any to express my belief that partisan and self-serving agendas vitiate the Founders' wise and elegant attempt to fashion a government that, in some sense, is permanently at odds with itself.

• LondonLad-- very nice response to Glenn's "still-towering mystery" phrase!

• zeroworker-- thanks for volunteering for the cleanup in Aisle Tim W. Brown.

This isn't as exciting as a "how I lost my virginity" story, but FWIW I can still recall certain seemingly mundane and otherwise unmemorable moments that stuck in my head because they contained important flashes of insight.

I was about 11 or 12 (c. 1967), and reading an article in LOOK magazine about the state of US politics. I don't remember whether Theodore H. White wrote the piece, or if he was interviewed for it. (I knew who White was, although I didn't know that he was the guy who created the JFK "Camelot" theme.)

But I remember White pontificating that the modern US Congress was far and away the most professional, competent, scrupulous group of politicians in the history of Congress or somesuch. Just a sterling bunch of dedicated public servants!

This may have been by way of explaining that the old era of Party Bosses and secret deals made smoke-filled rooms was dead and gone.

I hadn't paid much attention to politics, but for some reason this passage jumped out at me; I remember thinking "Man, this sounds like such bullshit!". I actually remember it clicking that maybe, just maybe, highly-regarded "experts" like White existed to put the status quo in the most flattering light.

I can't say why this trivial moment stayed in my head, but it has.

All this to note that when I read Tim W. Brown's pious, hand-wringing claptrap, I thought, "Man, this sounds like such bullshit!" So thanks again for the cleanup.

PS: Sadly, this is more exciting than my "how I lost my virginity" story.

I was so wrong to wonder whether Keillor was actually addressing his abominable "move forward" homily here.

You know-- the "torture-shmorture" one that reeked like a case of summer lutefisk abandoned in the trunk of a car.

I stopped bothering with the vitiated remains of Keillor's creative efforts after that; even reading the persistent comments nastygrams didn't justify checking out his folksy dreck.

But upon reflection, that headline can't be a coincidence. Writers don't compose the headlines to their published work generally, but somebody in the writer-to-Salon screen chain had to know about the controversial post.

The headline is snark. To whoever is responsible for it: f*** you too!