Lind thinks he's being clever, but he just shows his ignorance. Policing, military protection, and the like are legitimate responsibilities of the government, something only a government can do. The legitimacy of the state (or lack thereof) lends itself to the force sometimes necessary to protect the public and enforce the law. (That's why vigilantes are outside the law.)

Health care is not something only the government can do. It is something legitimately done by private entities. (Never mind that it's often done better by private entities, too. Compare the survival rates for cancer and heart disease in Canada and the U.S.)

Lind confuses the duties of the government vs. the rights of private citizens (which would include private companies and organizations).

I'd think a Salon editor would have been smart enough to save Lind from embarassing himself here. Apparently not.

California has among the highest overall tax rate in the nation, yet it is broke and billions in debt. Why?

It's not libertarians or conservatives. Democrats and liberals control the state legislature and have for decades, and they went on a spending spree for all their favorite causes, most particularly public-employee unions.

Teachers and others will lose their jobs while retired government workers will not lose their overly generous pensions and benefits. The state also insists on paying for benefits to illegal immigarants, who are overwhelming the state.

There's only one party responsible for California's mess: the Democrats.

In the meantime, California, once the Golden State, has a net loss of population and jobs and a net increase in people who work off the books or pay no taxes.

Nice try to bail out Pelosi, but even a cursory reading of the NY Times article shows that the CIA has some discretion in when it reveals certain things (hence your charge of "lying" is serious overstatement) and the fact that the program never went fully operational, making your charge even more absurd.

More to the point, Pelosi said the CIA specifically lied about her being briefed on waterboarding, which is provably untrue, since other congressmen were present and all agreed that not only did Pelosi acknowledge that the CIA was presently at that time using waterboarding, but she was among several who asked what more they could do to help the CIA.

Pelosi was caught in a lie, and now Joan Walsh is part of her enablers who are desperately trying to twist the facts to bail her out.

Pathetic.

Sorry, but that "explanation" is a big fat lie, and Sotomayor's been caught at it. Her point was to disagree with Justice O'Connor's point that a wise old man and wise old woman should come to the same conclusion on an issue.

See more here:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/07/024048.php

This blatant lie alone is enough to disqualify her, lying to the Senate. It also shows her to be a moral coward who will say anything if it benefits her.

If she said it but once, you could attribute it to careless speaking. But she gave the same speech with the same sentiments on six different occasions. This was not misspeaking; she truly believes this racist crap.

In fact, the US did strike a knockout blow on the military field. The Viet Cong were never again a factor on the battlefield, so decimated were their ranks. And the North reeled from the absolute drubbing they received on the battlefield in February 1968.

NVA general Vo Nguyen Giap admits as much. But, he added, they won a propaganda victory in Tet, aided in large measure by Walter Cronkite.

Glenn Greenwald (if he had any influence beyond this very small venue) would be another Cronkite if he had his way, wishing victory to our enemies and denying the obvious.

Capricorn One was about a faked Mars landing.

But also interesting is that a major star of the movie was ... O.J. Simpson, sans sharp knife, of course.

They're all locked in a warehouse at Area 51, recently joined by the crew and passengers of United Flight 93, who didn't crash in Pennsylvania on 9/11 but rather landed safely in Cleveland and then quickly whisked away by black helicopters.

My real name is Carl Smith, and I resent your doubting my existence.

Well, Mr. Greenwald, as a former philosophy major you should probably recognize a very flawed piece of reasoning in this overly long bit of drivel.

Leo Strauss said X, Irving Kristol cited Krauss, Bill Kristol is Irving's son, therefore Bill Kristol believes what Strauss taught -- even though the only "lies" you cite from Bill Kristol are in fact policy pronouncement with which you disagree or which were mistaken, but not lies. (A lie requires knowledge that what you state is false.)

It's the classic tactic of the Left and people like Greenwald to engage in a form of ad hominem attacks by declaring their opponents to be liars rather than simply engaging them on the merits or demerits of their arguments.

In summary, there are a whole lot of dots in this column, but few of them connect.

And a proposal: let's all stop using the word "neocon" since is has become utterly blanched of any meaning, if it every had any in the first place.