In case you haven't noticed, the country is under attack by people armed with modern weaponry.

A CBU-52B cluster bomb just fell on the statue of Winton B. Grapplethorn while I was on my way to work this morning.

Can you imagine how much worse it will be when those detainees are running around in our neighborhoods?

If you are taking Gender and Lit, I may BE your literature instructor!

in his opening monologue tonight said this about Obama's speech--

When Obama said he'd have transparency in government, he meant he'd do illegal shit out in the open.

He got dead silence from the audience.

So he said--

I know you don't like me going after your guy, but we have to worship the law in this country rather than a man. Otherwise it would be religion.

One would think that he might be emboldened to act in the public interest by all the small donations he received from millions of Americans hungry for real change. One would be dead wrong.

This is just one of the sad things about this, the Biggest Bait and Switch in History.

All of those people giving their tiny donations of five or ten dollars because they couldn't afford more, hoping not just to end the blatant illegality of the previous regime, but also to see the political tone changed and some basic decency to be part of American life.

I still remember this granny holding an Obama sign at the library where people were voting. She was the only one in that conservative precinct. I went to chat her up and she said just that--she didn't want her grandchildren to grow up in a country where the government was corrupt and non-representative and where our leaders made lies and gross self-aggrandizement the national pastime.

I'm sick of being referred to, to my face, as 'too leftist' or a 'radical', just because I want my government to perform UNDER the Constitution, and not EXTRA-constitutionally. Jesus, people, how hard is it to understand? GG certainly is working overtime to explain it, every single day.

I feel your pain. And not in a phony Bill Clinton way.

[...] Feingold's concerns with regard to the president's "prolonged detention" proposal are sufficiently deep that the senator has informed the president of plans to hold a Constitution subcommittee hearing with regard to the plan.

This cannot be easy for him. Here is the link for the web form to write to Feingold, along with snail mail addresses.

http://feingold.senate.gov/contact_opinion.html

Also, linky siggy.

And let's write to Obama to tell him Feingold is right.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/

By the way, at the top of this contact form, it says:

President Obama is committed to creating the most open and accessible administration in American history.

Wow. It certainly takes balls to write that shit.

but there is a small chance that if someone like Feingold hears from a lot of people, his backbone may be stiffened just a bit!

Titonwan, I am glad your pidgeons have an interesting vocabulary. Mine read Miss Manners and they are no fun at all.

As we accept this, repression of reality and the infantile fantasy of perfect safety -- in other words, cowardice -- become the driving forces of our lives.

Obama proves himself no leader when he gives in to this kind of cowardice. Certainly the flames of this pathology have been stoked in recent years, but it is the job of a real leader to set a different tone for the country. I never thought I'd see the day when Cheney's approval ratings went up, but that would not have happened if there were not a vacuum of leadership for him to play off of. Appalling.

is better than any of these shows, and I believe it will be back this summer.

Great cast, great chemistry, great fun.

Thanks for the great laugh with that, Glenn.

I spent about 60 hours this last week carefully editing a poorly written mess of a manuscript, only to find out that I edited the wrong book! And then spent some overnighters madly editing the correct one. Whew.

So a good laugh is mighty welcome.

Gah, Rosen. Total jackass.

Sadly the flame of hope is flickering weakly for want of audacity and moral courage. But I'm sure it's all part of his masterful 11 level interdimensional chess strategy to keep the GOP off balance [cough, cough, ahem] so he garners the time to forge a bipartisan consensus around a "just solution" to "the problem" [cough, cough].

I believe you have written Prez Bait-and-Switch's re-election campaign slogan there.

From the Good article:

Keeping disagreements with Israel private would undoubtedly further the U.S. image as an strong, some would say unconditional, backer of Israel--it would prevent Obama, for instance from publicly voicing concerns over settlements, as he has done of late.

In voicing those concerns, Obama has put pressure on Netanyahu's government. Citizens in Israel, the Arab world, and the U.S. now know what Obama thinks--for better or worse--and Muslim-world newspapers have displayed his dispute prominently, probably helping his standing in those countries--and probably rallying some sentiment against Netanyahu.

This is an encouraging development, that Obama has voiced such concerns, and that the Muslim world is noticing, and I hope that Obama doesn't cave in and backtrack on this. I don't know if this will become a big part of the conversation , but I wonder if Obama's failure to adhere to law in the case of Gitmo, habeas corpus, etc., become a ball and chain to him if he tries to get Israel to follow the law.

Btw, I just want to give Rachel Maddow a hand for covering the anti-abortion terrorists in relation to the recent murder of Tiller. I was not aware of the extent to which our law enforcement agencies have failed to protect health-care providers, despite the fact that the tactics that the terrorists have been using are felonies.