...I welcome being called an anti-Semite (if that's what it takes). That's why I joined J Street as soon as it was formed. I know I'm with Glenn (and M. J. Rosenberg and Gideon Levy) on (much of) this, and not David Duke, and the more that the likes of Jeffrey Goldberg and Abe Foxman huff and puff like this, the cheaper the slur becomes.

Signed,

(the half-Jewish) Sheikh Hassan Bell

..of the celebrification (if there is such a word, but readers will understand) of the political/intellectual culture.

Frankly, I was appalled when I back when I first found out that the Hollywood PR agencies were getting editing rights for Vanity Fair profiles of the Brangelinas of the day and photo approval. Now, that same tendency is affecting everything, everywhere.

In a way, I don't understand it: the Obama/O'Reilly interview was one of the most interesting of the campaign, while like minds produce, usually, stale dialog (hooray for our side!). Maybe, staying in the cocoon is just easier and everybody prefers to be lazy: Pawlenty and Maddow were both working, had to work.

as an alternative?

Most of what we get as intel (leaks in paragraph 22 on page A17) indicate some al Qaida resurgence, and the job of rooting them out was never completed by the prior administration. Afghanistan sure doesn't look ripe for a withdrawal at this juncture. The takfari jihadis do have a safe haven in the FATA and other areas in western Pakistan. I would also note that Obama's speech represents a downscaling of the mission to something that might be attainable.

I have been an admirer of Informed Comment and your sagacity about the Middle East/Iraq. And so I am loathe to cast your opinion aside, but I really don't see where you're going here.

...than the typical reader here. So, I remember that one of the reasons I was enthusiastic for Clinton's candidacy in 1991-1992 was that he had been a Constitutional Law professor (following his one defeat for Arkansas governor). I thought that, with that background, he would be sensitive to civil liberties/constitutional issues and right some of the depredations of the Reagan/Bush 41 years. I then watched the next 8 years with dismay in this respect.

Fast forward to late 2006 - early 2007. Obama is a Constitutional Law professor--a full-time one. Surely,... Even if one violates the Who's Theorem (Won't Get Fooled Again), the FISA fiasco should have (re)-taught the lesson.

And that lesson is that, with Democratic Presidents just as much (and maybe more) than Republican Presidents, keep your membership in ACLU or EFF or one of the other worthwhile Friend of the Court-type organizations in this space--and keep it current.

I was told at the Sprint store yesterday that it will be out June 17. (I didn't directly press for the information: I have a waterlogged Centro (don't ask), and said that I wanted to replace it with a Pre rather than doing an interim replacement.)

It's Princeton summa and an editorship at Yale Law Review. That should put the "not smart enough" canard where it belongs. And that should be enough to put the "affirmative action baby" canard where it belongs. But no!

Politically, this is brilliant. There is going to be no way that the conservatives can mount a concerted opposition without showing their own ids, and thereby re-alienating any Hispanics that were starting to forget the immigration battle.

...but there you go, being reality-based again. Particularly when writing against Rove, you need to review Suskind. We're an empire now, and we create our own reality--and then poor sods like Suskind (and you) come along, carefully considering it--aw, heck, you know the rest.

...as accurate, Saturday's tea party was more than double the size of any other protest ever mounted on Washington.

Also, if I recall correctly, it was larger than the inaugural.

Looking at the videos though, I wonder why the crowds don't look denser/larger? Maybe there were separate rallies in Tysons' Corner and Anacostia?

Actually. this is of a piece with this circle's reckless disregard of the truth--and can be Exhibit A in making that case.

A few examples: first, why are footnotes, bibliographies etc. still on dead trees? They should be retrievable, for those who are interested, on the book's (or publisher's) website, except when particularly extensive and essential to understand the author's meaning/point.

Likewise, of late, I have become fascinated by Camus, and have been reading everything I can get my hands on by and about him. Surely, he did some filmed/televised interviews. In a 'modern' biography, wouldn't/couldn't/shouldn't those be embedded, rather than merely summarized/analyzed? Camus edited and was the principal editorialist for an initially underground, and, after the Allied victory, overground, newspaper called Combat. I would like to see what a copy looked like, and be able to link to translations of some of those editorials (a fair number of which are apparently still of pertinence to present-day problems). Why can't I do all this right now--except that the publishers have no imaginations?

Does every novel need to be a graphic novel? Lord, I hope not: my imagination of what the characters look like, how they move etc. may not conform to the author's (or the visage of the actor hired to depict a character).

So even if the economy doesn't revive quickly, the value of the acquisition won't go to, or anywhere near zero. OTOH, this is a huge bet that we will have robust revenue growth going forward, over some kind of reasonable time horizon.

...I've always thought of Salon as an even older kind of men's online magazine!

But how come, then, Huffington Post has far more T&A?