No Comment
By Scott Horton
October 27, 11:00 AM
Details of CIA Snatch Effort Unfold in a Canadian Courtroom

Abdullah Khadr is the brother of Omar Khadr, a Canadian who was seized at the age of 15 following a firefight in an Afghanistani village near Tora Bora and spirited away to Guantánamo. Omar’s case has stirred international controversy about the conditions and treatment of child prisoners by the United States, and U.S. authorities long sought Abdullah to help make their case against his brother, among other things. The CIA tracked Abdullah down and paid the Pakistani Interservice Intelligence (ISI) $500,000 for his capture and surrender to an undisclosed third-country detention site (potentially Guantánamo), but both the Canadian and Pakistani authorities balked at this. Instead, Abdullah got a trip home to Canada. Everyone apparently wanted to charge Abdullah, but no one seems to have had any evidence—until suddenly Abdullah began to confess....

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/10/hbc-90005986

Horton's link to The Star fails. A search on Abdullah Khadr at The Star's website turned up zilch. Apologies for the nature of Google's cache linked at sig.

I can't speak for the others, but religion-bashing is practically a religion for me.

I was doin' okay in the religion - everyone needs to have one - department until I got railroaded into attending a Catholic High School; despite my best efforts to flunk the entrance exam. There were 300 bubble spaces that I randomly filled out on the answer sheet, for a 200 question test I didn't even bother to look at. Oops! Busted! But, at least I started out with the right kind of reputation, and it went all down hill from there. At the end of four years and only one Spanish-Inquisition-type "examination" over a piece a bunch of us wrote for the high school newspaper, they graduated me and suggested I didn't quite have the right stuff. On that, at least, we agreed.

My opinion of slate.com has been diminished.

Since you're not even sure what part of the cyber-universe you're in, my opinion of your opinion of Glenn's opinion is zucchini.

Not even the most-unhinged American evangelicals are routinely strapping bombs to themselves or planting bombs and then blowing up public spaces.

I say give 'em time. For now they're principally occupied with bombing abortion clinics, and using abortion providers for target practice.

Eg; http://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/15/us/jury-indicts-suspect-in-abortion-killings.html

Eg2: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1902189,00.html

his article is descriptive, not normative. The most he could be accused of is using loaded terminology.

could only be made by someone not quite thinking it through.

It seems to me that loaded terminology is normative nearly by definition.

How, in what way, does knowing why change your response? I can understand how it might change the way you feel about Obama, but how would it change what you do about Obama?

For those who might not have seen it...

Harper's
Jesus killed Mohammed: The crusade for a Christian military
By Jeff Sharlet

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/05/0082488

And, at sig

Now we get to find out how Douthat came to arrive at the NYT?

The blatancy with which this viewpoint is being promoted in a country founded on secular principles ought to chill any honest American right to the soles of their shoes.

There is an ill wind blowin' and a bad moon risin' for sure.

What why would make Obama's choices acceptable to you? Does there exist in your imagination a why that absolves Obama of the contra-choices he has made from his campaign rhetoric?

I gently suggest that waiting for why only delays the person wondering from being required to confront the reality of Obama.

Waiting until it's obvious what the final bill looks like - who needs sources of any stripe at that point - only means we have lost whatever opportunity we might have had to influence what shows up in that final bill. The "rumors" of Democratic capitulation have been flying all weekend. By your logic, the HuffPo (and TPM) should sit with its hands folded politely in its lap until the bill is a fait accompli.

Glenn can speak for himself, but I cannot recall Glenn ever arguing that anonymous sources should never be cited. He has identified numerous instances where it was entirely unnecessary for journalists to not name their sources, but I'm not sure he would be inclined to say this is one of them. If, as you state, I find it not only plausible, but also likely that the executive branch is secretly working to seriously water down the public option, if not kill it entirely., these anonymous sources are doing activists an enormous favor by affirming that public pressure is still very important.

If it turns out that this "panic alarm" was falsely activated, I hope the HuffPo burns that (those) source(s). That's the other side of the coin for those who argue that Glenn is somehow being inconsistent. For those times, and I agree this might be one, when an anonymous credit is legitimate, there is an opportunity to punish the source. Something which is almost never done - but, I wouldn't put it past the HuffPo - and, Glenn has argued that, too.

Well at least you still feel good about yourself at the end of the day. That's what's most important, right? - orbitboy

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is not the definition of insanity.

Apologies to Albert Einstein.

tremayne put up a diary at Open Left last week positing:

Creating a Trigger for Campaign Contributions in 2010 and 2012

http://www.openleft.com/diary/15660/creating-a-trigger-for-campaign-contributions-in-2010-and-2012

The next morning this petition was in my email:

Donor Strike for Public Option

http://www.democrats.com/donor-strike-for-public-option?cid={cid_enc

I believe the petition above is still taking signatures, for those inclined.

http://www.heraldsun.com/pages/full_story/push?article-Hersh-+Military+waging+war+with+White+House%20&id=3974209-Hersh-+Military+waging+war+with+White+House&instance=homethirdleft

and, at sig