Two Young men from Glasgow, Archie and Jock, are sitting in the pub discussing Jock’s forthcoming wedding .” Ach, it’s all going like magic,” says Jock. “I’ve got everything organized already -the flowers, the church, the cars, the reception, the rings, the minister, even ma stag night…..” Archie nods approvingly. “Man, I ‘ve even bought a kilt to be married in!” continues Jock.” A kilt?” exclaims Archie, “That’s grand, you’ll

Funny how quickly New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt can turn up to criticize the paper… after it has taken a lopsided public shellacking over its anonymously sourced innuendo regarding Sen. John McCain and a female lobbyist: But in the absence of a smoking gun, I asked (Executive editor Bill) Keller why he decided to run what he had. “If the point of the story was to allege that McCain

Cloudy and overcast, with a progressive chance of forgiving terrorist bombings — and befriending those sophisticates who commit them — come November. Part of all of that changyness and hopeitude, you see. YES WE CAN! (h/t STACLU)

From emptywheel:  When I noted that John McCain’s lobbyist gal had represented the two networks that would, in 2004, show the anti-Kerry propaganda piece, Stolen Honor, I admitted I didn’t know precisely whether or how John McCain had helped the second of these two networks, Sinclair Broadcasting’s shell company, Glencairn Broadcasting. Today, the NYT makes it very clear that McCain used the same kind of inappropriate, pushy tactics for Sinclair as he had with

Story of the progressive icon and reader of Gleen(s) on the Senate floor at The Nation. Which is cool, I suppose; given the number of Obama supporters from Illinois who probably crossed the state line into Wisconsin to vote for Feingold, that’s probably fair.

Fascinating article on population genetics that references three fascinating studies on population genetics: White Americans are both genetically weaker and less diverse than their black compatriots, a Cornell University-led study finds. Analyzing the genetic makeup of 20 Americans of European ancestry and 15 African-Americans, researchers found that the former showed much less variation among 10,000 tested genes than did the latter, which was expected. They also found that Europeans had

I’m cancelling my vacation plans to Diego Garcia.

The Washington Post reports that the failure of House Democrats to allow a vote on the terrorist surveillance law reduced cooperation from the telcos last week: Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said in a letter sent yesterday afternoon to Capitol Hill that the companies were refusing to cooperate because they were uncertain about what legal liability they might face. “We have lost intelligence information this past week as

Josh Marshall warns of the grave threat the US military poses to our democracy: It would appear that we have another case where the Bush Pentagon, particularly the Office of Public Affairs is forcefully inserting itself into the civilian election process. Put aside the fact that Marshall does not reference any prior instance to justify his claim that this is “another” instance, let alone his later claim that there is a

Worst songs of the nineties (slideshow).  Most of them really are pretty dreadful. No music, but earworm alert, anyhow.