His Arch-Puppetude holds forth on the purported psychological exhaustion caused by the continual attention paid to the Islamist menace by those who do pay attention to it, stating that in fact those who continually focus on the threat–a canard uptrumped in order to facilitate Executive power-grabbing and the shredding of the Constitution in general–actually enjoy this posture, because it lends an element of romance to their otherwise pointless lives to believe

David Thompson: To avoid printing the cartoons – or to avoid any public suggestion that Islam is anything other than a Religion of Peaceâ„¢ – would not only show that death threats and violent thuggery work it would also imply that such thuggery is a morally legitimate response. It is not. Burning down schools and destroying libraries is simply not a sane reaction to the publication of a cartoon. Likewise, threatening to “take to the streets”

Sen. Hillary Clinton is scaling back her Wisconsin campaign schedule by a full day.  It looks like Sen. Barack Obama also may be leaving early.  Jeff Greenfield thought it could have been fertile ground for Clinton.  Chris Bowers thought (and may still think) it is a “must-win” for Obama. My speculation would be that neither side was moving the numbers there enough to affect their projected delegate take and are moving onto

Bob “The Prince of Darkness” Novak reports: Strategists for Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign believe it is imperative to identify her high-flying opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, with the “McGovern wing” of the Democratic Party — but they want to keep their candidate’s fingerprints off the attack. Presumably, leaking it to Novak would be considered counter-productive to that sort of secrecy. Now that her cover is blown, perhaps Clinton ought to

Everybody’s noticed the swelling on the left side of McCain’s face.  So, my question is . . . do the political cartoonists start drawing him with a lopsided head, or is it just too un-PC, even to do to a Rethug?

round-up at Jawa. Fairness Doctrine equal time. 

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! NYT reports Democrat vote fraud:  Black voters are heavily represented in the 94th Election District in Harlem’s 70th Assembly District. Yet according to the unofficial results from the New York Democratic primary last week, not a single vote in the district was cast for Senator Barack Obama. That anomaly was not unique. In fact, a review by The New York Times of the unofficial

Mo’ better victimage: On the other hand, if you’re running for president not as an unexceptional first-term senator with a thin resume but as the new Messiah, the new Kennedy, the new Gandhi, the new Martin Luther King, you can’t blame folks for leaping ahead to the next stage in the mythic narrative. Around the world, a second instant sub-genre has sprung up in which commentators speculate how long it

who can dig the humor in the dumb. (starts at about min 27)

Sean Wilentz and Julian E. Zelizer, who teach US political history at Princeton University, do not actually endorse Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid in their Sunday WaPo op-ed, “A Rotten Way to Pick a President.”  But their complaints about “our badly flawed system” for picking presidential candidates sound as though Clinton could have been giving them dictation. Their criticisms?  Caucuses can be highly undemocratic.  Michigan and Florida may be disenfranchised.