From the AP: The GOP-controlled Senate on Thursday rejected Democratic calls to start withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq by years’ end, as the two parties sought to define their election-year positions on a war that has grown increasingly unpopular. “Withdrawal is not an option. Surrender is not a solution,” declared Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, who characterized Democrats as defeatists wanting to abandon Iraq before the mission is

Drunk on his own “power,” Kos strikes back against The New Republic for daring to reveal a collaboration among several prominent leftwing sites.  From “TNR’s defection to the Right is now complete”: People talk about the need for the left to work together and have a unified message in the face of a unified conservative noise machine. So a google group was created called “Townhouse”, and it included many bloggers

Here’s Austin Bay: I heard a report on Fox News about twenty minutes ago (5 PM Central) that Senator Rick Santorum claims coalition investigators in Iraq found chemical weapons — artillery shells filled with a chemical agent (perhaps sarin nerve agent). The Fox report said Santorum had fought with the Pentagon and White House to get the information declassified. I’d like to see Santorum put his evidence up on the

Josh Trevino at Red State: TNR’s The Plank re-prints an e-mail from Matt Stoller’s not-so-secret Townhouse group—the entry page for the associated distro list is here — in which Markos Moulitsas asks his fellow left-bloggers to maintain a studious silence on the slowly coalescing story on what looks very much like a Jerome Armstrong-dKos pay-for-play cash nexus. “It would make my life easier if we can confine the story,” he

Dear ABC News: I suppose the biggest effect global warming has had on my life — aside from putting an end to my childhood fears that the next ice age could arrive at any moment and cancel the Orioles’ season — is that, as frightening as it now seems in retrospect, it made “moderate Democrat” Al Gore a viable national candidate for President, particularly in the minds of those who

Via the New Editor’s Tom Elia, I’m alerted to the latest verbal boner from DNC Chairman Howard Dean, who unleashed this bizarre articulation of Democratic war strategy (liberally peppered with anti-GOP invective) on Monday’s Hardball (with Norah O’Donnell): DEAN: I believe that John Murtha, who served two terms in Vietnam and 37 years as a combat veteran marine, knows a great deal about national defense than anybody in the Republican

So.  To hear dean of the faculty and professor of psychology and neuroscience at Pitzer College, Alan Jones, tell it, those folks who criticize the rather obvious and intellectually dangerous “progressive” bias in the modern academy (mostly in the humanities and social sciences) are part of a vast rightwing conspiracy funded by shady conservative sugar daddies.  Which, even were it true (and I don’t think it is) wouldn’t bother me

What do I hate about soccer?  Well, first of all, it’s so very European—what with the ridiculous colored socks, and with the hand made to feel guilty over what is its clear superiority in most activities requiring dexterity.  That is to say, for the offense of being so useful, the hand is marginalized to the point of criminality.  In soccer, using your hands is akin to committing a hate crime. 

From the WaPo: Two U.S. soldiers missing since an attack on a checkpoint last week have been found dead near a power plant in Yusifiyah, south of Baghdad, according to U.S. officials, and Iraqi officials say the soldiers had been tortured. Maj. Gen. Abdul Aziz Muhammed-Jassim, head of operations at the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, said the soldiers had been “barbarically” killed. U.S. officials would not confirm or deny that

*must credit protein wisdom* Not to get too far out in front of the news cycle here, but it appears TruthOut has been fully exonerated with respect to its earlier Rove reportage, and that Marc Ash, Jason Leopold, and their unnamed sources in federal law enforcement and government are actually heroes—albeit heroes who have been victimized by their own heroism in such a way that it appears that they’ve made