al-Zarqawi has it. Find out why.

This is really happening? I swear I’m living in bizarro world. We have so many important things to worry about and now we’re going to criminalize an expression of free speech. Amazing. Sean Aqui says it best: I didn’t join the Army to defend a piece of cloth; I joined the Army to defend what that piece of cloth represents. And what it represents is individual freedom, including freedom of speech — which includes moronic things like burning flags. When protesters burn American...

For my money, Hillary’s opinions about not pulling out of Iraq anytime soon make a lot of sense. That some in the left-wing can’t accept this is understandable, but ultimately disheartening. However, what will this mean for her chances in 2008? Will the Dem base cast her aside because she doesn’t agree with them now? Alan Stewart Carl isn’t optimistic.

Three enemy combatants killed themselves recently at Gitmo. Sean Aqui has three words for our leaders: Shut It Down.

Amba observes, and I agree, that an independent party could have a major impact come 2008. However, is it less a third party and more an endorsement of a more common sense way in politics? Could there be a way to bring members of both parties back towards the sensible middle? Amba rounds up the latest thoughts around the mediasphere on the third way.

Michael Reynolds has a must read post about Daily Kos and what it really means in the grand scheme of things. I am a netroots skeptic. I don’t think politics has moved to the web. I think there is a disconnect between web-world and real-world. Remember “meet ups?” Go to MeetUp.com, scroll through the political stuff. Lots of zeroed-out groups. Remember “flash mobs?” Yes, the web is a good tool for raising money, but mostly just because it’s easier to find a web...

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross knows: Zarqawi’s role model was twelfth century Arab fighting king Nur ad-Din Zanki. Zanki had two missions in life: to drive the Crusaders from Arab lands and to crush Shiite rulers. Few understood the importance that Zarqawi placed on him. In interviews with Iraq and Zarqawi specialists at the State Department, Defense Department and West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, we found no one who understood the importance that Zarqawi placed on Zanki. A survey...

Dennis Sanders is right. Gay marriage is an important issue, and after watching clips of Bill Bennett trying to explain his views about gay marriage on The Daily Show, I can’t help but feel that this issue is essential to our nation moving in a positive direction. Why? Very simple. Bennett’s arguments just don’t hold water. And the tradition argument has been used to prevent people from getting rights they deserve since the beginning of recorded time. But hey, don’t take my...

Have you seen this? What a great idea. Jonathan Alter explains… To begin busting up the dumb system we have for selecting presidents, a bipartisan group will open shop this week at Unity08.com. This Internet-based third party is spearheaded by three veterans of the antique 1976 campaign: Democrats Hamilton Jordan and Gerald Rafshoon helped get Jimmy Carter elected; Republican Doug Bailey did media for Gerald Ford before launching the political TIP SHEET Hotline. They are joined by the independent...

Those are the current talking points from the right wing, and according to Amba, they’re falling on deaf ears in centrist circles. More here.

Like it or not, pornography is more widespread now and easily accessible than any other time in human history. There are pluses and minuses, but do your teenagers know what “normal” is? More here.

From the looks of it the answer could be yes. Amba has the details.

Are we ignoring the first country to fall in our war on terrorism? The answer seems to be yes… The private word from the people who are closest to these things is that Iraq is doing slightly better than most Americans think it is, and Afghanistan is in much more danger than most of us realize. Chances are you’ll be seeing more about it in the months to come, and it won’t be purple-fingered “good news.â€? Unfortunately this makes sense because we’ve ignored this...

Looks like a focus on abstinence education could actually be increasing the spread of HIV, but this data doesn’t seem to sway the Ugandan government. The latest HIV infection information from Uganda seems to indicate that the abstinence approach may be a disaster in the making. Uganda, long viewed as a model for HIV prevention success in Africa, appears to have taken a wrong turn in promoting the program described as ABC…A: abstinence first…B: be faithful in a committed relationship…C:...

That’s the question amba poses after reading about the myriad of mistakes the administration and Pentagon officials made when trying to rebuild the Irai police force. Even before the 2003 invasion, General Jay Garner and Justice and State Department specialists had explicitly warned the administration that the rotten Saddam-era police force was likely to collapse and that 5,000 to 6,000 American and foreign advisers would be needed to train and monitor a new force. Bush and Rumsfeld blew them...

Bob Aman has the story: According to Wired, since the gag order applied only to “the EFF, its representatives and its technical experts,� and not to Mark Klein or any of the other news agencies, Wired was free to release the information they had. I’m not a lawyer of course, but I have a funny feeling that AT&T may try to sue anyways. The interesting part though, is not that Wired released the documents. The interesting part is that, so far as I can tell, Mark Klein’s...

That’s what Alan Stewart Carl is asking today, given the pointless “English is America’s language” bills the Senate passed yesterday. And that’s right. They actually passed two bills on this. Find out more here.

People are getting helped, but it’s either “too little too late” or “not even close to being enough.” Read some sad stories here and then take action.

This slipped past me last week, but Cory Booker won the Newark mayorial race in an out and out landslide. So why is Booker such a big deal? Well, anybody who’s seen the Academy Award-nominated documentary Street Fight already knows how Booker’s challenger in the 2002 mayorial contest, Democratic mayor Sharpe James, played extremely dirty politics against him. And yes, you should try and rent the documentary. It’s a revealing and jaw-dropping look at how a culture of corruption...

Cicero shares his journey with religion and how that may affect his 2 year-old daughter’s spiritual life. More here.

Michael Reynolds poses a curious riddle (hint: use Google) and then he follows up with a post about why the answer to the riddle should concern us all. Read An NSA Riddle first…then take a look at Why It Matters.

Amba thinks the time has come for the middle to get galvanized. More here.

It must be seen to be believed.

Well, I wouldn’t pose the question if the answer was no. From Defense Tech: It’d be one thing if the NSA’s massive sweep of our phone records was actually helping catch terrorists. But what if it’s not working at all? A leading practitioner of the kind of analysis the NSA is supposedly performing in this surveillance program says that “it’s a waste of time, a waste of resources. And it lets the real terrorists run free.” […[ So I called Valdis Krebs,...

Dennis Sanders, Alan Stewart Carl and Sean Aqui discuss this new information about the NSA storing our calls. The question everybody is asking: When is it going to stop?