The caption to a photo at the The Globe and Mail the other day explained what was going on: “Supporters of deposed Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra hold up cannisters filled with human blood as they gather outside Government House in Bangkok, Thailand. Protesters donated blood with the intention of collecting one million cubic centimeters to be used in demonstrations outside Government House, as the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva continues to reject calls for a dissolution...

Those who know me, even just through blogging, know what I think of organized religion, and of Christianity in particular. Well, let me be blunt. If, as Glenn Beck suggested, taking the baton from Rep. Steve King, one of the more extremist Republicans on Capitol Hill, voting for health-care reform on a Sunday, perhaps this Sunday, is “an affront to God,” then Beck’s “God” can shove it. Because it would mean that his “God” thinks that millions and millions...

Karl Rove says he is “proud we used techniques that broke the will of these terrorists… Yes, I’m proud that we kept the world safer than it was, by the use of these techniques. They’re appropriate, they’re in conformity with our international requirements and with US law.” Of course, the U.S. did a lot of nasty things to its detainees, at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, and a lot of what it did amounted to torture as defined by any decent human being. What Rove was specifically...

First, just a couple of weeks ago, it was for voting with the Democrats to move a jobs bill forward, now it’s for announcing he’ll vote to end a Republican filibuster on an unemployment benefits and tax credits bill. It’s for coming out generally against the filibuster and for supporting simple majority rule even when it means he, and his party, will lose: I have very serious concerns about the overall cost of the bill, but my vote for cloture signals that I believe we need to keep...

Yesterday, I called Eric Massa the Worst Democrat of the Day for a variety of reasons. Well, Massa went to Glennbeckistan last night and admitted to having “groped” and “tickled” a male staffer at his 50th birthday party: He also said he’d used rough language when he shouldn’t have and that he had jokingly told a male staffer at a wedding reception that he’d rather have sex with him than with one of the bridesmaids. But, Massa told Beck, “I did nothing...

Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation yesterday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said — I kid you not — that using reconciliation for health-care reform would be “catastrophic.” Remember when 9/11 supposedly marked the death of irony, when words like “war” and “courage” took on new meaning? In what world should the word catastrophic be thrown around this recklessly? How exactly is it “catastrophic” to use reconciliation? Let me quote him directly: So...

Uh-oh: “A section of the Arctic Ocean seafloor that holds vast stores of frozen methane is showing signs of instability and widespread venting of the powerful greenhouse gas.” More: The research results, published in the March 5 edition of the journal Science, show that the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, long thought to be an impermeable barrier sealing in methane, is perforated and is leaking large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Release of even a fraction of...

VoteVets.org, in conjunction with my friends at Operation Free, has put together a hard-hitting new ad examining the connections between U.S. energy dependency and Iran’s terrorist campaign against the U.S. in Iraq. HuffPo’s Sam Stein reports: In a spot set to air in eight key states, the group, VoteVets.org (with assistance from the energy independence group Operation Free) splices footage of highly developed improvised explosive devices being used against U.S. soldiers alongside Iranian...

It was a close vote, 23-22, but the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted yesterday, if I may quote the NYT, “to condemn as genocide the mass killings of Armenians early in the last century, defying a last-minute plea from the Obama administration to forgo a vote that seemed sure to offend Turkey and jeopardize delicate efforts at Turkish-Armenian reconciliation.” It’s a vote I applaud enthusiastically. And not for the first time. Here’s what I wrote back in October 2007: What...

It looks like the process has been worked out: Sen. Tom Harkin told POLITICO that Senate Democratic leaders have decided to go the reconciliation route. The House, he said, will first pass the Senate bill after Senate leaders demonstrate to House leaders that they have the votes to pass reconciliation in the Senate. It’s not clear how Senate Democrats will “demonstrate” their commitment to use reconciliation to pass so-called patches to the Senate bill — remember, reconciliation...

MUST-WATCH VIDEO BELOW! The Olympics are over, and many of us Canadians are experiencing a serious post-Olympic hangover — it was such a high, after all, and it’s hard now to adjust back to “normalcy” — but there is no denying that the Vancouver Winter Games was a deeply meaningful event for this country. Whether there is a long-term effect remains to be seen, but I do think the Olympics tapped our deep reservoir of rarely seen national pride in a way that few events...

The closing ceremonies got off to a great start with the fourth arm going up — the one that didn’t work during the lighting at the opening ceremonies, the malfunction that got all the overhyped buzz and took on a life of its own in the media — and with Catriona Le May Doan finally getting to light it, and I enjoyed seeing the athletes come in, all the Canadians, with Joannie Rochette carrying the flag, Team Martin’s golden curlers, and all the rest, and the others as well,...

I’m late getting to this, but, well, you know, the Olympics. Our women’s hockey team shut out the U.S. for a third straight gold, our men’s and women’s curlers both won their semifinal matches, and Joannie Rochette, a lovely and courageous young woman, skated to the bronze in women’s figure skating, with all of Canada behind her, just days after her mother’s death. Yesterday was a pretty good day. The Vancouver Games have done a lot to unite this country, to allow...

Yeah, so I’m not blogging as much as usual with the Olympics on, what with such extensive coverage on three different Canadian networks. But you know what? We rule! Uh… at… uh… ice dancing? Yes! No, it’s not a sport, and it’s utterly ridiculous, with the performers — it’s undeniably athletic, and commentators fall all over themselves trying to justify it as a sport by protesting that it’s so very athletic, but I refuse to call them athletes (although...

Newsweek: “Another leader of the Afghan Taliban has been captured by authorities in Pakistan working in partnership with U.S. intelligence officials. Taliban sources in the region and a counterterrorism officials [sic] in Washington have identified the detained insurgent leader as Mullah Abdul Salam, described as the Taliban movement’s ‘shadow governor’ of Afghanistan’s Kunduz province.” I assume this means conservatives across America, from the GOP to the FNC...

Jon Stewart had a nice bit last night on the bad winter weather in the northeast, poking fun at those, mostly on the right, who think that all the snow is evidence that global warming is a myth. The fact is, weather is not the same thing as climate, and a single weather event doesn’t really tell us anything meaningful about climate, let alone global climate. This is simple enough to understand, isn’t it? I won’t repeat what I’ve written many times before — e.g., here,...

I received an e-mail the other day from an old college friend asking me why the right has canonized Ronald Reagan. I thought about it, thought about it some more, and came up with a reply, written fairly hastily, that I reprint here. It is not meant to be a comprehensive explanation of Reagan’s lofty status among conservatives and in recent U.S. history. I welcome your comments. ********** I think Reagan’s victory in 1980 was the distillation of years and years of conservative activism....

Seems things aren’t so great in Colorado Springs these days: This tax-averse city is about to learn what it looks and feels like when budget cuts slash services most Americans consider part of the urban fabric. More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled. The...

President Obama isn’t “doing all kinds of crazy stuff that risks destroying America,” as Bill Kristol claims, echoing a common Republican talking point that Obama himself ridiculed at last Friday’s Q&A — and Kristol just proved his point — but he is leading what TNR’s John Judis calls “The Quiet Revolution”: [T]here is one extremely consequential area where Obama has done just about everything a liberal could ask for — but done it so...

I agree with Glenn Greenwald that “the behavior of Justice Alito at [Wednesday] night’s State of the Union address — visibly shaking his head and mouthing the words ‘not true’ when Obama warned of the dangers of the Court’s Citizens United ruling — was a serious and substantive breach of protocol that reflects very poorly on Alito and only further undermines the credibility of the Court. It has nothing to do with etiquette and everything to do with the Court’s...

I live-blogged Obama’s State of the Union address, with commentary before and after. So if you’re interested in a pro-Obama, more or less liberal perspective, check it out. I’ll be adding more to it, including reaction from others, as the night goes on.

For pulling an Evan Bayh and learning all the wrong lessons from the Massachusetts special election: I think we do go slower on health care. People do not understand it. It is so big it is beyond their comprehension. And if you don’t understand it when somebody tells you it does this or it does that and it’s not true, you tend to believe it, even though it isn’t true. It’s hard to debunk all of the myths that are out there. In my view when people are earning, when their home...

Here’s another example of the insane narrative emerging from Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts on Tuesday — from a leading German publication, Der Spiegel: US President Barack Obama suffered a painful defeat in Massachusetts on Tuesday. With mid-term elections looming, it means that Obama will have to fundamentally re-think his political course. German commentators say it is the end of hope. US President Barack Obama has had a number of difficult weeks during his first year...

I’ve been live-blogging the Brown-Coakley election/results over at my place, and, with Brown now declared the winner, I’ll be following up with analysis and commentary, looking ahead to what comes next. Yes, yes, I bring a liberal Democratic perspective, but I do it with such moderatation. If you’d like to check it out, see here. I’ll also post some of my thoughts here either tonight or tomorrow. And make sure to keep checking back here for some great posts from Joe and the...

In Massachusetts… oh, Massachusetts… what are you doing? Seriously. Republican Scott Brown may be up by as many as nine points over Democrat Martha Coakley. Actually, he may even have a double-digit lead. Polling expert Nate Silver has Brown as a 3:1 favourite. We’ll know by this evening, but it’s pretty clear what’s going on: Brown has surged ahead over the last week, further and further ahead, in poll after poll. And he will win today. Even if the race is closer than...