Portland and Seattle are secure, sire. On to Vegas! The straw currently being grasped at by George Bush and the stay-the-course crowd is that U.S. forces have made big inroads among the Sunni tribes in Anbar Province, who instead of fighting among themselves are being bribed . . . er, financed to fight Al Qaeda. And this success can be replicated elsewhere in Iraq, which will lead to peace, an American troop drawdown and Hollywood ending. That’s all well and good, and I’ll take good...

A four times-married British woman has wed a son of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden after meeting him on holiday and plans to apply for a visa so that he can visit the U.K. Jane Felix-Browne, a 51-year-old grandmother and parish counselor from Cheshire, had kept her marriage to Omar Ossama bin Laden, 27, secret from everyone except her immediate family and close friends. She told The Times of London: “It would be nice if, like any other married woman, I could stand up and say this is my husband...

Remember the Walter Reed scandal? Remember the Veterans Administration hospital scandal? Remember reports that a tidal wave of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan with serious physical and mental health needs will soon break on the shore? With all that in mind, The Associated Press reports that: “The Bush administration plans to cut funding for veterans’ health care two years from now – even as badly wounded troops returning from Iraq could overwhelm the system. “Bush is using...

Why is it that only Republicans or right-wing demagogues who suck up to Republicans get caught with their pants down these days? At least he wasn’t having sex with underage boys. * * * * * John McCain in 1994: “The right course of action is to make preparations as quickly as possible to bring our people home. It does not mean as soon as order is restored to Haiti. It doesn’t mean as soon as democracy is flourishing in Haiti. It doesn’t mean as soon as we’ve established...

Anybody see a surge in there? Monday: The White House insisted that Mr. Bush did not intend to change gears. “Don’t expect us to lift a veil and have a whole different strategy,” the spokesman, Tony Snow, said. “We’re not going to have a strategy jumping out of a cake.” Tuesday: [T]he White House announced that an upcoming progress report will result in “the beginning of a new way” in Iraq. . . . “What Congress will get this week is a snapshot...

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“America is still suffering the horrible consequences of hippies who thought utopia could be found in joints and intentional disconnect.” — Ted Nugent It has been 40 years since the Summer of Love and those unlovable right-wingnut Republicans, led by their knuckle-dragging shoot ‘em up poster boy, are waging class welfare anew against a favorite target. But is it possible that Ted Nugent has a point? Please click here to read more at Kiko’s House.

Like the last person in the room to get a really bad joke, President Bush becomes more isolated by the day as the scales fall from the eyes of the small and shrinking number of people who share his belief that his war in Iraq can be won. There would seem to be an element of pathos to this: The lonely commander in chief walking the halls of the White House late at night, framed portraits of his predecessors looking down on him in mute abjection as he ponders what went wrong. But we know this man...

Desert One: The Aftermath Although the mission had originally been viewed as preposterous, it gradually had come to seem feasible. It included a nighttime rendezvous of helicopters and planes at a desert landing strip south of Tehran, where the choppers would refuel before carrying raiding parties to hiding places just outside the city. There they would stage an assault on the U.S. embassy, spirit the American hostages to a nearby soccer stadium and then ferry them to a seized airstrip where transport...

An Aboriginal group kicks off the Australian leg of the Live Earth Concert in Sydney, one of nine concerts worldwide aimed at persuading people to go green. More here. Photograph by Reuters

That dwindling minority of unquestioning supporters of the Iraq war have sought out one fall guy after another as Mission Accomplished has become the Forever War: That cooked pre-war intelligence was the fault of an incompetent CIA. Joe Wilson lied and thousands died. The Democrats have been giving comfort to the enemy. Those treacherous Irani mullahs are to blame. Yada yada yada. And now that a chickenhawk like Senator Pete Domenici is sidling toward the lifeboats, the gig is truly up despite some...

. . . with a hanging chad when I found out that George Bush and the Dalai Lama were both born yesterday. But then you know what they say about karma. Well, wait. What do they say? This confoozlement led me to consult at the knee of Craig Johnson, a practicing Buddhist who has not let a previous life as an international investment banker cloud his big picture (which to say cosmic) perspective. Sayeth Craig: “Two men born on the same day, George Bush and the Dalai Lama. “One who forgoes...

A newly released study finds that when people were contacted by MoveOn’s get-out-the-vote canvassers, they appeared to be seven percent more likely to vote than the general population, which is damned significant. For the record, I find MoveOn’s appeals to be akin to the sound of fingernails on a blackboard, but if the study is anywhere near accurate, they are to be commended. Hat tip to Henry at Crooked Timber

If the area in which I live had an “official” flower, it would be the day lily. Beginning in mid-June and peaking in mid-July, the ubiquitous bright orange blossoms begin appearing on country roadsides, in woods and in gardens until the last flowers fade in August. As their name implies, the flowers of the day lily are transitory, opening at sunrise and withering at sunset, usually to be replaced the next day by another flower on the same stem. Although day lilies are extraordinarily...

I be a bad ass hired gun getting rich off of da war. Let’s be cynical for a moment by suggesting that one of the reasons Iraq has become a Forever War is the billions and billions of dollars being made from it not just by stateside defense contractors, but all of the camp-follower companies that now have more employees in the war zone than there are U.S. soldiers. Perhaps that’s not cynical at all, but an unpleasant conclusion that is reinforced by three inter-related realities: *...

While most of my friends were buying houses and raising families in the 1970′s, I was seeing the U.S.A. in a Volkswagen bus that I had customized to be a comfy home away from home. I had globetrotted in previous years and realized upon my return that I knew more about the Far East than East L.A., so I set out on a year-on, year-off exploration of the contiguous 48 states. I’d seen Hawaii and Alaska traveling to and from Japan, and except for Kentucky and Montana, ended up driving through...

For a bunch of white guys with bad hair the Founding Fathers were really onto something. Please take a few minutes to read the entire (original) text of the Declaration of Independence. Then think about where American has been in the last 231 years and, most importantly, where it is today. I don’t know about you, but reading this extraordinary document invites comparisons between a George to which the Founding Fathers repeatedly refer and a present-day George.

In a delicious turn of events, the family of O.J. Simpson murder victim Ron Goldman has purchased the rights to the Juice’s cancelled book, “If I Did It,” from a court-appointed bankruptcy trustee. The family has said it will rename the book “The Confessions of a Double Murderer” and shop it around. It also acquired the media and movie rights and Simpson’s name, likeness, life story and rights of publicity in connection with the book. Goldman was slain along...

When Benjamin Franklin famously remarked that the law is an ass, a reference to the donkey, he could not have imagined a future law in his adopted Pennsylvania that forbids fireworks sales to state residents but allows out-of-staters to buy the explosives by the truckload. A horse’s ass of a law, perhaps? This incongruity comes into sharp focus every Independence Day as residents of New Jersey, which has an absolute ban on fireworks sales, transportation and use, stream into Pennsylvania to...

There is a birdbath tucked in between a Japanese maple and a spruce tree at our house and this time of year it is a rare evening that there isn’t a procession of fat robins who take turns splashing in the water and then flying up to the branches of a nearby plum tree to preen and shake themselves dry. I was standing at the door last night taking in this sweet little sideshow, a moment of sublime normalcy in what has increasingly seemed like a world gone crazy, when the news broke that President...

A federal appeals court said today that Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, must go to prison while appealing his conviction for obstructing a CIA leak probe. The three-judge panel found that Libby “has not shown that the appeal raises a substantial question” under federal law that would merit letting him remain free. Steve Benen writes at Political Animal: “For those who keep track of such things, Bloomberg reported, ‘The...

The wife of Alex R. Jimenez, one of the two U.S. soldiers kidnapped and feared dead after an Al Qaeda-led ambush in May in the Triangle of Death, has been issued a green card and can stay in the U.S. indefinitely. Yaderlin Jimenez, like her husband, is a native of the Dominican Republican, but she entered the U.S. illegally prior to marrying him in 2004. She had been listed for deportation despite being married to a naturalized U.S. citizen because she did not apply for a green card. Alex Jimenez...

In another bloody milestone, 108 U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq in June — the first time that there have been over 100 deaths for three consecutive months since the war began. Please click here to read the monthly war news and statistical summary at Kiko’s House.

The news today that the Supreme Court will review two Guantánamo Bay detainee-related appeals prompts me to make a statement that seems outrageous on its face considering the high court’s recent sprint to the right: It will side with the detainees in their assertion that they cannot be indefinitely confined without trial. Howcum? Because this is more or less a replay of last year’s Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision, which is possibly the Supreme’s most important of the young millennium,...