He and his wife don’t think it is. But it’s all water under the bridge now, because he’s resigned.

The Syracuse Post-Standard talks to Dede Scozzafava:

The subject of veteran suicides rises every so often, like a dark island that floats off shore, but lays submerged under the water most all the time. Only small boats with intrepid rowers that are strong enough to go out past the riptides can see the sleeping dead under the water. But every so often the ocean heaves and there it is again: the landmass rises and you see that it has been weighted down by huge...

This point has been made before, but not usually as bluntly as here (emphasis in original):

Attention deficit disorder:

It’s not what you might think. It’s not dying in battle. It’s not losing your life. It’s losing your mind, your heart, your soul, and the life force inside you that makes you want to survive.

The always worth-reading Rick Moran — even when I couldn’t disagree with him more (and this is not one of those times) — has a piece on how to make the GOP a majority party again — and it isn’t by reading the ideologically impure out of the party:

Josh Marshall at TPM (emphasis mine):

The news that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been declare the winner of Afghanistan’s hotly contested and controversial Presidential election now ensures that the Afghanistan issue be an ongoing controversial one on several fronts in several countries. Clearly, the fact that his prime foe former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah has pulled out rather than participate in a runoff that Abdullah insisted...

WASHINGTON — The next health care fight has already started. It’s the battle to define the bill that President Obama will eventually sign as a victory for consumers, taxpayers and the common good. You might say this view is premature. Legislation has yet to pass the House or the Senate, there are differences between the two bodies, and some moderates still have doubts. But barring astoundingly...

A koan is a short, often paradoxical idea, meant to tell the truth, or cause the ego to give up, or cause enlightenment, or all three. Old well known koans: What is the sound of one hand clapping? What is the sound of a tree falling in the forest, if there is no one there to hear it? I try my hand at koans. I’m no good at it, but I try. Why it is so easy for ‘the base’ of any side to fall...

President Obama must understand that foreign wars are the undoing of U.S. Presidents and most domestic agendas. If he hopes to concentrate on getting us out of this deep recession, he cannot spend any more time in Iraq and in particular, enlarge or continue our dead-end involvement in Afghanistan. Perhaps he’s trying to find a way to break the news to the U.S. Military and the American people that we must...

There are a few strong voices in Israel’s media who are willing to call out Israel’s intransigence on issues related to the peace process for what it is — the self-destructive behavior of an arrogant spoiled bully convinced that consequences are for someone else. How did Israel’s leaders develop such an entitlement mentality? Levy’s answer: Washington, D.C.: Now is the time to say...

Before the upcoming rough and tumble week of political debates, firestorms, memes, falsehoods, truths, insanity, coffee-fueled sermons, drug-induced tirades, and assorted odds and ends, I present the legendary Pat Metheny Group with their classic song “As It Is” (Live) from their 2002 release “Speaking Of Now”. Every time I hear this song, I realize how true the phrase “As It Is”,...

Sen. Joe Lieberman told Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation today that Democrats are sabotaging health care reform by insisting on a public option. Schieffer, however, got Lieberman to admit that he would prefer no health care reform bill at all to a health care reform bill that included a public option (emphasis in original):

In northern New York State, they are staging a 21st century version of an American classic, old-time hardball without the Iowa corn. “People will come,” said the prophetic Voice in the 1989 movie. “They’ll turn up not knowing for sure why they’re doing it. They’ll arrive as innocent as children, longing for the past. They’ll pass over their money without even thinking...

Frank Rich’s column today is about — as he puts it — the “GOP Stalinist invasion of upstate New York” — and it’s superb:

The Watertown Times has endorsed Bill Owens, the Democratic candidate to represent New York State’s 23rd Congressional district seat:

The issue in the United States of how bystanders react — or do not react — to a crime that has unfolded before them has now emerged in Italy, on a somewhat smaller scale in an incident that seems right out of The Godfather, The Sopranos or GoodFellas. Italian police have released this video of an authentic mafia hit. And it’s double deja vu: its a scene seemingly copied from Hollywood (when...

I thought it might be interesting — now that the Honduran government and exiled President Manuel Zelaya have come to an agreement that will restore Zelaya to the presidency until the legal end of his term — to look back at the reaction around the world when the coup occurred, at the end of June. It’s easy now, four months after the events took place, to forget how united the world was in its...

It’s been a little while since we’ve tried this One of the hardest things is to determine your own political position because it is only natural to assume you are the mainstream/center and everyone else should be left or right of you. There are a number of political surveys out there, and they too have some bias, but this one is pretty good at offering evaluation, and if anything it gives us an idea...

John Hannah is being roundly mocked for his NRO piece today in which he complains that Hillary Clinton is doing harm to U.S. interests abroad by contrasting Pres. Obama’s foreign policies with those of the previous administration, to the latter’s discredit. In her recent trip to Pakistan, Clinton told a group of students that she spent her entire Senate career opposing Bush’s policies, and...

Jonathan Safran Foer (and Michael Pollan) notwithstanding, Nicolette Hahn Niman argues it’s factory farming, not meat eating, that wreaks environmental havoc: In contrast to factory farming, well-managed, non-industrialized animal farming minimizes greenhouse gases and can even benefit the environment. For example, properly timed cattle grazing can increase vegetation by as much as 45 percent, North Dakota...

This is not one of the subjects I’ve been following closely, since I don’t live in New York State, but the response to her decision to drop out of the race is interesting. My understanding is that Scozzafava is a moderate Republican — she does not hew to the far right position on abortion and marriage equality, for example. But Michelle Malkin, in her post exulting about the news that she is...

Senator Lieberman of Connecticut has angered Democrats in his opposition to the “public option” for healthcare reform. Well this is not the first time he has gone his own way. It is perfectly understandable because he is officially an independent and thus he has no duty to the Democratic Party. He answers only to his constituents and himself. Just because he caucuses with Democrats who foolishly permitted...