Hamas, after a meeting with the Palestinian Authority, has decided to stop firing mortars and rockets into Israel, something it had been doing since Wednesday. There’s speculation that the violence was nothing more than a Hamas attempt to show exactly how powerless Abbas is in controlling the peace process and the overall security situation, and in that regard it was completely successful. Sure, Fatah asked Hamas to stop being naughty, and Hamas has complied, but that does not mean it will...

…at Balloon Juice. Balloon Juice is the blog of one John Cole, a well-known conservative blogger…with an important distinction: he is one of the most independent-thinking bloggers on the Internet. On several key issues he has broken with his own party and taken a lot of heat from (and lost) readers. He analyzes each issue, then filters it through a series of values that don’t have as top priority winning an election. Just a few minutes ago we linked to a post we found that was...

Expressing shock and expressing indignation, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has called for custody of all Afghan prisoners and more control over U.S. miltiary operations in his country. In future weeks it should become more clear whether this is due to his own concern over the reports, a clamor within his own military establishment and security forces for more control, or his responding to political backlash over Friday’s New York Times report which detailed the abuses of Afghani prisoners...

If you think the Bush administration’s word games on “personal accounts” for Social Security is deceptive, check yourself for consistency with biotech’s switcheroo on exactly what happens in cloning: They used to acknowledge the basic biological truth that cloning creates embryos. But now, to win a political debate, they claim cloning doesn’t create embryos or any form of life at all. The latest to change his tune is Woo Suk Hwang. When he manufactured the first human...

This film short is easily one of the best online marketing productions I’ve seen, and I agree with Josh Chafetz that “I don’t even particularly like the cause.” Few people would have the temerity to question this parody’s claims about its competition, but I will note an artistic flaw: its blatant ripoff of a character from Spaceballs, one of the greatest parody films ever. (If you’re having trouble streaming the video, you can download them here.)

cross posted on my blog Basie! It will take government internvention to solve America’s energy problems in earnest, but for now, it seems the market is finally beginning to correct itself. The New York Times‘ Danny Hakim has the story. But gas prices are a more unconquerable force of nature. With higher prices at the pump sinking in as something more than a blip on the radar, and with several new passenger car models winning back customers, America’s love affair with S.U.V.’s...

If a new poll is to be believed in Washington State, my former home, 1) Voters think the official governor isn’t the legitimate one 2) They don’t want a revote 3) They’d choose the challenger next time 4) They’d choose the challenger for Senate 5) No one likes either party. Sounds about par for the course in the Evergreen State, as I explain.

This is the right idea: America’s first lady said women already have achieved extraordinary gains in the Middle East and that change must come to any nation that wants to be considered truly free. “Women who have not yet won these rights are watching,” she said at the World Economic Forum conference on the Middle East. “They are calling on the conscience of their countrymen, making it clear that if the right to vote is to have any meaning, it cannot be limited only to men.” … “Freedom,...

The Weekly Standard’s Jonathan Last gives a fond farewell to retiring Indiana Pacers veteran Reggie Miller, “certainly the best clutch shooter in the modern game (post-1980) not named Bird or Jordan.” Miller is a rarity these days in the faltering NBA: a truly great player who stayed with the same team over nearly two decades and never got a ring. Last also says: He is the only great player of recent vintage who has been able to stay with the same team and completely (and successfully)...

…and some landmarks in a life highlight how much things can change.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay faces a double-whammy: running for re-election in what could be one of his toughest races yet and defending himself legally against ethics charges — and there is indeed a prospect DeLay’s dilemmas could help the Democrats. But the Democrats better not take anything for granted. That’s part of the conclusion reached by Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics in the latest edition of his critically acclaimed...

Today TMV leaves scenic Gold Beach, Oregon for Eugene, Oregon…and hops on a plane to begin a two-connection flight back to his hometown of San Diego, CA. This means today’s posts will be largely by TMV’s co-bloggers. We’ve eliminated the phrase “Guest Bloggers” because each of the contributors to this site is on the same wavelength regarding the kinds of posts we do here — posts that don’t go after other blogs or bloggers but focus on issues. Plus,...

Muqtada al-Sadr continues to be influential from well outside the Iraqi political structure. After American troops imprisoned 13 of his associates in a recent raid, Sadr called for massive demonstrations against the American occupation and his supporters have responded: The protests, which drew an estimated total of 6,000 demonstrators in the three cities, followed radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s call Wednesday to reject the U.S. occupation of Iraq by painting Israeli and American flags on...

cross posted on my blog Basie! Extremist conservatives like to make somes issues black and white, no more so than those pertaining to “life.” Stem cell research is a prime example, where further discoveries could lead to therapies and drugs that could save millions of lives, but the right still opposes funding because embryos in petri dishes — that would otherwise be thrown out — might be harmed. The issue clearly is not black and white, however. Likewise, there is not one...

The American style of winning their hearts and minds and extracting information has not generally been perceived as being done by virtual sadism — but if a report in the New York Times is correct that seems to have been the modus operendi in some quarters. In a truly horrifying account that should do more than just raise eyebrows both in the U.S. and elswhere in the world, the Times details allegations of severe brutality that ended in some Afghani prisoners’ deaths. The account below...

So now we have the answer to the world’s most infrequently asked question about former Iraqi dictator Sadaam Hussein: briefs. We always knew the British tabloid The Sun was panting to get scoops, but Britain’s biggest selling newspaper’s front page photo of Sadaam in his underpants takes it to a new level (Martha Stewart: be grateful you didn’t live in England): Washington promised an investigation on Friday into how pictures of Saddam Hussein in his underpants were splashed...

In case you haven’t noticed, a quiet revolution of sorts has occured in Los Angeles, which has just elected its first Latino mayor with Mexican-American roots since 1872. Is it one of those one-shot deals that pundits generalize into a trend — or a watershed event, the beginning of a REAL trend? Over the years there has been a lot of lip service paid to the looming power of Hispanic voters in California. And Hispanic voter ire over former California Governor Pete Wilson’s stance...

Are there limits to implementing the goal of regime change — particularly if the goal is pressed too quickly? That’s the view of LeFigaro. In an article translated from the original French by the must-read news aggregator Watching America, the newspaper takes a look at some of the challenges and, in effect, warns that the devil in the policy of regime change is in the nuance: The American policy of energetic and intrusive support in favor of democracy in the Muslim world has just undergone...

Over the past 48 hours key GOP Senators’ rhetoric has sunk to new lows — bordering on an extremism that conservatives in the past (rightly) condemned when coming from Democrats. To say it’s loaded verbiage is an understatement. The question is whether it’s simply the unthinking new political style to use verbal atomic bombs as you march towards triggering “the nuclear option” on judicial filibusters or part of a short-sighted effort to inflame passions to the...

As usual, we LOVE the posts by our Guest Bloggers…which we should call Family Bloggers because they are part of our family. A reminder that TMV is a fan of all of them…and if you read the posts below you can see why. TMV himself has been unable to post since late yesterday afternoon (but as you can see from the posts below this site has been in excellen hands). He left yesterday for Oregon and got to the airport to find that due to bad weather his plane to San Francisco was late. He...

Coldplay frontman and Gwyneth boytoy Chris Martin has mixed feelings about his wealth, but not because of how he earned it. His label, megalith EMI, said its profits would fall below expectations because Coldplay took three years to finish its latest album, leading Martin to respond, “I don’t really care about EMI. I’m not really concerned about that.” Well, good for him! If only he could keep his mouth shut: “I think shareholders are the great evil of this modern...

Cross-posted to Random Fate. At The Kudzu Files, hboswell has written about a situation that could have been presented as a hypothetical case in arguments over life and death. A woman in need of a liver transplant has a close relative on death row in Indiana who has offered to donate, but the procedure that will be used to execute the inmate will essentially poison the liver, rendering it unfit to transplant. Apparently, the Indiana Department of Corrections is not being very cooperative. Go...

One would think the Shi’ite-dominated Iraqi government would primarily be concerned with stabilizing the country’s abhorrent security situation, or, perhaps, writing a new constitution. Alas, this is not the case, at least according to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani: he claims that Iraq’s number one priority is strengthening the country’s ties to Iran.

Over at Basie!, I take a look at how the votes are lining up for the so-called “nuclear” option. Despite the fact that Majority Leader Frist appears confident in Mitch McConnell’s whip count, the numbers are much more in the air today than one might expect. Among wavering Republicans are: Open opposition: Sens. John McCain (AZ), Lincoln Chafee (RI) and Olympia Snowe (ME) No public opinion: Sens. Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Pat Roberts (KS) Still negotiating: Sens. John Warner* (VA),...

Today is the beginning of NO Day (Nuclear Option Day) and efforts are still underway to head off a showdown over the right of the minority to use the filibuster against judicial nominees. Some see a political train wreck and some (on both sides) seek just that, for different reasons. But the L.A. Times, in an editorial, is seemingly shouting “Enough already!” and literally declaring: “Nuke It Already.” In this editorial (which most likely is written by the ever-witty and independent...