There finally is a documentary movie about the Iraq war that the Bush administration should truly — genuinely – fear. It is NOT a movie about ideology. It is NOT a movie that has an entertaining showman/interviewer bursting with personality as an unofficial character. It is NOT a movie that hurls political adjectives at the policymakers who helped create what is now the unprecedented Iraq war crisis. It is NOT a movie where some can say that the key people who give the devastating interviews...

The Moderate Voice runs Guest Voice posts by people who don’t have their own weblogs, websites or who want to discuss something with TMV’s ideologically diverse readership. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reflect the opinion of TMV. This is by Mark A. Smith, an associate professor of Political Science and an ajdunct professor of communication at the University of Washington. He is the author of an intriguing new book The Right Talk: How Conservatives Transformed the Great Society...

Brian Fairrington, Cagle Cartoons

Talk about Chutzpah! Sudan: Jews behind Darfur conflict Sudan’s defense minister, Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein, has accused “24 Jewish organizations” of “fueling the conflict in Darfur” last week in an interview with a Saudi newspaper. Hussein was interviewed during an official state-visit to the Saudi kingdom last week. A journalist from Saudi Arabia’s Okaz newspaper asked Hussein: “Some people are talking about the penetration of Jewish organizations in...

Hollywood activists are easy targets, often earnestly silly and self-congratulating, but a shining exception is Mia Farrow and her work to stop the genocide in Darfur. This week, her efforts provoked two world powers-—the People’s Republic of China and Steven Spielberg. During the YouTube debate, Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clinton, hemmed and hawed about diplomacy to stop the killing, clearly uneasy about a complex humanitarian crisis in far-off Africa (only Joe Biden...

RJ Matson, The St. Louis Post Dispatch

No conservatives will go on Fox News to defend Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The link also notes: no White House officials would go on the air to defend him, either… This is not just a sign of Gonzales’ isolation. It is a sign of the increasing isolation of the Bush administration. If you cut away any journalistic diplomacy it boils down to this: Republicans are stuck with the Bush administration and some are choosing to distance themselves from it discreetly and others feel they...

Alberto Contador, a 24-year-old Spaniard and rider with the Discovery Channel team, has won the Tour de France. Given past experience, we must now await with bated breath whether Contador passes the drug test. More here . Photograph by Bryn Lennon/Getty Images

A round up of recent posts by a few centrist, moderate, and independent bloggers. At Booker Rising, Shay predicts “it may well be black folks who most undermine [Obama's] candidacy.” Dave Schuler thinks the reports of the death of the DLC (Democratic Leadership Council) are premature. McQ offers “another reason to like Petraeus.” Earlier, Joe posted on the subject of the hidden 2006 Surgeon General report. Opening with the same subject, GTL indulges in a little “told...

Add this to growing evidence (almost a story a day) that this administration is one of the most politicized in American history: A surgeon general’s report in 2006 that called on Americans to help tackle global health problems has been kept from the public by a Bush political appointee without any background or expertise in medicine or public health, chiefly because the report did not promote the administration’s policy accomplishments, according to current and former public health officials. The...

But which of the two parties or not-of-the-two-parties would he run on?

Bill Steigerwald is a columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. His column is made available here via Cagle Cartoons. The Key To Winning Iowa Is Electability’ By Bill Steigerwald David Yepsen, the chief political columnist for The Des Moines Register, has been covering Iowa government and politics for more than 30 years. With Iowa’s corn already well-trampled by the herd of Republican and Democrat presidential candidates hoping to win the mysterious Iowa caucuses in January, and with...

Jeff Parker, Florida Today

RJ Matson, The St. Louis Post Dispatch

A new survey indicates the Republican Party is now facing a major long-term problem: there is an increasing gap between its policies and youth. A new Democracy Corps/Greenberg Quinlan Rosner survey finds young people “profoundly alienated from the Republican party and its perceived values.” Key finding: “Young people react with hostility to the Republicans on almost every measure and Republicans and younger voters disagree on almost every major issue of the day.” In the presidential...

In comments to this post, C Stanley asked about rates of reporting for police harassment (racial and sexual). I can’t answer her question directly, but it does raise another important issue: why might certain wrongs be persistently underreported? Guest-starring an excerpt from the incomparable Professor Martha Minow of Harvard Law School (so you know you don’t want to miss it).

The immortal words of Casey Stengel come to mind for the Bush Administration’s latest moves in the Middle East. Casey’s incompetent Mets were only losing baseball games. This bunch is playing with our country’s future. The most recent tragi-comedy of errors is reported in today’s New York Times: “The Bush administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve an arms sale package for Saudi Arabia and its neighbors that is expected to total $20 billion over the next...

Dying people at a Rhode Island nursing home get warm fuzzy purring in their last few hours. AP: Oscar the Cat Predicts Patients’ Deaths PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, by curling up next to them during their final hours. His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means they have less than four hours to live. David M. Dosa,...

. . . That is the question. Fuggedabout troop withdrawal timetables, tax cuts and universal health insurance. Can a woman political candidate be taken seriously if she shows cleavage? This became an issue last fall in Alabama, when The Associated Press noted in a report on Loretta Nall, the Libertarian Party candidate for governor: “[She is] campaigning on her cleavage and hoping that voters will eventually focus on her platform.” Now I’ll be the first to admit that while my thoughts...

The word is out: former Senator and “Law and Order” character actor Fred Thompson is almost certainly going to go for it. Various news reports say he’s planning to make the leap in September and announce that he’s running for President. And the word is also out: he needs some law and order in his campaign — which has already been hit with some turmoil, even though he hasn’t officially announced yet. Which raise the question: his imagery is masterful but is he...

With the huge growth of news helicopters, coupled with competition for police chases by local news stations (anyone who has visited Los Angeles has seen plenty of that) this was a day that you could almost guess was coming. And yesterday was the sad day when two news helicopters collided over Phoenix while they covered a police chase — killing two people in each of the helicopters. The story in videos: The disturbing (WARNING) final moments as seen on TV while a news anchor talks to the traffic...

Mike Lane, Cagle Cartoons

Yours truly was totally away from computers yesterday and early this morning and as you can see there are no new posts that have gone on the site, and no new ones were up last night. Yes, this can happen, even on a group blog with nearly the whole state of California involved in co-blogging. But it doesn’t happen often, and it won’t happen often. So please keep checking back throughout the day and if you ever see a day with no new posts here, realize yes…we still are offering...

The media melodrama is over. Apparently enough of the Bancroft family will accept Rupert Murdoch’s $5 billion Faustian bargain for the Wall Street Journal. But give them credit for a struggle to save their souls. At a family meeting Monday night, the Journal reported, one of the matriarchs, 77-year-old Jane Cox MacElree, argued against making the deal with the Devil by invoking the martyrdom of Daniel Pearl. “He put his life on the line for the paper,” Ms. MacElree said, citing...

Some on the right think we’re going too far (though what they wish for the gander, they certainly don’t want to apply to the goose).