The Bush administration, amid rebukes from Congress and the courts, is now trying to get legislation passed to authorize or indemnify themselves for much of what they’ve done in the past few years.
It’s a bit like getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar, and then seeking to have stealing cookies declared retroactively legal.
In [...]

From the McClatchy newspapers:
BAGHDAD, Iraq – The Bush administration’s decision to move thousands of U.S. soldiers into Baghdad to quell sectarian warfare before it explodes into outright civil war underscores a problem that’s hindered the U.S. effort to rebuild Iraq from the beginning: There aren’t enough troops to do the job.
Many U.S. officials in Baghdad [...]

Why do people think they can get away with this stuff?
BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 29 � The State Department agency in charge of $1.4 billion in reconstruction money in Iraq used an accounting shell game to hide ballooning cost overruns on its projects there and knowingly withheld information on schedule delays from Congress, a federal audit [...]

There’s the criticism from the Left: Bush lied, we had no right, think of the children. In other words, bad idea from the start.
There’s the criticism from the Right: Too little, too poorly planned, too stupid. In other words, good idea, screwed up by Mr. Bush.
Regular readers know that I choose: B. I think [...]

Today. Hugo’s 52nd birthday, his fifth visit.
And Hezbollah has been active in South America for quite a while.
New Axis of hostile powers coalescing. Li’l Kim, Chavez, Ahmadinejad, two out of three on or over the verge of going nuclear. Islamofascists and leftists, allied in hostility to America. Really does seem likely [...]

Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as their patrons, Iran and Syria, are in the vanguard of a relentless Islamist-jihadist march that challenges human values on a global scale, from Indonesia to Iraq, Lebanon to Palestine, and as far away as Chechnya and the “Mad Max” land of Somalia. The jihadists’ goal is reversing a 200-year [...]

Bush and Blair call for a cease fire. Remember me writing about the possibility that at some point we’d have to play the role of the buddy who pulls you out of a bar fight and lets you save face? My guess is that’s what’s happening here. I suspect the Israelis, having waffled on dealing [...]

For the past eight years I’ve run a fantasy-football league for a group of friends and colleagues. It’s strictly small time: The $10-per-owner annual fee covers the cost of hosting the league, with enough left over for minor prizes: The Super Bowl winner and total points winner get their $10 back; the Super Bowl winner [...]

The Democrats will be divided this fall — but so will the Republicans, according to David Broder in the Washington Post. What he calls “the Taft-Goldwater-Reagan wing of the GOP” is just as unhappy with the radical right as DLC centrists are with the Kossacks:
That is why there was so much high-fiving on e-mails [...]

Michael J. Totten knows and loves Lebanon, and sees all too clearly what lies in wait for the serially war-torn country after Hezbollah and Israel break off the fight that’s destroying it: more hell.
During all seven months I spent in Lebanon the overwhelming majority feared an imminent return to civil war. I always told [...]

This is a sobering look at American casualties in the Iraq war versus Iraqi casualties.
Now, this is not to suggest that Americans caused all of these Iraqi casualities, and the website doesn’t suggest this either. It’s merely a juxtaposition of the people lost in this war.
But needless to say, for every 1 American killed, about [...]

Ayman al-Zawahri has issued a new video calling on Muslims to rise up and defeat all those who are aligned with Western civilization. Clearly, al-Qaida sees the turmoil in the Middle East as an opportunity to recruit new members…and by portraying the struggle as a religious war they are much more likely to be successful. [...]

“Over here, everybody is the army,” one soldier said. “Everybody is Hezbollah. There’s no kids, women, nothing.”
Another soldier put it plainly: “We’re going to shoot anything we see.”
Looks like a war that has no end.
More from ABC.

I figured this was the most likely outcome:
Judge dismisses phone records lawsuit
Citing national security, a federal judge Tuesday threw out a lawsuit aimed at blocking AT&T Inc. from giving telephone records to the government for use in the war on terror.
“The court is persuaded that requiring AT&T to confirm or deny whether it has disclosed [...]

I’ve argued before that debt-fueled stimulus is a bad idea. Bush has borrowed $2 trillion and dumped it into the economy. That will certainly have a positive effect on short-term economic growth, just like maxing out a credit-card works pretty well in the short term.
But that’s the wrong way to look at the issue, because [...]

I wrote this post yesterday as a guest blogger at Unity08, but I thought it was worth sharing here.
WHAT IT WILL TAKE
A lot of other bloggers have expounded on what it means to be a moderate, and on the evils of partisanship, and what’s wrong with the current way of doing things.
Me, I want to [...]

Sen. Specter Readies Bill to Sue Bush
A powerful Republican committee chairman who has led the fight against President Bush’s signing statements said Monday he would have a bill ready by the end of the week allowing Congress to sue him in federal court.
“We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will…authorize [...]

Is the “American Dream” realistically attainable? Meaning “every” American can get there?
Is it even what we should be dreaming about?
Discuss.

The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), the Democratic group that sits on the party’s right flank and near America’s center, has released a plan on which they want their entire party to run. The American Dream Initiative is the DLC’s vision for what Democrats can achieve for our nation if elected this November.
They call the plan [...]

Jeff Jacoby had a generally good column yesterday on the incoherence of the term “chickenhawk.”
He’s right — but he’s also wrong.