Looking back through the Bush years for his Positive Accomplishments is, for me, like picking through my toddler’s diaper for the undigested corn.

The government says they don’t have a database of all their communications. But there’s lots of reason to disbelieve them.

When PEBO becomes PBO on Tuesday, our wounded nation and struggling people will see Hope take the oath of Office in a ceremony invoked by Hate. After the last Inaugural ball ends and the bleachers come down, what will PBO choose to keep around: Hate, or Hope?

This will be a technical win that the adminstration will be able to point to and say “see, we’re not in a recession!” For ordinary people however, there will be both wage deflation and real asset deflation, while there are fewer jobs. People will feel worse and be worse off in December than they are today.

Nate Silver is the latest person to discuss the Coleman camp’s strategy of attempting to muddy the waters (and to prolong processes that normally are done rather quickly). He guesses that Norm’s trying to make things look so icky that everybody just throws up their hands and says “Screw it — let’s have a do-over” as happened in New Hampshire back in the 1970s.

Our failure to understand the conflict in Palestine is not accidental, it’s the result of another little understood phenomenon, the ability of the powerful to control the way the world press frames the story.

In his book The People’s History of Sports, Dave Zirin proceeds from the premise that most sports history lacks context and is generally told in an anecdotal fashion that reinforces the

“a history that critically examines the political forces as well as the political power at work in the world of sports.”

The BBC is reporting that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has called a halt to Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.

The ACLU has worked continuously on the issue of child soldiers being held at Gitmo, in violation of international law and treaty obligations. Recently, ACLU put together a video regarding two of the more prominent cases, which you can view at right. From the ACLU blog: “Six days after the inauguration of President Obama, the U.S. is scheduled to begin the first trial of a child soldier accused of war crimes since World War II….”

BushCo just dropped all charges against Andy Card’s cousin, whom they accused of being a spy for Saddam and/or crazy. And with the dropped charges, they may have succeeded in suppressing very embarrassing information from coming to light.