•  Sign of the times.
• Where the debt is.
• What Crist means.
• Hammer time!
• GOP circular firing squad, cont’d.
• He said, she said. 
• Why McKiernan was ousted.
• All part of the far-left’s master plan.

Richard Cohen, is a “liberal” just ask him.

Featuring music of Pink Mountaintops and The Walking Man.

The Leader of the Republican Party ushers his party out into the wilderness for forty years.

Bob Graham appears to go even further than Pelosi denying he was briefed on torture. There may be reasons for that. But the big point remains: the Bush Administration and the CIA did not fulfill legal obligations to brief Congress on torture.

Paul Krugman recently told an audience in Beijing that the US risks having a “lost decade” of Japanese-style economic stagnation because of the Obama Administration’s “half-measures”, most notably a stimulus that was too small and will, in his opinion, need soon to be repeated. The problem is that the stimulus requires America to borrow an awful lot of money, which in recent years has largely been made possible by China’s buying up American currency and Treasury bonds. And that’s something the Chinese are apparently no longer willing to do.

Roy Germano’s documentary answers some of the questions raised by an earlier documentary we discussed, Made in LA. While watching that, I kept wondering, what about the towns where immigrants come from? How does immigration affect the residents and local economies? What are some of the underlying causes of the poverty that force migration?

An article by Greg Miller at the L.A. Times has lifted the veil on the profound terror lying behind the supposedly known nomenclature of torture. Miller focuses on the use of “sleep deprivation,” a term we will now have to always render in quotes, as the irony of describing one sort of torture as a means of covering up three or four other kinds of torture is both diabolical and morbidly

I saw the billboard yesterday on my way past the airport: “What will Pawlenty choose? People of Minnesota — or — His national ambitions?” Well, if his veto of the compromise state budget bill is any indication, he’s definitely picking “National Ambitions” for $1000, Alex. Then again, he’s also known for making the big woofin’ noises whilst nervously hoping somebody else does the right thing for him.

Rumblings up on Capitol Hill: Democratic leadership is worried they might not have the votes to pass the war supplemental. The House is due to vote on the emergency $96.7 billion dollar supplemental, which would fund the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, later this week. But opposition is possible from an unlikely place, House Republicans: