James Risen at the New York Times reports on a concerted campaign by U.S. officials during the Bush Administration to impede the investigation into the mass killings by suffocation and shooting by U.S.-backed warlord forces at Dasht-e-Leili in Afghanistan in November 2001 (emphasis added). American officials had been reluctant to pursue an investigation — sought by officials from the F.B.I., the State Department, the Red Cross and human rights groups …

More records falling, and that’s not good. More food provided to those in need than ever, more needy folks coming than ever, and from the perspective of food pantries, the coming year will break the record again. Tell me again about the cost of health care reform.

So a bunch of “Blue Dogs” — conservative GOP-wannabee Democrats that usually vote the way their major Big Business donors tell them to vote — sign a letter huffing and puffing in order to blow down the public-option part of the health-care reform proposal. Guess what: A non-trivial number of their fellow Blue Dogs didn’t sign the huff-and-puff letter. Furthermore, many Blue Dogs have broken with the official Blue Dog/Republican stance and are on board with HCAN’s pro-public-plan principles.

The US helped Rashid Dostum cover up his war crimes.

We haven’t done a “getting to know you” post for a while. Since that time, we’ve had a lot of new folks join the FDL commenting and writing community.

So I thought this morning, we might start the day with a howdy.

And an invitation to folks who don’t often comment to step out and say “how do you do.” Because you know we’d all love to meet you.

Spanning the globe this week to bring you new sounds from the UK to somewhere between Portugal and Cape Verde’.

Forget your troubles, c’mon, get cynical.

I for one am glad to see someone stand up for traditional kissing. All this gay kissing completely devalues the institution of kissing, which the Bible and nature tell us should only be between a man and a woman. Why, next thing you know, we’ll have people kissing more than one person at a time, or kissing family members or little children or box turtles, and then where will we be? Hitler, that’s where!

McChrystal to call for greatly expanded Afghan force, will need more money and more US troops to get there.

As Christy points out, Republican and insurance-lobby whinings about “rationing” and “more choices” sound particularly silly when you realize that health care already is being rationed by a system that makes it impossible for anyone but the rich to take full advantage of the choices it provides.