And if your religion can’t stop Satan or the Devil or El Diablo or whatever magical evil force you’ve conjured to frighten the rubes — well, neither can Mr Law. Listen up, unenlightened ones: YOUR FEARS ARE NOT ENOUGH.

No, Abby Phillip, an American president using Marine One helicopter in the completion of his duties as the head of the Executive Branch is not news.

In Gaza and the West Bank, as in Afghanistan, the daily toll on children of American policies is devastating.

It has become fashionable on the Left to feign a world-weary cynicism. The “Audacity of Hope” is often considered a utopian conceit, and a New Fatalism has descended upon the Left. We must not be afraid of the inspiration that we got from the Audacity of Hope, even if our prophet seems to have feet of clay.

Jeff Merkley is a new Senator for me, although I was proud to be a supporter-from-afar when he ran for the Senate from Oregon in 2008. I like his taking-questions-from-constituents YouTubes and was happy to see Atrios featured one of them on today’s Eschaton front page.

In a Reuters article on Sunday, we see yet another call from Hamid Karzai’s government in Afghanistan for the disbanding of US private security firms. It is undisputed that these firms represent a huge destabilizing presence, as seen by the small riot that ensued in Kabul on July 30 when a vehicle driven by DynCorp personnel was responsible for the deaths of four Afghans in a traffic accident. But in calling for the disbanding of US security contractors, is Karzai promoting peace or simply consolidating businesses controlled by his brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai?

Today’s book salon with Lee Badgett discussing her book, ‘When Gay People Get Married’, is incredibly timely. On the heels of Judge Walker’s order finding Prop 8 unconstitutional, America has begun anew a conversation about whether same sex couples ought to be afforded the same right to marry as opposite sex couples.

Few people are as studied and knowledgeable as Lee Badgett on this subject. Aside from her professional roles as an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amerherst and as Research Director for UCLA’s Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy, she and her wife are married under Massachusetts soon after it became the first state in the U.S. to afford marriage rights to same sex couples.

As government reaction grows against the whistleblower website Wikileaks, in the aftermath of the release of tens of thousands of Afghan War Logs, showing the real face of the Afghan war, a group of prominent activists has started up a petition to defend Wikileaks, and point out that it is the U.S. government that with the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan that has “blood on its hands.” The article includes the full petition text.

News media need to carefully get the facts right about allegations of “anchor babies” and put the allegations in context, to avoid yet another wave of hysteria over a nonexistent threat.

Steven Aftergood has an important update on the continuing saga of whether or not GAO can conduct investigations of intelligence activities. He explores the source of current restrictions on GAO review: a 1988 OLC opnion written by Douglas Kmiec. Aftergood goes on to explore the troubling current use of this 1988 opinion protecting raw intelligence to protect more function-oriented reviews of Executive Branch counter-terrorism activities. It’s troubling that this 1988 OLC opinion used to protect details inconvenient to Poppy Bush’s aspirations are now being used to hide details of Obama’s counterterrorism programs.