Tonight in Portland, we had a small dose of the FBI’s almost-operational terror sprees, as agents spent more than a year goading a young jihadi wannabe into almost killing thousands of Portlandians in our city’s living room as we gathered for the lighting of the holiday tree.

Just a few odds and ends and random observations from the currently frozen tundra of Saint Paul: – The UK publication The Spectator, a longtime institution among both British and North American conservatives, was forced to apologize for lobbing false anti-Semitism accusations against Mohammad Sawalha, the president of the British Muslim Initiative. – Last September, [...]

I truly hope that you all had a wonderful holiday meal without any unwelcome surprises, culinary, dental or otherwise on Thursday!

Cookie Monster Auditions For Saturday Night Live.

A chief executive whose mental gears were engaged might have thought to himself, “Hmm, wait a second. Why would Scooter lie, to the point of obstructing justice, if he wasn’t involved in the leak to Novak?” He might have been even more suspicious when his vice president compared Libby to “a soldier on the battlefield” — implying that Libby’s crimes were committed on behalf of the administration.

Joe Klein believes in giving newly-elected presidents the benefit of the doubt… even if they’ve already spent four years screwing up everything they’ve touched.

Besides failed economic policy and the lack of new jobs programs combined with strong messaging, there is a third factor that has hampered and will continue to thwart the formulation and implementation of any progressive economic agenda:  the economic illiteracy of the American people.  Without some means to educate the public, the media,  and our elected leaders about progressive economic alternatives to our current economic crisis, conservative politicians with their message discipline will continue to sway an electorate that is woefully ignorant on economic matters with simplistic and illogical soundbites passing as policy solutions.

The next WikiLeaks dump is about to reveal to the world what the United States really thinks of the world leaders it pretends to like and the degree to which it overlooks corruption among friends (it sounds like the reports will include confirmation that Hamid Karzai is corrupt, among other things).

Knowing that it’s coming adds just a bit of irony to the publication of excerpts from a German document liberated to refute some claims Bush made in his memoir.

Among other things, the document describes the Germans warning the US–in February 2003–of just how badly the Iraq war would turn out.

Pakistan’s Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Noman Bashir spoke on Wednesday in Islamabad and once again reiterated the official Pakistani line that no foreign helicopter or drone raids would be allowed inside Pakistan. As if in response, we see from Dawn. com that both helicopter and drone attacks occurred again today. How long will this charade of completely different public and real stances be tolerated?

I could care less about Simpson behavior if it wasn’t for the fact that President Obama appointed him co-chair of the bipartisan President’s Deficit Commission. It’s disconcerting that Obama tolerates this sexist behavior. Why would he appoint Simpson and stay silent as Simpson used the perch Obama gave him to lash out in such a childish manner and pointedly against women?