Leonard Cohen-Democracy

Fox News.com contributor Richard Benedetto thinks Dana Milbank’s February moratorium on Sarah Palin betrays the noble ideals of journalism.

Let me repeat that. FOX NEWS.COM CONTRIBUTOR Richard Benedetto thinks Dana Milbank’s February moratorium on Sarah Palin betrays the noble ideals of journalism.

Three weeks ago I woke up and started organizing my thoughts to write this post. I had no more than written the title when news started coming in hot, first on Twitter and then local news channels, that Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords had been shot in Tucson. In a strange dichotomy, it was both an event which brought the ugly underbelly of hate in my state into even better focus than it had been before, which is the subject of this post.

David House spoke with Dylan Ratigan this afternoon about his visits this weekend with Bradley Manning at Quantico Marine Base.

Join us for a special FDL Book Salon tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. ET when FDL’s Ed Walker will host a live chat with Financial Crisis Inquiry Commissioner Byron Georgiou. They’ll be discussing the FCIC’s financial crisis report and take your questions on the same.

One Too Many Mornings was a Sundance 2010 selection thanks to its realistic dialog, acting and melancholy black and white footage.

Fischer and Peter, now in the their late twenties, are best friends from childhood. Fisher moved to Los Angeles, where now he lives rent free in a church in exchange for coaching soccer, turning off the lights and locking up. Peter visits unexpectedly after a major fight with his girlfriend and Fischer tries to help him heal by picking up cougars for them in a bar and throwing Peter a fake birthday party.

The cougar adventure turns out a bit differently than expected, and the party explodes in a series of disasters which could resolve both their problems. Or not.

Friendship, adulthood, love, responsibility and a free place to live are at stake here. Will Fischer and Peter make the right choices?

The workers movement has stepped back onto the stage of world events in a big way, as the a new Egyptian trade union association is formed, and finds plenty of support for its immediate call for a general strike against the Mubarak regime.

The New York Times has one of the most stunning headlines of the day: Losses at Afghan Bank Could Be $900 Million. The story tells a story of Afghanistan’s own “Too Big to Fail” problem that offers opaque descriptions of precisely what caused the problem, but waits until the 17th and 18th paragraph to explain the real problem with the bank. The fact that our government is discovering, but not revealing, the degree to which we have been backing “a vertically integrated criminal enterprise” is the real story.

When this came down a while ago on Al Arabiya, the collective response from the Twitterati was that this signals the end of the Mubarak regime:

Egypt’s powerful military said yesterday it would not open fire on protesters as a coalition of Egyptian opposition groups called for a million people to take to Cairo’s streets today.

“To the great people of Egypt, your armed forces, acknowledging the legitimate rights of the people … have not and will not use force against the Egyptian people,” an army statement said.

The Mubarak government seems to know this as well, as they responded to this statement with a round of bargaining.

Last week, Russian Ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, told the organization that the computer worm Israel and the US devised to ruin Iran’s nuclear program could have led to a catastrophe with the Bushehr nuclear reactor like Chernobyl. Russia said on Wednesday that NATO should investigate last year’s computer virus attack on a Russian-built nuclear [...]