Memorial Day is often a time to reflect on the soldiers who die in war. Why not also the civilians? Why not these five girls, seven boys and two women killed in their sleep from an object dropped on them at 10,000 feet, without warning? Don’t they deserve a memorial? Don’t their families and countrymen deserve to be free of a life in fear that they could be the next target of a poorly aimed bomb from the sky?

That’s not the title of his John Harwood’s NYT column today, but it might have well have been. It’s a typical example of sloppy, one-sided Beltway thinking.

Lockheed may have prevented a much bigger breach into their own systems. But the assumption of many is that other companies might not have noticed what Lockheed did.

If you really want more bipartisanship, the only real solution is to promote more viable political parties.

• The Germans just say nein.
• Real Merkuns ride $25K motorocycles.
• Goldbuggery comes to Utah.
• Ay-yiyi.
• Wingnut bloggers’ political instincts: still awesome.

Among the items that should be grilled in this country over Memorial Day is a large helping of irony.

Bryan Adams – Summer of ’69

If you’d like a chance to lick Harvey Milk’s backside to send a piece of mail, sign the change.org petition right here. More than 9,000 other people have signed.

Shortly after I first started writing about HAMP, I had an email exchange with a housing counselor who said I was being too harsh on the program, that borrowers in trouble had no recourse, and that I basically didn’t understand the pressure these homeowners were under. The dozens of emails I was getting from all around the country from borrowers, all of whom almost without exception were saying that HAMP was making their problem more intractable, differed with this counselor. And now, a year later, apparently the great majority of housing counselors disagree as well.

The bad economy, Democrats’ terrible political handling of health care reform and an unusually high number of positions up for election allowed a wave of Republican governors to be swept into office across the country last year. Yet this wave of success, and the poor economy which enabled it, could become a real political headache for the GOP in 2012 as the try to take the White House.