“Your father is a murderer”

Was he? Or did William Colby act for what he saw as the highest good for America and the the world? Are the two mutually exclusive? Can we ever really know our families? These questions and more are at the center of The Man Nobody Knew, a portrait of William Colby, by his son and Emmy-award winning director, Carl Colby, our guest tonight.

I must say, I’m getting tired of the hand-wringing on the left about how unreasonable Republicans are being and how “strong” Obama was yesterday. Of course Republicans are being unreasonable: they’re threatening to blow up the global economy rather than raise taxes on rich people in an era of historically-low taxes for rich people. Does anyone expect crazy people to act any other way but crazy?

Do we know what the President’s goals are, outside of getting a “win”?

One explanation put forth for why President Obama and his aides are so upset with the liberal base of the Democratic Party is that they believe Obama has achieved legislative success rivaling that of President Lyndon Johnson, but the base does not appreciate this success. Even NPR’s Mara Liasson easily refuted the “success” aspect of the comparison, but the comparison to LBJ is an especially poor choice for a number of other reasons, as well.

Stewart Udall, Secretary of the Interior under Presidents Johnson and Kennedy, passed away at the age of 90 on Saturday. Rather than repeat obituaries’ biographic details, this diary pays photographic tribute to his life’s passion, our wild public lands.