I often read reporters promoting the myth of powerless top government officials, such as the false claim that it takes 60 votes in the Senate to pass anything. Or it’s the insistence that the President wants to do something, but can’t, because he is powerless on his own. This myth of the toothless President is perfectly exemplified by this article about drug policy, where a President actually has broad discretion to act.

Ken Mehlman left the gay closet earlier this week, asking for understanding if not support from the glbt community. That would be easier to find if Mehlman demonstrated a bit of understanding of that community and the toll that the Bush White House and RNC took on it while Mehlman was working there. No matter how much he did in his Off-The-Record political closet, it’s going to be hard to overcome what happened on the record.

On Monday it’s expected that the Washington Post will debut a series by Dana Priest on military contractors, with an emphasis on intelligence contracting. We’ve known for some time there are far more contractors than troops, that we don’t know the exact number — which makes for a lot of interesting questions.

Perhaps I’m missing something, but it seems that a somewhat coercive but nevertheless voluntary monitoring of cybersecurity via a program like “Perfect Citizen” for things like a nuclear generating plant isn’t such a bad thing.