Jonah Goldberg makes a point about positive portrayals of torture in our culture:
I agree with Klein that the cavalier use of torture on 24 is getting to be a bit disturbing. But I think Peter’s right that this isn’t nearly as new a trend as Ezra Klein is making it out to be. [ed - [...]

The motion to allow debate on the anti-surge resolution failed. Dick Durbin returns fire:
Democrats said Republicans were running interference for the White House to avoid what is essentially a vote of “no confidence” in Mr. Bush.
“We are witnessing the spectacle of a White House and Republican senators unwilling even to engage in a debate on [...]

War, even when it’s necessary, is almost always a lose-lose proposition. So it’s good to see articles like the one in today’s Capital Times highlighting the staggeringly large opportunity cost of the war in Iraq, as calculated by two County Board supervisors:
Hulsey and Vedder calculated what those war dollars could have purchased in Dane County, [...]

Russ Feingold came out against the bipartisan anti-surge resolution, because it doesn’t go far enough, and because it won’t help end the war. From the senator’s statement:
I oppose the weak Warner-Levin resolution as currently written because it misunderstands the situation in Iraq and shortchanges our national security interests. The resolution rejects redeploying U.S. troops [...]

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Wisconsin’s Congressional delegation rejects President Bush’s plan to escalate the war:
Only one of Wisconsin’s three Republican members of Congress - Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner - is embracing the president’s plan to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq… The lukewarm response from the two comes amid blunt criticism of the plan Thursday [...]

Kudos to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for this article looking at the real world impact of President Bush’s desire to escalate the war, instead of discussing the idea as if it were an abstract answer to the political necessity of looking like you’re changing course without actually changing course.
President Bush’s expected move to increase the [...]

George Bush wants to make his war bigger, despite the fact that three in four Americans disapprove of his Iraq “strategy” [sic], and nine in ten Americans reject the idea of sending even more soldiers to Iraq. There appears to be unanimous or near-unanimous disapproval among the Democratic caucus, and according to the Times, significant [...]

In another of the little bits of wisdom from National Review, Stanley Kurtz writes:
Smith organizes a big-picture look at the Middle East around an emerging, region-wide Sunni-Shia civil war. (A prospect alluded to at the Gates hearing.) Our real interests in that civil war are on the Sunni side, which is a big reason why [...]

Since we overwhelmingly voted last week for phased withdrawal from Iraq, and since the Iraqis, in every poll of public opinion in that country, are even more eager for us to leave, our president has decided on one last push, by which he means sending even more troops (20,000) to Iraq, and then leaving in [...]

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
2,844 American men and women have been [...]

Does John Kerry hate our troops? Or does he merely hate what President Bush has been asking them to do? From a summary of the incident in the New York Times:
In his remarks in California on Monday, Mr. Kerry said: “You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do [...]

As disappointing as it was to watch the pathetic lack of coordination in the Democratic counter-attack on the habeas corpus bill, there’s some small comfort to be taken in the fact that the thing had to be rammed through on an essentially party-line vote. Particularly absurd was Sen. Specter (R-Penn.) declaring that the bill was [...]

Or more accurately, how to totally ignore your own statistical analysis in favor of anecdotal evidence from obviously biased sources. Is this preposterous argument really the basis for our government’s decision-making:
The State Department poll found two-thirds of Iraqis in Baghdad favor an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces, according to The Washington Post. [State Dept. spokesman] [...]

From Legal Fiction, A New Birth of Freedom:
Bush Second Inaugural:
On this day, prescribed by law and marked by ceremony, we celebrate the durable wisdom of our Constitution, and recall the deep commitments that unite our country.
Art. I, Section 9:
The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of [...]

To no one’s surprise, those “independent” Republican senators the media was praising last week ended up surrendering to the Bush Administration, again. From the New York Times:
The deal does next to nothing to stop the president from reinterpreting the Geneva Conventions. While the White House agreed to a list of “grave breaches� of the conventions [...]