CHOI: Well, when I got the letter, I was extremely angry. I was angry -- I mean, the letter is basically saying bottom line, Lieutenant Dan Choi, you're fired. You're a West Point graduate, you're fired. You're an Arabic linguist, you're fired. You deployed to Iraq, you're willing to deploy again, doesn't matter. Because you're gay, that's enough grounds to kick you out.
But the biggest thing that I'm angry about is what it says about my unit. It says that my unit suffered negative good order -- negative actions -- good order and discipline suffered. That's a big insult to my unit.
I mean, all the insult that the letter can do, to say that I'm worthy of being fired, you know, that's nothing comparing to saying that my unit is not professional enough, that my unit does not deserve to have a leader that is willing to deploy, that has skills to contribute.
Khaled Abu Toameh is not your typical Palestinian journalist. He began his career at one of Yasser Arafat’s newspapers and today he writes for the Jerusalem Post.
Smuggling is a business. We're doing Hamas an injustice by saying they're the ones who established the tunnels. These tunnels have been there since 1967. In the 1970s I visited some of the tunnels. In the 1980s I visited the tunnels. When Arafat was there I visited the tunnels. These tunnels are part of the culture. It's a cultural thing over there. If you have your own tunnel it's like you have your own business. Hamas now takes taxes and gives people a license to build their tunnel.
What the two men said 36 years ago can be known with such precision today because they worked in what was, in retrospect, the golden age of White House taping. Both Nixon and Mr. Kissinger had given secret orders to record their calls, each evidently without the other’s knowledge.
Self-Portrait Shit by Andres Serrano ©2008 The whole thing is here."To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”
To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.
I mean, really, what’s to be confused about?"
"Some of the promoters of a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities have sold the strike as a high-tech, airborne surgical attack. But a look at the naval environment indicates that like the Iraq invasion, what starts surgically could end very messily indeed."
I just happened upon these guys wheatpasting some new stuff and they were kind enough to give me a mini sticker version of this great Super Obama image. I will tuck it into my Siddur during the High Holy Days. Flickr page here.
Just seeing these 2 together gives me hope. Pitbulls, pigs, lipstick, trollops, idiots, please step aside.
A potential vice president with the ideology of Dick Cheney and fewer qualifications than Dan Quayle should send arctic shivers up our spines.
Vice presidents matter. In our history, nine have become president when the sitting commander in chief unexpectedly died or resigned. McCain, a 72-year-old cancer survivor, may be rolling the dice to grab a chunk of Hillary Clinton's voters, but he is asking all of us to gamble on Sarah Palin if she were to become president at a time of national crisis.
So this is the future of the Republican party you are looking at: a future in which national security has bumped down the list of priorities behind abortion politics, gender politics, and energy politics. Ms. Palin is a bold pick, and probably a shrewd one. It's not nearly so clear that she is a responsible pick, or a wise one.
"The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said in the statement.
Ordinary citizens who want to live in a democracy — including those with nothing to hide — should be concerned about the ability of the government to use private, sensitive personal information to blackmail, manipulate, and intimidate their representatives, journalists and their sources, potential whistleblowers, and activists or dissenters of any sort.
When 32 people were killed at Virginia Tech and five at Northern Illinois University, the public was outraged. Yet every four days we have the equivalent of a Virginia Tech tragedy that passes unnoticed. Our gun violence epidemic robs parents of their children, wastes our human potential, and drains resources from our health care system.I know we are fucked up primates, and am often resigned to the suicidal stupidity of our race. But every once in awhile something fresh comes along to induce a fresh wave of puke.
He was never, ever, on time. In Joe Klein’s roman à clef about the Clintons, Primary Colors, the Betsey Wright character accuses the Bill Clinton character of always skating by on charm and talent and need. “You have never paid the bill,” she tells him. “Never. And no one ever calls you on it. Because you’re so completely fucking special. Everyone was always so proud of you. And me, too. Me the worst.”