A quasi-Debaathification Commission has excluded over 500 candidates from March’s parliamentary elections in Iraq. The overwhelming majority of them, of course, are Sunnis. The men responsible for the exclusion are running for office themselves. The prime minister has formally approved of the exclusions. So much for the cross-sectarian coalitions that looked like they loomed on [...]

A major new piece from Scott Horton at Harper’s about the alleged suicide of three detainees at Guantanamo Bay in September 2006. After obtaining a long-secret investigation from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, Horton notices the official explanation for the deaths is absurd. According to the NCIS, each prisoner had fashioned a noose from torn [...]

Talking with some friends the other day, it suddenly occurred to me in a visceral way that most people don’t grow up in urban megalopolises, where people from all manner of backgrounds intermingle. Obviously this ought to be no great revelation, but meeting people who through no fault of their own lived in more homogenous [...]

Yes yes, this is very old, but my friends just played it for me, and it’s a revelation.

This i09 post about the depressingly persistent lameness of the 90s-era X-Men is wonderful and overdue. But it goes off the rails here. (You have to click through to Jim Lee’s deeply-dated-yet-somehow-classic “X-Men Pool Party” drawing, in which Wolverine is wearing daringly tiny denim cutoffs like he was Kriston Capps.) In 1991, we knew Wolverine [...]

I’m still catching up on Google’s announcement that Chinese government cyberattacks, aimed ultimately at persecuting dissidents, are causing the company to re-examine whether to continue operating in China. Marc Hedlund had this vivid phrase: Google effectively has a foreign policy now. They have had nothing much to hold over China and have acted as a supplicant [...]

So I guess we pretty much knew this was going to happen, but I’m still a little wary: April will see both the conclusion of Marvel’s Siege four-issue miniseries and the apparent end — certainly only temporarily — of the Avengers franchise. That’s right, the publisher’s solicitations preview lists the series finales of The New [...]

I’m coming to this a bit late, but Starbuck has a helpful roundup/scorecard of U.S. military efforts to resolve the logistics problem of getting aid to Haiti. Galrahn tweeted ominously that the problem is like filling an Olympic-sized pool with a soda straw. Jay Newton Small from Time is in Haiti right now, and she [...]

All right, I’ll be the asshole to say it. Good for Bush for trying to do something for Haiti. But I’ve seen people on coke benders sit stiller and exude greater seriousness. All that’s missing here is grinding teeth and a giggle. You see how Clinton’s doing it? Do it like that. Now donate to [...]

The new Washington Post poll suggests it did. (Can you find better crosstabs of this poll from the Post site? I can’t; maybe I’m overlooking something in my pre-caffeinated state.) Look at his approval rating. Down to about 50 percent in December; up to 53 percent now. The variables, as best I can tell, is [...]