Brian Beutler: Civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) and fellow Congressional Black Caucus member Andre Carson (D-IN) recounted a particularly jarring encounter with a large crowd of protesters screaming “kill the bill”… and punctuating their chants with the word “nigger.” Standing next to Lewis, emerging from a Democratic caucus meeting with President Obama, Carson [...]

I can offer you nothing about health care. What I can offer you is a pained meditation on my disappointment with Siege, a Marvel crossover event that’s easy to love and frustratingly difficult to like. The third issue of the series shipped Wednesday, as did the fifteenth issue of one of its affiliated stories, Dark [...]

I’ve had an amusing stroll through the rightwing neighborhoods of the online Shtetl, where the bilious hatred for the president mixes with the humorous conviction that he secretly hates Israel, and I would like to propose a bet for anyone who wants it. If Obama wins less than, oh, 70 percent of the American Jewish [...]

The United States invaded Iraq. We barely mark today with an anniversary, a sign that the Iraq war has lost not merely the centrality it once occupied in American political discussion but practically all of its purchase. In a manner breathtaking to behold considering the 90,000 U.S. troops who are still in Iraq — is [...]

Michael Chabon makes an insightful observation while musing on the death of Alex Chilton: True power pop is rueful and celebratory at the same time, glorifying desire and frustration, which is why so many power-pop songs concern themselves with the subject of Tonight, or Tomorrow Night, or Saturday Night, or some other night that will only be [...]

The Los Angeles Times‘ Greg Miller sees it and wonders if it makes al-Q less vulnerable to detection. You know me — this is one of those good problems. It underscores the need for vigilant intelligence and police work after the Afghanistan war eventually ends. And it’s true that handfuls of random dudes plotting bad [...]

I’ll be having lunch with the friend I referenced in this earlier post, but while I’m gone, check out Rep. Tom McClintock’s assessment of what the current House GOP caucus thinks, in retrospect, about the decision to invade Iraq. It cannot be a coincidence that McClintock would only say this after the country stops giving [...]

Maybe there’s an appetite for it. While Haaretz is maddeningly vague about what its poll actually finds — and what kind of a newsgathering model is that? — it nevertheless reports that most Israelis consider President Obama “fair or friendly,” which reverses his 2009 cratering among Israeli public opinion. My half-assed guess is that the [...]

Via io9, a funny story about an, uh, editing error in a 1998 issue of Wolverine that saw the Viper call Sabretooth a kike. I had no idea the character was supposed to be Jewish — he’s a really tall dude with flowing blond hair and no known history of sinus trouble or nearsightedness, though [...]

No, I don’t mean the act of being professionally obligated to act in a less-than-trustworthy manner. You can read Janet Malcolm for the definitive perspective on that. I mean that I got a text from a non-journalist  friend asking, “What is this srebrenica happened because there were [gay Dutch] soldiers bullshit?” And my first reaction [...]