“Yeah, I got tired of that blogging, ’cause everybody do it.” Too true. Then he goes into “Louis sweatsuit, Jamaica eating breadfruit/the sun rising/is mesmerizing” and I start to feel better about my life choices.

Since I got the shit beat out of me in comments, let me try to refine what I meant to say. (I thought I said it this way, but I guess not.) I never ever would suggest that there is no “Iraq Syndrome” in terms of PTSD, which is all too painfully real. What I [...]

I like Londonstani’s Pakistan dispatches for Abu Muqawama very much. And I find the point made in this post very interesting. But professionally I have to cringe when I read this: The Sufi tradition has very deep roots in Pakistan. The country is dotted with shrines that are visited by thousands of people daily from [...]

This is a seriously great piece of journalism by Justin Elliott for TPM. Long story short: the FBI kept a file on the eminent historian John Hope Franklin, as it did in the Hoover era on many liberal and black Americans for the crimes of being liberal or black or both. It’s only a bit [...]

I’ve never come across the blog Men With Pens before, but now we learn something disgusting that won’t shock anyone who works in journalism who thinks for a minute. The MWP blogger, James, was barely getting by as a freelance writer. About $8 per week. Kids to feed, welfare application looming, bills piling up. Snark [...]

It’s that time. Four congressional hearings. Two days. Gen. McChrystal. Amb. Eikenberry. And — ahem — there sure will be some good coverage over at the Washington Independent! For real, I’m going to try not to post every 15 minutes like I did during the September 2007 and March 2008 Petraeus hearings. These are not [...]

One of the best things about blogging reminds me — and I may have made this point in an old post; I write a lot and can’t always remember what I said — of Bill Florio’s approach to punk rock. In some old MRR column, Bill described how when his bands get boring, he’d break [...]

So I tried to do this nuanced piece for the Washington Independent. I stand by it. But you tell me if I succeeded. Obama creates this new top-level-detainee interrogation task force. It’s called the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group or the HIG. (Now is not the time to discuss precision in acronyms! This country faces ruthless [...]

We don’t do enough sheer naming-and-mockery-of-fools in this business anymore. Andrew Sullivan, who’s really hitting a stride lately, shows how it’s done. And by the way, governor Palin, since you clearly read this blog: which of the 32 lies we have already documented can you rebut? We’d be delighted to give you a platform to [...]

Yglesias goes hard without breathing hard