Via Daniel Larison, the latest telling of what must be the biggest whopper of the 21st century:
Well, we were not involved in the world before 9/11, and look what happened.
That’s Karl Rove, on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. Of course, there’s no reason to pick on Fox. Do you think anyone would have contradicted Rove on one of the non-Murdoch networks?
Sheldon Richman on the passing of William F. Buckley Jr.:
Looking over his rich biography, I can’t help but take away the impression that one of his goals in life was to make the pro-liberty, anti-state movement safe – unthreatening to the establishment. …
The primary consequence of his long career (which included a stint in the CIA) was to seduce budding radical libertarians into an insipid “hip” conservatism that functioned largely as a defender of big business and the intrusive national-security state.
To be fair, Buckley did speak some truth to power in his last years, though not when his dissent could have made a real difference.
Various sources are reporting that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will not make an independent bid for president. I, for one, was hoping to witness another blandly “transpartisan,” authoritarian warbot crash and burn à la Rudy Giuliani, but alas. Of course, there’s always John McCain…
In December, Glenn Greenwald collected some of Mikey’s greatest hits, with an emphasis on foreign policy, here.
Wikileaks.org, which has published documents such as the Rules of Engagement for Iraq and Guantanamo Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures, has been ordered to remove its content from that URL by a California court. The court issued an injunction at the request of a bank in the Cayman Islands. Fortunately, foreign versions of the page, including this one, remain online. Read more here.
In a post sure to infuriate cons and libs, neos and paleos, progs and trogs alike, IOZ seconds the archbishop of Canterbury. Agree or disagree, it’s worth a read.
