The Commentariat -- September 16

Note: Internal links have been removed.

** Michael Moore, with a true history lesson on the lead-up to the Iraq War: "We invaded Iraq because most Americans -- including good liberals like Al Franken, Nicholas Kristof & Bill Keller of the New York Times, David Remnick of the New Yorker, the editors of the Atlantic and the New Republic, Harvey Weinstein, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer and John Kerry -- wanted to."

Random Reflections from the Mouse Brain of O'Donnell:

American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains. So they're already into this experiment. -- Christine O'Donnell, 2007

And then there's also the issue of murder with Vincent Foster. That's a much more serious charge than failing to seek legal advice, and yet we're all just blowing that off, and everybody's trying to focus on Newt Gingrich like a witch hunt, to bring him to the stake and burn him, because they don't like the policy that he's behind. -- Christine O'Donnell, 1996

... Let's agree on this: "the Republican party has kicked out the moderates":

Christine O'Donnell is a sideshow freak.... O'Donnell is a creature of an age in which politics have no meaning beyond performance art.... Her résumé is so thin as to be opaque, and a lot of it seems to be a lie. She seems to be something of a deadbeat, and 'U.S. Senator' seems to be her idea of an entry-level position. This morning, she stands one step away from the job. She is what politics produces when you divorce politics from government.... She is what politics produces when you turn it into a game show and the coverage of it over to a generation of high-technology racetrack touts. -- Charles Pierce, Esquire

... The Starfish Eats the Spider, Creepy Metaphors for Creeps:

When you can't compete on ideas..., you try to delegitimize the other guy.... They're attempting to delegitimize one of the most talented men to enter politics in three generations. They did the same thing with Bill Clinton. -- Joe Biden, on the "Republican playbook"

... Rachel Maddow talks to Joe Biden about the upcoming election, and the "garbage" Newt Gingrich repeats:

... AND about the candidates for his Senatorial seat:

... Kate Zirnicke of the New York Times tries to figure out what the relationship between Republicans & the tea party is. She identifies South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint as a likely "bridge" between the two. ...

... John Dickerson in Slate: "Democrats now believe they have a body of evidence -- eight Senate races in which Tea Party candidates won the Republican nomination -- that allows them to argue that the Republican Party has gone nuts." ...

... "The Daily Show" panel of political experts discusses how the Democrats will fuck up the November elections:

Bloomberg: "The U.S. poverty rate rose to the highest level in 15 years in 2009, government data show, underscoring the toll the recession took on household incomes and adding fuel to an election-year debate over the Obama administration's economic poliies."

Fred Kaplan in Slate: the war on corruption in Afghanistan is as important as the war against the Taliban.

President Jimmy Carter in a New York Times op-ed: "During my recent travels to North Korea and China, I received clear, strong signals that Pyongyang wants to restart negotiations on a comprehensive peace treaty with the United States and South Korea and on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."

Jeff Israely of Time has some background on Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the British Isles. For one thing, he won't be arrested.

ABC News: Justice Stephen Breyer ... said he wasn't convinced the First Amendment protected the burning of the Koran:

     ... NEW. Dahlia Lithwick, in Slate: maybe Stephen Breyer should stop talking on the teevee; it sure got the history of jurisprudence wrong in his musings with Stephanopoulos.

Steven Chu: How to Save the World. Really!

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy ride on one of the firstdesegregated buses. Montgomery, Alabama, December 21, 1956. Photo by Ernest C. Withers.

Whitney Johnson of The New Yorker publishes more photos by Ernest C. Withers, whom the Memphis Commercial Appeal exposed last week as an F.B.I. informant.