“Public Pension Funds Are Adding Risk to Raise Returns”
States and companies have started investing very differently when it comes to the billions of dollars they are safeguarding for workers’ retirement.
Companies are quietly and gradually moving their pension funds out of stocks. They want to reduce their investment risk and are buying more long-term bonds.
But states [...]

If you’re not familiar with the back story, it’s this: James O’Keefe, a patently dishonest right-wing firebrand, if that’s not redundant, and Hannah Giles, a patently dishonest right-wing surf bunny took a hidden camera into various offices of ACORN, an umbrella operation for community organizing groups, and produced a patently dishonest video purporting to show [...]

So Senator Evan Bayh is taking his whiny ass and going home. He says he doesn’t love Congress anymore. There’s a simple explanation for that: he’s not important anymore. But don’t count him gone altogether; while he’s reaping the financial rewards of two terms in the Senate—beyond the $13 million campaign kitty he’s taking with [...]

PR firm Murray Hill Inc. has announced its entry into the Republican primary for Maryland’s 8th Congressional district, thereby becoming the first corporation to exercise its personhood by running for elective office. The company says that “Until now, corporate interests had to rely on campaign contributions and influence peddling to achieve their goals in Washington. [...]

No they aren’t. They’re doing rescue and remediation work that is pretty astonishing in its magnitude and effectiveness. I’m still steamed by Pat Robertson’s insanely malignant remark to the effect that the natural disasters suffered by Haiti are the result of a pact with the devil that empowered them to successfully rebel against the French [...]

The only fair way to score the debates is to watch them without audio. That way one doesn’t get distracted by what the candidates say, which anyway has only a minor relationship with reality. The important thing is how they looked. Did McCain smirk? Did Obama get that pinched, schoolmarm-ish look? Did either man dip [...]

So Barack Obama is planning to become the first African-American president of the United States. The first black president. Or so we’re told. But wait just a second here. How come Obama is black? When someone is tagged “white,” it’s because s/he’s all white. Allegedly. If s/he has one drop of African-American blood, s/he’s black. Of [...]

The New York Times has a he said/she said story about the potential hazards of second-generation biofuel crops, which generally aren’t edible and hence don’t contribute to famine and associated political difficulties, but are often unfriendly to local ecosystems and domestic crops. On one side of the story are ecologists and others who point to [...]

Circumstances in Iraq are insanely complicated, but not generally indecipherable. The major players are known—some well, some not so well—many major occurrences are reported, and a fair number of people who are either in Iraq or know the country well regularly provide commentary and analysis. Yet the US press continue to rely largely on the [...]

Jackson Diehl, the deputy editorial page editor of the Washington Post, has an op-ed today in which he asserts that the lack of political progress in Iraq is an argument for staying there indefinitely. It’s another version of the now familiar If-Things-Are-Getting-Worse-We-Must-Stay-In-Iraq-And-On-The-Other-Hand-If-Things-Are-Getting-Better-Then-We-Must-Stay-In-Iraq argument that, whatever its deficiencies might be, is at least admirably consistent.
But I’m [...]

The latest signal came from George Bush, warning of a “nuclear holocaust” if Iran gets The Bomb (despite an IAEA report that Iran isn’t as much of a threat as Bush claims). There can’t be any more provocative words than “nuclear holocaust” to justify the purported prevention of one. Nor can there be any doubt [...]

It’s yet another example of reporting that makes no effort at analysis of Bush’s claims. This time, Bush says that an American withdrawal from Iraq would have an effect like that of our withdrawal from Vietnam – a bloodbath resulting in the deaths of millions of people.
…one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price [...]

The American Psychological Association now says that its members can’t take part in water-boarding, sleep deprivation or sexual humiliation, among other techniques that have become part and parcel of Bush tactics against alleged terrorists at Guantanamo. If they see such activities, they are now required to intervene to stop them, report them to superiors, and [...]

The war – George Bush’s War, the Neo-con’s War, Joe Lieberman’s War, the Republican-Democrat’s War – is as catastrophic as its opponents predicted, but the reality of it is far more catastrophic than they could have imagined, because it’s impossible to imagine such endless, grinding horror. It must be lived to be known. Words can [...]

I’m puzzled. When Karl Rove finally spoke in public about the Plame Affair last week, he said that Armitage was the one who “used her name.” But didn’t Novak look it up in Who’s Who?
Aha. I see you subscribe to the immaculate leak theory of Plameogenesis.
It’s true that Novak started making that claim after the [...]

Two British men suffer for Bush’s sins…

Bush tells Saudis: I’ll never leave Iraq!

Among the great occasional pleasures I enjoyed while living in Hawaii for more than a decade were evenings spent lounging around on the lanai of Steve Geimer, the general manager of Arturo’s, and chowing down on his invariably tasty pupus and dinners. The Arturo of the company is Arturo Montoya, who arrived in Hawaii during [...]

In which Tony dodges questions about the U.S. Attorney firings…

The Bush Doctrine’s return on investment is unattractive…

After six years of being lied to by the Bush administration and the pundits, the American people finally hold someone accountable…

Killing time and taking chances, while the Libby jury ponders its decision…

If at first you don’t succeed, lie, lie again…

Students of ancient history will recall that long-ago moment when president Bush found in Vladimir Putin a kindred soul. Bush said that “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of [...]

Ted Wells wants Scooter back, Pat Fitzgerald would rather have the truth…

The U.S. military’s demonstration of “Iranian” weapons in Iraq fails to convince…

Why are lefty bloggers embracing the defense’s attack on Russert’s credibility?

Tim Russert delivers the prosecution’s knockout punch…

In his grand jury testimony that we heard today, Scooter Libby introduced a novel concept to the field of national security law…

My paraphrased account of this morning’s playing for the jury of audiotapes of Fitzgerald’s March 5, 2004, interrogation of Libby…

In his March 2004 appearance before the grand jury investigating the Plame leak, Scooter Libby can’t recall very much…

Monday morning at the Libby trial, prosecution gets October 2003 Washington Post articles on the Plame leak admitted as evidence, and the defense continues cross examination of FBI agent Deborah Bond…

Plame-At-A-Glance™ condenses the whole Plame Affair down to one easy-to-understand flow chart…

Last Friday while listening to the news on the radio I had the pleasure of hearing our president say these words: “History will record that the first major ground battle in the 21st century involving American forces began with a Calvary charge. I guess that’s what you get when you bring together a President from Texas with a Secretary of Defense who actually remembers when America had a Calvary.”

This week, it’s two non-genre-specific used bookstore finds. Given what you find in used bookstores, this is pretty well represented in my library. I’ll try to get more up to date one of these days, but these are both good ones if you missed ‘em.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jailbird (A)
When I read Sirens of Titan [...]

Tony Snow laughed at me today in the White House briefing room after I asked him a question inspired by John Yoo’s vigorous defense, in an op-ed in last Sunday’s NY Times, of the Supreme Leader style of government that Mr. Yoo helped fashion when he worked in Bush’s Justice Department in the two years after the 9/11 attacks.

Someone claiming to be “the man named Wissam al-Zahawie” responded this week on Slate.com’s message board to noted British romancer Christopher Hitchens’ April 10, 2006, Slate article in which Hitchens charged Zahawie, once Saddam’s envoy to the Vatican, with being a raving anti-Semite whose love of Wagner places him in dangerously close approximation to Hitler.

Tony Snow does his best to control the damage after Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki, speaking to reporters on Thursday, denounced coalition troops’ treatment of Iraqi civilians.

Leave it to the clever Brits to come up with the perfect description of the current state of the Bush-Blair special relationship.

Sometime on Sunday, March 21, our site reached the million visits* milestone. Thanks to everyone who visited and all those who have donated to the site to keep us up, running and writing.

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) said Monday that new immigration legislation will allow as many as 200 million legal million immigrants to enter the US in the next 20 years. At present the US admits about 1 million legal immigrants annually; Sessions says that number would increase to between 5 and 10 million annually if the legislation passed by the Senate yesterday becomes law, with most of the new immigrants arriving from Mexico and points south.

NBC News says reports that Marines fighting in Iraq killed more than a dozen civilians in the aftermath of a firefight appear to be true. The killings in the western Iraq city of Haditha, a hot spot of the insurgency, were first reported the day they occurred in November of last year. Military officials told NBC News that photos from the scene show, among other horrors, “a mother and young child bent over on the floor as if in prayer, shot dead.”

The White House press corps gave Tony Snow rock star treatment for his first televised press conference today. It was standing room only.

Six months ago, Department of Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff dismissed the idea of deploying National Guard troops to the Mexican border. Chertoff told Fox News talk show maven Bill O’Reilly that dragooning the Guard into border duty “would be a horribly over-expensive and very difficult way to manage this problem.”

President Bush couldn’t have been clearer: his amnesty proposal for illegal immigrants with local roots and clean records is not an amnesty proposal. All he lacked was one of his famed ‘message’ backdrops printed with “Not An Amnesty.”

Karl Rove told the American Enterprise Institute today that president Bush’s approval ratings are down only because Iraq is a mess. By the same token, as Philip Klinkner notes, “if it weren’t for the Alps, Switzerland would be flat.”

Cynics would see this speech tonight as a diversion—pragmatists as further incompetence. Perhaps both. I find it somewhat ironic that those so obsessed with ‘securing the borders’ and protecting ‘our way of life’ care so little for their own boundaries and the decisions that actually undermine that way of life in far more subtle and effective ways.

President Bush has told Mexico’s Vicente Fox that any deployment of National Guard troops along the US-Mexico border will be “on a temporary basis.” Bush is expected to announce the deployment in a speech tonight. White House spokeswoman Maria Tamburri said Bush made the assurance when Fox called Bush to voice concern over reports of the move.

If the report that Karl Rove was secretly indicted on Friday is true, we have a bit of advice for The Architect: throw Momser from the train. Give up Dick Cheney.

Two items of interest in the continuing investigation into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, one highlighting Dick Cheney’s involvement and the other, a report that Karl Rove was indicted Friday on at least two counts in connection with the case.