The real loser in all this, however, is Levi Johnston. Poor Levi Johnston is the unluckiest horny teenager in the world. First, he knocks up the governor’s daughter. Stupid, but probably not all that difficult in a state of 600,000 people. But then, the unthinkable (for everyone!): the Republicans nominate that governor for the vice presidency of the United States of America!

Suddenly, it becomes a matter of national security that he marry the girl. If he doesn’t man up, Obama will win the presidency and the terrorists will attack Juneau!

The term “shotgun wedding” evokes the rich imagery of a gun-toting father forcing the guilty young stud to make his pregnant daughter an honest woman, but I shudder to think what the Republican Party is holding to Levi’s head.

TORTURE IT! According to the last Batman movie anyway. It might know where that ticking bomb is! Oh, and one other thing, why is a fat, goateed mega-church pastor asking presidential candidates about their relationship with Christ?

If Americans put up with this, they are totally capable of electing McCain.

… although the terminology “material support” may not have existed historically, the laws of war have long prohibited stealthy attacks on civilians, the mainstay of terrorism groups and the target of material-support charges.

Totally. And representatives of the U.S. government have never offered material support to any war criminals who committed stealthy attacks on civilians. We don’t do that sort of thing. Unless we need to Protect Your Freedoms, in which case, that information is classified.

Excuse me while I go throw up in the corner.

The State Department loves to label distasteful governments/groups - Syria, FARC, North Korea - as “terrorist” or “state sponsors of terror” as if that somehow makes them ideological allies. Occasionally I run across chintzy action TV shows and movies where beefcake characters express their desire to go out and kill “terrorists,” as if such a status were self evident.

Meanwhile the Office of Motherland Homeland Security (tagline: Preserving Our Freedoms) spends billions of dollars every year on weird grants designed to defend against evil in terrorism hotspots like Annapolis, Maryland.

“Since 9/11, tourist areas are targeted by terrorists… ” Sgt. Johnson said. “Annapolis is the capital of Maryland. These days, I guess anything can happen anywhere.

Right! Except these days, nothing is happening anywhere! Spooks and State Department bureaucrats will tell us, hey, we’ve foiled tons of plots since 9/11, and you snot-nosed kids don’t even realize what kind of stuff has almost killed you in the last seven years.

But with the U.S. government’s track record, if hordes of terrorist boogymen really had been trying to blow up the Homeland since 9/11, at least one of them would have succeeded. Really, it can’t be that hard. Also, keep in mind that the people “protecting” us are the same ones who’ve been lying to us since the Mexican-American War, so frankly, I’m not buying it.

The truly interesting thing is how Cold War terminology has carried over into the 21st Century. The American imagination has been encouraged to think in terms of anti-Western “-isms.” Today we have simply flipped one “ideological” threat (communist, communism) for another one (terrorist, terrorism). Seriously, next time you hear a commentator or politician talking about the threat of “terrorism,” just insert the c-word. Suddenly, it’s 1962 all over again.

The thing is, it’s all just a little too perfect. Uribe is coming off as a national hero just at the moment when he must decide whether to make the legally-sketchy move of running for a third term. Some Swedish radio station is saying that the “rescue” was really a ransom, paid by the U.S., of $20 million. While I’m not inclined to believe Swedish radio stations per se, it seems really likely that something “extra” is going on.

Either that, or Colombians are just total bad-asses. Which, you know, is also kind of true.

Newspaper publishers assumed that even if the printing press disappeared, the internet would still have an insatiable need for their basic product - verified facts, hierarchically arranged by importance. But Romenesko’s rapid growth showed that even newsrooms are part of the emerging market for an unprocessed sprawl of information, delivered immediately and with as few filters as possible between the fingertips of one laptop user and the eyeballs of another. In short, it’s not technology per se that’s killing newspapers; it’s plummeting demand for quality information.

The arrogance of this paragraph is toe-curling, this idea that the only place one can get “quality information” is from newspapers, and you poor, stupid pleebs on the Interwebs just don’t even realize you need an editor to wipe your ass and tell you what to read. People like Raines are seriously out of touch.

NB - I’m presently reading Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. The brutality and incompetence of the whole thing is at once embarrassing and scary, as well as (in post-9/11 retrospect) not at all surprising.