It's All Too Much.

There is just too much going on in the news for one blogger to adequately deal with and analyze, particularly if said blogger has plans that include not curling up into a fetal ball of despondency for the next 12 hours. It's hard to know which of these stories is the most galling or depressing. Take your pick of the following topics, but for goodness sake, not all at once! In no particular order:

• Airport security screeners are unable to competently detect bomb components.


• The lawyer who coached witnesses in the Moussaoui trial may have been trying to protect the interests of two airlines who are engaged in a civil suit about 9/11.


• The Republicans in the House of Representatives voted against extra funding for port security. (Remind me, which party is supposed to have the lock on the national security issue?)


• Reporter Helen Thomas seems to be the only one who remembers that the whole "preemptive war" doctrine that HRH just reaffirmed, the one that's worked out so well in Iraq, is, three years later, still against the fundamental principles of international law, (cf. the UN Charter, Geneva, Nuremberg) and anathema to the civilized countries of the world, of which we used to be one.


• The editors at the New York Times somehow, after all these years, seem to think that a reasonable, bipartisan Congressional investigation of Presidential wrongdoing is actually an option in today's Washington.


• The much-ballyhooed Operation Smarmy, er, Swarmer, looks to really be a Potemkin operation, intended to convince American TV viewers of the ability of the Iraqi Army, whether or not they are capable. (Is that the smell of a pre-November announcement of troop withdrawals?)


• A new book, Cobra II, has just been released, and it documents in horrifying detail just how really, really badly the invasion and occupation of Iraq was bungled.


• The hardly radical Sandra Day O'Connor spoke about the right-wing attacks on the judiciary and warned about being on the road to dictatorship.


• Ruth Bader Ginsberg gives an example of a death threat made against her and O'Connor last year.

"OK, Mr. Davis, that's enough. Just step back from the computer now, OK?. Slowly. Easy now. You can do it... that's good. Now, just sit down here. Here. Take this. You'll feel better soon. Look, it's Friday. Why don't you try a little cat-blogging. I hear it's relaxing. Really. It might help."