Yesterday's congressional testimony by General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker went pretty much the way almost everyone knew it was going to go. And the recommendation by those two gentlemen that we pretty much stick with current policy is based largely on the uncertainty of Iraq's outcome.

The cavalier discussion of American Empire and the American Century that not long ago permeated many political articles and organizations has died down considerably in light of our predicaments in Iraq and Afghanistan. The same predicaments and how we ended up in them, especially Iraq (and now the public discussion of the need to "do something" about Iran), also appear to be having an impact on both how foreigners view the US, and how Americans in the US feel about that view.

I sincerely thought my opinion of our erstwhile leader couldn't go lower. Then I read an excerpt of the new Bush biography Dead Certain, and a few other pieces about it. Looks like the Gonzales "I don't recall" disease infects the entire White House.

The British online gambling firm PartyPoker is taking it in the shorts after the U.S. cracked down on online gambling last fall. The company lost $47 million in the past six months and saw a 70 percent drop in profits. I have an crazy theory about the 2006 mid-term elections, and I am going to share it on the principle that every American is entitled to one off-the-wall explanation for an election's outcome, per election.

Your SEC, working for.....ummm, it seems to depend on how much juice you have. Just ask former SEC staffer Gary Aquirre, who went from good performance reviews to good-by shortly after ignoring his SEC superiors' desires to protect their friend, Wall Street hotshot John Mack.

Sometimes you find the oddest information tucked away in a story about something else entirely. Like how dangerous it is to work for the Iraqi government trying to restore and maintain the electrical grid that supplies the country with power.

Bradley Schlozman, a one-man example of partisanship in action, has tendered his resignation in order to join a law firm in the Midwest. The DOJ and Congressional investigations of him probably have nothing to do with it. Really. R.I.P.

Do you have to be crazy to really be bothered by President Bush's actions, attitudes, and policies? Charles Krauthammer seemed to think so, when he apparently coined the phrase "Bush Derangement Syndrome" to describe people who were rabidly critical of Bush.

Stu Bykovsky, a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News recently wrote a column on the fractured state of the U.S. today. After lamenting our divisions, he offers up this, in a column titled "To save America, we need another 9/11."

A writer for a national security group set up by a conservative think tank has called on President Bush to declare himself "President for Life" and remove all Arabs from the Middle East so he can "repopulate the country with Americans."

Read Older Articles