In a sense, we should be gratified that David Ignatius, in this column, the mouthpiece of Admiral William Fallon, is now writing of declaring victory and getting out of Iraq:

Let's assume that the numbers from Iraq are right and that there has been a significant reduction in violence there. Let's even agree that the Bush administration's strategy is finally showing some success. Isn't that an argument for accelerating the transfer of security to the Iraqis -- and speeding up the withdrawal of some U.S. support troops?

If that becomes the BushCo cover story for getting out of Iraq, so much the better. But Ignatius' "analysis" is bereft of reason and intelligence so one doubts whether he actually has good sources. For example:

Requiring students to speak only in English while they're at school is an affront to the students' ownership of their own identities. It may be reasonable to ask students to speak to teachers in English, but prohibiting students from speaking to each other in their native languages is insensitive, offensive, and discriminatory against students who do not speak English as a first language.

The Catholic Diocese of Wichita says [St. Anne Catholic School] enacted the policy to deal with Spanish-speaking students who were using their native language to bully other children or insult teachers and administrators without their knowledge.

Are the teachers really insulted if they don't know they've been insulted? Wouldn't hiring more bilingual staff members be a better solution to the perceived problem?

Making contraceptives more readily available to kids prevents unwanted pregnancies. Opponents of abortion should be pleased that women have birth control options that make abortion less likely. Instead, the Republican Party chairman in Portland, Maine echoes the right's familiar response to governmental efforts to broaden access to birth control:

“It is an attack on the moral fabric of our community, and a black eye for our state.”

As if a middle school girl in Portland won't dare to have sex unless the school clinic will fill her birth control prescription.

The winning bid in a charity auction of the original "smear letter" that 41 senators sent to the CEO of Clear Channel, criticizing Rush Limbaugh's reference to "phony soldiers," was $2,100,100. Limbaugh auctioned off the "smear letter" to benefit a charity of his choosing, while promising to match the bid out of his own pocket. The recipient nonprofit: the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation Inc.

Mr. Limbaugh is a director of the organization, which had total revenues of $5.2 million last year.

Harry Reid wrote the letter. His take on the auction:

Reid did a clever thing right back. He went on the Senate floor and praised Limbaugh's attempt to raise money for a good cause off his letter and said he could have gotten every Democratic senator's signature if he'd had time.

Who would pay to support Limbaugh's assertion that the letter was a "smear," when it is in fact Limbaugh who smears soldiers who speak out against the war? Reports differ. This is the NY Times:

Monday, I came down with whatever bug is going around these parts. I finally went to the doctor yesterday who said it's a respiratory inflammation of some sort, so now I've started a course of cipro (antibiotics) and prednisone (steroids) and feeling a little out of it.

TChris and Big Tent will be posting this weekend, as I'll mostly just be reading. I'd also like to get started on my thank you e-mails to the generous readers who sent in donations this week.

So, here's an open thread for you. Let us know what's caught your attention or talk about whatever you feel like.

If there are diaries this weekend, I'll put up a diary rescue tonight.

More...

Adam Liptak provides a lucid explanation of President Bush's decision to nominate Michael Mukasey to replace Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General:

[I]n his two days of testimony this week, it became clear that Mr. Mukasey believes presidential power to be robust, expansive and sometimes beyond the power of Congress to control. That is perfectly aligned with the Bush administration’s views, and if Mr. Mukasey was initially a refreshing presence to the Senate Judiciary Committee, it was only because he justified in plain terms what other administration lawyers have said in secret memorandums often cloaked in obfuscation. ...

He indicated, for instance, that he favored a narrow reading of the Supreme Court’s sweeping 2006 decision, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, striking down the administration’s initial plan for military commissions to try prisoners at Guantánamo.

Is Mukasey just a smarter version of Gonzales--better able to defend the administration's indefensible positions? Liptak explains why Mukasey's reading of precedent to authorize expansive executive power in defiance of legislation is strained, at best.

The New York Times Book Review assigned Stanford history professor David Kennedy to review Paul Krugman's new book, "The Conscience of a Liberal." It is an extremely negative review. I have not read the book so can not comment on it but I did read the review. And I found it inconsistent to say the least. For example, after chiding Krugman for being, in Kennedy's words, "factually shaky," he then writes:

For this dismal state of affairs the Democratic Party is held to be blameless. Never mind the Democrats’ embrace of inherently divisive identity politics, or Democratic condescension toward the ungrammatical yokels who consider their spiritual and moral commitments no less important than the minimum wage or the Endangered Species Act, nor even the Democrats’ vulnerable post-Vietnam record on national security.

Ummm, that all sounds factually shaky to me. What is the basis of Kennedy's statement? A fact or 2 to support this sweeping claim, especially from someone throwing stones, might have been in order. Kennedy continues:

WaPo's Howie Kurtz is, as anyone who has ever read him knows, a joke. Via Digby, he is at it again. This time he makes statements so stupefyingly wrongheaded that it is a wonder he is allowed to publish:

I agree that leakers often get to set the story line, but I also know that Democrats are not unfamiliar with the practice. (Remember the Bush DUI leak just before the 2000 election?) And those who leaked information about domestic surveillance, Abu Ghraib and secret CIA prisons also had an impact.

Digby explains how the timing of Bush's DUI story was actually a function of Media incompetence, not leaking. But the truly stunning assertion from Kurtz is his view that McConnell's office's attack on the Frosts is comparable to this:

You may not remember the name Joe Darby, but you remember the impact of what he did. Darby turned in the pictures of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq – pictures he had discovered purely by accident. Unfortunately for Darby, exposing the truth has changed his life forever, and for the worse.

Comparing Joseph Darby's act of courage to the McConnell false smear of 12 year old Graeme Frost? Are you serious Mr. Kurtz? What a dim hack you are. As for the warrantless surveillance leak, the one the Times held inappropriately for a year, what can one say? It is simply incredible that Howard Kurtz is a reporter, much less a Media critic. He is truly awful.

It didn't make much news last week when Air Force Col. Morris Davis, the lead prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay, resigned. The articles I read said something about his not being happy that another official,Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, was usurping his power and that Hartmann should remain neutral.

Davis abruptly resigned after complaining that his authority in prosecutions was being usurped. He argued that , a new legal adviser to the convening authority for military commissions, should remain a neutral and independent party and should leave prosecuting cases to prosecutors.

Now, the real reason for his quitting comes out.

Politically motivated officials at the Pentagon have pushed for convictions of high-profile detainees ahead of the 2008 elections, the former lead prosecutor for terrorism trials at Guantanamo Bay said last night, adding that the pressure played a part in his decision to resign earlier this month.

Senior defense officials discussed in a September 2006 meeting the "strategic political value" of putting some prominent detainees on trial, said Air Force Col. Morris Davis. He said that he felt pressure to pursue cases that were deemed "sexy" over those that prosecutors believed were the most solid or were ready to go.

...."There was a big concern that the election of 2008 is coming up," Davis said. "People wanted to get the cases going. There was a rush to get high-interest cases into court at the expense of openness."

There was also a disagreement about use of classified evidence at the detainees' trials:

And rightly so:

With Democrats Like These ...
Every now and then, we are tempted to double-check that the Democrats actually won control of Congress last year. It was particularly hard to tell this week. Democratic leaders were cowed, once again, by propaganda from the White House and failed, once again, to modernize the law on electronic spying in a way that permits robust intelligence gathering on terrorists without undermining the Constitution.

. . . There were bright spots in the week. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon managed to attach an amendment requiring a warrant to eavesdrop on American citizens abroad. That merely requires the government to show why it believes the American is in league with terrorists, but Mr. Bush threatened to veto the bill over that issue.

Senator Christopher Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat, said he would put a personal hold on the compromise cooked up by Senator Rockefeller and the White House.

Otherwise, it was a very frustrating week in Washington. It was bad enough having a one-party government when Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. But the Democrats took over, and still the one-party system continues.

Bump and Update: The case has been dropped and the special prosecutor has been fired.

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Grand Jury Investigation Seeking Phoenix Newspaper's Reader Data

In the department of news ranging from unprecedented to shocking, from the Phoenix New Times, this stands out.

This newspaper and its editorial staff — both current and former — are the targets of unprecedented grand jury subpoenas dated August 24.

The authorities are also using the grand jury subpoenas in an attempt to research the identity, purchasing habits, and browsing proclivities of our online readership.

At the heart of the matter is controversial Sheriff Joe Arpaio (think, inmates wearing pink underwear and juvenile chain gangs forced to bury the dead and other bizarre jail programs.) The grand jury subpoena seeks:

More....

The Bush administration would like you to live in fear of terrorism. Shouldn't you be more fearful of this story?

Three senior officers have been relieved of command for their roles in mistakenly allowing a B-52 bomber to fly from North Dakota to Louisiana carrying armed nuclear warheads, top Air Force officials said. .. The bomber took off from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota on Aug. 30 with the nuclear-armed cruise missiles under one wing. The mistake wasn't discovered until after the plane landed later that day at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.