As Atrios says, Joe Lieberman is a buffoon:

LIEBERMAN: I believe that America is a mighty enough nation that we should never fear to talk to anyone. But anyone who believes that Iran and Syria really want to help us to succeed in Iraq, I just is missing the reality. Asking Iran and Syria to help us succeed in Iraq is like your local fire department asking a couple of arsonists to help put out the fire. These people are flaming the fire. They are the extremists. They are supporting terrorists in Iraq, in Lebanon and of course in the Palestinian areas.

HAGEL: That’s not the point. Of course the Iranians and Syrians are not going to come to our assistance. Of course not. But they are going to respond in their own self-interest. All nations respond in their own self-interests. Tallyrand once said that nations don’t have friends. They have interests. He was right. It’s not in the interest of Syria or Jordan or Iran to have a failed state that would be a complete mess for the middle east.

Why did the Iranians help us in Afghanistan? Why did they cooperate with us in Afghanistan on intelligence matters and other issues? Because they didn’t want a failed state next to them which comes with all the problems. They didn’t want heroin moving into their borders. What we’re not getting here, is we’re not getting a full and comprehensive wide-lens appreciation of interests.

To follow Lieberman's thinking, no conflicts would ever end.

NOTE: I published this piece last year.

There is a passage in Umberto Eco's 1988 novel Foucault's Pendulum that has always had a great resonance for me, as a companion piece to Richard Hofstader's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." I think, as edited, it can be understood without intimate knowledge of the plot:

To invent a Plan. The Plan justifies you to such a degree that you can no longer be held accountable, not even for the Plan itself. Just throw the stone and hide your hand. If there really were a Plan, there would be no failure. You never had Cecilia because the Archons made Annibale Canta-lamessa and Pio Bo unskilled even with the friendliest of the brass instruments. You fled the Canal gang because the Decans wanted to spare you for another holocaust. And the man with the scar has a talisman more powerful than yours.

A Plan, a guilty party. The dream of our species. An Deus sit. If He exists, it's His fault. The thing whose address I lost is not the End, it's the Beginning. Not the object to be possessed but the subject that possesses me. Misery loves company. Misery, company, too many dactyls. Nothing can dispel from my mind the most reassuring thought that this world is the creation of a shadowy god whose shadow I prolong. Faith leads to Absolute Optimism.

So says Eric Foner about George W Bush:

He's The Worst Ever

By Eric Foner
Sunday, December 3, 2006; B01

Ever since 1948, when Harvard professor Arthur Schlesinger Sr. asked 55 historians to rank U.S. presidents on a scale from "great" to "failure," such polls have been a favorite pastime for those of us who study the American past.

The New York Times has the full text of Donald Rumsfeld's last memo to the White House, written 2 days before he resigned.

Background here.

“In my view it is time for a major adjustment,” wrote Mr. Rumsfeld, who has been a symbol of a dogged stay-the-course policy. “Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough.”

Nor did Mr. Rumsfeld seem confident that the administration would readily develop an effective alternative. To limit the political fallout from shifting course, he suggested the administration consider a campaign to lower public expectations.

Journalists Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada reported some of the testimony leaked from a grand jury investigation into the use of steroids by professional athletes. As TalkLeft noted here, the reporters adhered to their promise of confidentiality when prosecutors asked them to reveal their source, and again when a judge ordered them to answer. The judge held them in contempt.

In a brief filed yesterday, the San Francisco Chronicle argued in favor of a reporter's privilege:

"Confidentiality is essential for the reporters to sustain the relationships they need with sources and to obtain sensitive information from them," Jonathan Donnellan, a lawyer for the newspaper and reporters, said in the court filing. "Without it, the press cannot effectively serve the public by keeping it informed."

It doesn't pay to party in Macomb County, Georgia Michigan.

In what her father called "outrageous" and her attorney called "ridiculous," a 23-year-old Eastpointe woman was sentenced to 30 days in jail and highly restrictive probation conditions after being given a misdemeanor ticket for excessive noise at her house.

Some neighborhood residents signed a petition complaining about Carmen Granata's parties, but Granata says her immediate neighbors support her, and her father notes that the person who circulated the petition has a pattern of complaining about his neighbors. Whatever Granata's neighbors may think, jail is an obscene response to a loud party. Granata thought the charge wasn't a big deal, and she should have been right.

The sentence, tougher than many defendants in Macomb County receive for a first felony conviction, came after Granata pleaded guilty to violating the ordinance. Granata, who did not have an attorney, had been told by a city attorney that she likely would be fined a minimal amount if she pleaded guilty, according to her father, Joe Granata.

TalkLeft wrote here about the phenomenon of "contagious shooting." In an excellent essay, "Breathing While Black," Christopher Rabb argues that "contagious shooting" is "symptomatic of something larger that undoubtedly correlates to when such contagions most often occur and to what degree": institutional racism.

It's almost sunset here in Key West. Incredible weather, great company. I'm sitting at the dock of the bay on the Gulf of Mexico, 100 yards from the Atlantic Ocean. We're hoping to see the Green Flash.

Here's an open thread for you.

The Constitution prohibits any religious test for public office and forbids the establishment of an official religion, making this proposal the stupidest idea of the week:

The American Family Association, a nonprofit organization that focuses on the news media's influence on society, has entered the fray, calling on people to ask members of Congress to pass a law that would make the Bible the only book that could be used during swearing-in ceremonies.

Some are upset because Keith Ellison, a Muslim who is newly-elected to Congress, might hold the Quran in his hand when he takes his oath of office. These are the same people who insist the United States is a Christian nation, when in truth it is a religiously diverse nation.

Whether Ellison holds one of the many versions of the Bible, the Quran, the Torah, or the most recent Playboy magazine is his business. That's what freedom (including religious freedom) is all about. Why does the AFA hate our freedoms?

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's website has a link to the affidavit and search warrant in the search that led to the death of Kathryn Johnston on November 21st, previously posted here.

The no-knock provision was based on the alleged surveillance cameras that the informant reported to the police which showed up in the affidavit. (No surveillance cameras or monitors were found.) The affidavit for the search warrant also described the house as having a wheelchair ramp in the front. The latter would seem to be a tip off to the police that there was somebody else in the house besides the alleged drug dealer, if they had bothered to investigate.

CNETnews.com has this article by By Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache: FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool.  Brave new eavesdropping via a cellphone that is not even turned on:

USA Today on Friday had, via AP, an article about the controversial body scanner with "backscatter" technology that graphically reveals everything about your body, in an effort to see what an airline passenger may be carrying on his or her body.  Don't want to be seen nude on a computer screen?  Then you can be subjected to a patdown instead.