As you may have heard, Mitt Romney’s great-grandfather was a polygamist. It’s hard for me to think of a reason why a rational person would hold this against Romney, but it’s not hard at all to think of a reason why an opposing campaign would want that information out there: Did you know Mitt Romney [...]

OK, OK. Lots of chatter among readers about an imminent attack by U.S. or Israel against Iran. Some of it is being generated by this piece by Sy Hersh. A few days ago, David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo posted a Ha’aretz report about Israel asking for overflight clearance from neighboring countries for an airstrike [...]

One of the jurors on the Libby trial has been dismissed for having gained information about the case outside the courtroom. It could be as minor as seeing a headline, but that’s happened before (the Howie Kurtz mishap) — it seems like the information must have been more substantial than that to warrant dismissal. In [...]

At the very top of its list of recommended articles this morning, Real Clear Politics features pieces about Iraq by Joe Lieberman and Henry Kissinger–and they are very instructive. Look at the emphasis in the two columns: Lieberman’s is all about the military; Kissinger’s, diplomacy. Kissinger says that a military solution “is not possible,” which [...]

A mostly positive report about the effects of the new security strategy in Baghdad from Mohammed at Iraq the Model. It’s always good to be reminded that there are actual non-aligned, normal Iraqis who welcome the increased police presence provided by the new U.S. tactics. Mohammed is an unusually judicious and clear-eyed observer, and those [...]

And I had to poke around in a little-noticed literary journal called “The New York Times” to find it: My favorite thing about this chart — as pointed out by a friend of mine — is that it appears to equate David Geffen and Donald Rumsfeld, which can’t be pleasant for either of them. (Geffen [...]

OMG! HAVE YOU SEEN THIS BREAKING NEWS!!! HOT HOT HOT!! DRUDGE RED SIREN POLITICO EXCLUSIVE from yesterday: Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut told the Politico on Thursday that he has no immediate plans to switch parties but suggested that Democratic opposition to funding the war in Iraq might change his mind. Gosh, that sounds [...]

Now the Kurdish President and Sunni Vice President say it should be investigated. Several readers have asked why this case is so important. Two reasons: –it’s a measure of how serious Nuri al-Maliki is about being a Prime Minister who creates a multi-party state. So far, in this case, he has gratuitously inflamed tensions between [...]

Josh Marshall picks up a telling bit from Ha’aretz about the U.S. efforts to block a Syrian-Israeli peace deal. When I interviewed Bashar Assad a few years ago, he told me that his father and Yitzak Rabin had gotten “98.5% of the way” toward a peace agreement. “The only outstanding issues were water rights and [...]