Sean Hannity just referred to how “we can’t really define torture,” except, of course, when it comes to “cutting off of limbs.” Glad we can agree on that. PS: RON PAUL just won the text message poll. The GOP’s Sanjaya!

The idea that Sean Hannity is posing as someone fit to judge the rhetorical styles of others, let alone their logic, is offensive to those of us who can construct a sentence that doesn’t include the words “Hannitized!” I advise those who can to start drinking now. Blogging to begin at 9pm. (Or, you know, [...]

Not a phrase you normally see in a New York Times account of a congressional hearing. But James Comey was indeed a spellbinder today on Capitol Hill. NYT account by David Stout begins: WASHINGTON, May 15 — On the night of March 10, 2004, a high-ranking Justice Department official rushed to a Washington hospital to [...]

Condolences to the many whose lives he touched, I hope they will not be too offended by a small bit of “news analysis” related his passing: Already the guy filling in for Rush predicts that the “loony liberal left” will use his death to proclaim the “end of the Religious Right.” That may happen, but [...]

Hillary Clinton is the latest to speak out against the troubling and unexplained imprisonment in Iran of Haleh Esfandiari, the 67-year-old director of Middle East programs at the Woodrow Wilson Center. (The website also links to an online petition for her release, as well as separate campaigns being run by Amnesty International and Scholars for [...]

I confess that John Podhoretz is one of my favorite Cornerites, and not in the ironic did-he-really-just-say-something-that-insane way that one usually can appreciate John Derbyshire. He has a sense of humor, he’s not entirely doctrinaire, he is a fellow pop culture enthusiast. But then he writes something like this: The Silly Story of the Day… [...]

All right. So we have 4000 troops–a brigade plus–searching for the missing American soldiers south of Baghdad. We have another brigade diverted north from Baghdad to Diyala, where the war has escalated and the situation is a dangerous mess. The question is, who’s minding the surge? And while some neighborhoods in Baghdad may be–marginally, temporarily–safer [...]

Things don’t seem to be getting any better. Kevin Drum raised the key question yesterday: What can we do about it? My guess is, not that much–overtly. But we can and should be very active with special and covert operators, especially in the northwest territories and–if possible–within the ISI. We may already be doing that…but [...]

Not his own, but still noteworthy: After a spate of bad publicity generated by dissing the Iowa farm family of Jerry and Deborah VonSprecken last week (including a phone call by John McCain trying to capitalize on Rudy’s mistake), the Giuliani campaign has announced that – lo and behold! – Deborah VonSprecken is Rudy’s new [...]