This one caught my eye, and how could it not: Three teenagers presumed lost at sea have been rescued after 50 days adrift in the South Pacific, in a 12-foot aluminum boat that had traveled 800 miles by the time they were found by happenstance.
The essence of George Packer’s elegant review of George W. Bush’s memoir:
The structure of “Decision Points” … reveals the essential qualities of the Decider. There are hardly any decision points at all. The path to each decision is so short and irresistible, more like an electric pulse than like a weighing of options, that the reader is hard-pressed to explain what happened. Suddenly, it’s over, and there’s no looking back. …
In Bush’s telling, the non-decision decision is a constant feature of his Presidential policymaking. …
Here is another feature of the non-decision: once his own belief became known to him, Bush immediately caricatured opposing views and impugned the motives of those who held them. If there was an honest and legitimate argument on the other side, then the President would have to defend his non-decision, taking it out of the redoubt of personal belief and into the messy empirical realm of contingency and uncertainty.
A week ago Tuesday, 77 year old Michael Stephen Bowden was getting a routine physical exam at a VA clinic in Spartanburg, South Carolina when he told the attending VA nurse he would “like to shoot the President [and] then myself.” This revelation earned Bowden an impromptu psych evaluation in which he confided further that he “was thinking of traveling to Washington, DC, to shoot the President (Obama) because he is not doing enough to help African Americans.”
That triggered a visit from the Secret Service to Bowden’s home where he lives with his wife and grown son. But things didn’t go as they normally do when the suspect recants his statement or explains that there was some misunderstanding. Bowden waived his rights and went on to make a sworn statement in which he said that “if I had the opportunity to put (President) Obama against the wall and shoot him, I would. I would kill, if possible, the president for what he has done to this country.”
Agents’ concerns were heightened when a search of Bowden’s home revealed a small armory of weapons, including 3 loaded semi-automatic handguns and a semi-automatic rifle in the immediate vicinity of Bowden’s bed.
Bowden was arrested on November 18th and charged with threatening to take the life of, kidnap or inflict bodily harm on the President of the United States. A judge has ordered a full psychiatric evaluation.
Pastor who castigated Facebook as a website of sin takes leave of absence from church after revelation of three-way (sometimes four-way) relationship.
A Texas jury has just returned a conviction against former House Majority Leader Tom Delay in his campaign money laundering case.
Delay faces up to life in prison, according to the AP, but that seems far, far more severe than any sentence Delay will actually get.
Alan Simpson, whining about the crap he says he’s getting as co-chair of the President’s debt commission: “We had the greatest generation. I think this is the greediest generation.”
I’ve got no brief for Joe Miller, but what is Norm Coleman — Norm Coleman! — doing opining that Miller ought to throw in the towel now in the Alaska Senate race?
It’s only been three weeks since the election, and Coleman dragged his own Senate election contest out for 8 months. Now, there’s virtually no doubt Miller is going to lose, but it’s Norm Coleman!
I guess when you’re working the inside game in DC as an ex-senator you have to kiss up to the Republican establishment which much prefers the return of incumbent Lisa Murkowski to the insurgency of Joe Miller.