Washington Babylon

From Glenn Greenwald (via Andrew Sullivan): Just to underscore how mild and mainstream were Nasr’s firing comments, consider this 2002 column from ultimate establishment centrist David Ignatius, expressing “sincere respect…

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From the New York Times: Human Rights Watch, the group best known for documenting governmental abuse and war crimes, plans to release a report on Wednesday showing that child and…

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From Dana Milbank: It would not be accurate to say that Democrats are worried about losing control of the House in November. It would be accurate to say that Democrats…

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From Politico: Taxpayers have paid out nearly $1 million per year in settlements to congressional employees who have been harassed or otherwise treated badly by their political bosses over the…

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From the Sunlight Foundation: To allow members of Congress and Hill aides to attend their annual fundraising golf tournaments free of charge, Washington’s premier partisan clubs get ethics waivers from…

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Remember WellCare, the Tampa-based insurer that was accused of “bilking taxpayers of hundreds of millions of dollars by using fraudulent practices that were integral to the company’s profit-making,” says a…

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Spain was clearly the best team in the World Cup and it deserved yesterday’s 1-0 victory over Holland. It controlled the ball and the tempo for most of the match,…

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From Associated Press: The U.S. government has denied a visa to a prominent Colombian journalist who specializes in conflict and human rights reporting to attend a prestigious fellowship at Harvard…

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From the New York Times: Whether it is their residence, a second home or a house bought as an investment, the rich have stopped paying the mortgage at a rate…

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From the Angry Arab: The dismissal of Octavia Nasr proves this: No matter how much you grovel and how much you insult Arabs and Muslims in the US, as Nasr…

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There’s been much speculation about Sarah Palin’s political prospects and the possibility that she will win high office in the 2012 elections. Yesterday Andrew Sullivan posted an item in which…

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From Jeff Stein: President Richard M. Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry A. Kissinger, joked that an “incompetent” CIA had struggled to successfully carry out an assassination in Chile,…

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One of the more revealing examples of the mainstream media’s laughable claims of “objectivity” came in a Sunday Washington Post story about what lies ahead for the U.S. economy. Written…

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Because I tend to root for Latin American teams at the World Cup (except for Argentina), I began to worry about the fate of its teams when the media narrative…

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Holland 2, Brazil 1. In my last post, I noted that soccer is impossible to predict because so much depends on who scores the first goal, luck and poise. Brazil…

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From the Washington Post: BP, the global energy corporation whose massive oil spill is fouling huge swaths of the Gulf of Mexico, proclaims in its corporate code of conduct that…

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There were a lot of upsets in the first round but the best teams have reached the quarter-finals at the World Cup: Argentina, Brazil, Germany and Spain (with Holland a…

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From Matt Taibi: I thought I’d seen everything when I read David Brooks saying out loud in a New York Times column that reporters should sit on damaging comments to…

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A reader, who asked to remain anonymous, sends along the following (slightly edited) email: There are many reasons to move to public financing of elections, the chief one of which…

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From Allen Sloan: One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from a former editor, who told me how to handle topics that were likely to annoy…

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“Michael Hastings has never served his country the way McChrystal has,” says Lara Logan of CBS. Andrew Sullivan asks, “When will the Washington Post hire her?” You know the answer…

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From a British sportswriter in 1966, before the World Cup game between England and Germany. Via Andrew Sullivan: Tomorrow, Germany will attempt to defeat us at our national game. It…

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From Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington: Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asked [Congress] to investigate and hold hearings on the extent to which White House…

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From Laura Rozen: A federal grand jury in Miami, Florida has indicted an Israeli defense consultant and an American citizen of conspiring to transfer hundreds of AK-47s to the breakaway…

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Random World Cup observations: First, does anyone still want to argue about the mediocrity of the U.S. team, which was mercifully eliminated by Ghana on Saturday? In what was arguably…

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I posted an item Friday morning about why I generally don’t enjoy blogs, saying, “Having one’s own opinion validated twenty times a day really isn’t all that stimulating, though that’s…

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A number of emailers, not all necessarily friendly, have asked if I intend to post today after the U.S.-Ghana game. In fact, I don’t intend to comment, no matter what…

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I don’t know much about Congressman Paul Kanjorski or whether he’s a racist, but I do know that if a Republican had said this — “We’re giving relief to people…

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