John Lennon was born 70 years ago, today. We’ll never know what he’d have accomplished in the last 30 years had our nation’s gun fetish not allowed a mad-man to have the ready means to kill him… but at least we know… whatever Lennon is, was or would be… the FBI remains interested. Fascinating. Rest in peace, John. Even if, it seems, our government remains threatened by a man who has been dead for decades. Huh.

Yes, I do sound like one myself, as I regale with you tales of completed marathons (this week, state no. 15 and marathon no. 27, “Freedom’s Run” starting and finishing in the great state of West Virginia, albeit mostly of its course being in Maryland, in a comparatively blazing fast time for yours truly… and coincidentally ran into a high school friend there, who is much farther along in her quest for 50 states glory than I am… she is also somewhat faster than I). And this, just a week after an early exit from what was supposed to be...

As there seems nothing much else to talk about… Mrs. TD and I celebrate our 19th anniversary. Woo hoo!

Malcolm Gladwell writing in The New Yorker (I confess that I have read Blink and Outliers, and very much enjoy his “not-so-fast” takes on the conventional wisdom)… does it again, in “Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted.” The “compare and contrast” is the civil rights movement of the pre-internet, pre-cel-phone, pre-fax-machine, pre-all-electronic-social-media era United States, with today’s “twitter revolutions,” be they in places like Moldova or Iran or wherever. His point is not something our “moron media by and for morons” will tell us, to wit (not shortened to “twit,” an all too apt description for all...

The ever indefatigable Andy Worthington wants us to know that Omar Khadr, the almost-certainly-innocent juvenile prisoner who American personnel have been abusing (and most likely torturing) for the last 8 plus years, and whose own government of Canada has been joining in the abuse, who stands accused as a “war criminal” of conduct (hurling a grenade in combat that killed a soldier) that is not actually a war crime, and who was likely unconscious at the time of the incident, and who was only 15 at the time of the incident and, despite the fact that “the evidence” against him...

I vaguely agree with Greenwald’s assessment of the apparent rude treatment that Delaware’s GOP Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell and others in her position as “tea party” “insurgents” are receiving from Republican establishment figures (Karl Rove has been awfully unpleasant)… but of course, one should really look beyond “the apparent.” Glenn rightly observes that Ms. O’Donnell, or Sharron Angle, or my fair state’s GOP gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino, or head Mama Grizzly herself for that matter, really are not, ideologically, anything different than pretty much mainstream conservative Republicans, to wit, Neo-Victorians in their economic and social policies, fascist and imperialist in...

Evidently, census data is going to show that the nation’s “poverty rate” (an arbitrary definition to be sure, but unlike unemployment, at least a consistently measured one) will slide to a nearly 50 year high for 2009. While the A.P. piece observes it may be useful political fodder, I tend to agree with the observation made that “middle class unemployment” (somewhat of on oxymoron, but we know what they mean) will prove to be the more potent electoral issue. Of course, one must step back and note the whole subtext: the untold suffering of untold millions that, while fully felt...

Notwithstanding my unequivocal support of “The Mosque,” (I see Colin Powell agrees too) I’ve restrained myself from commenting on the sudden media notoriety of one “Rev.” Terry Jones of Florida, who has been promising to burn Holy Korans on the most Holy Day of the American Calendar (TM), you know… (hushed silence)… 9-11… largely because Jones is the type of small man who deserves no attention, a point brilliantly made here by Mike Thomas of the Orlando Sentinel, and duly ignored by the rest of our media. Of course, one obvious corollary point is that the broader media covers pathetic...

Surprise, surprise. Obama and Holder sold us out on the grand daddy of them all– the political decision to keep the promise it made at no cost… no fear of filibuster, no need to bribe Bart Stupek or Ben Nelson, no nothin’… just a willingness to honor Obama’s own God damned campaign promises. Too much to ask. Too much to ask. As the great Charlie Savage tells us in this piece in the Grey Lady, a sharply divided panel of the (almost) full 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, by a 6-5 vote, issued a decision upholding the...