Kevin Drum

GANGING UP ON ENERGY….I missed this last Friday while I was off at the fair eating deep-fried food, but apparently there’s a bipartisan energy bill on the table that’s cosponsored by a “Gang of 10” — a group of five Democratic senators and five Republican senators. Among other things it includes some limited offshore drilling, […]

WITHDRAWAL AGREEMENT UPDATE….Looks like maybe al-Sabah was right. No details yet, though.

ECHOES….Just because his father was a famous Nazi war criminal doesn’t mean that Albert Speer Jr. shouldn’t be able to find work. Still, given that the Olympic Games are nothing if not a gigantic quadrennial symbol of nationalistic spirit, did China’s totalitarian leaders really think he was the best choice to design the master plan […]

THE END OF THE AWAKENING?….Marc Lynch thinks the failure of the Iraqi parliament to pass a bill approving provincial elections might be worth more attention than a few paragraphs on A12: Leaders of the [Sunni] Awakenings have been warning that they are “losing patience” and “the next few months will be decisive” so many times […]

QUOTES OF THE DAY….From John McCain, talking to David Broder about the “tone and direction” of the campaign so far: “I’m very sorry about it,” McCain said in a Saturday interview at his Arlington headquarters. “I think we could have avoided at least some of this if we had agreed to do the town hall […]

CAMPAIGN WATCH….John McCain, making the world safe for trolls and spammers. Great work, senator.

WHAT DO MEN WANT SURF?….Professor B points us today toward this site which examines your browsing history and tells you your gender. Here’s mine: Likelihood of you being FEMALE is 2% Likelihood of you being MALE is 98% Site Male-Female Ratio youtube.com 1 walmart.com 0.77 nytimes.com 1.13 foxnews.com 1.41 washingtonpost.com 1.15 drudgereport.com 2.08 latimes.com 1.3 […]

BENTONITE REVISITED….Shortly after the 2001 anthrax attacks, Brian Ross of ABC News reported that government tests showed that the spores contained traces of bentonite, a substance linked with Saddam Hussein’s bioweapons program. But that wasn’t true. So did Ross’s sources lie to him? Today he talked to TVNewser and says they didn’t: Ross tells us, […]

MORE ON THE PICKENS PLAN….A regular correspondent thinks I was too hard on T. Boone Pickens and his energy plan this morning: I take your point, but I’m not sure it’s worth getting too excited about and am perhaps more willing to give slack here. Whether we like it or not, the alternative energy revolution […]

AGREEMENT IN BAGHDAD?….Via Juan Cole, al-Sabah reports that Iraq and the U.S. are close to finalizing a status-of-forces agreement: According to a memorandum of understanding to be signed by the two parties after a summary of results is presented to political leaders, Baghdad and Washington have set a time limit for the withdrawal of American […]