Kevin Drum

QUOTE OF THE DAY….From Attorney General Michael Mukasey, defending his decision not to pursue criminal charges against former employees who politicized the hiring of career lawyers in the Justice Department: “Not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime.” I imagine a lot of people are relieved to hear this. UPDATE: […]

THOSE LOVABLE NEOCONS….Reihan Salam thinks that neocons have gotten a bad rap: What people misunderstand about neoconservatives is that they’re not reflexive unilateralists, like Rumsfeld or Bolton; rather, they believe the United States has the power to provide global public goods. The idea of a “League of Democracies,” unwise though it may be, is about […]

REPUBLICANS FOR OBAMA….The New York Times reports on a new group of high-profile “Republicans for Obama”: Rita Hauser, a New York philanthropist who raised money for both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, is helping to organize the push to draw Republicans away from Mr. McCain and will serve as a spokeswoman for the […]

ENDANGERED….The latest parting shot from the soon-to-be-departed Bushies: The Bush administration Monday proposed a regulatory overhaul of the Endangered Species Act to allow federal agencies to decide whether protected species would be imperiled by agency projects, eliminating the independent scientific reviews that have been required for more than three decades. ….Afterward, in a telephone call […]

GEORGIA WAR WINDING DOWN?….The Russo-Georgian war appears to be pretty much over: Russia’s president today said his country was ready to begin peace talks with Georgia to end a five-day conflict over pro-Russian separatist-minded enclaves along the two nations’ Caucasus region border. ….[Dmitri] Medvedev, speaking after a closed-door meeting in Moscow with French President Nicholas […]

“WE THOUGHT WE HAD AN UNDERSTANDING WITH THE RUSSIANS”….Jonathan Landay has a pretty fascinating piece about the war in Georgia posted tonight at the McClatchy site. I’ll take note of two particular fascinations. First, Landay’s sources insist that even though the Bush administration had “fretted for months” over Russian provocations in Georgia, they did nothing […]

NEXT UP: NEW, LOW-FRICTION WATER….Hey, I heard there was a swimming event at the Olympics today where a world record wasn’t set. Seems unlikely to me, though. Can anyone confirm?

THE PREDATOR STATE….Jamie Galbraith writes today about the difference between Reagan conservatism and Bush conservatism: As I got to know the free-market, supply-side crowd, the hard money, low-tax, Wall Street Journal deregulate-and-privatize team, I came rather to like them. I never thought they were right. Far from it: on matters of economic policy they were […]

TALES FROM THE CRYPT….I have to admit that in the annals of bureaucratic pigheadedness, this isn’t a bad story. It kinda makes me wonder if the Kingdom of Denmark ever expunged that parking ticket I got there a few years ago. I guess I’ll find out if I ever go back and they toss me […]

SPHERES OF INFLUENCE….Earlier this morning, Matt Yglesias suggested that if there are conservatives who think we ought to go to war over Georgia, they ought to say so forthrightly. Henry Farrell counters by suggesting that if there are liberals who believe in realist “sphere of influence” geopolitics, they ought to say so forthrightly: Russia sees […]