The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal as well as the Independent Bloggers Alliance, The Peace Tree and Worldwide Sawdust.

Alan Greenspan belongs to the Club of Emasculated Moderate Elites who enabled corporate theocrats to destroy the American Dream at home and annihilate our moral authority abroad. A prerequisite for membership is to first allow crazy ideologues to exploit their prestige and later disown the disastrous policies their reputations facilitated. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell is a charter member of this club and a pathetic figure who criticizes the Bush Administration about Iraq when it no longer matters. Powell's domestic policy soul mate, Alan Greenspan, joined him with his new memoir, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures In a New World.

David Brooks is a lightweight whom I typically ignore. Other progressive bloggers critique his sophomoric punditry and infantile analysis with enthusiasm. Until Friday, I considered attacking Brooks akin to abusing the Pillsbury Dough Boy.

Standing on an overcrowded A-Train with malfunctioning air conditioning, I read Brooks' column "Bye-Bye Bootstraps" while commuting to Manhattan from Brooklyn. Brooks had the temerity to suggest that a "Wal-Mart leisure class" was emerging in America. One wonders how my fellow passengers suffering from the heat as we commuted to our jobs would've responded to this soft minded propagandist of America's plutocracy.

In July 1947, George F. Kennan published an article in the quarterly edition of Foreign Affairs entitled "Sources of Soviet Conduct." Kennan originally drafted the article as a paper for Defense Secretary James Forrestal. When he submitted it to Foreign Affairs, Kennan used the moniker "Mr. X." The piece was known as "containment" and is credited with guiding American foreign policy under presidents of both parties during the cold war.

Did you cry for them?  Did you worry about any orcish widows left waiting by the window?  Little orclings wondering when papa was coming home?

Of course not.  You cheered Sam's courage and didn't give a second thought to the orcs.  Why?  Because... they're orcs.  They're ugly, vile, evil.  The very definition of other.  

Now, wherever I wrote the word "orc," imagine that it said "liberal."

There's nothing new about conservatives attacking the Times, of course. It's been going on for as long as I can remember, certainly. What's strange about this particular attack is the impetus. I'm sure you know what's happening, of course, but let's record it for posterity's sake. A while back, the NYT reported on an government info-gathering program aimed at terrorist-connected bank accounts. There was nothing unusual about the program or the reporting, but the right wing flew off the handle. Why? Good question.

The program was never that secret; information about it has been on the White House web page for more than four years. That's not why I'm perplexed, however. What gets me is that the article was largely positive.

I was an avid reader of Bill James' annual Baseball Abstract while growing up in the 1980s. As both a nerd and baseball fanatic, his methodical statistical analysis and incisive prose influenced me almost as much as listening to the Beatles. Perhaps the most memorable essay of James' career was in his 1983 abstract when he wrote about, "The Law of Competitive Balance." Twenty-three years ago I copied words of wisdom from that essay into the spiral notebook I was supposed to use for algebra:

"The Law of Competitive Balance: There develop over time separate and unequal strategies adopted by winners and losers; the balance of those strategies favors the losers, and thus serves constantly to narrow the difference between the two."

   An internal faceoff at the New York Times is set to go public in Sunday editions when the public editor accuses his bosses of 'stonewalling' him in his attempts to understand the decision to report on NSA eavesdropping after at least a year's delay, RAW STORY has learned.

   Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

There's an editorial in today's Washington Post on the brouhaha surrounding Bob Woodward.

And as with the NYT did with Judy Miller, they just don't get it.  

Excuse me, but nobody is vilifying Bob Woodward for protecting the identity of his source.  They are vilifying him for being a part of the story, and using his 'vaulted' experience to undermine the investigation.

More.....