Cartoon du Jour

Tom Toles/Universal Press Syndicate

The Most Implausible Candidate Evah

Hitch nails it: Sarah Palin's "problem" is that she cynically incites a crowd that she has no real intention of pleasing. Oh, and someone needs to tell Andrew to calm down.

Another Dumb Hunter, Another Death

It is hard to understand how a hunter could have mistaken three Ferrum (Va.) College students collecting frogs along a wooded trail for a biology class could be mistaken for deer.

But yet another hunter apparently did so, leaving 23-year-old Jessica Goode dead and one shot in the hand in an annual fall ritual.

This is because for some hunters anything that moves and is not wearing hunters' blaze orange is literally fair game.

Jason David Cloutier was charged with manslaughter, reckless handling of a firearm and trespassing.

Police said the 31-year-old Ferrum resident was the first o call 9-1-1.

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

FOG
By Ivica Jandrijevic

Another Breast-Cancer Bombshell Lands Amidst The Health-Care Reform Debate

Hard on the heels of a study revealing that the benefits of breast cancer screenings have been overstated and risk overtreating small cancers while missing cancers that are deadly comes another earthquake: Most women should start regular screenings at age 50, not 40, women age 50 to 74 should have mammograms every two years, rather than every year, and self-breast examinations are not what they're cracked up to be.

These latest findings are from a different research group than that which had earlier studied the benefits of screenings for the American Cancer Society, but like that study found the benefits of mammograms have been overstated in light of the fact that more women are dying for breast cancer-related reasons despite the increasingly sophisticated screenings that they undergo.

Both studies are political hot potatoes coming as they do amidst the debate over health-care reform.

Researchers worry that the new report will be interpreted as a political effort by the Obama administration to save money on health-care costs. There also is the question of how many women -- as well as doctors -- long schooled in the benefits of mammograms and getting annual screenings will follow the new recommended guidelines.

Many women do not think screenings can be harmful although medical experts now say the risks are real. This is because screenings can trigger unnecessary further tests like biopsies, invasive radiation treatments and painful needle biopsies.

The surgeries that often result are a multi-billion dollar industry that gets filthy rich on overdiagnoses. Then there's this: Too many women who have been treated for breast cancer cannot get health insurance or are dropped by their insurers. Being a woman can be a pre-existing condition in and of itself, of course, while having breast cancer is often a health-insurance knockout punch.

The second study was by the United State Preventive Services Task Force.

The task force, an independent panel of experts in prevention and primary care appointed by the federal Department of Health and Human Services, had recommended just seven years ago that women have mammograms every one to two years starting at age 40. It found too little evidence to take a stand on breast self-examinations.

The task force's new rationale about breast self-examinations is that there is no evidence that they yield significant medical benefits. Large studies in Russia and China found no difference in mortality rates between women assigned to perform self-exams and those who aren't.

Some breast cancer organizations are highly critical of the task force report, asserting that more lives will be lost because of later and fewer screenings. American women have the highest incidence rates of breast cancer in the world, 144 per 1,000 among white woman and 122 per 1,000 among African American women, although those rates have been declining in recent years.

Presidential Timber: Then & Now

Sarah Palin's appearance on "Oprah" this week is being heralded as the kickoff of the 2012 presidential campaign despite the awful poll numbers that the smirking face of the Republican Party keeps getting.

That is one scary thought considering that Winfrey, as should have been expected, threw softballs during the hour-long gabfest.

While former not-son-in-law Levi Johnson, Katie Couric and the dregs of the McCain campaign came up, there was nary a peep about the issues that concern, uh . . . oh yeah, voters.

Contrast this with Senator John F. Kennedy's appearance on Jack Paar's "Tonight Show" in June 1960. The future president fielded more than 30 minutes of questions from Paar, comedian Peggy Cass and the New York studio audience. The subjects were the U-2 incident, failed Soviet summit, Cuba and JFK's Catholicism.

More here and here.

Cartoon du Jour

Chris Britt/Springfield (Ill.) State Journal Register

Bigger Brains Aren't Necessarily Better

MORE HERE.

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

AUTUMN COMPOSITION
By Deduar

You Know That Society Is Doomed . . .

When civilian courts were good enough to try terrorists when Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush were president but they aren't now that Barack Obama is.

When a television comedian breaks stories that the mainstream media won't.

When Republicans say that human life is sacred. Until it's born. Or in a country they believe should be bombed because they don't like its leader.

When a dog sitter is charged with getting a puppy drunk on vodka.

When a pop singing star lumps up his girlfriend, semi apologizes and then takes a victory lap with a Fan Appreciation Tour.

When one of teevee's longest-running funnymen isn't exactly a hoot to work for.

When the Securities and Exchange Commission hires a former Goldman Sachs executive to head its enforcement unit.

When an airline crew overshoots a runway by 150 miles.

When FexEx and UPS pay the Postal Service to deliver packages to rural areas.

When young white guys are criticized for dressing too much like young black guys.

When the punditocracy compares Barack Obama to Richard Nixon.

When fat people are underrepresented as governors.

When a plagiarizing serial hypocrite who made his chops as a graffiti artist lies when it suits him and then gets all huffy when he's called out.

When teenagers are cited for rapping their order at a McDonald's drive-thru.

When the federal government orders gadzillionaire executives at big companies to give back some of the dough they're paid.

When any veteran who lends his name to addressing climate change is considered a traitor.

When Obama plays golf more than George Bush did.

When a man is arrested for driving a La-Z-Boy chair while drunk.

When guests on the Jerry Spring Show start fighting before they go on the air.

When a hotel tells Hispanic workers to Anglicize their names.

When drug makers pledge to cut costs but then surreptitiously raise the price of their prescription meds in anticipate of health-care reform.

When a drunk man calls 9-1-1 to report his marijuana missing.

When some blogs generate more traffic than cable news channels.

When swine flu is considered to be a secret plot.

When a woman calls police to report the theft of her marijuana plants.

When a senator whose state has a high proportion of people who don't have health insurance and has been given $3.3 million in contributions from the health care lobby declares that he'll vote his conscience -- against extending health insurance to his uninsured constituents.

When a woman offers sex for a World Series ticket.

When a man dressed as a Breathalyzer for Halloween is arrested for DUI.

When schoolchildren believe that Adolph Hitler was the manager of Germany's national soccer team.

Click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here for previous installments of You Know Society Is Doomed. Hat tip to Obscure Store for many of the links.

Cartoon du Jour

Mike Luckovich/Atlanta Journal Constitution

This Behemoth Actually Flew

HONEST.

Earl Cooley (1911-2009)

MORE HERE.

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

MOVING IMAGES
(Osaka, Japan -- 1998)
By Jean Gaumy/Magnum Photos

Some Musings On The Writerly Life

I have written perhaps 12,000 pieces in my writerly life and that's just a rough guess. But I do know that the most difficult thing I ever wrote was among the very shortest -- album liner notes for a rock band. The next hardest is by far the longest thing that I've ever written -- a forthcoming book.

To novices or non-writers, these polar opposites of 500 words and 50,000 might seem paradoxical. Why is writing short more difficult than writing long?

In the instance of those liner notes, for two reasons: Most notably, because confining oneself to a few well chosen words is far more difficult than prattling on at length.

But there also is a second reason specific to this task: Writing well about music is extremely challenging even for someone like myself who surrounds himself with it. The brain's processing of aural stimuli is one thing, but describing that stimuli in the King's English is quite another.

The book has presented altogether different challenges.

Central to this effort -- titled The Bottom of the Fox: A True Story of Love, Devotion & Cold-Blooded Murder -- is the 1981 murder of popular bar owner and community leader in the Pennsylvania Poconos that investigators didn't give a crap about solving because by their crude social calculus he was from the wrong side of the tracks.

That murder has led me to three others -- two also unsolved and the third lacking a believable motive -- but every time I have pronounced my tome ready for prime time I get a new piece of information that sends me back out into the field or some musty courthouse archive.

That has been the easy part.

The hard part has been trying to maintain enough emotional detachment from my primary victim, whom I now feel like I know very well and admire deeply, to be able to sift and assess information in a even-handed manner.

This has been made harder still because while there are a lot of good cops out there, the detectives who investigated the four murders ranged from indifferent to incompetent in all but one case.

I have to be fair to the cops, but my primary allegiance is to my victims.

Falling between the extremes of liner notes and a book is blogging. As Kiko's House closes in on its fourth anniversary I'm closing in on 7,500 posts. I kid you not.

Many of these have been throwaways, but I've been fairly successful in maintaining a pretty high level of original content, not to mention edgy opinionating. I couldn't have have done this without your support -- and we're talking readers from over 150 countries, territories and Milwaukee.

Which is why I am honored to again be nominated for an annual Weblog Award in the Best Individual Blogger category. Thanks, folks.

Images from Gustav Dore's illustrated edition
of Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven (1884)

Republicans Really Stuck On Stupid

The U.S. Constitution does not outlaw stupidity, so increasingly desperate Congressional Republicans are fully within their rights to argue that a key aspect of the health-care reform bill passed by the House and awaiting Senate approval is unconstitutional.

These Republicans are increasingly desperate because President Obama is edging ever closer to an historic victory that a large majority of Americans welcome. The Republicans' argument, which we'll be hearing a lot about in the coming days, goes something like this: The individual mandate, which will require people to have health insurance or be penalized, is not sanctioned by the Constitution.

The argument falls apart quickly when you consider that the individual mandate is a tax of a sort, which is constitutional. Then there's mandatory auto insurance, which is constitutional, and my favorite -- the Americans With Disability Act -- which requires businesses to install handicapped ramps and such even though the Constitution does not address the issue of entryways.

More here.

Cartoon by Tom Toles/Universal Press Syndicate

What Became Of The John 3:16 Guy?

THE SHOCKING ANSWER HERE.

Your World In Charts

It was all downhill after Dark Side of the Moon.

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

JELLY FISH EXTRAVAGANZA
By Mohammad Alkhamuis

The Collected Wisdom Of A. Lincoln

The first entry reads Abraham Lincoln/his hand and pen/he will be good but/god knows When. The last reads Allow Mr. Ashmum & friend to come in at 9 a.m. tomorrow. A. Lincoln.

The first is boyish doggerel, while the second is the last thing the great president wrote -- at precisely 8:10 p.m. on April 14, 1865 just minutes before he left the White House for Ford's Theater, where John Wilkes Booth waited.

In between those entries are virtually everything Lincoln wrote, some 4,452 pages comprising The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, a rare nine-volume compendium published in 1953 by the Abraham Lincoln Association. A mere 3,300 sets were published and were quickly snapped up. At a mere $115 (or about $1,000 in today's dollars) it was a bargain.

Today used sets occasionally come on the market for upwards of $300, depending on the condition, and the price probably is not higher because the contents are widely available online.

The Collected Works includes thousands of letters, speeches, business notes and miscellaneous jottings, is said to contain about 99 percent of Lincoln's works, the missing 1 percent were items owned by holdouts who refused to cooperate with the association, which disbanded after publication.

A few of the great man's musings:

The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me. (Remarks to the Illinois House of Representatives, December 1839)

The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and of generosity. (Address, Springfield, Illinois, February 1842)

Leave nothing for tomorrow which can be done today. (Notes for a law lecture, July 1850)

I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except Negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics." When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty - to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy. (Letter, August 1855)

Beavers build houses; but they build them in nowise differently, or better now, than they did, five thousand years ago. Ants, and honey-bees, provide food for winter; but just in the same way they did, when Solomon referred the sluggard to them as patterns of prudence. Man is not the only animal who labors; but he is the only one who improves his workmanship. (Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions, April 1858)

Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. (Lincoln-Douglas debate, Ottawa, Illinois, August 1858)

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction! (Address, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, September 1859)

Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it. (Cooper Union address, February 1860)

My friends, no one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of the Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him who can go with me, and remain with you, and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell. (Address, Springfield, Illinois, February 1861)

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. (1st Inaugural Address, March 1861)

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. (1st annual address to Congress, December 1861)

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. (Letter, August 1862)

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. (Gettysburg Address, November 1863)

I have not permitted myself, gentlemen, to conclude that I am the best man in the country; but I am reminded, in this connection, of a story of an old Dutch farmer who remarked to a companion once that "it was not best to swap horses while crossing streams." (Remarks to National Union League delegation, June 1864)

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom. (Letter, November 1864)

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan - to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations. (2nd Inaugural Address, March 1865)

'In The Hands Of A Higher Power'

GRANT AND LINCOLN

41st of 45 excerpts from Lincoln by David Herbert Donald:

Naming Grant to head the Union armies [in March 1864] won Lincoln a brief respite from pressure to produce a military victory, since everybody recognized that it would take a while for the new commander to take control and to develop a strategy. But there was no armistice in the political warfare as Radical and Conservative Republicans maneuvered for position. During the weeks before the Republican National Convention, Lincoln tried to maintain a cautious neutrality between rival wings of his party and to build bridges to the War Democrats. His tactics easily secured his renomination, but as reports poured in of the ghastly losses in Grant's Virginia campaign, his reelection remained in doubt. At times even he despaired, and increasingly he came to feel that the outcome of the war, and of his administration, was in the hands of a Higher Power. . . .

With a general-in chief who shared his determination to destroy the Confederate armies, Lincoln directed his own efforts to seeing that the Union forces were adequately supplied and constantly reinforced. Manpower was a constant problem. Many of the Union soldiers had enlisted for three-year terms, which would expire in 1864. Though Congress offered special inducements in the way of bounties and furloughs to those who would reenlist, at least 100,000 decided not to. When the casualties from the Wilderness campaign were added to this number, it was obvious that more recruits were needed. Since volunteering had virtually ceased, Lincoln on May 17 felt forced to draft an order for the conscription of 300,000 additional men.

The order was never issued because of May 18 the New York World and the Journal of Commerce published a [bogus] proclamation, purportedly originating in the White House, in which Lincoln announced that "with a heavy heart, but an undiminished confidence in our cause," he was ordering an additional draft of 400,000 men. This depressing news caused a flurry of speculation on Wall Street, and the price of gold, as measured in greenbacks, rose 10 percent . . .

The Lincoln administration came down heavily on the two newspapers. In an order drafted by Stanton, Lincoln directed the army to "take possession by military force" of the premises of the two offending papers and ordered the arrest of their editors and proprietors. Shortly afterward authorities discovered that [gold speculators] were responsible and the men were imprisoned in Fort Lafayette.

An Index To Abraham Lincoln Posts

Abraham Lincoln was the greatest American president because none faced such enormous challenges, none grew more in office and none reinvented the United States to the extent that he did. All of that and the fact that 2009 is the bicentenary of his birth is reason enough to publish posts each Sunday on the great man.

Series highlights:

THE SPYMASTER & THE REBEL RAMS (11/8) While the tide began to turn against the Confederacy after the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, it was a forgotten foreign-policy coup engineered by the Lincoln administration that arguably sealed an eventual Union victory. LINK

'AND THE GREAT STAR EARLY DROPP'D' (11/1) The great poet Walt Whitman's admiration for Lincoln bordered on a fixation. LINK

THE COMPLEXITIES OF MRS. LINCOLN (10/25) History has not been particularly kind to Mary Todd Lincoln and it's not difficult to understand why. LINK

CAPITULATING ON BLACK ENLISTMENTS (10/18) Lincoln had vowed to never use African-Americans in the Union Army, but that finally changed in advance of the Emancipation Proclamation LINK

HE MADE THE TRAINS RUN ON TIME (10/11) Lincoln was a superb railroad lawyer before he became a superb president, so it should come as no surprise that the American rail network grew during his four years in office not despite the Civil War but because of it. LINK

BRILLIANT, HUMANE & RUTHLESS (10/4) More recent authors have disputed Lincoln's brilliance as commander in chief. Military affairs expert Eliot A. Cohen says that they're wrong. LINK

THE WAR WITHIN THE CIVIL WAR (9/27) Lincoln knew virtually nothing about Native American affairs, an ignorance driven by the commonly held view that the U.S. government should disenfranchise Indians of their land because they were barbarians. LINK

'HIS AMBITION WAS AN ENGINE THAT KNEW NO REST' (9/20) Historian Richard Shenkman debunks several Lincoln myths. LINK

HOLLYWOOD'S OBSESSION WITH LINCOLN'S LOVES (9/13) The great man -- and his loves -- have been played by an eclectic range of actors and actresses over the last century. LINK.

THE MONITOR-MERRIMACK SHOWDOWN (8/30) The battle between the ironclads settled nothing but did change navies forever. LINK

'STAND BY OUR DUTY' (8/23) Lincoln's Cooper Union speech was probably his finest. Yes, greater than the Gettysburg Address. LINK

WAS HE DISHONEST ABE? (8/9) Historian-economist Thomas DiLorenzo says that scholars criticize Lincoln at their own risk, but there is plenty of bad about the man along with the good. LINK

THE TRENT AFFAIR (8/2) In 1861, Lincoln had little to do with foreign affairs. This myopia was to exacerbate a crisis early in his presidency that could have transformed the war into an international conflict. LINK

COMPLEX & IMPERFECT (7/26) Historian Edna Medford argues that we do better for Lincoln and for the nation -- and for understanding of the Civil War -- if we view him in all of his complexity. LINK

THE BOOK THAT CHANGED LINCOLN & AMERICA (7/19) Uncle Tom's Cabin shook the U.S. like an earthquake when it was published in 1852. LINK

SLAVE COLONIES (7/12) Lincoln believed that he found a way to deal with the problems caused by slavery in sending blacks back to Africa to colonize Liberia, but hee was wrong. LINK

A TRUE GENIUS (6/28) Historian Shelby Foote says that there has never been a president who functioned like Lincoln did, and despite having no executive experience, he was a miracle at it. LINK

INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE (6/21) Historian Harold Holzer leads an intimate walk-through of the very different presidential mansion of Lincoln's time. LINK

EVEN LINCOLN NEEDED A GOOD EDITOR (6/14) Guest blogger Michael Reynolds imagines how the Gettysburg Address might have turned out had the president had a good editor. LINK

MOST HANDS-ON COMMANDER IN CHIEF (6/7) The outcome of the Civil War in all likelihood would have been different had Lincoln not cajoled, taken over for and in some cases dismissed the generals who lacked his vision and courage. LINK

A SKIMPIER RESUME WOULD BE HARD TO FIND (5/31) David Herbert Donald, the recently deceased Lincoln biographer, writes that an inexperienced chief executive can cause the country immense heartbreak, but that with time and good common sense can grow into greatness. LINK

NOW ALIEN TO THE REPUBLICAN PARTY (5/11) Pete Abel writes in a two-part guest blog that while there are a few common traits between Lincoln and today's GOP, the differences are far more substantial. PART 1, PART 2

THE ASSASSINATION (4/22, 4/29, 5/4) It is rather amazing that so little is known about basic aspects of the assassination of John F. Kennedy while there is virtually no aspect of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln a century earlier that remains a mystery. PART 1, PART 2, PART 3

THE STRANGE BUT TRUE STORY OF THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS (4/5) It took fewer than three minutes to deliver the famous speech, but it was an afterthought on the day it was given and remained so into the next century. LINK

HOW VALID THE COMPARISONS? (3/29) With the nomination and election of Barack Obama, the comparisons to Abraham Lincoln have come fast, thick and furious. But do they hold up? LINK

A PATENTLY CLEVER PRESIDENT (3/22) That Lincoln was the only president to get a U.S. patent is not surprising when you consider that he was an inveterate tinkerer and had a lifelong fascination with mechanical things. LINK

A PRESIDENTIAL SCHOLAR ON LINCOLN (3/15) A wide-ranging interview with James Hilty on Lincoln's greatness, frailties and innate conservatism. LINK

A BUMPY RIDE TO HIS REWARD (3/8) There was a controversy over a photograph taken of Lincoln's open coffin, an attempt to steal his corpse and his body was exhumed an extraordinary 17 times. LINK

WAS THE GREAT EMANCIPATOR GAY? (3/1) No revisionist history of a famous person would be complete without a book on whether they were gay, or if they were gay whether they were bisexual, or if they . . . LINK

PRESIDENTIAL POWER GRABS (2/22) The infringements by Lincoln on civil liberties arguably were greater than during any period in American history, including the last eight years. LINK

EARLY ASSASSINATION PLOT (2/15) A March 1861 assassination plot was never carried out, but Lincoln's response to it sullied a carefully cultivated image of dignified courage. LINK

OH HE OF LITTLE FAITH (2/8) Beyond Lincoln's opposition to slavery there was no aspect of him more controversial than his spiritual bona fides. LINK

THE BOHEMIAN BRIGADE COMES THROUGH (2/1) Modern journalism can trace its roots to the Civil War, which because of the telegraph and steam locomotive was the first instant-news war, something of which Lincoln was very much aware. LINK

LINCOLN ON BLACKS & SLAVERY (1/25) His metamorphosis from a frontiersman who always opposed slavery but like most white Americans felt that blacks were unequal into the Great Emancipator was as complex as the man himself. LINK

LINCOLN'S CAUTION (1/18) Guest blogger Robert Stein writes that Barack Obama can learn much from the 16th president, who perhaps even more than wisdom and moral strength needed a highly developed political sense of the possible. LINK

THE FIRST TECHNOLOGY PRESIDENT (1/11) Arriving in Washington at the dawn of the age of the telegraph, Lincoln embraced this new technology of instantaneous communication with a passion and used it not just to communicate with his generals in the field during the Civil War, but to bend them to his will. LINK

LINCOLN LINCOLN BO BINCOLN (1/4) A substantial Lincoln mythology had taken hold in the American imagination even before his assassination in 1865. This canon of broad brush strokes and tall tales gave Lincoln his historic due but overlooked or willfully ignored the myriad complexities of our greatest president. LINK

A Big (Half) Step On The Long Road Back

The Obama administration is taking a big step away from the Dark Side in planning to prosecute the 9/11 mastermind and four other men in federal court in New York City.

While it is gratifying that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (above) will be tried a few blocks from where the World Trade Center stood and 3,000 people died, there is another aspect of the Dark Side that could yet undermine a successful prosecution: KSM was waterboarded repeatedly and evidence used against them should be inadmissible.

Attorney General Holder has anticipated this wee potential snag and intimates that torture will not be relevant to the evidence presented.

Meanwhile, how to seat an impartial jury? That could be even tougher.

And will congressfolk have another Don't You Dare Close Guantánamo bed wetting fit? Of course, and they already are. While conveniently ignoring that the U.S. is a nation of laws and it's nice that we're becoming reacquainted with some of the more important ones.

Still, the decision is not a clear rebuke of the Dark Side because the Obama administration also announced that Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri (right), who is accused of planning the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, and four other detainees will be tried before a military commission.

If the logic here is to try terrorists accused of hitting a civilian target in a civilian court and terrorists accused of hitting a military target in a military court, then the White House is undermining its position.

In any event, the most satisfying outcome of the KSM trial and the one feared most by Bush-Cheney sycophants would be convictions across the board based on evidence obtained legally and not through torture.