TIME has compiled a list of the “50 Coolest Websites.”
Although I spend a fair amount of time on the Internet, lists like this always seem to direct me toward undiscovered territory.

Billmon:

It’s a pretty ironic coda to the wingnut flypaper theory — under which we were supposed to “take the fight” to the terrorists in Iraq (and Afghanistan and Lebanon and, in time, Iran) so that we wouldn’t have to fight them in the streets of New York and London:

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Fran Townsend, the president’s homeland security adviser, said that the war in Iraq attracts terrorists “where we have a fighting military and a coalition that can take them on and not have the sort of civilian casualties that you saw in London.”

Either there are more than enough flies to go around or the flypaper has moved — or both. In his post, Juan Cole cited recent poll results showing that 13% of all British Muslims surveyed think last year’s London bombers are religious martyrs, while another 16% think their ends were justified even if their means weren’t. That’s almost 30% — of a population of 1.6 million.

Looking back on real and supposed terrorist attacks against the west, one begins to wonder whether we would have done just as well to invade England or Pakistan as Iraq, since the former seem to be where the terrorists are hanging out these days.

Oy:

A 48-year-old Maryville man was killed when struck by a truck Wednesday afternoon as he rode his bicycle along the shoulder of West Lamar Alexander Parkway.
. . .
Maryville police officers said Roth was riding westbound alongside the parkway near North Union Grove Road about 4 p.m. when he was struck from behind by a 1999 Chevrolet 1500 pickup truck driven by Tommy L. Carroll, 46, of Vinegar Valley Road, Friendsville.
Witnesses said the truck was being driven erratically before it struck the bicycle, and was weaving back and forth between lanes, off into the grass in the median, then off onto the shoulder. According to a police report, the truck hit the cyclist and knocked the rider onto the hood and windshield of the truck. The rider was carried some distance before he came off the truck and onto the pavement.
Despite a broken windshield, the truck crossed the parkway and into the eastbound lane while continuing west and out of town. Witnesses followed and notified authorities of the hit-and-run vehicle’s location.

According to the article, the driver was involved in two other accidents before he was caught.
Hopefully, multiple criminal charges are upcoming.

I suppose this is another thing that’s “messy.”
Perhaps when Maliki had the ear of the United States Congress he should have made a point about having a say regarding U.S. military actions in “his” country. But I guess it was easier to go with the approved speech instead.

The Connecticut primary, that is. I realize that this campaign takes place close to the big media markets and that there are only a few competitive races during the primaries. So you expect to hear about it. But good grief, some blogs have been playing it up as if the fate of the U.S. Senate hangs in the balance. Like him or not, the Senate clearly has far bigger issues than Joe Liberman.
That being said, I see how some of these bloggers have been frustrated by the media coverage. Here is David Gergen last night on CNN:

But my larger concern here is that the disappearance of the Senators, with Senators like Bill Bradley and Alan Simpson and Jack Danforth, and, you know, so many others, as they’ve left the Senate, it’s been much, much harder to put together bipartisan compromises.
And if the message out of Connecticut is, you work with the other side too closely and we’re going to burn you. Just like Lincoln Chaffey, if you work too closely with the Democrats, we’re going to burn you. That means that people are going to be afraid to be in the center. And it really, I think, provides a recipe for a very divided, very polarized and very dysfunctional politics.

Sure, a point can be made about the death of moderates in Congress. But this isn’t the case to make that argument. If Liberman loses, it won’t be because he crossed party lines to compromise on a spending bill or because he joined the “Gang of 14.” It will be because he embraced the biggest screw up of the Bush presidency (the Iraq War) and continues to deny the disaster on the ground there.
This isn’t about bipartisanship; it’s about whether or not Liberman is in touch with reality.