• South Carolina football coach Steve Spurrier calls for the removal of the confederate flag from the state capitol. I agree; it’s time to turn the page.
• David Bauder writes on Democratic presidential candidates boycotting Fox News Channel debates:
  

  The risk to this strategy is it could make the candidates look like, well, weenies.
  “If you can’t handle the people at Fox News Channel, it makes people wonder if you can handle the Iranians, the North Koreans, the Chinese, the Russians and maybe even the Canadians,” said Ellis Henican, a Newsday columnist and Fox News contributor.

  To which, if I was in one of the campaigns, I would respond using in-kind rhetoric: “We don’t what to reward bad behavior by appearing on Fox News.”

• R. Neil notes inefficiency in a ethanol subsidies. Don’t forget the higher food prices.
• What is web 2.0? I really don’t know. But this video is pretty cool:
  

Finally we’re getting to the heart of the matter. We learn (via Fark) that the real reason Don Imus was fired was because he was about to reveal 9/11 secrets:

In a clear sign of its intent to reign in dissident American media personalities, and their growing influence in American culture, US War Leaders this past week launched an unprecedented attack upon one of their most politically ‘connected’, and legendary, radio hosts named Don Imus after his threats to release information relating to the September 11, 2001 attacks upon that country.

There you have it.
On a more serious note, I might as well weigh in on this saga.
I note at the outset that I don’t feel sorry for Imus. He’s been saying stupid and offensive things for years and it finally caught up with him.
That said, I find the media reaction to this to be one of the more interesting angles to the story. As Gwen Ifill pointed out today, we’ve had elite news and opinion leaders going on air for years as Imus carried on his act, and they hardly said a thing about it. Then, magically, the switched flipped and it suddenly became cool to pile on Imus under the guise of a national discussion on civility/meanness/racism/whatever.
Why were all these people seemingly okay with the coarseness until last week? I heard more than one “journalist” attempt to justify his/her change of heart on the incident after seeing the Rutgers basketball players being paraded before the TV cameras. I’m not sure when we started needing victim impact testimony to determine if a remark was sufficiently offensive or not. What if several Rutgers players had come out and said that Imus’ remark didn’t bother them at all? Would that have made his comments okay?
Anyway, I’d like to believe that this was truly the start of a national conversation and soul-searching about public racism, mean-spiritedness, and shock radio. But my suspicion is that issue has a shelf-life of no more than three more news cycles or the next media pile on, which ever comes first.

In advance of his congressional testimony this week, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has opinion piece in today’s Washington Post.
In short, Gonzales says, “I’m sorry you’ve been so confused about what the Department of Justice did”:

What began as a well-intentioned management effort to identify where, among the 93 U.S. attorneys, changes in leadership might benefit the department, and therefore the American people, has become an unintended public controversy.

What Gonzales fails to say, and what has never been satisfactorily explained, is how the firing of these eight U.S. attorneys benefited the Justice Department.
What we do know, or rather all Gonzales thinks we should know, is that the dismissals were not “improper”:

I know that I did not — and would not — ask for the resignation of any U.S. attorney for an improper reason. Furthermore, I have no basis to believe that anyone involved in this process sought the removal of a U.S. attorney for an improper reason.

That’s a unsurprising non-admission.
Even you accept what the Bush administration says at face value–that the attorneys were not fired for political reasons–there’s no real way to get around the big “C” word. You know, the issue that’s plagued the administration since day one: competence.
Gonzales offers his own indictment:

During those conversations, to my knowledge, I did not make decisions about who should or should not be asked to resign.

Eight U.S. attorneys were fired, and Gonzales can’t remember if he made that decision? Is anyone running the Justice Department? If so, who?

Buried amidst all the Don Imus/Duke lacrosse brouhaha today are two interesting stories regarding the Iraq war effort:
First, a day after President Bush tried to blame Congress for over stretching the military and lengthening troop deployments, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced tours of duty would be extended to 15 months.
Darn those Democrats! If they had only passed a non-restrictive emergency spending bill 12 hours earlier, all of this could be avoided. Now the troops must pay the price.
In another development, the Washington Post revealed that the White House is looking to to create a “War ‘Czar'” to handle responsibilities previously managed by the Commander-in-Chief. Here’s the money quote:

“The very fundamental issue is, they don’t know where the hell they’re going,” said retired Marine Gen. John J. “Jack” Sheehan, a former top NATO commander who was among those rejecting the job.

I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a more succinct summary of the Bush administration’s Iraq war management.

Per Kos, Governor Richardson is the only “major” (Democratic) presidential candidate calling for American troops to withdraw completely out of Iraq.
(He actually calls for this to happen within a year, which is easier for him to say because that’s before the election.)
This is a nice goal, but I don’t think it’s a good strategy now. The risks of that country melting down are too great for the U.S. to completely abandon it.
At the same time, following President Bush’s “plan” of an indefinite status quo is unworkable; a waste of American life and treasure with no end in sight.
The way out, it seems, lies somewhere in between. A reasonable plan involves the following:
(1) A drastic downscaling of the American presence. Iraqis have to take charge of their own security. Yesterday. It’s their country; they’ve got to work their problems out. It’s become obvious that the issues plaguing Iraq will continue to simmer just below the surface as long as the U.S. military continues babysitting the country. Moreover, we cannot afford to maintain this a failed nation building-via-military-force policy. Ultimately, 150,000 American troops are not going to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, no matter how hard they try. The solution has to come from the Iraqi people.
(2) Maintenance of a safety net. That said, in the near-term America must maintain a force there in case the bottom drops out. I’m not a military strategist, so I don’t know exactly how many would be needed. I assume at a minimum we’ll need something like 30,000 troops there for the next three years to dose fires. This doesn’t need to be a highly visible force, subject to danger, but it probably needs to be there to ensure stability.