How did this not get around more?

Ok, am I not keeping up with the news? Or was there insufficient outrage over a Pakistani-American air force vet being beaten down for peaceful protest?

Hertzberg Strikes Again: Quagmier

The New Yorker's Talk of the Town has become the most regularly incisive and gratifying source of political commentary I know of. Recently, there was a spot-on critique of the Harriet Miers nomination, including this historical context: Henrik Hertzberg cites Alexander Hamilton about how the senate confirmation of judges should make the president

both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure.

Read Hertzberg's whole piece. Do it now.

"I hate Illinois Nazis"

I believe it was Jake Blues, said that one. Now the nazis have come to my home lil corner of Ohio, or darn close. What's more surprising is that some "unruly protestors," "rioters," or "gang members," depending on who you ask, didn't stand for it. Not only that, when the nazis beat it, these Toledoans started to throw down with the cops. What is this, Berlin? Wow. I wonder what would have happened if I had been in high school still this week. One sure outcome: a new member of the caption writing hall of shame, for Fox News's story, with the either scary or embarrassing photo essay title "Nazi Rally Gone Bad." Does a nazi rally really have to "go" bad? Oh, well, the first photo is interesting enough since we see the arm of a Toledo's finest, "stopping" a nazi according to the caption-- but it sure looks like a fascist salute. Strange days, indeed.