I think this -- a presidential debate focused solely on science -- is an absolutely spiffy idea, and I think the chances of it actually happening are approximately zero in a million. Until Rush Holt runs for president.

(Via Slashdot.)

Tom DeFrank just published a book called Write It When I'm Gone, a collection of things that Gerald Ford told him on the condition that they not be published until after Ford's death. Regarding Bill Clinton, according to Meet the Press, Ford said this:

Ford ... returned to his Clinton head-shaking theme without any prompting. "I don't understand why any of his cabinet hasn't resigned [because of the Lewinsky scandal]. How can they keep working for him after he lied to them?"

Seriously? Gerald Ford said that? Gerald "I’m convinced Nixon had nothing whatsoever to do with Watergate" Ford? I know he was famous for being a bumbling idiot, but surely even he must have seen the irony there.

Roger Simon, The Politico's chief political columnist, on Face the Nation this morning:

In a field that has seven credible candidates, actually seven pretty good candidates, for one person [Hillary Clinton] to get 51% of the vote, which is the third time she's done this, the third poll she's done this in, that's... that's not an insurmountable lead, but it's large.

Seven credible candidates? Really?

Actual credible candidates

Clinton

Obama

Edwards

Pseudo-credible candidates

Richardson

Dodd

Biden

The Seventh

Kucinich?

Gravel?

Gore?

Clark?

Dean?

Romney?

The Georgia Supreme Court ruled this morning that Genarlow Wilson's ten-year sentence was cruel and unusual, and ordered that he be immediately freed. That ruling -- which is about as comically overdue as a ruling can possibly be -- prompted this quote from Wilson's lawyer:

"The courts can work. The courts do work."

Really? That's your quote, lawyer-lady? Genarlow Wilson, four years ago: 17 years old, star football player, honor student, looking forward to college. Genarlow Wilson, now: 21 years old, ex-convict, probably a registered sex offender, life completely fucked. It's great that the court came to its senses and ordered Wilson's release, but calling this case an indication that "the courts do work" seems to be setting the bar almost criminally low.

(Sidenote: according to the Times report, the dissenting judge argued that the legislature's explicit decision to not apply the law retroactively is an indication that the punishment is not cruel and unusual. I haven't read the opinion, but assuming the reporter's summary is correct, that's a pretty bizarre conclusion to draw, isn't it? Neither "cruel" nor "unusual" are subject to definition by the legislature. When a punishment -- unnecessarily painful lethal injection, for instance -- is cruel and unusual, no amount of protestation by the legislature can define it as not cruel and unusual. So if the issue is, "Should [some conduct] be a crime," the judiciary probably has to defer to the legislature; but if the issue is whether or not a crime's punishment is too severe, the judge has a great deal more leeway.)

Bloggingheads.tv goes big time.

Kucinich, on the Colbert Report the other night. Awesome.

Zing!

"If I believed in polls, then five years ago I would have backed the war in Iraq like she did."

-- Barack Obama, on polls showing he continues to trail Hillary Clinton, "Early Show," CBS, 10/15.

From Sunday's New York Times:

"Our life, it makes you laugh, but it’s a tragedy," said Felah, a bowlegged Shiite man with a tired look, who has lost six close relatives, including a brother, to Sunni militants, and whose wife and children have been forbidden to see him by a bitterly sectarian father-in-law. "We feel that we are not telling the truth, but what can we do?"

The story's headlined "In Life of Lies, Iraqis Conceal Work for U.S.," and it's well worth a read.

Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, responding to John McCain:

In the 1790s, in the waters off Tripoli, pirates were making sport of American shipping near the Barbary Coast. Toward the end of his second term, Washington sent Joel Barlow, the diplomat-poet, to Tripoli to settle matters, and the resulting treaty, finished after Washington left office, bought a few years of peace. Article 11 of this long-ago document says that "as the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion," there should be no cause for conflict over differences of "religious opinion" between countries.

The treaty passed the Senate unanimously. Mr. McCain is not the only American who would find it useful reading.

Mike Leavitt's Arguing School, Lesson 1: When confronted with a convincing counterargument, simply pretend you didn't hear it and repeat your initial point. Over and over and over. (And don't bother to cut him off, George!)

In Leavitt's defense, I don't think there's really any way to make the "the President vetoed the SCHIP bill to help the children" argument not sound ridiculous.

There's absolutely no chance I'll ever have the time to read Arthur Schlesinger's Journals, but Maureen Dowd's review does a heck of a job of making it sound like a good way to spend an afternoon a weekend a week a month.

Observation:

The entire "conservative" media movement, from Limbaugh to O'Reilly to Coulter, is based on old Andrew Dice Clay skits.