The American Mind

My latest Freaks of the Week column is now up at SportsBlog.

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Here’s something interesting (and completely unrelated to Plame/Wilson) from Will Baude:
I’ve recently heard a comment to the tune that Libertarians who vote for a Libertarian presidential candidate are “throwing their vote away,” or hurting the major party that they consider to be the lesser evil. This isn’t so.
Voting Libertarian in last election (or next election) [...]

John Cole’s question about President Bush’s role in the Plame/Wilson investigation is just so good:
Why does the left seem to think that Bush needs to get involved in this- my guess is so that anything he says can be scrutinized and distorted so later on they can treat it as a lie or as evidence [...]

This is the year for Ronald Reagan books. Lou Cannon has one on Reagan as governor of California. Peter Robinson came out with one a few months ago on How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life. Now, two collections of Reagan’s letters will be available for Reagan fans this Christmas. Andrew Sullivan reviews Reagan: A Life [...]

Matthew makes two good points on Plame/Wilson. First:
Am I alone in thinking that the CIA is withholding some information on Plame — in particular, exact details of her “undercover” status — not because it would reveal secrets, but because the CIA as an institution feels slighted by the administration’s cherry-picking of intel from various sources, [...]

Another translator has been arrested for spying at Guantanamo. Once is a fluke. Twice problem. Three times is a conspiracy. Think I’m off my rocker? Well, two of the three arrested had ties to Syria.
“Another Guantanamo Base Translator Arrested”

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Donald Luskin writes,
Think about the sequence of events. Novak talks to administration officials who tell him about Plame. He has the integrity to call someone at CIA to confirm his risky story before he runs with it — and they confirmed it! Instead of saying “Valerie who? We’ve never heard of anyone named Valerie” or [...]

Matthew Yglesias writes,
At this point, though, the scandal (to my mind, at least) has become less about the wrongdoings of specific officials (whether senior or not) than it is about the president’s lack of desire to get to the bottom of things.
If that’s all this is then this will go away in a few days [...]

Say you want to tackle some major public policy problems. Maybe you want to work on intellectual property issues (downloading music and movies) and think the FCC would be your place. Or maybe you want to help Colin Powell in getting support to rebuild Iraq. Or maybe you want Donald Rumsfeld’s job because you think [...]

Blaster has a theory that Iraq may have hit the U.S. with a bio-weapon.
“The Real Bush Coverup“

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To use McGehee’s words, “not only is there no ‘there’ there, there isn’t even a ‘there’ for “there” to be there, or not be there. Uh, so there.” Bob Novak, who started the whole story with a forgotten column back in July declares, “‘Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this.” [via Drudge] [...]

I think it was one of the writers at 2blowhards who said that only a few hundred people in the world made money just from writing books. Taking that as truth, then how do writers pay the bills while still writing books? To use Virginia Postrel and her latest, The Substance of Style, as an [...]

There’s a lot to digest on this whole incident. I’m not calling it a scandal because Bob Novak’s statement today complicates it. As a starter, here’s Clifford May’s take.
In a related aside, Jane Galt thinks this takes oxygen from Weasley Clark’s embryonic campaign.
“Spy Games”

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AintNoBadDude has a link to the Washington Post story on Plame/Wilson (to use Glenn Reynolds’ label) as well as blogosphere commentary. I didn’t watch any Sunday yap-fests so I don’t know how it’s playing inside the Beltway. Outside the Beltway (like the transition?) James Joyner takes a wait-and-see approach.
To show how serious this scandal could [...]

German companies are under investigation for violating the embargo with Saddam’s Iraq.
“German Firms Face Iraq Arms Trade Probe”

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