One of the darker ironies of American history was the existence, back in the early Cold War era, of the House Committee on Un-American Activities -- a deeply un-American institution that dragged private citizens into the spotlight to answer for their (often decades-old) political affiliations, with the not-infrequent result that those individuals were shunted off to professional blacklists and struggled to make a living there

"Battlestar Galactica" is perhaps the smartest and most comprehensive artistic meditation on life in post-9/11 America that exists in all of popular culture. Also, it has sexy robots, which is pretty awesome.

Remember last year when the U.S. supported an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in order to deprive terrorists of a sanctuary in the latter country? It's not working out so well.

Apparently we could win the war in Iraq if people would just stop complaining about how we're not winning the war in Iraq. Abe Greenwald takes note of new research suggesting that violence in Iraq spikes after periods of intense war criticism:

Let me do something this morning I rarely do: I will praise President Bush and his administration for its evolving conduct of the War on Terror. They've apparently realized you can't kill all the terrorists and their sympathizers, so they've turned to a Cold War Plan B: Deterrence.