Midday Open Thread

• Atrios celebrated Suck on This day yesterday, the 5th anniversary of Tom Friedman going on Charlie Rose and telling the world that the Iraq war was fought to tell Iraqis to "Suck On This"... because we could!

  Little Tommy kept soldiering on, hunting for ponies in his little fantasy war. And every few months or so, Little Tommy's moustache would communicate to him that the next six months were critical, or important, or whatever. Little Tommy kept punting the problem down the road six months at a time, and over 10 Friedman Units later people are still dying. Even in his little fantasy war Tommy couldn't find the pony.

  Thanks for the reminder, Atrios.

• Rolling Stone has a infuriatingly good article on the state of the Democratic Senate. Read the whole thing, but this critique from former Republican senator Chafee is particularly striking:

  Even some Republicans are bewildered by the failure of Senate Democrats to stand up to the White House. "When you see a headline like 'In The Senate, A White House Victory On Eavesdropping,' something is wrong," says Lincoln Chafee, a moderate Republican from Rhode Island who was ousted from the Senate in 2006 by voters who believed a Democratic majority would take on the Bush administration. "We threw out all these incumbents for a reason. But there's been no discernible change in direction."

  Instead, Chafee says, Senate Democrats caved to Bush on wiretapping because they're still "skittish" about being tagged as soft on terror. Reid and the Democrats, he says, need to "draw a line on what's more sacred: short-term thinking about a possible terrorist attack, or the long-term ramifications of undoing our Constitution."

• Today in torture:

  A judge hearing a war crimes case at Guantanamo Bay who publicly expressed frustration with military prosecutors' refusal to give evidence to the defense has been dismissed, tribunal officials confirmed Friday.

  Let the show trials commence, timed to influence the general election. Because is sure as hell isn't about justice.

• This is both fun and scary, a look at how television influenced the CIA. The "Cone of Silence," from Get Smart? Yup. The same with the pen communicator from The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
• Lexington, KY has a dubious new distinction, the largest carbon footprint among all of the nation's 100 largest metropolitan areas.
• World hunger, just another opportunity, in the minds of BushCo, to line the pockets of a few more gigantic corporations. Let them eat GMO biofuels.
• The 81st annual Scripps National Spelling Bee is now history, with Sameer Mishra, a 13-year-old from Indiana, winning with the correct spelling of "guerdon," which means "a reward." Congrats, Sameer.
• Killer observation from Sisyphus Shrugged noting that Bob Dole's full of it:

  Dole assures McClellan that he won't read the book -- "because if all these awful things were happening, and perhaps some may have been, you should have spoken up publicly like a man, or quit your cushy, high profile job"

  "That would have taken integrity and courage but then you would have had credibility and your complaints could have been aired objectively," Dole concludes.

  ...says the RNC Chair who presided over Watergate. [Kagro X]