TPM has an interview of Paul Krugman. The subject of the interview is Barack Obama.

I can't decide which of these cable news channel guys is worse.

Chris Matthews (MSNBC), Lou Dobbs (CNN) or Tucker Carlson (MSNBC).

(I am not including Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity on my list because I am focussing on news channels. Faux news doesn't make the cut.)

I have a question for Republicans.

They know the "surge" is not going to work. They know it as surely as they know the sun will rise from the east in the morning.

Why are they backing the surge? Is the real motive just to put off the day of reckoning they know is coming? That day of reckoning is the day they have to tell President Bush they will be joining the Democrats in voting to begin withdrawing our troops from Iraq.

Are they afraid of their most delusional constituents who want to wage a holy war in the entire middle east and who view Iraq as just the first step?

Supposedly September is the deadline for judging whether the surge will work. That is nonsense. We know the answer now. The surge won't work.

So why are the Republicans delaying?

Congressman Henry Waxman has this idea that Congress should be able to investigate how we ended up getting into the mess in Iraq. One of the issues he is concerned about is how did the phony claim about Iraq obtaining uranium from Niger end up in the 2003 State of the Union speech. In early 2003 the documents that claim was based on were known to be false.

However the State Department isn't cooperating. At least the State Department at the political appointee level isn't cooperating. Further down in the ranks it seems that there is a person willing to give congress more details on the "uranium from Niger claim". Congressman Waxman wants that information.

For much of the world including the United States, the ban on commercial whaling is a signature environmental achievement. However, for a number of years Japan has been leading a drive to reinstate commercial whaling. See more in the extended entry.