Najim Abed al-Jabouri, former mayor of Tal Afar, has a piece in the Times that seems like cause for alarm:

Both the military and the police remain heavily politicized. The police and border officials, for example, are largely answerable to the Interior Ministry, which has been seen (often correctly) as a pawn of Shiite political movements. Members of the security forces are often loyal not to the state but to the person or political party that gave them their jobs.

The same isSource: Cato-at-liberty RSS Feed

You likely won’t see this poll result elsewhere, so I thought I’d highlight it here. This is a Pew Political IQ test conducted over the phone with 1,002 adults from Oct. 1-4. They were asked 12 questions, and answered an average of 5.3 questions correctly, according to Pew.

But here’s the part you likely haven’t heard about:

Under a section called “Partisan Knowledge Gap,” we find Republicans were more knowledgeable by a double-digit factor on four issues. Although the GlennSource: Michael Goldfarb – The Blog RSS Feed

The next generation of launch vehicle which will once again return man into space exploration, the Ares 1 X, successfully made its first test launch at 11:30 AM from Cape Canaveral. The largest rocket currently made and only slightly smaller than the massive Saturn V which launched all of the Apollo moon missions, the Ares is designed to make the next step in space exploration taking the successor of the Shuttles, the Orion, in to space with the eventual destination being a manned mission toSource: The Liberal Lie, The Conservative Truth RSS Feed

Majority Leader Harry Reid says health care legislation headed to the Senate floor will include an option for government-run insurance.
Reid says states will have the prerogative of opting out of the program if they choose.
It was out, then it was in, then it was out, and now it is back in again. If the debate over the Public Option were a carnival ride we would all be bent over losing our corndogs right about now.
I have NO idea how the Opt Out option will be implemented,Source: The Immoral Minority RSS Feed

WSJ | Self-help is not benign. The $11 billion industry can hurt you psychologically, it can hurt you financially and, as we see, it can hurt you physically. It can hurt your family and friends too.
Consider that today’s increasingly popular “large group awareness training” (LGAT) incorporates tactics more commonly identified with psychological warfare. Facilitators bully attendees verbally and sometimes physically, call upon them to relive their worst experiences in humiliatingSource: subrealism RSS Feed

I have always been amused at Bill and Hillary Clinton’s complaints about being the victims of a “vast right-wing conspiracy.”
As far as I can tell, they made it through the White House days just fine, even surviving the Monica Lewinsky scandal. I, on the other hand, actually did lose my job because of a vast right-wing conspiracy of sorts, which I outline in several chapters of my new book, Newspaper Days, which is on sale at Amazon.com and which will be available at otherSource: The Turner Report RSS Feed

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President Barack Obama accused Fox News as operating in a talk radio format. Fox News only strengthened that argument Sunday as they allowed only White House detractors to comment on the situation. Chris Wallace went so far as to suggest the White House was using mob tactics in it’s “war against Fox News.” Of course, Fox couldn’t find any White House defenders to appear on the Sunday talk show.

It’s “what some people are calling theSource: Crooks and Liars RSS Feed

By Melanie Ruiz

This Saturday, Oct. 24, City College of San Francisco (CCSF) is holding a garage sale and flea market to raise money to help offset billions of dollars cut from the state’s public education budget. The district lost $20-25 million this school year under the current state budget, a decision that Milton Marks, president of the CCSF Board of Trustees, says was “made in error and is short-sided.”

Marks admits that it, “really is absurd for the college toSource: SFBG Politics RSS Feed

It would appear from this angry article in Iran’s rigidly state-controlled Kayhan newspaper, that when it suits its own interests, the leadership in Tehran condones listening to the music of the Rolling Stones. With allusions to the all-seeing-eye of the Freemasons and a section on how Americans abuse women, this is the regime’s latest verbal assault on the United States.

The author, Kian Mokhtari, writes in part:

“We allowed it to introduce itself – and it was neither Source: The Moderate Voice RSS Feed

Stoopidest congressional graphic du jour. Can you spot the GOP closet case?
Only 20% of Americans now self-identify as Republicans. And those who do, are split between delusional extremists (teabaggers) and the old fashioned mainstream conservatives. What’s happening in NY-23, where a deadly fight between teabagger Doug Hoffman and mainstream conservative Dede Scozzafava, is virtually guaranteeing that a quasi-Democrat will win this seat next month. Ironically, by driving moderateSource: DownWithTyranny! RSS Feed