an up-or-down vote

* krugman:

"By Bush administration standards, the choice of Ben Bernanke to succeed Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve was just weird.
For one thing, Bernanke is actually an expert in monetary policy, as opposed to, say, Arabian horses.
[snip]
All of this raises a frightening prospect. Has President George W. Bush been so damaged by scandals and public disapproval that he has no choice but to appoint qualified, principled people to important positions?"

* i registered michaelluttig.blogspot.com in case he was nominated. i was close, but no cigar.

* " The National Security Agency has kept secret since 2001 a finding by an agency historian that during the Tonkin Gulf episode, which helped precipitate the Vietnam War, N.S.A. officers deliberately distorted critical intelligence to cover up their mistakes, two people familiar with the historian's work say." (link)
apparently this is news? i thought it was already accepted as fact.

* "At a press conference this morning, Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell said that he and his colleagues would guarantee that Samuel Alito gets a fair hearing and an up-or-down vote, "as has always been the case on the Supreme Court nominees."" (link)
brilliant.

* btw - the other day i mentioned the house-keeping wrt the spambot vacuum - there seems to be 2 different types of spambots - those that strike everytime i post, and the other type which responds when comments are posted - for example i just stumbled across this old post from last year which has 50+ spam-comments. its quite an odd phenom.