Abolish the death penalty

* chitrib Ed:

"Abolish the death penalty.
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The evidence of mistakes, the evidence of arbitrary decisions, the sobering knowledge that government can't provide certainty that the innocent will not be put to death--all that prompts this call for an end to capital punishment. It is time to stop killing in the people's name."

fancy that.

* arkin:

"Was damage done to national security by the revelation of Plame's identity as a CIA officer? The answer hinges on Plame's actual career. Valerie Plame might have been "covert" in the definition of the law.

But if the Democratic Congress really wants to do something useful, it should repeal the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act. It is a law that goes so far overboard in shielding the intelligence community that what it really accomplishes is placing a government bureaucracy, no matter what it does, outside of oversight and needed exposure.
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The Intelligence Identities Protection Act isn't responsible for this mess, but it is symbolic of a general shield of the CIA to any reasonable level of oversight. Hey, it wouldn't be revealing state secrets to know how many case officers we actually have on the government payroll, how many more we've developed in the Bush years, what they are focusing on, what kind of cover they actually use, what kind of intelligence they actually produce, how much money we actually spend on penetrating terrorist groups as opposed to collecting gossip (or mowing the lawn at Langley for that matter).

Maybe Valerie Plame in fact was a skilled case officer running a key agent of some foreign intelligence service providing inside information about weapons of mass destruction. So skilled, so crucial to our national security that her husband can write a political op-ed in The New York Times revealing his own clandestine relationship with the agency, a relationship that was sure to be linked back to his wife. I say one less incompetent and nincompoop on the government payroll."

* Clemons:

"Chuck Hagel: George W. Bush 'Could' Face Impeachment if He Ignores Congress on Iraq War"

* glenn is angry about this 3 min vid from Chris Matthew's show. You can be too.

* Bill Kristol on FNS: Global Warming is good, because cold is bad for your health. Besides, energy consumption goes down when it's warm, so if you think global warming is bad, then you should think global warming is good, because energy consumption goes down when it warms up.