Unqualified Offerings: American culture, or the human race?

Dissent: The Hundred Years' War over Toxic Chemicals. And let's remind everybody that "toxic" means, "It Can Kill You." (h/t MaryK)

Balkanization: Marshall, Kagan, and MLK.

Zaius Nation: I am Actually Rather Fond of Giant Atomic Insects

Guest Roundup by Blue Gal. Send tips to bluegalsblog AT gmail.

Balloon Juice: Assassinating American citizens is not okay.

Scholars and Rogues: A serious (scary) look at Glenn Beck.

SexGenderBody (NSFW): The politics of death and dying, or what to do with a cadaver.

Skippy: With their "findings" on Kagan, the Freepers are losing it.

You Are Dumb: Summer Movie Hating Preview

[Round ups by Blue Gal while Mike is away this weekend. Send tips to bluegalsblog AT gmail]

43 Ideas-Per-Minute: Hacking Hypocrisy

Geekosystem: Facebook's Privacy Policy is longer than the US Constitution.

Sparkle Pony: Laura Bush jumps on annoying bandwagon.

A Kagan roundup from Citizen Crain, Field Negro, Echidne, and TBogg.

And finally, Bildungblog: Hey, at least no one can call Obama a quitter.

[Mike's away for a few days. Round up by Blue Gal; send tips to bluegalsblog AT gmail.]

Above the Law: Elena Kagen and Me: One semester of Civil Procedure with the new SCOTUS nominee

Grist: Political fallout from the Gulf oil spill: Hill hearings, climate-bill questions, MMS reorganizing

Miller-McCune Online: Unconscious bias amplifies anti-Obama rhetoric

A Tiny Revolution: Seymour Hersh describes "battlefield executions" by U.S. in Afghanistan

Legal Schnauzer: Insider on Siegelman prosecution fears for his life

Apoliticus: Top 10 Craziest Election Results

Corrente: So how'd the BP executives get off the Deepwater Horizon?

Night Light: They're violating 30 centuries of moral law - and lobying like crazy, too

SCOTUSblog: Special edition round up: Kagan nomination

The Poor Man Institute: Failure is no longer an orphan

Alternate Brain: In case anybody still doesn't think Big Biz has us all by the short and curlies, read about what it's done to one California desert town.

Borowitz Report: Somali pirates say they are a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs

I really thought the day of the Neocon was over when most people admitted what a screw-up the Iraq war had been, from start to almost-finish. But here we have Fred and Kim Kagan gloating in the Washington Post about the inevitable "troop surge that President Obama will be authorizing for Afghanistan next week.

Adding forces gives us leverage; military forces are vital to the success of any political strategy because they contribute directly to improving governance as well as to improving security.

The recent American experience in Iraq illustrates how U.S. forces and diplomacy helped correct the behaviors of a sometimes malign government in ways that helped neutralize insurgent groups.

For those of you just joining our show, the Kagans were loud proponents for dramatic increases in the number of US troops for Afghanistan. Yes, folks, the first thing we're supposed to believe is that Afghanistan is just like Iraq, and that adding tens of thousands of American troops will solve any problem in nation-building. Really! There are no problems in Iraq now...

If the Afghan government were fully legitimate, there would be no insurgency. ... [We] must persuade and even compel Afghan leaders to stop activities that alienate the people and create fertile ground for insurgents.

Wow. I'm torn between thinking that that paragraph is either the most patronizing or the most idiotically simple statement ever made. Do the Kagans really believe that if the Karzai government were less corrupt, that the Taliban would all say, "oh, obviously we can deal with this man, let's all give up our arms and drug money and participate in a democratic government." The Taliban are inherently opposed to a democratic-type government, they want to be in charge.

American military forces can also help restrain politicians' abuses of power. U.S. forces can develop a picture of local power structures, including those through which Afghan officials abuse their power and exacerbate the insurgency. American commanders can collect evidence on individual offenders that a reformed Afghan judicial system would one day be able to use.

That's a great idea, if Karzai doesn't go legit, we'll make him - by embarrassing him, because the blatant evidence of corruption in Kabul hasn't really done it enough. As for the Afghan judicial system, does "decades from now" count as "one day"? This is not a culture that will adopt Western values, but again, somehow the Kagans think that we can impose it on them. The Kagans' argument - that we need to force the Afghan government to behave so that our "security concerns" are met via the McChrystal options - is illegitimate and boastful. It could only appear on the Wall St Journal or - embarrassingly for the alleged liberal MSM - in the Washington Post op eds.

SHORTER Bob Kagan: "Obama's being a pussy about confronting China's massive military build-up."

China's defense budget in 2008 was $57 billion, or just under one-tenth of the US defense budget. In 2009, China will spend around $70 billion - or just over one-tenth of the US defense budget. It's a funny thing, Bob - when nation-states have a booming economy and a large geographical area with lots of well-armed neighbors, they tend to buy more weapon systems (the US government being the exception, we buy more weapons whether or not the economy is good). Neocons view this as "threatening" and want to negotiate over the barrel of a gun. Realists understand it as a natural progression of an evolving superpower and want to negotiate as a potential partner.

The Carpetbagger Report: The disgrace that is Bush's Housing Department

The Agonist: Liberty and personal responsibility

Ali Eteraz: McCain's spiritual advisor

A Tiny Revolution: Nir Rosen debates Fredrick Kagan on the "surge."

MotherJones Blog: A million man march against STDs?

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: The Cognoscenti, barefoot and progressive, Don't Tase Me, Bro!, Beppe Grillo's Blog

Shrillblog

I don't know if there are enough free beds in the Shoggoth Wing to hold the entire Weekly Standard staff: Fighting the Wrong War

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[H/t Heather]

I'm not very excited about covering this Supreme Court nomination process, but I will point out Republican demagoguery over it.

The gerbil-esque Republican senator from Alabam, Jeff Sessions, had quite an opening on Monday. He viciously attacked Elena Kagan on all counts and went so far as to say she was a traitor to the troops -- and it was all considered OK, because conservatives can never go too far.

SEN. JEFF SESSIONS: Ms. Kagan has less real legal experience of any nominee in at least 50 years, and it's not just that the nominee has not been a judge. She has barely practiced law, and not with the intensity and duration from which I think a real legal understanding occurs.

Her actions punished the military, and demeaned our soldiers as they were courageously fighting for our country in two wars overseas. Ms. Kagan has associated herself with well-known activist judges who have used their power to re-define the meaning of words of our Constitution and laws in ways that, not surprisingly, have the result of advancing that judge's preferred social policies and agendas.

Tweety blasted Sessions pretty well, which offended the tortured souls at Newsbusters, but this is about Sessions. Sending our troops to countries that didn't attack us and then watching the body counts rise on all sides of the conflicts doesn't faze Sessions. See, they could all be home or on some nice and cozy military base instead of dealing with the heat and the IED's of Iraq and Afghanistan, building democracy from the ground up, brick by brick, body by body, person by person. It's a task not all soldiers embrace wholeheartedly.

Think Progress also catches Sessions with a Harriet Miers crush:

On CNN’s American Morning, many of Sessions’ arguments were effectively demonstrated to be disingenuous by host John Roberts. Arguing that Kagan has “serious problems,” Sessions complained that Kagan has praised former Israeli Supreme Court President Aharon Barak. But Roberts noted that Justice Antonin Scalia had also praised Barak.

Sessions then attacked Kagan for not having a depth of experience, but Roberts noted that Sessions had praised Bush nominee Harriet Miers, who also did not have judicial experience. Roberts said, “Just a second ago, you pointed to Harriet Miers’ White House experience as a qualifying factor, but you point to Elena Kagan’s White House experience as a potential disqualifying factor.”

Harriet Miers was an awesome pick for Bush. Jeff Sessions said so. Doesn't that qualify him for much bigger things in conservative-land. In movement conservatism, dumbing down government agencies and the people that work there is paramount. With Sessions, they've found somebody who operates at the bottom level of the not good for government chart. Or rather, he's their kind of guy.