From Juan Cole, this little stroll down memory lane:

Republican poobah Newt Gingrich has lambasted Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor as a 'racist' because she implied that a Latina woman could empathize with certain situations as a judge better than a white male could, and so would come to sounder judgments.

Just so everyone remembers, this is Newt Gingrich's idea of the difference between the sexes:

'If combat means living in a ditch, females have biological problems staying in a ditch for 30 days because they get infections.... Males are biologically driven to go out and hunt giraffes.'

I rest Judge Sotomayor's case.

Didn't we already win in Afghanistan? This is tragic:

A huge blast from a suicide car bomb at the gates of the Indian Embassy on Monday killed 41 people in the deadliest suicide car bombing since the American-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 ousted the Taliban.

Among the victims of the attack, the first in seven years on a regional diplomatic mission in Afghanistan, were at least four Indian citizens: the Indian defense attaché, a political counselor and two other Indian officials. Six Afghan police officers were also killed. Many of the rest appeared to be civilians.

The fact that the Indian Embassy was attacked raised suspicions among Afghan officials that Pakistani operatives allied with the Taliban had used the bombing to pursue Pakistan’s decades-long power struggle with India.

Juan Cole covers it...

AP also noted that Sunday's attack came in the wake of pledges of reprisals issued by the Pakistani Taliban because of Pakistani military operations against them in the Khyber area...

The BBC has more...

No-one has admitted being behind the attack, the deadliest in Kabul since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001. Afghanistan has seen a sharp increase in violence, particularly in the south and east - and Taleban militants recently vowed to step up their attacks in the capital. But the latest blast - in what was supposed to be a secure area of Kabul - will greatly concern Afghan government officials, says the BBC's Martin Patience in Kabul.

  This headline made my heart sink:

Hit Iran where it hurts

Democratic presidential hopeful takes a get-tough stance against tyrant of Tehran

By BARACK OBAMA

Americans need to come together to confront the challenge posed by Iran. Yet the Bush administration and an anonymous senator are blocking a bill with bipartisan support that would ratchet up the pressure on the Iranian regime. It's time for this obstructionism to stop.

The decision to wage a misguided war in Iraq has substantially strengthened Iran, which now poses the greatest strategic challenge to U.S. interests in the Middle East in a generation. Iran supports violent groups and sectarian politics in Iraq, fuels terror and extremism across the Middle East and continues to make progress on its nuclear program in defiance of the international community. Meanwhile, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has declared that Israel must be "wiped off the map."

Hook, line and sinker.  He bought the whole thing.   Please, other than the increasingly hysterical rhetoric of the Bush White House (that is eerily similar--if not outright identical--to the 2001-2002 rhetoric against Saddam Hussein), why would Barack Obama believe that Iran is such a threat?  Given the past seven years, should Bush's say so truly carry that much credibility?

In fairness to Obama, much of his op-ed is actually very critical of the Bush administration for their lack of diplomacy, but it hardly matters, because by accepting the Bush framing of a looming crisis against Iran, he's given all the right wing pundits the ammo of saying, "Even that liberal Obama thinks we have to take out Ahmadinejad!"  He even justifies the threat by citing Ahmadinejad's words against Israel, although, unfortunately, he relies on the Bush administration's translation of Farsi, which as we've seen before, only has a glancing relationship with reality.

This is not to single out Obama either; all of the top tier candidates have tried to earn their "I'm not a wimpy Democrat but a strong leader" bona fides with tough talk against Iran. But this kind of talk is incredibly irresponsible and we--as the progressive community--MUST be clear with the Democratic contenders who are seeking our support that if they think the occupation in Iraq is going bad, any military actions against Iran would be like Iraq on steroids.  We've already seen how much damage a president with no understanding of the geo-political or cultural circumstances of an area can do.  We simply cannot afford another one.

Juan Cole and Slate

Check out this email exchange between Juan Cole and Jacob Weisberg.

The Smearing of Juan Cole continues

Last week it was John Fund. This time it's Hitchens.

Juan Cole: "Christopher Hitchens owes me a big apology."

Jane takes Slate to task over it.

     "It's embarassing enough that Slate continues to publish the discredited Hitchens. The far right is already doing a St. Vitus dance over Cole's potential appointment to a Yale history chair, and now Slate has handed them an article full of typical Hitchens bullshit with which to bludgeon him."

The New York Times :

Are We Stingy? Yes

President Bush finally roused himself yesterday from his vacation in Crawford, Tex., to telephone his sympathy to the leaders of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia, and to speak publicly about the devastation of Sunday's tsunamis in Asia. He also hurried to put as much distance as possible between himself and America's initial measly aid offer of $15 million, and he took issue with an earlier statement by the United Nations' emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, who had called the overall aid efforts by rich Western nations "stingy."

Juan Cole points out how Bush wasted yet another opportunity:

As John F. Harris and Robin Wright of the Washington Post cannily note, US President George W. Bush has missed an important opportunity to reach out to the Muslims of Indonesia. The Bush administration at first pledged a paltry $15 million, a mysteriously chintzy response to what was obviously an enormous calamity. Bush himself remained on vacation, and now has reluctantly agreed to a meeting of the National Security Council by video conference. If Bush were a statesman, he would have flown to Jakarta and announced his solidarity with the Muslims of Indonesia (which has suffered at least 40,000 dead and rising).