1) Clinton campaign surrogates allegedly offer $1 million in bribe money for the two superdelegate votes of the Young Democrats for America. Maybe this is just behind-closed-doors business as usual, but this sounds pretty sordid to me.
2) Via Spencer Ackerman, this fascinating L.A. Times story explains how the global food crisis is making Islamic fundamentalist groups that provide social services and food aid increasingly popular, particularly since many Middle Eastern nations have been following the neoliberal economic model that privileges guns over butter. That hasn't worked out well in the past.
3) Robert Farley on the comforting fantasies of intervening militarily in Burma.
4) Brian Beutler has a nice piece in the Nation on John McCain's record of voting against VA improvements.
5) Finally, Chris Hayes shoots a giant fish in a tiny barrel. A related question: If columnist Kathleen Parker were a fish, what type of fish would she be? I think it's pretty obvious she'd be some type of deformed deep sea fish (safely removed from the nurturing light of reason), but would she be a humpback anglerfish? A cookiecutter shark? A viperfish? I'm open to other nominations.
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Brian Cook was an editor at In These Times from 2003 to 2009. He now works on the editorial staff of Playboy magazine.
