Some Thursday Newsiness

Kill Counts Borzou Daragahi and Julian Barnes for the LA Times report "Military prosecutors and investigators probing the killing of three Iraqi detainees by U.S. troops in May believe the unit's commanders created an atmosphere of excessive violence by encouraging "kill counts" and possibly issuing an illegal order to shoot Iraqi men."Military officials are investigating Army Col. Michael Steele, the commander of the 101st Airborne Division's 3rd Brigade, whose soldiers are accused of killing the three Iraqi detainees. Investigators are trying to determine whether Steele issued an illegal order to "kill all military aged males" and encouraged unrestrained killing by his troops. On Wednesday, a military court heard testimony from a witness who suggested that a culture of racism and unrestrained violence pervaded the unit. Rummy's Excuse That He Had to Wash His Hair and Arrange His Sock Drawer Weren't Enough to Exempt His Testimony On Iraq Thom Shanker for the NY Times reports that "Under criticism, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld reversed course late Wednesday and agreed to testify Thursday at a public hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee." Young Liberals v Old Liberals Digby follows up on Matt Yglesias' discourse regarding what he views as the difference between younger liberal minds and older, with respect to their abilities to adapt to the Republican Party's scorched earth approach to governing. Digby - who's approaching the age at which he'll soon be able to benefit from senior discounts - says he was radicalized in the 90s. I trace my general extremism alarm, in this regard, to early July of 1987, when Oliver North - testifying before the joint congressional Iran/contra committee, employed the Nuremberg Defense to justify his criminal misconduct ("I just followed orders") - an excuse which immediately troubled Senator Daniel Inouye as well. Inouye, alas, allowed his complaint to be rudely shouted down by an outburst interruption from North's lawyer, Brendan Sullivan. Gingrich and DeLay and Limbaugh later perfected the shout-down of Dems, but Brendan Sullivan was the originator. The Republicans a couple years later began their assaults on public funded art exhibitions sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, employing the model of attack initiated in Germany, in 1934, and which resulted there in the Degenerate Art Exhibition. The ever-reliable twin excoriations, employed by critics at both times, was that that the disfavored art was "obscenity" and a "waste of taxpayer money" (this being voiced in later times by the same folks who supported the illegal mining of harbors in Nicaragua, the funding - also illegal - of the contras who perpetrated the massacre at El Mozote, and who also willfully turned a blind eye to cocaine smuggling into US inner cities because it aided their contra cause). Biden was a lame hack ineffectual putz back then too. Monkeys and Politics The learned Shakespeare's Sister, guest blogging for The Rude Pundit, provides an illuminating discourse on the relationship between them. The Children Are the Future… of Religious Wars This Week in God with Rob Rob Corddry Norm at onegoodmove has the video.