For some reason, nothing really compelled me to post yesterday. Not the fact that Bush is lying all the more feverishly in response to findings from the 9/11 commission, or that the chairman of Shell Oil admitted that he's worried about global warming, or the story of the US soldier who found out the hard way that torture and abuse of "uncooperative" prisoners is pretty much S.O.P. at Guantanamo, or the mounting evidence that Donald-"I was blindsided" by revelations of abuse at Abu Ghraib-Rumsfeld in fact authorized similar violations of international law, or that ethics complaints will be filed against Tom DeLay (although that couldn't happen to a nicer fellow), or the fact that the Justice Department lost its trumped-up case against a University of Idaho computer programming student (while managing to ruin his life) (actually, that's apparently older news that I missed earlier). I couldn't even get excited about the Civil Liberties Restoration Act, which promises to roll back some of the "most egregious and ineffectual post-9/11 policies," including "arbitrary and indefinite detentions, secret hearings, severe restrictions on due process, and violations of privacy and First Amendment rights."

But I think I'm snapping out of it today, at least long enough to note how terribly convenient it is that Putin suddenly remembers telling the US that Hussein had been planning terrorist attacks on US citizens. And to celebrate the fact that Kerry's favorability ratings are rising despite Bush Co's megamilliondollar smear campaign. And to appreciate Amy Sullivan's observation that, as the Pistons go, so goes Kerry...