The Morning Blog

This is interesting: Former Chinese officials make demand to end censorship that was quickly censored. The timing is pretty significant, inasmuch as the Chinese have been particularly incensed over the recent award of the Nobel Peace Prize to dissident, media critic and prisoner, Liu Xiabo (pronounced leo she-ow-bwah if you're interested. I just found that out). From the article:

Still, the bluntness of their message — and its timing, coming days after the jailed intellectual Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize — signaled that not all in the ruling establishment are content with the steadily tightening control over expression in the final years of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao’s leadership.

A real quick thought on the judicial end of DADT yesterday : Ending the asinine, hypocritical, damaging "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy was a fairly large civil liberties plank in Obama's election platform. On which he did nothing. Nothing at all. Now all he has to do to see that this injunction effectively ends a policy he railed against on the campaign trail is.....drum roll.....nothing. All he has to do is show the political spine to NOT order the DOJ to contest this. It's just that simple. Let's see if he's up to the non-task.

Wow. This is a pretty amazing story, actually. It's a bio of the woman behind the "Conviction" movie coming out. Essentially, she was a waitress with a high school equivalency degree, that put herself through college and law school in order to free her brother after 18 years of incarceration. And then she quite happily, went straight back to being a waitress. Sadly, it has a very unfortunate ending that Hollywood in its wisdom, has decided is just too much for the sensitive minds of mere audience members. Still though, really compelling story.

Wow. Wow. I haven't really been following this story that much but things just heated up: An American couple was fired upon from a speedboat while they were jet skiing on a lake bordering Mexico. The husband was killed and the wife was forced to flee as the gunmen continued firing. And now the head of the Mexican police chief investigating the case has been found in a suitcase outside of an army base.

Pliny the Elder: "There is always something new out of Africa" Hopefully Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan can manage to keep things together. Good luck, Goodluck.

Speaking of Africa: Anybody out there surprised that Mugabe is wrecking the power sharing agreement in Zimbabwe? Anybody? I guess he's still got work to do ruining the country's economy.

Roethlisberger doesn't deserve a warm reception. I love the Steelers. Oh, do I ever love the Steelers. Right now I'm blogging wearing Steelers pajamas.

That said, the man is a thug a cad and quite possibly brain damaged. I'm in the unusual position where I have to root for the defense. On both sides of the line.

Paladino offers an apology. Meh. Typos.

But looking at Part 6 of the statement: Does Paladino have gay children? I wasn't aware of that though it's possible that it's just sloppy writing.

I guess this is what passes for reasoned political discourse these days:

Brown apologized that one of his aides had described Whitman as a "whore." Whitman argued that her campaign chairman's use of the word "whore" to refer to Congress was different from the Brown campaign's use of the word.

I guess his career's gone down the tubes.

I really hope you guys click on that. I'm so clever! Long Morning Blog soooo.......just one more.

John Avlon crunches the numbers. Guess what Republicans? Centrism works.