Riverbend's "The Raid"

Here's a "must read": The Raid, a recent post on Riverbend's blog, detailing the coordinated invasion of her neighborhood and home by Iraqi and American security forces.

A sample:

One of them stood with the Klashnikov pointed at us, and the other one began opening cabinets and checking behind doors. We were silent. The only sounds came from my aunt, who was praying in a tremulous whisper and little B., who was sucking away at his thumb, eyes wide with fear. I could hear the rest of the troops walking around the house, opening closets, doors and cabinets.

And this passage, towards the end, is particularly chilling:

They took at least a dozen men from my aunts area alone- their ages between 19 and 40. The street behind us doesn’t have a single house with a male under the age of 50- lawyers, engineers, students, ordinary laborers- all hauled away by the ‘security forces’ of the New Iraq. The only thing they share in common is the fact that they come from Sunni families (with the exception of two who I'm not sure about). [emphasis added]

Eliminating all males of reproductive age--is this the behavior of a liberator, or a conqueror?

On the Issues website

On the Issues - Every Political Leader on Every Issue

Looks like it could be pretty useful. It also appears to have data on declared candidates--Robert Lorge (Republican challenger) and Rae Vogeler (Green Challenger) are listed as people running against Herb Kohl this fall. One interesting thing about Herb Kohl--if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, there is a little graph, diagramming Kohl's position on a two-dimensional political spectrum. He's apparently more liberal than I give him credit for (especially in light of his failure to support a filibuster of the Alito nomination). I'll attempt to hotlink the image here:



Of course, one has to wonder about a scale that ranks Samuel Alito as a "moderate, populist conservative":