Slinking shamefully through my old subscriptions again. William Gibson long ago linked to this fascinating bit of what-iffery by James Wolcott, dating back to before a slim majority of America screwed up by electing Bush again. What if there had been no insurgency, or one that had been quashed easily, as Bush and company seemed to imagine would happen? Just imagine how different things would have been over the last year, how different they would be now. Bush would have been completely vindicated for invading Iraq, despite the non-discovery of WMDs. His pre-war critics would have been completely discredited, the …

Courtesy of Tedious and Brief, here’s a real beauty. A religious fanatic in the Kansas government is charging a Kansas abortionist with not only operating on patients in a filthy clinic (which, you know, might be possible), but also with eating fetal tissue. Eating babies. Just when did they observe this? Did the abortionist in question hold up his sandwich and point at the meat, saying, “Look at this delicious baby! I find it does wonders for my skin!” I mean, really, on what basis is that charge made? Oh, wait, there’s a bill stalled now, that pushes for strict …

My friend Adam has a way of digging up stories that make me want to give up on America. I mean, okay, it’s possible that this kind of story isn’t crazy, right? Look, a title like Student Arrested For Terroristic Threatening Says Incident A Misunderstanding, I could take that seriously enough. Or, I used to be able to. Any kid planning an attack on his high school would claim it was a misunderstanding if he were caught before the fact, wouldn’t he? A George Rogers Clark High School junior arrested Tuesday for making terrorist threats told LEX 18 News Thursday …

Two links via Raed in the Middle: An Iranian telling Bush what he thinks of th blue-tipped finger images from Iraq, and a look at what I think Iraqis will probably remember about the American occupation. (Warning, the images are very graphic, and some of you may regret clicking through. But it’s also reality, and something we’ll need to face up to for a long time, much longer than Bush will be in office.)

via the latest Viridian Note, here’s an interesting look at what happens if you try to disrupt oiltrading in Britain. ‘I took on a Texan Swat team at Esso last year and they were angels compared with this lot.’?Behind him, on the balcony of the pub opposite the IPE, a bleary-eyed trader, pint in hand, yelled: ‘Sod off, Swampy.’ Greenpeace had hoped to paralyse oil trading at the exchange in the City near Tower Bridge on the day that the Kyoto Protocol came into force. ‘The Kyoto Protocol has modest aims to improve the climate and we need huge aims,’?a …