<![CDATA[SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE]]>“In Britain, we call this sort of thing criminal damage, and you can get three months in jail for it, as 37-year-old Paul Kelleher discovered recently when he beheaded a marble effigy of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Poor Mr Kelleher: wrong time, wrong place, wrong statue.” – Brian Whitaker, in the Guardian, comparing the toppling of Saddam’s statue with British vandalism.

RAINES WATCH: Guess which story the NYT submitted for a Pulitzer? Their brave, pioneering, completely unhinged coverage of the Augusta Golf Tournament “controversy”! I’m not sure if they submitted the columns they originally spiked.

A PLURALITY: More Massachusetts residents now support equal marriage rights than oppose them, according to a new poll. I point this out so that when the hard right claims that the courts are subverting popular opinion, you’ll know they’re projecting.

BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: (for extreme liberal hyperbole) “No doubt Kristol, with his censorious, antidemocratic instincts, would have risen high in the apparat of the old Soviet Communist Party. But there may be a larger, more ominous parallel here: Once upon a time, the Kremlin also used force to try to remake the world in its own image. Conservatives claim to learn from history. Kristol’s outburst-one of many such dissent-is-unpatriotic statements issued by pro-White House cheerleaders in the media – is more evidence that the people who now control America’s national security policy are not really conservatives but extremists.” – Katrina vanden Heuvel, the Nation, equating current U.S. policy with that of the Soviet Union (which, paradoxically, she provided excuses for at the time).

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