…is not doing a great job. Dick Cheney, dishonest? Come on, next you’ll tell me that Barack Obama isn’t a Muslim.

That’s how Frank Rich describes the newly uncovered Donald Rumsfeld memos. GQ (!) has a great piece on Rumsfeld, talking to some ex-administration folks about his ignominious career.

If you really want to feel a bit sick, GQ actually has the memo cover sheets in question. Right there, on the intelligence reports Rumsfeld was delivering to the President, are Old Testament verses meant to convey the point that the war on terror is a holy war.

You really have to see these things to believe them – they represent the cynical machinations of a soulless man, playing upon the President’s religious devotion to further his own career.

Theoretically, I visit the site just to know what’s going on over there in right wing land. But I’ve really started to wonder if I should find a community that has a bit more intellectual firepower.

Exhibit A: Neil Stevens has this really dumb post about a new study of the circulation of cold water in the North Atlantic. Stevens is convinced that he’s made a huge breakthrough:

It sounds to me like every climactic model has to be rewritten, and if it were an honest science, it’d be reeling for some time.

Having read the little synopsis of the study, I have to say that it doesn’t sound all that earth-shaking to me. But here’s the point that Stevens doesn’t really understand: I’m not a climate scientist and neither is he. That means that when I look at new studies and information without the proper context, chances are I’m not going to get it right. Maybe he ought to know a bit more before he declares that the entire field of climate science is bunk.

And then the real moment of supernatural idiocy. Who does he blame for all these problems he sees in climate science?

…Al Gore. He was more interested in generating a good crisis, than in publishing a true representation of science.

Ah yes. Because for conservatives, Al Gore is not just a popular cultural face for the issue of climate change – he invented it. No one had ever thought of climate change until Al Gore came up with it one day. 

Exhibit B: This funny piece, totally outraged with Susan Rice for saying that the United States’ record on human rights is “not perfect.” For real. That’s all she said.  But the right-wingers are really pissed, which means one of two things:

1. They do not know that the United States used to provide legal protection for the ownership of other human beings as slaves OR
2. They do not consider slavery a human rights issue

Of course, wade into the comments and you’ll see that it doesn’t take long for these folks to start bashing the U.S. government over Roe v. Wade. But no mention of slavery. 

At its heart, though, the post is about the U.N. Human Rights Council, and how silly it is. I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t think it’s stupid that Cuba, Saudia Arabia, China, et al. are on that council, but I also don’t know of anyone who takes the council all that seriously.

Which brings me to the most frustrating piece of right-wing idiocy. In order to be a real conservative, you must:

1. Believe that the U.S. should not be participating in the U.N., because it is a violation of our sovereignty
2. Complain that the U.N. is not effective enough at enforcing its own policies
3. Not see the blatant contradiction between 1 and 2

My favorite potential GOP candidate in 2012, Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, will be named ambassador to China. That’s a hard job to pass up, particularly for someone who’s worked in China and East Asia in the past.

Politico seems to think that this effectively removes Huntsman from the field in 2012, but I don’t see why that has to be the case. Ambassadorial positions are not very partisan, and there’s no real partisan divide on the issue of our relations with China. So I’m not sure what Huntsman could do that would alienate the GOP base, aside from participating in some terribly bad deal with N. Korea.

Look at it this way – had Howard Dean served as ambassador to Canada in Bush’s first term, would that have negated any of his criticisms in the 2004 campaign?

Too busy to actually write anything substantive, so I’ll just post some of the stuff I’ve been reading lately:

• Richard Cohen says it’s tough out there for white guys. Turns out affirmative action is still, yes, a good thing.
• Evidently the internet is about to change forever.
• Conservatives don’t know that Stephen Colbert is making fun of them, thus proving my maxim that it is impossible to be both funny and right-wing.
• Ross Douthat wrote a great first column, examining what would’ve happened if Dick Cheney had run in 2008.
• Jon Huntsman starts to staff up. He could be just what the doctor ordered for the GOP.
• The folks at RedState are having a hard time adjusting. They mount a full-throated defense of Jeff Sessions’ racism, then wonder why African-Americans aren’t smart enough to vote for Republicans.
• Michael Steele and the entire conservative movement have decided that they are adamantly against empathy. Guess that’s not one of the “values” that matters to “values voters.”
• And finally, some fun:

So Bob McDonnell, the GOP candidate for Governor of Virginia, has decided that Notre Dame shouldn’t give the President an honorary degree. 

Now, truth be known, I really don’t care if they give the President an honorary degree. He has a couple of real ones, and it’s really more of an honor for the school than for the guest. But McDonnell, like other folks on his side of the debate, makes a very weird argument:

McDonnell, a graduate of Notre Dame, said Obama should be allowed to speak but should not be given an honorary degree because his views “appear to be in great conflict with the Catholic social teaching.”

“Therefore I think conferring a degree confers certainly an imprimatur, or approval of these views,” he said on WTOP radio. “So I don’t think if it’s a uniquely Catholic University like a Georgetown or Boston College or Notre Dame.”

First of all, I’m not really sure that giving someone an honorary degree necessarily endorses their views as much as it says, “Hey you’re a notable person and we want a piece of that notoriety.”

But I’d also like to point out that Notre Dame has non-Catholic students and faculty. They give real degrees and tenured jobs to people who don’t accept the authority of the Church, some of whom undoubtedly are pro-choice and pro-gay rights. So, it’s not like the school just refuses to honor anyone who deviates from Church doctrine. This is just a political game, one that must be played whenever a pro-choice politician comes near a church.

Barack Obama is not receiving the imprimatur of Notre Dame, at least no more than the school’s faculty and students. But it is important for churches to avoid placing the seal of approval on politicians who blatently violate Christian social teaching. Trust me – as a Methodist, I know.

I’ve been meaning to post something on the latest torture revelations, but I frankly feel overwhelmed. There is a wealth of information out there, and people far more qualified than I have already written so much. So I’ll just give you some references here, and I may comment later:

• What did Dennis Blair actually say about torture?
• Tim Noah points out that torture had nothing to do with stopping the LA bombing plot
• Was the LA bombing plot even a plot?
• The Progressive Realist takes down three arguments in favor of torture
• Marcy Wheeler debunks the claim that torture has provided us with valuable information
• Vanity Fair has a big piece on the lie that torture “works”.

So many others have been doing great work on this story, including Andrew Sullivan, so get to reading.

P.S. When you hear crap like this, just remember my three talking points on torture:

1. It’s wrong
2. It doesn’t work
3. It’s really *%@$ing wrong

I don’t know why the “vaccines cause autism” movement annoys me so much. Maybe because those folks remind me so much of creationists and climate change deniers. Anyway, evidently there’s been a recent movement by anti-vaccination activists around this motto of “Green Our Vaccines” – whatever that means.

It’s essentially an attempt at green-washing the anti-vaccination movement – a movement that is, without a doubt, monumentally stupid. There’s a great post here that pretty comprehensively deals with the anti-vax crap. One of the more persistent canards these folks drag out is a complaint that “doctors are injecting little babies with TOXINS!”. Go here and here for competent takedowns of this hysteria.

Look, I’m not a scientist. When it comes to questions of science, I defer to those who have research experience outside of Google and Wikipedia. Scientists aren’t perfect – they get things wrong. But luckily, they have a pretty good process for checking themselves and exploring the evidence. And when there is a mainstream scientific consensus, whether it’s climate change, evolution, or vaccination, laypeople are probably better off listening and learning.

It’s not really surprising that ESPN has had a somewhat antagonistic relationship with the blogosphere in the past. Bloggers tend to see ESPN personalities as stuffy establishment types who have nothing in common with ordinary fans. It doesn’t help that ESPN’s programming is too often gimmicky and tiresome (see “Titletown”).  ESPN has tended to see bloggers as armchair quarterbacks, lobbing criticisms from the relative security of the web. I love me some ESPN, but I’ve tended to side with the blogs on this one – some things are done better by fans than by media pros.

Now, SportsCenter has something called “Morning Blog Buzz”, in which ESPN summarizes the discussions on major sports blogs. After some initial (warranted) criticism, ESPN is signaling a real willingness to adapt and (gasp!) listen to criticism. Kudos to tWWL for doing the right thing – though only time will tell if this signals a change in direction or simply another gimmick.

I have to wonder now if other news organizations will pick up on this notion. If ESPN is willing to give airtime to critical voices in the blogosphere, why can’t we get this from the New York Times or the Washington Post? Traditional media tends to touch on blogs only in passing, very rarely allowing the blogosphere to participate actively in the public discourse. My guess is that incorporating “ground-level” viewpoints into standard elite-level journalism will actually result in a better product.

In the meantime, I agree with A.J. Daulerio and would like to see sports blogs band together to all talk about Hannah Storm’s clothes one day, forcing a very awkward SportsCenter indeed. Some other things I’d like to see find their way onto “Morning Blog Buzz”:

1. Certain videos of a famous ESPN personality.
2. Discussion of a certain episode involving the cellphone of another ESPN personality.
3. Compliments for ESPN’s most popular personality.

Give me some more time, I’ll think of others.