If what it reports is true, then once again it looks like the Bush administration is worse than I had imagined–even though I thought I had taken account of the fact that the Bush administration is always worse than one imagines. Either Seymour Hersh is insane, or we have an administration that needs to be removed from office not later than the close of business today. The scariest part: “[Hersh] said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said, ‘You haven’t begun to see evil…’ then trailed off. He said, ‘horrible things done to children of women prisoners,…

The shrines, which began in a major way with the death six years ago of Diana, Princess of Wales, almost instantly became an expected part of public mourning, flourishing after the deaths of John F. Kennedy Jr. and the victims of the 9/11 attacks. This aspect of public grief reveals a paradox in our supersized culture: the outsized, media-driven theatrics of the Reagan funeral are punctuated by small personal gestures and people waiting eight hours in the sun to file past his coffin for a minute. These individual acts are attempts to break through the weeklong wall of official mourning…

Take the October Surprise! poll, and while you’re there review the history of the original October Surprise, which was orchestrated by the minions of a certain recently dead President. I still remember how angry I was that during Reagan’s inaugural, the Iranians held the aircraft holding the American hostages on the runway until after Reagan had been sworn in. I knew there was something fishy about that deal. I just didn’t know how fishy.