[Quote]:

It seems some members of the Bush family are no adherents of Republican political orthodoxy.

Barbara Bush, the 28-year-old daughter of President George W. Bush, told Fox News on Sunday that she was "glad" the Democrats’ health care reform package passed, and declared that "health care should be a right for everyone."

I guess she’s now off the Christmas list…

[Quote]:

A vicar has revived an ancient law to call members of her parish together for archery practice.

The Reverend Mary Edwards, of Collingbourne Ducis, near Marlborough, called residents to the village recreation ground on Friday.

Residents were rewarded for complying with the law with a bar, a barbecue and live music.

[Quote]:

For years, Pentagon-backed studies have cautioned that more and more troops are being medicated with antidepressants, sleeping pills and psychotropic medications. But despite the warnings, it turns out that the data needed to reach any solid conclusions about military pharmaceutical use isn’t available. The military doesn’t actually keep tabs on the drugs its troops take.

[Quote]:

The U.S. doesn’t win wars anymore. We just funnel the stressed and underpaid troops in and out of the combat zones, while all the while showering taxpayer billions on the contractors and giant corporations that view the horrors of war as a heaven-sent bonanza. BP, as we’ve been told repeatedly recently, is one of the largest suppliers of fuel to the wartime U.S. military.

[..]

There is no overall game plan, no real strategy or coherent goals, to guide the fighting of U.S. forces. It’s just a mind-numbing, soul-chilling, body-destroying slog, month after month, year after pointless year. The 18-year-olds fighting (and, increasingly, dying) in Afghanistan now were just 9 or 10 when the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked in 2001.

Americans have zoned out on this war. They don’t even want to think about it. They don’t want their taxes raised to pay for it, even as they say in poll after poll that they are worried about budget deficits. The vast majority do not want their sons or daughters anywhere near Afghanistan.

Why in the world should the small percentage of the population that has volunteered for military service shoulder the entire burden of this hapless, endless effort? The truth is that top American officials do not believe the war can be won but do not know how to end it. So we get gibberish about empowering the unempowerable Afghan forces and rebuilding a hopelessly corrupt and incompetent civil society.