Internal Monologue

You know how in your email inbox, the emails you've replied to have that little curled arrow next to them? How come when you click on that arrow, it doesn't take you to the reply you sent? Instead you gotta go dig through your sent items folder. I can't believe that this isn't a standard feature on all email programs.

Thank you very much, Internal Monologue readers. Your ad revenue has got me all of this, and I still have a few dollars left over. Despite the depression, my ad revune rate seems to be increasing even though my readership (i.e. people who stumble in from Google) has been pretty steady. Maybe Google is getting more generous with their revenue sharing, or cleverer at targeting their ads.

Democrat Jane Harman was a leading defender of the warrantless wiretapping done by the Bush administration. Now, she's pissed that her phone conversations were recorded as part of an investigation. Greenwald : So if I understand this correctly -- and I'm pretty sure I do -- when the U.S. Government eavesdropped for years on American citizens with no warrants and in violation of the law, that was " both legal and necessary " as well as " essential to U.S. national security ," and it was the "despicable" whistle-blowers (such as Thomas Tamm) who disclosed that crime and the newspapers which reported it who should have been criminally investigated, but not the lawbreaking government officials. But when the U.S. Government legally and with warrants eavesdrops on Jane Harman , that is an outrageous invasion of privacy and a violent assault on her rights as an American citizen, and full-scale investigations must be commenced immediately to get to the

I think right-wing nuttery is demographically doomed. But the fact that its lost its grip on mainstream power (outside of certain regional ghettos) means that they are feeling bewildered, angry, and paranoid. Thus, we're seeing an increase in right-wing activity like the recent "teabagging" events. So I happy and worried: happy that right-wing extremism as an electoral strategy is going to be less and less viable. But I'm worried that disempowered right-wing extremists will resort to violence as their political power wanes. Here's a scary thought: What if someone figures out how to make right-wing extremism appealing to minorities in this country? Then we're in big trouble.

Political Animal counts five prominent Republicans who have gone through the ritual of saying something critical about Rush Limbaugh, then subsequently kissing up to him.

I know this is too late, but I'm hereby advocating for the Star Wars intellectual property to be taken away from George Lucas and given to a consortium of fans. They could then hire directors and writers who can actually direct and write. This should have been done before Phantom Menace was made. I'll never forgive Lucas for making Natalie Portman look like a bad actor.

From Sullivan: Sent to you via Google Reader This Used To Be The Future Chino Otsuka makes double portraits : Images of Otsuka as an adult are craftily combined with snaps of the artist as a child, pinched from the family photo album. The resultant composite snapshots are both glaringly literal and astoundingly subtle musings on the contemporary relevance of the self-portrait. More here .