A Swiftly Tilting Planet

Madeline L'Engle died last week, and this piece is just a lovely, eulogistic book review. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/09/AR2007090901947.html

And in other planetary news (not as exciting as a tesseract, mind you), the reports are in! Highlights include:

1. The arrest and deportation of former Pakistani leader Sharif on his attempted return to Islamabad. If anything shows the weakness of Musharraf's hand, this is it. You don't tip the table when you're winning the game of chess. Now he's managed to lose quite a bit of credibility and fire up resistance. D'oh.

2. The reports are in! More than I'd like to admit, I really appreciate Ryan Crocker's analysis of the scenario in Iraq. He's the first person who's stood up and presented the complex, long-term sort of thinking that can keep Iraq from turning into even more of a quagmire. I look forward to hearing the rest of what he has to say, and I only hope Congress and the White House can keep their mouths shut long enough to listen.

Damn straight, Judge Marrero

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/06/AR2007090601438.html?hpid=topnews