Time For Some Serious Reading

OK, your Monday is well underway.  Maybe you've already browsed my light Monday morning reading (best enjoyed with coffee).  Now it's time for some meatier stuff.  Have you caught these columns and stories today?

James S. Robbins, Typhoid Osama  Osama would really have to try to die from typhoid fever. It is a highly treatable malady. Antibiotics take care of it most of the time, and even if untreated it is only fatal in 10-30 percent of cases.

Ronald A. Cass, Bill Clinton: Play It As It Lies  Presidents often find it hard to leave the stage. The day of Bush's first inauguration, Clinton lingered for hours at Andrews Air Force base trying to hang on to the attention he had so enjoyed as President. He still seeks the limelight.

But desperation to be noticed after leaving office, to have the respect and affection Clinton craves, isn't a substitute for doing the right thing when in office - any more than lies are a substitute for honesty, or indecision a suitable alternative to moral courage.

On the golf course, Bill Clinton is known for his dislike of playing his ball where it lies, scoring honestly, and taking his lumps as the rest of us duffers must. He makes his own score, always a good deal better than the real number.

Someone else should be trusted to do the scoring when it comes to Clinton's time in office. In the history books, he deserves to be counted as the President who did not protect us against al-Qaeda, who left the impression they could attack us without penalty, whose wasted opportunities contributed to the travesty of 9/11.

Tough talk now should not be allowed to obscure that fact.

William Kristol, Why Clinton "Lost His Temper"  The former president knew what he was doing.

Little Green Footballs, UN in Lebanon: Pathetic Beyond Belief   Blue-helmeted UN “peacekeepers” in Lebanon are not allowed to set up checkpoints, not allowed to search cars or houses, not allowed to detain suspects, not even allowed to stop trucks carrying Hizballah missiles: U.N. Force Is Treading Lightly on Lebanese Soil.

Thumb-twiddling is apparently permissible, if the proper forms are filled out in triplicate and the Lebanese army approves.

Michelle Malkin, AP Runs to the Washington Post  What do you do when you are a global news organization under fire for suppressing five-month-old news of the capture of one of your employees by American troops in a Ramadi apartment with an alleged al Qaeda leader and a weapons cache?

You run to a sympathetic news organization to help you whitewash the story and smear the U.S. military. Naturally.

On Saturday, the Washington Post op-ed page published a shameless CYA screed by Associated (with terrorists) Press president and chief executive Tom Curley on the Bilal Hussein case. The inanity begins with the very first paragraph . . . .