I'll never forget the moment, ten years ago this weekend, when I first heard the news. I was winding down after a long week of work, my thoughts drifting to Independence Day holiday festivities, when my cell phone rang with word that a young white man driving a blue Ford Taurus shot up a crowd of Orthodox Jews as they were leaving Sabbath services. Six people lay seriously injured on the sidewalk outside Congregation Adas Yeshurun, not far from my Chicago apartment.

After years of researching white nationalist groups, my instincts told me that this wasn't some random shooting. Minutes later, I received a call alerting me to another shooting just north in Evanston. Those blasts left Ricky Byrdsong, an African-American family man and basketball coach, lying dead in front of his children.

As I raced back across town through rush hour traffic in the sweltering summer heat, I got another call that more shots were fired in another suburb. Thankfully, this time the perpetrator missed the young Asian-American couple. The identity of the shooter was still a mystery, and he was still at large.

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Check out this website. The story is in here.

Just start from the top and read in reverse chronological order.

Anyone who missed the announcement, check it out on TPM or wherever. It was incoherent, even scary. Obviously something is about to hit the fan and she is bailing.

She clearly is not running for President. A governor or senator who is running for President delivers some kind of policy address. Palin ignored policy, limiting herself to whining about media scrutiny.

She's done. My only hope is that she doesn't ruin Levi Johnston's career before it starts. I was so looking forward to his book. Actually, this craziness may increase interest in the book and the true story behind the Palin family follies.

What a fun 4th. Sanford, Ensign and now Palin gone. Three candidates, three scandals. Bring em on. The new GOP is delightful.

I'll never forget my Independence Day at war. On July 4, 2003, I was in Baghdad, preparing to return home with my infantry platoon after six months fighting Saddam's Army and an insurgency that was just beginning to exact its toll on coalition forces. On that day, however, my expectations were thwarted, as my men and I were notified that our combat tour would be extended indefinitely. So instead of enjoying fireworks stateside, my unit watched AK tracer trails zip across the sky, walked patrols instead of parades, and ate MREs instead of hot dogs.

Many Americans will never see the inside of a Humvee on the Fourth of July. Instead, they will enjoy three-day weekends capped by barbecues, block parties, and Roman candles. I'm extremely proud to be an American, but real patriotism is more than just picnics. And anyone who has served in any war will tell you that.

Ironically, for veterans, the Fourth of July can be a difficult holiday to celebrate. With every uniform that marches by in parades, we remember our friends that did not make it home. The sounds of fireworks remind us of incoming mortar rounds. And as large crowds gather to celebrate America's birthday, we sometimes find ourselves scanning the masses for potential danger.

But the impact of war isn't limited to July 4th.

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David Kurtz asserted on the front page this morning that Michael Jackson's "Thriller" is actually not the best-selling album of all time - The Eagles' "Greatest Hits 1971-1975" tops the list. His source? Sales figures from the RIAA.

So many readers - and TPM staffers - have taken issue with this claim that we've set up this open thread as a forum for Eagles and MJ fans to go head to head (instead of flooding the TPM inbox with complaints). Enjoy the discussion, and enjoy the holiday!

One telling moment in Scott Shane's NYT piece on the FBI's 2004 interrogations of Saddam Hussein, just released through the invaluable labors of the National Security Archive, is this FBI summary trying to explain why Saddam wanted to thwart UN inspections and cover up his non-possession of WMD. This is not brand new stuff, but still revelatory. Saddam told the FBI he

was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq's weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions [from] the United States for his refusal to allow U.N. inspectors back into Iraq. [Inspections] would have directly identified to the Iranians where to inflict maximum damage to Iraq.

Shane then quotes the US's former chief weapons inspector, Charles A. Duelfer, attempting to explain why Saddam would have wanted to fake WMD possession. Evidently it did not occur to the geniuses then on a mission to run American foreign policy for God that Saddam, having warred with Iran at the cost of millions of casualties for eight years, might fear the Islamic Republic.

"We did not appreciate how large the threat of Iran loomed in [Saddam's] thinking," Mr. Duelfer said, calling the United States' understanding of Iraq in 2003 "cartoonish."

This insult to the subtlety of the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote must not be allowed to stand.

But seriously, the FBI documents, though remarkable, are incomplete. The redacted sections are voluminous, and whatever appeared there is intended to remain classified until 2034. What are the subjects closed to investigation until then? The National Security Archive says:

Not included in these FBI reports are issues of particular interest to students of Iraq's complicated relationship with the U.S. - the reported role of the CIA in facilitating the Ba'ath party's rise to power, the uneasy alliance forged between Iraq and the U.S. during the Iran-Iraq war, and the precise nature of U.S. views regarding Iraq's chemical weapons policy during that conflict, given its contemporaneous knowledge of their repeated use against Iranians and the Kurds....This series of interviews also does not address chemical warfare in Kurdish areas of Iraq in 1987-1988, although an FBI progress report says Saddam was questioned on the topic.

I suppose it's a backhanded tribute to the new-era FBI that the redactions are whited-- rather than blacked--out. But that's not quite the change we had the right to expect from the transparency-claiming Obama administration.

Bring out the rest of this history, people. We have a right to know.

Jeff Stein of Congressional Quarterly keeps doing the best reporting on the continuing story. I assume we can expect more including from AIPAC as it fights off Steve Rosen's claim that alleged violations of the Espionage Act is just business as usual for the lobby (it isn't) and that therefore AIPAC owes him gazillions in damages for firing him and further damaging his reputation.

Also this from Natan Guttman, the ace Forward reporter.

Good reading for the Fourth of July.

Parting thought: Al Smith once said that the "only cure for democracy is more democracy." If he were alive today, he'd add "and by that I mean getting all money out of politics through 100% public financing."

The 'Green Revolution' in Iran has its paradoxes-- not least among them the anomaly of seeing young people out on the streets of Tehran in outfits that seemed openly defiant of Islamic dress norms while they also sported a color that many Muslims consider represents their religion.

The choice of that color, and of the accompanying rallying cry of "Allahu-akbar", seemed like deliberate attempts to build alliances between the often pro-secular west-o-philes of North Tehran and important reformist branches of the country's ruling hierarchy. (The lack of any real agreement between these two portions of the movement over whether the goal is to reform the country's Islamic system or to overthrow it is probably one of the movement's most notable weaknesses.)

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Months ago I declared that Gaza had cracked the Israel lobby. It did so by causing non-affiliated Jews to at last speak out about Israel/Palestine policy. These Jews had traditionally ceded the foreign-policy turf to their pro-Israel cousins (as I did, deferring politely to Marty Peretz out of the stupid guilty feeling that he was a better Jew than I was) till they realized that their cousins were nuts.

The Israel lobby is slowly waking up to the new landscape, and blaming anyone but the real culprit: a state practicing Jim Crow with millions of Palestinians under occupation and promoting a policy of permanent war with its neighbors.

The latest evidence of the lobby's puzzlement is a highly-tendentious piece by Gary Rosenblatt in the Jewish Week about "Whispered Worries About Obama" that--while poohpoohing the settlements and feeding suspicion about Obama-- states that the body of American Jewry is with Obama, even if the "mainstream supporters of Israel and Jewish causes" (i.e. Jewish chauvinists) are against him.

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In recent weeks, Americans struggled to make sense of tragic shootings that seemed disconnected at first glance. Anti-Semite James Von Brunn killed Stephen T. Johns, a black security guard at the Holocaust Museum. George Tiller's murder a few days earlier seemed to be about abortion, yet his shooter, Scott Roeder, also had roots in the racial purity movement. Two weeks ago, it was reported that the murders of Raul Flores and his daughter in Arizona were charged to three people with white supremacist ambitions.

There's been lots of discussion about why hate crimes are rising and how to prevent future tragedies, yet we've largely missed the relationship between extremist racism and the less obvious version that plays out in our political debates. These shooters all felt that people of color (along with women and Jews) have stolen the birthright of white men. In his book "Kill the Best Gentiles," Von Brunn rails against "the calculated destruction of the White Race." Roeder was a member of the Montana Freemen; commenters on white supremacist websites praised him for ensuring that Tiller would never "kill another White baby." Flores' alleged murderers appear to have been preparing for a white uprising.

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The media is full of speculation about President Obama's deft "deflection" against President Hugo Chavez' maneuvering and finger-pointing in the Honduras crisis. But another narrative is possible, of an undisclosed new diplomatic collaboration replacing the constant tensions and CIA foreknowledge of the brief 2002 coup against the Venezuelan leader.

It is too early to define a new era, but something profoundly new began developing between Obama and Chavez at the hemispheric conference in April in Trinidad.

According to eyewitness sources, under the apparently blind eye of the global media, the two leaders had lengthy conversations. The media covered the friendly photo of the initial handshake between the two leaders, then made much ado about an apparently-impertinent Chavez handing Obama a book in Spanish by Eduardo Galleano.

What has not been reported is that Obama, leaving his advisers behind, held lengthy private conversations with Chavez where only an interpreter was present.

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Adding my thanks to Leonard for producing this timely and thorough book. I think mostly about how explicit, violent white supremacy relates to the more subtle ways in which racism works, as seemingly race-neutral policies like deregulation of the mortgage industry or immigration raids produce never-ending racial disparities. Those disparities segregate Americans and create the conditions for a racial divide into which white supremacists easily step.

In a piece called The White Supremacist in Us, which I wrote after the shootings of Dr. George Tiller and Stephen T. Johns, I note that our solutions to racist violence tend to focus on the individual - either punishment or education depending on how far gone the person is. But the policies that aren't obviously about hate crimes have the greatest potential to stop the perpetuation of racist ideas. Racial hierarchies show up in our policy debates every time we ask the question who deserves education/healthcare/legal status/prison. These are the policies that the Obama Administration will work to change, drawing even more ire from the white supremacist crowd.

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John Hodgman was right. It's the revenge of the nerds in America right now. These past few years we've seen self-proclaimed, highly-influential nerds using the power of online technology to play a huge role in driving public policy, political campaigns and organizing grassroots engagement. In the 2008 presidential campaign both McCain and Obama harnessed the power of new media to address voters, raise millions and rally their supporters. And just in the last two weeks, Twitter is revolutionizing the way protests are coordinated and communicated in Iran.

But social networking isn't just for electoral battles. It's transforming the way communities organize for the public good. And now, nerds--and I say that with the utmost respect-- are changing the lives of thousands of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. Case in point, Rey Leal, an Iraq veteran, found his community online and began his journey home from war:

Rey served in Fallujah during some of the heaviest fighting, earning a Bronze Star with valor as a Private First Class, an almost unheard of accomplishment for a Marine of his rank. When he was discharged in February 2008, Rey looked forward to returning to Texas to begin a new chapter with his wife and infant son. Unfortunately, Rey's transition home from combat was far from easy. He struggled with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and spent months trying to deal with his symptoms, including severe depression and insomnia. His marriage at a breaking point, Rey sought treatment.

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Today's Israeli press quotes Prime Minister Netanyahu as telling 27 EU ambassadors that he was willing to "make concessions to the Palestinians" but did not want to be a "sucker" if the Palestinians pocket his "concession" and give nothing in return.

Netanyahu was speaking to the ambassadors in English. If he was using Hebrew, he would say that he didn't want to be a "freier" which is Hebrew (really Yiddish) for sucker. Ha'aretz says that "thou shalt not be a freier" is Israel's 11th commandment. Above all, an Israeli does not want to be taken advantage of which is why he often will take advantage of the other guy first. (The Palestinians have almost always been freiers in their dealings with the Israelis).

Americans don't spend much time worrying about being suckers. The equivalent "thou shalt not be" for us is not to be an "a-hole" which is what we would call the people who make other people into freiers. In my experience, most Americans would rather be accused of being a sucker than of being an a-hole. For Israelis, it is just the opposite.

See this Ha'aretz piece elaborating on this Israeli malady which causes so many problems, especially for those Israelis who have to deal with those adhering fiercely to that 11th commandment and, above all, for Palestinians.

For the record, Rahm Emanuel is not a freier. That is one of the reasons President Obama is not backing down in the face of the pushback from Israel on settlements. I can just hear him tell Obama, "If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times. You can't be a freier when you deal with the Israelis. Trust me on that one, sir."

Each month, I receive from Leo Hindery an update on "America's effective unemployment rate" which includes not only the official unemployment figures but other data points showing off-the-books unemployed or underemployed people.

The numbers are staggering and are aggregates of official data. They matter because various Obama administration officials including the President himself started off calling for huge stimulus packages to help generate "jobs, jobs, jobs!"

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Congratulations to my Iraqi friends on the occasion of the significant (if not quite total) withdrawal of US military occupation rule from your cities and towns that took place yesterday according to the November 2008 Withdrawal Agreement between our two governments.

I wish you all the very best as you continue working to reconstruct lives, communities, and a nation that have been harmed very severely indeed by the actions and decisions of my government and its military (as well as by others.)

I am so sorry that we in the peace movement were unable to prevent the disastrous (and lie-based) decision our government took to invade your country in 2003. We tried, but we were not strong enough.

I hope that the rest of the US withdrawal, as mandated in the Withdrawal Agreement, goes ahead smoothly.

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