Half-Hearted Blogging

When I'm away from home--especially if I'm busy with something, such as this weekend's BEA or my brother's graduation from grad school today--it seems like the news stands still. Has anything much happened? I don't know this for sure, but I'm betting Karl Rove still has not been indicted. (A few times lately I've typed that word and mistyped inducted. I don't think Rove's had that happen, either.) Since I've got no current events to comment on, I'm going to fall back on the cliche blogger strategy and recommend some other things.
This morning in The New York Times, Ted Koppel (via donkey o.d. suggested that the U.S. military should just hire on a mercenary military force and simply be done with it.

[C]ontractors provide the bodyguards (most of them veterans of the American, British, Australian, Nepalese or South African military) and, in some cases, the armored vehicles and even helicopters that have become so necessary for the conduct of business by foreign civilians in Iraq. Such protective services are employed by practically every American news agency and, indeed, are responsible for the security of the American ambassador himself.

So, what about the inevitable next step — a defensive military force paid for directly by the corporations that would most benefit from its protection? If, for example, an insurrection in Nigeria threatens that nation's ability to export oil (and it does), why not have Chevron or Exxon Mobil underwrite the dispatch of a battalion or two of mercenaries?

On that same editorial page, Paul Krugman, via Brrreeeport, took off on Joe Lieberman:

You see, the talking-head circuit loves centrists. But a centrist, as defined inside the Beltway, doesn't mean someone whose views are actually in the center, as judged by public opinion. Instead, a Democrat is considered centrist to the extent that he does what Mr. Lieberman does: lends his support to Republican talking points, even if those talking points don't correspond at all to what most of the public wants or believes.

But this "center" cannot hold. And that's the larger lesson of what happened Friday. Mr. Lieberman has been playing to a Washington echo chamber that is increasingly out of touch with the country's real concerns. The nation, which rallied around Mr. Bush after 9/11 simply because he was there, has moved on — and it has left Mr. Lieberman behind.

So that will give you something to read for a little while. Our flight back to Chicago doesn't leave until sometime after 3:00 in the afternoon, so I don't know if tomorrow will bring better blogging or not. But I'm keeping my fingers crossed.