Sherry Chandler

TPM is all over Blackwater, as is Have Coffee Will Write. It’s headlining at Huffington Post today and Salon is running several articles. This use of mercenaries, especially Blackwater, to fight our war has been a hobby-horse of mine for some time and now that it’s all coming out, I’m beyond outrage into a great weariness. It’s as bad as I thought, but the big dogs can handle it now. However, I do have to wonder about the quality of the Christianity professed by Blackwater CEO Erik Prince. Read Josh Marshall’s profile.

Added: Check this out for family values, from P. W. Singer’s The Dark Truth About Blackwater in Salon:

As an Interior Ministry official said of the Blackwater contractors hired by the U.S., “They consider Iraqis like animals, although actually I think they may have more respect for animals. We have seen what they do in the streets. When they’re not shooting, they’re throwing water bottles at people and calling them names. If you are terrifying a child or an elderly woman, or you are killing an innocent civilian who is riding in his car, isn’t that terrorism?

By now everybody probably knows that Clarence Thomas has published a memoir, My Grandfather’s Son, in which he seems to prove again that he’s a small-minded, bitter man incapable of rising to the high office with which he’s been trusted. I think he may be right that the conversation about race in this country is dishonest and that white liberals can be patronizing, but I can’t see that he’s made anything better by his sixteen-year sulk. Anyway, I bring this up to point out that, while ABC News has given Thomas ample time to belittle Anita Hill again, the NYTimes has afforded her an opportunity to respond to The Smear This Time.