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Excerpts:

"Former Democratic presidential candidate Mike Gravel was caught on tape last week telling a crowd in Washington, D.C., that they should harass a federal prosecutor who helped bring criminal contempt charges against a Palestinian activist," Fox News reports.
...
Gravel: Find out where he lives. Find out where his office is. If you've got some chutzpah--which is a word that you don't hear often--if you've really got it, find out where he lives, find out where his kids go to school, find out where his office is; picket him all the time. Call him a racist in signs if you see him. Call him an injustice. Call him whatever you want to call him, but in his face all the time. They can't take the heat; deliver it to them. We have to stop laying down to these injustices.

Find out where Gravel lives, where his office is, if his wife works, where his kids live. Then get in their faces everywhere they turn. No?


On the International front:

"The International Red Cross said Wednesday that Colombia broke the Geneva Conventions by deliberately using its humanitarian emblem during the covert military mission that freed Ingrid Betancourt and other hostages," the Associated Press reports from Geneva:

Use of the Red Cross symbol in a military operation violates the first Geneva Convention because it could damage the relief group's neutrality in conflicts, endangering medical personnel on the battlefield who are using the red cross for protection.

Maybe we're dense, but it seems to us that rescuing civilian hostages from a terrorist group is a higher humanitarian priority than preventing unauthorized use of a trademark. The way the Red Cross interprets them, the Geneva Conventions seem almost quaint.

Reason #26:

Yesterday we noted that Slate's Timothy Noah believes it is racist to call Barack Obama "skinny," because any reference to a black man's physical characteristics is code for calling him black.

Is there anything we can say about Obama that is not racist?

Excitable Andy pontificates:

"Obama's fortnight was an objectively miraculous one."--Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic Web site, Aug. 2

OK if you say so.

"Dead Man Awakens Before Autopsy, Shocks Doctors by Asking for Glass of Water"--headline, FoxNews.com, Aug. 6

Good thing it was before the autopsy.

• "Hospitals Infested With Rats, Fleas and Bed Bugs"--headline, Daily Telegraph (London), Aug. 6

The much heralded British public health system.