Today’s edition of quick hits.
* A majority of Americans — 52% — think House Speaker Dennis [tag]Hastert[/tag] (R-Ill.) should resign from Congress as a result of the Foley scandal. (Note: the question was not about resigning from the leadership, but literally resigning from the House.)
* The “moms’ vote” is abandoning the GOP.
* Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) still says he never used the “N-word,” but the number of people who say otherwise continues to grow.
* Newsweek’s Brad Stone wrote a good item calling the Sci Fi Channel’s “Battlestar Galactica,” the “best show on television.” (Technically, Stone said it is “indisputably, hands-down and without question, the best show on television.”) Stone, in particular, notes the parallels in the show to the Bush administration and contemporary U.S. policy, a point Matt Yglesias emphasized as well.
* It’s official, Google bought YouTube today for $1.65 billion.
* Newsweek editor Fareed [tag]Zakaria[/tag] probably shouldn’t have been chatting with Paul Wolfowitz in 2001 about administration policy, but I was encouraged to see him come to grips with the disaster in Iraq.
* Seriously, people are still talking about English as the official language?
* Former Attorney General John [tag]Ashcroft[/tag] has become the first high-profile Bush administration figure to publicly condemn the 9/11 Commission. In his new book, argues that the Commission “seemed obsessed with trying to lay the blame for the terrorist attacks at the feet of the Bush administration, while virtually absolving the previous administration of responsibility.”
* The Secretary of State Project is a great idea, which hasn’t been getting the attention it deserves.
* The AP reported this afternoon that NATO’s top commander in Afghanistan believes that a majority of Afghans would likely switch their allegiance to the Taliban if their lives show no visible improvements in the next six months.
* And speaking of Afghanistan, this weekend was the fifth anniversary of the launch of the U.S. attack. The anniversary seemed to go by largely unnoticed.
* Turning your back on a voter: not a good idea. Turning your back on a voter who is a mother with a son in Iraq: a very bad idea.
* American Edmund Phelps won the Nobel Prize in economics today for his work on the relationship between unemployment and inflation. This strikes me as interesting for two reasons. One, Phelps was rewarded for his research that showed cutting interest rates or taxes would give only a short-term boost to employment. And two, Americans have gone four-for-four in Nobel prizes so far this year, which will give Stephen Colbert a chance to chant “U.S.A., U.S.A.” again this evening.
* And speaking of Colbert, [tag]Jon Stewart[/tag] has seen people wearing “Stewart/[tag]Colbert[/tag] ’08” T-shirts and he’s almost depressed about it. Stewart, interviewed yesterday at the New Yorker Festival, said the shirts “are a real sign of how sad people are” with the state of affairs in the country. “Nothing says ‘I am ashamed of you my government’ more than ‘Stewart/Colbert ’08,'” Stewart added.
If none of these particular items are of interest, consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.