Today’s edition of quick hits.
* The House’s resolution on Armenian genocide is causing quite a diplomatic stir: “The Bush administration, chafing over a House committee vote to label the deaths of Armenians a century ago as genocide, said Thursday lawmakers could better spend their time passing legislation attending to today’s problems at home. White House deputy press secretary Scott Stanzel reiterated the administration’s disappointment with the vote by the House Foreign Affairs Committee and said it would be problematic for American efforts in the Middle East.”
* On a related note: “Turkey has recalled its ambassador to the United States, Nabi Sensoy, in response to a House resolution that would call the World War I massacre of Armenians by Turkish forces ‘genocide,’ the Turkish Foreign Ministry said Thursday.”
* WaPo: “An injured Iraqi man and the families of three Iraqi civilians who were killed in the Sept. 16 shootings by Blackwater security contractors sued the company in federal court today, calling the incident a ‘massacre’ and ‘senseless slaughter’ that was the result of corporate policies in the war zone. Attorneys for Talib Mutlaq Deewan, who was injured in the shootings at Nisoor Square, and the families of Himoud Saed Atban, Osama Fadhil Abbas and Oday Ismail Ibraheem, who were killed, filed the lawsuit this morning in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asking for an unspecified amount of money to compensate for alleged war crimes, illegal killings, wrongful death, emotional distress and negligence. The lawsuit names Blackwater USA, The Prince Groupand Blackwater founder and CEO Erik Prince as defendants.”
* NYT: “The Marine Corps is pressing to remove its forces from Iraq and to send marines instead to Afghanistan, to take over the leading role in combat there, according to senior military and Pentagon officials. The idea by the Marine Corps commandant would effectively leave the Iraq war in the hands of the Army while giving the Marines a prominent new role in Afghanistan, under overall NATO command.”
* Paradoxically, dentists are making more money while Americans are having more dental problems. According to the Times, “[T]he percentage of Americans with untreated cavities began rising this decade, reversing a half-century trend of improvement in dental health.”
* Paul Krugman: “I’m just a liberal, living in a radicalizing time.” I know how you feel, professor.
* Politico: “Rank-and-file members of Congress are grumbling about the five-day workweek instituted this year by House Democratic leaders, complaining that it leaves little time for campaigning and allows few weekdays to deal with business back home.” You know, for most of Congress’ history, lawmakers stayed in DC for months. It wasn’t a bad system.
* Atrios makes an important point about school violence: “Any time there’s a horrible school shooting there’s talk of changing security as if there’s something schools can or should be doing. It’s stupid. We live in a society where lots of people have very easy access to guns. People who aren’t too concerned about getting caught or killed, as is usually the case, will generally manage to injure or kill a few people. They could just as easily do this in a school bus, or outside the school, or at some gathering of people elsewhere, or whatever. Turning the school itself into an extreme security location where students inevitably just feel like criminals won’t really help stop anything.”
* Tim Grieve: “Number of times Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, John McCain, Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee and Duncan Hunter uttered the word “Bush” during Tuesday night’s two-hour debate in Michigan: 0. Number of times Giuliani and Romney referred by name to Bill or Hillary Clinton: 16.”
* If a writers’ strike affects The Daily Show, I’m going to be severely disappointed.
* Has everyone seen this? I swear the silhouette is spinning counter-clockwise; Ms. CB swears it’s spinning clockwise.
* Who’s pushing back against Bush’s executive overreaching? Strangely enough, it’s the state of Texas.
* And finally, last night, Lynne Cheney boasted to Jon Stewart that the White House’s policies are responsible for stopping terrorist attacks since 9/11. Stewart noted, “[T]here was the anthrax thing. … [Terrorists] have been doing that all these past six years. The Spanish bombings, the English bombings, and then all the bombs in Iraq.” Cheney responded, “Yes, yes. But we’re talking about American interests.” I wonder how many other conservatives agree that Washington, D.C., England, Spain, and Iraq are not “American interests”?
Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.