Today’s edition of quick hits.
* Practitioners of genocide keep getting busted: “Radovan Karadzic, one of the world’s most wanted war criminals for his part in the massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995, was arrested Monday in a raid in Serbia that ended a 13-year hunt. Serge Brammertz, the prosecutor of the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, hailed the arrest as an important step in bringing to justice one of the architects of Europe’s worst massacre since World War II. He said Mr. Karadzic, 63, the Bosnian Serb president during the war there between 1992 and 1995, would be transferred to The Hague in ‘due course.'”
* Torture comes with consequences: “Prosecutors in the trial of Osama bin Laden’s former driver cannot use as evidence some statements the defendant gave interrogators because they were obtained under ‘highly coercive’ conditions while he was a captive in Afghanistan, a military judge ruled Monday evening.” (thanks to Sarabeth)
* Bob Novak is backing off his report about John McCain announcing his running mate this week, telling Fox News today that the leak may have been “a dodge” by the campaign to grab some headlines from Obama.
* Thank goodness for all of those miraculous tax cuts: “The current U.S. economic expansion is the first in 60 years that may end before many Americans have recovered from the last slowdown. Annual family incomes adjusted for inflation have grown just 0.8 percent since the end of 2001 even as the economy expanded an average 2.7 percent a year, leaving households little cushion to absorb higher food and fuel prices.”
* This is beyond outrageous: “Of the women veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who have walked into a VA facility, 15 percent have screened positive for military sexual trauma, The Associated Press has learned. That means they indicated that while on active duty they were sexually assaulted, raped, or were sexually harassed, receiving repeated unsolicited verbal or physical contact of a sexual nature.”
* Republicans blasted Obama today for flying into Jordan in an Osprey aircraft, which Obama has opposed in the past. There’s just one problem — McCain also criticized the Osprey, and also flew in one during his Iraq trip in May.
* It looks like Obama enjoyed a very enthusiastic greeting from U.S. troops and State Department officials in Baghdad last night.
* There’s already some talk in media circles about a “backlash” against Obama traveling abroad. I have no idea why.
* Bob Herbert: You want a scary thought? Imagine a fanatic in the mold of Dick Cheney but without the vice president’s sense of humor. In her important new book, ‘The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals,’ Jane Mayer of The New Yorker devotes a great deal of space to David Addington, Dick Cheney’s main man and the lead architect of the Bush administration’s legal strategy for the so-called war on terror. She quotes a colleague as saying of Mr. Addington: ‘No one stood to his right.’ Colin Powell, a veteran of many bruising battles with Mr. Cheney, was reported to have summed up Mr. Addington as follows: ‘He doesn’t believe in the Constitution.'”
* The right is still whining about the NYT failing to run McCain’s hatchet-job op-ed. The complaints still don’t make any sense.
* The Austin American-Statesman was right to apologize for this.
* McCain suggested today that Obama refuses to acknowledge the successful work of the troops in Iraq. McCain, again, is lying.
* Eric Boehlert: “The AP has a Ron Fournier problem.”
* I meant to make fun of David Brooks today, but ran out of time. Steve M. is on the case.
* Fox News’ Chris Wallace wanted to go on the foreign trip with Obama. The campaign blew him off, and now his feelings are apparently hurt. (Note to Wallace: to get treated as a legitimate journalist, you have to work for a legitimate news outlet.)
* After his comments sparked considerable controversy, right-wing shock-jock Michael Savage said today that his attacks against autistic children had been “take[n] out of context.” They weren’t.
* As a result of the story, Savage has lost Aflac as a show sponsor.
* TV preacher Pat Robertson, still insane.
* And Richard Cohen devoted an entire column today to complaining about young people getting too many tattoos. The Washington Post paid him for this, and published it. Next week, he’ll probably explain why he wants those darn kids off his lawn.
Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.
