“It’s the oft-stated phrase that truth is the first casualty of war,” said Michael Ware, CNN’s Baghdad correspondent, on the telephone from Iraq. “In this war, as in every other conflict, everybody lies to you. Your government is lying to you. The Iraqi government is lying. The insurgents are lying. The militias are lying. The U.S. military is lying. Even the civilians lie. Or in the best case, there’s confusion and exaggeration. The truth is the most elusive thing in war, particularly in an insurgency.”

Sixty-two months into the war, this is the language of the American journalist in Iraq. It’s not the only language; there are others: Cyclical, monotonous, brutal, strategic, hopeful. But slowly, as Iraq slips from the front pages and Web pages, today’s news starts to sound like yesterday’s; violence explodes; a spectacular military success, or failure. Casualty lists grow until they become incomprehensible, and then unreadable, unquantifiable. Against that metronomic numbness, 90 American journalists (according to a November 2007 study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism) continue to work a dangerous war that becomes a harder and harder story to sell to Americans. As the American press corps gets older, wearier—and simultaneously younger and more untested as the veterans leave—there are truths that some of the reporters of Baghdad have learned about the war in Iraq.  read more »

Like the Saturday Night Live skit of ‘Tom Brokaw’ taping a tireless litany of possible deaths, the Associated Press has been preparing Britney Spears’ obituary over the past month.

“We are not wishing it, but if Britney passed away, it’s easily one of the biggest stories in a long time,” the AP’s entertainment editor, Jesse Washington, told Us. He also said that it would be difficult for anyone to argue convincingly that Spears has not been skating on thin ice recently.

“Of course, we would never wish any type of misfortune on anybody and hope that we would never have to use it until 50 years from now…but if something were to happen, we would have to be prepared,” Mr. Washington added. Apparently this practice is not entirely unusual for the media outlet, which has a “pretty extensive obituary operation.”  read more »

More reporters than you could possibly believe are stacked into an auditorium at Saint Anselm college, safely far from tonight's debate.

At the front of the room is a row reserved for photographers. In the second row, news agencies AFP and AP and Reuters share space with USA Today, as well as local heroes from the Keene Sentinel, the Concord Monitor, and the Eagle Tribune.  read more »

Oh, well. The Real Estate kind of hoped it would go the other way. On Sunday, in case you missed it, Donald Trump's proxy beat the wrestler representing World Wrestling Entertainment owner Vince McMahon. Per a bet between the two billionaires, Mr. McMahon had to have his head shaved (photo, above, courtesy of the Associated Press).

Myself I think there's something to the Republican argument. The more religious you are, the more conservative your politics tend to be. The more unaffiliated and assimilated you are, the more leftleaning. And though I'm for a big tent in terms of Jewishness, the Republican argument does touch on a significant divide: the extent to which conservative, religiously-identified Jews dominate Jewish organizational life, and the policy positions the organizations endorse. (C.f., Palestine, the Occupation; and its sequel, Iraq, the Occupation)

Lamont lost the momentum in this race literally days after his stunning primary triumph-- when he took off for a vacation in Maine. His campaign manager's ugly verbal attack on the city of Waterbury -- a socially conervative Lieberman stronghold in the primary whose voters, late in turning against the war, could have been Lamont converts in the fall-- didn't help either.