PBS documentary "Bush's War" cites Rumsfeld notes

PBS's excellent new Iraq documentary "Bush's War" cites DoD staffer Stephen Cambone's notes from meetings with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the afternoon of September 11, 2001, which were first obtained under FOIA by outragedmoderates.org in 2006.

The notes are shown in the first segment of the documentary, "Within Hours of the 9/11 Attacks." One great feature about the online version of the documentary is that it has been broken up into 10-12 minute segments, which makes more sense for online viewing.

Frontline: "Bush's War" [PBS]
DoD Staffer's Notes from 9/11 Obtained Under FOIA [outragedmoderates.org]
"Hard to get a good case": Early Attempts to Link 9/11 and Iraq [outragedmoderates.org]

UNC student body president found dead

First there's a bombing in Times Square, one of the most heavily-photographed places in the world; now, a shooting in downtown Chapel Hill, one of the friendliest places in the world. As a UNC grad, and as someone who lived in two different apartments within 10 blocks of the shooting, I can't even explain how disturbing this is. What have we come to, when, if a week goes by without some insane random killing, I start to expect to hear news of another one?

"No suspect yet in Carson slaying" [News & Observer]
Daily Tar Heel coverage [Daily Tar Heel]
Message from the Chancellor [UNC.edu]

Obama's (underreported) pragmatism

I don't buy the Clinton campaign's mantra that the media has been biased towards Obama - perhaps because the media seems to have adopted it as its own mantra during the last couple of weeks. If anything, I think the media's emphasis on "Obamamania" has played into Clinton's argument that she is better prepared for the office, and that he is all talk.

To the contrary, Obama's campaign website has a very detailed policy platform (some areas, like his technology policy platform, are particularly impressive), and I think anyone who has watched one of the recent debates realizes he has a strong command of the major issues of the day. Moreover, his campaign's promise to transcend the partisan divide is supported by a policy team that has been described as "surprisingly non-ideological." Here are a couple of interesting articles about Obama and his policy advisors (including Austan Goolsbee, the economist who sparked a controversy by discussing NAFTA with Canadian officials):

"The Audacity of Data: Barack Obama's surprisingly non-ideological policy shop" [TNR]
"An hour and a half with Barack Obama" [Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen]
"Obama's policy team loaded with all-stars" [Chicago Tribune]