Nine U.S. soldiers were killed in a bombing in Diyala province near a patrol base, the U.S. military confirms. Twenty more U.S. troops and an Iraq soldier were reportedly injured.

Visit CNN for the latest.

NPR takes a look at various Bush Administration officials potentially implicated in the U.S. Attorney kerfuffle. Professor Kelley is one of the nine (The Nine?) whom they profile. Oddly, he’s the only one they don’t have a photo for. I’m guessing he’s not too torn up about that, though…

Last month, shortly before spring break, my beloved Incase laptop carrying case broke. Specifically, the zipper broke, such that it became impossible to close the bag. This is obviously a problem, and because I was getting ready to travel, I needed a replacement bag fast. So, unable to find a store in South Bend that sells Incase bags, I went to Circuit City and bought the Saturn Messenger Bag, from SwissGear by Wenger. It’s a good bag — a worthy replacement for the large shoulder bag that I lost when my laptop was stolen in L.A. almost a year-and-a-half ago — and it was on sale. But its biggest advantage, the multitude of compartments for wires and iPods and such, is also its biggest weakness: it’s bigger and heavier than I like my primary laptop bag to be. It’s great for travel (like that aforementioned L.A. trip), and for other times when I need to carry a lot of extra accessories around with me, but it’s a bit bulky for everyday use (e.g., carrying my laptop to class). Still, I couldn’t really justify plopping down $50 on a replacement Incase bag so quickly after buying the Wenger bag.

But then I remembered something wonderful: my sister-and-brother-in-law, Jen and Sören, got me a $50 gift certificate to Amazon.com for my birthday, which I hadn’t spent yet. And of course, Amazon.com sells everything, right? So I checked, and, lo and behold, yup, Amazon sells my Incase bag! Woohoo! So I just cashed in that gift certificate and bought it. With shipping, it cost $53.90 — so, $3.90 out of my pocket. That, I can justify. :) I should have it in 3-7 days. YAAAY! You have no idea how happy this makes me. Soon my precious PowerBook will be back in a sleek, form-fitting Incase bag, where it belongs, and I can use the Wenger bag on those select occasions when I need to carry more stuff around with me. Balance will be restored to the Force in the Brendan Loy Gadget Universe.

Now I just have to remember to go easy on the zipper. (And if it breaks again, despite my best efforts, then it would become a pattern, at which point I would call Incase and get all huffy with them. But hopefully it won’t come to that.)

Move over, Mark Buehrle: you’ve got nothin’ on Ashley and Katie Coker.

Jay’s post about the Irish Trojan Fantasy Baseball League is steadily scrolling down the page, so I figured I’d post another plug for it here. Sign up now! Deadline is 12:01 AM Friday morning. Autodraft is Saturday night. E-mail irishtrojanbaseball AT yahoo DOT com for the league password, and also leave a comment on Jay’s post saying you’re in.

[UPDATE: Bumped to top. Lots of room still. Sign up now! -ed.]

I don’t blog much about Iraq these days, because I find the whole situation — both military and political — extremely depressing, and I really have nothing constructive to say because I have no idea what we should do. But let me start small, by quoting and responding to Bill Kristol’s commentary on Harry Reid’s statement that the “war is lost“:

If he believes it is lost, he has an absolute responsibility to cut off that funding and bring those troops home as soon as possible — three months, six months, maybe, not 15 months, which is the appropriations bill that he just supported with this gradual withdrawal.

(Hat tip: InstaPundit.) On the one hand, Kristol’s got a good point, logically speaking. On the other hand, if Reid actually exercised that “absolute responsibility” and called for an immediate or near-immediate “precipitous withdrawal,” Republicans would accuse him of “not supporting the troops” (not that they aren’t already doing that, but the accusations would be even louder and angrier), and Kristol would be first in line to back them up. Which raises the question of whether Kristol and his ilk have an “absolute responsibility,” or any responsibility at all, to be honest and consistent in their commentary on such an important issue. If so, they’re failing miserably.

The Republicans have very consciously fashioned their rhetoric and their actions in order to put Democrats between a rock and a hard place, and as a side effect, have made honest debate impossible. Honest negative assessments of the war effort, without legislative action to back them up, are regarded as inherently off-limits and borderline unpatriotic — but legislative action to back up such remarks is considered even worse. So Democrats are left with no choice but to either a) support Bush’s surge, or b) be accused to “not supporting the troops.” Which isn’t to say that the Democrats aren’t equally calculating in their framing of the issue, or that their negative assessments are always honest; on the contrary, both sides are utterly shameless in their politicization of the war. (To read a critical response to Reid’s statement that doesn’t fall back on “how dare you stab our troops in the back” type rhetoric, check out what Joe Lieberman said. He might or might not be right, but at least he’s being honest, as always.)

I have no idea what the right answers are, I just know we’ll never find them by asking the wrong questions, which is what both sides are doing. Ross Douthat, at least, is asking a reasonable question of the unreasonable questioners:

Here’s my question: Is there any imaginable point in any imaginable conflict where Mark Levin would admit that the United States had lost a war? I don’t mean to be flip, and I say this as someone who generally thinks that the U.S. hasn’t necessarily lost in Iraq; we probably have, but the outcome is still sufficiently in doubt and the stakes sufficiently high that I want to give the “surge,” however ineffectual it may prove (or may already be proving), at least a Tom Friedmanesque six months to work. But even allowing that Reid shouldn’t have said what he said, it’s still the case that the United States can lose wars, like any world power; that we may well lose this one (in some sense, at least); and that at some point, in this struggle or another, some American politician will say “we’ve lost the war” and be entirely correct. Given this reality, I wish Levin (and many of his fellow “till the last dog dies” Iraq War backers) would clarify whether there’s any situation in which they would greet a U.S. defeat abroad with any response save a rote invocation of the stab-in-the-back narrative.

(Hat tip: The Moderate Voice.) More thoughts after the jump.

(more…)

The Observer’s Erin McGinn has a hilarious column in today’s paper about relationship drama on Facebook. Excerpt:

[S]etting your [relationship] status to “it’s complicated” … can mean anything from an on-again, off-again couple, to a regular hook-up from the Backer. In the worst-case scenario (or best, depending on your view), this setting is used in relationship warfare between a couple. …

Sometimes, Facebook relationship statuses are the best way to find out whether that drunken confession of love will still stand true in the sober light of day. “Megan” and “Mike” might have made out at the Feve, but is that going to translate into an actual status (”it’s complicated,” perhaps)?

It could just end up as a poke. …

Whole Facebook groups are devoted to determining how pokes should be used and who should actually get poked. Is it a friendly gesture? Is it indicative of a non-duLac approved desire of intimacy? Your idea of poking and the viewpoint of the person who you are poking (or who poked you) might not be the same, and that could lead to a potentially complicated situation.

Heh. It’s enough to make a 25-year-old married guy, less than four years out of college, feel like a veritable old geezer. Crazy kids today and their newfangled Facebook thingy…

Boris Yeltsin’s death has me reminiscing about some of his greatest hits…

Is it disrespectful to post funny videos of President Yeltsin on the day he died? Perhaps, but as Lisa said when I asked her that question just now, I hope that when I die, people have a good laugh about the funny things I did in my life. To wit, if this blog is still around when I die, I hereby give my guestbloggers permission to re-post the video of me tripping over the tennis net. In fact, I insist on it. :)

Besides, I’m remembering ol’ Boris fondly here. As I said in comments earlier, “It makes me nostalgic for the good old days when Russian presidents were merely drunken buffoons instead of wannabe fascists.”

R.I.P., President Yeltsin. May the vodka flow freely in heaven. :)

For those who missed ‘em, here’s a 7-minute video clip of the Red Sox’s four consecutive home runs as they happened last night:

If you want to see just the home runs, here’s a 53-second clip.

I feel lucky to have watched history unfold live. It was the first baseball game I’ve watched all season. I picked a good night to tune in!

Last Wednesday evening, I blogged about the special Bud Light bottles with Sabres logos on them that are being sold in western New York in honor of Buffalo’s playoff drive. I learned about this from Bfloblog (which wrote, “The fact people would change their beer because there’s a Sabres logo on the bottle is a bit frightening. The fact it is considered news is terrifying.”) and thought it was rather amusing, which is why I blogged about it. Alas, I hadn’t gone beer shopping while in Buffalo the previous weekend, and I didn’t know about the bottles then, so I didn’t expect I’d have the chance to drink from one of them while watching a Sabres game. And I certainly didn’t expect that my blog post would earn me any freebies.

But, lo and behold, the next day in ConLaw, one of my classmates clandestinely handed me the the bottle you that see photographed above (posed next to Toby, our one Buffalo-area-native pet). This classmate, who shall remain nameless because I’m not sure whether alcohol trafficking in class violates the Honor Code :), had been in Buffalo the previous weekend, and had bought some of the special Sabres-branded Bud Lights and brought them back to South Bend. He then saw my blog post, and decided to give me one of them.

This is amusing on several levels. One, my blog got me free beer. Two, it took less than 18 hours for a blog post about beer to translate into actual beer. Three, a fellow law student brought in beer and gave it to me in class. I can honestly say that’s the first time, at any level of school, that I’ve had alcohol smuggled to me in the classroom. And it happened a month before graduation. I think my education is now officially complete. :)

Anyway, I have yet to actually drink the beer. I figure I should save it for when I’m watching the Sabres play. I was going to drink it during Game 5 of the Islanders series, but then I wasn’t really in the mood for beer, so I decided to hold off. I would consider saving it until the Stanley Cup finals (knock on wood furiously), but by then we’ll be living in Knoxville, and moving a bottle of Bud Light from Indiana to Tennessee seems a little excessive. Besides, if the Sabres make it to the finals and get within a game of winning the Cup, Becky and I are totally going to drive up to B’lo, just to be in the city when they (again, knock on wood furiously) win… so I can buy another Buffaslug Light then, if I want. (Then again, once I’m in Buffalo, at Pearl Street or someplace similar, why would I drink Bud Light?) Anyway, perhaps I’ll drink this bottle during Game 1 of the Rangers series.

Speaking of which, the schedule for the Sabres-Rangers series hasn’t been officially announced yet, but Newsday reports that NBC has said it will televise Game 2 on Saturday, which probably means Game 1 is on Thursday. (Hat tip: Sabres Insider.) In any event, the first two games will be in Buffalo, as well as games 5 and 7, if necessary.

One thing’s for sure: if they win this series, the Sabres won’t just be in the Eastern Conference finals, and halfway to their first-ever Stanley Cup. They’ll also be the undisputed New York state champions. ;)

P.S. Here’s a picture of Toby defending the beer from Sasha’s advances:

That exchange resulted in a brief staring contest…

…followed by an uneasy truce:

Toby’s defensiveness is understandable. Sasha is a Coyotes fan.

I had to laugh at the current top search-engine phrases that are leading people to my site:

Heh. Some of these people may want to check out my Babes, Boobs & Sex category. :) Though I’m afraid the ones looking for “alyssa milano nude” will be disappointed regardless.

Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin has died, Russian news agencies report.

Visit CNN for the latest.

Heh:

I pulled my last all-nighter on Wednesday. It was one of those special nights where, to stay awake, I gradually forced myself into less and less comfortable positions, moving from my bed to the couch to a hard plastic chair to, finally, the floor. Even on my scratchy old carpet that hasn’t been vacuumed for months, I nearly went down for the count - only the thought of never again having to subject myself to this torture kept me going.

Now that I can count my remaining days of class on one hand, I’ve started itemizing these college experiences into “good riddance!” and “gone so soon?” groups. Those all-nighters, blue books, insufferable summer internships and mornings spent hugging the toilet? Parting is such sweet sorrow. But blissfully warm night games at the Coliseum, chicken nugget Tuesdays at EVK and any game involving red Solo cups? I hardly knew thee.

That’s from a highly entertaining Daily Trojan column by Derek Peters about “The DT’s very sexy mailbag.” Good stuff.