Midweek link dump

[tangaroa]

• Ron Moreau of Newsweek takes a realistic look at Western plans to bribe the Taliban, which has no intention of quitting its war.
• Norman Ornstein of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute writes that the "Democratic Congress is on a path to become one of the most productive since the Great Society 89th Congress in 1965-66, and Obama already has the most legislative success of any modern president".
• Howard Gleckman of the Urban Institute argues that the health care bill under consideration in the U.S. Congress would be more attractive to Republicans than Democrats were it not for the partisan politics involved.
• Anti-semitic propaganda creeps its way into Yahoo's weather service.
• Republican anti-tax rhetoric has led the city of Colorado Springs to reduce basic services.
• Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman of Newsweek report that U.S. Justice Department report condemning torture proponents Jay Bybee and John Yoo was edited by Justice official David Margolis to be less critical of them, allowing Bybee and Yoo to avoid sanctions from the Bar Assoication.
• The Greensboro lunch counter sit-in was 50 years ago on February 1, 1960.