Quick Hits

Didn't have a lot of time to post today, so let's go through the Internets and see what's hap'nin':

• Because George Allen needed another scandal: he's also something of a greedy cheat:

For the past five years, Sen. George Allen, has failed to tell Congress about stock options he got for his work as a director of a high-tech company. The Virginia Republican also asked the Army to help another business that gave him similar options.

This race was actually stabilizing a bit for Allen before this. I thought his "Checkers speech" actually stopped the bleeding. But this won't help, giving him the stain of corporate corruption along with, you know, the racism and the self-loathing Jew stuff.

• More tragedy in Darfur, as previously acknowledged janjaweed attacks thought to have killed a handful actually killed hundreds. As the world continues to look away unless George Clooney says something, the genocide continues.

• Speaking of Africa, John Edwards provides a report from Uganda. The question of why Africa has seen no development has many answers, some of them demographic (poor medical infrastructure means more infant mortality means less workers means less growth), some of them the result of kleptocracy and corruption, some of them from perpetual war. But the world's indifference plays a role as well.

• I agree that it's too soon for Barack Obama, mainly because he has no singular accomplishments other than hiring a good speechwriter for his 2004 keynote, and he's never had a real campaign against a Republican (Alan Keyes doesn't count). In fact, in campaigns for federal office Obama is 1-1, losing to Bobby Rush badly for Congress before winning the Illinois Senate primary.

• This actually deserves a full post, because it tells you so much about this Administration:

The Navy lawyer who led a successful Supreme Court challenge of the Bush administration’s military tribunals for detainees at Guantanamo Bay has been passed over for promotion and will have to leave the military, The Miami Herald reported Sunday.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, 44, will retire in March or April under the military’s “up or out” promotion system. Swift said last week he was notified he would not be promoted to commander.

He said the notification came about two weeks after the Supreme Court sided with him and against the White House in the case involving Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who was Osama bin Laden’s driver.

If you show a lack of sufficient loyalty, you will be taken down. Your career will end. You will be ruined. We deserve better for our patriots who fight for American values against all odds.

• Very cool project by the Sunlight Foundation to use "citizen muckrakers" to investigate members of Congress and see who had their spouses on their Congressional payroll. Turns out 19 have been confirmed, to the tune of almost $600,000.

• If you can't beat 'em, join 'em: Google's buying YouTube. Could be worse, it could be Disney or Viacom or a content provider who would turn YouTube into their own personal cable channel.