Quick Hits

The lay of the land with three weeks to go until Election Day:

• Free speech is apparently alive and well in Georgia, where a woman got a $100 fine for sporting an anti-Bush bumper sticker on her car. All the right-wingers who support free speech when the question is, say, Mohammed cartoons, go silent when it comes to something that makes them uncomfortable.

• FEAR Unit is on the march as Michael Chertoff announces that THE WEB is a terrorist training camp. The whole Web. How much longer before any site where you can communicate and leave a comment must be made off-limits in the name of national security? These are not abstract, conspiratorial thoughts. If the DHS head believed the Web WAS a terrorist training camp, it'd be a dereliction of duty not to shut it down, no?

• Just like in the US, the mantra for the British government is that if one of their own speaks their mind, what you have to do is attack them personally.

Tony Blair will hit back today at General Sir Richard Dannatt, who warned last week that the continued presence of British troops in Iraq was "exacerbating" the country's security crisis [...]

Mr Blair's allies made clear that he could not allow the challenge to go unanswered. David Blunkett, the former home secretary, is believed to have been reflecting views inside Downing Street when he criticised Sir Richard for "trying to introduce a new constitutional element" by interfering with the Government's decisions.

Somehow, the next paragraph says that's not "attacking Dannatt personally". Hmph.

• Today is a sad anniversary. It's been one year since the disgusting backruptcy law went into effect. John Edwards writes a great piece at Think Progress that shows the impact of this on the middle class and those struggling to survive. We have predatory lenders in the credit card industry turning handworking Americans into debt peons.

• Hey, Iraq's a nightmare, in case you forgot. Of course, if you're Rep. Peter King, you think it's like being in Manhattan. Honestly, the stupidity which rules our political discourse is staggering.

• And finally, Afghanistan: You put your WEED in there!

Note to self: when fighting militants in a giant forest made of pot, it's best not to try to burn the place down (unless you've got time to make a run for some munchies, that is).

Canadian troops in Afghanistan found this out the hard way.

Reuters reports the troops were fighting Taliban militants when they were met with a greener, more potent enemy: a 10-foot-tall marijuana forest.

The Taliban fighters were using the dense thicket of plants for cover, so the troops were forced to eliminate the weedy threat.

"The challenge is that marijuana plants absorb energy and heat very readily. It's very difficult to penetrate with thermal devices ... and as a result you really have to be careful that the Taliban don't dodge in and out of those marijuana forests," General Rick Hillier said in a speech in Ottawa.

"A couple of brown plants on the edges of some of those (forests) did catch on fire. But a section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill effects and decided that was probably not the right course of action," Hiller said.

Afghanistan is clearly a gateway war. First you're fighting militants in pot fields, then poppy fields, coca farms, pretty soon you're making your way through freebase and crack jungles.