I posted this as a comment over at TPM, but I think it bears repeating here:

The jury has been selected, and the trial begins this morning: the first prosecution of a Guantanamo detainee since Obama instituted his new, improved, Supreme Court-compliant military-commission system. Not at all like Bush's, except for every important detail.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/americas/and-then-there-were-7-the-jury-who-will-decide-omar-khadrs-fate/article1669446/

Who the Fug? Yeah, that's the guy.

Some of you (probably most of you) are too young to recognize the name, but The Fugs were a seminal influence on music in the mid to late '60s. Sort of a Mothers of Invention without the musicality; a Velvet Underground without the polish. Protopunk, maybe ur-punk. The name derives from Norman Mailer's corruption of the word fuck in The Naked and the Dead.

It's no secret that I greet all information coming from the IDF skeptically. I expect bullshit, but I expect cleverly crafted, quasi-credible bullshit. So when I heard this 26-second audio clip from the flotilla encounter two days ago, I felt sure it was a scam -- a hoax by some nasty leftist agitators seeking to embarrass the Israeli military.

I know, I know. Daglog is not Twitter. And as Joe Biden would say, big F-ing deal. It's just that I'm over 60 years old (there, I said it) and to the best of my recollection I have never before bought a toaster.

The Alma Mater Society at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., has just cancelled a campus fundraiser for a local foodbank. The problem: the event would have involved students donning sumo suits and wrestling each other. A few similar events have already been staged at the university. Here are photos:

http://www.pbase.com/parpho/image/119537016

The Liberal Party, which ran Canada for most of the past half-century but recently has lost its resonance with voters, held a weekend policy symposium in Montreal. A featured guest was Robert Fowler, a now-retired top diplomat who advised every prime minister -- regardless of party -- for at least three decades.

If you go to the Drudge Report right now, you'll see the teaser:

PAPER: Soros 'at center of hedge funds plot to cash in on demise of the euro'...

If you click on the link, you'll see the Mail Online headline:

Man who broke the Bank of England, George Soros, 'at centre of hedge funds plot to cash in on fall of the euro'

If you read the lead paragraph, you'll see:

A secretive group of Wall Street hedge fund bosses are said to be behind a plot to cash in on the decline of the euro.

I'm not one of those who see the glass as seven-eighths empty. I see it, rather, as one-eighth full. So I'm not crying in my crisp, refreshing Canadian beer over last night's 5-3 loss to the United States in Olympic hockey.

No, there is an upside: Canada won't have to face Russia or Sweden in the gold-medal game next weekend. The downside is that we will have to beat both those powerhouse teams one-on-one to get within even sniffing distance of the podium. Assuming we can first dispatch Germany tomorrow night.

The Vancouver Olympic organizing committee has gotten a lot of unfair criticism, so I hate to pile on.
But I've watched quite a few medal presentation ceremonies over the past few days, and I'm now fairly positive: that is not Canada's flag on display.
Ours is a red maple leaf on a white central square, with two red bands half as wide on either side. Its proportions are therefore 1:2.
All the flags I see raised at the medal ceremonies appear to be 2:3. And I'm making allowances for camera angles.

OK, there's this nagging problem I have. Sort of an obsession. I push it to the back of my mind, where it stays quiescent for months, causing me no grief. Then it re-emerges, always re-emerges. Help me, dagblog community. HELP ME!

I blame Genghis for this latest relapse. In a comment to a post by Orlando (below), he wrote:

"A lying Mrs. Tebow would have no significance on the abortion debate. But nor would an honest Mrs. Tebow."

I get it. You're angry with the incompetent, self-serving, tone-deaf leadership of the Democratic Party. Just don't try to tell me you're surprised.

The good news is: the solution is at your fingertips. Channel that anger! It's a midterm election year -- traditional time for throwing out incumbents. Just beat the Republicans to the punch by primarying the asses off all these pseudo-Democratic dickheads. Not all of them, of course. There are at least a handful who stand with and for the common man. But there's a long list of corporatist anti-progressives who can go.

I'm totally unqualified to predict who'll win tomorrow's Senate election, which puts me right up there with every other pundit or expert. I suspect Obama's last-minute intervention and a desperate get-out-the-vote effort just might eke out a narrow win for Coakley. But I wouldn't bet on it; she's a bad candidate with an aura of entitlement and zero resonance with the national mood Obama tapped into just over a year ago.

Considering what's just happened to the poor, sick, malnourished and misgoverned Haitian people, it may seem an irrelevant distraction to focus on the words of one arrogant Christian bigot. But it needs to be done. It's time for Pat Robertson to just go away.

Conjuring up bogus causality after the fact is his recurring shtick. Feminists and gays caused 9/11. Abortion caused Katrina. Evacuating Gaza caused Sharon's stroke. Health care reform probably caused swine flu. Teaching evolution no doubt led to Fort Hood and the underpants bomber. Enough.

Don't mean to step on anyone's franchise (no need to lawyer up, Deadman) but I simply have to share this armchair fan's elation at tonight's orgy of televised hockey fare: four games to choose from, spread over the next seven hours -- and much of it top-notch.

Reading material! I'm talking reading material. Jeez!

I read today that sales have soared for British science popularizer John Gribbin's Get a Grip on Physics. The reason? Photos of Tiger Woods's crashed SUV showed a copy of that 2003 book on the floorboards. So Tiger wasn't distracted by the drugs or alcohol he'd imbibed, or wife Elin tossing golf clubs at his speeding vehicle. He was simply so engrossed in the book that he failed to successfully exit his driveway. That's some riveting reading!

Something just happened in Dallas that hit me in the gut. Forty-six years ago, it was (as Noam Chomsky is quoted as dismissively saying) "a man in a building shooting a man in a car." For most people, however, the JFK assassination significantly changed how they viewed the world. This week, hardly anybody noticed when management of the Dallas Morning News sent out an internal memo announcing a structural reorganization. Huffington Post ran an article about it, as did Editor & Publisher, but for most of the public it was all "inside baseball."

Laura showed up at my door today. Well actually, a UPS guy. But he handed over a copy of The Original of Laura, Vladimir Nabokov's final, unfinished, fragmentary novel.

I had never ordered a book pre-publication before, without waiting for the reviews or (more likely) for it to go into paperback. This was different. This was Nabokov -- his first "new" work in more than 30 years. And, obviously, his last. I had to have it.

One of Drudge Report's headlines today is "Sarkozy first to admit: Iran working on nukes." (The original was, of course, all-caps; I'll spare you.) It links to a Jerusalem Post article that reads in part:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy maintained that the Islamic republic was still working on a nuclear weapons program.

Compare and contrast.

Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter (whose job it is to enact legislation): "I have a fundamental problem with any 1,000-page bills."

The Daily Show's Jon Stewart (whose job it is to make us laugh): "I've read the bill."