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Some light reading

This blog often seems a little too serious. My friend Noah often inspires me to try and be more light-hearted. Observe this otherwise-horrifying post about bedbug attack:
What's your game bed bug!? Now I have a new enemy that I can't even begin to understand. Apparently they are making a resurgeance in America because of international travel and new drug resistant super breeds. I suggest you start practicing taking micronaps standing in stainless steel cubes.
What spirit, eh?

Unfortunately, my sunshine and rainbows meter is all the way in the red. So here's Andrew Sullivan on the child abuse scandal currently blasting through the Vatican:
But what staggers me is once again the immediate, visceral circling of the wagons - when what is being revealed - again! - is a pattern of criminal abuse, aided and abetted by a powerful elite, led by the Pope himself. If this were a secular institution, the police would move in and shut it down.
And he's a Catholic! I'm curious if anyone has heard about this scandal from another source. Sullivan and a few other bloggers are on top of it, but I haven't seen it in many big-time publications.

Also check out this Jane Mayer review in the New Yorker eviscerating Marc Thiessen's book about torture. Check here for a previous post highlighting a different review eviscerating Thiessen. So I don't like Marc Thiessen very much. Sue me.

UPDATE: More on health-care reform--check out this sweet chart from the LA Times. Lays it all out. (h/t Kevin Drum.)

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