• The Kirkwood shootings
• Nancy Miller, RIP
• Area police officer killed
• We’re, uh, number one
• A geography of murder

Kwame M. Kilpatrick, the charismatic mayor of Detroit who has been embroiled in legal problems stemming from a sex scandal since the beginning of the year, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and agreed to resign Thursday morning as part of a deal with prosecutors.

He agreed to plead guilty to two felony counts of obstruction of justice and to plead no contest to a felony count of assault on a police officer; to pay restitution to the city of $1 million; to surrender his law license, forfeit his state pension to the city and be barred from elective office for five years; and to serve 120 days in the Wayne County jail, followed by five years’ probation. The other charges were dismissed. The judge in the obstruction case scheduled a formal sentencing hearing for Oct. 28.

All this stemming not merely from his adulterous affair with his chief of staff, Christine Beatty, but from firing police officers in an attempt to cover it up, from using millions of public dollars in what amounted to a bribe to keep the story under wraps, and from lying while under oath. As we have learned from other fallen angels - say it with me - it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.

There’s little mention of Beatty in the stories I’ve seen at CNN, NYT, and WaPo - as though she was just an extra in Kilpatrick’s made-for-Law & Order drama - but her own day in court is coming up.

I have to say that my schadenfreude level regarding Kwame’s komeuppance is somewhat lower than I had expected. Maybe the Edwards story burned me out - or sobered me up - on handmade tragedies like this.

• You have to draw the line somewhere
• The Kilpatrick countdown begins
• Shootings in Maplewood
• Cracking down on those who won’t pull up
• Shots fired - and detected?

Additionally, Bernhard identifies submunitions reportedly found on the ground in and around Shindisi in Georgia’s Gori district as bring of Western origin rather than Russian. The analysis provided by Bernhard and Venik4 is convincing, particularly in light of the admission of the Georgian government that it has used cluster weapons in the recent conflict with Russia. Georgia maintains, however, that it has not utilized the particular weapon type in question “at any time during the hostilities or afterwards.”

HRW has walked back on its identification as Russian of cluster submunitions found in Shindisi and Pkhvenisi on August 20, but defends earlier findings that Russia used aerial cluster bombs in attacks against the village of Ruisi and the town of Gori.

Cluster munitions are terrible weapons regardless of who deploys them, and the push to outlaw them is a moral cause. However, that cause is undermined by inaccurate claims. It is to hoped that better vetting of these claims in future is an imperative for organizations like Human Rights Watch, and by bloggers like myself.

• War on civilians
• Cindy Sheehan
• A prayer for this Fourth, and likely others
• Well, that’s convenient
• The current crisis in Sudan

In correspondence, Dani Sevilla of Survivor Corps sounds the alarm over Russia’s barbaric use of cluster bombs against the civilian population of Georgia. From Human Rights Watch, some background:

Human Rights Watch said Russian aircraft dropped RBK-250 cluster bombs, each containing 30 PTAB 2.5M submunitions, on the town of Ruisi in the Kareli district of Georgia on August 12, 2008. Three civilians were killed and five wounded in the attack. On the same day, a cluster strike in the center of the town of Gori killed at least eight civilians and injured dozens, Human Rights Watch said. Dutch journalist Stan Storimans was among the dead. Israeli journalist Zadok Yehezkeli was seriously wounded and evacuated to Israel for treatment after surgery in Tbilisi. An armored vehicle from the Reuters news agency was perforated with shrapnel from the attack.

This is the first known use of cluster munitions since 2006, during Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Cluster munitions contain dozens or hundreds of smaller submunitions or bomblets. They cause unacceptable humanitarian harm in two ways. First, their broad-area effect kills and injures civilians indiscriminately during strikes. Second, many submunitions do not explode, becoming de facto landmines that cause civilian casualties for months or years to come. In May 2008, 107 nations agreed to a total ban on cluster munitions, but Russia did not participate in the talks.

Neither, it should be noted, did the United States.

Sevilla directs readers to the Survivor Corps news release on the use of these indiscriminate weapons and action items including a People’s Treaty for signature (sponsored by the Cluster Munition Coalition and Mines Action Canada) and a letter for your U.S. Senator or Representative.

Cluster munitions do terrible damage to civilians, including children, and remain in a landscape long after armed combatants have departed. Let’s do what we can to end their use.

• Cluster bombs and clarification
• A prayer for this Fourth, and likely others
• How the Bush administration protects Lebanese civilians
• Returning to the well of regret
• “Deliberate”

Criminy. I’d better get started.

Happy Labor Day to all. I’ll be around, even as busy as I hope to be.

• The list, it gets longer
• Time is like a clock in my heart
• A sense of where you aren’t
• Skin as biography
• Time is fleeting

No need to join the rush to judgment either way on McCain’s selection - especially before I’ve heard so much as one word out of Palin herself.

I remember an anguished Republican’s response to George H.W. Bush’s choice of running mate in 1984: “It’s Quayle - we lose.” Interestingly, this is what McCain had to say back then (verified here) about the selection of Dan Quayle:

I can’t believe a guy that handsome wouldn’t have some impact.

One thing’s for sure: Obama’s speech has been pushed below the fold.

Kate Klonick and Greg Sargent at TPM provide some info on Palin, including some perceived strengths for the McCain campaign.

She’s the sweetheart of Alaska: Attractive, young (44), a hockey mom, feminine and strong (beautiful and a member of the NRA!). Palin could appeal to a generation of women who respect strength and independence in women, but don’t necessarily identify with the feminist movement. She has also managed to achieve higher office while coming across as someone who puts family before career.

There’s a powerful maternal narrative, too: In April, she elected not to have an abortion when she discovered that her baby had Down’s Syndrome. And for good measure, she also has a son in the army named “Track” who’s set to deploy to Iraq.

The selection of Palin, of course, is also a bid for the disaffected Hillary vote, though it’s unclear how disaffected that vote is now that both Clintons have offered full-throated endorsements of Obama.

Palin is also a sign that there was never much to the speculation that McCain would choose someone with indy cred. She’s a solid conservative who will thrill the right-wing base.

As I said: don’t rush to judgment.

Add interesting: An NY Times Caucus Blog piece on Palin and a now-unfortunate quote from a McCain adviser has apparently been, er, disappeared. Fortunately, lots of people - like John Cole - have less selective memories:

Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska? As reports circulated on television and cable networks on Friday morning that Senator John McCain might have selected Ms. Palin as his running mate, McCain advisers expressed bewilderment. One adviser said that while Mr. McCain thinks highly of Ms. Palin, who is opposed to abortion rights and would be welcomed by Christian conservatives, her less than two years in office would undercut one of the McCain campaign’s central criticisms of Senator Barack Obama — that he is too inexperienced to be commander-in-chief.

“While it’s a dramatic and interesting choice, it would make the argument he’s making difficult to make,” said one McCain adviser.

Last, I think: Had Obama chosen Hillary Clinton instead of Joe Biden - and this is not to criticize the choice of Biden - whom would McCain have selected? Palin, still, or someone else?

Okay, here’s the last (maybe): “Palin Pick Leaves Bruised Feelings.”

Though it was high in shock value, the Palin pick left bruised feelings among the short-list contenders who were not picked — and infuriated some Republican officials who privately said McCain had gone out on a limb, unnecessarily, without laying the groundwork for such an unknown. Two senior Republican officials close to Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty said they had both been rudely strung along and now “feel manipulated.”

“They now know that they were used as decoys, well after McCain had decided not to pick them,” one Republican involved in the process said.

• Obama woodsheds Lieberman?
• “Affordable quality outcomes”
• Nothing wrong with Rumsfeld’s memory, at least
• Way to go out on a limb, Washington Post
• Matt Blunt impersonates Karl Rove, lamely

Fortunately for Obama, the Democratic Party, the United States, and the world at large, other reactions vary from mine.

My skepticism remains. Obama has my vote, however, and we’ll see what happens afterwards. As I’ve said before, history can wait.

• History can wait
• Obama-Biden: Er, feel it
• Stupid campaign tricks
• Nuts to you
• Edwards = White people!

My question isn’t whether that news warrants the BREAKING treatment, but whether it’s true - not that the Georgia district did or did not lose its accredited status, but whether it is actually the first to lose it.

The Saint Louis public school district was stripped of its accreditation by the Missouri State Board of Education on March 22, 2007. That decision was upheld by the Circuit Court of Cole County on January 23, 2008.

Unless the definition of accreditation is at issue here, which I doubt, that sort of strips away the whole five-alarm BREAKING aspect of the CNN story. Somebody call an editor.

Update: Ah. Someone did call an editor (emphasis mine):

A Georgia county’s school district has become the third district in the nation in 40 years to lose its accreditation.

Better. Though someone at CNN should feel kind of foolish for the earlier banner treatment of the story. If not for the falsely-assumed historic nature of the story, it would probably never have been published at CNN at all.

• Is our Forbes reporters learning?
• “Incremental news”
• Unsatisfying feeds
• Improved RSS for St. Louis Beacon
• PubDef.net

Briefly:

Detectable levels of disappointment in the blogosphere from those who didn’t get the news first on their secret Obama decoder rings, as promised by the campaign.

Trace amounts of irritation with the choice of Biden based on his support of the MBNA-lobbied bankruptcy bill, a sore point among progressives.

General acknowledgment of the virtues of Biden’s foreign policy strengths and general tough-guyness.

Personal take: the message sent by relative-DC-outsider Obama’s selection of the insidery (and, uh, more qualified to be president) Biden could be interpreted as “change, but verify?”

More message interpretation:* Making the announcement in this manner - in the middle of the fucking night, basically - could well be a way of saying that the role of veep is just that unimportant, at least so far as the campaign is concerned. The campaign is about the brand, and that brand is Obama.

*Nix that: Obama, Inc.’s hand was forced by leaks to CNN. The campaign was thus obliged to make the announcement when it did.

Finally: Does the choice of Biden signal a rejection of the traditional weak role of the vice-president (assuming a Democratic victory)? I have a lot of trouble seeing a personality like Biden voluntarily accepting a “foreign dignitary funeral visitor” position. I have to assume that Obama and Biden have had conversations about a strong role - not Cheney-strong, perhaps, but certainly a center of power - within the administration.

• History can wait
• Product launch
• Stupid campaign tricks
• Nuts to you
• Obama woodsheds Lieberman?

I had pretty much decided to take a break from playing fantasy football towards the end of last season, and actually would have skipped last year altogether had I not been invited into OW’s league. This time around, though, I’m definitely on the sidelines; I’m too busy and just don’t have the psychic overhead needed to handle the emotional storms that come with the game. I will be handling the two teams that belong to my brother since he can’t see the computer screen what with the blindness and all, but that consists of taking instructions, basically, with some minimal input as he requests it. Not the same as running your own imaginary franchise.

So I’ll just be watching football as a fan this season, mostly. Good thing, too; I could use the rest.

Time to set the trophies on the shelf, eh? I won’t be adding to them any time soon.

• He’d better be worth it
• It’s go time
• Inglorious victory
• Cold consolation
• It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish