A federal judge found that Jose Padilla is competent to stand trial.

Rep. Mel Watt, Chairman of the Financial Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, presided over a hearing today: Insurance Claims Payment Processes in the Gulf Coast after the 2005 Hurricanes; see videos here.

StopIranWar.com Intro

Gen. Wes Clark and Jon Soltz of VoteVets.org discuss their website, StopIranWar.com.

You probably heard that a a suicide bomber detonated himself in Afghanistan yesterday, and the incident became international news because Vice President Dick “the Dick” Cheney was nearby and was, by some accounts, the intended target.

Apparently a number of commenters to this Huffington Post news item left snarky remarks to the effect that the terrorist missed. I hope they were joking. In any event, the Huffington Post closed comments and deleted the most egregious comments from their site, which is what I would have done, also.

So exactly how can Pajamas Media find fault with Huffington Post about this? I agree with Ron Chusid:

Perhaps the most absurd attack of all comes from Pajamas Media. They criticize Huffington Post for showing the good taste to remove the comments expressing a desire that Cheney had suffered harm. Apparently they fail to realize that the fact that liberal bloggers will not tolerate such expressions of violence on their blogs undermines their entire argument against the liberal blogs. Of course if they were able to process information in a rational matter they wouldn’t be conservatives.

See also Glenn Greenwald. As Glenn points out, comments — especially anonymous comments — do not necessarily reflect the positions of the web site/blogger or other readers or anyone else on this planet. It is unfortunate that there are people who wish physical harm on others, like expressing a wish to lynch Supreme Court justices, or making excuses for commenters who wish to lynch Supreme Court justices. Or mocking a blogger who has breast cancer.

Oh, wait; those weren’t commenters. Those were bloggers. Right-wing bloggers. Sorry.