A commonly recognized reason why death is bad

Would have been interesting to have asked Rilke what he thought of this story.

Bush: L'Etat, il est moi

See here, discussed here.

Drumheller, Bush, Kerry

While picking my jaw up off the floor after reading this TPM post, it occurred to me that the admin keeps demonstrating my lack of imagination and acumen. I had long thought that there were multiple reasons for the war, WMDs being only a unifying one and useful as a selling point, and that they had assumed we would find (if not a major program) enough shreds of half-baked or old stuff to point to while they established the Chalabi regime. But that there was something so cut and dried as a report heard by Bush/Cheney/Rice of a high-level leak in the Iraqi govt disputing the WMD claim would not have occurred to me.

I wonder what John Kerry is thinking tonight. If this had come out before the election, it would have made (so it seems to me anyway) a devastating ad. If I were running for office today, I'd put that soundbite up over a picture of my opponent shaking Bush's hand. So I also wonder what Drumheller was thinking last year.

Your daily good news from Iraq

here.

The Gospel of Judas found

See here.

Scholars say that they have long been on the lookout for the Gospel of Judas because of a reference to what was probably an early version of it in a text called Against Heresies, written by Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons, about the year 180.

A rather Borgesian line.

The Gospel says Judas was just following Jesus's instructions, an idea already familiar from
Borges's "Three Versions Of Judas". Borges goes much deeper into the issue than the Gospel appears to.