Funny you should ask that, Molly, I was just about to link to this. Once you start spinning hypotheses about that worm, it’s hard to stop:

The Russians have sold much of the technology to the Iranians, in the face of weak and ineffectual protests on the part of our State Department. Is it possible that there is a quid pro quo where we let the Russians sell the technology (to get the hard currency), but the technology is actually sabotaged a la the Siberian Pipeline of the 1980s? The cover story now becomes a worm did the damage, to keep the Russian’s hands “clean”. If so, then it’s possible that we created this. Absolutely we have people who know how to do this (I know some of them).

Oh, Conrad, you’re so crabby.

The U.S. was magnificent in the defeat of the Nazis, imperial Japanese, and Soviet Communists, and in the inducement of China into at least state capitalism. But — apart from the facilitation of NATO expansion through Bill Clinton’s bunk about a Partnership for Peace (via dismemberment of the Soviet bloc), and possibly the setting up of a post-Saddam power-sharing regime in Iraq — the U.S. has been completely ineffectual in the world since the original Gulf War and the end of the Cold War 20 years ago.

People tend to see history in decade-shaped chunks. It helps to sort the events and trends if we can store them in boxes marked 70s = shag horror or 50s = conformity or whatever concept we ascribe to the mood of the time. The farther you go back, the more standardized the labels become, so the 40s = war, the 30s = everyone in a sepia-hued breadline, and 20s = Jazz Age, whatever that means. Beyond that, though, it gets indistinct. The teens of the previous century seem quite remote; they had a big dress rehearsal for World War Hitler, and then . . . well, people sat around waiting for the Charleston to be invented, I guess.

But everything from the previous century still affects us today, and sometimes you get little pieces of news that remind you how close Now is to Then. Such as:

Peter asked me a few days ago what Margaret Thatcher would have made of Ed Miliband, the new leader of the British Labour Party. She would have thought him an abomination, of course, but I have to imagine any leader of the Conservative Party would be grateful to Labour for electing him: What more could you hope for in a political opponent than someone who inspires in voters such an overwhelming urge to change the channel? David Cameron is assuredly sleeping better these days.

The Economist’s Bagehot was actually pretty funny about the leadership rally at which Miliband’s victory was declared:

Last year, in the Citizens United ruling, the high court struck down certain campaign finance laws and ruled that corporations have free speech rights. This year, the Court will consider a case that asks: Do corporations have privacy rights? From the WSJ’s law blog:

In its Citizens United opinion from last year, the Supreme Court shot down certain campaign-finance limits. In so doing, the court essentially ruled that U.S. corporations have First Amendment free-speech rights.

Earlier today I wrote a short piece just as my flight from L.A. was about to depart (thanks, Emily, for getting it edited and posted), and now that I’m on another coast, I wanted to elaborate on one portion of the piece. In it, I observed that this administration has been evaluating the performance of voters when it was supposed to be the other way around. They’re busy ripping into the Right (ignorant bigots) and the Left (whiners who need to “buck up”) while ignoring their own shortcomings. They seem to have forgotten that they were elected to represent all of us, no matter how distasteful that might be for them.

It got me thinking about the attitude some voters on the losing side of an election have expressed in past campaigns: “He’s not my President!” Well, I’ve never subscribed to that mindset. In fact, every President is our President. That’s why we’re supposed to show respect for the office even as we criticize policies. But something disheartening and alarming is going on. For the first time, I’m beginning to feel as if this man is not my President, and that feeling is not coming from me. He really can’t stand Tea Party people, and he really is exasperated with carping liberals. He appears suspicious of anyone who succeeds in the private sector and positively angered by anyone who had the temerity to become wealthy. He seems to like no one except those who continue to idolize him.

I hereby stop complaining–at least for today–about the left-wing bias in the mainstream media. I’ve no quarrel with this AP item, but you’ve got to admit, it could be an RNC press release:

WASHINGTON (AP) – A deeply unpopular Congress is bolting for the campaign trail without finishing its most basic job – approving a budget for the government year that begins on Friday. Lawmakers also are postponing a major fight over taxes, two embarrassing ethics cases and other political hot potatoes until angry and frustrated voters render their verdict in the Nov. 2 elections.

At the Corner, Kevin Williamson throws down the gauntlet:

set aside the legal questions for a second. The Awlaki case speaks to something even more fundamental than law: Decent nations do not permit their governments to assassinate their own citizens. I am willing to give the intelligence community, the covert-operations guys, and the military proper a pretty free hand when it comes to dealing with dispersed terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda and its affiliates. But citizenship, even when applied to a Grade-A certified rat like Awlaki, presents an important demarcation, a bright-line distinction in our politics.