Monday Evening News Roundup
I wish I could tell you that I sat down watched hours and hours of the Olympics. I haven’t. For some reason, life hasn’t stopped. I was able to catch a little bit of the US women’s soccer game. An amazing ending.
From Steve Benen @ MaddowBlog:
Truly extraordinary: “The [NASA] spacecraft plunged through Mars’ atmosphere, fired up a rocket-powered platform and lowered the car-sized, 1-ton Curiosity rover to its landing spot in 96-mile-wide (154-kilometer-wide) Gale Crater. Then the platform flew off to its own crash landing, while Curiosity sent out a text message basically saying, ‘I made it!'”
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Huge shake-up in the Assad regime: “Syria’s prime minister has fled the country, activists and Syria’s official media reported Monday, in what appeared to be the highest level defection from President Bashar al-Assad’s government thus far.”
President Obama today ordered American flags to fly at half-staff through the end of the week, honoring the victims of yesterday’s shooting in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. (Ed note: another mass shooting. Another semi automatic weapon. Too sad for words.)
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton helped oversee an important oil deal between Sudan and South Sudan, but the future of the agreement is unclear.
Would Obama support an assault-weapons ban? If Congress would pass it, sure.
Incidentally, the president would support a tax exemption for Olympic athletes, too. (Republicans began pushing this last week, and I still think it’s silly.)
Yes, Fox News really did complain today that American athletes’ Olympic uniforms aren’t patriotic enough.
Hey look, Sens. John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham want a war with Syria. Who would have guessed?
Aaron Carroll’s annual look at “Adventures in Indiana State Fair Food” is always quite fascinating, in a scary sort of way.
