Wingnut Hypocrisy: Part CLXXXIX

Pat Robertson, a former presidential candidate who never served as a mayor or governor, now says that only big city mayors and governors are qualified to be president.

The assertion is rottenly specious on its face – obviously serving just to trash the legitimacy of President Obama while implicitly boosting the supposedly essential qualifications of the two current Republican frontrunners – but it’s perhaps worth noting that Abraham Lincoln (and for that matter, most presidents over the course of American history) also never served as a mayor or governor.

The Terror Industrial Complex

Great story from CBC’s The National about the insane amount of money that has been spent post-9/11 on the secretive intelligence and policing apparatus to make America safe from demented cave-dwellers in Afghanistan, inept lunatics with explosive underwear, and suchlike “threats” to the so-called Homeland.

More on the WP’s investigation “Top Secret America” here and a PBS Frontline piece on the same project here.

Update: An interview with investigative reporter Bill Arkin from Democracy Now! about this issue…