 Defining Quixotic If you think because most of official Washington is on vacation, that you'll need to go on some kind of grand quest to find real news right now, we can say with one hundred percent certainty that you're wrong.
Much to the chagrin of those of us in the news and information business who were expecting a relaxing August, there are a ton of great stories right now. From the news that networking company Cisco is planning to cut 4,000 jobs, to the beginning of the end of the recession in Europe, to the final end of California's Prop 8, to the upcoming budget battles in DC, important, substantive news stories are nearly everywhere we look today.
Some of the biggest stories this week though involve war, in one from or another. Sadly, most of these wars seem to be accurately defined as "quixotic": Exceedingly idealistic; unrealistic and impractical.
The "war" extremist Republicans seem desperate to wage against Obamacare is one example, as we pointed out Wednesday. Another war is the United State's ridiculous "War on Drugs," a conflict that Attorney General Eric Holder made clear earlier this week, the Obama Administration is no longer looking to fight.
Frankly, we can't disagree with the Administration's decision to stop tilting at the drug war windmill. As both Ed Kilgore and Greg Sargent noted, stopping pointless overspending on drug policing, while ending ineffective mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent criminals are things that large numbers of Americans across the political spectrum agree on.
The biggest war going on, however, isn't on American soil. It's in Egypt, where the concept of a mostly civil revolution may have finally proven the most impractical of any of the conflicts in the news this week... |
