Friday Mashup (4/25/08)

Greg Mitchell of E&P has probably devoted more coverage to the mental and emotional problems faced by too many of our returning troops from Iraq, and this is his most recent post on the grossly underreported issue of “soldier suicides.”

I thought of his work on this after I read this McClatchy story (some repetition between Mitchell and McClatchy here, but lots of good background) about how Dem Sen. Patty Murray (pictured) has contacted VA secretary Dr. James Peake and told him to fire Dr. Ira Katz, the man in charge of the department's mental health programs, primarily because Dr. Katz appears to be more concerned with bad P.R. for the agency than properly providing the treatment our returning heroes need.

(Yep, Katz is Bushco through and through all right, with Katz writing to Ev Chasen, the agency’s communications director, and asking how to handle the fact that the agency’s suicide prevention coordinators are seeing about 1,000 cases per month; actually, they came up with the interesting lie that the agency saw about 790 cases all year in 2007).

This is despicable for so many reasons that I’m not sure it’s necessary to list them all.

This Guest Opinion from the Bucks County Courier Times appeared a few days ago from Harris Martin, running for the PA legislature against incumbent Repug Rep. Gene DiGirolamo; Martin rightly takes DiGirolamo to task for opposing the latest gun bill introduced into Harrisburg and promptly defeated (here).

The odds will probably remain long on this far into the future, but this is a battle that must be continually fought.

This tells us that Dubya’s final White House Press Club Dinner will be emceed by TV talk show host Craig Ferguson; apparently, the one hosted by Rich Little last year was a snoozerama for the ages (“Gipper” jokes, references to Bob Hope…spare me; of course, as we know, Little was dragged out of mothballs in response to this guy’s bravura turn in 2006).

And kudos to the New York Times for deciding not to attend. I only wish more news organizations would follow that example and kill this cozy, incestuous Beltway bash once and for all. We as a country will be much better for it.

Update: And by the way, here's Stephen Colbert's moment one more time.