I love Harper's Index.
For those of you not familiar with it, Harper's Index appears near the front of every edition of Harper's magazine. It presents a sort of snapshot of current affairs by way of assembling a bunch of seemingly obscure, but ultimately telling, statistics. The index can really help break an issue down to irrefutable numbers in a way that cuts through ideological trappings.
Take the current iteration of Harper's Index, for example. It's all about the legacy of the Bush years, the whole fucking war-ridden, corrupt, incompetent, greedy, murderous, filthy lot of them. Here's just a few choice nuggets:
Percentage of Bush’s first 189 appointees who also served in his father’s administration: 42
Minimum number of Bush appointees who have regulated industries they used to represent as lobbyists: 98
Date on which the GAO sued Dick Cheney to force the release of documents related to current U.S. energy policy: 2/22/02
Number of other officials the GAO has sued over access to federal records: 0
Number of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and North African men detained in the U.S. in the eight weeks after 9/11: 1,182
Number charged with an immigration violation: 762
Days since the federal government first placed the nation under an “elevated terror alert” that the level has been relaxed: 0
Percentage of the amendments in the Bill of Rights that are violated by the USA PATRIOT Act, according to the ACLU: 50
Minimum number of laws that Bush signing statements have exempted his administration from following: 1,069
... and on and on. It's an itemized chronicle of catastrophic mis-government. Read the whole thing, and then print it off and give it to your Republican co-workers.
-A
Occupation is a crime, killing children is a crime - was the chant that filled the downtown streets of Portland Tuesday afternoon, as hundreds of local residents gathered with handmade signs and megaphones to voice their outrage at the Israeli airstrikes on Gaza that have continued for the last four days. 
