Did you know that Wednesday was the 60th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions? Neither did we! Funny how everyone overlooked it.

Interrogation Inc.: 2 U.S. Architects of Harsh Tactics in 9/11’s Wake [NYT]

All the Vice President’s Men [Stinque]

Traveling wingnut buskers provide welcome entertainment for the true-blue crowd.

Despite Duke Cunningham, and the Minutemen, and Mission Accomplished celebrated in the waters off our shore, Sandy Eggo is no Orange County. Our local Congresscritter is a Demrat, and when we heard she was holding a health-care Town Hall Tuesday night, we feared the worst.

Which is to say, we feared nothing would happen.

And we were right.

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As our crack Canadian Investigative Team exclusively! reported Monday, there appears to be a crack in the Globe’s exclusive! report that Barack Obama was exclusively! born in Vancouver.

Here, via WorldNetDaily’s exclusive! report on the Globe’s exclusive!, is the troublesome passage:

The Globe also quotes Canadian broadcaster Brian Barron as saying Obama’s mother gave birth to the child in Vancouver, Canada, before transferring as a student to the University of Washington in Seattle.

Just one problem: Nobody can find Canadian broadcaster Brian Barron.

Let’s review some candidates:

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WorldNetDaily, master of the paranoid style in American blogging, is bringing back a Golden Oldie for the dog days of summer:

An ad campaign featured on a U.S. Army website seeking those who would be interested in being an “Internment/Resettlement” specialist is raising alarms across the country, generating concerns that there is some truth in those theories about domestic detention camps, a roundup of dissidents and a crackdown on “threatening” conservatives.

How they manage to fear a government they say can’t run a car-rebate program, much less socialized health care, is beyond us.

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American life expectancy is ranked 47th in the world. Our infant-mortality rate ranks 43rd. We spend twice as much on health care per capita than any other country. Half our bankruptcies are due to medical expenses. Medicare operates with a 3 percent overhead, compared to 16 percent for nonprofits and 26 percent for private insurers.

And yet we love our insurance companies.

We love them for the coverage they deny us. We love them for their refusal to pay the claims we file. We love them for jacking our premiums 87 percent since 2000. We love them for the enormous profits they make, instead of wasting that money on our health.

We love our insurance companies to death.

The purpose of the Darwin Awards is to celebrate people who, by dint of their own stupidity, remove themselves from the gene pool. Although we do not control the nominations, we nevertheless proclaim a special collective 2009 Darwin Award for the American public. You may collect your trophy at your local town hall meeting. Careful you don’t get hit by a bus.

Health Care Statistics in the United States [HealthPAConline]

Whenever we see an ad like this, we can’t help but imagine the pitch meeting behind it. Thoughts that, in this case, are shoved aside by the knowledge that this is our mother’s favorite mayo. Which in turn brings back ugly repressed memories of white-on-white-on-white lunches.

No sale, dudes. If you want to update a dowdy brand, call Bruce Campbell and get back to us.

We wish we could get excited about the Gallup map making the rounds this week — the product of 160,236 phoners over the first half of 2009.

The bright colors represent states where one party enjoys at least a 10 percent advantage in voter self-identification. Contrary to conventional wisdom, only the Mountain West remains solidly wingnut — even the South is in play.

So why aren’t we celebrating? The Democrats have the most promising opportunity in our adult life, and they still can’t get shit done. Why not? No, it’s not the GOP pushback, or the lobbying money, or even Fox News.

The answer instead is very simple, and very depressing: They’re fucking cowards.

Political Party Affiliation: 30 States Blue, 4 Red in ’09 So Far [Gallup]