49 Years Ago the 49th Joined:

Forty-nine years ago today, Alaska joined the Union as the 49th state. Back in 1959, the country was in the midst of the Cold War, but regardless of the political hype about the perceived threat of nuclear attack, the real concern of that day was how to arrange the stars in the flag. As I can personally testify, we were almost as stupid under Eisenhower as we are today under What'shisname.

More wit from the same: "We need to apply twenty-first century information technology to the healthcare field. We need to have our medical records put on the I. T." — G. W. Bush, Collinsville, Illinois, January 2005.

Today's Top Story: Criminal Inquiry into C. I. A. Tape Erasures:

Everybody and their brothers are talking about the Justice Department's inquiry into the destruction into the C. I. A. videotapes (see the Times article) that showed agents torturing people following 9/11. The question is will this simply be another whitewash like the 9/11 Commission itself, which, as you no doubt recall, was simply a venue for the Administration to cover up its ineptitude.

The Real Top Story:

While the Justice Department's investigation of the C. I. A. garners headlines with its supposed potential to lead to criminal convictions of a president and his vice (it should but it's not gonna happen), the issue that will affect us all appears in today's Washington Post. It is the economy, stupid. Neil Irwin points out that we are facing that godawfull bugaboo of the Nixon and Carter administrations, stagflation, that state of the economy wherein both inflation and stagnant economic growth occur.