The Onion writing for the LA Times?

Here's the headline from an article about China from today's LA Times:

China shows caution on executions
Facing pressure before the Olympics, Beijing's policy is to 'kill fewer, kill carefully.'

The photograph and caption that accompany the article were also apparently written by staffers at The Onion.

Except, of course, that this isn't actually dark humor but real news. Boy, do I hate the death penalty.

New Hampshire Debates

Well, for the first time in this primary season I actually watched the debates last night. (Previously, I'd felt like there were just too many candidates on the stage for me to get a real sense of any of them.) I think it was really helpful to finally sit down and get a sense of what each candidate was like (especially on the Republican side: I've been largely ignoring the details of that race so far). And the debate format this time was interesting: very conversational as compared with most Presidential debates that I've seen (with explicit encouragement for the candidates to directly address each other on stage).

( On to too many specific comments... )

In the end, I remained firmly in Obama's camp. There may have been some confirmation bias to that; it's hard to avoid, especially when a debate presents a lot to like and dislike about each candidate. But pretty much everything that Obama said made sense to me, and I came away with a sense that he had thought deeply about every issue that was raised (and that his way of thinking about them and his preferred answers were not too different from my own: I would trust him to make wise choices). At the same time, I felt like he was capable of the strength and confidence and leadership that we always need in a President. And I think he has as good a chance as anybody to reduce (at least a little) the deep partisan divide in this country, which I like to think could give him a greater mandate to create lasting improvements in how our nation addresses the issues of the day.

So I wish Barack Obama good luck in New Hampshire, and I fully expect that he will have my vote when he shows up on my ballot. As usual.