The Plank

The military was clearly grasping for any signs of success in Iraq in 2003, writes Alyssa Rosenberg, who sifts through the thousands of documents the Defense Department released in response to a New York Times story about a Pentagon public relations effort. Military talking points in 2003 and 2004 called the new Iraqi army a “force for stability” and said members were taught to function as “a multi-ethnic team,” neither true at the time, Rosenberg writes. Turning to the Supreme Court, Josh Patashnik notes that four of the justices recused themselves from a tort claims case because of corporate conflicts of interest, rending the high court unable to hear a case for the first time in recent memory. Three of the four justices held large amounts of stock in the companies involved, prompting Patashnik to wonder why they don’tput their assets into a blind trust or sell the stocks in question.