Predictably, I spend good parts of Monday digesting material on the assassination, some of which was thought-provoking, some of which was informative, and some of which was celebratory. All this webstuff had two main effects:

1. Draining some of the U-S-A!-ness from my reaction to the news, and replacing it with a sense of grim satisfaction in seeing the killer killed.
2. A deepening interest in the details of how bin Laden was sheltered within Pakistan (presumably by elements of that country’s government) and how bin Laden was finally tracked down and killed.

Below is some of the more interesting webstuff I’ve seen so far. Other links are welcome.

Barack Obama, announcing bin Laden’s death

For over two decades, bin Laden has been al Qaeda’s leader and symbol, and has continued to plot attacks against our country and our friends and allies. The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al Qaeda.

Yet his death does not mark the end of our effort. There’s no doubt that al Qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us. We must –- and we will — remain vigilant at home and abroad.

As we do, we must also reaffirm that the United States is not –- and never will be -– at war with Islam. I’ve made clear, just as President Bush did shortly after 9/11, that our war is not against Islam. Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own. So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.

Susan Piver, “Osama bin Laden is dead. One Buddhist’s response.”

Osama bin Laden is dead. We killed him. There really was no choice. We were clearly in an “us or them” situation and if we didn’t kill him, he was going to continue to do everything in his power to kill us.

As Buddhists, we are supposed to abhor all killing, but what do you do when someone is trying to kill you? Obviously great theologians have pondered this question for millennia and I’m not going to try to pile on with my point of view, which would be totally useless.

Instead, I’ll pose this question: How do you kill your enemy in a way that puts a stop to violence rather than escalates it?

Steve Coll, “Notes on the Death of Osama bin Laden” (newyorker.com)

After President Obama took office, he and the new Central Intelligence Agency director, Leon Panetta, reorganized the team of analysts devoted to finding Osama bin Laden. The team worked out of ground-floor offices at the Langley headquarters. There were at least two-dozen of them. Some were older analysts who had been part of the C.I.A.’s various bin Laden-hunting efforts going back to the late nineteen-nineties. Others were newer recruits, too young to have been professionally active when bin Laden was first indicted as a fugitive from American justice.

As they reset their work, the analysts studied other long-term international fugitive hunts that had ended successfully, such as the operations that led to the death of the Medellín Cartel leader Pablo Escobar, in 1993. The analysts asked, Where did the breakthroughs in these other hunts come from? What were the clues that made the difference and how were the clues discovered? They tried to identify “signatures” of Osama bin Laden’s life style that might lead to such a clue: prescription medications that he might purchase, hobbies or other habits of shopping or movement that might give him away.

Lynn Sweet, “How the U.S. found, killed Osama bin Laden” (Chicago Sun-Times)

A summary of the planning and execution of the operation in Pakistan, this reads like the pitch for a Hollywood thriller. (I know that’s already a cliché, but nobody’s published a book on the operation yet. Mark Bowden, get moving!)

The inevitable counterreaction (Frank Cerabino, “Bin Laden kill sure to produce ‘The Deathers’”; Palm Beach Post)

If you really do believe that bin Laden is dead, but you don’t want to credit Obama in any way for this, Rush Limbaugh has shown you the way.

The order to kill bin Laden was made only because Obama realized his chances for reelection were slipping, Limbaugh told his audience on Monday.

“If he was a shoo-in for reelection, Osama bin Laden would still be alive today,” Limbaugh said. “There would have been no need to undertake the mission.”

Pointed silliness, part I:

Pointed silliness, part II: Brendon Etter, What Osama Bin Laden Was Probably Doing Right Before He Was Killed

1 – Patiently waiting right in front of that one big window at exactly the agreed upon time for his new buddies to meet him for a couple beers.
2 – Trying one last time to fix that crappy beard trimmer…
5 – Feeding the poor…
8 – Slaughtering the recently fed poor…
11 – Wondering what that sound was.

Unfortunately, we could not fund any of the applicants at the full level. There simply isn’t enough money to go around. This isn’t news – or rather it’s the main focus of news these days: budget cutting, deficits, “austerity,” and all that. While I was disappointed to be unable to help fund the community organizations at 100% of their requests (hell, even 75%!), I was also troubled by three interrelated facts.

First, many of these organizations’ needs are so great now because state and federal funding is declining or even disappearing. Second, many of these organizations’ needs are ludicrously tiny relative to the resources we use on campus – much less the relatively large sums used by public entities (city, state, and federal governments) or, worst of all, are outright wasted by bloated private enterprises. Third and worst, many of these organizations are serving the most vulnerable people in America – and doing it with a bit of money and a ton of effort.

It’s infuriating that our obscenely rich country is so goddamn terrible at providing its citizens with what they need to survive, much less to thrive.

First, last Friday, the Democrats in the House nearly tricked the GOP majority into voting for an even more extreme budget than Paul Ryan’s nutto budget.

Republicans were caught with their pants down Friday when Democrats pulled a fast one on the House floor. In the lead up to a vote on their controversial budget, Republicans nearly zapped it and replaced it with an even more conservative 10-year vision for the country — the right-wing Republican Study Committee’s budget alternative.

To recap, Democrats took a flyer.

They waited until the last minute, and then voted “present” on the RSC plan. That put the question of whether to swap out Paul Ryan’s plan for the RSC’s in GOP hands. At the last moment, Republicans realized that a majority of their party had voted for the farther-reaching budget and had to whip votes backwards to prevent it from passing accidentally. It was quite a scene.

Second,a freshman GOP representative from California seems to not quite understand the idea of “return on investment.”

A freshman California lawmaker made a big splash but barely broke even at a glitzy and controversial January GOP fundraiser featuring country singer Leann Rimes, new campaign filings show. Celebrity, it seems, comes at a cost. Rimes and her entourage made out well at the Jan. 4 fundraiser that served as Republican Rep. Jeff Denham’s big political debut in Washington. Between assorted fees, flowers, catering and other costs, Denham’s special fundraising committee reported spending $212,250 on the Rimes event. The committee, meanwhile, raised only $212,900 from outside contributors. Add it all up, and Denham’s special committee spent nearly a quarter of a million dollars to net a grand total of $650 in outside contributions.

Last, Michele Bachmann’s profile is now high enough that the German newspaper Spiegel interviewed her, capturing some of that special MN-6 crazy:

Spiegel: Last week, you voted against the budget compromise for 2011. The budget includes cuts worth $38 billion. Why are you so opposed?

Bachmann: The deal that was reached is a disappointment for me and for millions of Americans who expected $100 billion in cuts. Instead, we’ve been asked to settle for $39 billion in cuts. We’re missing the mandate given us by voters last November.

Spiegel: How deep would you like to see the cuts ultimately be?

Bachmann: I think that my opinion has been from the beginning that we need to have a defunding of Obamacare in any final agreement. There is no other issue like Obamacare that has unified people across America. We’re talking Democrats, independents, apolitical people, Libertarians, Republicans. All people want to see Obamacare defunded.

Spiegel: Yet the majority of Americans support the idea of universal health care.

Bachmann: Obamacare is a crime against democracy because a material part of that bill was not disclosed to the Senate nor to the House of Representatives. The funding was hidden in the bill. That was fraud and I can’t vote for any budget that fails to bring back that money from Obamacare.

Spiegel: The US is currently struggling with an unemployment rate of 8.8 percent. If the government slashes spending to the degree that you wish, would it not lead to a loss of jobs?

Bachmann: Job creation comes from the private sector. Job creation doesn’t come from the federal government creating more jobs.

Spiegel: But when the government slashes spending, jobs are lost.

Bachmann: Not at all. I do not believe that that is true. I think that the private sector will get a signal that they will be able to keep more of their money.

All of this goes to demonstrate one of the towering stupidities of American society: that the teachers who are literally responsible for shaping the next generations of Americans are grossly undervalued, both in absolute terms and in relative terms. I don’t think it’s excessively hyperbolic to say that any one of those elementary-school teachers does more good for America in a week than a Wall Street banker does in a year.

Though of course I’m eager to see Sotomayor confirmed – for political and sociological reasons as well as judicial and legal ones – I can’t quite decide which is a worse symptom of the Republic’s political health. On the one side, we have powerful white men who belong to a venerable party that was founded, in part, to pursue a form of racial equality now embarrassing themselves with borderline-racist attacks on someone who – but for the color of her skin and maybe her gender – exemplifies every up-by-your-bootstraps story they love to tell. On the other hand, we have powerful white men and women (Feinstein and Klobuchar!) having to assert, with the backing of an Everest of evidence but against shrill cries from the American Falangists, that Sotomayor can, in fact, do the job that her entire professional adult life has led toward.

Sigh. Patrick Leahy, don’t fail me now.

And Jeff Sessions? Here’s my favorite tweet of the day:

RT @KagroX: Hilarious to hear Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III of AL decry Sotomayor’s reference to “heritage.” Never happens in Alabama.

The corollary is that some of us in the “First World” are so enamored of the idea of tweeting the revolution because we are so enamored of tweeting to begin with: we’re seeing what we hope to see and can see (through tweet aggregators like Twazzup, for instance), not necessarily what’s really happening in Iran.

And but so, for my money the medium that’s really showing us what’s going on in the Islamic Republic is the same one that’s been showing us world-shaking events since the 1860s: photography. And nobody does the photo-essay thing better than Boston.com’s incredible “Big Picture” feature. Today’s series on the protests in Iran is nothing less than breathtaking. I can barely stand to look at this shot, for instance:

"A supporter of defeated presidential candidate Mousavi is beaten by government security men as fellow supporters come to his aid during riots in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, June 14, 2009. (AP Photo)"