Not a joke. The island of Lesbos is suing a Greek gay-right's group over the use of the term 'lesbian'. This fight has long since lost. Nobody thinks "resident of Lesbos" when she hears the word lesbian. Best case, they think Xena. Or of Xena.

Bush is now the most disapproved president in the history of Gallup polling

When you get 98% of historians to declare your term as a failure -- and historians still argue whether or not terms by Buchanan, Grant, Hoover or Nixon were failures or not -- you've achieved something grand. Give this man a prize.

Finally, a scientific explanation for the existence of boy bands.

It's hard to know what ticked him off -- the casual mentions in previous columns or making it a major thesis in his new book. But whatever it was, it started an unusual secret argument that played out on the pages of the New York Times.

Reagan made a speech at Philadelphia, MS. Civil Rights workers were murdered there years ago. Reagan spoke of States' Rights there. But States Rights is code for racism. Reagan must have known, right? Brooks says no, it was a misunderstanding.

2.5 months before Brooks took fire: "Reagan didn’t begin his 1980 campaign with a speech on economics, he began it—at the urging of a young Trent Lott—with a speech supporting states’ rights, where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964.

1.5 months before Brooks: "Thus Ronald Reagan, who began his political career by campaigning against California’s Fair Housing Act, started his 1980 campaign with a speech supporting states’ rights delivered just outside Philadelphia, Miss.

He'd might buy it as a mistake if not for all of the other times Reagan appealed to coded racism. Such as saying the Voting Rights Act humiliated the South. Or fought for Bob Jones Univ and its interracial dating ban. Or fought against MLK day.

Throughout his career, Reagan was wrong, insensitive and mean-spirited on civil rights and other issues important to black people. There is no way for the scribes of today [Brooks] to clean up that dismal record.

Whether or not Reagan himself was racist is immaterial. It's that he pandered to the voters racism to win elections. This is a continuation of the GOP Southern Strategy, which continues to this day.

So you say waterboarding isn't torture? Then why was it illegal?

Thank Comcast for ruining it for everyone. To those Comcastic fools, P2P is not used solely for piracy. As a online gamer on WoW, P2P is how updates are delivered. As a Linux user, P2P is how I get my software.

"What happens when a few media conglomerates control not only what you can watch, but what you can download?"

More Krugman on our brilliant broadband policy.