Thomas Jefferson's Rough Draft of the Declaration of Independence

Remember, when we see the (glorious) finished product, we see only the final result of a long, arduous process of writing and editing and rewriting and re-editing and compromise and debate. Here is a rough draft of the Declaration of Independence!

An Author Considers How to Create Characters

Fascinating read.  Here's a bit of it:

"... your bad guys need to be great. They need to be so interesting that they potentially upstage your good guys. Hans Gruber versus John McClane. I’m rooting for McClane, but Hans steals every scene with his casual, clever villainy (best Christmas movie ever, by the way). "

If you don't think Die Hard is a Christmas movie, then I have nothing to say to you.

New Front-Runner For Stupidest Utterance of the Year

I had thought the "libertarians are power-hungry Communists" piece was pretty unassailable as the dumbest, most ludicrous piece of the year, but I think we have a new front-runner. Via Twitchy, I point you to this: "What ISIS gets wrong about the Caliphate."  Seriously?  A bunch of Western libs messing around on the Internet is going to "explain" to ISIS how they're doing it wrong?

What ISIS gets wrong about the Caliphate: http://t.co/ApPLMNmM9n
— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) August 8, 2014

As for the "article" itself, it's so badly written in terms of style (let's not even touch substance) that I laughed. Here's an example:

The present-day Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in declaring himself a caliph and his terrorist mini-state a caliphate, is communicating that he believes he is fighting on behalf of all Muslims worldwide (he does not count Shia Muslims in this, only Sunnis) and that he is the representative of God on earth. He is also sort of suggesting a desire to continue ISIS's advance until he has conquered all Muslim-majority lands, which is an aspiration that's hinted at frequently in jihadist maps of a unified Islamic empire ...

This is freshman-level writing.  At best.