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Opinion: May 10 buzz: Jonah Goldberg backlash; Midwest flooding

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Most viewed and commented: Why the hurry to gloat about Bin Laden?

Jonah Goldberg, none too pleased about the timing of President Obama’s announcement on Osama bin Laden’s slaying, begins his weekly column like this --

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For a week people have been asking, ‘Why won’t the president release Osama bin Laden’s photo?’ That’s the wrong question. We should be asking, ‘Why was Barack Obama in such a hurry to tell us Bin Laden was dead?’

And compares the speech to --

It’s a bit like racing to the microphones to announce you’ve stolen the other team’s playbook even before you’ve had a chance to use the information in the big game.

And laments --

The White House says the information in Bin Laden’s compound is the equivalent of a ‘small college library,’ potentially containing incalculably valuable and unique data on Al Qaeda operations, personnel and methods.

There’s quite a bit of backlash on the discussion board, including:

Lighten up, Obama haters. As a Republican and frequent critic of our sitting President, I commend him for taking out Bin Laden the way he did, and it was an event worthy of immediate presentation. There would be little to no value in waiting, it would have only brought out more of the conspiracy whackos, and a Republican president would have certainly made the same real-time announcement. While I don’t agree with some of the post-raid actions, this is one instance in which the President showed some leadership for a change. --TimBowman We take out Osama in a suburb 35 miles from Islamabad and Goldberg expects that to remain a secret? The Pakistani military was already scrambling F-16s before we got out of their air space. This may be the dumbest attempt to complain about the killing of Osama bin Laden that I’ve read so far -- and there have been many dumb attempts. If Bush had taken out Osama, these partisans would have been gushing and accusing any complainers of being un-American. -- abc-Ed

Most shared: Climate change and the flood this time

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In Pakistan, Australia and now the center of the North American continent, we’re getting a powerful taste of what global warming feels like in its early stages, writes Bill McKibben, a scholar in residence at MiddleburyCollege and founder of 350.org.

There are no grounds for optimism in this fight against the weather. So far we’ve only increased the temperature of the planet about a degree, and that’s been enough to set the Arctic to melting, turn the ocean 30% more acidic and make the atmosphere about 4% wetter, loading the dice for floods. Climatologists predict that unless we kick oil, gas and coal habits very, very fast, the increase in temperature will be 4 or 5 degrees before the century is out. If one degree does the damage we’re seeing at the moment, we’d be fools to find out what 4 degrees will look like.

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