Mormon crickets: If you live, say, anywhere in the American West, you know these horrifying animals as a persistent cannibal scourge that can form a phalanx a mile across and two miles long, marching through the desert in search of food. If you are a senator “from” Arizona who grew up in Virginia and spent most of his life in Washington D.C., they are a punch line to a terrible joke. MORE »

• ‘INSECTS PLACED IN A CONFINEMENT BOX’: We made a light joke earlier about Glenn Greenwald goin’ nuts with the highlighter on those four Bush Administration torture memos released today — almost completely unredacted — and man, he did just that. You are required to read some of the shit in these memos. This is our CIA’s War on Terror? Throwing a dumb caterpillar in a dark box but telling the detainees it’s a killer scorpion that will poison their butts? This isn’t SUMMER CAMP. [Glenn Greenwald]