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Saturday, September 16, 2006

16 Sep 2006 11:53 pm

Quote for the Day II

"Nancy Grace fails the absolute power test. Here it is. If Nancy Grace had absolute power, she could do whatever she wanted. If she were omnipotent, how many people would die? Many," - Tucker Carlson, on his show last month.

16 Sep 2006 09:54 pm

The "Stupid War"

Michael Totten asks the Israeli military historian Yaacov Lozowick about the recent war against Hezbollah. You might be surprised by the response.

16 Sep 2006 08:49 pm

Grace Award Nominee

Well, she created the award, so let's give her the first nomination. In this clip, Nancy Grace defends herself and goes further: suggesting, without any proof, that a dead woman's "guilt" prompted her to commit suicide after Grace's grilling of the woman on CNN. I have no idea what happened to the missing child. More important, neither does Nancy Grace. But the principle of her show is "guilty until proven innocent" and if a jury acquits, "guilty" anyway. This time, a possible suspect is dead possibly because of Grace. And a critical witness is no longer alive to help investigators. If you haven't seen the movie "Network" lately, it's worth renting again.

16 Sep 2006 07:29 pm

The Revolt Against King George

Even the White House's own Office of Legal Counsel is now at war with the Bush-Cheney cabal on interrogation. Money quote from the AP:

The high court's ruling in June, in a case involving Salim Ahmed Hamdan, essentially said that the Geneva Conventions on the rights of wartime prisoners [actually, that should only be Article 3 of those treaties] should apply to the suspected terrorists in CIA custody. That meant that for the first time since the interrogation program was born in 2002, the Justice Department could not give the CIA a written opinion on whether its techniques still were legal. Spy agencies rely on such opinions to justify activities that get little, if any, public scrutiny.

As Marty Lederman explains:

This Administration has been willing to rest its terrorism policies on plenty of unorthodox legal interpretations - such as that that waterboarding is not "torture" - but the ridculous notion that the CIA techniques in question comply with Common Article 3's prohibition on cruel treatment is simply a bridge too far, even for this OLC.

Eventually, even the hand-picked cronies cannot go along with the madness of King George. Thank God that the constitution is not without its allies in the Senate.

(Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty.)

16 Sep 2006 06:28 pm

The Pope's Error

The Times of London points out something that strikes me as important about the Pope's remarks about Islam:

His address is undermined further by a serious error in regards to the Koran. "Sura 2,256 . . . is one of the suras of the early period, when Muhammad was still powerless and under threat." In fact, this sura [Koranic chapter] is held by Muslim scholars to be from the middle period, around the 24th year of Muhammad’s prophethood in 624 or 625, when he was in Medina and in control of a state. Contrary to what the Pope said, this was written when Muhammad was in a position of strength, not weakness.

This undermines the one passage where the Pope clearly speaks in his own words, as I explain below. And it undercuts his point almost completely.

16 Sep 2006 05:23 pm

Quote for the Day

"Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence," - Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam. Somehow, I don't think he quite grasped the irony.

16 Sep 2006 04:59 pm

Bush Fights On For "Waterboarding"

That's the ineluctable conclusion from the president's speech yesterday. Marty Lederman sees through the usual lies and obfuscation:

In a story today, Jeff Smith of the Washington Post quotes one "well-informed source" as saying that the techniques [the president is asking to authorize] "include prolonged sleep deprivation and forced standing or other stress positions," and that the techniques "match the techniques used by the agency in the past," which I describe here.

Smith identifies "a notable exception: The CIA no longer seeks to use a notorious technique called 'waterboarding,' which is meant to simulate drowning." Note the phrasing: Merely that the CIA no longer "seeks to use" waterboarding. Not that waterboarding would be unlawful under the Administration bill. To the contrary, "[p]rivately, the administration has concluded that [enactment of the Bush proposal] would allow the CIA to keep using virtually all the interrogation methods it has employed for the past five years, the officials said." So perhaps, if Congress were to enact the Administration bill, even waterboarding would be back on the table, should the CIA once again "seek to use it."

This is why McCain, Warner, Graham, Powell and every decent, sane conservative with military experience refuse to give in. There is already clarity in the law, the Geneva Convention, and the McCain Amendment. What the Bush administration wants is to introduce vagueness to get away with exactly the same barabarism they have deploying illegally for the past five years. They must be stopped. And eventually, they must be prosecuted for war crimes.

(Photo: David Y. Lee/Time.)

16 Sep 2006 04:47 pm

The View From Your Window

Oxford, Ohio, 10.30 am.

16 Sep 2006 01:20 pm

Emails of the Day

A reader writes:

I'm sorry your soldier is a moron.

Iraqis had a choice, surrender and receive fair and humane treatment. Fight us?  Cross us?  Hide behind civilians?  You will receive no quarter, no kindness, you will forfeit your life and your humanity.

It's imbecilic to think that they surrendered because they knew our kindness.  They surrendered because of the hellatious ass-whomping they would receive.  Prostrate yourself and be treated kindly.

Fight us and die. Those we detain and torture are those that chose the second path. This makes them a good lesson for those contemplating the first.

Well, some Cheney-supporters read this site, don't they? Here's another reader's observations:

I hear the most dreadful things from Americans I'd thought had decency. These are women, mind you, middle aged women who've never known anything but comfort and privilege. They're women who have raised children and done a good job of it, women who do charity work and who go all out to help dogs and cats and any other animal in need.  But they don't see this issue as you and I see it. They talk about the people tortured as if they're not human beings.  They see every Muslim, every Arab, as another species. Their usual term is "scum" but "murdering bastards" is also a favorite. Yes, all of them are guilty, all terrorists. These are women who've traveled extensively, some who were even born in other countries. Thus it's not all foreigners who come under this sub-species heading, only the people they've labeled terrorists without knowing what they're talking about. It's racism at its worst and that, sadly, is what Bush and his cronies are playing to.

None of the people I know who think torture appropriate would admit to being racists, of course. High IQs, high incomes, no brains at all -- or is it no hearts? Perhaps no empathy is the key. To one of them, I said, "This sort of thing can escalate and next they'll be coming for us." She replied, "Oh, for God's sake!" with disgust, the implication being that such methods would never, ever be used for us fair white middle class people.

16 Sep 2006 09:45 am

The Pope and Islam

As I wrote yesterday, I wrote extensively about the Pope's remarkable recent address on reason and faith and Islam as soon as the text was released. You can read my analysis here and here. I do not believe that the issue is an inflammatory quote or some unfortunate misunderstanding. Benedict said something in his own words that are at the center of the controversy:

In the seventh conversation ("di√°lesis" - controversy) edited by professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). The emperor must have known that sura 2:256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion." It is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under [threat]. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Koran, concerning holy war.

The obvious inference from the pope is that the Koran does indeed sanction violence, i.e. "holy war," in the cause of its own religion; and that the passages about peace can be explained in part by the fact that they belong to the early days of Islam, when Muhammed had no other practical option. Subsequently, Muhammed endorsed and practised war. One thing you can say about Jesus: he didn't kill anyone, however bloodthirsty his subsequent followers might have been. Today, in many Muslim countries, apostasy remains subject to the death penalty. That in itself is the use of murderous violence to impose faith. Christianity has, of course, been just as bad in the past. But it has reformed itself. Moreover, the nature of the Muslim revelation, according to Benedict, is that it was God's word channeled unmediated through the Prophet. The Christian tradition of logos or reason does not therefore have the same salience in Islam, according to the Pope. A Muslim reformation, Benedict seems to say, is very unlikely because of the intrinsic irrationality of Islam.

I will pass on the ironies of this Pope commending reason in faith. He has done a great deal to stifle reason within the Church by policing and suppressing free debate. But his fundamental point about Islam and logos cannot be dismissed as a glitch or merely bad manners. I'm not a scholar of Islam and so I am not prepared to say whether his appraisal of the role of reason and violence in Islam is accurate. But it's pretty clear that he's saying something substantive about the core meaning of Islam. And the violent reaction of some Muslims to his address doesn't exactly prove him wrong, does it?

(Photo: Wolfgang Radke/AP.)

16 Sep 2006 12:16 am

YouTube of the Day

Here's a great lesson on how to deal with an asshole with a cell-phone. I feel better for having watched this. Maybe the university is still a healthy place, after all.

Friday, September 15, 2006

15 Sep 2006 10:13 pm

My Take on the Pope

I already blogged his address on Islam, reason and faith here and, especially, here. More tomorrow.

15 Sep 2006 09:15 pm

Farewell, Oriana

I didn't know her, but Michael Ledeen did. Here's his beautiful tribute. Money quote:

Like all creative persons, she was a bundle of contradictions, for those inner turmoils are what drive such people to create. She reveled in her non-conformism and her independence, but she was also profoundly traditional, both privately and intellectually.  She could not bear to live in Italy. She was repulsed by what had happened to her Florence, but she was also intensely Florentine and I never doubted that she would find the strength to go there to die.  She loved to make trouble, even for her family and closest friends, but her thoughtfulness and humanity required her to be close to the family cemetery when she left. She didn't want to be a burden.

Yes, she was a little crazy. But good crazy.

15 Sep 2006 07:38 pm

What We've Lost

A reserve soldier who fought in Iraq writes:

I was deployed in my reserve unit (USMCR) as part of operation Desert Storm and Desert Shield. Marine infantry, and we were on the front lines, supposedly to guard a gunship base, but really, though, the gunships guarded us. 

Not too much later, it was time to take prisoners. One of the platoons went north, and when they came back, there were stories about how Iraqi soldiers lined the roads, trying to surrender. I spent a week guarding Iraqi men in a makeshift prison camp, a way-station really, and more than I could count. They didn't look like they were starving or dehydrated. Apparently, once the ground war began, they just pitched their weapons and headed south at first opportunity. The more I've thought about it, the more I realize that they knew bone deep that they'd get fair treatment. We gave them MREs (with the pork entree's removed) but almost immediately some Special Forces guys arrived and set up a real chow line for them. We gave each man a blanket, (I kept an extra as a souvie) and I think I saw a Special Forces doc giving some of them a once over.

Once, only once, one of them got all irritated and tried to get in one of the Corporal's faces, loud. (I was a lance-corporal). He wouldn't back down, so the Corporal gave him an adjustment, a rifle butt-stroke to his gut, not hard, but he went down.  The Corporal sent me for the medic. The guy was ok, and now calm (or at least understanding the situation), and hand-signed that he was out of smokes and really, really needed one...  Not a bad guy, just stressed-dumb and needing a smoke.  None of the others prisoners in the camp even registered it.

We went north to mop up not long after that. I saw the Iraqi weapons: rocket launchers a little smaller than semi-trailers, hidden in buildings, AKs in piles, big Soviet mortars and anti-tank mines, everywhere but unarmed. They had food too. Pasteurized milk to drink, but most gone bad by then. Some of the mortar rounds were still in crates. They had long trenches that were hard to see in the dunes, bunkers with maps, fire-plans laid out, and blankets, all placed with decent vantage for command and control. They even had wire laid for land-line communications. The point is, they could have fought. Not won, no they couldn't have won, but they could have fought. Instead, they chose to surrender.

Looking back, I think that one of the main drivers in these men's heads was that they knew, absolutely, that they'd get fair treatment from us, the Americans.  We were the good guys. The Iraqis on the line knew they had an out, they had hope, so they could just walk away. (A few did piss themselves when someone told them we were Marines. Go figure.) Still, they knew Americans would be fair, and we were. 

Thinking hard on what I now know of history, psychology, and the meanness of politics, that reputation for fairness was damn near unique in world history. Can you tell me of any major military power that had it?  Ever? France? No. Think Algeria. The UK? Sorry, Northern Ireland, the Boxer Rebellion in China...  China or Russia. I don't think so. But America had it. If those men had even put up token resistance, some of us would not have come back. But they didn't even bother, and surrendered at least in part because of our reputation. Our two hundred year old reputation for being fair and humane and decent. All the way back to George Washington, and from President George H.W. Bush all the way down to a lance-corporal jarhead at the front.

Its gone now, even from me. I can't get past that image of the Iraqi, in the hood with the wires and I'm not what you'd call a sensitive type. You know the picture.  And now we have a total bust-out in the White House, and a bunch of rubber-stamps in the House, trying to make it so that half-drowning people isn't torture.  That hypothermia isn't torture. That degradation isn't torture. We don't have that reputation for fairness anymore. Just the opposite, I think.   And the next real enemy we face will fight like only the cornered and desperate fight. How many Marines' lives will be lost in the war ahead just because of this asshole who never once risked anything for this country?

This president must never be forgiven for what he has done to the reputation of this country.

15 Sep 2006 06:53 pm

Congressional Hair

Radar Online does some investigation of various hair styles on Capitol Hill. My favorite: the "Just Nuts" look.

15 Sep 2006 05:56 pm

"Re-Launching" the Conservative Movement

Michael Crowley notices a sign of the times.

15 Sep 2006 05:47 pm

Baby Day

Glenn Reynolds and I have had our differences. But we have at least one thing to bring us together. Yesterday, we both became uncles. Here's the first guarantee that the Sullivan name will continue on my DNA line. He's called Ben. He looks quite pleased to be here. And he has more hair than I do.

15 Sep 2006 05:20 pm

Dobson's "Gang of Thugs"

The conservative revolt appears to be growing. Here's Dick Armey talking to Ryan Sager:

Where in the hell did this Terri Schiavo thing come from? There’s not a conservative, Constitution-loving, separation-of-powers guy alive in the world that could have wanted that bill on the floor. That was pure, blatant pandering to [Focus on the Family President] James Dobson. That's all that was. It was silly, stupid, and irresponsible. Nobody serious about the Constitution would do that. But the question was will this energize our Christian conservative base for the next election ...

Dobson and his gang of thugs are real nasty bullies. I pray devoutly every day, but being a Christian is no excuse for being stupid. There's a high demagoguery coefficient to issues like prayer in schools. Demagoguery doesn’t work unless it's dumb, shallow as water on a plate. These issues are easy for the intellectually lazy and can appeal to a large demographic. These issues become bigger than life, largely because they're easy. There ain't no thinking.

But there's been a lot of following and excuse-making, hasn't there?

15 Sep 2006 05:13 pm

What's At Stake

Marty Lederman brings light to the detainee debate:

It's important to be clear about one thing: The question is not simply whether, in the abstract, it would be a good or acceptable idea for the United States to use such techniques in certain extreme circumstances on certain detainees. I happen to think that the moral, pragmatic, diplomatic and other costs of doing so greatly outweigh any speculative and uncertain benefits -- but that is obviously a question on which there is substantial public disagreement, much of it quite sincere and serious.

Instead, the question must be placed in its historical and international context -- namely, whether Congress should grant the Executive branch a fairly unbounded discretion to use such techniques where such conduct would place the United States in breach of the Geneva Conventions. And that, of course, changes the calculus considerably. Does Congress really want to make the United States the first nation on earth to specifically provide domestic legal sanction for what would properly and universally be seen as a transparent breach of the minimum, baseline standards for civilized treatment of prisoners established by Common Article 3 -- thereby dealing a grevious blow to the prospect of international adherence to the Geneva Conventions in the future?

That's what is at stake: whether the global super-power, sixty years after helping create the Geneva Convention, now wants formally to legislate that its minimum standards of humane treatment no longer applies to the U.S. and thereby to any other government on earth. The consequences of doing that are so grave - for U.S. troops and for the world at large - that we simply cannot allow it to happen.

15 Sep 2006 02:14 pm

The JAGs

A reader writes:

I agree wholeheartedly with your opinion that the White House's pressure tactics against the JAG chiefs is "breath-taking and shameless." But, the JAG chiefs were not without a choice. If they really felt as strongly about this matter as they seemed to in front of Congress last week, then the only honorable thing for them to do, in my opinion, would have been to resign their commissions in protest, no matter the personal consequences. By signing those letters, the JAG chiefs stained their own honor and violated their sworn oaths to defend the Constitution. We are truly living in dark times when the defenders of our Republic so meekly surrender to the thuggish cabal that currently haunts the White House.

They're also soldiers and were being pressured by their commander-in-chief. Some lee-way is merited, in my view.

15 Sep 2006 01:57 pm

The View From Your Window

Brooklyn, New York, 11 am.

15 Sep 2006 12:53 pm

Left Behind

Islam has its own version of the End-Times. And Ahmadinejad believes the Apocalypse is coming. A fascinating first-person account of how Iran's leadership has fused religious prophecy with political power here. And, yes, it scares the wits out of me as well.

15 Sep 2006 11:49 am

Bush vs Powell and McCain

By chance I bumped into Senator John Warner last night at the fifth anniversary party for the Chris Matthews Show. I was able to go up and shake him warmly by the hand and thank him from the depth of my heart for protecting this country's honor. He replied quite simply: "It's just the right thing for the country." The sight of so many Republican senators and one former secretary of state finally standing up against the brutality and dishonor of this president's military detention policies is a sign of great hope. It turns out there is an opposition in this country - it's called what's left of the sane wing of the GOP. Slowly, real conservatives are speaking out loud what they have long said in private. The apparatchiks of the pro-torture blogosphere can vent, but it is hard to demonize the new opposition as "leftist" or "hysterical." Warner? McCain? Graham? Powell? These men who have served their country are somehow less reliable on matters of war than a man who never went to the war of his own generation and has bungled the two critical wars on his own watch? Please. These men are less serious about confronting terror than Dick Cheney, whose own record of commentary in Iraq would be dismissed as unhinged and absurd if he were a lowly blogger? Please. This should have happened long, long ago - before the explosion in spending, before the conflation of religious dogma with conservative politics, before the reckless indifference toward the immensely challenging task of occupying a foreign country.

But this is not over. There are rumors that if the president and Rove cannot use the torture issue to browbeat Democrats, they will use it to wage war on those few principled conservatives left in their own party. The president may veto a war-crimes bill that actually keeps war crimes illegal. He may still use the issue as a rallying cry for his base, as a way to help turnout in November. He will argue that only he has the cojones to waterboard a terrorist, and that therefore only he can keep America safe. Running on the president's prerogative to torture? Why not? There are no ethical boundaries that this president recognizes in political warfare, just as there are no ethical boundaries he will not cross in actual warfare. Here's the campaign theme:

"I just think John McCain is wrong on this. If we capture bin Laden tomorrow and we have to hold his head under water to find out when the next attack is going to happen, we ought to be able to do it."

This from Pete King, a man who appeased Irish terrorism for much of his political career. I've learned one thing about this administration these past few years: they are capable of pulling any lever, using any tactic, to keep the power they have so arrogantly abused. This is not over. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Addington, Haynes, Cambone, Rove: they're warming up.

(Photo: Daniel Ochodeolza/AP.)

15 Sep 2006 10:57 am

Quote for the Day

"The United States has seen political swings and produced its share of extremists, but its political character, whether liberals or conservatives have been in charge, has always remained fundamentally Burkean. The Constitution itself is a Burkean document, one that slows down decisions to allow for “deliberate sense” and checks and balances. President Bush has nearly upended that tradition, abandoning traditional realism in favor of a warped and incoherent brand of idealism. (No wonder Bush supporter Fred Barnes has praised him as a radical.) At this dangerous point in history, we must depend on the decisions of an astonishingly feckless chief executive: an empty vessel filled with equal parts Rove and Rousseau," - Jeffrey Hart, one of the true intellectual architects of American conservatism in the modern era, calling this president what he is: a dangerous, reckless, ideological incompetent.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

14 Sep 2006 11:02 pm

The Grace Award

More advice from a reader;

One critical aspect of the Nancy Grace Award should clearly be excessive personal attacks. While your awards have got bigotry pretty well covered, Nancy Grace is all about personal attacks more than she is about principle, a sort of savage sadism added to the zeal of her personal righteousness.

Taken under consideration.

14 Sep 2006 10:16 pm

Letter of the Day

14 Sep 2006 09:57 pm

Arianna and Me

PBS asked us both the same questions about the political impact of blogs. You can see our contrasting answers here.

14 Sep 2006 08:40 pm

Photo of the Day

I saw this on the main site of my corporate overlords and it made me both immensely sad and yet also hopeful. It's of a wedding in Iraq by AP photographer, David Guttenfelder. It says more than I can.

14 Sep 2006 07:37 pm

Coercing the JAGs

The White House's last gambit to legalize war crimes was to force the military lawyers to sign a letter disowning their previous opposition to the Bush administration military tribunal and Geneva-breach proposal. The kind of political pressure being applied to the professional military by this administration is breath-taking and shameless. These people are beyond belief. Lindsey Graham is rightly furious. Every tactic this Bush-Cheney crew has deployed to retain the right to torture detainees reveals a president as ruthless and scruple-free as he is incompetent. It's a toxic brew. Here's a critical interchange on the issue from Tony Snow's presser today. The JAG's letter can be read here.

(Hat tip: Josh.)

14 Sep 2006 07:37 pm

Meet The New Liberalism

A large number of American liberals and left-wingers have signed an American version of the Euston Manifesto, dedicated to opposing Islamism, the violence and terrorism it has fomented, and the intolerance and illiberalism at its core. You can read the full text here. Money quote:

We are signers or supporters in the United States of the Euston Manifesto and its reassertion of liberal values. Our views range from those of centrists and independents to liberals of varying hues on to the democratic left. We include supporters of the decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003 as well as people who opposed this war from the beginning. However, we all welcome and are heartened by the decision of the writers of the Euston Manifesto in Britain to reassert and reinvigorate liberal values in the present context. Now we confront the issue of how to respond to radical Islamism. Some of us view this ideology and its political results as the third major form of totalitarian ideology of the last century, after fascism and Nazism, on the one hand, and Communism, on the other. Others regard it as having a history in the Arab and Islamic world that eludes the label of totalitarianism. We all agree however that it fosters dictatorship, terror, anti-Semitism and sexism of a most retrograde kind. We reject its subordination of politics to the dictates of religious fundamentalists as well as its contempt for the role of individual autonomy and rationality in politics, a rejection not seen on this scale in world politics since the 1940s. We understand that the United States must continue to take the lead with our allies in confronting this danger.

14 Sep 2006 07:06 pm

The Heroes

Count them: Republicans John McCain, John Warner, Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins joined with the Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee to vote the Senate bill, retaining Geneva protections, to the full Senate floor. The committee vote was 15 - 9. That's what I'm hearing. Here's the latest news story. More later - because I haven't had a chance to read the small print. But the bottom line is: Rove's gambit may be backfiring - and for the Senate to rebuff the president even as he lobbies them personally is a stunning rebuff, and a victory for American decency and honor. Now Karl Rove will have to win a Republican re-election by campaigning against at least four Republican senators. Stay tuned.

14 Sep 2006 07:06 pm

The View From Your Window

Zurich, Switzerland, 11 am.

14 Sep 2006 06:51 pm

The Grace Award, Finessed

A reader suggests:

A critical component of any Grace Award must include a nauseating level of absolutist self-righteousness on the part of the Nominee. If there's anything that truly gets me about Grace, it's her unflappable self-assurance that her outrage represents the true moral high ground on any issue (regardless of the amount of evidence or counter-evidence backing or contradicting her position).  Most amusing was her seamless flip flop on the guy accused of killing John Benet Ramsey, and the fact that once the guy turned out to be (most likely) innocent, she simply shifted her fury to the DA‚Äôs office for bringing him over from Thailand.   Of course this is not uncommon among prosecutors and police investigators, but to call it journalism is truly embarrassing.

Send a few in and I'll come up with a one-sentence criterion.

14 Sep 2006 06:46 pm

Benedict and Reason

A reader writes:

Like you I too believe "we need to breathe new life into [the rationality of faith] in a world where religion is too often described as an irrational leap or 'submisson' to an illogical God" and I find the Pope's lecture very interesting. But, with his major role in the drafting of Dominus Iesus, I can't help but wonder if we are to hear a double-meaning in his appeal to logos. Specifically, John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word (logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." The Word is, of course, identified with Jesus and has been since the early Church Fathers. Thus, if we read this double meaning into Benedict's lecture, his penultimate sentence takes a different meaning, one which echoes Dominus Iesus and the controversy it generated:

"It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures."

It is to this Christian conception of God as Father and the belief that through his Son, the Word (logos) made flesh, that salvation lies.

In addition this invitation to a "dialogue of cultures" is itself a new and controversial development in interreligious relations between the Church and non-Christian religions. Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald was removed from his post at the Vatican as the president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and was made nuncio to Egypt. At the same time, the PCID was subsumed under the Pontifical Council for Culture. Money quote:

According to several sources, sending Archbishop Fitzgerald from the Vatican to Egypt could signal a shift in the Holy See's approach to dialogue with the other religions, a tougher stance in the relations with Islam, and a greater insistence on evangelization and the preaching of Jesus Christ as the one savior of humanity.

Pope Benedict has made it clear that he does consider true theological dialogue with non-Christian religions impossible (with the exception of Judaism). Instead of theological engagement, he sees only cultural dialogue; this is major shift from Pope John Paul II.

(Photo: The Polish Government.)

14 Sep 2006 06:12 pm

YouTube of the Day

Francis Fukuyama's epiphany - on the Daily Show.

14 Sep 2006 05:14 pm

The End is Nigh

Are you ready? A new report says not:

"Our survey of households in seven U. S. regions demonstrated that few citizens have bothered to equip themselves with fireproof suits and extinguishers to deal with volcanic upheaval, solar flares, or the Lord's purifying flame," Malthusian Institute director James Olheiser said. "Almost no one is prepared for a sudden shift in the Earth's polarity or the eating of the Sun and moon by evil wolves Skol and Hati during Ragnarok."

Olheiser added: "All in all, America gets an 'F' for end-of-the-world preparedness."

More here.

14 Sep 2006 04:17 pm

Powell Comes Through

He did it. This is the quote from Colin Powell, that leftist, terrorist-loving, draft-dodging guy who "doesn't get" the threat from terrorism:

"The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism. To redefine Common Article 3 would add to those doubts. Furthermore, it would put our own troops at risk."

The president has decided to drive a huge divide within his own party in order to make war crimes legal. He must be stopped. And it's a huge deal that even as the president is personally lobbying for the bill, his former secretary of state and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is lobbying against it. Some things matter more than your re-election strategy, Mr President. Why is he going against the advice of the entire military leadership, the most respected Senators on defense matters, and the conscience of his own party? Are the polls that dire?

14 Sep 2006 04:06 pm

A New Award?

A reader suggests:

I suggest you name an award for Nancy Grace. Give it for a lack of grace and empathy. A stunning embrace of crassness and misplaced self-regard are also qualifers. There is a line forming already. Leave Ann Coulter out of this one too to give others a chance.

Maybe it should be awarded solely for cable news or TV horrors. Readers could only nominate for this award from a YouTube, so we can watch the evidence before our eyes. Special points for Hannity and O'Reilly car-wrecks. Grace, Dobbs, Gibson and Cavuto are obviously strong contenders. Let's put it on probation and see if it yields some treasure of dreck. Send in the lowpoints of cable and network news, and nominate them for a Grace Award.

14 Sep 2006 03:01 pm

The Grace-Duckett Interview

Here's the critical part of the Nancy Grace grilling of Melinda Duckett, a woman who subsequently killed herself. Grace went even further and replayed her vicious grilling even after the woman had committed suicide. Make your own mind up whether Grace went way over the line.

14 Sep 2006 02:51 pm

Correction of the Day

"An article in Business Day on Friday reported that the Walton Family Foundation had made contributions to four conservative research groups whose analysts wrote articles favorable to Wal-Mart Stores for newspapers and journals around the country. The Times article said that the groups and their employees had consistently failed to disclose the donations, and it said in the first paragraph that the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research was one of them. But a Manhattan Institute author had told The Times that he had indeed disclosed contributions from the Walton Foundation in an article he wrote, a fact that should have been included in the Times article.

The article also reported that Tim Kane of the Heritage Foundation and Karl Zinsmeister, formerly of the American Enterprise Institute, were among those who wrote articles favorable to Wal-Mart after their foundations received a donation.

Both those groups were called for comment for the Times article. Mr. Kane, who was not called, subsequently said that he did not know about the Walton Family Foundation contribution and that he had criticized Wal-Mart’s call for a higher federal minimum wage in an article he wrote. The Times also did not ask Mr. Zinsmeister to comment, but he declined to do so when reached after the Times article was published. Both Mr. Kane and Mr. Zinsmeister should have been asked to comment before publication." - New York Times, today. Ouch. Hey, you've always got blogs for hard news.

14 Sep 2006 02:46 pm

Yglesias Award Nominee II

"This is not about November 2006. It is not about your election. It is about those who take risks to defend America," - Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, standing up for principle against the administration's attempt to unilaterally rewrite the Geneva Conventions for the election campaign.

14 Sep 2006 02:46 pm

Begala Award Nominee

"The American Airlines ticket agent who checked in Mohammed Atta on 9/11 later committed suicide - unlike the man in charge who, being briefed on the potential threat, told his briefer, 'Okay, you’ve covered your ass,'" - blogger Susie "Suburban Guerrilla" Madrak, linked approvingly on Eschaton. (Hat tip: Brendan.)

14 Sep 2006 01:55 pm

Yglesias Award Nominee

"We're at a tipping point here. We have to do something to favor the new technologies and send a message to American consumers that gasoline prices are going to be systematically higher. A gas tax is a statement from the government that this is an issue of national security and we're going to do something about it," - Mike Jackson, chief executive officer of AutoNation Inc., at the Reuters Autos Summit in Detroit. (For a glossary on the various awards given annually by this blog, click here. And send nominees in!)

14 Sep 2006 01:37 pm

Lysistrata Lives

There really is nothing new on earth - except Aristophanes' comedies turning into contemporary realities.

14 Sep 2006 12:31 pm

Quote for the Day