Various items
(1) Brad R. at Sadly, No surgically (and quite amusingly) dissects one of the most astonishing and disturbing articles I’ve read in some time – a little rant by the always disturbing Ben Shapiro in which he advocates that the Republican Congress enact legislation rendering illegal various statements made by Al Gore, Howard Dean, and John Kerry (among others), and that under this legislation, any American citizen be imprisoned for sedition if they utter such statements which are critical of the Leader and his actions. Seriously.
As easy as it is to scoff at Shapiro and his proposal, I would bet that a majority of Bush followers would favor such legislation, and many of them would enthusiastically favor aggressive application.
(2) It’s not often that one reads anything new on the abortion issue, but Barbara O’Brein has written a thought-provoking post about many of the overlooked philosophical questions concerning the "beginning of life" on which the abortion debate really depends. If nothing else, Barbara’s post illustrates the complexity and impropriety of trying to use the law in order to compel moral behavior – a project that is often depicted as being quite simple even though it is everything but simple.
(3) For quite some time, we’ve been hearing a sea of promises from the White House - which always turn out to be false – about the supposed progression of Iraqi troops to independence. As the Heretik points out, that process is actually moving backwards, and after three full years of our occupying that country, there is not a single Iraqi battalion capable of fighting on its own.
---posted by Glenn Greenwald
