Unqualified Offerings

Doug Feith has made a “personal and family reasons” decision. Alas, he is unlikely to live out the rest of his days in bitter obscurity or rueful reclusiveness. He’ll slide back into a foundation sinecure until the wind changes, maybe amuse himself trying to torpedo the latest chance for Israeli-Palestinian peace in the meanwhile.
Always welcome [...]

Doug Feith has made a “personal and family reasons” decision. Alas, he is unlikely to live out the rest of his days in bitter obscurity or rueful reclusiveness. He’ll slide back into a foundation sinecure until the wind changes, maybe amuse himself trying to torpedo the latest chance for Israeli-Palestinian peace in the meanwhile.
Always welcome [...]

All eight Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted against Alberto Gonzalez. On the Blame Where Blame Is Due front, all ten Republicans voted in favor.

The entire first issue of the NYU Journal of Law & Liberty is online free. Via the Modulator.

Have you noticed how hawkish blog discussion of our treatment of detainees and prisoners often features the word torture surrounded by scare-quotes? Well, the “torture” incidents that Nobody’s Business exhumes from various official reports and news accounts are pretty darn “scary.”
“[T]he photos and videos so far unreleased by the Pentagon show American soldiers ‘having sex [...]

Alina Stefanescu talks to the bot flavor of the month. Verdict?
U> yes
A> On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you grade my ability to hold a humanlike conversation? (1=terrible, 10=excellent).
U> 5, but humanity is highly overrated and overwrought
A> Well, neither here nor there. I guess I’ll have to try harder. What would you [...]

Apparently we had a little problem with the silo doors on 200 of our missiles in Montana last Friday – the things flew open. Silo doors are something other countries watch with spy satellites because one takes a dim view of silo doors popping open: they’re only supposed to open when missiles are about to [...]

Back from the latest of the secret missions that takes him away from blogging now and then, BruceR of Flit gets into the “necessary wars” discussion. As a Canadian, he’s actually too kind to the US in his discussion of the causes of the War of 1812, since I think it’s pretty well established that [...]

Comic Book Resources has a critique of blogs that actually doesn’t suck. It’s a reprinted and presumably edited-into-shape e-mail exchange between authors Joe Casey and Matt Fraction. What distinguishes it from other news-site blog critiques is that it shows some knowledge of the history of the medium, sympathy for the undertaking and a lack of [...]

Stuff I noticed in my reading the last couple of days, with lightning reactions to same.
Abu Aardvark noticed a peculiarity of the Bush inaugura speechl:
. . . it’s all about liberty and freedom, about helping others to “find their own voice”, about human dignity (although he oddly avoids using the phrase “human rights”), about [...]