Unqualified Offerings

Suggested by Gary Farber.
Also, feel free to make the case for Opera if you prefer it.

Lily-livered conservative Andrew McCarthy speaks up for bottomless Presidential power to spy on you, and includes a ritual invocation:
It was critical in the Civil War, when, by definition, it was done domestically — and without the slightest suggestion that federal courts should be involved.
I bring this up because it’s worth pointing out that this kind [...]

Aqoul is a new group blog devoted to
a space for reasoned discussion, debate and blithering on about the Middle East, North Africa (MENA) and to a lesser extent other regions associated with Islam. Let us call it “MENA writ large”
And the penis. (”People who don’t even know our names are now aware that we keep [...]

Yglesias:
I’m on record as a “pessimist” in this sense — “The United States lacks the instruments to transform other societies, Fukuyama argues; to build nations you must first build institutions, and nobody knows how to do that.” I would add as a caveat, however, that I don’t really like the “pessimist” label. The flipside of [...]

Heard on the radio this morning that the governors of Pennsylvania and Washington state have already placed the traditional “characteristic products bet” on the Super Bowl. If Pittsburgh wins, the governor of Pennsylvania will receive a bushel of tart red Washington apples; if Seattle wins, he’ll give the governor of Washington a deer that got [...]