Unqualified Offerings

The early reporting on this battle near Najaf today looks pretty implausible. See the Washington Post, the Daily Star and the Boston Herald for starters. I can buy the idea that there were Sunni insurgents gathering to attack Ashura pilgrims in or near Najaf. I can buy the idea that the Iraqi police caught on [...]

This is by Thoreau, not Jim
So, this morning in Sunday school I was telling the first graders about the Prayer of Saint Francis.
One of my students, in response to the parts about “It is in pardoning that we are pardoned” and “Make me an instrument of Your peace” said that the President should stop fighting [...]

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad interviews a Mahdi Army platoon commander about his lucrative kidnapping and killing racket. It’s all good:
“We ask the families of the terrorists for ransom money,” said Fadhel. “And after they pay the ransom we kill them anyway.”
There’s a lot more to the piece, including the Origin of Fadhel. (His family lived in a [...]

Walter in Denver takes on the vicious John Hawkins drug war apologia that Mona linked to earlier.

Jeff Stein writes about the burgeoning yet inconsequential army of “national security undead,” the whistleblowers and critics cut loose from their careers for dissenting on aspects of post-9/11 war and intelligence policy. It’s a good story, whose chief takeaway is that in important respects there is no story:
During the Vietnam war, a single national security [...]

So I kept to my plan of catching the new Heroes on SciFi Channel Friday at 7, since I missed it Monday night while watching 24. This is a workable method anyone without video recording capability can follow to keep up with both series. But . . .
I like Heroes a lot better than 24.
God [...]

I never went to see the 1992 movie Lorenzo’s Oil because the previews painted it pretty clearly as an anti-science quackfest. American movies hate the brain. Hollywood wants you to use the Force. The film version of Searching for Bobby Fischer treats public park chess and tournament chess as a dichotomy, romance and instinct on [...]

By Mona
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Pete Guither tears his hair out examining a Human Events piece by Bush-worshipper and ardent drug warrior John Hawkins, a truly imbecilic rant (Hawkins relies on that outstanding authority for all things, Ann Coulter) in defense of criminalizing substances the state dislikes. Hawkins attacks libertarians, and declares that then-”Drug Czar” Bill [...]