Panopticon

Just a few links and announcements:

* I’ve had a generous offer from a reader to match my contribution to the “Punk the NR” contest. I don’t expect anyone to get a letter printed, but if they do, they’ll get a gift certificate for $20 instead of $10, and they’ll be competing for a $40 first prize instead of a $20 one.
* Katherine at Obsidian Wings is taking a break. Entirely understandable, but a shame; her exhaustive blogging on the Maher Arar case is a terrific example of the best of the medium.
* Kevin Drum appears to be seriously moving the ball forward on the AWOL story. (Maybe.)
* Adam Felber has a great post on gay marriage:

We’re all for the separation of church and state, naturally, but if the government doesn’t define marriage as the sacred union between a man and a woman, who will? Are Jeanne and I expected to treasure our union solely on the basis of our deep love, personal beliefs, public vows, and the government’s blessing? Sorry, Judge Pinkypants, but that’s just not good enough. Not for us. We need to know that we’ve got something that’s only available to 90% of the population, the select and upstanding few.

Sure, some of us are criminals. Murderers, even. Some of us have committed rape, beaten children, tattooed swastikas on our bodies, abused animals, broken into houses, bilked the government out of millions of tax dollars, lied under oath, cheated on previous spouses, dishonored our fathers and mothers, failed to keep the Sabbath holy…

But we’re straight, and that means we can get married. And that’s special. Or, at least, it was.

* Gary Farber asks a question that has continued to bother me: since it’s turned out that people like Hans Blix and Joseph Wilson were correct, will any of their critics bother to apologize? (I spent some time earlier this week looking up pre-war quotes about Hans Blix, and actually found myself too depressed to continue. I should note that Andrew Olmstead has said something.)
* I’ve noted before that I don’t think highly of blogger triumphalism. But I defy anyone to compare Dwight Merideth to Maureen Dowd on the infamous Cheney-Scalia duck hunt, and then explain to me why Dowd gets paid for this.
* Finally, is it just me, or has this blog improved tremendously with the addition of John Quiggin? Sorry to get meta, but I’m just so pleased to have him here.