In case you missed it, the popular right-libertarian blog QandO has recently written a detailed post in opposition to torture by U.S. forces. An excerpt:
Torture and abuse is not just a moral or legal failure. It is a strategic failure in the War on Terror. Certainly, we will never be nice enough to convince Zarqawi—and the ~20,000 like him—to stop killing Americans. But there are another 55 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan who may still be convinced of our moral superiority to the Islamic fundamentalists, the terrorists and their ilk; another 55 million people whose hearts and minds may still be won.
[click to continue…]
Following a link to James Taranto from Pandagon, I find that Taranto got paid for writing this:
The Associated Press dispatch in which we found the original Kerry quote also includes this one:
“The fact is, 10 million more Americans voted for our idea of what we wanted to do than voted for Bill Clinton in 1996 when he was the sitting president of the United States,” Kerry said. “The fact is, a million people volunteered. The fact is, across America we created an energy.”
“We created an energy”? But the first law of thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. So much for the Democrats’ claim to be the party of science.
Well, there goes that.
I am very, very sorry that it took me so long to pull this together. Many thanks to Anthony at Things You Don’t Talk About in Polite Company for the name, and many thanks to those who emailed. Newish bloggers, I’m going to do this again in two or three weeks, and I’d love to hear from you about your best posts. Opinions expressed are not necessarily mine.
Mark Thoma at Economist’s View has a terrific basic-principles primer about The Need for Social Insurance.
Charles Norman Todd at Freiheit und Wissen compares the Bush administration’s treatment of two different Latin American governments in Guatemala and Venezuela: Two Models for U.S. Diplomacy. He also edits the Carnival of the Un-Capitalists:
Our Carnival is not meant to be anti-capitalist. Rather, we are just trying to gather the best economic posts from the left on issues ranging from globalization and neoliberalism, to income disparity, free-trade, corporate malfeasance, etc, and so on.
Patrick Smith at Tiberius and Gaius Speaking… is likely to get some angry comments about Is the Republican Party truly fascist?
Wufnik at Bazzfazz is an American ex-pat in the London. He’s got an interesting post on Team Horowitz’s take on European anti-Americanism:
American xenophobia.
Delicious Pundit has a nice metaphor going on in The martini of public policy.
Nick at News From Beyond The North Wind writes about Cumbrian company towns in These Preterite Shoes.
Chase McInerney at Cutting to the Chase is a freelance journalist in Oklahoma; he writes In Defense of Newsweek.
by Kieran Healy on June 1, 2005
Josh Marshall’s new venture, “TPM Cafe”:http://www.tpmcafe.com/ is up and running, as you probably know. It’s a cross between a group blog and something like the Daily Kos model of a community website. Best of luck to them, and hopefully once they find their groove they will lay off the “Pull up a chair” stuff.