Good Stuff

Roxtar muses about Clinton and Bush.
The truth is, the world is the weak. And we're the tyranny of evil men. But we've gotta try harder, Ringo. We've gotta try real hard to be the shepherd again.

Peter Levine muses about King Lear.
"As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods. / They kill us for their sport."

Geoff Manaugh muses about Antarctica's underground cathedral.
A hundred thousand years later, the cathedral reaches the sea, where its vast internal voids are broken open and revealed in the glacial cliff face. Sections of nave and pulpit can be found floating in the water, sculpted rims of prayer-domes drifting north in the smooth surfaces of icebergs. Here and there a complete chapel; elsewhere a crypt, its tombs' chiseled inscriptions melting slowly in the sun.

Bullseye Rooster reflects on faith-based body armor.
Three Marines were killed when a powerful verse from Isaiah 43:2 remained on a server in Maryland and did not reach the Anbar province in a timely manner. The verse, “When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, nor will the flame burn you. For I am the Lord your God” was instead returned to the software company after 48 hours.

Jack Balkin on torture again.
There are many things that are deeply distressing about the Military Commissions Act of 2006. One of the most distressing is its deeply cynical attitude about law. The President has created a new regime in which he is a law unto himself on issues of prisoner interrogations. He decides whether he has violated the laws, and he decides whether to prosecute the people he in turn urges to break the law. And all the while he insists that everything he does is perfectly legal, because, the way the law is designed, there is no one with authority to disagree.

Riverbend is back, thankfully, and writes a post on the Lancet study.
There are Iraqi women who have not shed their black mourning robes since 2003 because each time the end of the proper mourning period comes around, some other relative dies and the countdown begins once again.

Rick Santorum's disease is apparently viral [via Lawyers, Guns, and Money].
And if people remember the wonderful and amazing movie, Deer Hunter, in Western Pennsylvania, there was an understanding of the war even then. It was a controversial movie, and people can have...but this has never been other than a hyper-patriotic state.

Lance Mannion, with more on Lord of the Rings politics.
The Armies of Mordor are mustering to destroy the World of Men, but the Armies of Mordor include men. The Easterlings are not literally enemies from the East. They are not Nazis or the Soviets or the Red Chinese or Islamic terrorists. They are the men of the West, the men of Rohan and Gondor, facing themselves in the mirror, the way West and East face each other across the compass dial not in opposition but as two names for the same ideas, "Where we are" and "Where we are going," with either being either. We could be going one way as easily as we could be going the other.

Bryan Finoki muses about border fences and walls.
So, I ask myself, under what circumstances would a securitized border fence be tolerable? Is it that I'm just opposed to every type of fence or wall out there? I don't think so. And, in fact I can't answer my own question, yet. But, perhaps it has to do with more about the moment when the fence begins to define the context rather than the other way around. Do border fences help address the exodus of the refugee, or only compound it? Do border fences help decide territorial disputes, or contain them in a state of perpetual irresolution?

Pat Lang on the suspension of habeas corpus.
Americans, you are now "subjects" and not citizens. Accept your new role... If you watched Generals Hayden and Pace who were artfully positioned behind the sovereign at the signing, you saw a lot of blinking. They know what they have done... At the end of his program tonight Keith Olberman said to Professor Jonathan Turley, who had commented on the import of the day, "I'll see you in Guantanomo."

Cheryl Rofer posts a timeline on the leadup to North Korea's nuclear test.

SteveG muses about the death of neoconservatism.