"This was the voice of moderation until 13 Sept, 2025"
by Eric Martin Daniel Larison neatly disposes of the latest version of the neo-conservative argument that terrorists hate us for our freedoms/morality – the Sayyid Qutb edition. …[T]he decadence-as-cause-of-terrorism argument grossly exaggerates the importance of such cultural factors in explaining jihadist violence as a way of distracting us from remediable political grievances. In fact, attacks on … Read more
by Cheryl Rofer I’m hearing a certain amount of grousing that New START doesn’t take the numbers down enough. In one sense, that’s true. The United States and Russia will still have thousands of nuclear weapons, although once the reductions are in place, the numbers may go below ten thousand each, total, for the first … Read more
by Eric Martin There are some interesting, if extremely disturbing, developments stemming from the legal process surrounding alleged al-Qaeda operative, and Gitmo prisoner, Abu Zubaydah: Attorneys defending Abu Zubaydah, a Guantanamo prisoner designated as the first "high-value" detainee by the Bush administration, have finally gained access to three volumes of diaries he wrote while he was in the … Read more
by Cheryl Rofer Apparently that is what the administration is calling the new arms control treaty with Russia, and the acronym is appropriate. Arms control was badly neglected during the Bush administration, despite the negotiation of the Moscow Treaty, which brought the number of deployed strategic weapons down to 2,200 for each side. That treaty … Read more
by von Here begins the ramble. I don't have an opinion about this quite yet. No, that's a lie. I do have an opinion. I think that it's a good thing. Because a change, even if messy, sets the precedent that Iraq needs. And because there are elements in the current Iraqi government that we and the … Read more
by Eric Martin Being a lazy blogger, I don't have time to give either of these two pieces the full treatment they deserve, but still, they are worthy of wider circulation, and so a little linkage. No, not that kind of "linkage." First, Billmon – this time riffing on the nature of misinformation campaigns, with … Read more
by von The best way to get to/from the airport and downtown Minneapolis is the light rail. The YMCA in downtown Grand Rapids (MI) is better than the nearly all the health clubs in Manhattan. A good place to stay if you're in Manhattan is the W-The Court at 39th and Lexington. In San Francisco, I'm partial … Read more
by Eric Martin My friends, we call this putting my country first in a patriotic bout of supporting the troops: Carl Levin, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, begged the Senate to allow him to go ahead and hear testimony from military commanders who had come from as far as South Korea to talk … Read more
by Eric Martin The individual mandate – the requirement that every adult individual has health insurance – is certainly the most controversial aspect of the current HCR legislation that is being finalized through reconciliation. Republican leaders are attacking this provision as a fundamental violation of individual liberty, and have urged state attorneys general to join … Read more
by Eric Martin Where have all the cowboys gone? (via Sean Paul Kelly) For months, Wall Street banks and the troubled automakers feverishly protested that their top executives would flee if they were not lavishly rewarded for their talents. New data, however, suggests the departures were more of a trickle than a flood, Eric Dash … Read more