"This was the voice of moderation until 13 Sept, 2025"
Sebastian An interesting quote: If the new Moore-standard says you can be a force for good even if you argue through half-truths, guilt-by-association and innuendo, then the case against Joe McCarthy evaporates entirely. He did, after all, have the larger truths on his side. This is a truly fun parallel. Surely we can agree that Communism … Read more
Over at Crooked Timber, dsquared has a particularly bad defense of Moore’s film: The big advantage of the “he’s implying this without saying it” critique, and the main reason I use I myself so often, is that since he isn’t saying it, you can chosse for yourself what you want to claim he’s implying. For … Read more
At a pool party a friend was talking about how Michael Moore’s new movie taught him so much. I sighed, asked what he learned, and cringed as he told me about pipelines through Afghanistan, Saudis leaving while everyone else was grounded, and congressmen who wouldn’t talk about sons and daughters dying in Iraq. He also … Read more
Pejmanesque has an excellent round-up of the Supreme Court’s recent enemy combatant cases. He has one point which I want to highlight because it addresses a concern that I often have about the court: Justice O’Connor then goes on to find that Hamdi has the right to contest his status as an enemy combatant before … Read more
Yesterday there was much talk across the blogosphere about Chirac and Bush’s public exchange of words regarding Turkey and the EU. But Chirac did something far more damaging than that. He has blocked the deployment of NATO troops to safeguard the elections in Afghanistan. (Rueters cite): France has blocked a U.S. bid to deploy NATO’s … Read more
Via Pejmanesque I find this article on the Iranian nuclear program: NINE MONTHS AGO, as a confrontation loomed between Iran and the United Nations over Iran’s illicit nuclear programs, three European governments staged a preemptive operation. Flying to Tehran, the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany struck a deal with Iran’s Islamic regime: The … Read more
“Russian President Vladimir V. Putin said Friday that his intelligence services had received several reports before the war last year that Iraq was planning terrorist attacks against U.S. targets.” LA TIMES cite. When I read that I wondered how it would be dealt with by those who think that Iraq wouldn’t engage in anti-US terrorism. … Read more
This Crooked Timber post reminds me of something that has annoyed me recently: the idea that from the liberal perspective abortion arguments and stem cell research are closely linked. The post is technically about the idea of Kerry being denied communion because of his pro-choice and stem cell research stances. I’m not Catholic, so I … Read more
The torture memo is being adequately covered in its details all over the net (including by co-bloggers at ObsidianWings. So instead of hashing through all the little reasons why it is wrong, I want to focus on the systemic reasons why it is wrong and why even if it were legally correct (which I do … Read more
There are certainly some reasonable arguments against the war in Iraq. But I must admit that the unreasonable ones absolutely drive me nuts. A perfect example of an unreasonable argument is found by Daniel Davies at the high profile academic blog Crooked Timber. He has repeatedly claimed to be merely against the unilateral U.S. war … Read more