Daily Bloggerback
Best of Blogs Round-Up: Thursday, February 9
Candide's Notebooks

Non-disclaimer: We're liberal to the core, but we include in this daily blog review the political, the social, the cultural and the undefinable from the left, the right, the in-between from all over the globe. And we're suckers for good writing regardless of ideology. Clicking the link will take you to the original post.

• From Israel: Outrage at Ammona evacuation’s brutality
• Europhobia on the UK aping the Pentagon’s descent into lawlessness
• Bill O’Reilly declines Nick Kristoff’s invitation to join him in Darfur
• NSA expands, centralizes domestic spying
• Loopholes in torture law redefine constitution
• Buzzmachine on AP’s “offensive” refusal to run Mohammed cartoons
• Digby on right-wing “outrage” over the King funeral
• Brad DeLong: Jonah “Great-Plains” Goldberg “Stupidest Man Alive”
• Instapundit on Democrats losing momentum for 2006
• Wayne Besen writes of Kanab, Utah, where bashers and quivers roam
• Emma Thompson inaugurates Virtual Anne Frank Tree
• Intelligence as a curse
• How to foil the PDA police in India: rent a Burqah
• From South Africa, an original way to advertise against music piracy
• Consumption and happiness: how much is enough?
• Andrés Gentry on the phenomenon of telenovelas (Spanish soaps)

Featured Blog I: Insanity's ABCs
The Bush Alphabet
Jo Fish, Democratic Veteran
February 7, 2006

Just released, the new Alphabet (Alfabit) according to Preznit Incredibly Ignorant.

A is for Absolute Fiscal Insanity
B is for Business's I ran into the ground
C is for Cheney the self-selected evil dwarf
D is for Destroying the Social Contract
E is for Egregiously ignoring congress
F is for Felonies I have committed
G is for Grand Juries that will ensure I'm acquitted
H is for Hack Political Cronies
I is for Ignorant Political Cronies
J is for Justice Denied
K is for K is for Karl, or K-street with loot
L is for Larceny, our strongest suit
M is for McClellan who lies without conscience
N is for the Noise Machine, he's always playing
O is for Obstruction of Justice
P is for Politics over Policy
Q is for Queers. Outlaw them! Marginalize them!!
R is for Religious Right, so vital yet so stupid (see Q above)
S is for Science. Hate it. Read the rest at Democratic Veteran...

Featured Blogger II: Freedom's Dissonant Ring
Desecration from Mohammed to the Star Spangled Banner
Eugene Volokh /February 8, 2006

A commenter (Porkchop) raises a great point:

Republication of the cartoons boils down to this: Depicting Mohammed in violation of Muslim tenets strikes a blow at the very heart of Islamic beliefs, and and such sacrilegious desecration of their beliefs is so offensive and hurtful that it simply should not be allowed, even under the guise of "free speech." Personally, I don't buy into that, but here's a question for discussion: Isn't this the same argument advanced in the United States by those who want a constitutional amendment (and implementing federal and state statutes) to ban the burning or other desecration of the flag of the United States? Can one support the right to publish the cartoons and also support a flag-burning amendment? If so, how does one distinguish between the two?

One can naturally come up with some distinctions -- among other things, banning all depictions of Mohammed burdens a wider range of speech (e.g., pretty much any film biography of Mohammed) than banning flagburning would -- but I think that on balance these distinctions are unpersuasive. If you want to credibly say to Muslims that they have to tolerate offense to their sacred symbols, you have to tolerate offense to your own sacred symbols, too. Conversely, as I've argued before, allowing flagburning bans seems likely to help stimulate what I call "censorship envy": If my neighbor gets to ban symbols he dislikes, why shouldn't I get to do the same? Read the rest at The Volokh Conspiracy...