From the United States' point of view, there's no serious difference between the incumbent President of Iran, Mahmood Ahmadinejad and his challenger in this year's election, Mir Hussein Moussavi.  (Except that, amusingly enough, the latter shares a middle name with our own President.)  Neither would radically change the Iranian status quo, least of ( Read more... )

"Unfortunately, God will not reveal information to [Khamenei] directly." - Ibrahim Yahzdi, an Iranian dissident

30 years after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran is in upheaval again.  To a marginally informed observer like myself, the reasons seem clear: the government of the clerics has not delivered on its promise.  The new religious order that ( Read more... )

A crazy, anti-Semite and racist octogenarian walked into the DC Holocaust Museum this morning and fired his shotgun at one of the security guards.  The guard returned fire and wounded the assailant and both ended up in the hospital, where the guard died of his wounds.  In short order it became known that the 86-year-old shooter has a long history ( Read more... )

I confess. I’m a sucker for free and fair elections. It warms my heart to watch people drop ballots in a box to express their will, especially in a region where that so rarely happens. So I came to Lebanon on Sunday to watch the Lebanese hold their national election. It was indeed free and fair - not like the pretend election you are about to see ( Read more... )

So, it appears that, according to one poll, 8% of the people surveyed actually buy into the notion that Sonia Sotomayor is "racist".  That's... kind of strange, to me.  I thought that a much more significant percentage of the population is terrified that "they" (i.e. "coloreds") will take control of the U.S. Government and disenfranchise poor, ( Read more... )

"[The] entire theme [of a New York Times article] is that it's a problem that many women judges might rule differently than a man. Never once is it questioned whether it's then a problem that so many male judges might rule differently than a woman. The assumption is that the male point of view is the impartial view, while the female view is biased. ( Read more... )

"[A]ll people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. These are not just American ideas; they are human rights." - Barack ( Read more... )

So, I'm in the process of moving.  I find that making it a process, rather than packing all your life up in boxes and transporting it all at once, is actually better for me.  I get to ferry over a couple of boxes, spend an hour or two organizing things and putting everything in its place and I don't trip over things while I'm doing this.  ( Read more... )

"And you have an African-American community, particularly in the poor inner city areas, we're looking at out of wedlock birthrates in three quarters to 75 percent (sic) of children being born out of wedlock." - Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum on Fox News

Three quarters to 75%, people!  That's quite a wide range of values he's got there.  I'm sure that he ( Read more... )

There's an old story out there.  I'm not sure whether it's real or apocryphal.  It tells about a bunch of Palestinian prisoners in an Israeli jail who staged a hunger strike demanding ... something.  I forget what.  So the prison guards took away their mattresses.  The prisoners then staged a hunger strike demanding the return of their mattresses ( Read more... )