So to address some major points:

Are blacks, on average, convicted of more crimes than any other race? Yes.
Did Bennett disagree with author Steven Levitt’s theory that higher abortion rates = lower crime rates? Yes.
Did Bennett agree that higher black abortion rates = lower crime rates? Yes.

I blogged about the Bennett’s Black Babies Theory story yesterday. [...]

Remember people, these photos are going to come out sooner or later. I say sooner is better because it’ll get the inevitable out of the way.
From the Wash Post.
NEW YORK, Sept. 29 — A federal judge ordered the release Thursday of dozens more pictures of prisoners being abused at Abu Ghraib, rejecting government arguments that [...]

Bring computing power to the third world and the shackles of poverty and desperation could begin to break under the weight of knowledge.
More from the Independent:
One man in Boston has a plan that he hopes will bridge the world’s gaping digital divide - and quickly. The visionary is Nicholas Negroponte, director of the Media [...]

Why?
Her source said she could talk.
From the NY Times:
WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 - Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who has been jailed since July 6 for refusing to testify in the C.I.A. leak case, was released from a Virginia detention center this afternoon after she and her lawyers reached an agreement with a federal [...]

Michael Yon’s latest from the Middle East is up.

Much world travel has convinced me that the “average American� is a good person. But even a good person needs information in order to act effectively on their best impulses. Oftentimes, good things do not happen simply because information does not make it to the right people.
I [...]

R.I.P., M. Scott Peck, author of “The Road Less Travelled,” as memorialized by the London “Telegraph.”

Its opening sentence, “Life is difficult”, introduced a tome which argued, uncontentiously and sensibly, that human experience was trying and imperfectible, and that only self-discipline, delaying gratification, acceptance that one’s actions have consequences, and a determined attempt at spiritual growth [...]

Apparently Israel has allowed some jailhouse interviews Rafat Moqadi, a Palestinian suicide bomber who changed his mind at the moment he was supposed to detonate himself in a Tel Aviv restaurant. Both AP and CBS have stories on him. (I can’t find the AP one on the Net yet.)

As the pace of attacks increases in [...]

In discussing the Electoral College and voting reform, we’ve been seeing various plans in the light of mass, direct, participatory democracy as an inherently good thing. The people and the president in direct power hook-up. The more the better. But where’s the proof we’re better governed today than we were in 1800?
Michael Lind offers one [...]

What happens when you know something is wrong, but everybody around ignores you? I would guess that most of us would simply shut up and fall back in line for fear of serious reprisal.
Not Army Captain Ian Fishback. He saw the “pretend it’s not there” policy on torture in Iraq and tried to stop it. [...]

What do those two things have in common?
Well, apparently the U.S. Department of Education thinks that some of the students who were displaced by Hurricane Katrina should go to the private, religious schools that they attended before the Hurricane hit. They even saw fit to put a $488 million school voucher proposal into the possible [...]

Howard Fineman writes a dead-on story about the problems with the Democratic leadership. They have a perfect opportunity now to frame their party as the stewards of a new way, and yet they can’t seem to get it together.
Why?
Here are some reasons:

Supreme divisions: John Roberts smooth sailing through the nomination process.
Lack of star power: Rudy, [...]

Media Matters For America captured a conversation Bill Bennett, author of The Book of Virtues, had on his show Bill Bennett’s Morning in America. The program is said to reach an estimated 1.25 million listeners each week.
Are you ready?
Okay, here we go…
BENNETT: you know, one of the arguments in this book Freakonomics that they make [...]

Fouad Ajami on “Heart of Darkness”

It was the luck of the imperial draw that the American project in Iraq came to the rescue of the Shiites — and of the Kurds. We may not fully appreciate the historical change we unleashed on the Arab world, but we have given liberty to the stepchildren of the [...]

Salam Pax decides to reluctantly support the proposed Iraqi constitution.

After a lot of soul searching and nail biting I have made up my mind about the draft.
I don’t like it. I believe we should have done better. And I am especially angry about the US administration for jumping around and cheering about how great this [...]

Good riddance to a bad idea. Not the museum itself, but the location.
Here’s the ground zero for the “take back Ground Zero” movement.
Jeff Jarvis has done yeoman work in this cause. He deserves to celebrate.
Rudi was against it. So was Hillary. Talk about an issue that brought people together.

Classical music in America isn’t what it used to be.
Yes, it never was.
But I can’t help enjoy a rather dismissive review of a book that itself dismisses two of my favorite modern American composers, Barber (born in my hometown, I used to pass his house every day; he wrote the alma mater of my dad’s [...]

In Dover School District, just across the Susquehanna from where I live, Intelligent Design has been slipped into the science curriculum in a “camel’s nose in the tent” sort of way. Predictably, it’s been challenged, and defended, and the case is now in court.
Patrick Gillen, a lawyer defending the school district, said the case was [...]

This just in:
The indictment accused DeLay of a conspiracy to “knowingly make a political contribution” in violation of Texas law outlawing corporate contributions. It alleged that DeLay’s Texans for a Republican Majority political action committee accepted $155,000 from companies, including Sears Roebuck, and placed the money in an account.
The PAC then wrote a $190,000 check [...]

This is truly amazing, and no, not the good kind of amazing.
From Washington Post.
Former Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael D. Brown said yesterday that it was not his job to take over the evacuation of New Orleans and rescue the drowning city from Hurricane Katrina, blaming Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, New Orleans Mayor [...]

Perennial skeptic of international good intentions William Easterly romps through the quagmire of African aid.

After 43 years and $568 billion (in 2003 dollars) in foreign aid to the continent, Africa remains trapped in economic stagnation. Moreover, after $568 billion, donor officials apparently still have not gotten around to furnishing those 12-cent medicines to children to [...]