In a comment to Montag’s Electoral College vote I gave an imperfect defense of the institution based largely on sentimental reverence for a relic.
But there are better arguments than that for keeping it. Perhaps enough time has elapsed since 2000 that it’s worth a look at some of them, since election reform again seems to [...]

This photo (online here) is labeled as an “undated handout combination image released September 27, 2005 by the Royal Society,” and is said to show “the first photographs of a live giant squid in its natural environment, taken by Japanese scientists in the Pacific Ocean.”
Cool! Except the last frame in the panel seems to have [...]

Andrew Sullivan salutes the Christian faith, strict morality, patriotism, national idealism, and sense of soldier’s honor in one American military man. Tell the truth: Who out there is rolling eyes right now? Well, guess what? It’s the soldier who persisted in protesting the torture and abuse of prisoners in the war on terror.

It doesn’t surprise [...]

Butterflies and Wheels over the years has collected a stack of articles and links on the topic of reforming Islam (or secularizing it) and reclaiming it from the fundamentalists. They’ve gone the next step here and collected them all on one page. Useful!

ouch.
[Satire alert]

Hurricane survivors begin to pick through the gunk that fills their homes to find what can be saved. For news junkies, we’ll spend the next few months picking through the gunk of hurricane coverage to find journalistic nuggets of September 2005 that got buried by storm stories.
Marc at American Future calls attention to one: The [...]

Over at TomPaine.com, Rob Richie and Steven Hill examine the recommendations made by the Commission on Federal Election Reform headed by James Baker and Jimmy Carter.
Ritchie and Hill say, “We believe it a mistake to condemn the entire report because of the understandable voter ID objections.” (The voter ID objections that we have discussed [...]

The #2 terrorist in Iraq is now confirmed dead.
Fox News has more.
Azzam is the latest in a series of top Zarqawi deputies that have been killed or captured by coalition forces in recent months. Zarqawi’s Al Qaeda in Iraq group has taken responsibility for some of the country’s most horrific acts of terror including car [...]

Smash notes some dissent within the peace movement.

JAMAL KANJ, a fiery Palestinian from a group called Al-Awda, takes the podium. “We Palestinians,â€Â? he begins, “have been subjected to GENOCIDE at the hands of the Israelis for generations.” He rants on. “In 1948, they forced us out of our homes, and today we must DRIVE THE [...]

Every now and then I like to introduce readers here to some of the fine writing being done by men and women in military service in Iraq. It puts the news reporting to shame, frankly. Danjel Bout is one of our soldiers in Iraq, and like so many of them he’s worth your time to [...]

The New York Times finds common threads among the 220 Mississippi hurricane victims. And “Bush lied, they died” isn’t among them.
Most of the victims were in their 60s or older. Many had the ability to evacuate, and relatives and friends pleaded with them to do so. Instead, they stayed. Some of the older residents just [...]

WaPo op-edder E.J. Dionne in a new column celebrates the fact that “President Bush has finally faced his moment of accountability. The travails of Hurricane Katrina followed a bad summer for the president and have called into question his leadership style, competence and intense partisanship.”
He veers from that into the inability of the Democrats to [...]

AlterNet posts an interview with the Weather Channel’s climate expert Heidi Cullen. She says global warming isn’t the only culprit we sould examine with regard to the intensity of Hurricane Katrina.
What lesson should we draw from Katrina? In light of the fact that it was predicted years ago what a hurricane like Katrina [...]

Remember Pat Tillman, the NFL player who quit his job to fight for our country?
Well, his mother wants answers about his death. Unfortunately, she’s running into roadblocks.
From SF Gate:
The battle between a grieving family and the U.S. military justice system is on display in thousands of pages of documents strewn across Mary Tillman’s dining [...]

It’s important to remember that the people our leaders appoint to these positions need to have the appropriate experience, otherwise we’re simply leaving our safety up to “ideology.”
One such person is the head of the regional FEMA office in the Northwest, John Pennington, whose only experience seems to be an “interest” in disaster relief.
From TIME:
In [...]

Oh…avarice…
From the BBC:
The US attorney’s office alleges Joseph Medawar, 43, collected money from investors for two years but spent the majority of it on himself.
It said Mr Medawar had falsely claimed the White House had endorsed the proposed series, called DHS.
Mr Medawar had previously produced several B-movies in the 1980s.
He has been charged with mail [...]

If our Republican led government keeps choosing to spend billions upon billions that we don’t have, then don’t be surprised if they find how much it really costs come November 2006.
From the Opinion Journal:
This isn’t all Katrina’s fault. Republicans have been kidding themselves for years that they are still the stewards of fiscal conservatism and [...]

The title is purposefully dramatic because I wanted to highlight what the recent elections in Germany actually mean for their government. In short, the situation is not as dire as the media portrays it.
Simply put, it means that the two big parties in Germany will have to actually (gasp!) work together!!!
OH NO!!!
From Jeff [...]

This one slipped past me, but I think it’s good news.
WASHINGTON – The architect of the memorial to a plane downed in western Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001, said Wednesday he would work to satisfy critics who complained that it honors terrorists with its crescent-shaped design.
Designer Paul Murdoch said he is “somewhat optimistic” that [...]

Frist backs stem cell research.
Cheer!
Frist backs Intelligent Design.
Jeer!
In a 2003 interview, Frist says he owns no HCA stock.
Cheer!
New documents reveal Frist knew he owned HCA stock before he gave that interview.
Jeer!
(HT: Political Wire)