Richard Cohen of The Washington Post has an excellent essay on Abdul Rahman, the Afghani Christian convert who was nearly executed as punishment for converting away from Islam. Cohen says:
The murder of a person for his religious belief ought to be inconceivable. It is something we in the West stopped accepting hundreds of years ago…the [...]

Apparently, we’ve done it recently to test our own security and we got them into the country. That’s right, we got them through our borders.
So why does anybody think “they” can’t?
From CNN:
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Two teams of government investigators using fake documents were able to enter the United States with enough radioactive sources to [...]

Looks like he’s “mending fences.”
From Editor & Publisher:
Several correspondents confirmed to E&P either participating in such meetings or being invited to them, noting that at least two have been held in the past week, with one scheduled for Tuesday. Most have lasted more than an hour and at least one took place in Bush’s private [...]

Everybody has been urging President Bush to switch his team around and get some fresh ideas in the Oval Office. Well, looks like Chief of Staff Andy Card has done it for him.
So who’s going to replace him? Red State says Josh Bolten. Who’s that?
Rumored for a month, it is about time Mr. Card [...]

Ahh Islam…how you provide us with such obvious examples of why you need to change.
From CNN:
NEW DELHI, India (Reuters) — A Muslim couple in India have been told by local Islamic leaders they must separate after the husband “divorced” his wife in his sleep, the Press Trust of India reported.
Sohela Ansari told friends that her [...]

To me, movement away from the radical religious fringe and towards a humble, moral center is a great thing. And somehow, the fact that it’s happening in Texas makes it even better.
COVINGTON, Texas (ABP) — Pastor and politician Kerry Horn has been called an agent of Satan. He has faced country farmers trembling with rage. [...]

Can states use newspapers and magazines to discipline prisoners? And we’re not talking about a smack across the nose with a rolled-up “Boston Evening Transcript.”

The Supreme Court struggled Monday with whether states can keep troublesome inmates from reading secular newspapers and magazines.
Pennsylvania prison officials urged the high court to allow them to use access to [...]

Weekly Standard writer Daveed Gartenstein-Ross emailed me via The Moderate Voice about my recent Scalia post. He seems to think that Scalia’s recent speeches are perfectly within reason.
And after reading his article, I think Daveed has a valid point:
BY ALL ACCOUNTS, Scalia’s Freiburg speech did not go beyond the views he already expressed in his [...]

While I’ve only been at Donklephant for a few months, I’ve been at this blogging thing for a full year. It hasn’t always been easy. I even walked away in disgust last fall, only to come back wiser and more focused. You can read my reflections on blogging over at Maverick Views.

The latest Carnival of German-American Relations is up at Atlantic Review, featuring posts from online writers in Germany and the U.S. dealing with one another’s nations and their perceptions. I’m in there, but I recommend it anyway. It’s a gathering of some great thoughts, along with some questionable observations. And it’s what we still desperately [...]

Out of all the uncertainty of this time, relying on our indomitable free spirit is the one possible future I can still imagine.

Michael Reynolds just celebrated a year in the blogosphere. But he forgot the date.
Trust me, I sympathize…
I have never been any good at keeping track of dates. Every single year for 26 years I’ve missed the day my wife and I celebrate as our anniversary. July 1st, by the way, I know that. She [...]

Taegan Goddard has the word and I reprint it in full here because the post is so short:
CQ Politics notes there are eight members of congress whose personal term-limit pledges come due in this year: Barbara Cubin (WY), Phil English (PA), Jeff Flake (AZ), Timothy Johnson (IL), Ric Keller (FL), Frank LoBiondo (NJ), Mark Souder [...]

That should be the headline we see in the next few days.
Newsweek has more:
The Supreme Court this week will hear arguments in a big case: whether to allow the Bush administration to try Guantánamo detainees in special military tribunals with limited rights for the accused. But Justice Antonin Scalia has already spoken his mind about [...]

At first glance, this seems like fantastic news. After all, the guy is being let off.
But the opening on this story certainly gave me pause:
KABUL, Afghanistan – An Afghan court on Sunday dismissed a case against a man who converted from Islam to Christianity because of a lack of evidence and he will be released [...]

They just won’t go away.
In Sweden, the “row” has entangled the foreign minister and she got herself in such a nasty fix the only way out was to quit:

The row about cartoons of the prophet Muhammad yesterday claimed the career of Sweden’s foreign minister, who resigned after allegations that she shut down a far-right website [...]

Retired Command Sergeant Major Eric Haney has this to say:
Q: What do you make of the torture debate? Cheney …
A: (Interrupting) That’s Cheney’s pursuit. The only reason anyone tortures is because they like to do it. It’s about vengeance, it’s about revenge, or it’s about cover-up. You don’t gain intelligence that way. Everyone in the [...]

This is very good news:
An Afghan Christian facing possible execution for converting from Islam was likely to be released from jail “soon,” a senior government official said following huge Western pressure over the case.
“He is likely to be released soon,” the official said, adding there would be a top-level meeting on the matter Saturday.
Awesome. Religious [...]

Across the country today people marched in protest against a proposed legislation that would crackdown on illegal immigration. A number of members of Congress want to make it a felony to be in the U.S. illegally. They also want to enact new penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants and build a fence covering one [...]

Well, the Red America blog is no more and plagiarism brought it down. That’s right…Ben Domenech has resigned due to some heavy pressures from the left, the right, and probably his own conscience.
This looks bad for bloggers, right? Well, as the executive editor of washingtonpost.com explains…
We appreciate the speed and thoroughness with which our readers [...]