“What’s really killed the Republican Party isn’t spending, it’s Iraq. As it happens, I was opposed to going into Iraq from the beginning. I think it was a mistake, for the simple reason that I do not believe the United States of America ought to be involved in aggression.” – Milton Friedman

Very funny (and well done!), via Mrs. VI.

This is interesting – Maryland’s independent Senate candidate Kevin Zeese has been endorsed by the state’s Green, Populist, and Libertarian parties, essentially creating a left-right fusion ticket. Zeese is emphasizing a populist-based opposition to the Iraq war, ending the war on drugs, cutting corporate welfare, defense of civil liberties, election reform, and shoring up Social…

“Hot and Bothered: Facing up to Global Warming” by Bill McKibbon. Now that global warming denial seems to be crumbling – even former skeptics are coming around – what will we do about it? And what kind of role should churches play? “Theocracy! Theocracy! Theocracy!” at First Things. Ross Douthat reviews the recent spate of…

This is an interesting argument from the Catholic legal blog Mirror of Justice to the effect that destroying embryos for research is worse than abortion. Of course, the argument won’t cut any ice with you if you don’t think that the embryo has some kind of moral standing, but I’m not particularly interested in revisiting…

There’s been quite a bit of discussion about appropriate church attire among the blogs I read (see here, here and here) stemming from a pastoral letter from a Catholic bishop in Texas urging modest dress in church (though most of the disputants in the above linked posts are not Catholic). Personally, I’ve learned through long…

I’ve made no secret of my disgruntlement with many aspects of the Bush administration’s policy (foreign and domestic), but it seems to me that I should praise the President when he does something I agree with. At the risk of seeming too positive, I can think of about a half-dozen occasions before this off the…

Catholic law professor Stephen Bainbridge has more on just war and proportionality. Prof. Bainbridge is making a slightly different point than the one I was trying to get at. He’s more concerned about how the targeting of civilian infrastructure violates the criterion of proportionality. I was assuming, for the sake of argument, a case where…

Matthew Yglesias has a really good article at the American Prospect on what he calls the “Green Lantern” theory of politics. This is the idea that the only thing standing between us and achieving our objectives is a lack of will power. Just like Green Lantern’s power ring can do pretty much anything if the…

Tim Cavanaugh tries to puzzle it out. I’m as clueless about this situation as everyone else. Despite the sight of many bloggers, pundits, etc. treating us to their iron-clad certainty over the past week. P.S. Fred Kaplan has a helpful article up at Slate.