The New York Review of Books is going to become the first major American media outlet to (finally!) publish the “smoking gun” memo of Tony Blair’s government. The memo indicates that the decision by the Bush administration to go to war with Iraq had been made as early as July 2002, and that the justifications…

Julian Sanchez and Matthew Yglesias both ponder the oft-made argument that it’s inconsistent or hypocritical to be against legal abortion but in favor of the death penalty. Sanchez says that there’s nothing logically inconsistent about opposing abortion while favoring capital punishment while Yglesias argues that it’s fair game to ask anti-abortion death penalty proponents to…

The Discovery Channel is doing a new series to determine who the “greatest” American is. The list of 100 nominees will be whittled down by voting over the course of the series. The list of nominees is pretty presposterous. Apart from the obvious inclusions, there are a lot of people that seem to be on…

There is nothing conservative about war. For at least the last century war has been the herald and handmaid of socialism and state control. It is the excuse for censorship, organised lying, regulation and taxation. It is paradise for the busybody and the nark. It damages family life and wounds the Church. It is, in…

Reason‘s Jesse Walker surveys some of the recent nonviolent protests in Latin America and elsewhere, pointing out that those which are seen as not aligned with U.S. interests tend to receive much less favorable coverage in the mainstream press. He also discusses some of the more interesting and creative ways that people have been taking…

Ronald Bailey thinks that the political conflicts of the 21st century will not be chiefly between right and left but between “transhumanists and bioconservatives/bioluddites.” He worries that bioluddites will want to curtail “technologies that will enable people to boost life spans, enhance intellectual capacities, augment athletic abilities, and choose their preferred emotional states” and obstruct…

Check out this interview (at, of all places, Ariana Huffington’s new multi-contributor celebrity blog thingie) with Rene Girard talking about Pope Benedict XVI and the “dictatorship of relativism.”

I discovered (via Clark Stooksbury) that the current issue of The American Conservative features a lengthy article on factory farming and why conservatives should care about it by Matthew Scully (It’s not online at the AmCon site, but you can read the article at Scully’s personal site here). Scully is a former speechwriter for President…

I give you…the Bush fish. (via Jim Henley) Henley comments: “Despite all the talk among the pro-Administration media about ‘Bush hatred,’ the truly interesting phenomenon is Bush love. Who could have imagined that this well-born gladhander could become the object of the strongest personality cult in my lifetime?” Good question.

Another interesting piece from NR this morning is by Warren Bell, who says he’s conservative on everything but food: I am against the modern food industry. I think industrialized food, especially beef, is a menace to our way of life. I stand athwart the checkout line, shouting “Don’t eat that crap!” The weird thing is,…