Over at The Reaction, guest blogger Aspazia has the latest in her excellent series on “Rethinking feminism”. This one’s on sexual consent, sexual assault, and collegiate codes of conduct. It’s a provocative yet thoughtful post sure to elicit passionate reaction from left, right, and center alike. I encourage you to check it out. See here. (Note: Blogger has been a bit slow today, but it seems to be working.)

The Democratic Party is looking ahead to November ’06 and November ’08: With Democrats increasingly optimistic about this year’s midterm elections and the landscape for 2008, intellectuals in the center and on the left are debating how to sharpen the party’s identity and present a clear alternative to the conservatism that has dominated political thought for a generation. Read on. ********** In the blogosphere, the debate isn’t always friendly — or, at least,...

From the BBC: Young girls in Liberia are still being sexually exploited by aid workers and peacekeepers despite pledges to stamp out such abuse, Save the Children says. Girls as young as eight are being forced to have sex in exchange for food by workers for local and international agencies, according to its report. The agency says such abuse is becoming more common as people displaced by the civil war return to their villages. The UN in Liberia said it would investigate specific allegations. The...

At least one prominent Republican pollster thinks so. Here’s the Post: “‘This administration may be over,’ Lance Tarrance, a chief architect of the Republicans’ 1960s and ’70s Southern strategy, told a gathering of journalists and political wonks last week. ‘By and large, if you want to be tough about it, the relevancy of this administration on policy may be over.’” I’d like to believe this, but I just can’t. Bush won’t be able...

According to Goss himself, his resignation is “just one of those mysteries”. Maybe we need Dan Brown on the case. Or not. According to Laura Rozen, the verdict — the conventional wisdom, that is — is already in. Mainstream media outlets have more or less determined that “Goss was forced out yesterday after months of tension between him and John Negroponte over the CIA’s reduced turf, and that President Bush lost confidence in Goss ‘almost from the beginning’”. So...

Brazil isn’t Iran, but they now have something in common: “[It] has joined the select group of countries with the capability of enriching uranium as a means of generating energy.” Thankfully, “Brazil and the IAEA [have] agreed [to] a system of safeguards to ensure that the new facilities would not be channelled into weapons production.” But not before some Iran-like tension: “Keen to protect its commercial secrets, Brazil was reluctant to give inspectors full...

Iraq is such a lovely place, isn’t it? This horrific story is from Britain’s Independent: Human rights groups have condemned the “barbaric” murder of a 14-year-old boy, who, according to witnesses, was shot on his doorstep by Iraqi police for the apparent crime of being gay. Ahmed Khalil was shot at point-blank range after being accosted by men in police uniforms, according to his neighbours in the al-Dura area of Baghdad. Campaign groups have warned of a surge in homophobic...

Be sure to check out J. Kingston Pierce’s latest link-filled post over at The Reaction. Whatever his many criticisms of Bush and the Republicans, he says “there are reasons to be optimistic again”. Indeed, he’s hopeful and “ready for a change” after being “pessimistic for a long time now”.

According to the BBC, “A three-week voyage of discovery in the Atlantic has returned with tiny animals which appear new to science. They include waif-like plankton with delicate translucent bodies related to jellyfish, hundreds of microscopic shrimps, and several kinds of fish.” It’s a fascinating story. Be sure to check out the “In pictures” feature, too.

We may not be the only ones experiencing global warming. A new storm on Jupiter suggests that that planet “is in the midst of a global change that can modify temperatures by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit on different parts of the globe”. Space.com has the story here.

Over at The Reaction, if you’ll excuse a quick pointer post, co-blogger Creature takes a critical look at the nature of the White House press briefing. It’s become something of an embarrassment, but perhaps the White House itself is to blame.

Sorry, I just had to put the title of this post in all caps. The reality of global warming is obvious to many of us, but its deniers occupy the highest reaches of political life and continue to block efforts to deal with it appropriately. Despite all the evidence, these deniers have long claimed that there’s just too much uncertainty to reach any definitive conclusion. And so all we get is reckless stonewalling. But now, according to The New York Times, we have this: A scientific study commissioned...

Needless to say, I and almost every other sensible person in the world have been rather critical of Iranian President Mahmoud “Madman of Tehran” Ahmadinejad’s incendiary rhetoric, both with respect to Iran’s budding nuclear program and to Israel and the Holocaust. (For background, should you be so inclined, see my previous posts here, here, here, here, and here.) Now, I suspect that much of this rhetoric is intended directly for domestic consumption. Iranians are notoriously...

I noted last December that Bolivia had moved to the left with the election of Evo Morales, a Castro admirer and would-be Chavez, as president. Well, rightly or wrongly, Morales has seized control of his country’s gas industry, according to The Washington Post: Bolivian President Evo Morales seized control of the country’s natural gas industry Monday, sending soldiers to occupy fields that he contends private companies have plundered for years. Morales said that unless foreign energy...

An update from The New York Times: The United States, Britain and France have drafted a binding Security Council resolution requiring Iran to stop key nuclear activities, but Russia and China are already resisting, officials involved in the negotiations said today. The draft resolution, which has not been made public, expresses “serious concern” that Iran has not complied with its international commitments and calls on it to stop producing enriched uranium, which can have both peaceful...

(Originally posted at The Carpetbagger Report. This version has been modified.) Should America’s national anthem only be sung in English? Or is, say, a Spanish version acceptable? That’s what the recent debate over the anthem is really all about. It’s an offshoot of the debate over illegal immigration, but, more to the point, it’s about how America conceives of itself as a nation. In other words, it’s about identity. The new Spanish version is known as “Nuestro...

Over at The Reaction, J. Kingston Pierce offers up a brilliant (and link-filled) analysis of the demise of the Bush presidency. See here.

Pardon my Anglophilia, but I always find it amusing when the French get up on their pedestal and proclaim their world-historical superiority (or at least their pretension to superiority). They do that periodically, as you may know, often when they’re feeling ignored, when they sense that history has passed them by, when they need to feel good about themselves. And, really, can you blame them? History has largely passed them by, they’re largely ignored outside of Europe (where all they...

This is truly alarming: China has secured four oil drilling licences from Nigeria as President Hu Jintao continues his week-long tour of Africa, his second in three years. In exchange China will invest $4bn (£2.25bn) in oil and infrastructure projects in Nigeria. China will buy a controlling stake in Nigeria’s 110,000 barrel-a-day Kaduna oil refinery and build a railroad system and power stations. Nigeria, Africa’s top oil exporter, has long been viewed by China as a partner. That...

I haven’t done one of these in a while, but how about a round-up of blogospheric reaction to Karl Rove’s fifth appearance before the federal grand jury looking into the Plame case? See here.