A former student of mine at the University of Toronto, Hajera Khaja, writes a blog called Finding Neverland. She describes it as “[t]he nonsensical ramblings of a self-defined slightly crazy, slightly delusional Muslim”. Maybe, maybe not. I’ll let you decide. But if you want a break from the political arena that I tend to inhabit, if you want to explore the poetic possibilities of blogging, and if you want to be challenged to consider the deeper, more spiritual facets of your humanity,...

Yet more lies and damned lies at the Pentagon. Yes, democracy is messy, but does it need to be so blatantly phony?

Isn’t it truly a wonderful thing? Now we can get on with our lives…

Once again, the truth threatens to undermine President Bush’s grotesque attempts to spin the Iraq War in the direction of his peculiarly faith-based sense of reality. For it looks like those Iraqi security forces in whom we have been told to trust, those wonderfully well-trained forces who will take over for the U.S. when Bush withdraws American forces for partisan political purposes and shifts the war in a new and as yet ill-defined direction. From the AP, via Editor & Publisher: The...

On Monday, John Kerry called on President Bush to replace Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary, according to The Raw Story: “The President owes it to our troops serving in Iraq to remove Secretary Rumsfeld and replace him at the Pentagon with a Defense Secretary who understands the situation on the ground in Iraq and who will advance, not undermine, American values around the world.” Well, sure. I would wholeheartedly support Rumsfeld’s long-overdue removal. But is it possible...

Stressed? Need to relax? Why not visit a wine spa?

It’s not quite marriage, but the U.K. has finally recognized same-sex partnerships under the new Civil Partnerships Act, according to the BBC. It’s a huge step in the right direction. (Here are posts on same-sex marriage in Canada and South Africa.)

Call it what you want: jihadism, Islamofascism, Islamic radicalism… But it isn’t Communism. My take on Zbigniew Brzezinski’s excellent op-ed piece in The Washington Post is here.

In yesterday’s New York Times, Ted Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger wondered what JFK would have done about Vietnam. It’s all quite speculative, of course, but they knew first-hand what JFK was planning to do — that is, withdraw from Vietnam before it turned into a quagmire, an unwinnable war. But Sorensen and Schlesinger are also right about this, in response to Bush’s speech at the U.S. Naval Academy last week: We did not hear that the war in Iraq, already one of the costliest...

And what a grand failure it is, both as a wholly un- and anti-scientific theory and, increasingly, as a faith-based political movement. It still gets quite a bit of attention, but: Behind the headlines, however, intelligent design as a field of inquiry is failing to gain the traction its supporters had hoped for. It has gained little support among the academics who should have been its natural allies… On college campuses, the movement’s theorists are academic pariahs, publicly denounced...

Over the summer — like Steve Clemons, Jeremy Dibbell, and many other bloggers out there — I wrote a great deal about John Bolton’s nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the U.N. (and his subsequent recess appointment when said nomination stalled in the Senate). I vehemently opposed Bolton’s nomination (see here) and I objected to his recess appointment (see here). (For background, links to all my Bolton-related posts may be found here.) But when his appointment was announced,...

Skippy (of Bush Kangaroo fame) has a good post on the necessity (or, rather, non-necessity) of Maureen Dowd. Like Skippy, I wonder why she’s an op-ed columnist at arguably the most important newspaper in the world. I’ve previously written about her, unfavourably, here and here. (I’ve given her a chance time and time again, but, aside from a few moments of witty perspicacity, I just don’t find much to like anymore.) Here’s a little game: Whom would you remove from the...

Another attack in Iraq, “one of the deadliest in recent months”. CNN reports here. The Left Coaster: “On the same day that the New York Times is reporting that the Pentagon admits they are fighting a decentralized nightmare now of nearly 100 insurgent groups in Iraq who are able to operate independently of each other and who weren’t there before we toppled Hussein, the Pentagon also releases the news that ten Marines were killed in just one incident yesterday from a roadside...

Over the summer, Canada became the fourth country to legalize same-sex marriage — a great milestone in Canadian history. Now South Africa has (almost) done the same: South Africa’s highest court ruled on Thursday that gays and lesbians have a right to marry, and it gave the national parliament one year to change the words “husband” and “wife” to “spouse” in its marital laws. Under the ruling, which was greeted by jubilation by gays and lesbians and...

Alas, we neglected to mention that yesterday was World AIDS Day. About 40 million people around the world are infected with HIV. Half of them live in Africa. For more information, a good resource is the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network.

Media Matters is reporting that folk-leader Bill O’Reilly has taken to attacking what he calls “a very secret plan” by secular progressive to “diminish Christian philosophy in the U.S.A.” Now, this is misguided on so many levels, but let me mention three. 1) There is no such thing as Christian philosophy. Theology yes, philosophy no. This may be a somewhat controversial assertion on my part, but religion is very much the antithesis of philosophy properly understood...

For your amusement and edification, I’ve done a fairly long round-up of reaction to yesterday’s twin events of Bush’s speech at the U.S. Naval Academy and the appearance of the unclassified document called the “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq” over at The Reaction. I call my round-up (which includes a bit of commentary from the rounder-upper): Spinning Iraq: The Orwellian scope of Bush’s self-justifying self-delusion I hope you enjoy it. Feel free to add...

Once again, a somewhat gullible Tony Blair has learned that the U.S. isn’t serious about tackling the problem of climate change: The US has dismissed a suggestion from UK Prime Minister Tony Blair that it may be prepared to sign up to binding targets to tackle climate change. Speaking at UN climate talks in Canada, the US chief negotiator said his nation would not enter talks about fixed curbs on emissions of greenhouse gases. Mr Blair told UK business leaders on Tuesday that he believed...

SI.com is reporting that “Sen. Arlen Specter on Tuesday backed off a threat to have a Senate subcommittee investigate whether the NFL and the Philadelphia Eagles violated antitrust laws in their handling of Terrell Owens.” But what was the point to start with? Only the day before, Senator Specter had “said it was ‘vindictive and inappropriate’ for the league and the Eagles to prohibit the All-Pro wide receiver from playing and prevent other teams from talking to him”....

On Monday, I reported on Ayad Allawi’s assertion that in terms of abuse things are just as bad in Iraq now as they were under Saddam. Well, now there’s more — and it isn’t pretty: Shiite Muslim militia members have infiltrated Iraq’s police force and are carrying out sectarian killings under the color of law, according to documents and scores of interviews. The abuses raise the specter of organized retaliation to attacks by Sunni-led insurgents that have killed thousands...