A round up of recent reporting and commentary by a few centrist, moderate, and independent bloggers.
At Munaeem’s Blog, there’s a wonderful post on the complexity of Islam. Money excerpt …
… can one talk of a single homogeneous Islamic experience? After all, the experience of Damascus under the Umayyads was very different from the experience of Abbasid Baghdad, while both were very different from the historical experience of Andalusia, where a unique bonding between Muslims and Jews produced such great thinkers as the Muslim Ibn Rushd [Averoess] and the Jewish Ibn Maymoun [Maimonides].
Andrew Sullivan’s quote for the day (from yesterday) is worth a read, as is his unrelated pointer to a WaPo article on the environmental influence of Paris (the city, not the Hilton).
Jon Swift is known, loved, and in some corners, despised for his snarky parodies. (I’m in the “love” camp.) Regardless of what you think of his writing, Jon entirely outdoes himself yesterday in a post on “Sanjaya Malakar, the 17-year-old Indian-American contestant with the face of an angel and the voice of…something else.” Money excerpt …
… this is not a small-town talent show we are talking about, it is American Idol, the number one show in the country, and increasingly people around the world are asking themselves, What is wrong with American voters? Have they gone completely insane to vote for someone who is clearly so incompetent and dim-witted and has gotten as far as he has on little more than charm and luck?
Meanwhile, Brad DeLong continues building the case for impeachment … and Libby Spencer takes a rather embarassing (for Peggy Noonan) “trip down memory lane.”
At Stubborn Facts, Simon — who claims he is “not a global warming skeptic” — asks “a serious question” of global warming zealots, while TMV assistant editor Michael Stickings (writing at The Reaction) borrows a lyric from Pink Floyd to suggest (indirectly) that questions like Simon’s have no place in U.S. schools.
The Angry Independent suspsects the U.S. is (and has motive to) sabatoge regional negotiations with North Korea.
And finally, at The Glittering Eye, Dave Schuler looks at this week’s story on the “seizing of 15 British sailors by the Iranians.”