What a warmth of feeling and intellectual support can be found in a discussion of human sexuality, once we can all shake out the last of whatever holds us to the same old water mark in cultural discussions of same so we can never progress beyond ‘first reactions’: discomfort, sniggering, and various other ego resistances. Yet, I just know the editorial cartoonists, who are magicians of the universe with their pithy images and few words, are just sharpening their ink nibs about this study…...

He now as memory problems about this. Question: Shouldn’t a medical team be dispatched to examine members of the Bush administration? There seems to be some kind of massive affliction that is taking away their ability to recall.

Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune

Yesterday, Senator Ted Stevens’ (R) house was raided by the FBI and IRS. Today, Stevens has threatened to place a hold on the House-passed Ethics Reform bill. It’s appalling, and yet, a part of me can’t help but stand back and admire.

The first step in undoing one of the more appalling decisions of the Roberts Court. Unfortunately, between uncertain Senate prospects and Bush’s veto threat, it may also be the final step.

If I had picked up my morning newspaper a few years ago and read that Rupert Murdoch had bought Dow Jones & Company, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, I would have sneezed coffee through my nose and then collapsed to the floor with heart spasms. But times have changed, and while it still is a bit off putting that a conservative media mogul who has built his empire on sleaze and scandal is buying the owner of one of the most respected brands in mainstream media for a cool $5 billion, that...

I saw ‘Persona’ with my aunt Terez who was wearing a hat with practically an entire pheasant sewn onto it. The Notre Dame students behind us kept saying, ‘I don’t get it, this is nuts, what’s this movie about?’ Terez who had just learned to speak some English kept saying ‘Shhhh, eets abowt drrreems. Go to sleep and you’ll understand it.’ What Bergman himself, the grand mind of another time and place, said: “Film as dream, film as music....

And not a moment too soon! BAGHDAD – Iraq’s parliament on Monday shrugged off U.S. criticism and adjourned for a month, as key lawmakers declared there was no point waiting any longer for the prime minister to deliver Washington-demanded benchmark legislation for their vote. Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani closed the final three-hour session without a quorum present and declared lawmakers would not reconvene until Sept. 4. That date is just 11 days before the top U.S. military and political...

The British army’s longest continuous military operation comes to an end at midnight tonight when responsibility for security in Northern Ireland passes to the police. Operation Banner lasted 38 years and involved 300,000 personnel, of which 763 were killed by paramilitaries. The last soldier to die was Lance Bombardier Stephen Restorick, who was shot at a vehicle checkpoint in 1997. From tomorrow there will still be a garrison of 5,000 troops in Ulster, but they will not be on active operations...

A round up of recent posts by a few centrist, moderate, and independent bloggers. First Gen. Petraeus; now NYT journalist John Burns has agreed to an interview with Hugh Hewitt. McQ wonders if “the left” will also accuse Burns of being a mouth piece for BushCo. Dave Schuler questions Muslim accommodations and requests for accommodations that are not equally “accorded to non-Muslims.” Sean Aqui looks at NY Gov. Spitzer’s “unique” approach to controversy:...

A New York Times op-ed piece this week by Michael E. O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack stating that the U.S. is finally making progress militarily in Iraq has gotten enormous coverage – and deservedly so. I offer two overarching and interrelated observations pertaining to it: First, the response to the piece by the Brookings Institution braniacs puts the lie to the notion flogged by conservatives and right-wingers that many liberal and left-wing commentators want the U.S. to be humiliated...

Brian Fairrington, Cagle Cartoons

Conservatives are once again rumbling about abolishing it, for no discernible reason other than the sub-rational jihad they like to wage against the academy every once in awhile. I assume that this, too, will pass, and once again we’ll remember that tenure is an integral part of why American universities stock a large percentage of the most insightful, leading-edge, productive, and brightest scholars in the world

Sorry for the Fox News Channel-esque headline, but I wanted to bring attention to some interesting data I came across. I’m not aware of any polls indicating whether the average Democratic voter is any more or less partisan than the average Republican voter. However, recent data collected by the Washington Post would seem to suggest that among members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Democrats are more partisan than Republicans. After comparing the voting records of all 435 members of...

MSNBC: WASHINGTON – Chief Justice John Roberts suffered a seizure at his summer home in Maine on Monday, causing a fall that resulted in minor scrapes, Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said. He was to remain in a hospital in Maine overnight. Roberts, 52, was taken by ambulance to the Penobscot Bay Medical Center, where he underwent a “thorough neurological evaluation, which revealed no cause for concern,” Arberg said in a statement. Roberts had a similar episode in 1993,...

I have been thinking about Elizabeth Edwards’ breasts, about her bold life force, about her truly living each day. As I think about her holding her life above the cancer, I think about other heroic women I’ve known who have also, and do also live strong and womanly… with breast cancer. This is a photograph of my friend, Deena Metzger: she is a healer who lives in California. This picture was taken of her in 1978. It is the first photograph most of my generation ever saw of a woman...

Yaakov Kirschen, The Jerusalem Post, Dry Bones

A NYT op-ed piece today, by the Brookings Institution’s Michael E. O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack, puts the questions about Iraq and time front and center. Currently, neither O’Hanlon nor Pollack are apologists for this conflict, just the opposite in fact: Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling...

The seeds of a women’s rights movement have been planted in the Islamic world. However, it is not secular or liberal groups who have finally succeeded in pushing a more progressive vision of Islam. Instead, it is women in groups like Hezbollah and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood who are starting to question their role in society.

Mike Wolverton, Cagle Cartoons

The best diagnostic clues may come from the Freedom of Information Act. I have been reading de-classified documents from the CIA about Iraq this week. The docs reach back to before the time Saddam murdered his way into power… …so far back in fact that Saddam’s name is spelled Hussyn, and so far back that the writer of some of the documents called him Saddam Tikriti, Tikriti used as his surname, the writer seeming not to realize Tikriti was the name of both Saddam’s tribal...

A Hero? You Bet. As noted in the previous post, another casualty of the Iraq war is that fewer medals and fewer medals of distinction for bravery are being awarded because they call attention to the war’s bloody realities. A veteran blogger who has spent considerable time in Iraq tells me that: “Company commanders . . . complain that the awards they submit are constantly downgraded as they go up the chain of command.” Some 300,000-plus Americans have served in Iraq, and there also...

The Glittering Eye looks at the issue. A MUST READ.

From Sideways Mencken: Straws in the wind. Nothing conclusive. And bear in mind: they’ll manage to hit us again. Hard. So I’m not saying it’s over. It’s a long way from over. But I think the tide has turned. I think Al Qaeda has jumped the shark. And I am starting to think that even while we lose one and a half small wars, we may win the big war. Usually the United States wins its wars with overwhelming power. It’s what worked in the Civil War, the Spanish-American...