Iraq's leading Sunni Muslim religious organization blamed top Shi'ite clerics on Thursday for fuelling sectarian tension in which dozens of Sunni Arabs have been killed over the past 24 hours.

ahhh the blame game
the politics of the last atrocity

International News Article | Reuters.com

We need the computer power you're not using. Join in the largest climate prediction experiment ever, developed by climate scientists for the BBC using the Met Office climate model.

BBC - Science & Nature - Climate Change

The House Science Committee’s Republican chairman and senior Democrat told NASA Administrator Mike Griffin they had little interest in accelerating the U.S. space agency’s exploration plans at the expense of science and research.

SPACE.com -- Congress Criticizes NASA Budget Request

Iraq has launched an investigation into claims by the US military that an Iraqi interior ministry "death squad" has been targeting Sunni Arab Iraqis.

The probe comes after a US general revealed the arrest of 22 policemen allegedly on a mission to kill a Sunni.

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Iraq 'death squad caught in act'

A US journalist whose broadcasts from London helped rally American public opinion to Britain's side during World War II has been commemorated.

A blue plaque has been unveiled at Edward R Murrow's old home, Weymouth House in Hallam Street, central London.

we brits hail an American hero

BBC NEWS | England | London | London remembers US broadcaster

Stanley Fish wrote

But a firm adherent of a comprehensive religion doesn't want dialogue about his beliefs; he wants those beliefs to prevail. Dialogue is not a tenet in his creed, and invoking it is unlikely to do anything but persuade him that you have missed the point

Decius wrote

a responsible believer wishes his ideas to win in the open marketplace of ideas rather then through force.

he is rejecting dialogue and liberalism
he seems to be arguing for some sort of apocalyptic war? perhaps? he doesn't argue for anything but rejects liberalism
he rejects the idea of a responsible believer

Stanley Fish wrote

the morality of a withdrawal from morality in any strong, insistent form

this is his description of what liberal editors are doing by being "concerned only to stand up for an abstract principle - free speech" but excuse me blasphamy is an abstract principle. He's just condeming decadent liberal ideology and sounds like a jihadist, Christian/Muslim who knows for sure.

The belief in the therapeutic and redemptive force of dialogue depends on the assumption (central to liberalism's theology) that, after all, no idea is worth fighting over to the death and that we can always reach a position of accommodation if only we will sit down and talk it out.

this to me is scary and the guy is a law professor! he's rejecting this!

RE: Our faith in letting it all hang out - Editorials & Commentary - International Herald Tribune

Married people are happier than unmarrieds. People who worship frequently are happier than those who don't. Republicans are happier than Democrats. Rich people are happier than poor people. Whites and Hispanics are happier than blacks. Sunbelt residents are happier than those who live in the rest of the country.

Get rich, get married, get religion, get a gun, get a place in Miami, and vote for Jeb...

One wonders if Democrats are less happy because they spend more time thinking about poor people, gun violence, and the long term impacts of foreign policy rather then enjoying low taxes and military ass kicking.

Pew Research Center: Are We Happy Yet?

in the public sphere, the argument goes, one's religious views must be put forward with diffidence and circumspection. You can still have them and express them - that's what separates us from theocracies and tyrannies - but they should be worn lightly. Not only must there be no effort to make them into the laws of the land, but they should not be urged on others in ways that make them uncomfortable. What religious beliefs are owed - and this is a word that appears again and again in the recent debate - is "respect"; nothing less, nothing more.

The thing about respect is that it doesn't cost you anything; its generosity is barely skin-deep and is in fact a form of condescension: I respect you; now don't bother me.

This is, increasingly, what happens to strongly held faiths in the liberal state. Such beliefs are equally and indifferently authorized as ideas people are perfectly free to believe, but they are equally and indifferently disallowed as ideas that might serve as a basis for action or public policy.

Strongly held faiths are exhibits in liberalism's museum; we appreciate them, and we congratulate ourselves for affording them a space, but should one of them ask of us more than we are prepared to give - ask for deference rather than mere respect - it will be met with the barrage of platitudinous arguments that for the last week have filled the pages of newspapers.

this scary argument is from nyt and i found it in the International Herald Tribune
Stanley Fish, a law professor, seems to be arguing for theocracy and failing to understand that liberalism emerged out of the religious conflicts which followed the Reformation. In England we had a civil war and Christmas was banned by the Puritans, fundamentalist Protestants. From the English Civil War we get the philospher John Locke and the birth of liberal philosophy, the birth of human rights thinking and a theory of government as something which rises up from the people and builds upon individual liberty. Individuals bind together to form a commonwealth, thence authority rather than the Divine Right of Kings, a top down theory.
Attempts were made and failed to allow religious diversity in England.
As a result of the reactionary backlash which was the attempt to introduce uniformity to religious belief and practice post 1688 many Christians of diverse sects fled to America in search of religious freedom.
As inheritors of a philosophical school which had seen religious wars and persecution, the American founding fathers choose free speech. Free speech is not simply an idea it is perhaps a meta meme in that it is the provision of a space in which memes can interact.
What Stanley Fish dismisses as a museum is a rich and vital ocean with diverse tides, currents and eddies. Strongly held religious beliefs are fine unless and until they impinge on the rights of others. In the idea space all ideas are not s... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

Our faith in letting it all hang out - Editorials & Commentary - International Herald Tribune

Kenyan MPs who interviewed the exiled former anti-corruption investigator said they were "astounded" by evidence of alleged government corruption.

John Githongo - who gave his testimony in London - has directly implicated several Kenyan government ministers in an alleged multi-million dollar scam.

The head of the delegation said Mr Githongo's information would be acted upon following a report to parliament.

time for a new politics

BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Graft evidence stuns Kenyan MPs

It was a victory for Lance Cpl. Matthew Schilling to walk into the upper gallery of the House of Representatives on Jan. 31 for the State of the Union address. He wore his dress blues and a prosthetic leg. Five months earlier, he had been carried on a stretcher, wounded and bleeding, into a hospital in Iraq after a roadside bomb exploded 10 feet from him.

The blast tore through his right foot and calf and blew a hole through his left hand. But hearing President Bush speak confidently of victory in Iraq, Corporal Schilling, a smooth-faced Marine reservist and college student from Portersville, Pa., who grew up on a cattle farm, again felt that his sacrifice had been worth it.

"I felt really proud when all those people I met that night thanked me for my service," said Corporal Schilling, 21, who attended with his wife, Leigh Ann, as guests of their congresswoman, Representative Melissa A. Hart, a Republican.

Yet when the Schillings returned to the Mologne House, a hotel at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for wounded soldiers and their families, Corporal Schilling found that wearing his prosthesis that night had taken a toll. Blood blisters had formed on his stump, and he was soon back in a wheelchair facing more surgery.

the story of two brave men

Healing, With New Limbs and Fragile Dreams - New York Times