What the Pope actually said, if you're interested, is linked here. The inclusion of the controversial quotation is intended to be provocative and to draw the listener in to the talk. The talk doesn't refute the observation, but uses it as a basis upon which to frame the irrationality of the God of Islam, in contrast to the rational God of Christianity. If he knew this statement would be read by Muslims, he would have known that it would have angered them.

In a way, it speaks to the fundamental philosophical perspective that fuels Al'Queda. Al'Queda beleives that the flaw inherent in western society is the bifurcation between science and religion. They see Islam as a religion in which rational scientific pursuits exist in complete harmony with God. Here, the Pope strikes at that bifurcation while bringing a counter accusation to fundamentalist Islam.

The primary purpose of the essay is a manifesto for the academic study of religion, which is assailed on the basis that it is not empirical. I might agree with the Pope, that questions of philosophy and ethics might have right and wrong answers, and while these questions cannot be effectively assessed by empirical means with today's techniques, that these answers might be found through intellectual observation and analysis, and religion is certainly one of the ways in which these matters are explored, and as such is a valid academic pursuit.

The problem here is two fold. First, the Pope wishes, as Christians often do, to argue that Religion is a prerequist to ethics. I think that good ethics makes sense systemically, and encouraging systemic good doesn't require a God standing over your shoulder. Furthermore, religious people seek to do more than to assess questions of philosophy. They ask people to accept matters of fact about the physical word that are not merely unsupported by empherical evidence, but directly undermined by it. Having said that, I think the Vatican has been distancing itself from that sort of thing lately.

The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons.

I wonder if physicists are going to start burning stuff in the street?

Cartoon War ][ - The Pope Strikes Back

This is a very interesting story. Guy gets charged with a misdomeaner. The charge is dismissed. Clerk at the State doesn't update the file. A million data reporting services copy the bad information. Apartment complex won't rent to him as a result.

Problem 1: Once bad information gets out there about you there is no way to clean it up.

Problem 2: The rapidly falling costs associated with criminal background checks mean that everyone is going to be checked for everything. Renting an apartment? Getting a loan? Applying for a job? Hope you weren't convicted of a misdomeaner 10 years ago. Otherwise you're out of luck.

File this along side eliminating felon's right to vote as a process thats based on the enormously stupid idea that there is a clear distinction between "normal people" and the "criminal class" and if you are part of the "criminal class" you cannot be trusted with anything again for the rest of your life. These policies actually serve to create that class, because the people who are added to it don't have the option of living a legitimate life after the fact. This, of course, produces more crime and social strife, and the cycle continues.

Exhiling people who are still living in your society is a recipie for disaster.

Boing Boing: Bad info in background check database nixes apartment application

The Soviets understood that these methods were cruel. They were also honest with themselves about the purpose of such cruelty -- to brutalize their enemies and to extract false confessions, rather than truthful intelligence. By denying this, President Bush is not just misleading us. He appears to be deceiving himself.

How do you motivate a high level operative that you've captured? Carrots or sticks. Sometimes you don't have any carrots. You are ultimately going to seek a death sentence against your captive. Its unlikely that the administration is employing these methods for the ends described in this article. However, the reason you have these rules is that its impossible to tell. Laws aren't impossible to break. Its just hard, and for a reason.

Tom Malinowski - Call Cruelty What It Is - washingtonpost.com

He spent a typical day watching movies, going to class and playing football. He was fascinated to learn about the solar system, and now enjoys reciting the names of the planets, starting with Earth.

An interesting perspective on GitMo that I hadn't seen before. On the other hand I'm a little concerned that they have him reciting the planets starting from Earth. He ought to be starting from Mercury. I hope GitMo didn't teach him to be geocentric. :)

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Cuba? It was great, say boys freed from US prison camp

How many right wing blogs are gunna link this one?

I was locked up and mistreated for being in the wrong place at the wrong time during America’s war in Afghanistan. Like hundreds of Guantánamo detainees, I was never a terrorist or a soldier. I was never even on a battlefield. Pakistani bounty hunters sold me and 17 other Uighurs to the United States military like animals for $5,000 a head. The Americans made a terrible mistake.

It was only the country’s centuries-old commitment to allowing habeas corpus challenges that put that mistake right — or began to. In May, on the eve of a court hearing in my case, the military relented, and I was sent to Albania along with four other Uighurs. But 12 of my Uighur brothers remain in Guantánamo today. Will they be stranded there forever?

Like my fellow Uighurs, I am a great admirer of the American legal and political systems. I have the utmost respect for the United States Congress. So I respectfully ask American lawmakers to protect habeas corpus and let justice prevail. Continuing to permit habeas rights to the detainees in Guantánamo will not set the guilty free. It will prove to the world that American democracy is safe and well.

I am from East Turkestan on the northwest edge of China. Communist China cynically calls my homeland “Xinjiang,” which means “new dominion” or “new frontier.” My people want only to be treated with respect and dignity. But China uses the American war on terrorism as a pretext to punish those who peacefully dissent from its oppressive policies. They brand as “terrorism” all political opposition from the Uighurs.

The View From Guantánamo

[Bush] seems to [have] a deeply seated conviction that under his leadership, America is right and does not need the discipline of rules. He does not seem to understand that the rules are what makes this nation as good as it can be.

Bush Untethered - New York Times

Sen. Reid stated flatly and unequivocally -- and I'm paraphrasing -- that the Specter bill was not going anywhere, that it would not be enacted. I then asked him how he could be so certain about that --

In response, Sen. Reid explained that our system does not allow every bill to be enacted simply because a majority supports it, that Senate rules allow minority rights to be protected, clearly alluding to a filibuster.

Apparently Reid has told the blogosphere that the Dems are prepared to go nuclear on this. Or is it nucular?

Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald: Sen. Reid: The Specter bill will NOT be enacted. Period.

On a scale of 1 to 10, in which 1 is the least important and least far-reaching and 10 is the most important and most far-reaching, the controversial parts of the Patriot Act renewal were about a 2. Nonetheless, the Bush Administration struggled for months to push through the legislation. Congress held hearings on almost every teeny tiny piece of text...

Compare that to the developing politics surrounding the Specter NSA bill, which was voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. On the same scale of 1 to 10, in which 1 is the least important and 10 is the most important, the Specter bill is somewhere around an 8. The Specter bill would reorient the basic role of the legislative branch in national security surveillance. In terms of importance, its provisions dwarf the provisions in the Patriot Act renewal by orders of magnitude.

The Volokh Conspiracy - The Politics of Surveillance and the Specter NSA Bill:

"This is like prewar Iraq all over again," said David Albright, a former nuclear inspector who is president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. "You have an Iranian nuclear threat that is spun up, using bad information that's cherry-picked and a report that trashes the inspectors."

The committee report, written by a single Republican staffer with a hard-line position on Iran, chastised the CIA and other agencies for not providing evidence to back assertions that Iran is building nuclear weapons.

Maybe they're not providing the evidence because according to everyone in intel and at IAEA, they're not building them.

They likely see other reasons for attacking Iran, like Hezbollah. I supported Afghanistan, I was wavery on Iraq, but I'm going to go ahead and pre-emptively come out against a war in Iran. We have two intractable insurgencies on the go. I think thats quite enough, thanks. There is no good reason to add a third. If they know where nukes are and want to go get them, then thats cool, but regime change in Iran is way more then we can chew right now.

U.N. Inspectors Dispute Iran Report By House Panel - washingtonpost.com

“We just don’t want to see Americans’ rights abused for the next 50 or 60 years because of an oversight on our part,” Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, told The Associated Press.

You know when Dianne Feinstein makes a pro civil liberties comment things are totally screwed up. Specter is feebly attempting to retain the appearance of the rule of law. You can sense how far things have gone in the mere symbolism of this act and the weakness of his position. Relenting to totalitarianism seems less hassle then dealing with all this beaurocracy, knowing that its just for show. Why bother with an election this year? Clearly, the outcome is the product of marketing anyway, and the Repbulicans will win, again. Whats the point? I'm sure Bush will keep us safe, and there is nothing we can do about it anyway.

Democratic Effort to Limit Surveillance Bill Is Blocked - New York Times