The west went through the wars of religion and emerged with a modern understanding of toleration. We have learned through bitter experience that we can worship God without forcing everyone else to worship in the same way. We allow our neighbors to practice their religion, we practice our own or none at all, we criticize views we deem unsound, and we accept that our own views and faith will also be subject to criticism.

What we forswear is violence in response to words. In the present crisis we should seek peaceful dialogue between Muslims and Christians, not to mention Jews and freethinkers and all the others who share our world. But we who live in Enlightenment societies should not apologize for the fact that freedom of thought and freedom of speech sometimes lead to hurtful words.

Instead, we should reaffirm our own commitment to free speech - “hate speech” laws, anyone? - and urge Muslims to appreciate the benefits of liberal values, such as liberty and prosperity and social harmony. And we should hold Muslim leaders to the same standards we expect of western leaders, both civil and religious: we expect them to condemn, yes, “unprovoked” violence.

This isn’t just begging the question; it could be a textbook illustration of the fallacy. The economic toll of 9/11 was in the billions of dollars in large part because of our reaction to it. And the impact on our civil liberties was entirely because of our reaction to it. Remember, the whole question in this debate is whether we should continue to sacrifice money and freedom to the cause of preventing terrorism – so it’s circular reasoning of the highest order to use those very sacrifices as justification for doing more.

Read the whole thing.

Thanks to modern communications and the modern media, we are quite well informed about how Al-Qaeda perceives things. Osama bin Laden is very articulate, very lucid, and I think on the whole very honest in the way he explains things. As he sees it, and as his followers see it, there has been an ongoing struggle between the two world religions—Christianity and Islam—which began with the advent of Islam in the 7th century and has been going on ever since. The Crusades were one aspect, but there were many others. It is an ongoing struggle of attack and counter-attack, conquest and reconquest, Jihad and Crusade, ending so it seems in a final victory of the West with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire—the last of the great Muslim states—and the partition of most of the Muslim world between the Western powers. As Osama bin Laden puts it: “In this final phase of the ongoing struggle, the world of the infidels was divided between two superpowers—the United States and the Soviet Union. Now we have defeated and destroyed the more difficult and the more dangerous of the two. Dealing with the pampered and effeminate Americans will be easy.” And then followed what has become the familiar description of the Americans and the usual litany and recitation of American defeats and retreats: Vietnam, Beirut, Somalia, one after another. The general theme was: They can't take it. Hit them and they'll run. All you have to do is hit harder. This seemed to receive final confirmation during the 1990s when one attack after another on embassies, warships, and barracks brought no response beyond angry words and expensive missiles misdirected to remote and uninhabited places, and in some places—as in Beirut and Somalia—prompt retreats.

The idea that Christian beliefs are true and other religious beliefs are false (at least to the extent that they contradict Christian teachings) is not an incidental or gratuitous aspect of the faith that was grafted on to offend Muslims. Nor is the idea that Christians (those who accept Christ as their savior) go to Heaven and non-Christians go to Hell. These are core beliefs of the Christian religion. Indeed, if you don't share them, it's open to debate whether you qualify as a Christian yourself. So it's rather strange to fault the Pope, the leader of the world's largest Christian denomination, for stating a core tenet of his church's dogma.

The shoe fits just as well on the other foot. I don't know a whole lot about Islam, but according to Wikipedia, the basic tenet of Islam is that "I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allah and I testify that Muhammad is the Messenger of God." Presumably, this implies that it's a mistake to worship anything other than the Muslim God, which would include most other religions in the world.

The professor seems to believe that criticizing the religious beliefs of others is a form of religious intolerance. If so, he's deeply confused. Thomas Jefferson explained the point over 200 years ago: "It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." A free society doesn't mean that no one ever criticizes the religious beliefs of others. Quite the contrary: one of the hallmarks of a robust culture of tolerance is that we're regularly confronted with those who ridicule our beliefs, and we've grown a thick enough skin that we can handle it without resorting to violence.

All of this makes me deeply pessimistic about the prospects for liberal democracy in Iraq. In a society where the professor's attitude toward religious tolerance prevails, disagreements over religious doctrine must necessarily devolve into physical violence, as they did in the West for centuries until the ideas of Locke and Jefferson gained widespread acceptance.

If a well-educated professor of Islamic studies at an American university can have such a poor grasp of liberal ideals, how much worse must the grasp of the average Iraqi be? And without a critical mass of Iraqis who understand and support the ideal of liberal tolerance, how can liberal norms possibly take root?

This is nuts. Even if we did have the resources to attack Iran, doing so would be an incredibly stupid idea. For all its faults, Iran is relatively stable and peaceful as Middle Eastern regimes go. As Fred Kaplan points out, the government of Iran isn't terribly popular with the Iranian people, and there's considerable sympathy for at least some aspects of American society among the Iranians. Just today, I was reading a BBC story about how more and more women in Iran are going to college and having careers outside of the home. It's not a liberal democracy by any means, but as Middle Eastern countries go, it's doing pretty well.

This was not a random guy on the Muslim street. It was a professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University (I think, I didn't catch his name)--a guy who's enjoyed the benefits of living in a liberal democracy in which religious tolerance is the norm. In other words, he's a guy who ought to know better.

The most grating thing about the folks who make those kinds of arguments is the tone of earnestness, bordering on condescension, with which it's made. "No, you don't understand. Making fun of the Prophet is really hurtful to Muslims, and you just can't appreciate it if you're not one yourself." Actually, we do understand. We've got our own share of religious types who are (understandably) upset when people make blatantly disrespectful depictions of Christianity--with their tax dollars to boot. These depictions are, frankly, an order of magnitude more inflammatory than cartoons of Mohammed or medieval quotes attacking Islam. Yet the people calling for censorship of disrespectful depictions of Christianity are firmly in the minority, and I don't believe there was a single riot over the controversy.

To be blunt, the Muslim world needs to grow up. You live on a big planet with a lot of people with religious views different from your own. Some of them are going to say mean things about you. And, frankly, there's nothing you can do about it. So you're just going to have to learn to deal with it. We in the West figured this out over a century ago, and as the several million Muslims who work in the United States will tell you, it's working pretty well for us.

It's extremely rare for the Bush administration to pick big fights with congress. When the House and Senate were preparing to send him a campaign finance reform bill he regarded as unconstitutional, he tried to get his allies to kill it. But when they couldn't, he signed it. When it looked like congress might pass a patients' bill of rights he tried -- and succeeded -- in getting House allies to kill it, but indicate that he would sign it if it passed. He hasn't vetoed any bills. He comes from an ideological tradition nominally committed to small government, but has been willing to increase spending by leaps and bounds.

When it comes to this issue, though, no compromise can be brooked. Bush wants to order intelligence agencies to violate all the country's traditions and several of its laws in order that they might torture people. To that end, he's willing to say that if he can't torture people he just won't interrogate them at all.

Matt seems to have forgotten that Bush issued his first veto this summer over the stem cell bill. But his broader points is right: It's very rare for Bush to make a stand on principle. For the most part, he's worked quietly behind the scenes to get the changes he wanted, and then signed whatever Congress sent to his desk.

But the exceptions are interesting. In the stem cell debate, he fought tooth and nail to prevent Congress from second-guessing his "compromise" positon on stem cells, despite the fact that the position didn't make much sense to either the left or the right. Here, he's fighting tooth and nail to prevent Congress from second-guessing his decision to torture suspected terrorists. The only principle that seems to be operating in both cases is the principle of unbridled executive power. He appears to believe that when he makes a decision, Congress has a duty to defer to his judgment. Fortunately, that's not the way our Constitution works.

Update: Someone falsely claiming to be Solveig Singleton commented on this post over the weekend. Given that this person lied about his identity, I can only assume that the substance of the comment is false as well. It has been deleted.

The latest sign of GOP division over White House security policy came Thursday in a letter that Powell sent to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., one of three rebellious senators taking on the White House. Powell said Congress must not pass Bush's proposal to redefine U.S. compliance with the Geneva Conventions, a treaty that sets international standards for the treatment of prisoners of war.

The campaign-season development accompanied Bush's visit to Capitol Hill, where he conferred behind closed doors with House Republicans. His plan would narrow the U.S. legal interpretation of the Geneva Conventions treaty in a bid to allow tougher interrogations and shield U.S. personnel from being prosecuted for war crimes.

"The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism," said Powell, who served under Bush and is a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "To redefine Common Article 3 would add to those doubts. Furthermore, it would put our own troops at risk."

Bush said that "there's all kinds of letters coming out" and he cited letters from the Pentagon that support his argument.

Right, because the Pentagon is a reliable, independent source for analyzing White House decisions.

As near as I can tell, what the president has done is flout the law, get caught, and then declare that if Congress doesn't retroactively ratify his illegal behavior, he'll be forced to set the terrorists free. This is simply reprehensible.

It would be bad enough if the president simply didn't care about human rights and the rule of law and so pursued policies that undermined them. But this is much worse: he's actively working to undermine America's founding principles, and he's using his opponents' scruples as a weapon. And he's doing it at the peak of the election season, the time when weak-kneed politicians are most likely to buckle to the president's demagoguery.

The University of Western Ontario psychologist reached his conclusion after scrutinising the results of university aptitude tests taken by 100,000 students aged 17 and 18 of both sexes.

A focus on a factors such as the ability to quickly grasp a complex concept, verbal reasoning skills and creativity - some of the key ingredients of intelligence - revealed the male teenagers had IQs that were an average of 3.63 points higher [than those of female teenagers]...

Although experts have accepted that men and women differ mentally, with males averaging higher on tests of 'spatial ability' and females higher on verbal tests, it was assumed the differences averaged out, leaving no difference in overall intelligence.

What does it mean for differences to "average out"? It's pretty clear that there is no objectively correct weighted sum of the various abilities that constitute intelligence. Weak dominance in each subcategory (with strict dominance in at least one variable) would be sufficient to establish an ordering, but that isn't the case here. In fact, my understanding is that some tests (perhaps including the SAT?) are constructed so as to minimize gender differences. The moral of the story: it's always important to know the limitations and origins of your variables. Gender comparisons of IQ or any other arbitarily aggregated intelligence measure are simply uninteresting.

Democrats said they had initially planned to avoid any sort of partisan response to Mr. Bush’s address. But they said they changed their minds within minutes and followed up on Tuesday by attacking the administration over its record on port security and other efforts to protect Americans at home. Late Tuesday, they released a letter to the television networks asking for equal time to deliver responses to Mr. Bush’s future national security addresses.

At the White House, Tony Snow, Mr. Bush’s spokesman, could hardly disguise his eagerness to go before the cameras to engage the Democrats on turf that Republicans have come to consider their own. He invited reporters who posed questions to him in the morning about Democratic complaints about the speech to ask again at his regular televised briefing, where he said Democrats were politicizing the anniversary and reasserted the White House line that a withdrawal from Iraq would turn it into a terrorist base.

On Capitol Hill, Republicans took an even harder line, questioning Democrats’ commitment to fighting terrorists. Representative John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, the majority leader, said of the Democrats, “I wonder if they’re more interested in protecting the terrorists than protecting the American people.”

OK, so the debate that's being related in the newspapers is: was it a good strategy to have Ted Kennedy whine about Bush politicizing September 11? This is an absolutely terrible narrative from the Democrats' perspective.

Update: Jacob Sullum writes about the problem. It seems he advocates the legalization of the opium trade, but if the NR article is right, there's already a perfectly legal market for them. That might make it far more palatable to critics.

Larry Bartels of Princeton has studied the voting record of the Senate between 1989 and 1994—a time, note, when Democrats controlled Congress. He found that Senators were very responsive to the preferences of the upper third of the income spectrum, somewhat less attentive to the middle third, and completely ignored the policy preferences of the poorest third of Americans. In one striking example, Bartels discovered that Senators were only likely to vote for a minimum wage increase if and when their wealthier constituents favored it—the views of those directly affected by the hike had "no discernible impact."...

To some extent, these findings are likely a result of the fact that elected officials tend to hail from the upper classes, and so tend to be the sort of people who worry more about the burden the estate tax imposes than, say, food insecurity or too-high heating bills. In 2003, financial records revealed that 40 senators and 123 representatives were millionaires. This shouldn't be surprising. Without publicly-financed elections, it takes a good deal of personal wealth to run for office—the average Senate campaign in 2006 will cost about $10 million, minimum, according to a University of Washington study.

But that's only the most obvious way economic power begets political power. Consider the fact that wealthy Americans are far more likely to vote: 86 percent of those in families with incomes over $75,000 reported voting in 1990, compared to only 52 percent of those in families with incomes under $15,000. Whether that's because the well-off are more likely to believe that government will work for them—evidently a sound assumption—or because they have more time and opportunity to inform themselves and do their civic duty is unknown.

But it's not just voting. People in the $75,000 bracket are much more likely to join a political advocacy group like the NRA or the NAACP (73 percent vs. 29 percent), and much more likely to make campaign contributions (56 percent vs. 6 percent). Indeed, in the 2000 election, 95 percent of those donors making substantial campaign contributions came from households making over $100,000. While high-income donors don't usually bribe politicians to do their bidding, they do get more face time with their representatives, during which they can frame issues and concerns in ways amenable to their interests.

Matt finds these figures quite compelling. But I don't think this proves what Plumer thinks it proves. And even if it did, Plumer never gets around to explaining what it has to do with income inequality.

It's obviously true that wealthier members of society will have a greater influence on the political process. But that's true in every society on Earth. The primary reason for this, I think, is not that rich people spend more money on think tanks and lobbyists (although that certainly has some effect) but that politicians simply belong to the same social circles as a lot of rich people. All the lawyers, lobbyists, college professors, business executives, engineers, and others who form the average politician's social network are likely to be over-educated, highly-paid white collar workers. It's not remotely surprising that politicians often tend to reflect their friends' political views.

But that has absolutely nothing to do with income levels, as such. Enact a huge tax hike, so that the richest third of Americans are paying most of their income to Uncle Sam, and politicians will still make their friends among society's upper crust. True, that upper crust will be somewhat less wealthy, but it will largely consist of the same people, and they'll largely have the same political views.

And the same is true of the other common means by which the wealthy and well-connected influence politics. The non-influence of the poor has a variety of factors, but a big part of it is that they tend to be less educated, less articulate, less well-organized, and less politically sophisticated. Even if we could find a way of raising their incomes so that they could devote more time and money to influencing the political process, it's likely that these other handicaps would prevent them from having a significant impact on the political process.

Finally, I think it's worth noting that Plumer should be careful about what he wishes for. If we did find a way to increase the influence of the poorest third of society in politics, he might not like what we get. The anti-immigrant lobby, the NRA, the pro-life movement, the Family Research Council, and numerous other right-wing populist organizations draw their political strength from people who aren't at the top of the political spectrum. On the other hand, although the wealthy do include a lot of right-of-center folks, it also includes a lot of philanthropists like George Soros and Peter Lewis who support progressive causes. And on a lot of social issues, such as abortion, evolution, and immigration, the wealthy tend to be firmly on the liberal side of the political spectrum. Frankly, I think that Plumer would find a dictatorship of the richest 1 percent would be a lot more congenial than a dictatorship of the poorest third.

Radley's latest big story concerns Cory Maye, a man who shot a police officer after police raided his apartment in the dead of night. The police raided Maye's apartment by mistake--the subject of the warrant was actually the guy on the other side of Maye's duplex. Maye says he shot the officer because he thought he was the victim of a burglary--his 18-month-old daughter was in the apartment with him. The police found a grand total of one joint in Maye's house. He has no criminal record and there is no evidence he dealt drugs.

OK, so Radley publicized Maye's story last year. Today he broke another explosive detail to the story. The defense team hired a private investigator to track down the guy whose anonymous tip led to the raid in the first place:

After the guy realized the investigator was working for the defense team, he clammed up. When Bob Evans -- Cory Maye's lead attorney -- called to tell him that if he didn't talk, they'd compell his testimony with a subpeona, the informant flipped out. He called Evans, and left a rant on Evans' answering maching that, when Evans played it for me the other night, blew my mind. It's a 45-second clip of absolute fury, brimming with f-bombs, anger, hate, and -- by my count -- at least four utterances of the word "nigger."

This is the "trustworthy" informant whose tip led to the raid on Cory Maye's home. An unabashed bigot. Makes you wonder how many other black people have been raided, arrested, and imprisoned based on this guy's tips. Not to mention how many ignoramouses like him are still turning people in down in Mississippi -- or, for that matter, anywhere else.

Maye's case was already an outrage, but obviously a dash of racial politics will make this story all the more newsworthy. Let's hope that this story gets a lot of play in the mainstream media and that this asshole becomes the poster boy for anonymous drug informants.

And, obviously, I hope this improves Maye's chances of acquittal.

A guy who identifies himself as Jason Fortuny, a 30 year old network administrator, posted a graphic ad on Seattle's Craigslist, pretending to be a woman wanting some BDSM sex.

Not surprisingly, many men responded, many with photos and more than a few with pics of their genitals.

Some used their work accounts, provided their real names and gave out their cellphone numbers. One looks to be a contractor for Microsoft, while another used a .mil address to reply.

Fortuny, whose MySpace profile says he likes to "push people's buttons" then posted all the photos and correspondence on what may be the web's lamest wiki, Encyclopedia Dramatica.