Eric Rudolph (original) — you know, the guy who bombed the Atlanta Olympics, a gay bar, and a couple of abortion clinics — was captured over the weekend. About time. It appears that sympathetic locals may have helped him stay a fugitive. The Washington Post goes for the gusto and labels him a Christian terrorist. Given the typical bent of the Christian Identity movement, I don’t see why we shouldn’t just go all the way and label him a Christianofascist. ...
I actually wasn’t gonna link to the long list of administration statements about Iraq’s WMD (original). But then I thought about it some more, and I came up with a thought experiment. Let’s assume the best. Let’s assume Bush and the rest believed everything they said. Let’s assume Wolfowitz’s rationale for misinformation is justified. Great. But now you know the government either a) bungles intelligence information, or b) is willing to stretch the truth a good long way to get your support. So when the next one comes around — when Bush starts talking about Iran’s Al Qaeda connections (original) — how can you trust that? You gotta have more evidence than just his assertions, because they have been proven wrong before in similar situations, and that is true no matter who you blame or don’t blame for that inaccuracy.
A little while ago I wrote about the tax cut, noting that it would provide some relief for parents. I apologize for being too optimistic. They wound up removing the increased child credit for families making under $26,625. Ooops. (Via CalPundit.)
Paul Krugman, fearless economist, explains liquidity traps for the non-economists among us. Interesting stuff. He gets political towards the end, but I happen to think he’s mostly right. The extra few hundred bucks parents get on their taxes may make more of a difference than he claims, though. Parenthetically, I am a bit baffled as to why more liberal commentators don’t address that aspect of the tax cut. It’s very hard to convince people that the tax cut mostly benefits the rich when you completely ignore the increase in the child credit. 400 bucks per child is not chump change. It is a pretty small percentage of the total cut, but that doesn’t mean middle and lower class parents won’t notice it, and you just look like a complete idiot if you pretend it doesn’t exist. ...
The Telegraph has partial confirmation (original) of the earlier Gitmo capital punishment story. It seems fairly likely, at this point, that there are plans for a camp that include an execution chamber. Talking about this is not being alarmist; it’s part of the system. Which is to say, it’s citizens expressing their opinions when (as may well be the case here) some military personnel let their enthusiasm get the better of them. The reason abuses like that don’t happen is because people speak up. It is not sufficient to simply say “Well, we’d never do that.” It’s our job to remind our government that we don’t do that.
The Economist has a very good report on the Congo (via Gary Farber, who would like as many bloggers as possible to raise awareness of the situation). 2.5 million have died in the Congo over the last four years; the death toll makes Saddam look like a piker. If humanitarian motivations suffice to justify the war on Iraq, then the Congo ought to be next in line. If they don’t — we still ought to do something about this. ...
Then: “I don?t think there is any role for the U.N. in the short term in searching for, or identifying, or securing weapons of mass destruction, but we do not necessarily rule out some kind of U.N. role down the road.” That’d be U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton. Today, things are different: “The United States has started discussions with the International Atomic Energy Agency to make arrangements for IAEA teams to return to Iraq to determine what may have been stolen from nuclear sites, a State Department official said yesterday.” ...
Bruce R. is just destroying the initial responses to the Jessica Lynch story over on Flit. It’s the kind of impressively completist work that makes blogs look good. Start at the top and work down. Best quote so far, from Rumsfeld: “We are certainly grateful for the brilliant and courageous rescue of Sergeant, correction PFC Jessica Lynch who was being held by Iraqi forces in, in what they called a ‘hospital.’” ...
The UN Security Council will approve a resolution lifting sanctions on Iraq today. This resolution is the result of a fair bit of negotiation and back and forth; it’s not the resolution the US wanted, and it’s not the resolution France, Germany, and Russia want. But everyone’s fairly happy with it. Lo, the art of compromise. It gives the UN more of a voice in the post-war reconstruction, and extends the food for oil program for six months. Probably most importantly, from a practical standpoint, it doesn’t give Iraq permanent immunity from claims by creditors, which means that Russia and France have some leverage to encourage Iraq to enforce the pre-war contracts. ...
You know, it might be dangerous to let kids play violent videogames. In this case, Washington State just made it illegal to sell videogames to teenagers if they contain violence against police. Good work, y’all! Now let’s take care of those icky books that tell stories in which there’s violence against policemen. Nasty things.