The other day, I was debating the legality of entering my apartment without prior notice with my landlord when my neighbor got home. My neighbor is French; I don’t know the first thing about him other than that. He’s quiet. My landlord gave up on our conversation, and started haranguing my neighbor about speaking French. “Don’t go speaking French around here! I don’t like what France has been doing!” I wimped out; I didn’t tell him that my neighbor had every right to speak French if he wanted. ...

Weird little Cheney interview. He says, referring to terrorism, “[T]he United States and the president have been forced to come to grips with issues that our allies to date have not yet had to come to grips with…” And I really don’t understand that. Has he somehow missed the Red Army, or more recently the Chechnya terrorists who took over a theater in Russia? Shining Path ring a bell? Or, hey, how about the IRA and the Basque separatists? It seems very clear to me that many European nations on both sides of the debate have seen more than enough terrorist activity to get a very clear idea of the issues.

The [WISH of the week](http://web.archive.org/web/20060924230604/http://web.archive.org/web/20060924230604/http://www.whiterose.org/pam/archives/003041.html (original) “Perverse Access Memory: WISH 38: Favoritism”) (original): Do you (or your GM) ‘play favourites?’ Do you feel you have to justify your answer? Do you have a horror story to share? I agree with Greg Morrow’s comments (follow the link above), with some additions. Favoritism shows up most often as spotlight time, a concept I find tremendously useful when thinking about balance. It doesn’t matter if Bob the Paladin can deal out more damage than Ernie the Weedy Cleric if Ernie does all the negotiations and it’s a socially oriented campaign. ...

This is kind of trainspotting at this point, but the Guardian is running live coverage of the British House of Commons debate on Iraq. There’s no doubt Blair’s resolution will pass at this point; the question is how many Labour MPs will defect. Robin Cook adroitly separated opposition to war from opposition to Blair’s government yesterday, which makes today more interesting.

There we go. Here’s the full text of Robin Cook’s resignation speech, which I’ve been pitching as a must read, so hurry up already. In other British political news, Clare Short (original) withdrew her threat to resign, confirming everything skeptics think about the left.

So. We’re going to war. I think a number of things, which I will outline here, as much to remind myself of them in the days to come as for any other reason. I think that regime change in Iraq is an admirable goal; Saddam Hussein is a terrible leader who has caused great harm to his citizens. He is a dictator and a criminal. I have no doubt of this. ...

Charlie Daniels continues to be a sad, sorry little son of a bitch. He sent that “ open letter” out to a bunch of people. Tamara Saviano (who works in the music industry) got the letter, apparently directly from Daniels. She responded, from her home, on her own time. [She got fired](http://web.archive.org/web/20080705040512/http://web.archive.org/web/20080705040512/http://www.blogcritics.org/archives/2003/03/10/185255.php (original) “Blogcritics: Free Speech Crushed in Nashville”) (original). After Daniels’ publicist complained. So not only is Daniels revealing himself as the worst kind of idiot, but if you dare to disagree with him, he’ll see if he can get you fired. ...

Two very important speeches were delivered today. One was delivered to the people of the United States; one was delivered to Britain’s House of Commons. I’m glad I had the chance to watch both of them. President Bush made what we must now consider the definitive Administration case for war on Iraq. Robin Cook made what I consider to be the definitive case against. (I have not found a transcript of the latter, but there is a RealVideo archive.) ...

Robin Cook and Tony Blair displayed uncommon class in their letters regarding the former’s resignation. That’s how you disagree with someone’s policies without attacking them as a person. It’d make good reading for a lot of people on both sides of the aisle.

Promise to self: one non-war related post per day, minimum. I am not defined by my stance on this war. Atlas Games just released Ars Magica as a free PDF. Daring move, but it comes from one of the most savvy businessmen in the RPG business. I’m guessing it’ll work out pretty well and serve as a driver for sales of the supplements.