It's not just the face of this sick and sadistic man that you take in when you look at his lifeless features. It's the fact of violent death in general, beyond Zarqawi. As you look at the--truly obsessive--repetition of his image, you are not just enjoying the profound satisfaction of seeing evil defeated. You are experiencing a greater intimacy with the fact of killing . . .

Zarqawi was the mastermind behind the beheadings of Nicholas Berg and other innocent victims of his rage, a rare savagery that sickened, horrified, and perhaps also fascinated Americans. The act of cutting off a person's head, an American person's head, traumatized the national psyche. That is one reason why the image of the dead Zarqawi, which consists of only the beheader's head, is so cathartic to (sic) so many people. [How many people? What people? No one I know.]

But the fanatically reiterated image is also a way for this rare savagery to creep through the back door into our vindicated psyches. Zarqawi made beheading real, and now this image of Zarqawi makes it familiar, and just, and ours. Eye for an eye is a militant Muslim thing; it is their thing. . . . Now, with Zarqawi's head in all the papers, on all the airwaves--on all the poles of our culture-- this insanely archaic type of justice is becoming ours. Believe me, I like seeing that image of bloody extinction, too. I feel worried, and ashamed.[emphasis added]

Specter said he was surprised that Cheney “sought to influence, really determine,” the committee’s actions without even calling first.
“This was especially perplexing since we both attended the Republican senators caucus lunch yesterday,” Specter wrote, “and I walked directly in front of you on at least two occasions en route from the buffet to my table.”

The 73-year-old Specter is one of the Senate's best-known but least-liked members. . . .

Specter may not be the most unreliable GOP senator . . . but he is almost certainly the most harmful, because he is smart, ruthless, and influential.” . . .

[Lawmakers] regard Specter as one of the prickliest pols in Congress — a humorless man who is cold to colleagues and cruel to staff.” . . .

"There are two kinds of senators: Republicans who don't like Specter and Democrats who don't like Specter," says a former leadership aide. In a Washingtonian magazine survey, Hill staffers rated him the Senate's meanest member. This has given rise to one of Specter's nicknames: Snarlin’ Arlen.

“I'm wondering how you feel about your safety given that you've got armed guards there standing behind you, armed soldiers," Rowe says.
"Jessica, I feel quite safe, yes," Brigadier Slater says. "But not because I've got these armed soldiers behind me that were put there by your stage manager here to make it look good."

honoring their sacrifice and displaying the religious freedom our nation's veterans fight to preserve.

…Moreover, in the last go-round over maintaining the War Memorial intact, Congress on 20 November 2004 passed HR 4818, which was then signed into law by President Bush, authorizing the federal government to acquire the entire war memorial should the City of San Diego deed over the property. Last July, San Diego voters overwhelmingly approved this transfer by a 76 percent majority, but a Superior Court judge (who, a week before the election, declared a need for a two-thirds majority vote) prevented its finalization in yet another stunning despotic refusal to obey voter-enacted law.

San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders has indicated he'll represent the will of the voters—and the rule of the voters' law—by pursuing appeals.

Last year I wrote an article slagging Conor Oberst, aka Bright Eyes, for his awful protest song "When the President Talks to God." . . . But recently, I've had a little change of heart about Oberst. In fact, if he's reading this, I'd like to extend a hand: Conor, all is forgiven. I now know what truly awful political music is . . . and it is this.

Unemployment's staying down, Democrats are wondering how
Revenue is going up, can you say "Tax Cuts"

Tired of playing political punching bag to bishops and others who question their religious commitment, 55 House Democrats issued a “Catholic Statement of Principles” Feb. 28 that acknowledges the “church’s guidance and assistance” but also “the primacy of conscience.”

The 500-word statement rejects what its sponsors see as a narrow focus on abortion by some church leaders at the expense of other “basic principles that are at the heart of Catholic social teaching,” such as reducing poverty, promoting universal health care coverage and “taking seriously the decision to go to war.”

…we believe that the Church is the "people of God," called to be a moral force in the broadest sense. We believe the Church as a community is called to be in the vanguard of creating a more just America and world. And as such, we have a claim on the Church's bearing as it does on ours.

when a Danish author complained that he could find no-one to illustrate his book about Muhammad. Jyllands-Posten wondered whether there were more cases of self-censorship regarding Islam in Denmark and asked twelve illustrators to draw the prophet for them. Carsten Juste, the paper’s editor, said the cartoons were a test of whether the threat of Islamic terrorism had limited the freedom of expression in Denmark.

Even if you were overcome with a sudden urge to burn the Danish flag, where do you get one in a hurry in Gaza? Well, OK, that's easy: The nearest European Union Humanitarian Aid and Intifada-Funding Branch Office. But where do you get one in an obscure town on the Punjabi plain on a Thursday afternoon?

Once Judge Alito becomes Justice Alito, there's no turning back the Senate confirmation vote. We don't get to "take a mulligan" when choosing a Supreme Court Justice. . . . Will it matter if we speak up after the Supreme Court has granted the executive the right to use torture, or to eavesdrop without warrants? Will it matter if we speak up only after a woman's right to privacy has been taken away? Will history record what we say after the courthouse door is slammed in the faces of women, minorities, the elderly, the disabled, and the poor? No. History will record what we say and what we do now.--John Kerry, 31 Jan

The march towards knocking down the walls of discrimination that permitted us to pass a 1964 Civil Rights Act in public accommodations so people whose skin was not white could go into restaurants and go into hotels. Public accommodation. The 1965 act for voting rights. 1968 Act for public accommodations. The 1973 act to say that women are going to be treated equally. The Americans with Disabilities Act that said the disabled are going to be part of the American family. All of that is the march to progress. And my friends, the one organization, the one institution that protects it is the Supreme Court of the United States.--Ted Kennedy, 31 Jan

Of all the elements of Christianity, the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to save our souls. Did we ask him to? Poor child Edmund, to blame for everything, must bear the full weight of a guilt only Christians know how to inflict, with a twisted knife to the heart. Every one of those thorns, the nuns used to tell my mother, is hammered into Jesus' holy head every day that you don't eat your greens or say your prayers when you are told. So the resurrected Aslan gives Edmund a long, life-changing talking-to high up on the rocks out of our earshot. When the poor boy comes back down with the sacred lion's breath upon him he is transformed unrecognisably into a Stepford brother, well and truly purged. [my emphases]

Most British children will be utterly clueless about any message beyond the age-old mythic battle between good and evil. . . . only the minority who are familiar with Christian iconography will see Jesus in the lion. After all, 43% of people in Britain in a recent poll couldn't say what Easter celebrated. Among the young . . . that number must be considerably higher.