Category: The Dish

One of the worst ideas in memory:

What kind of dysfunctional thought process would underlie the conclusion that the best way to guarantee the right of non-discrimination (the victims from denial of which are few) is by obliterating the right of privacy (the enjoyers of which are many)? Add to the calculus that "non-discrimination" is strictly a statutory right and that "privacy" is a constitutional right, and the proposal becomes even more absurd.

The indigenous militias are splintering and reconfiguring in Iraq:

As a response to rising tensions with the Islamic State of Iraq, three rival insurgent groups – the Islamic Army, the Ansar Al-Sunnah and the Mujahideen Army – merged to create the Jihad and Reform Front last month, announcing in their first communiqué that they would not target innocent Iraqi civilians – a jab at the Islamic State of Iraq. A fourth group, the Fatiheen Army, also recently joined the front.

Last week’s clashes which raged on for two days between Al-Qaeda and the Islamic Army in Amiriya, western Baghdad, may forever end the shaky alliance that the two groups have so far maintained against U.S. troops and the Iraqi government.

In a recorded statement posted on the Internet yesterday, Islamic Army spokesman Dr. Ali Al-Ni’aimi strongly rebuked Al-Qaeda and blamed it for initiating the fighting in Amiriya. A barrage of insults against the Islamic Army from Al-Qaeda sympathizers on the Internet followed the posting.

(Hat tip: Danger Room.)

My friend and colleague, Sarah Baxter, of the Sunday Times tipped me off to her husband, Jez Coulson”s photoblog. He has a very rewarding obsesssion with New York taxis. This one was especially gripping.

In America, at least, they have remarkably similar views and attitudes toward the Middle East.

I know the feeling. God I wish she were straight.

A rare, and rather charming story on a little-known perk for some law-makers. No, not pages: "hideaways" in the Capitol Hill labyrinth.

A Shiite cleric has the answer for infidelity.

My Paris-Hilton-In-Jail coverage begins here. More destruction of democracy here.

Shaftsbury, Vermont, 11.45 am.

For an interactive gallery of Dish readers’ window views across the world, click here.

His spirit haunts American resistance to the Gitmo regime. My opposition to suspending habeas corpus, to the military commissions farce, and to torture has had many label me a liberal. Well, if Burke was a liberal, then count me in:

The Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol is a simple document – the transmission to two law-enforcement officers of his constituency of an act that the government of Lord North has put to Parliament. The act suspended the great writ of habeas corpus – not for the good burghers of Bristol, of course, but only for a group of murderous insurrectionists who then stood in open and bloody revolt against their lawful sovereign. And the act went further, namely, it provided that these miserable wretches, whose insolence and defiance now extended to the seas, could be labeled enemy combatants pirates at the King’s discretion, and thus robbed of the right to be tried in courts. They would be dealt with in a summary fashion by the King’s military. And the act also provided that these miscreants could be transported across the ocean to England and held there to await their summary disposition – a step which justified the suspension of habeas corpus, since otherwise an English court might demand an accounting for their brutal treatment and incarceration. And there was no doubt as to the brutality of that treatment – these wicked enemies were left rotting in ship hulks and were succumbing to pestilence and malnutrition by the hundreds already.

Burke was not a man to be taken in by such demonization, least of all by the likes of Lord North, and he registered his sharpest opposition to what was being done.