Category: The Dish

Apologies

The Atlantic redesigned the site a little, and the result is some disruption. The reason the site is looking weird for some of you is that your browser has not refreshed its cache and is overlaying the old design onto the new one. I’m told the way to resolve this is to hold down the shift button on your computer and click the re-load button on your browser. Of course, if you have this problem, you cannot read this post. But I figure I should post it anyway. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry for how often I have to say sorry.

Quote for the Day II

"Rudy’s preposterous position is compounded by the fact that he professes to be a Catholic. As Catholics, we are called, indeed required to be pro-life, to cherish and protect human life as a precious gift of God from the moment of conception until the time of natural death. As a leader, as a public official, Rudy Giuliani has a special obligation in that regard … I can just hear Pilate saying, ‘You know, I’m personally opposed to crucifixion but I don’t want to impose my belief on others,’" – Bishop Thomas J. Tobin of Rhode Island.

With each election cycle, the conflation of religion and politics intensifies.

The Clinton-Obama Poll

It’s obviously an aberration as a primary indicator. But surely a lot of its aberration has to do with the following fact:

The survey of 310 Democrats and 160 independents who "lean" Democratic, taken Friday through Sunday, has a margin of error of +/-5 percentage points… Among Democrats alone, Clinton leads Obama by 5 points, 34%-29%. That’s a significant narrowing from the USA TODAY Poll taken in mid-May, when she led by 17 points. Among independents, Obama leads by 9 points, 31%-22%.

Clinton has the base support that her name, her husband and her long record among the Democrats have earned her. But as a general election candidate, as someone who can appeal to independents and Republicans, as someone who can actually enlarge the Democrats – Obama is quite obviously the superior candidate. Do the Dems want to go forward and outward? Or backward and inward? That’s the choice they face between the Senator from Illinois and the Senator from New York.

Padilla

Padillachained

He’s no longer charged with planting or even thinking about planting a dirty bomb. The charges he finally faces – after years of solitary confinement, sensory deprivation, vershaerfte Vernehmung – are based in large part on wiretapped phone conversations whose meanings seem ambiguous. Recall this:

Mr. Padilla, an American convert to Islam who was named an enemy combatant after his arrest in 2002, has the highest profile of the three but has not figured prominently in arguments over the calls.

That is because his voice is heard on only seven of the 300,000 or so calls that the F.B.I. recorded from 1994 to 2001. The government added his case to those of Mr. Hassoun and Mr. Jayyousi only after transferring him to civilian custody last year, as the Supreme Court considered taking up the legality of his military detention.

I can only hope that, finally, he is getting a fair trial. I’m not there, but testimony such as this does not exactly reflect well on the government:

Earlier Monday, the jury heard from Herbert Atwell, a former convict who said he attended a mosque in Broward County with Mr. Hassoun and Mr. Padilla in the 1990s. He said Mr. Padilla had been very quiet and carried a Spanish-language Koran, while Mr. Hassoun gave fiery speeches about the importance of "raising money for mujahedeen fighters all over the world."

But, in testimony that could paradoxically help the defense, Mr. Atwell said he had never perceived Mr. Hassoun to support terrorism or "mujahedeen fighters" to be terrorists. He said he believed they were "defending Muslims under attack."