The Dish

Free peanuts! No warts! What’s not to like? I love the drug companies.

In Europe, the EU is counseling its members not to use the term "Islamic terrorism." One is now supposed to say ""terrorists who abusively invoke Islam". Bill Poser comments here. Money quote:

"The EU’s ostrich-like approach is stupid and dangerous for the way it ignores the very real fact of Islamic terrorism, but it is also linguistically ignorant since the phrase "Islamic terrorism" carries no implication that all Muslims support terrorism or that Islam is particularly associated with terrorism. By the same token, "Christian opposition to gay marriage" does not imply that all Christians are opposed to gay marriage or that Christians are particularly associated with opposition to gay marriage. If one must be politically correct, one should start from a correct understanding of the language at issue."

"Let us be clear: Ultimately, this is not about individual criminal acts or individual failures in leadership. This is about the systematic corruption of an institution. This is about the church as a hierarchy and a whole betraying the faith and the faithful in the most serious fashion imaginable. It is about a massively powerful institution using its power to conceal and effectively perpetuate – knowingly perpetuate – crimes (and sins) of the most evil nature against the most innocent and vulnerable of the souls who trusted the church," – Michael Kelly, Washington Post, March 20, 2002.

Mike died in Iraq four years ago today. I don’t know a better way to remember him than to reprint one of the many truths he wrote in the online version of the magazine he edited.

Plenty, I’d say. And he wields his power judiciously as well. But New York magazine wanted a more definitive answer, as far as debut novelists are concerned.

If you like cars and stuff.

Umberto Eco comes out for kitsch.

Kevin Drum ponders some. Is the capture of the Brits part of an internal, Persian power-struggle? I have no idea.

A brilliant speech, made all the more poignant by the official response. (Hat tip: Matthew Sinclair.)

It’s something I once suffered from. Elizabeth Keenan explores its depths. Say what you will about Ambien. The alternative is often worse.

A reader writes:

A small technicality on the "I’d rather be waterboarded than put in the general population of a high security prison" comment.  Whether actually guilty or not, anyone placed in the general population of a high security prison has been tried and convicted by a qualified court. Not so those who’ve been waterboarded at Gitmo, eh?

Hey: they’re terror suspects. And that’s good enough for the Bush administration and its supporters. You can always torture the confession out of them later. This is America.