The Dish

Never under-estimate the power of beagles.

I spent part of last night absorbing the latest comprehensive Pew report on trends in public opinion over the last decade. It’s a devastating indictment of the Bush-Rove strategy for conservatism and the Republican party. They may have created the most loyally Democratic generation since the New Deal with the under 25s. But check the other findings out. Party identification is now 50 percent Dem and 35 percent GOP. The country is now divided in two over the question of whether military strength is the key to ensuring peace; in 2002 62 percent were hawks and 34 percent were doves. Religious intensity is falling; acceptance of gay people is rising. The younger generation is the most secular of any. Support for the military has never been stronger – people don’t blame the troops for the war. The country is divided down the middle on torture, but still in favor of preemptive war in some circumstances. Sorry, Dinesh, but women’s equality and freedom are values now overwhelmingly popular among all groups, including Republicans, and strongest among the young. Since Bush has been president, there has been a sharp decline in the number of Americans favoring "old fashioned values about family and marriage." In the last ten years, opposition to gay marriage has dropped ten points and support has risen ten points. There has also been a striking twelve point increase in support for affirmative action over the past decade – all of it among whites.

It turns out that Karl Rove has gone a long way toward securing a permanent majority in American politics … for liberals and Democrats. The collapse of a coherent, freedom-loving, reality-based conservatism is surely part of the reason.

(Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty.)

The military is bringing technology and bio-technology to make US soldiers the most advanced fighters in the world. call it the human enhancement project. I linked to Noah Schachtman’s blog post on mind-reading earlier today. Here’s a more comprehensive piece on the latest developments.

The cut-ups on many conservative blogs mock the idea that depriving people of sleep indefinitely is anything close to torture. Stalin disagreed. But one blog decided to find out what happens to the brain when deprived of sleep. Here’s part of the journal. This is the post after 126 hours without sleep:

i am certiain i am hearing audioty hallcunations – i hear a cat mewo despite thatfact thast i own no cats. i also hear a weird series of bleeps in different tones – i cannot find the sourceo f them. i snap in and out of an almost trancelike state wher i look at a random object an space out. ifeel delirious, a frien came over to check on me asi told him to, and he thought it was funny that my statements were halfbaked nonsensical jibberish. i no longer simply walk – it is more of a staggerlike lurchin g. my balance is also off. out of the corner of my eyes i believe im seeing visual disturbances an interruptions. no hallucinations – i imagin thos come muhc later – just ripples an slight distortions in my periphial. it may not even be a true hallucination, just delerium.

That’s after five days. Now imagine this continuing for the better part of a month – in solitary confinement, and often in shackles and stress positions, as the Bush administration has done to prisoners at Gitmo. And think of the quality of intelligence we’re getting at the end of it. The point of torture is now and always has been only torture. The full log is here.

It’s more than a problem; it’s a nightmare waiting to happen. This symposium helps explain why.

But he is, Blanche, he is.

Bruce Bawer vents at the way the European press slimes and smears sane critics of Islamism.

An engrossing inter-Catholic blog-debate. This is the post that started it. Money quote:

Ultimately, the tension created by the children’s rights movement is captured in a single question: Whom do we trust to care for the child? Once the state assumes the authority to speak for a child, what happens if the parents fall into a category of people-for example, drug abusers, prisoners, the mentally incompetent-who tend not to act in a way that is most supportive of a child’s future autonomy?  Under Dwyer’s prescription, these parents would bear the burden of proving their worth before the state permitted them to act as parents. It is not difficult to imagine future calls to expand the category of those presumed to be unfit parents to include individuals who would threaten their child’s autonomy by passing on misogynist or homophobic religious beliefs. When parenthood exists as a creation of the state, the boundaries of state power become difficult to discern.

The debate continues here, here, here and here. Larkin pops up, of course.

Yes, the Pentagon can read minds. They think it will improve the performance of American soldiers.