The Dish

Iran’s government will now pay for them. I’ve long wondered why Christianists, whose hostility to gender non-conformity is almost as intense as the Islamists’, don’t support this more. Gender ambiguity or transgression – integral to nature, protected and defended by civilized societies – is anathema to the fundamentalist mind. Some fundamentalists even panic if men pee sitting down, for Pete’s sake. So isn’t surgically changing the gender of some transgendered people the perfect fusion of transgendered rights and religious orthodoxy? It clears everything up, the way fundies like their universe. No confusion. Just chop it off and marry a man; or become a man and marry a woman (or several). Ayatollah Khomeini approved of sex change operations a quarter century ago. And here’s a link to a new documentary about several Iranian men who have become women – in order to wear veils. It has a fitting title: "Be Like Others."

Transgendered identity and heterosexual normativity are allies. In many cases, only a physical barrier exists to transgendered people being fully integrated into heterosexual norms. But gay people, by our very existence, violate such norms. And our persistence in not wanting a cure – or seeing its desirability in any way – is what drives those who hate us crazy. We like our gender. We just express it differently.

Lowry:

Who would have guessed three months ago that Hillary would be the desperate out-of-sorts underdog nipping at the ankles of the cool, in-control frontrunner, Barack Obama, in what is probably the final Democratic debate?

How about nine months ago?

K-Lo wants McCain to run hard against Obama on this kind of thing. Is she nuts?

Kinda makes public financing moot, no?

Marc on each candidate’s body language:

I hesitate to point out her body language, if only because I can easily read too much into it. But she seemed tense, remorseful, sad, at times… her neck seemed leaden; her voice had an edge that all to often crossed the boundary between assertive and plaintive.

Obama seemed more solicitous and upbeat. Even as he was defensive, he was passive-defensive; he was oh-so-cool; one e-mailer, recalling Twain, called him a Christian with four aces. He seemed to be listening to Hillary Stagg with one ear and to Hillary Clinton with the other.

John Dickerson’s two cents:

At one point, Clinton talked about how she barely had time to sleep, and you could believe it. After watching her fight through 90 minutes trying to make some kind of dent against the vastly improved Obama, it made you want to offer her a pillow.

Roger Simon on Clinton’s new theme:

Hillary Clinton as the inevitable Democratic nominee didn’t work. Hillary Clinton as the front-runner didn’t work. So how about Hillary Clinton as the victim? That was her theme at the Democratic debate with Barack Obama in Cleveland Tuesday night.

Just for balance, here’s Taylor Marsh:

After a year in the primary season, Hillary Clinton has found her theme: I’m a fighter.

Italics hers. Nausea yours. My take here.

They’re not going to put the words "gay marriage" in scare quotes any more.

A sign of demagoguery to come:

In the war of words over Iraq, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) may want this one back.

Speaking about a Democratic proposal to force Iraq troop withdrawal within 120 days, Hutchison said Tuesday that such a proposal would "put a bullet right in the hearts of our troops who are there."

"I’ve had it up to here with John McCain. He’s off the list. I’m joining Ann Coulter in supporting Hillary Rodham Clinton,"- radio talk show host, Bill Cunningham.

At some point in the fall, McCain needs to have a Sistah Coulter moment, when he does to the loony right what Clinton once did to the loony left.

Well, it’s a start. The Turkish government has opened up the question of the validity and origins of the Hadith:

Turkish officials have been reticent about the revision of the Hadith until now, aware of the controversy it is likely to cause among traditionalist Muslims, but they have spoken to the BBC about the project, and their ambitious aims for it.

The forensic examination of the Hadiths has taken place in Ankara University’s School of Theology.

An adviser to the project, Felix Koerner, says some of the sayings – also known individually as "hadiths" – can be shown to have been invented hundreds of years after the Prophet Muhammad died, to serve the purposes of contemporary society.

I kid you not:

Olken and Jones discovered that a country was “more likely to see democratization following the assassination of an autocratic leader,” but found no substantial “effect following assassinations—or assassination attempts—on democratic leaders.” They concluded that “on average, successful assassinations of autocrats produce sustained moves toward democracy.” The researchers also found that assassinations have no effect on the inauguration of wars, a result that “suggests that World War I might have begun regardless of whether or not the attempt on the life of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 had succeeded or failed.”