The Dish

"The freedom to criticize religion is not only a fundamental right; for those of us who are unbelievers it is also a kind of duty, since one must do one’s part in opposing belief not supported by evidence or reason or, as it appears to us in this case, anything compelling at all. But that is something different from treating religion as uniformly productive of harm or as having a monopoly on unreason and fanaticism, and from treating its adherents as worthy of contempt. To do this is ignorance and folly, – Norm Geras.

Rio, Brazil, 5.30 am.

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My Sunday Times column on Blair:

The life of a poodle is often underrated. As dogs go, many enjoy the most pampered of existences and are smart enough to do the most intellectually demanding of tasks.

Poodle owners are often passionate about their pets, catering to their every whim, manipulated by their guile and tolerating their sometimes snippy relationships with other dogs. In many cases – and this is not restricted to poodles, of course – it’s hard to tell, after a while, who controls whom. The master routinely finds his days wrapped around catering for the poodle: walking it, grooming it, pandering to it. If the tail often wags the dog, the dog can also wag the human. And often does.

I’ve never understood, in this respect, why calling a British prime minister a poodle of the president of the United States is therefore always to the detriment of the Brit.

The rest is here.

(Photo: Stephen Hird/AFP/Getty.)

Looking on the bright side after week one:

The U.S. military commanders continue to state the operations will be ongoing through the end of the summer. The escape of Al Qaeda leaders and operatives from Baqubah and the southern belts will no doubt be touted as a failure in the plan, but this view demonstrates a lack of understanding of the fundamentals of warfare and the purpose of the operation.

First, no cordon is perfect, and the enemy has the ability to read the signs and act accordingly. It has been clear for months Baqubah would become a target of Coalition forces, and al Qaeda has its own sophisticated intelligence network that no doubt detected Coalition and Iraqi movements.

Second, the purpose of the Baghdad Security Plan and Operation Phantom Thunder is to deny al Qaeda Baghdad and the Belts, and to kill as many operatives and leaders as possible in the process. When al Qaeda attempts to regroup, it will be in the hinterlands, and in some cases, in regions less hospitable to its actions.

We can hope. But I’ll wait and see.

A cage dweller sits inside a cage on June 20, 2007 in Hong Kong, China. The poorest of Hong Kong’s citizens live in cage homes, steel mesh box constructions, stacked on top of each other. The division between poor and rich in the former British colony, which celebrates the 10th anniversary of its handover to Chinese rule on July 1, remains an unsolved problem. (Photo by MN Chan/Getty Images)

A reader writes:

Tonight with my daughter and wife I watched the first half of Stephen Frears’ and Peter Morgan’s The Queen. Your comments regarding Hillary remind me of the tone deaf comments and disposition of the royals in the film to Diana, her death and the public’s response to it. They just don’t get it. Tone deaf because no matter how closely you watched Hillary in the White House, you miss what she meant to some of us, what her senatorial career means to some of us, and what her chances of being the first female president means to us. Her book sold because many of us are moved by her work. Many of us prefer her to Bill who we also cherish in the same way we love and value Eleanor over FDR. Yes you were close up in the 1990s, but as Morton’s movie demonstrates, some phenomena are almost unrecognisable from up close.

My very precocious 9 year old sat with me watching a few minutes of Chris Matthews show tonight and hearing so much about the horse race and Bloomberg and Rudy. She asked very specific questions about who can and who can’t run. Can she ever run? Could her father? What kind of profession must you come from? Do you need a certain degree? My fourth grade students ask this question all the time: every couple weeks. And Hillary’s running means something completely different than Barack or even Libby Dole. It is possible you are too close to your work and what you know to see that, just as I am too close to my work and what I know not to see that. She and her ever-present coffee cup are real to a lot of us. I have never worked for a candidate and I don’t work for her but she is someone who makes my daughter’s horizon more real.

The reader is right. I don’t get it. But I did get Diana. Loved her. Ditto Maggie. And Golda. I think it’s partly because I would love to see a woman president that I can’t bear to think this phony could be the first one to do it.

But make sure you wait to hear all the potential side-effects.

Joe Gandelman on Cheney and the GOP.

Orange County, California, 5.45 am.

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The Democrats grow some balls:

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) said he plans to propose next week, as part of a spending bill for executive operations, a measure to place a hold on funds for Cheney’s office and official home until he clarifies to which branch of the government he belongs. Emanuel acknowledged that the proposal is just a stunt, but he said that if Cheney is not part of the executive branch, he should not receive its funds. "As we say in Chicago, follow the money," he said.

Cheney is acting as if he is outside the constitution and above the law. He has been acting that way for quite a while now. When a public official abuses the public trust and refuses any oversight, it’s time for the other branches of government to do what they can to rein him in. Especially when the man has revealed himself to be a blithering incompetent.

I don’t think this is a trivial matter, because it seems to me that Cheney is currently an extremely dangerous man. He has nothing to lose in the next eighteen months. He cannot get any less popular. He thinks the 2004 election is the only legitimacy he needs. He doesn’t believe the Congress should have any role in foreign policy. And he also believes that Iran must not develop nuclear power and that no one apart from him can stop them. The drum beat coming from his office about Iran’s direct involvement in the Iraq war is obviously a preamble to claiming that the 2003 war authorization gives him and Bush the right to bomb Iran without going back to the Congress for approval. He’s a man ready and willing to pull a Cambodia. If the Congress and the press don’t start pushing back now, it may come sooner rather than later.

(Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty.)