DC School Vouchers

Barack Obama and the DC School Voucher Program

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Who'd Be Female Under Islamic Law?

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown writes in The Independent:

I am a Muslim woman and, like my late mother, free, independent, sensuous, educated, liberal, contrary and confrontational when provoked, both feminine and feminist.  I style and colour my hair, wear lovely things and perfumes, appear on public platforms with men who are not related to me, shake their hands, embrace some I know well, take care of my family.

I defend Muslims persecuted by their enemies and their own kith and kin. I pray, fast, give to charity and try to be a decent human being.  I also drink wine and do not lie about that, unlike so many other good Muslims.  I am the kind of Muslim woman who maddens reactionary Muslim men and their asinine female followers.  What a badge of honour.

I am aware that my words will help confirm the pernicious prejudices that fester in the minds of those who despise Islam.  Yet to conceal or excuse the violations would be to condone and encourage them.  There have been enlightened times when some Muslim civilisations honoured and cherished females.  This is not one of them.  Across the West – for a host of reasons – millions of Muslims are embracing backward practices.  In the UK young girls – some so young that they are still in push chairs – are covered up in hijabs.  Disgracefully, there are always vocal Muslim women who seek to justify honour killings, forced marriages, inequality, polygamy and childhood betrothals.  Why are large numbers of Muslim men so terrorised by the female body and spirit?  Why do Muslim women encourage this savage paranoia?

I look out of my study at the common and see a wife fully burkaed on a sunny day.  She sits still.  Her children and husband run around, laughing, playing cricket.  She sits still, dead, buried, a ghost.  She is complicit in her own degradation, as are countless others.  Their acquiescence in a free democracy is a crime against their sisters who have no such choices in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

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Hitchens on C-SPAN

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Arlen Specter Switches Parties

Arlen Specter is the latest U.S. senator to switch parties.  Nothing wrong with that.  These days, with Rush Limbaugh leading the Republicans, who can blame him?  But, he reminds us that there is an honorable way to do it, and as he chose, a dishonorable way.

Like it or not, any politician running on a party ticket owes a duty to complete his or her term as a member of that party.  A duty to the party and to the voters.  If he or she believes that they can no longer represent the voters through the party, then they should resign first, then join another party, and then stand for reelection.

The fact is, like most national politicians, Specter stands for the only principle he knows:  Getting reelected.

Update:  David Broder on Specter the Defector:

The one consistency in the history of Arlen Specter has been his willingness to do whatever will best protect and advance the career of Arlen Specter.

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Divorced

I am an American.  In the sixties and seventies, I was the ugly American.  Today, I am the divorced American.

Of course this starts with my marital status:  I am divorced.  My ex-wife and I have two children.  She has remarried.  I am currently engaged to a divorcée with two children of her own.  So, I will live with another man’s children while yet another man lives with mine.

I was raised Catholic.  But the Catholic church will not acknowledge my divorce and second marriage.  So, I have divorced my church as well.  My fiancé was raised Baptist.  But when she married her first husband, who is Jewish, she had to convert to Judaism for the sake of her then-future children.  Today, her children are Jewish and she has now divorced two faiths.

My father worked for one company for his entire career.  I have worked for five already.  I divorced three of these, one divorced me, and one simply collapsed.  Today, I am self-employed.

Ten years ago, I divorced my political party.  Previously, I had been loyal to it since I became old enough to vote.  But, like most Americans, I am a political moderate, fiscally conservative, socially liberal.  What party represents me?

I grew up in Massachusetts and lived there after college.  Admittedly, the cost of living there was always high.  But eventually, I divorced my home state.  The cost of living, taxes, and unions drove me to start my own business in another state.

This year, I divorced my newspaper.  What passes for journalism these days is embarrassing.  And besides, I can get more news from a greater variety of sources online, generally for free.  And if any one of them goes astray, I will divorce them as well.

After buying American-made automobiles my entire life, I have just divorced Detroit.  My new car is also made in America, but it carries a foreign nameplate and any profit made by the manufacturer benefits a foreign stock market.  But then again, our own stock market divorced me in 2008.

I also recently divorced Microsoft.  After paying Mr. Gates and crew for 25 years for a deficient product, I just bought a Macintosh.  I feel better already.

And as divorce goes, I am not even average.  Many Americans have become totally divorced from the world around them.  Sure, we have all quit taking the newspaper.  But many of us have replaced it, not with other news outlets, but rather, with Comedy Central.  Oprah has become the new Walter Cronkite.  And Americans are more interested in Britney and Paris and football and basketball, than in the real issues of the day.  In short, they have divorced reality.

Even well read Americans seem to have divorced themselves from the ability to think about what they read.  If Thomas Friedman writes it and the New York Times prints it, well then, it must be true.  In their desire to avoid the perception of being judgmental, our post-modern intellectual classes have decided to divorce themselves from good judgment.

I am an American, and, like you, I am divorced.

So as not to be confused with James Frey, this essay is observational, not autobiographical.

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On those Pharma Ads

Protectasil (Gardasil) Drug Ad Parody

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PostSecret

On education and love


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David Mamet: No Longer Brain-Dead Liberal

From The Village Voice:

David Mamet:  Why I Am No Longer a Brain-Dead Liberal

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Kanjana's Heart

Across a distant sea
In an ancient land of karma and fate
A wealthy man has purchased
A living work of modern art
Haunting and sensual
The Golden Heart of Peace and Joy

While she offers him her beauty
He disregards her soul
He can penetrate her surface
But not her golden core
She is mere fruit of karma
Which surely he deserves

For hidden beneath the pretense
And her carnal acquiescence
The callous indifference of destiny
So locked in a vault sealed by fate
Guarded by her confidants
Neglect and Suffering

Kanjana safely secures
Her fragile heart
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Hans Rosling on Global Development

From TED

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