Two political movies

I was watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night and he had the most succinct commentary about why a constitutional amendment banning gay-marriage is a flawed proposition. They only other time we’ve had an amendment dealing with individual morality was prohibition. We all know how well that one went. What would we do without independent news outlets?

The case against Brandon Mayfield has been voided. (Previous posts). This is great news. More encouraging is what the fall-out of the case might be. First, I think it does wonders for increasing faith in the judicial system. It would have been better if the mistake had not been made in the first place, but the fact that legal system corrected the mistake relatively quickly is encouraging. Second, the PD for Mayfield believes part of the reason for the accusation was that Mayfield is Muslim. “Steven Wax, the public defender who represented Mayfield, said an FBI computer likely returned a…

Two articles worth reading: Haroon Siddiqui has a fair and well-balanced article in the Ideas section of the Sunday, 20 August Toronto Star entitled The Muslim Malaise George Soros’ article in the Wall Street Journal entitled A Self-Defeating War is also worthwhile and is published at the TPM Cafe. Here are some excerpts: “The war on terror is a false metaphor that has led to counterproductive and self-defeating policies…Unfortunately, the “war on terror” metaphor was uncritically accepted by the American public as the obvious response to 9/11. It is now widely admitted that the invasion of Iraq was a blunder.…