VOTE!

I was on a plane so I missed Barack Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), but I heard it was brilliant. I caught part of Al Sharpton’s last night, and all of John Edwards. Edwards is probably going to get the most press coverage, so I want to mention part of Sharpton’s. Favorite section of the evening: You [George Bush] said the Republican Party was the party of Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. It is true that Mr. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, after which there was a commitment to give 40 acres and a mule. … We didn’t…

According to today’s New York Times, Brandon Mayfield, the American convert to Islam [I’m painfully aware that nationality has nothing to do with religion, but that’s the way it’s being reported], who was detained yesterday for involvement in the Madrid train bombings of March 11, may not in fact be involved. The relevant graf is: The law enforcement officials said they were afraid that Mr. Mayfield, who is originally from Kansas, might become a fugitive if he knew he was under suspicion. So monitoring that was just getting started was abruptly halted. Mr. Mayfield was arrested before investigators had fully…

I was watching CNN last night and came across a Lou Dobbs interview with Fouad Ajami, Director, Middle East Studies Program, John Hopkins University. Dr. Ajami made a lot of sense to me. To get a sense of where he is coming from, here is a list of articles by or about Dr. Ajami: Iraq and the Arabs Future Rude Arab Awakening What the Arab World Is Watching [critique of Al-Jezeera] Lebanon Star [critique of Ajami’s attack on Al-Jezerra] During the interview, in which he was speaking about the Abu Ghuraib scandal and the brutal beheading of Nick Berg, Ajami…