The newest red state

Now what? We got Saddam, what’s next? Do we put him on trial? All of sudden his connections with Rumsfeld and Cheney get highlighted. Of course everything is in the public domain, just most news outlets have no interest in negative reporting on their associates. [Yes I do believe the fourth estate is dying.] But you can’t keep such a high-profile character in hiding forever. You could try him in Iraq, instead of in an international court designed to deal with international criminals, to make it sound as though there is a functioning judiciary in the country and to emphasize…

Last month the U.S. government canceled a visa that it had granted to Tariq Ramadan, a Muslim scholar in Switzerland. The visa, which had been approved in March and would have allowed him to accept a tenured professorship at the University of Notre Dame, was revoked at the request of the Homeland Security Department. No explanation has been given, but a department spokesman cited “public-safety or national-security risks” as the usual reasons for such an action. Tariq Ramadan, 42, is a professor of Islamic studies and philosophy at the University of Fribourg, in Switzerland. He will respond to questions and…

Joi Ito found a good article on the International Herald Tribune about what international observers are saying about our election process…. I don’t do it because I have affiliation to another country (unless we finally get the New York succession movement going), but because I have friends and family overseas, I like to travel and because of work and research.