I read the Gates story you linked to. On the Gitmo detainees, Gates said to the Senate:

"The question is what do we do with the 50 to 100 -- probably in that ballpark -- who we cannot release and cannot try."

As one commenter said, doesn't he mean they cannot convict them, not cannot try them? He didn't explain why they cannot be tried. So, excuse my naivete, but shouldn't they be free, then?

I think you are making a false equivalence, like Michele Bachmann did when she said this about evolution:

“In some ways, to believe in evolution is almost like a following; a cult following — if you don’t believe in evolution, you’re considered completely backward. That seems to me very indicative of bias as well.”

Here is a vision of your new SCOTUS. I loathe Thomas and Scalia, so I replaced them, too. One of the replacements isn't even a lawyer, but he'd still be better than those hacks.

Picture at sig.

This is why I am an apatheist.

at sig.

I am not at all surprised. Shit like that is one of the many reasons I am an apatheist.

Elsewhere in Salon, there is an article about the Dalai Lama, who seems to think there is something wrong with people who despise George Bush.

OK. As one commenter said, both the Dalai Lama and George Bush were born to rule.

Listen to ondelette! This is the Borg:

You can't outrun them. You can't destroy them. If you damage them, the essence of what they are remains – they regenerate and keep coming... eventually you will weaken – your reserves will be gone... they are relentless.

In their collective state the Borg are utterly without mercy... driven by one will alone: the will to conquer. They are beyond redemption... beyond reason.

. . . someone who considers the question of the existence of gods as neither meaningful nor relevant to his or her life; nor to human affairs.

Right on.

A vital component of that victimization...revolves around the unstated assumption that the group "deserves" absolute primacy among all other groups. From that perspective, anything that modifies that supremacy is an affront.

This is precisely the dynamic I see with people who pick on Bill Maher because of his views on religion. Maher's position, in essence, is that no one knows if there is a higher power out there, or what form it takes if there is; he also thinks that religion has no place in political life, and particularly in legislation, as it is not based on rational principles and should not be a determining factor in the lives of others of different faiths or nonbelievers.

But again and again, at the boards for Real Time, I see Christian posters indignant about Bill's views. They always call him an atheist, which he isn't, and they always say he is attacking Christianity. They invariably put words in his mouth to make their arguments, because they never want to address his fundamental, basically Enlightenment ideas, that reason should be the primary source and legitimacy for authority. Instead, it's--he's a creep; he's out to get us; he's deliberately antagonistic towards us; he thinks we should be outlawed; he doesn't have a balanced view about Christianity, etc. A lot of whining and no thought. Total bullshit.

Corrie's death as "ambiguous," i.e., saying that she may not have been deliberately murdered, then the film is already suspect.

Liberal Artist, as you say, some of us are grown-ups, but some of us are a bit more . . . egocentric. Picture at sig.

Whoa! Slow down there, my friend.

The guy is an imposter. An affront to all decency! I am the only insect around here. He calls himself a gadfly? Hmph. That's imitation buzzing, right there. He's a single-minded, single-celled organism (maybe even a terr'ist cell) trying to pass himself off as one of my kind. A shameless, presumptuous non-insect.

and a terrible writer, a total moron.

Picture at sig.

Glenn writes:

It's amazing how everyone other than Jeffrey Rosen seems to have such an easy time finding first-hand assessments of Sotomayor's work and intellect that are praiseworthy. It's enough to make one suspect that he set out on purpose to gather disparaging commentary in order to write a hit piece, and then conveyed only those remarks which comported with that objective.

I have to wonder if Rosen didn't gather disparaging commentary but in fact just pulled it out of his ass. To people like Rosen, it doesn't seem a big step to go from mischaracterizing comments or changing their tone or using ellipses to simply making shit up. I remember when Mike Barnicle was caught fabricating a bunch of his "man on the street" stories for the Boston Globe, and it doesn't seem to have hurt his career--I see him on TV as a political commentator all the time. So maybe Rosen sees the risk of doing this as pretty slim.

Rosen doesn't want to offer a valuable, well-supported piece of reporting. That's not enough for him (or rather, it's beyond him). He wants to place himself at the center of the lettered elite; he "cannot be confined within the weak list of a country's fashion: [he is] the maker of manners." His motives make his writing suspect.

As the use of anonymous sources increases, I have no doubt that outright fabrications will also increase.

"establishment media intercourse"

How about something a bit more alliterative? This will really make you avert your eyes.

"The Circle Jerk of the Sycophantic Stenographers"