Anonymous, "allegedly" means that the father is "alleged" to have done it, but the brother had threatened to do it, so it's possible the brother did it and the father is taking the rap for his son. One doesn't have to be "lawyered up" to use the term, only careful.

Silenced - nice post. Best of the thread, I think.

If anyone wants to read more about this from non-Western Muslim women, I'd like to suggest "Beyond the Veil", by Fatima Mernissi (there is an updated second edition and possibly by now a third), a Moroccan sociologist, and anything you can get your hands on by Nawal al-Saadawi, an Egyptian feminist (Egypt, BTW, had its first feminist movement in 1899; in the 80s, the 'feminist resurgence' featured young women adopting the veil as a feminist symbol). This is just a tiny tip of the iceberg, but not a bad place to start.

Also interesting is any account you can find on what happened in 1985 during the UN's Decade on Women (can the name really have been that badly chosen? someone correct me with the proper name!), when Western and Muslim feminists famously failed to see eye-to-eye on what the major concerns were for women in the Muslim world. Sadly, some arguments are never resolved, or transcended.

Glenn, when are you finally going to admit that your slothful lack of productivity is just part of an "industrial action" by Salon secretly concocted to deliver the nomination to Hillary? "Flu", indeed.

Seriously, keep up the great work. I don't comment here often but I read you everyday, and forward your stuff widely. You've done more than anyone else I'm reading to clarify and raise the profile of the PAA/FISA/Telecom immunity fiasco.

qs

Gang,

Whatsay we call a hiatus on all the how-great-it-was-when-Tim-was-here drama for a while? Yeah, it WAS great, but it took a while to get there. Tim G had to find his own voice and way of doing this blog; So does Alex. It'll be fine. Stick around, you'll see.

qs

Look, we really need to lighten up just a little.

This particular installment of Brooks, in spite of some gasp-producing lines (i.e. about Senators coming together in a bipartisan way to fix FISA ...!...) was, in fact, funny. It's good news for Obama to get some gentle gibes like this, or the halo is going to get rather tight. Just saying.

In keeping with the Buckley school of Right Writing, Brooks does try to have a sense of humor, occasionally, and is at least a little even handed in his targets. Even if you don't think he's funny, it isn't too hard to see that he's trying to be, not 'hateful', 'bile', whatever.

All this back and forth about is-it-realistic reminded me of an episode of Homicide (y'all chime in if you 'member it too). As I recall:

Pembleton and Bayliss are in the car. While Pembleton drives, Bayliss is reading a book. Pembleton asks him about it.

Bayliss says it's called 'The Corner', by a Sun journalist, where he followed around all these dealers and cops, talked about what they did, used their real names. (And we all know who wrote it, right?)

Pembleton is shocked. He asks Bayliss, would you ever do that? Let some reporter talk about things the way you actually do them? Let him use your real name?

Bayliss laughs. You kidding me?

Maybe Simon is lurking here, remembering that scene too, and having a good-natured laugh (And maybe he'll grace us with a comment, like he did on Matthew Yglesias' blog)

Thanks, I was trying to make out "Troop Surge" but couldn't. The product names are a great bit of marginalia (WMD, Greenhouse Gas, etc); maybe some obsessed fan (like maybe one of us) somewhere has gone through and notated them by episode ... ?