Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries ….
- House Gets Its Act Together on Health Reform While Senate Dawdles: Brian Beutler
- Firefox 3.5 Release Candidate Available Now!: Melissa Shapiro
- Pam’s House Blend:: Senator Chris Dodd: I now support marriage equality – Money graf: “The fact that I was raised a certain way just isn’t a good enough reason to stand in the way of fairness anymore.”
- Don’t You Hate It When This Happens? – Awwwww … the GOP haven’t painted Sotomayor as enough of a threat to curry all sorts of donations from their faithful, and that makes them sad. My heart bleeds cold peanut butter for them.
- The End of Islamic Theocracy? – It’s early days yet, from a regime change standpoint. But it does seem that the legitimacy of the theocracy seems to have been shattered for many. If the Iranian government continues to rule, it will be primarily because of bullets, not because of religious sanction.
- US Department of Defense classes protests as “low-level terrorism” – Meanwhile, folks are cheering all those “low-level terrorist” over in Iran. Doesn’t anyone see the disconnect here?
- Some Kindle books have secret caps on the number of times you can download them – And, again, DRM makes moving to ebooks like Kindle problematic. Remember, you don’t really own it if someone can keep you from getting to it.
- Serious Mandate for National Health : The Corpus Callosum – Poll results, of course, are ‘just’ poll results — and the folks funneling wheelbarrows of cash into lobbyist offices to stop this will pay little attention to same. The question becomes, what will the politicians do?
- What’s next for Jammie Thomas-Rasset? – Ars Technica – Outrageous fines seem par for the course for Big Media. In the long run, that will be their downfall.
- ‘Holy Grail’ of prostate cancer treatment? – These sorts of things often fizzle in studies after the first big headlines, but there’s always the chance of a big breakthrough, too.
- Kenneth Starr Endorses Sotomayor | Mother Jones – Starr’s an interesting fellow, and doesn’t automatically drop into stereotypical conservative modes. It will be interesting to see how his endorsement actually plays on the Right (assuming it’s even acknowledged).
- The Birth of the Birthers – It seems to me that there were conspiracy theories from the Left during the Dubya years, though most were forward-looking (e.g., Bush will announce the capture of OBL and/or suspend the constitution prior to ’04 or ’08 elections). But the apocalyptic theories from the fringe Right, like during the Clinton administration (“Secret! Labor Camps! Under DIA!”) seem to be their own special breed.
- Chip Berlet gives a scholar’s insight into the roots of right-wing conspiracism and the violence it engenders – Yes. This is not a “police issue” but a social issue. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to say nothing.”
- The Idiot Button : EvolutionBlog – The biggest barrier here for us to overcome is the sense that (a) we are always the Good Guys, (b) this is self-evident to everyone, thus (c) any side we support is clearly the side of the Good Guys. In far too many places, rightly and wrongly and bothly, we (the US) are not seen as the Good Guys, and throwing our support behind a cause is akin to the KKK, NAMBLA, the American Communist Party, or Tom Tancredo putting their support behind a particular domestic issue — the kneejerk reaction is, “Well, if they’re for it, I must be against it.” That’s a hard pill for Americans to swallow, but it’s a true one.
- Roger Cohen in Tehran: “I don’t know where this uprising is leading.” – The danger of the temporal taking on the authority of the divine is that … it rarely actually lives up to said authority, and usually brings the divine back down to the temporal as it falls itself.
- The Universe of Discourse : A child is bitten by a dog every 0.07 seconds… – Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
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Ummm Dave…you do know that the Iranian fight is between two groups supported by two different clerics, right?
It’s like if the Presidential Candidate supported by Pat Robertson were fighting against the Candidate of Fred Phelps.
God I hate our useless press.
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As I’ve noted, Moussavi is hardly a revolutionary figure (except, perhaps, in contrast to the current incumbent). And, yes, it’s a clash between clerics — but to the degree that the “Supreme Leader” cleric demonstrates the futility of blending church and state by letting church be dragged down to the level of state, it’s a good thing.
I think the real fallout in Iran will be long-term changes vs short-term. All these young Iranians are getting a taste for true participatory democracy (ie protesting) that equals their elders’ zeal for the original revolution.
Even a slight change in regime created by direct action will lead the entire country to move in a direction that better represents these younger Iranians, and they’re FAR more liberal than their elders.
I hope that they can keep their resolve in the face of the military might of their elders.
Arty’s prediction: this situation will change VERY quickly is elements of the military side with the protestors. Remember that these young people are the brothers/friends of the same people protesting in the streets . . .
I can see this tipping very quickly one way or the other in the short term. Longer-term, I agree — this has politicized the populace and shaken the homogeneous authority of the mullahs in a way that will have serious consequences over time for the regime.