Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 2614

Virtual Taliban

by Patrick Appel

Adam Serwer, a video game aficionado, realistic games. Building off a post by Adam Weinstein, Serwer cringes at "the Afghanistan-based edition of Medal of Honor, a First Person Shooter
in which you have the option of playing as a member of the Taliban":

I don't think any of this stuff should be forbidden. I just have nodesire to be a Nazi foot soldier in World War II or a G.I. in a trenchin 1917. For that matter, I don't even want to to be a drug dealer insome...

Mehlman Comes Out

by Chris Bodenner

Ambinder gets the scoop from "the most powerful Republican in history to identify as gay."

United States - Gay Lesbian and Bisexual - Republican - Chris Bodenner - Politics

"I'm Sorry" Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

Dan Savage called bullshit on the penitent proselytizer last month. His bottom line:

When evangelicals are ready to admit that the bible got homosexuality
wrong—just like it got slavery and shellfish and figs and masturbation
and burnt offerings wrong—then we can talk.

A Slog reader wrote:

I interviewed Marin a few years ago and in my research prior to the interview found he often dramatically changed his message depending on his audience. To the gay crowd he'd be much more...

Faces Of The Day

The granddaughter of trapped miner Mario Gomez, Marion Gallardo, writes a letter to her grandfather on August 25, 2010. In the San Esteban gold and copper mine in Copiapo, 800 km north of Santiago, 33 miners have been living in unimaginable conditions deep below ground for 20 days. Chile's trapped miners say they are enduring 'hell' underground, putting urgency into a rescue operation that is about to start but could drag on for months before providing salvation. By Ariel...

For-Profit Prisons, Ctd

by Patrick Appel

Will Wilkinson the discussion:

The great hazards of contracting out incarceration "services" is that private firms may well turn out to be even more efficient and effective than unions in lobbying for policies that would increase prison populations.

When we add to the mix the observations that America already puts a larger proportion of its population behind barsthan does any other country (often for acts that ought to be legal),and that the US already spends an...

Dropout Factories, Cont'd Again

by Conor Friedersdorf

All the e-mail I get from Dish readers is a privilege. Below the fold is an especially tremendous letter about a Cal State professor's experience teaching students who often failed out. It's lengthy and fascinating.

I taught mathematics at California State University at Hayward (now Cal State East Bay) about ten years ago. The admissions policy at Cal State was to admit students who had a B average or who graduated in the top third of their graduating class...

Colbert Bait

by Chris Bodenner

A monkey jockeying a dog and vintage footage of a monkey riding a goat. Carry on.

Monkey - Recreation - Animal - Humor - Bali

Stemming Federal Funding

by Chris Bodenner

Russell Korobkin wades through the details of yesterday's "shocking" court ruling on stem-cell research:

Judge Lamberth surprisingly interpreted Dickey-Wicker to prevent theuse of tax dollars to support researchers who do any work using hESClines as an input. One might at least plausibly argue for this resultbased on the principle that underlies Dickey-Wicker: that is, ifCongress' goal is to avoid dirtying the federal government's hands withcomplicity in the destruction of...

Running Towards America, Ctd

by Patrick Appel

It's good to have Daniel Larison blogging again. Catching up on old news, Larison takes on Douthat's worries about Muslim assimilation:

What we're talking about here isn't a question of assimilation to thenorms of American culture or an[ acceptance:] of the principles ofconstitutional government, but a question of conforming to the limitsof approved political discourse. Of course, there is no way for Rauf tosatisfy his critics in a way that will not destroy his credibility...

"Hallowed Ground"

by Patrick Appel

Stephen Budiansky goes a little far here, but he's right that excessive memorialization has consequences:

It is hard in this age of endless memorialization to even express thisview without sounding callous: but Londoners did not turn their entirecity into a "hallowed ground" or a shrine for the dead or a monument toBritish victimhood. They rebuilt, they went on, they rightly saw thatthe truest memorial to the dead was to show the Nazis that their citywould rise again as if the...