I am a proud native-born Iowan, even though I have been away from my state as a resident since 1969.

So it is with a sense of deep sorrow and helplessness that I witness the extreme floodings and other violent weather that is being reported around the world.  As a matter of fact, I found out on a BBC news program about the tornado in my home county in Iowa that killed the boy scouts.

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AND SUDDENLY: quiet. No Qassams. No mortar shells. The tanks are not rolling. The aircraft are not bombing.
 
In Sderot, sighs of relief. Children venture out. Inhabitants who have exiled themselves to other towns return home.

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Reviewing Tarek Fatah's "Chasing a Mirage"

Tarek personally asked me to review his book, Chasing a Mirage: the tragic illusion of an Islamic State (CM). It has been reviewed very favorably indeed in the Canadian media, especially the Asper-family owned newspapers. The right-wing National Post published long excerpts from the book in serial form, and frequently runs op-eds by Tarek.

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Not surprisingly, the Democratic-controlled Congress has once again capitulated to the president, this time agreeing to a “compromise” bill that grants immunity to telecom companies that knowingly and intentionally broke the law that prohibited them from sharing confidential information about their customers with the government.

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Oil Prices Are About to Fall

Bold economic predictions are dangerous, and I’ve been wrong before, but here goes: Oil prices are about to tumble.

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On Tuesday, the Senate Armed Services Committee held an eight-hour hearing that exposed the role of top Bush administration officials in authorizing the use of harsh interrogation techniques. Meanwhile, Retired Major General Antonio Taguba, the Army general who first investigated the abuse at Abu Ghraib, has accused the Bush administration of committing war crimes. “The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture,” Taguba said.

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In his dissent in Boumediene, Justice Scalia pulls an old trick from the interventionist hat — that Americans will be safer if they surrender their fundamental rights and liberties to the government. What he’s saying is that Court’s holding recognizing habeas corpus rights to Guantanamo prisoners is going to result in terrorists being set free, who will then return to “the battlefield” to kill Americans.

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A review of Eliza Gilkyson’s “Beautiful World”

Before I offer my review of “Beautiful World,” Eliza Gilkyson’s new CD on Red House Records, two disclaimers up front. First, this really isn’t a music review because I don’t know anything about music. I’m the guy they put in the back row of the choir with instructions to mouth the words as quietly as possible. I learned three guitar chords once; I remember two of them.

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In the forthcoming "Savage Mules: The Democrats and Endless War," Dennis Perrin argues that the Democratic Party (at least its elected officials, if not its loyal voters) is a party of war. I have some significant disagreements with Perrin, which I'll come to below, but here is roughly the way this story goes:

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The number of Americans who believe that the war in Iraq was a mistake has surpassed the number who felt the same way about Vietnam during that war. At the same time, a much quieter U.S. military build-up is underway on another continent. The ultimate objective of the two efforts is the same: securing Big Oil's access to the regions' oil. The impact in Africa will likely be the same as in Iraq: perpetual occupation, instability, and growing anti-Americanism.

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Once in a while the fading embers of freedom flare with defiant vigor. That happened the other day when the U.S. Supreme Court sternly informed the Bush administration that it may not hold people suspected of being terrorists indefinitely without charge and without judicial review at its prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

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Conservatives are berating the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in the Boumediene case, where the Court held unconstitutional the federal government’s attempt to cancel habeas corpus rights to the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. The conservative reaction to the decision reflects, once again, how conservatives have come to view the federal government — and, more specifically, the executive branch — as a deity, one which is never wrong.

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For months, the media has focused on the question of Democratic party unity. Now that Obama is the presumptive nominee, there are still ongoing questions as to whether Hillary voters will unite behind him.I think Hillary's recent, and full-throated, endorsement helps Obama with this task.

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Suppose the Chinese people were able to overthrow their communist regime and install a democratic republic. Suppose the new Chinese officials asked Americans to help them implement a new criminal-justice system for China.

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Ten-year-old Sweeta still remembers the most painful moments of her life when a bulky 35-year-old man raped her in his office in the town of Sheberghan, Jowzjan Province, in northern Afghanistan.

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After the Supreme Court handed down its long-awaited opinion, upholding habeas corpus rights for the Guantánamo detainees, I was invited to appear on The O'Reilly Factor with guest host Laura Ingraham. Although she is a lawyer and former law clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas, Ingraham has no use for our judicial branch of government, noting that the justices are "unelected." 

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