We humans do, when the cause is sufficient, spend our lives. We throw ourselves onto the grenade to save our buddies in the foxhole. We rise out of the trenches and charge the entrenched enemy and die like maggots under a blowtorch. We strap bombs on our bodies and blow ourselves up in the midst of our enemies. We are, when the cause is sufficient, insane. -- Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow
In this week's Sift:
Meet Joe Stack. The media can't decide whether the Austin kamikaze was a terrorist or not, but they're sure he was crazy. I'm sure he was a terrorist, but his manifesto sounds disconcertingly sane to me.
Torture is Nobody's Fault. Nobody cares when Dick Cheney confesses to war crimes, and John Yoo gets off scot free. All in all, a bad week for the rule of law.
Short Notes. My town stands up to conservative slander. Coverage of the stimulus' first birthday lacks substance. A Lord's Prayer parody. The real Ronald Reagan opposed military tribunals. The rich get richer and pay lower taxes. Obama's outrages were OK when the white guy did them. And more.
I should explain: This is an experiment.
I used to be a fairly regular poster (and occasional rec-lister) here. And then I started my own blog, The Weekly Sift, which I bill as "the political blog for people who don't have time for political blogs". It's a once-a-week survey that I try to keep down to 3000 words every Monday.
Now, obviously, regular readers of Daily Kos do have time for political blogs, so in some sense you're not the target audience. That's why I haven't been cross-posting. A lot of the stuff I collect on the Sift is probably old news to you by the time Monday rolls around.
Nonetheless, the Sift has evolved to contain a certain amount of original analysis, occasional book reviews, and other stuff Kossacks might find interesting. So I'm experimenting with a compromise: I'll post the header of the Sift each week -- a quote and a summary of what's inside. If it looks interesting you can click through.
Let me know what you think.