There are so many angles from which outrage should flow from Bush's "appeasement" comment in front of the Knesset. Making a cheap Nazi reference in front of the Israeli legislature that is celebrating the founding of the nation which was came about in no small part because of the actual horrors of Nazism is tasteless. Taking a nation's celebration of their 60th anniversary and hijacking it for domestic political shots is rude. Misrepresenting diplomatic engagement for appeasement is dishonest. Overlooking the fact that Bush himself is engaged in exactly this sort of diplomacy with fellow axis of evil leader Kim Jong Il and that the Israelis have a history of diplomatic engagement with their national enemies, not to mention criticizing a fellow American overseas after the Dixie Chicks fiasco, is nothing short of hypocritical.

It was forty years ago today that we lost the Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was only 39 years old. It is amazing to think about how young he was. He came about at the historical moment when the nation was in transition. Racism was official sanctioned policy, written in law, enforced by agents of the government and non-governmental mobs with equal brutality.

To all my fellow Comedists, I wish a happy Saint Shecky's Day, the holiest day of the Comedist year.  All praises to the Cosmic Comic and his sacred word, The Comedist Manifesto.

One of the easiest traps to fall into in writing philosophy papers is the strawman fallacy where you take someone's position you disagree with and attack a weaker version of it instead of the strongest possible version as required by what logicians call the principle of charity. I often warn students, if it seems like a really smart person is saying something really stupid, there's probably something there you are missing.And so it is, I think, with the Clinton campaign's scorched earth, kitchen sink approach.

Once again time for a pity party.  Who do you feel sorry for?

I feel sorry for Vicki Iseman. I mean if you have to deny sleeping with someone famous and powerful, don't make it John McCain who looks like your creepy old grandfather.

I'm baffled by those who complain that the Clintons are running as a team.  Of course they are.  The President is not a person. We have this leftover monarchic picture of the lone ruler sitting in a throne in the Oval Office dictating the way the country runs. The fact is the President is a team, a group of individuals performing a number of roles all needed to keep a very large government operating. This team is made up of close friends and trusted advisers of the team captain whose name appears on the ballot, but by pulling that lever, pushing that electronic touch-screen button, or hanging that chad, what you are really voting for is the team as a whole.

When you understand it that way, Obama's skin color, Hillary's ovaries, McCain's time as a POW, Edward's father's occupation, Romney's Mormonism, and the rest of the nonsense we are given to concentrate on is nothing but a distraction. The real question is what is the team, as a team, going to do for the country. In the case of the Clintons, we've already seen who the team is, how they work, and what happens when you let that team do what they do...and the results are not pretty.

So Hillary found her own voice...too bad it's in Bill's throat.  

Bill gives the concession speech?  HIS office is in Harlem...and this is important for Hillary's run because...?

Not showing up to say in person, "I congratulate my opponent" and sending your husband to do the dirty work while trying to say it's about me, not him...a bit awkward, no?

If the Democrats were smart and interested in winning elections (I wish we had more empirical evidence for either), they would be jumping all over an opening conservatives have been handing them recently. One of the most successful wedge herrings of the last couple of decades for the Republicans has been abortion. But as anyone who has been paying attention (and this excludes the media) realizes, abortion is not about abortion.

There have been noises made recently about removing busts of Roger Brooke Taney, former US Attorney General under Jackson, Maryland resident, brother-in-law of Francis Scott Key, and fifth Chief Justice of the United States from in front of prominent state and local buildings in Maryland.  Being the home of the author of the majority opinion in the Dred Scott case is perhaps not exactly the sort of legacy one would want to overtly embrace.

My opinion piece on the matter appears in today's Washington Post.  The longer pre-edit version appears below:

Scott over at Lawyers, Guns, and Money has an interesting amplification of Dana's post on the futility of the calls to depoliticize abortion. Both are worth a read, but there is a crucial point missing from both of these, which I discussed here, that warrants working out further.  It turns out that it is impossible to depoliticize abortion because when we think we're talking about abortion, what we are really talking about is *ABORTION*, and *ABORTION* has little or nothing to do with abortion.

My book, The Grateful Dead and Philosophy is out! It's real, it's on shelves, and I could not be happier with the book or prouder of my Deadhead cohorts who contributed wonderful, engaging, insightful, and fun essays.  As someone who made and sold tie-dyed t-shirts in many a parking lot, questions about the Dead, economics, and rights have always been fascinating.  One of the challenges the Dead raised that still lingers is the notion of authorship, ownership, and intellectual property.

I have always despised the term "values voters" to describe social conservatives. The purpose of the term is to draw an implicit contrast with those on the other side, that is, those who care about the needy, think that discrimination is a bad thing, and want to end needless killing -- you know, those who apparently don't vote on the basis of moral values. Note to the media -- hating gay people does not make you virtuous. I teach ethics for a living, you can ask me about it.

Today, Studs Terkel celebrates his 95th birthday just as we got the news that Jerry Falwell was "called home." The two provide us with a true study in contrast of the America we were left with fromn the 20th century.

I feel sorry for Terry Anderson. This guy must be PISSED. I mean, not only was he held for 2,454 days by the Iranians, but when they released him, he didn't get a frickin' gift bag and free suit.

I've been working on a book called Was It Morally Good for You, Too?: A How-To Guide to Ethics in Sex, Politics, and Other Dirty Words. The idea is to present a readable, funny, but robust framework in which to meaningfully discuss ethical issues. The reason Americans suck at talking about moral issues is that we don't know how to do it; we don't really understand what it is we are supposed to be arguing about, so we argue past each other.  We close-mindedly declare our positions to be unassailable without argument.  We impugn the characters of those who disagree with us.  Or we simply retreat to an anything goes, shoulder shrugging relativism. I hope to be able to show why the need for rigorous, good faith moral deliberation in our own minds and discourse with others is not only unavoidable, but gives us a means to progress in our understanding about questions that have seemed intractable...if we learn how to talk about ethics well.

Yesterday, in response to General Peter Pace’s homophobic outburst, Hillary Clinton balked at answering the question, "Is homosexuality immoral?" punting with the statement, "Well I'm going to leave that to others to conclude." Senator Clinton? Glad to meet you. My name is "Others, Professor Others."

Today is the 128th anniversary of the birth of Albert Einstein and I propose we dub this "international science day," a holiday dedicated to thinking about science and the role science and scientists do and ought to play in our society. Einstein left a legacy that effected both science itself and the relation between science and the broader society. What made him special in both cases was the fact that he was not a mere technician, but an intellectual. Einstein's thinking was rarely constrained by conventional wisdom -- even when he was wrong, as he was with quantum mechanics, it was for reasons beyond an appeal to tradition.

As I've been reading about Pfc. LaVena Johnson's suspicious death and the situation for female troops in Iraq,

(from the Salon article on the matter) I have talked to more than 20 female veterans of the Iraq war in the past few months, interviewing them for up to 10 hours each for a book I am writing on the topic, and every one of them said the danger of rape by other soldiers is so widely recognized in Iraq that their officers routinely told them not to go to the latrines or showers without another woman for protection.

it has taken me back a couple years to my time teaching at the United States Naval Academy. After a some high profile scandals, the Academy decided to create a mandatory ethics course for all midshipmen (even the women there are called midshipmen).