“Attorneys for John Walker Lindh, the American who fought with the Taliban, asked a federal court Tuesday to release him pending trial on charges that he conspired to kill U.S. forces in Afghanistan. “Lindh’s lawyers, in written papers filed here, said there is no evidence ‘that Mr. Lindh is a flight risk,’” The Washington Post reports. The filing also contended that the government’s charges, based on an FBI affidavit, are

Charles Johnson on LGF has a great post on the Saudis and the “problem” of apostasy within Wahhabist Islam (based on this Arab News article, whose author takes the “moderate” view). In the course of his discussion on the Wahhabist version of “free speech” [insert “lopping off of tongues” joke here] Charles offers this fine objective correlative: This overprotective attitude towards their religion is reminiscent of the Berlin Wall; a

Victor Davis Hanson explains why most Americans support Israel, and why many European intellectuals do not. In Israel, Hanson argues, most Americans recognize a version of America itself: Israel is a secular, pluralistic democracy with a free press and a penchant for cultural and technological ingenuity born from an ethos of freedom. The success of their military reflects the abject lethality of the Western way of war. Here perhaps lies

Horryfing. Simply horrifying. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna’ go and cook up a steak for my two wonderful pooches, Maggie and Dex, and try to put this story out of my head forever… [Update: The boy lied. But my dogs sure did enjoy the steak…]

In its February “Notes and Comments” section, The New Criterion weighs in on the C-Dub v. Summers Harvard showdown, distilling the controversy to its (obvious) racialist kernel: It was inevitable…that once a policy of ‘affirmative action’ was established to govern the admission of students and the hiring of faculty at Harvard the same racially determined criteria would have to be applied to the content of the courses to be studied.

The New Republic’s “Notebook” contains this interesting newslet: the Bush administration has appointed Bo Derek to a five-and-a-half-year term on the governing board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. TNR writes this off as in keeping with Bush’s “execrable taste,” but we know better; ‘tseems Dubya ain’t a leg man. As the brief piece rather snottily points out, Bo’s career accomplishments include her 1990 Golden Rasberry

“The instructions are simple but chilling: Attack sites with ‘high human intensity’ like skyscrapers, nuclear plants and football stadiums. Pick targets of ‘sentimental value’ like the Statue of Liberty, Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower. “That’s some of the advice contained in an al-Qaida training manual aimed at teaching Osama bin Laden’s followers the best ways to kill thousands of people and spread fear in the United States and Europe,”

Pink Viagra, describing a pill for improving the sexual pleasure of women, is likely to be the second big buzz term in Britain in 2002 — ranking just behind the catchy “In silico” (“computer programming in virtual laboratories”), the Independent reports. No real news value here, I grant you. Clearly The Independent — like yours truly — was just looking for an excuse to use the term “Pink Viagra” in

U.S. congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. “blasted President Bush this weekend, calling his recent address to the nation: ‘A police State of the Union speech!’” while appearing on BET’s “Lead Story,” Matt Drudge reports. Said the Illinois Representative: Increases in homeland security [are] obviously necessary, and I

Jay Nordlinger’s latest NRO “Impromptus” column contains this amusing bit: And now John Ashcroft has been bitten by The Great Breast