From Michael Yon and Bill Ardolino. Plenty of photographs of the strange brown Other — including some of their young, caught unawares in the wilds — for those of you who’ve let your subscriptions to National Geographic lapse. Such a strange people! And to think, we’ve given them fire! Oh, the arrogance! Oh, the hope! To borrow from Eliot — do we dare? And, do we dare?

To libertarian Denver Post columnist David Harsanyi, whose book, Nanny State, is out today. I had an opportunity to read the manuscript in its embryonic form and was both fascinated and appalled by the lengths to which nanny statists will go to micromanage the behaviors of supposedly free peoples. For those of you interested in exploring nannystate excesses, I highly recommend it. It’s like reading Reason without having to sift

…but I think this is what Maha and her ilk are inadvertently getting behind when they claim themselves to be “intolerant of intolerance.” Though Maha and other progressive crusaders bent on ridding the world of the scourge of “giving offense” — being the civilized sort — would likely choose a pen rather than a sword, and would of course happily donate a quarter of any “bounty” they collected to, say,

And surprisingly, not one of them is Michael Moore’s shitter. From the BBC: A list of the world’s most polluted places has been published by a US-based independent environmental group. The Blacksmith Institute’s top 10 towns and cities included sites in ex-Soviet republics, Russia, China and India. Peru and Zambia were also listed. The report said an estimated 12 million people were affected by the severe pollution, which was mainly

…a post in which Sally Field holds a conversation with 70’s counterculture icon Billy Jack touching on conservative warmongering and its predictable relationship to society’s racist, patriarchal substructure — with Field asserting that, were mothers running the country, there’d be “no goddamned wars.” The punchline, courtesy of Billy Jack, might go something like this: “Perhaps. But on the flip side, the inevitable proliferation of Lifetime original movies addressing the trauma

Bill Ardolino, writing for The Long War Journal: Officially appointed during the Saddam Hussein era, mukhtars are akin to “city sheiks” or “block captains.” They arbitrate interests within and advocate for their neighborhoods to the city government. Mukhtars know the people of their areas and understand their needs. And the reestablishment of this traditional position and new engagement with American civil affairs efforts have empowered both parties, as well as

me: “Is it true that even guys are supposed to be wearing low rise hip riders these days? Because I gotta tell you, I’m not particularly comfortable having my pubic mound so close to the waistband.” Levi’s: Levi’s: Levi’s: “OPEN THREAD!”

there’d be no goddamned war,” muthafuckas! From Think Progress: sunofabitching Fox assholes suck big hard cock by censoring Sally Fields’s righteous anti-war comments.  Perspective from the comments: “Libs, grow up. She used an obscenity.” Comment by Daryll — September 16, 2007 @ 11:39 pm And Fox allows Family Guy to used “pissed” all the time. Your myopia keeps you from seeing the double-standard. Comment by barfly — September 16, 2007

In “The Big Picture(s),” I noted that the dominant mode of the establishment media this year was to claim that any piece of bad news “cast doubt” on the new US strategy or the progress it has made: When Pres. Bush announced the surge, the poll numbers supporting it increased, but the establishment media — especially CBS –focused almost entirely on negative reaction to it.  If civilian casualties went down, it was