From RR

• ‘Cultural competence’, political correctness’s latest DBA described by Wendy McElroy.
• Cannons to the left of me, cannons to the right. Both mainstream US presidential candidates want to escalate the war in Afghanistan. Not marque and reprisal to get the 9/11 culprits but a conquest of the country, something the British and the Russians couldn’t do. More. The Taliban government did not attack the United States, our old ally, Osama bin Ladin, did. Al Qaeda and the Taliban are not at all the same organization (if one can really call Al Qaeda an “organization”), and no one seems to be listening to what the Afghans themselves are saying. We should be.
• Getting messy with Jesse helps Barack. Both men’s black cred is unshakeable and Jackson’s ‘badmouthing’ gives Obama a boost with the white swing vote.
• The irony is that George Bush, in his zeal to extend the US imperial reach, has actually crippled it for the foreseeable future.
• The origin of US state schools. To make Protestants who were good tools of the state.
• Bad laws breed civil-liberties violations.
• Another prediction of the end of cheap air travel and a long but interesting recent-history lesson.