9.07.2003

A few more...

Groan: Some 70% of Americans believe it's possible Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9-11 terrorist attacks, according to a new poll. Seventy-one percent in a Time poll thought the US was doing a "good job" in Iraq since major fighting ended, and 52% of people still think George Bush is swell.

Despite that last statistic, there's hope to unseat Bush, according to a new CNN survey. They found that 41% of registered voters would "definitely" vote against Bush, regardless of the Democratic candidate.

Go Ted Go! Here's Nightline's Ted Koppel on the Patriot Act:
The men who drafted our constitution, who framed our civil rights and protected our various freedoms under the law would, I suspect, retch at some of the bone headed, self-serving, misinterpretations of their intentions that they so often use these days to undermine the very freedoms they pretend to safeguard. The miracle of American Law is not that it protects popular speech, or the privacy of the powerful, or the homes of the priviledged, but rather, that the least among us, those with the fewest defenses thoses suspected of the worst crimes -- the most despised in our midst, are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

That remains as revolutionary a concept now as it was in the 1780s. It makes protecting the country against terrorism excruciatingly difficult, but we cannot arbitrarily suspend the rights of one catagory of suspects without endangering all the others.
Dear Scrabble nerds: Scrabblog randomly generates seven tiles and squares each day; readers can post their highest-scoring combination. Whee. (Via A Welsh View.)

Art in war: New York artist Steve Mumford describes the cross-cultural difficulties of making art in Baghdad.
Drawing here takes a little getting used to. The Iraqis are intensely interested in most things western, so the presence of an American sitting on a stoop or at a cafe making a drawing always elicits an avid audience. Every brushstroke is watched, and people have many questions. The Iraqi sense of personal space is very different from a westerner's; here people crowd in so close they're touching me, and men feel free to stab at the paper to point out someone I've drawn whom they know.

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