Bloggers and Iran’s Fear

Iran is afraid of bloggers, and is instituting the death penalty to harshly curb their rights.
Via BoingBoing:
New legislation has been proposed in Iran that could make blogging a crime punishable by death. Cyrus Farivar has a story on today’s edition of the PRI radio show The World: Iran considers harsh penalty for some bloggers (3:30).
Over [...]

Discourse and Assassination: McCain/Clinton vs Obama

Hillary Clinton’s assassination quote is far more problematic than I originally thought.
Frankly I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt in the light of what I felt where more serious offenses, but I think I was wrong to do so. Kevin noticed some interesting trends in terms of how people responded to [...]

McCain: Let Hamas Decide For You

The problem with McCain’s fear mongering, from a practical rhetorical perspective, is that it invites searing counterpoints. The Taijiquan classics state one should be without hollows or projections, and this applies quite well to rhetoric. McCain said (Huffington Post, emphasis mine):
From The Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb:
McCain spoke with bloggers this morning on a [...]

Political SC Church Crosses Line on Obama

Pastor Roger Byrd crossed the line between Church and State in a classless way, by repeating the more vicious lies from the GOP’s whisper campaign against Barack Obama (WYFF):
Pastor Roger Byrd said that he just wanted to get people thinking. So last Thursday, he put a new message on the sign at the Jonesville [...]

Natural Relations and Fear

Sush has posted a really thoughtful thread on what meanings one might find behind the phrase Unnatural Relations (emphasis mine):
In that way I’ve always thought of human sexuality as transcending “natural relations”, because we have made sex about more than fulfilling a lust or procreating. Sex, to me, is about two people learning to be [...]