Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

Afghan girls at first volleyball tourney since Taliban overthrow

We're in recurring nightmare territory here. Today's Zogby poll shows more than half of voters would support a military strike to prevent Iran from producing a nuclear weapon and believe it likely the U.S. will do so before next year's election.

On PBS' News Hour, normally an oasis of rationality in the TV news desert, we have a solemn debate about attacking Iran between Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International and Norman Podhoretz, the Neo-Con relic Rudy Giuliani is propping up to prove he is a true conservative.

When Zakaria points out we have used deterrence and containment against nuclear threats from China, the Soviet Union and North Korea, Podhoretz accuses him of "an irresponsible complacency . . . comparable to the denial in the early '30s of the intentions of Hitler that led to what Churchill called an unnecessary war involving millions and millions of deaths that might have been averted if the West had acted early enough."

If Zakaria's informed rationality and Podhoretz's apocalyptic drool are given equal weight as two sides of the argument, we may be headed for another Iraq, propelled by the same political and media cowardice of five years ago.

-- ROBERT STEIN

It would hardly be surprising if some folks in the military started wondering whether it was really worth risking their lives to protect the freedoms of people who seem to hate them and the cultural milieu out of which the soldiers came. Especially those who have been exposed to the fever swamp of the comment section of some leading left-liberal blogs.

Maintaining civilian control of the military is a two way street. If the military is being Malkinized, maybe the Kosites of the world will find an explanation by looking at themselves in the mirror.

-- PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE

I have been saying for the last year and see no reason to stop saying that the change that is occurring among evangelicals is most fundamentally a spiritual shift. Evangelicals have been part of the Great Sellout for the last eight years - worshipping at the altar of George W. Bush. They have seen what happens when Jesus is sold out for politics. I don't see them rushing back anytime soon.

-- DAVID KUO

At some point, we have to do an honest cost-benefit analysis for criminalizing marijuana. We jail tens of thousands of people and create legal burdens for hundreds of thousands more every year for using or selling a weed that grows almost everywhere. It puts an equal burden on law enforcement, courts, and the penal system. In exchange, we get a dubious effect on usage for a drug that has the same addictive and intoxicating effects as alcohol.

Some will argue that marijuana serves as a gateway drug to more destructive substances, and that much is true. Many things act as gateways to harder drug use: abuse, poverty, boredom, and peer pressure, and especially alcohol, which is almost always a gateway to marijuana. Prohibition didn't do much about that gateway drug, and decades of marijuana prohibition isn't doing much for that one either -- and marijuana might at least have a claim to be medicinal.

-- ED MORRISSEY

The controversy over Baltimore County (Maryland) Circuit Judge Susan M. Souder's decision to throw out the testimony of a fingerprint analyst in a death penalty trial hasn't stopped. Her opinion has reached universities, judicial chambers and evidence labs across the country. But it's the National Academy of Sciences review of the forensic science field now under way that could have real implications for analysis of fingerprints, hair and other physical evidence - and their use in criminal trials nationwide.

The academy's Committee on Science, Technology and the Law should expedite its review and help settle an ongoing dispute over the supposed infallibility of fingerprint analysis, a claim that critics contend is based on "junk science."

In her recent ruling, Judge Souder found the traditional method of fingerprint analysis to be "a subjective, untested, unverifiable identification procedure that purports to be infallible."

-- THE BALTIMORE SUN

The nation’s top official for consumer product safety has asked Congress in recent days to reject legislation intended to strengthen the agency, which polices thousands of consumer goods, from toys to tools.

On the eve of an important Senate committee meeting to consider the legislation, Nancy A. Nord, the acting chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, has asked lawmakers in two letters not to approve the bulk of legislation that would increase the agency’s authority, double its budget and sharply increase its dwindling staff.

Ms. Nord opposes provisions that would increase the maximum penalties for safety violations and make it easier for the government to make public reports of faulty products, protect industry whistle-blowers and prosecute executives of companies that willfully violate laws.

-- STEPHEN LABATON

Is it a good thing that only 52% of Maryland's black male athletes graduate? No. But the real tragedy is that only 54% of Maryland's black male students graduate. We should fix that problem first-- by improving public education so that students from poor and minority backgrounds come to college with the tools they need to succeed-- and see if the athletic graduation rates don't take care of themselves.

But it's easy to write self-righteous editorials blasting high-profile sports programs for their academic failings, while fixing the class and race problems of American education will cost real money, and require actual work. And nobody wants that.

-- CHAD ORZEL

Photograph by The Associated Press