Let’s give it a try, for old time’s sake, even though the new Duck Pond is open.

So sublime. He actually said this:

A Texas prosecutor with a history of abuse of his office, Ronnie Earle, has indicted Tom DeLay. Earle is a sort of Jim Garrison without the integrity. Soon to follow: Giant MSM coverage, show trial, acquittal and exoneration, DeLay’s return to Majority Leader for another 20 years.

What a seer.

Update: Lots and lots of great stuff on Delay over at Atrios (of course); just keep scrolling. Oh, how the mighty hath fallen.

This really sickens me. How can you be so stupid as to hand the righties a gift like this? No, it’s not as vile as what you see on LGF or Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler or FrontPage – but it’s close enough. Being a liberal is about being open minded and compassionate, not about crude mockery or pettiness. Please people, grow up – don’t ever stoop to the gutter tactics of the right. You do no one any favors, least of all yourselves.

Travelling to Hong Kong on business, back Monday. Guest posts always welcome. I’m still waiting for the comment system to be overhauled so the threads can get going again, and will keep you posted. Meanwhile, the Duck Pond is the most happening place around if you want to speak your mind.

One of my absolute favorite blogs – now one of my new daily must-reads – has a brilliant post today on evil, what it is and how it manifests itself. It’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately as I read a new book (for me) on morality in the Third Reich (a full-blown book review will follow in a month or two, when I’m done with the superb tome). I guess the bottom line revelation for me derived from the book is how often the people who commit outlandishly evil acts do so believing they performing acts of supreme goodness, morality and public service. Morality and ethics were behind nearly every aspect of the Third Reich, though it was a unique form of morality, in which ridding society of perceived enemies who could drag it down and threaten its future was the noblest and most selfless act imaginable.

Okay, that was a bit of a digression. So back to the post. Mahablog cites a comment on a far-right Web site that offers a clear and succinct illustration of the “evil as morality” phenomenon. Here’s what the winger says as he lecture a “liberal.”

The difference between you and me is that, deep down inside, you cannot accept the fact that there are truly evil people in the world. The difference between the liberal and conservative viewpoints boils down to this: you think that, deep down inside, the Islamic nutjobs really only want to have a nice house and a yard, and raise their children in a loving and safe environment, just like all the people you know. Whereas I think that they are truly evil people, like the Nazis, that want more than anything else to destroy all that we hold dear. And they are more than willing to sacrifice their lives, their families, everything in their hatred of all that is good and beautiful.

Mahablog counters this with a breathtaking dose of logic.

What most righties don’t understand about evil is how seductive it is. The seduction begins with the notion that “his hatred of me is evil, but my hatred of him is justified.” The fellow who wrote that paragraph may not yet be completely besotted with evil, but he is sure as hell flirting with it.

I say evil is as evil does. It’s not who you are; it’s what you do, that is evil. Or not.

Again, I’m not saying that evil acts should be forgiven, or that people shouldn’t defend themselves from evil or seek to apprehend or even destroy dangerous people before they can harm others. I’m just saying that as we do these things, we must take care not to be seduced by evil ourselves. And that’s hard. It takes a lot of self-honesty and self-discipline.

And it takes recognizing evil as evil. Evil doesn’t wear a big E on its T shirt. Evil can seem to be virtuous. It flatters your ego. And it can feel really good.

This fits in exquisitely with the book I’m reading, and reminds me that this phenomenon is probably as old as man himself. It’s something we must constantly be on guard against, which is why i cringe when I hear blanket generalizations about any group, be they Mexicans, immigrants, Arabs, Moslems, Jews – even conservatives.

Read the whole post. It is well, well worth it, as are the splendid comments. This is quickly becoming my favorite US domestic blog, almost up there with Josh Marshall.

edited at 10:30 Taiwan time

What to do about John Hinderaker? PowerTool‘s most outspoken and stunningly ignorant contributor, HindrakerAssrocket has dragged blogging down to the gutter and reduced political discourse to a few simple, ugly talking points: the Democrats are very bad, and they always do bad things, while the Republicans are really, really good, and even if they get caught doing really bad things, it’s still the fault of Democrats. I know, that sounds really silly, and you can’t believe someone as stuffy and smug as Assrocket could really be so simplistic. But wait; I have proof!

Here’s what Time magazine’s former Blog of the Year had to say about today’s Tom Delay announcement, which everyone knows is due to his being up to his eyeballs in dirty Jack Abramoff money. 72 hours before today’s big announcement, one of Delay’s top aides, Tony Rudy, pleaded guilty to taking funny money from Abramoff/Scanlon and will sing to the prosecutors, almost certainly to Delay’s detriment; Assrocket doesn’t think it’s worth a mention.

DeLay was an effective leader, albeit too liberal in recent years [oy; emphasis added]. It’s possible, of course, that he did something wrong along the way. But there is no evidence of that in the public domain; as I’ve often said, the politically-inspired prosection of DeLay by Travis County’s discredited DA, Ronnie Earle, is a bad joke. As far as we can tell at the moment, DeLay appears to be yet another victim of the Democrats’ politics of personal destruction–the only politics they know.

With all the exposure of all the sins of Jack Abramoff and the close ties the criminals maintained with the Delay circle, all Assrocket can do is squeal about wicked Democrats. (And we all know how they are the masters of personal destruction; look at how they used the Swift Boat veterans to destroy — oh, wait, Kerry was a Democrat.) If this was really just about political destruction, wouldn’t you think Bug Man would put up the fight of his life? After all, if he’s innocent he has little to lose. Another blogger – one who is more responsible and more upfront with his readers – puts it a lot better.

DeLay’s lawyers must have sat him down over the last 72 hours and explained to him that he needs to focus on not spending most of the rest of his life in prison.

Well, duuuuh. Yet Assrocket can see only Democratic treachery, with nary a peep about Delay being in bed with a confessed felon, rip-off artist and sleazebag.

Remember, this is the same John Assrocket who offered us these pearls of wisdom last year about our Codpiece in Chief.

It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

I’m not making that up. He actually said it. I try never to go to PowerTools, because it’s too maddening. He actually says as a matter of fact that we have found WMDs in Iraq, that we have proven Al Qaeda was involved in 911, and Bush is a genius. Not even Malkin or Chuckles Johnson stoop to this level of boot licking, and of printing flagrant untruths. Malkin and Johnson may get things wrong, but I’ve never accused them of making shit up, the way Assrocket does. No wonder he doesn’t have comments on his site – he’s so easy to rip to pieces.

For a wickedly funny satire of PowerTools, this is required reading.

New to me anyway. I came across Chinalawblog a few days ago when one of the authors left a comment on my post at Paper Tiger about the sad saga of That’s magazines. Chinalawblog looks to have been around since the beginning of this year; the blog focuses on Chinese law as it applies to doing business in China. From my brief perusal, I’d say this blog is a winner. The authors, both international lawyers, appear well-versed in their subjects; their writing is clear and concise. I particularly enjoyed the recent post, “Is China Going Green, Part IV” (answer: “It is, But It Better Hurry”).

In spite of my aforementioned lack of entrepreneurial drive, Chinalawblog is going on my blogroll. Check it out.

Soldier
Photograph by Rick Loomis, Los Angeles Times

I want to bring your attention to an excellent series in the Los Angeles Times on how wounded soldiers’ lives are being saved and how their lives are changed forever after. The photos are more graphic than has been typical of coverage of this war, and if you still get an actual newspaper delivered to your door, like I do, they’ve placed fairly disturbing images prominently on the front page (the LAT has been more willing to publish graphic war photographs and to examine how the press and media have dealt with such images than most mainstream media outlets).

Whether you’re for the war or against it, this is what war does.

Parts one, two and three, along with additional web-only features, can be found here.

The tide in Iraq has definitely turned: American casualties are plummeting. Bloodshed by Iraqis against other Iraqis, however, is soaring, with new reports of mayhem every day. I’m trying to imagine what it’s like living in a city where this sort of story is an everyday occurrence, but I can’t.

Gunmen killed a Shiite man and three of his relatives at their home in southern Baghdad, police said Monday. The men lined up a brother, two sisters, and their uncle against the wall in their home in Dora and shot each of them late Sunday, police Lt. Maithem Abdel-Razzaq said. The father of the family, a grocery shop owner, had been killed six months earlier by gunmen, he said. The mother was out visiting relatives at the time of the attack, police said.

Sectarian violence has inflamed the capital, where execution-style killings have become common and hundreds of bodies have been found in the weeks since a Shiite shrine was bombed on Feb. 22.

Also in Dora, one of Baghdad’s most dangerous neighborhoods, drive-by shooters killed a police captain outside his home late Sunday, police said.

Early Monday, a car bomb exploded in the central district of Karradah, wounding two civilians, police said.

All within 24 hours.

A telltale sign of just how grim it is can be found over at Iraq the Model, once seen as the ultimate pro-Bush, pro-invasion voice coming ou of Iraq. In recent weeks it has turned increasingly pessimistic, at times bordering on fatalistic.

Clerics are gathering and charging their followers with hatred to prepare them for a war; hatred towards anything that does not belong to their old school and this may also include provoking these followers against moderate politicians who will be denounced as cowards and betrayers of the faith.

Naturally most politicians do not want this land to be their grave but it won’t be easy for them to resist the pressure or stay away from the fire. I really think that clerics are leading us to a real disaster and it is time for Iraqis with brains and influence to put an end for this madness of the clerics. I don’t expect this to be an easy task but just as the religious succeeded in uniting themselves, the liberals must do better to overcome their differences and show more efforts to rescue their country from an imminent disaster.

You can tell he’s desperate to find some rays of hope, something, anything to be optimistic about, but to little avail. I mean, does he or anyone else really believe that “the liberals” in Iraq have anything even approaching the clout of the Sadr’s and the clerics? Just look at the entire region and its history. When do the liberals ever prevail against the clerics? Look at Iran. Look at Afghanistan, where the people march in the street to demand the death of a convert to Christianity. I feel really bad for Iraq the Model and other Iraqis who believed what Bush spoon-fed them. These people had a dream, and a noble one, too. Only it was founded on a false promise, that regime change would also bring with it cultural change. The other false promise was that the US knew what it was doing, and actually had a blueprint for success, backed up by the military muscle to maintain oprder and supply essential services during Iraq’s most critical moment. We failed, and now a lot of decent people, innocent people, will pay the terrible price for our folly.

Here we go again? It sounds horrible, though not fatal.

Over 400 students at a university in central China’s Henan province were hospitalized with high fevers linked to an unknown flu virus, state press and a school official have said.

The outbreak began on March 26 when 22 students were hospitalized with high fevers, Xinhua news agency said.
The next day the number of sick students at the Henan University of Science and Technology in Luoyang city rose to 88, and on March 28 there were 208 sick students in the university’s infirmary, it said.

“There were over 400 students that became feverish with the flu,” a university official who declined to be named told AFP when contacted by phone. He refused to detail what type of flu it was or how the outbreak had succeeded in infecting so many students. Local health officials were currently trying to identify the flu strain, Xinhua said.

The temperatures of some of the students reached 39.6 degrees celsius (103.3 degrees Fahrenheit), it said. The sick students were quarantined while school officials, under directions from provincial health authorities, cancelled classes and began disinfecting the university’s 2,000 dormitory rooms, dining halls and classrooms, it said.

Developing….