Could Orrin Hatch become the next Trent Lott? I guess we can dream. I don't think he's vulnerable at home, and he's a reliable water carrier for the Republicans, so my guess is that he won't suffer much for his asinine remarks yesterday. He deserves to, though. The idea that he was once considered for the Supreme Court makes me shudder.

I certainly hope he and the RIAA get everything they want and make people so angry they quit buying music or movies.

David Gelernter:

America's next great newspaper is a wonderful idea--but it will have to be published on the web and not on paper, and as a new style web newspaper, not one of today's conventional web-based losers. It is coming--and (in the nature of things) it will redefine the news story and the newspaper.

Why isn't Glenn Reynolds all over this?

Feingold joins the thought police

Senator Feingold questioned judicial nominee Bill Pryor about his and his wife's decision to postpone a vacation at Disney World with their 6 and 8 year old daughters because of the park's Gay Day, "can you understand why a gay plaintiff or defendant would feel uncomfortable coming before you as a judge? . . ." I suppose that if gays came into court in drag or clad only in thong underwear and makeup or otherwise acting like Gays typically do at such celebrations of their sexual orientation, they might have something to worry about. As for Pryor's decision to not have to answer his daughters' questions about what they were likely to see at Gay Day, it's a long way from homophobia. Feingold seemed somewhat uncomfortable with how low his own party had sunk in its efforts to prevent Bush from appointing conservative judges, but he asked the question, nevertheless.

Inmates Released from Guantanamo Tell Tales of Despair

Some of the 32 Afghans and three Pakistanis in the weeks since their release, it was above all the uncertainty of their fate, combined with confinement in very small cells, sometimes only with Arabic speakers, that caused inmates to attempt suicide. One Pakistani interviewed this month said he tried to kill himself four times in 18 months.

An Afghan prisoner who spent 14 months at the camp, at the American naval base at Guant?namo, described in April what he called the uncertainty and fear. "Some were saying this is a prison for 150 years," said Suleiman Shah, 30, a former Taliban fighter from Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan.

What happened to their faith?

Frank Keating "compared church leaders to the mafia as he officially resigned as head of a panel keeping tabs on the prelates' sex abuse reforms." Not so outrageous when we learn of the arrest today of Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas O'Brien of Phoenix in a deadly hit-and-run accident. The question for me is whether this is enough to get him excommunicated.

Always a master of understatement, Instapundit declares, "The Arab world is overdue for a shakeup . . ." So it is, but it's been overdue for at least a few hundred years. And, considering what they've been through at the hands of European colonial powers, it's surprising that they tolerate anything Western at all.