Fouad Ajami has an excellent article in relation to the president's recent statement repeating his request that the (rich) Arab countries give assistance to the Iraqi government including some facts on the geography, and thus population, of Iraq in relation to adjoining states. A part, from behind a subscription wall, is quoted here.

In the best tradition, like our Marines, the Israeli military is leaving no man behind; nice photo of tanks moving into position. They have also said they will grant immunity to no one. Apparently the commander of the kidnappers is in Syria. Not acting out of bravado, the Israelis are apparently talking to Abbas and Hamas officials

Patterico has struggled with some Coulter quotes from 'Godless:..'. The best opinion seems to be that of Mark Steyn.

Kesher Talk has uncovered evidence of an outbreak of rationality in American Protestantism and reciprocates with mentioning what sounds like a good book on Jesus from one of the participants. Dr. Helen talks of social isolation. One of the things we do naturally is let people have kind of a manic perspective, i.e. grandiose, superior, without confrontation in a new social setting so as to allow relationships among the group to form. The New York Times reports, from Pew, '65% of Muslims in Indonesia said the 9/11 attack were not carried out by Arabs, 35 to 65% of Muslims elsewhere did' (Dallas Morning News June 23,2006, p. 13A). This is the kind of thing and rationale, in my opinion, that the NYT and Pew are doing. The Dallas Morning News makes it a lot easier to orient oneself to the manic position of the Muslim world by citing believed 'facts' which are easily seen as evidence of denial. In the face of this, sometimes you enjoy some music of persistence with some tonality of an archaic Protestant hymn.

Roger Simon nicely displays the conventional wisdom on problems in our public schools. I see the problem a little differently as noted in comments.

Bob Sturm, sportscaster, discusses the end of hoop dreams for the Mavericks, a.k.a. the 'UN Peacekeepers,' in a late decathecting comment by me.

Annika comments on what a good shot Giuliani should have at the electoral college.

Annika in her journal recently brought up her essay on Leopold and Loeb and the 'crime of the century' in Chicago. I commented in part:

One thing that is possibly missed in the understanding of the 2 criminals is the significance of the luminosity of their prior achievements, their graduations from noted colleges at times others would be starting college. I imagine that mother or father for each may have driven them very hard. They may have imagistically reexperinced this as a thought to murder when they saw themselves as adults, pseudoparents, in relation to the younger boy.

I feel bad for the kids killed, tortured first, today in Iraq.

Liberalism and Catholicism collide in Commonweal's article "Benedict at Auschwitz." My thoughts are in the comments, June 17. Jews continue to seem to be an inordinately useful and seemingly fissionably combustible chemical reagent in politics and society. In Pfaff's piece in Commonweal, we learn that the 'clash of civilizations' involving the U.S. and Islam 'results from Washington's largely uncritical support of Israel,' the war in Iraq has as one it's main cause 'to defend and promote Israel's security interest,' and, in case the complex sentences are interfering with your learning, 'Jihad terrorism is merely a sideshow in the affair.' Goebbels call your agent; is methodology patentable? And then again a good article from an American student in Germany on what the pope said in the class he taught as a professor in 1968.