THE ANCHORESS:

Any intelligent human being understands that one does not – in the 21st century – publicly touch on the subject of Islamic jihad and religious compulsion, no matter how delicately or distinctively, unless one wants to deal with a reaction that is both primitive and intimidating, by a group demonstrably closed to dialogue.

And yet Benedict, clearly an intelligent man, has done so. He has, in essence, dared to say to Islam, “Is this really what you want to be doing, in this century? The rest of the world’s religions have put away the swords…how about we talk?”

Up to now, no one has come out and said that to Islam. The Pope is the first.

Matoko Kusanagi has a somewhat different perspective. Though to be honest, I haven’t noticed her taking this kind of advice herself . . . .

CRACKERJACK SECURITY: Open your Diebold voting machine with a minibar key? Jeez.

PORK BECOMES A CAMPAIGN ISSUE, as challenger Mike Bouchard goes after Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow.

THIS STINKS: “Lieuwe van Gogh—thirteen-year-old son of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was murdered by Islamists—is finding his life in increasing danger in his native Netherlands, while the Dutch police do nothing.”

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: The next blogger transparency swarm has begun:

Bloggers played a central role in Congress’ quick action over the past two weeks in passing a bill that would create a database on federal grants and contracts. President Bush is expected to sign the bill into law soon.

The conservative-oriented Porkbusters coalition started that effort, but blogs of other political leanings, including GOPProgress and TPMMuckraker, eventually joined the fight and pushed it to completion.

Transparency fostered the nonpartisan unity in the blogosphere, and that same goal is behind the new effort that surfaced today. A column in The Washington Post about the lack of electronic access to the campaign filings of Senate candidates prompted a quick reaction from bloggers in both parties, including two who were key players in the 2005-2006 blog swarm over campaign finance rules.

Ed Morrissey of Captain’s Quarters was first out of the gate in arguing that the blogosphere’s next bipartisan demand should be forcing Senate candidates to file electronically, just as House and presidential candidates already do.

“For some reason, Trent Lott and a number of our elected representatives in the Senate want to keep us from accessing that information in a timely manner,” Morrissey wrote. “Usually that means they either have something to hide or see the clunky, slow process currently in use as a hedge for their incumbency. We need to remind them that they serve at our pleasure, and that playing games with full disclosure does not please us in the least.”

Within hours, both Mike Krempasky of RedState and Adam Bonin, a lawyer who represented three Democratic bloggers before the FEC, were on the case. “There’s a bill to fix this, of course. And unfortunately for our side, it’s one of our guys holding it up,” Krempasky said of Senate Rules Committee Chairman Lott, R-Miss.

“So please, get on the phone and call Senator Lott’s office. … Make sure they know that [the bill] deserves a hearing — and deserves a vote.”

Bonin posted his thoughts at MyDD. “There is not much on which the left and right blogospheres agree, except, perhaps, on the ability of the Internet itself to transform politics,” he wrote. “It empowers the masses and provides for greater transparency in government, allowing citizens to have a greater understanding of and power over what’s going on in Washington.”

That same belief also explains a new blog entry at Dollarocracy, a blog of the Sunlight Foundation, which has been working with Porkbusters to expose the lawmakers who are behind earmarks in spending bills.

Read the whole thing. And there’s more here. If you’d like to call Trent Lott, call 202.225.3121 and ask for his office.

JONAH GOLDBERG: “I don’t think the Pope’s original comments have elicited nearly as much authentic rage as the images on TV would suggest. But I do think those driving these protests and whipping up anger know what they’re doing. The West wants to be loved. It can’t stand the idea that somebody — anybody — doesn’t like us. This is doubly so in Europe and perhaps triply so at the Vatican. So much of European — and American liberal — foreign policy is based on the idea that being disliked is an enormous indictment, a sign of serious moral failings on our part, rather than resentment, envy or scapegoating on the part of those fomenting anti-Americans.”

Meanwhile, Sam Harris writes:

Perhaps I should establish my liberal bone fides at the outset. I’d like to see taxes raised on the wealthy, drugs decriminalized and homosexuals free to marry. I also think that the Bush administration deserves most of the criticism it has received in the last six years — especially with respect to its waging of the war in Iraq, its scuttling of science and its fiscal irresponsibility.

But my correspondence with liberals has convinced me that liberalism has grown dangerously out of touch with the realities of our world — specifically with what devout Muslims actually believe about the West, about paradise and about the ultimate ascendance of their faith.

On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right.

This may seem like frank acquiescence to the charge that “liberals are soft on terrorism.” It is, and they are.

Read the whole thing. And read this column by Cliff May, on what our enemies believe. Norm Geras thinks that blindness to Islamic terror is producing a liberal debacle.

Finally, Wretchard writes:

But the really harmful consequence of not recognizing proxy warfare and addressing it openly is that it creates a subterranean world of countermeasures. A black market in defense. The present war is one no one wants to know anything about; that polite society wants to pretend doesn’t exist.

Read the whole thing here, too.

THE ALLEN-WEBB DEBATE: It’s all about the Jews.

MARTIN LINDESKOG has thoughts on the Swedish elections.

UPDATE: A couple of readers warn that there’s a not-safe-for-work blogad on Lindeskog’s site. It seems pretty tame to me, but if you work for the Corporate Taliban, be aware.

LONGEVITY RESEARCH UPDATE:

Peter A. Thiel, co-founder and former CEO of online payments system PayPal, Founder and Managing Member of Clarium Capital Management, a San Francisco-based hedge fund, and angel investor in social networking site Facebook, has announced his pledge of $3.5 Million to support scientific research into the alleviation and eventual reversal of the debilities caused by aging, to be conducted under the auspices of the Methuselah Foundation, a charity co-founded and Chaired by Dr. Aubrey de Grey.

Bring it on.

TAEGAN GODDARD reports from the Iowa steak fry. Reportedly it was “Barack Obama’s coming-out party.”

A LOOK AT BOB CORKER AND HAROLD FORD on guns.

YESTERDAY I WAS WONDERING if Iran already had nukes, and if the United States is already being quietly blackmailed. Now Austin Bay offers his thoughts.

UNIMPRESSED WITH THE NETROOTS’ POLITICAL SHREWDNESS:

Last week, the lefty bloggers maladroitly focused attention on the issue of whether Clinton mishandled the terrorism threat, which caused many people to watch a film they wouldn’t have bothered with and to marshall the evidence that he, in fact, had screwed up. Then, the bloggers who performed that dubious service were lured by lunch in the presence of the ex-president, and when they went back to their blogs and enthused about his blue eyes and how delightfully charmed they were by his aura and, doing so, provoked a tiny sprinkle of mockery, they flipped out for days on end. Their freak out just got everyone talking about Bill’s old sex problems again.

Restraint is not their strong suit. Or maybe the whole thing is clever maneuvering by Kos to undermine the Clintons . . . .

MICKEY KAUS: “Do fatal doubts expressed in a corner of The Corner shape opinion more than an op-ed in the Times? I don’t think we’re there yet!”

“YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF THE WAY YOU TREATED THOSE SOLDIERS:” An Iraq vet to Code Pink.

TORTURING SOURCES — well, their quotes, anyway — at Newsweek.

BRENDAN LOY has photos and a report from yesterday’s Darfur protest in New York City.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: John Fund looks at earmarks and corruption:

If Republicans lose big in November, one reason will be their tardy response to public outrage over profligate spending. The guilty pleas of former GOP Rep. Duke Cunningham and lobbyist Jack Abramoff prompted demands for reform of the earmarks–pork projects members often secure in secret–that were prominent in both scandals.

On Thursday, the House did finally pass a rules change that will force sponsors to attach their names to projects. The Senate isn’t expected to follow suit, meaning earmark reform there must wait until next year. On the plus side, both houses this month did pass the Federal Transparency Act. It creates a public Internet database that will allow Google-like searches of the $1 trillion in federal grants, contracts and loans. The “shame factor” the bill will heighten is needed, given that earmarks grew tenfold between 1990 and 2005.

As modest as it is, the transparency bill spent much of August in limbo after Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens of Alaska, chief defender of the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere,” put a hold on it, using the tradition allowing any senator to secretly block a bill. These games feed the perception of an out-of-touch Congress and demoralize many GOP voters. “Every event I go to, someone complains about overspending and pork,” says Rep. Chris Chocola of Indiana, one of the most embattled GOP incumbents. “They still don’t think we get it.”

Many members simply don’t believe the political costs of pork can ever exceed the benefits. Democrats have been largely silent. After all, they get about 45% of them even as a minority. “One man’s pork is another man’s steak,” is how many members dismiss reform.

The reforms passed this year were modest, but helpful. (The lame criticism that they don’t go far enough is true, but lame, especially when offered — as it usually is — by members of Congress who didn’t actually work for any reform.) It’s important to keep the pressure up, though.

Fund has this to say, too, which should be required reading in the White House:

President Bush could also do more. Republican Sen. Jim DeMint notes that the Congressional Research Service has found that 95% of recent earmarks were slipped into committee reports and not written into law. “These non-legislated earmarks are not legally binding,” he says. “President Bush could ignore them. He doesn’t need a line-item veto.”

The federal government is now an astounding 185 times as big in real terms as it was a century ago. A general sense that Republicans have forgotten why they were sent to Washington is a big reason why only 43% of Republicans approve of Congress in this month’s Fox News poll. If Republicans can’t better explain how they plan to get a grip on spending, many voters will conclude they both deserve and need a time-out from power.

Agencies won’t stand up to Congress on that committee report language, unless the President makes them, as they fear budgetary retribution. Bush needs to show some backbone on this, or Republicans will lose. And deserve to.

UPDATE: Here’s more from The Examiner:

Now with Coburn-Obama, every citizen with access to the Internet will be within a few mouse clicks of knowing where their tax dollars are going and who is benefitting from them. Such access moves our democracy beyond Government 1.0 web sites that mainly just provide passive information and encourages more active and informed citizenry. Call it the dawn of Government 2.0. It is especially fitting that a database of federal spending — the blood flow of governance — marks the opening of the new era. . . .

The experts will do well to study the campaign for Coburn-Obama closely for several reasons, not the least of which are that from the beginning it included people and groups from across the political spectrum and the fact that the Internet gave them unprecedented power to assess the situation at any given moment, distribute key information throughout the ranks of supporters and media and generate highly focused action wherever it was most needed. Old media was mostly on the sidelines throughout.

Indeed, though CNN and the Wall Street Journal provided some excellent ongoing coverage, as did the National Journal blogs — though I guess those are more new media than old.

WELL, I’m reassured.