Democrats trounce Republicans on “moral values”…

…and on virtually all other issues addressed in this New York Times/CBS poll:

I was particularly struck by the shellacking the Republicans took on the question of “moral values”, given the media frenzy of disinformation after the 2004 election (when the percentage of people who said they voted their moral values was actually down from 2000).

As my friend Carol says of the upcoming election, “It’s the Democrats’ to lose,” whereupon we agreed that if there’s anything Democrats know how to do these days, it’s lose.

pdf of chart
Times commentary

in memory of Ahmed Khalil, murdered at 14 by Iraqi police for accusations of gay sex

I have to admit I’d kept the case of a brutal murder of a fourteen-year-old Iraqi boy – one of many out of the carnage in Iraq – out of my mind and my heart until I stumbled across an impassioned (and occasionally politically incorrect) reflection on the crime by Brandon K. Thorp at Mogenic (excerpted below):

But if we don’t intend to chop the balls off the evil men of the world and stick them on an island where they won’t shoot anymore children, we had better start getting serious about some of our other options.

Here’s one: When you have children, and your children ask you about the Will of God, do not lie to them. Don’t tell them that you know, because you don’t. Even if you think you know, you have no way of knowing that you know, and you shouldn’t try to pretend otherwise. When your children ask you about the Will of God, tell them this: “Nobody knows, and anyone who claims to know the Will of God is a Nazi, and likely to murder children. If anyone ever tells you they know the Will of God, run away. People who think they know the Will of God are the most dangerous people in the world.”

Jerome Taylor’s reporting on the case in The Independent may be found at Common Dreams.
edit: Brandon K. Thorp’s commentary is apparently no longer available online.

another view of the Justin Berry case

A guest has commented on the Justin Berry post of last December:

Suggesting that [Berry] is a victim is a slap in the face to real victims everywhere. He made money from his pornography sites by making adults think he was 18, and now he is making money from his appearances on shows like Oprah. Would this have had the same response had he been a 16 year old girl that filmed herself and put the videos online? Would her adult viewers have been called pedophiles?

He has also provided this alternate view, by John Farmer at Mogenic, of both Berry’s career to date and the media response to it.