This is what its come down to: The Leader of the Free World holding people hostage.
U.S. Arrests Wife of Saddam Deputy

American troops hunting for a top Saddam Hussein deputy suspected of masterminding anti-U.S. attacks arrested his wife and daughter, the military said Wednesday, in an apparent attempt to pressure his surrender.
[...]
Troops of the U.S. 4th Infantry Division in Samarra, 70 miles north of Baghdad, arrested the wife and daughter of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a top Saddam associate, division spokesman Lt. Col. William MacDonald said Wednesday.

Under Saddam, al-Douri was vice chairman of the ruling Revolutionary Command Council, and shortly before the war began March 20, Saddam placed him in charge of defenses in northern Iraq.

MacDonald gave no details on why the wife and daughter were seized. American forces have frequently arrested relatives of fugitives to interrogate them on their family member's whereabouts and as a way of putting pressure on the wanted men to surrender.

In Tikrit, US Destroys Homes of Suspected Guerrillas

TIKRIT, Iraq - In a tactic reminiscent of Israeli crackdowns in the West Bank and Gaza, the U.S. military has begun destroying the homes of suspected guerrilla fighters in Iraq's Sunni Triangle, evacuating women and children, then leveling their houses with heavy weaponry.

At least 15 homes have been destroyed in Tikrit as part of what has been dubbed Operation Ivy Cyclone II, including four leveled on Sunday by tanks and Apache helicopters that allegedly belonged to suspects in the Nov. 7 downing of a Black Hawk helicopter that killed six Americans.

Family members at one of the houses, in the village of al Haweda, said they were given five minutes to evacuate before soldiers opened fire.

The destruction of the homes is part of a sharp crackdown on insurgents in the so-called Sunni Triangle where guerrillas have downed at least two U.S. helicopters, one a Chinook in Fallujah on Nov. 2, killing 16 U.S. soldiers, and the other the Nov. 7 downing of the Black Hawk. On Saturday, two more helicopters crashed, after one of them may have been fired upon, killing 17.

This tactic hasn't helped Israel and will make Iraq an even more dangerous place.

Great News
Massachusetts Court: State Wrong to Ban Gay Marriage

Massachusetts' highest court today invalidated a state ban on same-sex marriages, ruling that the right to marry is "the right to marry the person of one's choice," regardless of gender.

It stopped short of immediately legalizing same-sex marriages, however, referring the issue to the Massachusetts legislature for action "appropriate" in light of the ruling.

By a 4-3 vote, the state's Supreme Judicial Court said Massachusetts was violating its state constitution by denying the "legal, financial and social benefits of marriage" to people of the same sex who wish to marry.

It rejected the state's chief argument in favor of the ban: that the purpose of marriage is "procreation." That, the court concluded, is largely a cover for "persistent prejudices" against homosexuals.

It then took the extraordinary step of redefining the common law definition of marriage in Massachusetts.

Marriage, under the law, is not merely a union between a man and a woman, the court said.

Rather, it is "the voluntary union of two persons as spouses, to the exclusion of all others."

It is a "civil right," Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall wrote for the court, guaranteed by the state constitution's commitment to "the dignity and equality of all individuals."

Marshall left no doubt that the court expected conformance by the legislature. The "marriage ban," she wrote for the court, "works a deep and scarring hardship . . . for no rational reason."

Quote of the Week

The tyrant, who in order to hold his power, suppresses every superiority, does away with good men, forbids education and light, controls every movement of the citizens and, keeping them under a perpetual servitude, wants them to grow accustomed to baseness and cowardice, has his spies everywhere to listen to what is said in the meetings, and spreads dissension and calumny among the citizens and impoverishes them, is obliged to make war in order to keep his subjects occupied and impose on them permanent need of a chief

-Aristotle

Sound familiar?

(thanks to Christine B.)

Terror futures market back in business

A U.S. government plan to create a market in which traders could bet on the likelihood of certain events in the Middle East has been revived and is scheduled to start trading next spring.

The market, called the Policy Analysis Market (PAM), will allow traders to buy and sell contracts on specific events, including terrorist attacks, assassinations and overthrows of regimes.

Found on the Internet.

The weeks went on, and the discomfort in my shin continued. Once a week, I would try to go out and run, with varying results, but always with the feeling that something was not right. The shin was not healing, but that pain was inconsequential against a background of not being able to run. I was like a horse, who, upon breaking a leg, has to be shot, because she will never sit still long enough to heal. I never understood the stallion, or really, my fellow runner, until now. The pain is all consuming for one who needs to run and cannot.

I couldn't have said it better.

If Only The Son Could Read
In his memoirs, "A World Transformed," written more than five years ago, George Bush, Sr. wrote the following to explain why he didn't go after Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf War.

Trying to eliminate Saddam...would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible.... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq.... there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.

(thanks to Edwin C.)

As the killing continues...
Attack kills U.S. military policeman

The soldier was the 38th killed in November, and brings the number of U.S. troops killed in the Iraq war to 398. Since President Bush declared the end to major combat on May 1, 259 U.S. military members have been killed.

There is no reliable source for Iraqi civilian or combatant casualty figures, either during the period of major combat or after May 1. The Associated Press reported an estimated 3,240 civilian Iraqi deaths between March 20 and April 20, but the AP said that the figure was based on records of only half of Iraq's hospitals and the actual number was thought to be significantly higher.