Hate crimes

GJ in the comments:

Hey, there's nothing wrong with a little L Ron. At least he didn't say Dianetics. Imagine the response if he had picked that great American novel.

By the way DC, this article doesn't have to do with your post, but let me know your opinion on Bush threatening to veto this:
http://www.abpnews.com/2130.article

The article is about how Bush plans to veto an extension of hate crime protection to gays. I basically take the Andrew Sullivan position on this issue. I don't think we should have hate crime laws, but as long as we DO have them, the only reason not to include gay people in them is bigotry. He explains more eloquently than I could here.

As for Bush, it's pretty clear that he's doing this to throw a bone the base. Everything I've read suggests that Bush, like Dick Cheney, is personally very tolerant and accepting of gays, which makes his pandering on the matter even worse.

Andrew Sullivan on the debate and foreign policy

Andrew Sullivan agrees that McCain won the debate. But he isn't too happy with what passes for foreign policy these days:

very little nuance, very little subtlety, almost no fresh thinking. Conservatism now means simply projecting something called "strength" rather than articulating something called strategy. On the question of thinking through the lessons of Iraq, they seemed frozen. On the question of Iran, they never seemed to include any understanding of what constraints Iraq has placed on us. Just bomb them and kill them and we'll "win". That was about as sophisticated as it got (with the modest exception of McCjavascript:void(0)
Publishain's endorsement of Petraeus). And these people seem more aware of the Islamist threat than the Democrats. That's the state of the country and those entrusted with its defense.

With regards to the Islamist threat, just substitute "are absolutely obsessed with and scared witless by" in the place of "seem more aware of" and I agree 100%.