URLs du Jour -- 12/12/2005

  • Eugene Volokh despairs at what he calls the "hostility to atheism" currently in America. He cites a poll which (more accurately) points to a relatively high percentage of respondents who confessed to a mostly or very unfavorable opinion of atheists.

    Leave alone the slight distinction that can be made between (a) hostility to atheism and (b) not having a high opinion of atheists. Aren't the poll results simply explained by the fact that atheists act like jerks all the time? (Note: if you click the link, the relevant part is about halfway through the page. Also note that the the person making this assertion is not himself a believer.)

  • Dafydd ab Hugh at the Big Lizards blog trashes some senators, among them one of my own, John E. Sununu. At issue is the reauthorization of the Patriot Act; Senator Sununu is trying to include (in the words of a press release on his website) "modest protections for civil liberties". Comments Dafydd:
    There is a certain kind of conservative, such as former Rep. Bob Barr, who slides so far towards libertarianism that he ceases to support even the concept of law enforcement... these "conservatives" see even so much as tapping the cellphone of a suspected al-Qaeda bombmaker as an unacceptable abrogation of our rights.
    … to which I want to say: come on, now. First, there's no inherent conflict between libertarianism and full-fledged law enforcement; although I think the ACLUies go more than a little overboard sometimes with taking tools out of the hands of investigators, that's pretty far from Dafydd's caricature. And even non-ACLU types have some problems with the blank checks in the Patriot Act.

    For a more balanced view on Patriot renewal, see Glenn Reynolds and (linked to by Glenn), Orin Kerr. Yeah, I know that Sununu is mixing it up with a bunch of Usual Suspects here, but there's no reason to assume he's not doing so for admirable reasons of his own. I am a fan of Big Lizards, but Dafydd's slur is uncalled for.


Last Modified 2012-10-25 4:22 PM EDT