Links and Minifeatures 08 11 Friday

I shall make thee an offer thou canst not refuse! Actual plays that put a different twist on Shakespeare, including what if he had written "The Godfather."

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Court Upholds NYC Subway Searches. Correctly. Whether the city police are performing the searches or not is irrelevant, just like the feds run the airline screening. Like airliners, the cars of the NY Subway are the corporate property of the MTA, a corporation which issues debt instruments in its own name. The city police, like the feds for the airlines, are performing a service in (theoretically) streamlining the process. If the ACLU has a brain (I'll wait until you stop laughing!), here is where they will drop it. It is not a constitutional right to ride the subway, and there is a public legitimate safety concern.



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W.House: Democrats' extreme left defeated Lieberman No, I don't think anybody there reads my site. This is just a realistic assessment of what happened, and if I were Kos, I'd wait until the general election in November to crow. But I guess when you're 0-21, even the temporary illusion of a victory is precious.



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While reading The Moderate Voice's article on the Israel Lebanon front, I was struck by an idea: Suppose Lebanon's insistence upon impossible terms is a cover for wanting Israel to wipe out Hezbollah for them, which they have not the resources or the political ability to bring about themselves?



Yes, Lebanon will suffer. But then it will be over, not this ongoing twenty-plus year sniping both sides with intermittent Israeli invasions, and Lebanon can get on with the business of building a country. Sound weird? There are precedents for it, and it's not likely the political leaders of Lebanon will be among the casualties, is it?



Related: A hard truth: Blackfive on the virtues of killing children. It hurts to read. But he's correct. (censored).



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aTypical Joe has found a good commonsense research policy for using Wikipedia here



I never trust Wikipedia standing upon its own. It's okay for a quick toss off, but not a serious argument. At most, I might use it to confirm or question my recollections or what I already think I know. On a subject I do not have relevant level expertise, it is sometimes a good starting point for finding serious research, but never an authoritative source itself.