"Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III on Friday overruled the overseer of the war court at Guantánamo Bay and revoked a plea agreement reached earlier this week..."

"... with the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and two alleged accomplices.... In taking away the authority, Mr. Austin assumed direct oversight of the case and canceled the agreement, effectively reinstating it as a death-penalty case.... Mr. Austin’s decision brought relief to family members of victims who had expressed anger over the deal, but it also left uncertain the next steps of the prosecution over America’s deadliest terrorist attack.... The case had become mired in more than a decade of pretrial proceedings that focused on whether the detainees’ torture in secret C.I.A. prisons had contaminated the evidence against them.... Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the longtime Republican leader, called the agreement 'a revolting abdication of the government’s responsibility to defend America and provide justice.' Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas called the deal 'disgraceful and an insult to the victims of the attacks,' and introduced legislation intended to nullify it. But Senator Richard J. Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, hailed the plea agreement as a 'small measure of justice and finality to the victims and their loved ones.'"

From "Defense Secretary Revokes Plea Deal for Accused Sept. 11 Plotters/Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III assumed direct oversight of the case and effectively put the death penalty back on the table" (NYT).

"Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas has unexpectedly emerged as a top contender to become Donald J. Trump’s running mate..."

"... according to three people with direct knowledge of Mr. Trump’s thinking who insisted on anonymity to discuss private meetings. These people said that Mr. Trump’s other current favorites were Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota and three of Mr. Cotton’s Senate colleagues: Marco Rubio of Florida, Tim Scott of South Carolina and J.D. Vance of Ohio...."

Writes Michael C. Bender, in "Trump’s V.P. Pageant Has an Unexpectedly Strong Contender: Tom Cotton/Donald Trump’s interest in the Arkansas senator reflects a desire to choose a running mate with experience and the ability to run a disciplined campaign" (NYT).

The former president has said privately that he views Mr. Cotton as a reliable and effective communicator in cable news interviews. Mr. Trump has also praised Mr. Cotton’s Army service, which included deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, and the fact that he is a fellow Ivy League graduate. Mr. Trump went to the University of Pennsylvania, and Mr. Cotton attended Harvard, earning undergraduate and law degrees....

Mr. Cotton has long been considered one of the party’s rising stars, ambition that could hurt his chances with Mr. Trump, who has undermined allies in the past when he perceived them to be intruding on his spotlight....

Bender could be wrong about Trump's determination to hog the spotlight. Trump may actually care about the ongoing project of making America great again. To a Trump hater, MAGA is at best an embodiment of Trump's ego, but Trump may want to pick the person who can carry Trumpism into the next administration and beyond. If he is thinking like that, then he'd pick Tom Cotton, don't you think?

I had Tom in mind for this purpose from just after the 2020 election:

And here's this from February 10, 2013: "I had never heard of the guy, but he impressed the hell out of me."

A conversation about Tom Cotton and Bob Dylan.

Texting at 6 in the morning. I'm out for the sunrise, and Meade is on the internet, thinking about the government...

Later, I expand on "yikes":

It's Bob Dylan's get out of the way song.

And here's the link to Tom Cotton's tweet.

MORE FROM COTTON:

"I often found myself asking questions like 'Doesn’t all of this talk of "voter suppression": on the left sound similar to charges of "voter fraud" on the right?' only to realize..."

".... how unwelcome such questions were. By asking, I’d revealed that I wasn’t on the same team as my colleagues, that I didn’t accept as an article of faith the liberal premise that voter suppression was a grave threat to liberal democracy while voter fraud was entirely fake news. Or take the Hunter Biden laptop story: Was it truly 'unsubstantiated,' as the paper kept saying? At the time, it had been substantiated, however unusually, by Rudy Giuliani. Many of my colleagues were clearly worried that lending credence to the laptop story could hurt the electoral prospects of Joe Biden and the Democrats. But starting from a place of party politics and assessing how a particular story could affect an election isn’t journalism. Nor is a vague unease with difficult subjects. 'The state of Israel makes me very uncomfortable,' a colleague once told me. This was something I was used to hearing from young progressives on college campuses, but not at work...."

Writes Adam Rubenstein, in "I Was a Heretic at The New York Times/I did what I was hired to do, and I paid for it" (The Atlantic).

Rubenstein was the primary editor of the Tom Cotton op-ed that caused an uproar in 2020. This long article is mostly about that experience, which, he says, "was never about safety, or the facts, or the editing, or even the argument, but control of the paper and who had it."

Is ranked-choice voting more of a scam than other kinds of voting?

60% of Alaska voters voted for a Republican, but thanks to a convoluted process and ballot exhaustion—which disenfranchises voters—a Democrat "won."

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) September 1, 2022

The heads of Drudge have got me wondering — which one is the real boy?

Note the headless angel, the creepy succession of men, and — topping it all off — the little puppet boy. Beyond heads — hands: I like the mirrored hand gestures, the angel and Joe Biden and then Tom Cotton and Pinocchio. All the human entities frown. We can't know the expression on the angel statues head and Pinocchio is slack-jawed and woozy. 

Anyway, what's up with Disney sending the live-action remake of "Pinocchio" straight to video? It was directed by Robert Zemeckis and stars Tom Hanks. That's conspicuously intended to be huge. It must stink like a bad cigar.

ADDED: I see that there is a second live-action version of Pinocchio coming out this year.

"The tone of the Republican questioning of the public defenders [nominated as federal judges] has alarmed Democrats and..."

"... has them bracing for tense moments during Judge [Ketanji Brown] Jackson’s hearings. Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has argued that Republicans aim some of their harshest fire at 'assertive women of color' to suggest they are 'soft on crime.' Democrats contend that these attacks are tied to a central element of Republicans’ midterm campaign strategy, which is to blame Democrats for an increase in crime by portraying them as unwilling to punish lawlessness and hostile to law enforcement.... Republicans deny that they are trying to bar an entire category of potential judges. [Senator Tom] Cotton said he did not believe that criminal defense work was disqualifying, but that it was only appropriate to judge nominees by the cases they had accepted.... As for Judge Jackson, Mr. Cotton pressed her during her appeals court hearing last year on her work for terror detainees whom she was appointed to represent, though she continued to challenge Bush-era detention polices after she entered private practice."

From "As Jackson Faces Senators, Her Criminal Defense Record Is a Target/Republicans have vilified Biden’s judicial nominees who have represented criminal suspects. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, for the Supreme Court, is the most prominent" (NYT).

"Those hearings involved Garland’s inexplicable decision to target federal law-enforcement resources at parents who speak against critical race theory and unpopular transgender policies at school-board meetings."

"In response to a letter from the left-leaning National School Boards Association, which described those meetings with lurid language but scant evidence of any real threats, Garland ordered the FBI and the Department of Justice into action. There was no justification for Garland’s move, which was political thuggery at its worst. The disorder at these meetings mostly involved people shouting and talking out of turn, with the occasional scuffle....  Said [Senator Josh] Hawley: 'You have weaponized the FBI and the Department of Justice. It is wrong. It is unprecedented to my knowledge in the history of this country.' Garland’s mealy-mouthed reply was that it was merely an offer of assistance, if needed, to local law enforcement.... His letter was in fact unprecedented, and it was clearly intended to intimidate opponents and to support the Democrats’ efforts to characterize all serious political opposition as some sort of security threat."

Writes Glenn Reynolds (at the NY Post).

Here's the full transcript of the hearing (with links to the video). I'm most interested in hearing Garland specify the perception that this particular form of political opposition — rejection of school policies designed to support black and transgender students — could be a federal crime. Here are my selections from the transcript:

"Remember, dear readers, you and I are lab-leak-theory hipsters. We were into it before it was cool."

"Now, no less a figure than Dr. Anthony Fauci is no longer willing to say it’s too farfetched to be plausible: 'PolitiFact’s Katie Sanders... asked Fauci if he is “still confident that it developed naturally,” according to footage of the event which was resurfaced by Fox News on Sunday. “No actually,” Fauci said... “I am not convinced about that... I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we continue to find out to the best of our ability what happened."'"

Writes Jim Geraghty in "The Circumstantial Evidence at Wuhan Lab Keeps Growing" (National Review)(reacting to the big Wall Street Journal scoop "Intelligence on Sick Staff at Wuhan Lab Fuels Debate on Covid-19 Origin/Report says researchers went to hospital in November 2019, shortly before confirmed outbreak; adds to calls for probe of whether virus escaped lab").

UPDATE: Here's Jonathan Chait in NY Magazine: "How the Liberal Media Dismissed the Lab-Leak Theory and Smeared Its Supporters": 

Many mainstream journalists, though not all, dismissed the lab-leak hypothesis out of hand as a conspiracy theory....  The confusion surrounding this issue was sown in no small measure by Trump, who used China as a transparent gambit to distract from his failure to respond to the pandemic....

Obviously, the idea China would intentionally start a deadly pandemic inside of China, just so the virus would eventually spread around the globe and kill Americans, is preposterous.... However, the charge that the virus began in a lab and China was covering it up was never clearly false. Yet many media reports treated this aspect with the same skepticism as Trump’s other lies on the subject, often blending different aspects of these claims together....

"As a law student, I worked in the mayor's office in Detroit during the 1967 riot, and I can tell you what happens to major cities with sustained increases in violent crime..."

"... Very large parts of them are destroyed. That's what I fear could happen again. It's all the more likely if liberal mayors and their cheerleaders in the press act as many did during the 'mostly peaceful' BLM protests. Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser tweeted that it was 'shameful' for federal police to use force to clear Lafayette Square on June 1. Those overrunning it tried to topple the statue of Andrew Jackson and started a fire in St. John's Church, 'the presidents' church,' just to the north. That civic space was violated just as the Capitol was on Jan. 6.  ... Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton argued in The New York Times for sending the National Guard and federal troops into cities where rioting got out of hand, as was often done from 1967 in Detroit to 1992 in Los Angeles. That common-sense suggestion sent young Times journalists into tears, and they demanded — and got — the firing of editorial page editor James Bennet. It's easy to make fun of the double standard here, with Bowser decrying the active duty military being 'used on American streets against Americans' in June and having no problem with it in January. Or with then-President Trump decrying rioters in June and spurring them on in January."

Writes Michael Barone (at Rasmussen).

"'There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.' Those words are as true today as when Abraham Lincoln spoke them."

"As I said last summer when mob violence gripped our streets, so I say again about the mob violence at our nation’s Capitol last week: those persons responsible should be held accountable in the courts to the full extent of the law. The House has passed an article of impeachment against the president, but the Senate under its rules and precedents cannot start and conclude a fair trial before the president leaves office next week. Under these circumstances, the Senate lacks constitutional authority to conduct impeachment proceedings against a former president."

Tom Cotton says, in a statement (which I'm quoting in full).

"The Founders designed the impeachment process as a way to remove officeholders from public office—not an inquest against private citizens. The Constitution presupposes an office from which an impeached officeholder can be removed. Fidelity to the Constitution must always remain the lodestar for our nation. Last week, I opposed the effort to reject certified electoral votes for the same reason—fidelity to the Constitution—I now oppose impeachment proceedings against a former president. Congress and the executive branch should concentrate entirely for the next week on conducting a safe and orderly transfer of power. After January 20, Congress should get on with the people’s business: improving our vaccination efforts, getting kids back to school, and getting workers back on the job."

Click on my "Tom Cotton" tag. Tom Cotton is getting a lot of things right. 

Remember the poll I had on November 23? "Trump voters only please: If you had to pick the 2024 GOP nominee right now: Trump/Tom Cotton." I said, "My poll, my options — do your own poll if you don't like the constraints." Tom Cotton looked like the most apt alternative to me at the time. And you Trump voters who answered the poll — or whoever answered the poll — chose Cotton over Trump, 55% to 45%. 

Let me see how that choice is holding up:

Trump voters only please: If you had to pick the 2024 GOP nominee right now:

Trump

Tom Cotton

 

pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: Poll results:

"Cotton appeared to be referring to Hawley, his potential rival for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, whose campaign sent out a fundraising email Wednesday..."

"... promoting his plan to object to Pennsylvania’s electoral votes. The email was sent shortly before a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, bringing a temporary halt to the counting of the Electoral College vote and leaving offices and hallways in the Capitol ransacked." 

The Hill says, commenting on this tweet from Tom Cotton (which says "while," not "shortly before"):

Some senators, for political gain, misled supporters about their ability to challenge the election results--some even sent out fundraising emails while insurrectionists stormed the Capitol.

That stops now--Republicans ought to focus on countering the Democrats' radical agenda. pic.twitter.com/e0JDg2bsJy

— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) January 7, 2021

"If Congress purported to overturn the results of the Electoral College, it would not only exceed [its] power, but also establish unwise precedents."

"First, Congress would take away the power to choose the president from the people, which would essentially end presidential elections and place that power in the hands of whichever party controls Congress. Second, Congress would imperil the Electoral College, which gives small states like Arkansas a voice in presidential elections. Democrats could achieve their longstanding goal of eliminating the Electoral College in effect by refusing to count electoral votes in the future for a Republican president-elect. Third, Congress would take another big step toward federalizing election law, another longstanding Democratic priority that Republicans have consistently opposed. Thus, I will not oppose the counting of certified electoral votes on January 6. I’m grateful for what the president accomplished over the past four years, which is why I campaigned vigorously for his reelection. But objecting to certified electoral votes won’t give him a second term—it will only embolden those Democrats who want to erode further our system of constitutional government."

Says Senator Tom Cotton.

"Like so many presidential flocks this one started in the great state of Iowa, in what can only be described as an act of blatant pandering and by the way..."

"... I love the state of Iowa. These two turkeys sought to win the support of Iowans across the state, by naming themselves Corn and Cob.... Look at that beautiful, beautiful bird. Oh, so lucky. That is a lucky bird. Corn, I hereby grant you a full pardon. Thank you, Corn. Iowa farm. I knew I liked you. Happy Thanksgiving to everybody. Thank you very much."

Said President Donald Trump, dealing with the turkey business for the last time and ignoring the shouted-out question: "Any pardons before you leave office? Will you be issuing a pardon for yourself?" (Transcript.)

I excerpted the humorous material, but there was also some serious talk about thanking God and the perseverance of the pilgrims. And something that completely surprised me: "This year our nation commemorates the 400th anniversary of the pilgrims landing on Plymouth Rock." 

What?! That's a gigantic anniversary — a centennial mark — and I'd heard absolutely nothing about it.

I found this op-ed by Tom Cotton from a few days ago, "It's the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims' arrival. Why haven't we heard more about it?" I'm guessing the reason is that we are not proud of American history anymore. The pilgrims have been problematized. Senator Tom says: 

[T]he Pilgrims have fallen out of fashion in elite circles. Just this week, The New York Times food section published an article that called the Pilgrim story, including the First Thanksgiving, a “myth” and a “caricature.” In place of these so-called “myths,” the liberal newspaper seeks to substitute its own, claiming the history of our nation is an unbroken tale of conflict, oppression and misery...  

My poll, my options — do your own poll if you don't like the constraints.

Trump voters only please: If you had to pick the 2024 GOP nominee right now:

Trump

Tom Cotton

 

pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: Cotton won!

Trump gives his new list of potential Supreme Court nominees — including Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz — and challenges Joe Biden to produce his own list.

pic.twitter.com/RGnqBeDDjC https://t.co/iRxBXnfCtH

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 9, 2020

There's a reason why Trump can produce a list like this and Joe Biden can't. Prove me wrong, Joe.

"A federal judge said on Friday that there was enough evidence in Sarah Palin’s defamation lawsuit against The New York Times Company to send it to a jury trial..."

The NYT reports.

The suit, filed in June 2017, is centered on a Times editorial published that month under the headline "America’s Lethal Politics." In her complaint, Ms. Palin said the newspaper’s editorial board had wrongly and intentionally linked her to a 2011 mass shooting in which Gabrielle Giffords, a congresswoman from Arizona, was severely wounded and six people were killed...

The judge, Jed S. Rakoff of Federal District Court in Manhattan, dismissed Ms. Palin’s suit two months after it was filed, saying of the mistaken editorial: "Negligence this may be; but defamation of a public figure it plainly is not." Last year, a three-judge panel overturned that decision and reinstated the case. On Friday, weeks after lawyers for Ms. Palin and The Times made arguments at a hearing, Judge Rakoff denied a Times motion for summary judgment. In ordering the case to proceed, he said there was "sufficient evidence to allow a rational finder of fact to find actual malice by clear and convincing evidence."...

The editorial, as it was first published, argued that 'the link to political incitement was clear' in the 2011 shooting. It also suggested a connection between a map circulated by Ms. Palin’s political action committee and the shooting. The map showed 20 targeted electoral districts held by Democrats, including Ms. Giffords’s seat, under stylized cross hairs...

The disputed material had been added to the editorial by James Bennet, the editorial page editor at the time. The outcome of the case rests on whether he behaved with "actual malice," meaning that he knew what he wrote was false, or acted out of "reckless disregard" for the truth. ...

Mr. Bennet resigned from The Times in June, after the publication of an Op-Ed by Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, that called for a military response to civic unrest in American cities.

Palin needs to prove that it's clear that there was actual malice in saying that the connection between Palin and the shooting of Gifford was clear. It's clear that the connection was not clear, but for Palin to win, it needs to be clear that Bennet knew it was not clear or recklessly disregarded whether it was clear. What the trial judge said was that the question whether it was clear that Bennet knew or recklessly disregarded whether it was clear is unclear enough that a rational jury could find that it was clear.

Is that clear?!

Isn't it interesting to see Bennet in the center of things again? Here's what I wrote last June about the problem with what Cotton had written:

[Cotton wrote about] "left-wing radicals like antifa infiltrating protest marches to exploit Floyd’s death for their own anarchic purposes," but the NYT has not yet reported that the violent element was antifa. Its news story on June 1 had said "conservative commentators are asserting with little evidence that antifa, the far-left anti-fascism activist movement coordinates the riots and looting."

I was bothered at the time — and I'm still bothered today — that there isn't "more reporting in the NYT about who's responsible for the violence and disorder accompanying the protests." I continue to feel that the NYT is "not pursuing it or they are suppressing what they have because it impugns the left." By comparison, the Times was ridiculously eager to see a connection between a conservative — Sarah Palin — and one sudden act of violence.

Perhaps Bennet, in approving what Cotton had written, was thinking of balancing out the NYT tendency to blame conservatives for violence, which is what got the Times in trouble and made it vulnerable to Palin's lawsuit. But letting Cotton blame left-wingers for violence sparked internal dissension at the New York Times, and Bennet got booted out.

"There has not yet been a single confirmed case in which someone who self-identifies as antifa led violent acts at any of the protests across the country."

"The president and his administration have placed an outsize burden of blame on antifa, without waiting for arrest data and completed investigations. This is not the first time Trump has pointed to antifa as a shadowy nemesis. But the misinformation created by his continued insistence of antifa’s involvement has led to more chaos and violence in an already turbulent moment. As always, the burden of proof rests with the speaker — and the administration has provided no evidence, only assertions that it has evidence. Trump earns Four Pinocchios."

Write Meg Kelly and Elyse Samuels at the Washington Post "Fact Checker," addressing the many statements by Trump that the Black Lives Matter protests involve antifa.

This, by the way, was also the problem the NYT had with the Tom Cotton op-ed. As I said when the NYT first expressed regret for publishing the piece:

A particular problem with Cotton's piece was that it said "left-wing radicals like antifa infiltrating protest marches to exploit Floyd’s death for their own anarchic purposes," but the NYT has not yet reported that the violent element was antifa. Its news story on June 1 had said "conservative commentators are asserting with little evidence that antifa, the far-left anti-fascism activist movement coordinates the riots and looting."

Whether Cotton was right or wrong about the facts, there is a problem with factual assertions in op-eds. I've written op-eds for the NYT, and it was with a very short deadline and I was trusted to get the facts in order. I don't know how much the Times intends to change its process, but I assume it wants and needs to have some distance between itself and the writers it brings in from the outside to give a hot take on a breaking controversial story.

I added: "Why isn't there more reporting in the NYT about who's responsible for the violence and disorder accompanying the protests?"

I'm mildly glad to see the WaPo Fact Checker addressing this topic, but it's pathetic that this basic level of journalistic inquiry is coming so late. It is, however, horrible that Trump (and Cotton) have spread this meme. Maybe they are right and the Fact Checker is wrong, but it's not enough to luck out in the end and have said something that turns out to be the truth. We should care about the truth for the sake of truth and care about it all along. There's so little of that these days.

"If the Chief Justice believes his political judgment is so exquisite, I invite him to resign, travel to Iowa, and get elected. I suspect voters will find his strange views no more compelling than do the principled justices on the Court."

Just a line from Tom Cotton I wanted to memorialize, quoted at Fox News.

It's of a piece with the sort of rhetoric about judges I've been reading for the last 50 years and more. I can't remember a time when I was able to understand anything about the Supreme Court when there wasn't a notion that what they are really doing is politics. And I saw "Impeach Earl Warren" billboards when I was first learning to read — back when I had no idea what "impeach" meant (something about a peach?) or who Earl Warren was.

So it's an old, old theme. But it plays well, and I think Tom Cotton found a spiffy way to do the phrasing. Instead of calling Roberts unprincipled, he points to the other justices — "the principled justices" — and imagines them finding the Chief's "views" "strange" and uncompelling. That's a nice variation on the theme.

And you've got to give Cotton credit for complexity. He addresses the Chief Justice and invites him to do something he's obviously not going to do, though it's more realistic and respectful than the common insults that tell people to do things — like go to hell or kiss my ass — that they're not going to do. "Invite" is polite, and running for President is very grand. But the idea is that if you ran for President with your agenda, you would lose. Cotton predicts the loss in an elegant comparison of voters to "principled justices," who, he suspects, would have the same low opinion of the Chief's ideas.

Now, the so-called "principled justices" oppose the Chief because he's finding something in the law that actually belongs in the political decisionmaking process, and if the Chief were to run for President, he would be taking these ideas to the place where the "principled justices" say they belong. So if the voters rejected these ideas, it would not be for the same reason the "principled justices" rejected them.

Ah! Now, I see the little flaw in Cotton's rhetoric! The only way the voters and the so-called "principled justices" could share the same opinion of the Chief Justice's "strange views" would be if the "principled justices" were thinking in political terms — in which case, they would be no more principled than the Chief Justice.

But if Tom Cotton is reading this — hi, Tom! — I know you already know how to get off that hook. You only said the voters and the "principled justices" would find the Chief's views to be equivalently compelling. It can still be the case that these views are not compelling in court, because they are not law but merely political, and that they are not compelling in the political arena, because people just don't like them.

"There is little or no liberal space in this revolutionary movement for genuine, respectful disagreement, regardless of one’s identity, or even open-minded exploration."

"In fact, there is an increasingly ferocious campaign to quell dissent, to chill debate, to purge those who ask questions, and to ruin people for their refusal to swallow this reductionist ideology whole. The orthodoxy goes further than suppressing contrary arguments and shaming any human being who makes them. It insists, in fact, that anything counter to this view is itself a form of violence against the oppressed. The reason some New York Times staffers defenestrated op-ed page editor James Bennet was that he was, they claimed, endangering the lives of black staffers by running a piece by Senator Tom Cotton, who called for federal troops to end looting, violence, and chaos, if the local authorities could not. This framing equated words on a page with a threat to physical life — the precise argument many students at elite colleges have been using to protect themselves from views that might upset them.... In this manic, Manichean world you’re not even given the space to say nothing. 'White Silence = Violence' is a slogan chanted and displayed in every one of these marches. It’s very reminiscent of totalitarian states where you have to compete to broadcast your fealty to the cause. In these past two weeks, if you didn’t put up on Instagram or Facebook some kind of slogan or symbol displaying your wokeness, you were instantly suspect. The cultishness of this can be seen in the way people are actually cutting off contact with their own families if they don’t awaken and see the truth and repeat its formulae.... If you argue that you believe that much of this ideology is postmodern gobbledygook, you are guilty of 'white fragility.' If you say you are not fragile, and merely disagree, this is proof you are fragile. It is the same circular argument that was once used to burn witches. And it has the same religious undertones...."

From "Is There Still Room for Debate?" by Andrew Sullivan (New York Magazine).