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Joshua Micah Marshall (j-marshall.com/talk)
(October 17th, 2001 – 2:56 PM EST // link)

I must confess to you that with many friends working on Capitol Hill (and myself living only a few miles away), it’s not so easy to get a critical distance on these most recent disclosures of Anthrax-tainted letters.

Regular readers will also know that I’ve been skeptical of the ‘bomb Iraq now’ crew inhabiting the middle-ranks of the Pentagon. But these new reports raise some very serious questions.

We now seem to be getting conflicting reports about the nature and quality of the Anthrax which arrived at Tom Daschle’s office. First we were hearing that it was high-quality, weapons-grade material. Now authorities seem to be partially backing

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Virginia Postrel (vpostrel.com)
THE SCENE (a.k.a. vpostrel.com)
Comments on current ideas and events

ACADEMIC FREEDOM: For more than a decade, colleges have been adopting speech codes and other policies based on the idea that making anyone feel uncomfortable is a form of assault. That idea has been inconsistently applied, since upsetting religious people or conservatives has rarely been punished. The overall effect has been to erode academic freedom. None of this should be news, since “speech codes” and “political correctness” have been hotly debated for a long time. In the current charged environment, however, the left has suddenly discovered the problem. As this Associated Press story reports, “Colleges campuses take pride in nurturing debate

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Andrew Sullivan (andrewsullivan.com)
Daily Dish

NOT THE ONION: But it could be. This is true. Well, as true as anything in the British tabloids can be. A janitor mistook a modern art exhibit for trash and cleaned it up and put it in the trash can. It was worth $8000. ?As soon as I clapped eyes on it I sighed because there was so much mess,” the janitor comments. ?I didn?t think for a second that it was a work of art ? it didn?t look much like art to me. So I cleared it all into bin-bags and dumped it.?
- 10/19/2001 12:53:19 PM

ARAB ANTI-SEMITISM WATCH: Now,
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Mickey Kaus (kausfiles.com)  

Ask not what JohnnyApplewants you to do for your country: Apple chides Bush for failing to “call for sacrifice” in the anti-terror war, but what sacrifice? Apple doesn’t even try to specify what form of self-denial might appropriately be called for from ordinary citizens. Does he want higher taxes? Presumably not. Longer military tours of duty? A draft? He doesn’t say, probably because the nation doesn’t need more men under arms to fight this war… Instead Apple complains “one could not help wondering” why Bush didn’t invoke the example of some heroes – which is really a different point, since we can honor heroes without sacrificing anything ourselves. (Plus, hero-invoking is easy. There’s

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Matt Drudge (The Drudge Report)
Lucianne Goldberg (lucianne.com)
Rich Galen (mullings.com)
Arianna Huffington (ariannaonline.com)
Joanne Jacobs (readjacobs.com)
Glenn Reynolds (instapundit.com)
The Bull Moose Commentary