• There's a whole lotta good stuff on Tapped today. Pay particular attention to Sam Rosenfeld' one-for-the-road takedown of David Brooks and Matt on why locking away the op-ed columnists was precisely the wrong idea. On a different note, I guess next week I'll be able to link to myself over there -- weird.
• The LA Times has an interesting op-ed on whether or not we should negotiate with al-Qaeda. Generations of countries afflicted by terrorist organizations have talked their way out of conflict before, though often only after many deaths and even more bombs. One thing I've long feared with bin-Laden's horde is that their cultural differences make a decidedly political, territorial organization with comprehensible aims seem like an antagonistic group bent on destruction for the sake of it. Whatever the wingnuts say, there's little reason to think that, and the country would be doing itself a disservice if it didn't at least attempt to see if we could open a dialogue of sorts. Cheney once said, regarding North Korea, that we do not negotiate with evil, we defeat it. As we saw this morning, that lasted until negotiation looked like the better option. Al-Qaeda may prove a similar case.
• Daniel Radosh on the remarkable response you get when you give bloggers awards.
• On a more personal note, sorry my attention has been so far from the blog lately. In addition to preparing for a crosscountry move on Wednesday, I'm going through some really, really rough personal stuff. On the bright side, I just finished my last final, so I should be able to spend more time drowning my sorrows in soul-deadening, mind-numbing wonkery. Some folks do drugs, I mainline pdf's.
