  For those of the political mindset, here are a couple links perhaps worth seeing. Over at urlLink Transterrestrial Musings , Rand talks about urlLink the human rights double-standard when it comes to Israel.
Specifically, he's referring to the Palestinians' nifty little kids' camps, where, as he puts it, "instead of making lanyards and leather products, learning to swim or sail, and engaging in various sports, they are learning to sneak past Israeli checkpoints, and the virtues of dying for the Palestinian cause.
" Now, Human Rights Watch (as Rand notes) has voiced concerns over child soldiers in the past. But, in this case, deafening silence. This is problematic. Yes, there are more than enough horror stories on both sides of the Israel/Palestine conflict. When you have what is in many ways a civil war for, oh, fifty years, chances are no one's hands are going to be completely clean.
Having said that, it is striking, and rather disturbing, that large portions of the West's educated elite are incapable or unwilling to see the qualitative differences between Israeli and Palestinian tactics (i.e. attempts to avoid collateral damage vs. the fully intentional targeting of noncombatant populations). Perhaps it is from some delusional romanticism about the "wretched of the earth. " Or perhaps this is just a reflection of the unique malady in developed countries, probably best summed up in the term "radical chic.
" But, in any case, disturbing. And, from one disturbing element to the next, this one from the urlLink National Review Online . urlLink Mark W. Davis describes a hideous new book coming out on shelves. Perhaps you've heard of it - it's called Checkpoint . It's a very sweet book, really: A major publishing house, Alfred A. Knopf, which once published H.L Mencken, D.H. Lawrence, Albert Camus, Franz Kafka - and, most recently, former president Bill Clinton's My Life - has decided that it is now acceptable to sell, as edgy entertainment, Checkpoint , a novella by Nicholson Baker that explores explicit fantasies about killing President George W. Bush. With saws. With boulders. With bullets. A British newspaper reveals that a main character runs through various outrages over Iraq and concludes, "I'm going to kill that bastard.
" Ah, high literature. Let's think about this, shall we? Imagine the Clinton administration - some "edgy" author describes his revelries about capping off dear ol' Bill in numerous ways. Would any major publisher, or even most minor ones, have published it? Certainly not - it would (quite rightly) belong in dusty and not-often-investigated bookstores among other delusional tracts, like The Turner Diaries and other such worthless drivel.
It is uncivilized to talk about assassinating a President, much less one's fantasies of doing it in sundry forms. Clinton was scum, a dreadful President, and in many ways a waste of carbon molecules. But he was still the President, not a tyrant. Ah, but things are different now, apparently. While the chattering classes would (quite rightly) have seen such a delusional screed against a progressive as insulting, as well as no doubt illustrating (not quite rightly) the inherently violent/bigoted/intolerant/your-slur-of-choice-here nature of rightists, apparently a work of this type against a...well, a type of...conservative, is nothing to bat one's eyelashes at.
One dreads to think what accolades this junk will receive. "How daring! " "How true! " "In these times of oppression, a voice speaking truth to power! " Yeah. Hopefully, even though it is from a major publisher, this trite bit of Bush-baiting will not be received kindly by the critics, nor by the public. But, then again, so many just gobbled up F911 that....well, I shan't hold my breath. 
