Things are beginning to return to normal. Bush was smirking all over the place today, Guiliani has reverted back to being an asshole...

There are now (I haven't seen them) public service announcements by celebrities about how we shouldn't beat up or discriminate against Muslims and Arab-Americans. One (transcript in the Friday NY Times) was by John McCain. You know, the guy who called Vietnamese gooks last year and didn't see anything wrong with that.

I wonder if American foreign policy hasn't become slightly dechristianized in the last 2 weeks. Sanctions have been removed from Sudan, which was on the Fundamentalist hate list because it killed and enslaved Christians, and you haven't heard much about those missionaries imprisoned in Afghanistan, either.

Historian Sean Wilentz suggests that Guiliani, instead of trying to retain his mayoralty by arguing that he is more indispensible than Lincoln in 1864 or FDR in 1944, should be appointed next ruler of Afghanistan.

There is a letter to the NY Times today from someone who announced that they were a member of a support group for people who have lost a loved one to suicide. They are upset by the term suicide bomber, and wish people would stop using it. It just adds to the stigma associated with suicide, she says.

Bush says that we are in "hot pursuit" of bin Laden. It's unclear whether he knows that this was a legal term, one used in the past to violate the borders of other countries, such as the hot pursuit of Pancho Villa into Mexico in 1916 or the invasion of Cambodia in 1970.

Two Air Force fighters were scrambled to help stewardesses force a passenger to put out his cigarette.

A State Dept document says that the Taliban do not represent the Afghan people, who never elected them.

And they say irony is dead.

Attorney General Ashcroft says that the suicide bombers (take that, support group!) don't represent Islam. Mr. Ashcroft, you will remember, thinks that dancing is Satan's handiwork.