Matt Welch: “On the campaign trail, I saw Nader tell a variety of whoppers: that "the Social Security ‘crisis’ is a phony problem invented by George W. Bush to make his Wall Street buddies even more rich," that Western Europe had "abolished poverty," that Americans get "90 percent of their news from television." In Crashing the Party his tall tales range from the banal (saying that a disastrous appearance on The Tonight Show "went well," without mentioning that he was mocked by Jay Leno, a guest, and several newspapers after blurting out the word "Strawberries!" when asked what he does for fun) to the vindictive (falsely accusing several reporters of being uninterested in his appeal to "nonvoters" because "their experience had taught them not to inquire into such elusive quests") to the fantastic ("Most of our stands and positions are supported by most Americans").”

Stephen Thorne and Alex Spillius: “"It sucked," an exhausted Corporal Shaun Seaton said after the last grave was excavated on Monday.”

"He dared expose our sham Commons" by Andrew Coyne

"At least they take some conventions seriously. Mace-grabbing they take very seriously indeed. On the other hand, that little convention about MPs being elected to Parliament to represent the people -- deliberating and voting on legislation according as either their conscience or their constituents dictate -- well, that's a nice little fiction, isn't it? Members of the Parliament of Canada, as everyone knows, have one role and one role only: to stand up and sit down when they're told."

William Saletan: “Israel and its critics can't agree which facts to find. The mystery of the Jenin investigation—namely, why a country with nothing to hide would resist a search for truth—dissolves when you realize how much of the battle for public opinion takes place not between truth and falsehood, but between one truth and another. To control the answer, you must control the question. That's the game Israel is playing-and its opponent, the United Nations, is winning.”

"In the ruins of the future" by Don DeLilo

That's funny. I just read the actual Harper's Magazine version, and checked to see if there was an online version. Yep. Except the Guardian graphic misleadingly labels it as fiction. Whatever. It's a good piece reflecting on the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, written about a month after the attack.

Jim Holt: “Defenders of the doctrine of double effect appeal to Kant's categorical imperative: A person is always to be treated as an end, never merely as a means. And treating people as a means—to send a message, to create wider panic, to demoralize the enemy nation they are a part of—is precisely what the perpetrator of an act of terror does.”

The article cites an book review (which I haven't yet read) by Michael Ignatieff, someone I've been coming across a lot lately.