THREE LINKS: 1. 101 projects for artists and illustrators. I’m having a lot of fun recasting these as writing exercises–designing a magazine cover on a current news event would become writing a New York Post headline…. Basically, what exercises like this train you to do, I think, is to notice things you’d otherwise overlook–to consider every kind of art a possible source of inspiration. Via Journalista.

2. Nat Hentoff writes:

…In 2002, Arar, a software engineer and citizen of Canada, was kidnapped and flown by the CIA to Syria, where for 10 months he was held in an underground cell seven feet high, three feet wide, and six feet deep (“like a grave,” he said). The persistent tortures he underwent finally forced him to make a false confession of connections to Al Qaeda.

On his release, Syrian officials admitted there was a total lack of evidence against him. Then, after a two-year inquiry and its 1,200-page report by a Canadian commission–in which the United States refused to participate–Dennis O’Connor, the chief justice of the Ontario Court of Appeal, said, “I’m able to say categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense or that his activities constitute a threat to the security of Canada.” …

On December 7, 2006, the commissioner of the RCMP, Giuliano Zaccardelli, resigned because he had mishandled the case, saying he had “made a mistake” in not being aware of the false information the RCMP had given the CIA.

In this country, you will not be surprised to learn, no one–at the CIA, the Justice Department, or in Dick Cheney’s office of “dark arts”–has resigned or admitted any error at all.

Instead, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was asked at a press conference whether the Justice Department might at least offer Arar–who can’t find a job and still suffers from the effects of his stay in the grave-like Syrian cell–an apology. Astonishingly, since Arar’s ordeal has been reported in detail in mainstream American newspapers as well as in the foreign press, Gonzales actually said: “We were not responsible for Mr. Arar’s removal to Syria. I’m not aware that he was tortured, and I haven’t read the [Canadian] commission report. He was initially detained because his name appeared on terrorist lists, and he was deported according to our immigration laws.”

The attorney general did not mention that his Justice Department approved the removal of Arar or the special accommodations for Arar in a CIA plane, bound not for Canada, where he is a citizen, but for Syria’s torture chambers. And Gonzales has yet to answer the insistent questions on that brutal rerouting from senators Leahy and Arlen Specter.

more (via Mark Shea)

3. Washington Post story on the DC Archdiocese’s promotion of Confession–ads, how-to guides, extended confessional hours, and more. Via Amy Welborn.