I watch the blogs go by dressed in their summer clothes;

I have to turn my head until my darkness goes!…

Lots of must-read stuff out there, people. Why are you here? Go away until you’ve read these!

Balkinization: Report on a debate on torture and the role of a govt lawyer. (More on this later tonight.)

Family Scholars: Elizabeth Marquardt on siblings created by donor conception (of sperm or egg); and on donor conception generally: “Intentionally creating people who are forcibly broken from their genetic families, to serve the interests of others who desire children. Meanwhile insisting that it doesn’t matter, all that matters is the love and good intentions of the adults who do the desiring.”

Hit & Run: Best post I’ve seen so far on Bush’s exchanging long protein strands with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. Link-rich and infuriating. Also, Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation interviews Lebanese people who have been held in Syrian prisons.

Unqualified Offerings: Excellent takedown of drug prohibition; key bit: “For instance, I think most libertarians believe that consequences should fall as close to the decision-maker as possible. In the name of preventing a marginal increase in addicts, heroin prohibition (and especially cocaine prohibition) shift consequences unconscionably far from the subjunctive addicts in question – onto everybody who has to endure living in a neighborhood riven by drug gang disputes; everybody who suffers or fears theft from real addicts trying to make the inflated prices of their habits; everyone who falls along an AIDS vector begun with dirty needles in a transaction whose furtiveness stems from its illegality; everybody who lives in a country caught between narcoterror and norteamericano interdiction efforts; everybody who gets their property seized because they had the misfortune to have a drug user or dealer in their family; everyone at the address the anonymous paid informant gets wrong or pulls out of his ass; everyone with a reasonable if naive expectation of privacy in their financial transactions; every seventh black guy who picks up a felony record and the other six suffering his stigma by association. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was one of the few prohibitionists to be honest about this, at least in the abstract, years ago, in an American Scholar essay where he wrote that the policy decision to minimize a drug problem was also a decision to exacerbate a crime problem.”

On a totally different note, he also offers Japanese oddness, headlined, “Who died and left Bruce Sterling God?”

Ron Belgau, “My Alternative Lifestyle”–homosexuality and Christian faith. Some of this resonates really strongly with my own experience, some of it doesn’t, but it’s a good read and very much worth your time. Via Amy Welborn.