More in the continuing saga of the GOP’s obsession with druggies, pimps and hos:

Sen. Charles Grassley (news, bio, voting record), chairman of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, wants the Internal Revenue Service to chase after pimps and sex traffickers with the same fervor it stalked gangster Al Capone for tax evasion.

Grassley, R-Iowa, would hit pimps with fines and lengthy prison sentences for failing to file employment forms and withhold taxes for the women and girls under their command.

I can’t find the link, but I remember they tried this a few years back by issuing tax codes for marijuana sales. Of course, that backfired on them when city hall was barraged with stoners trying to purchase the required stamps.

I would say that the idea behind this policy initiative is actually rather sound. This kind of tax and regulate plan seems to be far better (in countries like Holland) at controlling the black market than prohibition plans. Not only does it ease up on prison overpopulation, but it also generates revenue which can then be used to finance treatment and outreach programs.

Unfortunately, that is not what this bill is about. Rather, this is an attempt to add further criminal charges to activities that are borne more out of illness and deprivation than they are from malice. All prohibition has ever accomplished is to make the underground market a more lucrative business to be in, so I can’t see how adding additional expenses will do anything but drive prices up thereby encouraging more illegal sex and drug trafficking.

Hat tip to ATR for the link:

Americans, led to believe that their soldiers and Marines would be welcomed as liberators by the Iraqi people, have no idea what the occupation is really like from the perspective of Iraqis who endure it. Although I am American, born and raised in New York City, I came closer to experiencing what it might feel like to be Iraqi than many of my colleagues. I often say that the secret to my success in Iraq as a journalist is my melanin advantage. I inherited my Iranian father’s Middle Eastern features, which allowed me to go unnoticed in Iraq, blend into crowds, march in demonstrations, sit in mosques, walk through Falluja’s worst neighborhoods.

I also benefited from being able to speak Arabic—in particular its Iraqi dialect, which I hastily learned in Baghdad upon my arrival and continued to develop throughout my time in Iraq.

My skin color and language skills allowed me to relate to the American occupier in a different way, for he looked at me as if I were just another haji, the “gook” of the war in Iraq. I first realized my advantage in April 2003, when I was sitting with a group of American soldiers and another soldier walked up and wondered what this haji (me) had done to get arrested by them. Later that summer I walked in the direction of an American tank and heard one soldier say about me, “That’s the biggest fuckin’ Iraqi (pronounced eye-raki) I ever saw.” A soldier by the gun said, “I don’t care how big he is, if he doesn’t stop movin’ I’m gonna shoot him.”

I was lucky enough to have an American passport in my pocket, which I promptly took out and waved, shouting: “Don’t shoot! I’m an American!” It was my first encounter with hostile American checkpoints but hardly my last, and I grew to fear the unpredictable American military, which could kill me for looking like an Iraqi male of fighting age. Countless Iraqis were not lucky enough to speak American English or carry a U.S. passport, and often entire families were killed in their cars when they approached American checkpoints.

Really great article, go check it out.

Clinton the First and Bush the Elder – snuggle-bunnies in love?

Since their friendship, the two presidents from opposite parties have not changed their political opinions, Clinton said. Instead, the pair have looked beyond their differences to areas where they agree and can help others, an example he hopes other politicians will follow.

"All this bitter partisanship has been poison for this country," he said.

Through his friendship with the current president's father, Clinton said his respect for the current president has grown. Bush has a better take on immigration than the more conservative members of his party, Clinton said, and he got Congress to spend millions fighting AIDS

Say what you will about either man’s politics, but the two of them as individuals are whip-smart (thanks Liz). Bush may have cared very little about domestic affairs, but was undoubtedly one of the sharper foreign-policy minds to have held the office in modern times. Clinton may have been a shameless self-promoter, but, for better or worse, was one of the chief architects of modern neo-liberal globalization, effectively ushering in the modern global economy and presiding over one of the most lucrative epochs (for some at least) in American history.

Many of you know that I am now mere months away from completing my Ph.D., after which you may all call me Dr. Urthwalker. But seriously, the longer I am in this academia game, the more I encounter people with whom I just plain disagree with on a fundamental ideological level. I love these people. Sometimes they even change my mind, sometimes I change theirs. But either way, we each have a lucid, reasoned rationale behind our opinions and engage one another with intelligence and respect.

I meet a great many people like this throughout the world and especially through the rise of the blogosphere. I also meet their doppelgangers, the mindlessly partisan, vacuous, sensationalists who see the world only in sharp dichotomies and empty sound bites. God help us all if one of these is currently running the country.