April 23rd, 2009 8:31 pm
One country’s nightmare experience with engaging the Taliban
Pakistan’s. The Dawn is describing the pell-mell retreat that followed the government’s negotiatated agreement with Islamists. The province of Swat is now doubtful and the retreat continues towards Islamabad. The Dawn asks what happens if “the center cannot hold”.

April 23rd, 2009 6:29 pm
Notes from all around

April 23rd, 2009 4:51 am
Links sent by readers April 22, 2009

April 22nd, 2009 3:14 pm
One more day
James DeLong argues that while the US has been operating under the same Constitution since 1789, the rearrangements since mean that the US is operating under what he terms the Third American Republic. DeLong reckons that the Civil War ushered in the Second, while the New Deal ushered in this last. The defining criteria, in each case, has been the extent of the Federal Government and its relationship with other elements in society. He maintains that the New Deal established the “special interest State”.

April 22nd, 2009 1:26 pm
Terrorism and moral torture
Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe adopts what I think is a morally sustainable position on the use of torture. He declares himself against it even if its use were necessary to save a city. Unlike other pundits, Jacoby allows for the possibility that coercive interrogation will work; that it might save the lives of innocent people. He is simply unwilling to pay the moral price that is necessary to save them. Jacoby writes:

April 21st, 2009 2:18 pm
Not for all the locks on doors
The WSJ reports that “computer spies”, probably from China, have stolen terrabytes of data from the F-35 project. They exploited vulnerabilities in a contractor’s system to siphon out data, which they encrypted before putting it on the wire, so that it may still be unknown exactly what was stolen. However, sources believed that the really important system details had escaped compromise, on the basis of the isolation of the data from the stolen information. The intrusions were first detected in 2007 and continued into 2008.

April 21st, 2009 6:48 am
Modern Times
On the day after the NYT won five Pulitzer Prizes, Reuters reported that the company suffered a first quarter loss “of $74.5 million, or 52 cents a share, compared with a loss of $335,000, or nil cents a share, in the quarter a year ago.” Bill Keller claimed that Pulitzer Prizes showed why the NYT was an indispensable institution, citing its ability to hire lawyers to break a story. But if so, why is it losing its shirt?