Today's Cultural Warfare Update

LA Times report: Latest draft of Iraqi constitution puts women's rights under Islamic law; I cannot overstate how angry this makes me, and I restate that if - IF - this is what we get out of this war, President Bush should be impeached;

Very good blogger commentary on the LA Times report;

Man kills three year old toddler son over fears the child might be gay;

National Director of Priests for Life essay on why the party of the candidate matters more than the individual candidate - basically a continuation of the ongoing "all religious people must vote Republican" campaign, without quite mentioning parties;

The Weekly Standard isn't particularly fond of Supreme Court nominee Roberts;

Focus on the Family issues action item - write letters to the editor supporting John Roberts for Supreme Court, and yes, it includes another letter-writing "wizard" (ACTION ITEM);

Focus on the Family issues action item - write your Senators in support of John Roberts for Supreme Court. Also includes their endorsement and that of the Family Research Council (ACTION ITEM);

Focus on the Family calls Rove allegations a "pseudo-scandal";

Today's Family News in Focus;

Concerned Women for America endorse John Roberts for US Supreme Court;

CWA links to Baltimore Sun column laments the loss of a conservative woman's perspective;

Concerned Women for America action item supporting John Roberts (ACTION ITEM);

Family Research Council action item: thank President Bush for nomination of John Roberts (ACTION ITEM);

Traditional Values Coalition action item: thank President Bush for nomination of John Roberts (ACTION ITEM);

Traditional Values Coalition endorsement of John Roberts for Supreme Court;

Michelle Malkin endorses FBI monitoring of liberal groups - she's previously endorsed the WWII-era internment camps, so my surprise is, well, limited;

WorldNetDaily columnist: Roberts is no Scalia, and they're very disappointed in the mass sell-out over his nomination by "constitutional originalists and textualists";

Heritage Foundation endorses John Roberts.

( Transcriptions and excerpts )

Iraq, the Islamist model?

The latest draft of the Iraqi constitution, which subordinates the rights of women to Islamic law, is not making big news. This is disgraceful. Make no mistake: imposing Islamic law on women in Iraq would be a monumental failure. It would be a nightmare scenario. President Bush must be made aware that he will be held accountable if this disaster makes it through to final approval.

Improving the rights of 40% (men in Iraq) of the population does not make up for making the plight of 60% (women in Iraq) worse. This is putting women into religious bondage, in no uncertain terms, and this is not better. It is a huge step back, even for Iraq.

And yet, I've found a few people already trying to say it's okay. That it's an improvement, or at least, a step back worth taking. Their vile calculus declares women to be less than 2/3rds of the value of a man. It declares that the only people who count, the only people who are people, are male.

In race, we call this kind of thing an apartheid state. In Iraq, we cannot let it be called the future. But if the worst happens, and this is what we get, then we must hold those who put these events in motion responsible. Such a catastrophe, such a betrayal, cannot go unpunished. Impeachment would be the only acceptable answer.

In the meantime, if anyone has any firm data on what, if anything, can be done to help Iraqi women and secular groups fight this, please post it as a reply.

Here are a few more stories on the new Constitutional draft:

Iraq The Model is a blog out of Baghdad. He talks about this and is opposed to it, and mentions street protests that I haven't heard much about otherwise. The local fundamentalists have sent out their token delegation of self-hatred too, apparently, getting a few women in full-body all-black burkas out nearby to counter-protest.

JURIST Newsburst is put out by the University of Pittsburgh's School of Law; they're taking it very seriously, describing it as "harsh on women's rights." Harsh is a reasonable word; brutal might be another.

ChristianIraq.com isn't a blog I know anything about, but talks about one of the protests. They say they're native Iraqi ChaldoAssyrian Christians.

The Washington Times mentions the situation, but doesn't give it a lot of space. Bastards. There is much more coverage of this overseas than here, as any Google News search will reveal quickly.

Here's the New York Times story, for whatever that's worth. The LA Times story is similar.

al Mendhar, an Iraqi press which includes English translations of their stories, describes calls for representation in "constitutional symposiums and conferences" to be "additional rights" beyond equality, but has interesting details if you can get through the translation issues.

Let's play connect the dots.

Three news stories today:

China's new destroyers feature Aegis tech copied from U.S. - This is China saying, "Hi, we're the dominant regional military power in South Asia," even if they had to steal a lot of our technology to do it.

It is in no way coincidental that they are building a deep-water-capable navy, particularly given that shipping goods towards China through India is nontrivally difficult. Double-particularly given how, well, unstable places like Pakistan are, even if you have a pretty good friend on the other side of that country.

China takes first step to revalue yuan - This is China saying, "We feel we're now economically strong enough to let our currency climb a bit."

Probably also not coincidentally, since oil pricing is set in dollars, it reduces the price they pay for oil.

Congress to add 2 months to Daylight Savings Time - This extremely unpopular move apparently saves approximately 100,000 barrels of oil a day for those two months. It's also one of the things they could do to reduce oil consumption that is least likely to provoke resistance from large corporate interests who are not interested in changing anything about their business models. It's not much, but it's a start.