Allawi shot prisoners in cold blood: witnesses: “Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings.

They say the prisoners – handcuffed and blindfolded – were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security centre, in the city’s south-western suburbs.

They say Dr Allawi told onlookers the victims had each killed as many as 50 Iraqis and they ‘deserved worse than death’.” (Sydney Morning Herald)

Book Review: “Joan Roughgarden does not like sexual selection, and her book Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People, is a polemic against the idea. Normally, one would not start discussing a person’s thesis by talking about the person herself, but in this case it is both legitimate and necessary. As Jonathan Roughgarden, the author had a very distinguished career as an evolutionary ecologist. Then, a few years ago, he made the crossing over the sexual divide. Although Joan Roughgarden denies that this book is a cryptic autobiography — indeed, one learns that she refused one publisher precisely because this is what they wanted — it is infused with that history, and moreover has been promoted with much fanfare precisely because the author is writing from a personal standpoint.” (The Globe and Mail)

“10. He’s making me root for John Kerry. I haven’t voted for a major party’s presidential candidate since 1988, and I have no plans to revert to the habit this year. The Democrats have nominated a senator who—just sticking to the points listed above—voted for the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, McCain-Feingold, and the TSA; who endorses the assault on “indecency”; who thinks the government should be spending even more than it is now. I didn’t have room in my top ten for the terrible No Child Left Behind Act, which further centralized control of the country’s public schools—but for the record, Kerry voted for that one too. It’s far from clear that he’d be any less protectionist than Bush is, and he’s also got problems that Bush doesn’t have, like his support for stricter gun controls. True, Kerry doesn’t owe anything to the religious right, and you can’t blame him for the torture at Abu Ghraib. Other than that, he’s not much of an improvement.

Yet I find myself hoping the guy wins. Not because I’m sure he’ll be better than the current executive, but because the incumbent so richly deserves to be punished at the polls. Making me root for a sanctimonious statist blowhard like Kerry isn’t the worst thing Bush has done to the country. But it’s the offense that I take most personally.” — Jesse Walker, Managing Editor (Reason)