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On Blogging

A blog is not so much daily writing as hourly writing. And with that level of timeliness, the provisionality of every word is even more pressing—and the risk of error or the thrill of prescience that much greater….Blogging is therefore to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud.

 

The Limits of Blogging

I’m pretty protective about the people in my life. I never write about Aaron without asking his permission, and normally it’s a very, very discreet mention…. I can’t write about my private life without mentioning my husband.

 

Gay Marriage

The core difference between those who favor marriage equality and those who oppose it….we see this as both-and; they see it as either-or. I love and revere heterosexual marriage and want it defended and celebrated alongside my own; they regard my civil marriage as an abomination to be banned and kept inferior to their own. I think that core difference is why we’re winning—because, in the end, Americans like to see freedom expanded, not curtailed, and they are adult enough and secure enough to live with those they disagree with.

 

Abu Ghraib

The person who authorized all the abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib, the man who gave the green light to the abuses in that prison, is the president of the United States, George W. Bush. Those ghastly pictures of naked, hooded prisoners? Bush approved nudity and hooding of prisoners. Hypothermia? Sleep deprivation? Bush signed a memo removing the most baseline protections for all human beings under the Geneva Conventions. Waterboarding? Bush knew full well.….Bush’s crimes are far greater than Nixon’s—because war crimes are far graver than burglaries. And there is no statute of limitations for war crimes.

 

Sarah Palin

I asked an intern to go back and double fact-check the 12 documented lies that Sarah Palin has told on the public record. These are not hyperbolic claims or rhetorical excess. They are assertions of fact that are demonstrably untrue and remain uncorrected. Every single one of the lies I documented holds up after several news cycles have had a chance to vet them even further….So for the record, let it be known that the candidate for vice-president for the GOP is a compulsive, repetitive, demonstrable liar.

 

Libya

This is the worst decision yet made by Barack Obama as president. I watched the president stand idly by as countless young Iranians were slaughtered, imprisoned, tortured, and bludgeoned by government thugs by day and night. I believed that this was born of a strategy that understood that, however horrifying it was to watch the Iranian bloodbath, it was too imprudent to launch military action to protect a defenseless people against snipers, murderers, and torturers. Now I am told that “we cannot stand idly by” as tyrants tell their people they will be given no mercy….This administration is willing to throw out its entire strategy and principles in this period of Middle Eastern revolt—in defense of rebels about whom we know almost nothing, whose strategy is violence, not nonviolence, and whose ability to resist Qaddafi even with Western help is unknowable.

Read more articles by: Andrew Sullivan

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