A Friday Round-Up

I wasn't the best of bloggers this week, so I give you a round-up of material I meant to post on but never got around to.

In the context of the White House "losing" those emails, Glenn Greenwald reminds us that we've heard this excuse before. This administration has a history of "losing" key documents when the heat is on.

Powerline explains the mysterious lack of Voting Rights cases brought by the Bush Administration against efforts to disenfranchise Black voters: There are none left! Racism is over! Whites and Blacks live in perfect harmony, and the fairies run free amid sharing glen!

Come on, is that the best you got?

Condi Rice deflects the pressure to run for President by saying she wants to go back to Stanford (where she is a tenured professor). I can't help but wonder what her reception among the students there will be (I'm thinking Kissenger at Georgetown).

For my part, I've always found Rice to be competent if nothing else, which is far more than I can say for her colleagues. I think her cousin, Constance Rice, hit the right mark: "I admire Condoleezza. I just think she's hanging around the wrong crew right now."

Concurring Opinion's Nate Oman offers up the secular case for Establishment. Oman notes that the history of establishment has supported the view that it has the effect of moderating the church and ushering in a more secular society. This post, of course, mirrors the religious case for separationism, which holds that establishing a church tends to degrade and weaken religion. Interesting bonus fact: The last established church in America? The Unitarians in Massachusetts.

Also at the Co-Op, a post on the process by which Iraqis make claims against the US for civilian deaths. They can be tough to read--this one features a female US soldier crying next to the body of the Iraqi soldier in colleague had just killed (the US offered $4,000 in compensation to the family).

BlackProf has, unsurprisingly, a bevy of great posts centering around the Imus scandal. I can't excerpt them all, so here's a list:

Adrien Wing: Women's Sports Foundation Responds to Imus

Paul Butler: Hip-Hop and the "H" Word

Darren Lenard Hutchinson (out of retirement!): Beating Up Imus and Other Idiots: How "We" Construct Racism

Angela Onwuachi: On Becoming Don Imus: What Happens When Insults Go Unanswered?

Melissa Harris-Lacewell: On Forgiveness for Imus and Misunderstanding the Movement

Melissa Harris-Lacewell: A Little On The History of the "Nappy Headed Ho"

Matt Yglesias unpacks the stats on the surge in interracial marriages since Loving v. Virginia. Certainly a better surge than the one in Iraq!

Finally, the Blogging the Bible project is at the Book of Job. Definitely interesting.