On the new Attorney General:
That there's a war on doesn't mean the game suddenly has no rules and the president can just do whatever. A man with no respect for the law has no business as Attorney-General.
On Yasser Arafat:
He didn't single-handedly transform the cause of Palestinian nationalism from a minor element of a regional struggle between Israel and its neighbors into a movement of massive global significance, but he came a lot closer to doing it single-handedly than one would think possible. At the same time, it's become clear to me and many other observers over the past several years that after Oslo, Arafat ill-served the movement he had done so much to create. He brought his people neither good government, liberation from occupation, nor peace. Instead, he himself and his taste for power and corruption became a major obstacle to Palestinian aspirations.
I have never, for the life of me, been able to figure out where I stand on the whole Israel vs. Palestine thing. This whole issue, with all of its corollary points of contention and violence, seems to me to be as canonical example of the old adage "A pox on both their houses" as I can think of.
As for Arafat, I think he was a bad man who came pretty close to getting something very good done...and then screwed it up completely, which is probably even worse than just being a consistently very bad man.
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