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The Guardian reports that Egyptian terrorist leader Sayid Imam al-Sharif, the author of Foundations of Preparation for Holy War and a former cohort of al-Qaida’s Ayman al-Zawahiri, has recanted his stance on the Muslim theological basis for violent jihad and plans to release a book he’s written from prison on his new non-violent views. Diaa Rashwan of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies said, “I have no doubt that [his conversion] is genuine. It will be a real shock and cause a lot of confusion. Jihadis will see hundreds of their former brothers criticizing their most fundamental ideas. That’s why Zawahiri is so bothered by it.”

The Weekly Standard isn’t so sure about the College Republicans, not after a visit to their convention.

College conservative activism is most authentic here, where passion supplants reason as argument’s locomotive. On page 124 of The American Cause, which I picked up from the [conference] table of the Leadership Institute, Russell Kirk writes of two types of revolutionary:

1) The naïve or sentimental revolutionary, who believes that something is hopelessly wrong with life as we know it and that their revolutionary agenda can actually provide the remedy for the ills to which humanity is heir . . .

2) The realistic, practical revolutionary, who may employ humanitarian phrases to win converts, but whose real aim is pure power.

Which kind of revolutionaries are College Republicans? Find out here.

In Character magazine has a whole issue on the virtue of honesty. Here’s one piece about why U.S. presidents sometimes “must” lie. Here’s another about the lie of Santa Claus, wondering if it’s good for our children, and then one that argues blacks are not honest about their race. A interesting Table of Contents, to be sure.

Vlad Putin does odd things. His country does odd things. Things that don’t make sense. Things that make Russia look less attractive, less democratic, and less like a place to find nice men like Yakov Smirnoff. What’s the deal with Russia these days? Gary Kasparov says if you want to understand Putin, he has one book suggestion.

No Karl Marx or Adam Smith. Nothing by Montesquieu or Machiavelli, although the author you are looking for is of Italian descent [...] If you are in a real hurry to become an expert on the Russian government, you may prefer the DVD section, where you can find Mr. Puzo’s works on film. “The Godfather” trilogy is a good place to start, but do not leave out “The Last Don,” “Omerta” and “The Sicilian.”

The web of betrayals, the secrecy, the blurred lines between what is business, what is government, and what is criminal–it’s all there in Mr. Puzo’s books. A historian looks at the Kremlin today and sees elements of Mussolini’s “corporate state,” Latin American juntas and Mexico’s pseudo-democratic PRI machine. A Puzo fan sees the Putin government more accurately: the strict hierarchy, the extortion, the intimidation, the code of secrecy and, above all, the mandate to keep the revenue flowing. In other words, a mafia.

I don’t guess Kasparov likes Putin too much.

First comes love, then comes…love. A Boston Globe piece explores what it calls “the new face of unmarried motherhood” — the mom who looks just like June Cleaver, but without the ring.

There are lots of them, according to the Globe, which based its story on two new studies that say more than half of out-of-wedlock babies born in the United States are now born to women who live with the fathers of their children. The piece notes that married couples tend to be more educated and economically stable, and also includes some interesting insights into the attitudes of some modern women:

Denise Baumann, 40, of Roslindale, never wanted marriage. “It’s a really dysfunctional institution for women in particular,” she says. “It’s not about people having healthy relationships that they define for themselves.” So even when she and Patrick McAllister, 37, started a family after living together a dozen years, they didn’t wed. They have two daughters, ages 3 and 1. “It took me a while to get over the fact that we weren’t going to get married,” McAllister says.

Ironically, with McAllister, a teacher, about to start a new job that doesn’t offer benefits for domestic partners, they finally tied the knot, without exchanging rings, at City Hall over the weekend. “For me, it was about resisting business as usual,” Baumann says. “I think we did that.”

Paula De Gregoria, 33, of Salem, didn’t plan on being pregnant when she moved in with her boyfriend two years ago. “This is not how I pictured my life growing up,” she says. “I didn’t want to be an unwed mother.” It was also no reason to say “I do.”

“I don’t want to get married to somebody just because I have a baby with him,” she says. “I wasn’t at the point where I thought he was the one.” And now? “We don’t talk about marriage,” she says, but “we’re more committed to each other because of the baby.”

Mind-boggling. Here’s the rest of the story.

HT: WMB blogger Harris

Sven Birkerts is worried. As digital media continues sucking the life from print, he wonders whether literary blogs will kill off the traditional book reviewer (of which he is one.) In the Boston Globe, Birkerts writes:

The controversy has to do with the fact that people in various quarters, literary bloggers prominently among them, are proposing that old-style print reviewing — the word-count-driven evaluation of select titles by credentialed reviewers — is outmoded, and that the deficit will be more than made up by the now-flourishing blog commentary. The blogosphere’s boosters pitch its virtues of variety, grass-roots initiative, linkage, and freedom from perceived marketing influence (books by major trade publishers, which advertise more, sometimes appear to get premium treatment in the print book review sections).

I’m hard put to repudiate these virtues of the blogosphere. But can it really compensate for losses in the more clearly bounded print sector? The bigger question, if we accept that these are the early symptoms of a far-reaching transformation, is what does this transformation mean for books, for reviewing, for the literary life?

What say you? Does the web’s Wild West egalitarianism make up for what would be lost with the demise of the (arguably) deeper ink-and-paper insights of experienced print reviewers?

HT: WMB blogger Phil W.

Years ago, I wrote an article about an Oklahoma City abortionist suspected of murdering his wife. The story posed a question: Does killing the unborn numb a person’s conscience, possibly leading that person to kill the born? In the case of the abortionist — who murdered his wife, went back to the hospital to perform surgery, then returned to his ritzy home and claimed to find his wife in a bloody heap with her head bashed in — it may have: A jury found him guilty of murder in the first degree.

Now comes this case, in which a formerly pregnant woman who had a dead, blanket-wrapped infant at her home also had secreted away the bodies of four pre-born babies. The question remains the same: Does killing the unborn lead to killing the born?

The GOP hits just keep on coming. About 15 federal agents yesterday photographed and videotaped various angles of the home of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) in connection with a public corruption probe. They later carried out a garbage bag full of unidentifiable materials and loaded it into an unmarked white van. The Associated Press reports:

Stevens, 83, is under a federal investigation for his relationship with Bill Allen, an oil field services contractor who was convicted this year of bribing state lawmakers.

A 2000 renovation project more than doubling the size of Stevens’ home in the ski resort community of Girdwood was overseen by Allen, who is founder of VECO Corp. The Alaska-based oil field services and engineering company has reaped tens of millions of dollars in federal contracts…A law enforcement official familiar with the case confirmed the raid on Stevens’ home was focused on records related to the ongoing VECO investigation.

Stevens, in office since 1968, is the longest-serving Republican in Senate history. He would not comment on the raid, saying justice would be best served if he commented after the investigation.

Good morning!

Today’s quote: “Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.”