I just heard Jon Ronson on This American Life, in a piece about Lord Clarendon, his resting place at Westiminster Abbey, and the legal concept of Habeas Corpus, which is relevant to the issue of Guantanamo prisoners held indefinitely, without access to lawyers, information, or with any hope of a fair trial or release. It was amazing, because the conversation he had with a guide at the Abbey about Clarendon and the Puritans, who were the theocratic-dominionist Religious Right of their day put a lot of historical perspective on current events. And I could swear that David, his guide, could possibly have been David, the verger who led the tour we took of the Abbey on our own visit there.
Jon’s site: about jon ronson | jonronson.com
Jon’s book: Them: Adventures With Extremists looks like a good and even funny read.
The rest of this TAL entry sounds like an important one that I’ll want to come back to and link – like the one about Katrina, it’ll be revisited.