Natural No More

I'm back from my Arkansas-imposed blogging hiatus. A couple of short things to tide you over until my next significant-length post:

- Michael over at Oleh Musings has named me a Thinking Blogger. I appreciate the kudos. I'm supposed to name five people I think are deserving of the title, and I can't tag-back. So five blogs that make me think:

The Agitator: If you didn't hate the drug war before reading Cato Institute researcher Radley Balko's blog, you will afterwards.

Eternal Recurrence: Jacob presents posts on miracle fruit and coffee, and occasionally libertarian stuff as well.

What Would People Think?: Ben self-identifies as a "liberal Jesus freak." Rock.

The Blog To End All Blogs: Mike needs to post more often.

Philosofickle: Matt is a baseball nut who has some interesting things to say about pretty much everything. He also has another blog that tackles politics, though he doesn't update it enough.

Honorable mention: Zhubin, Barzelay, Kenny (who mysteriously stopped blogging). I'm noticing that there is a dearth of conservatism on my blog rotation. Anyone who has a good conservative blog to recommend, let me know.

Update: Apparently I'm supposed to link directly to the post that cited me, not just to the blog. So here ya go. Other changes to the post made too, since the next bullet point was a) horrifically poorly written and b) did not make sufficient usage of the word "asshat."

- Apparently, we're keeping European Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan out of the country. I wonder if he's chilling somewhere with Cat Stevens (who apparently has a new album out). The American authorities claim that he's supporting terrorism using some rather spurious claims that amount to "he once said hello to a terrorist." What the hell? If we denied visas to everyone who ever met with a terrorist, Donald Rumsfeld would have been exiled long ago. I think I waved at Timothy McVeigh once - I'm going to Guantanamo now.

Look, Ramadan may be - ahem - misguided when it comes to Palestinian terrorism (note to Tariq: attacks on civilians are NEVER justified, not even "contextually," asshat), but objectionable ideas shouldn't be grounds for denying someone a visa. I know several Americans who maintain ideas even more radical than his. We may not agree with Ramadan, but it's damn near un-American to deny someone a place in our country because we disagree with them.

- Is anyone surprised at the Don Imus thing? I mean truly, honestly surprised?

- Think of a number between 1 and 20. Then click here. This is kind of cool.