Wednesday digest

- That beacon of tolerance and pluralism, the publicly funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, is set to air a pilot which satirizes some of the foundations of the Catholic faith. I don't expect that they'd dare send up similar practices within other certain religions, but perhaps they're gambling that the Knights of Columbus probably won't bother to launch lethal riots in the streets over this.

- Speaking of the public airwaves, the Fairness Doctrine is about to be resurrected because lefties are angry that no one listened to Air America. What does this mean? Well, if you ask Al Franken, the government would be able to fine people for "lying" on the air - meaning, in other words, that since he doesn't like the score, he's going to try to change the rules to criminalize certain types of political expression beyond a given state-sanctioned level. This is an Stalin-esque assault on the principles of consumer choice and freedom of speech (not to mention thought) within the court of public opinion.

- A Guantanamo Bay detainee has revealed the torture methods used on him by his American captors. They include being forced to use unscented deodorant and given half-inflated basketballs to play with, not to mention the abscence of weightlifting machines and DVD players.

Amnesty International could not be reached for comment.

- Another reason to cheer Sarko's win in France: it pissed al-Qaeda off. Perhaps after the recent telegraphing by US Senate leader Harry Reid, they expected France to ask for forgiveness and/or wimp out, just as their leader has always predicted.

- Michael Medved convincingly demonstrates that there's no such thing as obscene profit.

- Here's a thoughtful article from Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe on why hate crimes legislation wades into contentious territory by making the motivation for certain violent criminal acts more important than the harmful effect of the act itself.

- I watched the Republican debate last night and here are my impressions. Outside of the gun control issue, Rudy is looking like the candidate of the libertarian wing of the party. I was very impressed by Romney as well as Huckabee (even though Huckabee has no chance). McCain is a dead man walking and the only hope in hell he has of ever being President is via a third-party candidacy with someone like Bloomberg, Hegel or Lieberman. The rest of them are also-rans, but I'm waiting to see what happens over the summer with Gingrich and Thompson (Fred, not Tommy) as none of the candidates have yet claimed the "man to beat" mantle which is largely going to depend on who GOP members see as Reagan's heir.