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Not terribly surprisingly, some Democrats are more than willing to jump on the terror bandwagon. Want to push your domestic agenda? Bring up the war on terror! Bah. The proposals, not unlike much of what Bush has been pushing, assume that terrorists are inept idiots. In this case, you’d have to assume terrorists are incapable of stockpiling weapons. Seems an unlikely assumption to me.

Via Light of Reason, and while you’re there read Silber’s quietly painful memories of growing up gay in the 60s.

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While I think this change will be good for baseball, I have to wonder if the people criticizing the mid-season decision to stretch the NBA first round to 7 games will criticize baseball for doing the same thing. (Winner of the All-Star Game now gets home field advantage in the World Series.)

Parenthetically, I approve of it because strength of schedule is not something controlled by the World Series teams. For example, right now, three of the teams with the four best records are in the AL. Should the National League World Series team suffer because there’s more parity? I don’t think so. The Giants (say) can’t control who wins the All-Star Game, but they can’t control everyone in the AL falling over for the Yankees either.

This would be an even better change for the NBA, given the number of stars who have implied that they’d just as soon miss the All-Star game and given the number of teams that make the playoffs. That latter fact means teams like the Lakers can laze through the first chunk of the season and still feel good about their chances. Make the change, and suddenly Shaq has a really good reason to show up to the All-Star game. Well, or he would if the East could field a credible contender.

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So, what’s up in the world this fine morning? Stratfor kindly converted my US/Iraq war subscription into a general subscription, so I have a wealth of material to speak of.

India and Russia are conducting joint naval exercises, which are pretty much symbolic — they want to remind the world that they’re allies. It’s a good thing to remember, considering that India fully intends to become a world power over the next twenty years. Bruce Sterling wrote a great article about the India/China space race, which echoed this Guardian article from January. It might be somewhat disturbing to consider the fact that China, India, and Russia are all cheesed off about Gulf War II. Or not, if you think we’ve reached the end of history and no other nation will ever rise in prominence.

On a more cheerful note, India and Pakistan have resumed diplomatic relations. Breathe a sigh of relief.

Meanwhile, in Turkey, the military just observed that the secular nature of Turkey’s government should be “carefully protected.” Erdogan is not someone the Turkish military wants to see in power, and his party is the direct descendant of the government which fell in 1997. By “fell,” I mean “was pressured to step down by the military.” We could see another coup in the relatively near future; certainly tensions are high.

Also of note: Kurds in Turkey are protesting violently in the aftermath of the recent quake. More Kurdish/Turkish friction can’t be good.