The Qur'an, Toilets, and Newsweek

Wow. A big story happened while I was in Las Vegas. Political riots (perhaps) stemming from a now-retracted Newsweek article about detainee abuse at Guantanamo killed 16 people in Afghanistan. The fury over this has been wild, with the White House on the offensive and the bloggers frothing at the mouth. Slate has articles tracing the Newseek frenzy as it traveled through both the mainstream media and the blogs. Today, David Brooks calls for a little sanity in the NY Times, where yesterday Thomas Friedman posed an interesting question: why do Sunni Muslims erupt in fury when the Qur'an is destroyed, but quietly accept the obliteration of living Shiite Muslims bodies? For more colorful commentary, see why Ann Coulter has become the most beloved and and reviled woman in America.