1 I like how Chris Edwards didn't pull any punches with Bush: e.g,

I can't think of a single crisis that occurred on President Bush's watch that the Bush-Rove team didn't have an interventionist and big-spending response to.

I'm surprised that spending didn't skyrocket after 9/11 and the early years of the Afghan and Iraq Wars. The steepest climb is in 2008 - bigger than under Obama in 2009.

As for the other article, it's one thing to read about the phenomenon it deals with, but it's another to see it. Is there any country in the Muslim world where women have become freer in recent years? Here's a quick example of the opposite trend from Afghanistan:

Afghanistan has quietly passed a law permitting Shia men to deny their wives food and sustenance

There's more, but I'll stop there.

The article says the law contradicts the Afghan constitution .... or does it? It's a religious law "backed by the hardline Shia cleric Ayatollah Mohseni" and the constitution says,

No law shall contravene the tenets and provisions of the holy religion of Islam in Afghanistan.