So we should walk softly and not assume too much.

How the press can prevent another Iraq from Nieman Watchdog.
Provocation Alone Does Not Justify War. War is so serious that even proving the existence of a casus belli isn’t enough. Make officials prove to the public that going to war will make things better.
Encourage Public Debate. The nation is not well served when issues of war and peace are not fully debated in public. It’s reasonable for the press to demand that Congress engage in a full, substantial debate. Cover the debate exhaustively and substantively.

God changes with the weather by Garrison Keillor
There is a countervailing faith that says that God is in and of the world and has bestowed vast gifts to be shared with others, and that our understanding of God is faint and incomplete and so we should walk softly and not assume too much.

Moments of Regret from On The Media
It’s from The Los Angeles Times, and here’s the correction: “An item in the National Briefing in Sunday’s Section A said a bear wandered into a grocery store in Hayward, Wisconsin on Friday and headed for the beer cooler. It was Thursday.”

Romeo and Juliet: Just as you misremembered it on NPR
"It is the East, and Juliet is the West."

The Wrong Debate on Torture from On The Media
I have to, therefore, ask you, isn't any reporting on the intelligence pros and cons of torture changing the subject in exactly the way that Dick Cheney wants it changed, from the morality and legality of torture to the efficacy of torture? Aren't you kind of being suckered by your very reporting validating the premise that effectiveness constitutes justification?

The degrading effects of terrorism fears by Glenn Greenwald
What makes all of this most ironic is that the American Founding was predicated on exactly the opposite mindset. The Constitution is grounded in the premise that there are other values and priorities more important than mere Safety. Even though they knew that doing so would help murderers and other dangerous and vile criminals evade capture, the Framers banned the Government from searching homes without probable cause, prohibited compelled self-incrimination, double jeopardy and convictions based on hearsay, and outlawed cruel and unusual punishment. That's because certain values -- privacy, due process, limiting the potential for abuse of government power -- were more important than mere survival and safety. A central calculation of the Constitution was that we insist upon privacy, liberty and restraints on government power even when doing so means we live with less safety and a heightened risk of danger and death. And, of course, the Revolutionary War against the then-greatest empire on earth was waged by people who risked their lives and their fortunes in pursuit of liberty, precisely because there are other values that outweigh mere survival and safety. These are the calculations that are now virtually impossible to find in our political discourse. It is fear, and only fear, that predominates. No other competing values are recognized. […] This isn't exactly new: many of America's most serious historical transgressions -- the internment of Japanese-Americans, McCarthyite witch hunts, World War I censorship laws, the Alien and Sedition Act -- have been the result of fear-driven, over-reaction to external threats, not under-reaction. Fear is a degrading toxin, and there's no doubt that it has been the primary fuel over the last decade.