Human rights watch
Lost Budgie posts on runaway maids in Saudi Arabia, something Daniel Pipes had brought to the public's attention in the past.

Democracy is spreading
according to a Freedom House report

Reports of increased freedom emerged from Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian territories, and observers attributed the results to the Bush administration's support of fledgling democracies worldwide.

The findings were released yesterday as part of Freedom House's Freedom in the World 2006 report, a global survey of political rights and civil liberties published annually by the organization since 1972.

NSA and the law: what the Times didn't print is the title of Michelle Malkin's round-up, where she comments (emphasis mine),

Now, go back and look carefully through the Times article. The reporters who have been so assiduously working on the story for at least a year couldn't find a single, non-anonymous expert in national security and the law to come up with the kind of informed analysis that took legal and counterterrorism bloggers three days to research and post.

How pathetic is that?

Coping with the transit strike
will be difficult and expensive for all seven million people affected. For comic relief, you might want to read how ‘Life Reeked with Joy’ a thousand years or so ago.