Comments continue to cascade in response to  Catherine Lyons' thoughtful post on the president of France's broadside against burqas. I thought I'd add my 2 cents' worth, even they're pennies I spent in 2004 when I was writing for another newspaper. In a column headlined "Scarves and Smugness," I suggested that Americans ought to refrain from judging the French too harshly for their ban on the wearing of headscarves -- and other religious garments and adornments -- in state schools.

That policy had drawn criticism from the Bush administration, criticism  echoed by President Obama in his June 4 speech in Cairo. Freedom in America, he said, " is indivisible from the freedom to practice one's religion. That is why there is a mosque in every state of our union, and over 1,200 mosques within our borders. That is why the U.S. government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab, and to punish those who would deny it."

In my column (full text here) I wrote:

"Official tolerance for religious diversity in this country is a relatively recent phenomenon. It wasn't until 1987, in response to an adverse Supreme Court decision, that Congress allowed Jewish military officers to wear yarmulkes with their uniforms. Only recently have Christmas pageants in public schools been repackaged as ecumenical 'holiday celebrations' that also make note of Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. . . .

"It is tempting to recommend to the French that they copy the U.S. First Amendment, which the Bush administrations seems to think offers simple answers to the question of religious expression in state schools. But that amendment itself pulls in two directions: prohibiting governmental 'establishment of religion' but guaranteeing the 'free exercise' of religion. Into which category should we place an exception in a school dress code for religious apparel?
 
"The sort of 'multicultural' pluralism the Bush administration recommends to France took time to develop in this country and in England, where until the 19th century Roman Catholics and other 'Nonconformists' were second-class citizens. Earlier than that, in Elizabethan times, Catholics were presumed to be traitors because they answered to a pope who had excommunicated England's Protestant queen. The line between religion and politics in those days was a blurred and bloody one. So it is, some would argue, in contemporary France with its large Muslim minority."

"Some would argue" was a hedge on my part, and I'm still torn about whether France should bolster its wall of separation between church and state. I do think that the burqa controversy raises the question of whether Americans should equate the particulars of our democracy or civil society with universal imperatives like representative government, separation of church and state and fair trials. Take the question of an independent judiciary, which appears on the checklists of most definers of democracy. In this country, an independent judiciary includes the right of the Supreme Court to nullify unconstitutional statutes. Britain historically has not gone that far, not surprisingly given its lack of a written Constitution. But British justice, though sometimes flawed (as is American justice), has a deserved reputation for political independence. And while the British have an encouragingly expansive understanding of freedom of religion, they also have an Established Church.

Banning women from wearing the burqa anywhere strikes me as a violation of the basic principle of religious freedom. Banning headscarves and crucifixes from state schools, not so much.  France is more of a stickler for secularism than the is United States, because of its history and culture and not just out of concern about unassimilated Muslims. I'm not quite willing to say  "Vive la différence," but neither will I excommunicate France from the free world.

In Thursday's editorial pages, the Times focuses on the continuing fallout from this week's controversial election in Iran. 

The editorial board comes down hard on the Islamic republic, dismissing its absurd allegations that the United States is behind the current unrest, and blasting the Iranian government for its efforts to squelch coverage.

While it's true that the U.S. may have urged Twitter to keep its global network functioning, or opened its Voice of America site to video and messages from Iran, those were efforts at the margin. The real Iranian fight is internal. Until now, elections in Iran have given legitimacy to the religious government, but this time the vote is widely believed to have been stolen, and that has divided the country's ruling elite along with its citizens. Today's conflict is between factions in the religious elite.

On the Op-Ed page, Judith Lewis gives a shout-out to a sometimes intriguing, often annoying medium that did allow some information to get out: Twitter.

It's important not to get carried away here. There is no revolution being Twitterized, as some have reported, only a possible desire for one. There is certainly no direct line from Twitter to democracy. But Twitter is, by its very nature and architecture, destined to at least democratize information: Google and Yahoo executives can help Chinese authorities censor and rout out opponents with only minor public relations damage. But if Twitter betrays its base of millions, it ceases to exist.

See Lewis' previous op-eds for the Times here.

Also, writing from Iran, UC San Diego professor Babak Rahimi -- who has also studied the role of new media on Iranian politics -- compares this revolution to the one in 1979, which overthrew democracy and established the Islamic republic. This one, he says, is different:

This time, the protesters seek a more democratic state, transparent in structure and accountable only to its citizens.

But we're not only about Iran; we're also thinking about the Uighurs. The editorial board looks at the resettlement of Guantanamo detainees and argues that the best way to get recalcitrant Europeans to open up their countries to Uighers and others who can't be returned to their homes is for the U.S. to set the example:

Obama seemed to make such a commitment in a speech last month in which he reminded nervous members of Congress that hundreds of convicted terrorists are already held in "supermax" prisons from which no one has escaped. The president mustn't waver from that position.

The board also calls for an increase in Community College fees, and columnist Meghan Daum tries to get Barack Obama to light up.

Photo: AP / Getty Images

Obviously, some California public services will have to be cut, the editorial board observes, but what sense does it make to eliminate CalWorks, a program funded mostly by the federal dollars that enables people to get jobs and pay the rent? The board also notes that this is the big day for switching to digital TV, and it calls on the Federal Communications Commission to define the broadcasters' public-service obligations for digital channels.

CIA Director Leon E. Panetta might be right in saying that he can't possibly make public a single paragraph within 65 documents describing his agency's interrogation techniques, the board says, but that doesn't mean the federal judge in the case should take his word for it. The judge should review the documents personally before making a decision, the board advises.

 On the other side of the fold. a teacher of history and education says the use of the term "Hispanic" to denote an ethnic group is a relatively recent phenomenon in the nation's history, and one that has served to make those of Latin American descent feel more "other" than they used to. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor should be seen as the first person of Puerto Rican descent who might be appointed to the high court, Jonathan Zimmerman argues, rather than as Hispanic. And Bill Maher has had enough with the puppies and the hamburgers; he wishes President Obama were less visible and barking more orders over the phone. The man is in serious danger of cute media overexposure, Maher huffs:

We like you, we really like you! You're skinny and in a hurry and in love with a nice lady. But so's Lindsay Lohan. And like Lohan, we see your name in the paper a lot, but we're kind of wondering when you're actually going to do something.

Illustration: Pedro X. Molina

The Times editorial page today points out that General Motors' bankruptcy filing is a chance to make a formal, forceful break with a history of inferior workmanship and design that has tattered its reputation. The public is willing to forgive a car company for its financial failings, but only if it makes cars people want to buy.

We also weigh in on the murder of Dr. George Tiller, which is being used by pro-choice groups as an opportunity to bash abortion opponents -- suggesting that the responsibility for his death is shared by the entire pro-life movement. Some arguments from anti-abortion groups are thinly veiled incitements to violence, but "it's unfair to ask abortion activists to muffle their message because it might inspire an unbalanced individual to commit an atrocity."

Finally, we note that the election of Mauricio Funes as president of El Salvador, who represents a party that was once a Marxist guerrilla group that fought for 12 years against U.S.-backed governments, isn't quite the grim news for American interests that it may appear. Funes is an admirer of President Barack Obama who has stocked his cabinet with economic pragmatists.

On the Op-Ed page, columnist Jonah Goldberg says the hubbub over Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's statements about her superior wisdom as a Latina gives liberals the chance to have that dialogue on race they're always saying they want to begin -- yet they're running away from the issue as fast as they can.

Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, gives President Obama some tips about what to say and do during his Middle Eastern trip. Such as: Don't fall for the illusion that there's such thing as the "Muslim world," and focus instead on practical country-by-country strategies.

Finally, Gina M. Solomon, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, bemoans the Schwarzenegger administration's proposal to shut down a small state agency -- the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment -- that costs next to nothing to run but that has made dramatic strides in protecting Californians from dangerous chemicals.

I'm a big believer in simulations. For most of my career I have moonlighted (or, as with my current early-morning  gig at George Washington University, mornlighted) as a university journalism instructor. One of my most useful teaching tools, if I do say so myself, is a mock news conference at which a newly appointed "special assistant to the president for youth affairs" (impersonated by a series of glib twentysomethings) answers questions from students about his plans for the job (a "listening tour" of college campuses), his embarrassing past opinions (excavated from a bogus database) and his personal background (including a marijuana rap). I prefer a simulated press conference to a real one with say, a city council member, because it works better pedagogically. Students tend to be tongue-tied in the presence of a real politico, however small-time.

But a journalism class isn't a Supreme Court confirmation, which is why I'm distressed to read that Judge Sonia Sotomayor, like previous nominees, apparently will be put though the mock Senate confirmation hearings by the Obama White House. These rehearsals are known as "murder boards," and Harriet Miers' performance in such simulations reportedly contributed to the demise of her nomination.

It's fine for presidential candidates to engage in role-playing before debates, and allow staffers to shape their answers and critique their deportment. Campaign gurus, like congressional aides, are part of a politician's extended family. The relationship between the White House and a Supreme Court nominee is, or should be, different. Apparently President Obama was scrupulous about not asking Sotomayor about her view of Roe v. Wade, for fear of conditioning her appointment on a promise that she would vote a particular way on a contested issue. Is it any less troublesome from a separation-of-powers perspective for Obama's aides to stage-manage Sotomayor's presentation of what are supposed to be her own views?

Let the woman speak for herself, and leave the role-playing to computer geeks and journalism professors.

Credit: AP Photo / Alex Brandon

The Times' editorial board in the coming days will most likely address President Obama's decision to block the release of new photos showing alleged abuse of prisoners by U.S. personnel in overseas prisons. The administration's policy is a reversal of the Defense Department's previously stated position on the issue.

Here's the administration's position:

"The president was concerned about harm to the troops," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday afternoon. "The president, as you all know, met with his legal team last week because he did not feel comfortable with the release of the photos."

Gibbs added, "the president reflected on this case and believes that they have the potential to pose harm to the troops. ... Nothing is added by the release of the photos."

Click here to read reaction from other blogs, newspapers and the like.

Before we weigh in, we're interested in hearing what you have to say. Tell us what you think by taking our unscientific poll, leaving a comment or both. 

Credit: Win McNamee / Getty Images

In case you're wondering why you haven't seen your comment on this piece yet, it's not because we're censoring them. We typically approve 98% of the stuff that comes in, rejecting only things that are profane, threatening or hate speech. We get a fair amount of comments that include words not publishable in a newspaper, and we reject those out of hand. The other two categories, not so much. We also look askance at comments that insult other commenters without adding any substance to the conversation. Go ahead and insult the writer of the piece, that's fair game.

So what's the hold-up? There are two (robotically evil or simply human) forces at work:

1) Our publishing platform online is hideously slow and finicky. We'll approve comments, then they'll wait sometimes for hours -- literally -- to make it onto the page. I'd love to work with a better platform, but we don't have a lot of spare cash these days.

2) We don't monitor the comment boards around the clock. Sorry, but we just don't have the staff for that. I wish it could be otherwise, 'cause lots of people read and comment early in the morning or late at night, and we don't want to cut them out of the discussion. But for now, it least, it doesn't work that way.

UPDATED, 2:13 p.m. The cookies used by our site seem to freeze the comments counter at whatever level it was when you first hit the page. To see the latest comments, click on the link at the top labeled Discuss Article. There's still a time lag between when comments are approved and when they post, alas.

UPDATED, 5:03 p.m. Actually, to see the latest comments, you may have to clear your browsing history -- the temporary copies of the web pages you visit that your browser automatically saves. Go to the Tools menu in IE or Firefox and work from there. (You have to go the Options/Privacy submenu in Firefox to get to the right place.) Yes, that's a pain in the neck, and no, we're not trying to make it that way.

Today's editorial page leads off with a plea to the Los Angeles City Council to stop dawdling on a water conservation plan that would raise rates for water guzzlers. The need for conservation is dire, with a dwindling Sierra snowpack and supply reductions intended to reverse environmental damage, but a sensible rate plan will be jeopardized if the council doesn't act soon.

The Times also celebrates the remarkable rescue by Navy personnel of container-ship Capt. Richard Phillips after a five-day standoff with pirates off the coast of Somalia, but warns that the aggressive U.S. response could endanger the lives of more ships' crews. And we give thumbs-up to last week's U.S. Supreme Court decision restricting law-enforcement agents from giving the "third degree" to criminal suspects -- the court has clearly signaled that confessions will only be considered voluntary if they are made within six hours of arrest.

Today's Op-Edsters include columnist Jonah Goldberg, whose take on the pirate hostage drama is that it should mark the beginning of a tougher stance against pirates, one that has been delayed for too long by a "pro-pirate" culture, misplaced sympathy for criminals and, above all, lawyers.

Also opining today is Juan Carlos Zarate, former deputy national security advisor for combating terrorism, who says the best way to coerce North Korea's rogue regime to stop pursuing nuclear arms is to apply smart financial pressure. Even without support from the United Nations, the tools are in place for the U.S. to cut banks that do business with the regime off from the U.S. financial system, a strategy that the Obama administration should pursue.

Finally, writer and parent Lorenza Munoz recounts the tale of a PTA effort to put on a show by controversial comedian Carlos Mencia as a benefit for a low-income school, and the firestorm that erupted.

* Editorial cartoon by Joel Pett / USA Today

When I was young and not yet 20, I used to mock my elders for their antique vocabularies. My mother called the refrigerator the "ice box." The aged nun who taught me seventh-grade math referred to automobiles as "machines."  One of my grandmothers used the words "authoress," "poetess" and (more offensively) "Jewess" and "Negress."  The other admitted that she was born in the year Nineteen-aught-eight.  Older relatives who grew up in a German neighborhood in Pittsburgh called taverns "beer gardens."

Now middle-aged, I find myself bemused by what I consider ugly neologisms. I'm not talking about computer abbreviations (lol) or teenage lingo. "Proper" English has taken on weird new forms.   In my youth, the word "behavior" was singular, "partner" was not a verb and you "referred to" something. Today, the behaviors of well-educated people include partnering with stakeholders (not the villagers who chased Dracula) and "referencing" an event or article.

I'm especially agitated by the use of "reference" as a verb. I suspect it originated in business English, whereas other atrocities ("behaviors," "role models') have the odor of the sociology classroom. Whatever its origin, the verb  "reference"  has established itself even in The New York Times, or at least on its baseball blog.   The other Times' Josh Robinson noted that the first pitch at the Mets home opener was thrown by Tom Seaver. Robinson continued: "Asked if he was surprised that the Mets had invited him back, Seaver referenced his own special status in Mets history. He is, after all, their only Hall of Famer."

Language changes and crankiness are occupational hazards of growing old (or becoming, ugh, a "senior"). But linguistic behaviors like "referenced" and "behaviors" ought to be put on ice.

On Wednesday, the same day that Attorney General Eric Holder asserted that "we are a nation of cowards" when it comes discussing race, The New York Post published its now-notorious chimp/stimulus cartoon. Like many editorial cartoonists, Sean Delonas lamely juxtaposed a political story (the stimulus program approved by Congress and signed by President Obama) and a non-political  sensation (the mauling of a Connecticut woman by a chimpanzee, who was later shot to death by police). The cartoon showed two police officers, one with a smoking gun, looking at a chimp lying in a pool of blood. One cop says to another: "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill."

The connection between the stimulus bill and the chimp attack was tenuous and tasteless, but was it racist? In my previous existence as an editorial page editor, I spiked a few cartoons because of likely offense to a segment of our readership. I'm not sure I would have killed this one, at least on those grounds. To me it was obvious that the monkey was supposed to represent the Washington establishment that produced the unwieldy legislation passed by Congress and signed by President Obama. If a weasel had been shot for attacking a woman, the cartoonist might have transformed him into a symbol of fiscal trickiness (instead of ape-like stupidity).

When I read that the cartoon was being denounced for representing Obama as a chimpanzee, my initial reaction was that the objection was preposterous. I was confirmed in that reaction when I heard that the Rev. Al Sharpton was calling for a boycott of the Post.

I raised the subject with other members of The Times editorial board and encountered a mixture of angeement and disagreement along with some insights that hadn't occurred to me. One colleague wrote: "Welcome to the brave new world . . .  Criticisms of the president are going to be interpreted as racist attacks (or, in the case of this cartoon, criticisms of policies the president backs are going to be interpreted as racist attacks, if the cartoonist is boneheaded enough to involve a monkey). I’m not sure what the solution to this is, except that critics are going to have to be more careful with their words and images. Ultimately, it may not be a bad thing, because it will lead to an ongoing dialogue about race and symbology. But it’s going to be ugly. . ."

Another colleague, an African-American, pointed me to some truly offensive images of Obama as a monkey, including an ad for a T-shirt showing Obama thinking about a banana. Her argument -- and not just hers -- was that the cartoon had to be viewed in the context of an ugly tradition of likening blacks to apes. She had a point. My problem wasn't with the idea that a cartoonist shouldn't depict the first black president as a chimpanzee -- though that fate befell George W. Bush -- but that it was a ridiculous reach to regard the chimp in the cartoon as an Obama surrogate, let alone an allusion to a racist stereotype. 

Which brings me back to Holder's speech. He's correct that lots of Americans (though not, fortunately, our editorial board) are shy about engaging in interracial discussions about racial attitudes. The hesitation obviously exists among both whites and blacks, but I'll mention an example of what Holder would call white cowardice.

Many white Americans believe that some denuciations of "racism" by figures like Al Sharpton are exaggerated and self-serving, but they won't say so. Sometimes such shyness stems from a laudable recognition that African-Americans have been subjected to so many real outrages that a false alarm here and there should be overlooked. But I fear that some of the silence reflects a belief that the sort of dialogue Holder was urging is impossible and that it's futile to try to convince African-Americans that one of their "leaders" is wrong.  That strikes me as more racist than a silly cartoon.