Welcome to Casting the net, Liberal Conspiracy’s daily web review. As always, please feel free to share your own recommendations in the comments section.

Highlights
Blogging4Merton – Heathrow Airport plane crash & expansion of airport
Unlike many international hubs, Heathrow’s “flightpath is directly over the city”, and yesterday’s accident highlights the dangers of expansion.

The Daily (Maybe) – Just Wars
Sandals and placards at the ready: Jim Jay’s coming over the top.

anticant’s arena – Does reason matter?
Religion’s war on science. And more.

Mowaffak al-Rubaie/WashPo – Federalism, Not Partition
Federalism is the only solution to the stalemate in Iraq – so says the country’s national security adviser.

Charles Laurence/The First Post – Obama is just another machine politician
Don’t believe the hype, he’s just another vacuous changeling. Oh, right… bugger.

Hugh Barnes/openDemocracy – Putin on freedom versus welfare
Democracy in Russia is in bad-shape. And it’s getting worse as Putin puts welfare ahead of political freedom (I can’t help but think most Russians agree with Putin, though).

Daniel Finkelstein/Times – Why I think McCain will win
Yeah, I know all the usual rightwing self-promoting blowhards will be linking to this, but it’s worthy all the same.

westmonster – From the postbag: the BNP
The hard-working hacks at westmonster have received an email plugging the BNP’s mayoral candidate: Richard Barnbrook. Something wrong with the SPAM filter?

Elsewhere
Norfolk Blogger – Is there an organisation that has achieved less and is more useless than the African Union?
Pickled Politics – Who Can Implement Change? Obama v Hillary
Dave Cole – Pascal’s wager and climate change
Jamie C’s Political Hotspot – The Cold War of the Mind
THE DIVINE DEMOCRAT – REALITY CHECK
Bloggerheads – My submission to the Home Office for the public consultation on SOCPA
Davos Newbies – The fierce urgency of now
New Humanist (Mag.) – Backward Christian soldiers

Special thanks to Robert Rouse for forwarding me the link to his excellent Blog World Report: an excellent international progressive blog aggregator.

If you would like your blog or site to be considered as source material for future reviews, drop me an email at aaronh [at] liberalconspiracy [dot] org with the relevant url. I can then enter it into my RSS reader and monitor it for suitable content to be included. Likewise, if you have a specific article/post you feel deserves a little more traffic, get in touch.