In a classic post, Matt Welch outlines the rules for what is sure to be the next gaming sensation. My favorites:

In addition to the obligatory Hofstadter reference, tip your glass whenever you read that...

2) Not only are things just like Hofstadter wrote back when interracial marriage was widely outlawed, they're actually worse. (Krugman variation: "But while the paranoid style isn't new, its role within the G.O.P. is.")

...

5) Somehow, despite becoming a regional party of (racist) southern whites, the Republican Party is MORE POWERFUL THAN EVER in thwarting the will of our Enlightenment Democrats. (Krugman: "In California, the G.O.P. has essentially shrunk down to a rump party with no interest in actually governing — but that rump remains big enough to prevent anyone else from dealing with the state's fiscal crisis. If this happens to America as a whole, as it all too easily could, the country could become effectively ungovernable[.]")

6) Previous generations of Republicans, no matter how evil we said they were at the time, were wise intellectuals compared to the rabble today. (Krugman: "At this point Newt Gingrich is what passes for a sober, reasonable elder statesman of the G.O.P. And he has no authority.")

It only gets better from there. Read the whole thing.

The Iranian military has test fired the Shahab-3, a ballistic missile that is capable of reaching Europe and is thought to be the delivery platform for a an Iranian nuke. The test has Western governments up in arms, and comes just days after news of a secret nuclear facility in Qom put the Obama administration in an awkward position of having to explain that, contrary to the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, Iran is indeed pushing forward with developing a nuclear weapon.

Iran has conducted multiple tests of the Shahab-3 missile this year. Why conduct another just days after news broke of the secret nuclear facility near Qom, and just days before bilateral talks with the U.S.?

Iran is openly flaunting its nuclear weapons program to the Western media, knowing that there is not the collective will at the United Nations Security Council to impose even moderate sanctions. The news of the Qom reactor was actually leaked by the Iranians, when they sent a letter to the IAEA to disclose the existence of the site.

But the Obama administration will regardless carry out the bilateral talks starting on October 1, hoping that Iran will change its tune, when the Islamic theocracy shows no inclination of actually doing so.

And while Iran flaunts its capabilities, the U.S. military in Iraq continues to release members of the League of the Righteous, the radical Shia terror group backed by Iran's Qods Force. More than 100 fighters have been released this year. In exchange, the Shia terrorists returned the bodies of three Brits kidnapped in early 2007. The three men were murdered by the group.

Why would Colorado Public Television broadcast two 9/11 Truth propaganda videos? Good question. Colorado Public Television has enjoyed a fundraising boost after airing "9/11: Blueprint for Truth" and "9/11: Press for Truth." And they had help from 9/11 Truthers -- volunteers from a 9/11 Truther group called 911 Visibility answered phones during a fund drive that took place while the shows aired. Not surprisingly, this success has the station considering re-airing the "documentaries."

There continue to be many gracious and heartfelt remembrances penned in memory of Irving Kristol. Here are some additional reminiscences that have appeared since I posted my last round-up Sunday evening.

Be sure to read AEI's Christopher DeMuth on Irving's practical liberalism.

In the Telegraph of London, Irwin Stelzer remembers his friend and touches on the trans-Atlantic dimension to Irving's thought.

David Brooks devoted yesterday's column to an examination of Kristol's "detached attachment."

Leslie Lenkowsky writes on Kristol's substantial contributions to conservative philanthropy.

In the Los Angeles Times, Jonah Goldberg discussed Irving Kristol's clear-thinking, and situated his legacy in the context of other notable conservative intellectuals.

Ron Radosh looked at Kristol and anti-communism.

And Herbert London and Jim Prevor both wrote touching recollections.

And if you are interested in exploring Kristol's thought further, don't miss The Neoconservative Imagination, a collection of essays written by (among others) Nathan Glazer, Norman Podhoretz, and Michael Novak on the occasion of Kristol's seventy-fifth birthday.

The Condé Nast cafeteria no longer serves Fiji-brand bottled water.

(HT: Gawker.)

Over at his excellent blog, Richard Brookhiser highlights an interview that Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Times book review and William F. Buckley Jr.'s biographer, recently gave to MSNBC:

HARWOOD: Well, Sam, I want to switch gears and get a little different perspective. I know you’ve got a book coming out in September, The Death of Conservatism, you know an awful lot about the patron saint of modern conservatism William F. Buckley. What do you suppose Bill Buckley would think of the nature of the arguments that are being made against the Obama health care plan right now, death panels and all the rest?

TANENHAUS: Well, you know, one of the great contributions Bill Buckley made to conservatism was to move it toward the center. And one way he did that was to repudiate in a very forceful way what was then called the lunatic fringe, people who made-

The sentence in bold is simply ridiculous. As it happens, I've been reading a great deal of Buckley lately, and while he certainly did his best to remove fringe elements -- e.g., the Birchers, the Ayn Rand cultists, various anti-Semites -- from respectable conservatism, in no way did he attempt to "move" conservatism or the GOP "to the center." Buckley wrote and edited two volumes in defense of Senator McCarthy and the House Committee on Un-American Activities, criticized President Eisenhower throughout the 1950s (and, according to John Judis's biography, didn't vote for Eisenhower in 1956), was a passionate advocate for and lifelong friend of Sen. Goldwater, ran against liberal Republican John Lindsay in the New York City mayoral election of 1965 for the stated purpose of ensuring that the Republican party maintained a conservative profile, defended Vietnam as a "war of liberation," supported Ronald Reagan in 1976 and 1980, established BUCKPAC in 1988 in order to drive liberal Republican Lowell Weicker from the Senate, and ... well, you get the idea.

Here's Brookhiser: "The big mistake [Tanenhaus] makes here is to locate 'the lunatic fringe' on an ideological axis, and to equate seriousness with 'mov[ing] toward the center.' When Bill tried to expel Birchers or Randians from the conservative movement, it was not because they were too far right politically, but because they were out of this world."

Buckley wasn't a nutball. But he wasn't David Gergen, either.

The absurdly pro-Obama magazine Newsweek has a cover story saying "The Recession is Over! But Not For You -- Yet." The piece, by Dan Gross, is a well-written look at the current economic scene, and includes the caveat that, while macro-economic conditions may be improving, the job outlook will likely remain poor for some time. You'd think the administration would appreciate the (slightly) good news.

It didn't, however. In fact, Obama went out of his way yesterday to criticize the magazine that for the last two years has featured him on its cover something like, I don't know, a gazillion times:

I don't know whether you've seen the cover of the latest NEWSWEEK magazine on the rack at the grocery store, but the cover says, "The Recession Is Over!"I bet you found that news a little startling. I know I did. Here's what's true: we've stopped the free fall. The market is up and the financial system is no longer on the verge of collapse. We're losing jobs at half the rate we were when I took office six months ago ... So, we may be seeing the beginning of the end of the recession. But that's little comfort if you're one of the folks who have lost their job, and haven't found another ...

Gross rebuts the president here.

Key lesson: Money, or fawning coverage, can't buy you love.

The day the news broke that the Taliban captured a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan, it was noted here that the media would fall all over itself to give out the details of the soldier's life. The Associated Press, CBS News, and most every other news outlet failed to disappoint. About the only thing the media left out was the soldier's home address.

So if it was wise to hide the capture of New York Times reporter David Rohdes's capture because doing so increased the likelihood he would be returned home alive, why is it wise to splash this soldier's entire life of the airwaves and in print? Don't expect an answer from the guardians of truth.

Complaining about media bias gets tiresome. But, come on.

Republicans finally challenge Barack Obama on national security and the New York Times thinks it's all politics. "Seeking Cudgel, Republicans Return to National Security Issue."

Memo to the Times: Some conservatives are genuinely concerned about the fact that Obama is: releasing al Qaeda-trained terrorists in the United States, closing Guantanamo Bay, banning harsh (and effective) interrogation techniques, sharing secrets with the world, withdrawing from Iraq, and apologizing for American power. Sure, it might be good politics, too.

But a headline -- and an article -- that assumes politics is the primary motivation says far more about the Times than it does about the conservatives featured in the article.

I'm still waiting for the front-page NYT "fact-check" on Obama's claim that he cannot talk about classified documents detailing the success of the enhanced interrogation program. Obama, of course, could declassify those documents in a day and if his name were George W. Bush, and if the documents were not likely so damning to the Times' own editorial position, the front-page analyses would have begun.

How can it be that the Times is losing subscribers?

(H/T Jonah Goldberg).

John Madden is retiring. Truly these are dark times.

Plenty of criticism has been heaped on the Israeli Defense Forces for firing on United Nations and media headquarters during the operation inside the Gaza Strip. During these incidents, UN employees and reporters claimed it was impossible for Hamas to fire rockets from these compounds and intimated the Israelis intentionally targeted the facilities. Here is one such report in Editor and Publisher, America's Oldest Journal Covering the Newspaper Industry:

Bullets also entered another building housing The Associated Press offices, entering a room where two staffers were working but wounding no one. The Foreign Press Association, representing journalists covering Israel and the Palestinian territories, demanded a halt to attacks on press buildings.

The army had collected the locations of media organizations at the outset of fighting to avoid such attacks.

But we have at least one confirmed incident of Hamas's launching rockets from a media headquarters:

Al Arabiya reporter Hannan al-Masri is live on the air in Gaza when she is told that Hamas has just fired rockets from inside the Al Arabiya studio building, news which apparently strikes her as quite humorous.

Watch the video below and turn on the subtitles feature. The first laugh might be dismissed as nervous laughter, but the second one can't. She is clearly amused by the launch.

If the Israeli Air Force responded by striking the building housing Al Arabiya, it would have been completely justified in doing so.

Editor and Publisher was adamant the Israelis are "attacking" media headquarters, yet there is no report of the Al Arabiya incident on the website or a mention of the unprofessional behavior of the Hannan al-Masri. Surely E&P will eventually cover both sides of this story for the sake of balance. Right?

Joe the Plumber, PJTV's media correspondent in Israel, clearly does not know the first law of holes: once you are deep in one, you should stop digging. The other day Joe told us the media has no place in a warzone and harkened back to the days when war news was shown in theaters on grainy film. Yesterday, Joe told us that all information from a warzone should be filtered by the military, which doesn't need to be bothered by the media in the first place. ThinkProgress provides the transcript of the segment in question (PJTV requires registration to view the video; my recommendation is you don't subject yourself to watching it):

WURZELBACHER: you don’t need to see what’s happening every day, that’s my personal opinion, you don’t have to share it. But, you know, okay, you don’t have to see, you know, 800 dead, 801 dead. It’s like they drill that in your head. … They want you to sit there saying there are so many people dying. You know these are large, these are numbers, you know I don’t want to take away from that. Let me, uh, think about how to say that again. Just essentially, they keep drilling it into your head, newscast after newscast after newscast.

I think the military should decide what information to give the media and then the media can release it to the public. I don’t believe they need to be in the front lines with soldiers, I don’t believe they need to, uh, you know, be bothering the military for information or for access to certain areas.

Just think about how Joe's "media strategy" would have impacted the Iraq War. By late 2005/early 2006, it was clear the U.S. strategy to pull back and turn over security to the Iraqi security forces was premature and Iraq was sliding into chaos. The explosion of al Qaeda and Mahdi Army-led sectarian violence in the wake of the Samarra mosque bombing clearly showed the Iraqi security forces were incapable of maintaining order and defeating the insurgency.

Yet the senior U.S. military leadership, from Joint Chiefs of Staff (minus its chairman, General Pace), to CENTCOM commander General Abizaid, down to Multinational Forces Iraq commander General Casey, continued to push the "as they stand up we'll stand down" strategy. Had the U.S. military controlled the flow of information, the American public may never have known how close Iraq was to failing. Absent this information, the proponents of the Keane-Kagan plan would have had a difficult time pushing for a change in strategy. After all, the military was telling us everything is fine, right?

Instead, on-the-ground reporting showed that security in Iraq was rapidly deteriorating and that pulling back to the big bases was failing. Like it or not, the pressure from the media forced President Bush to recognize the problem, accept the change in strategy and overrule his military commanders. If Joe had his way, Iraq likely would have been a very different place today. To paraphrase Laura Ingraham: Shut up and report, Joe.

There has been no shortage of coverage of Joe the Plumber's foray into reporting on the Israeli military operation in Gaza. As someone who started reporting on the war as an independent reporter, I could understand PJTV's decision to support citizen journalism by sending Joe to Israel. Sure, the decision was clearly made to generate publicity for the conservative, web-based news service, but PJTV's decision to expend their resources is theirs to make.

After a few days of watching Joe fumble through interviews and issue his awkward opinions, it’s clear the guy is in over his head. Here's what Joe has to say about the media and their coverage of the war:

I'll be honest with you. I don't think journalists should be anywhere allowed war (sic). I mean, you guys report where our troops are at. You report what's happening day to day. You make a big deal out of it. I think it's asinine. You know, I liked back in World War I and World War II when you'd go to the theater and you'd see your troops on, you know, the screen and everyone would be real excited and happy for them. Now everyone's got an opinion and wants to downer–and down soldiers. You know, American soldiers or Israeli soldiers.

I think media should be abolished from, uh, you know, reporting. You know, war is hell. And if you're gonna sit there and say, "Well look at this atrocity," well you don't know the whole story behind it half the time, so I think the media should have no business in it.

First, if the media shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a war, what are you doing there, Joe? And why did PJTV send you?

Second, while embedded as an independent reporter in Iraq and Afghanistan several times, I have seen journalists do some appalling things. I could probably write a book about it, but honestly I'm far more interested in the war itself. Despite what I have seen, I believe the media should have access during conflicts. Shutting the media out would entirely concede the information to al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hamas, etc. who are increasingly developing sophisticated information strategies. Yes, there is bad and slanted reporting coming out of the combat zones, but there also are good reporters out there who can get the story right. The public needs to hear these stories to understand the nature of the war.

Third, if Joe’s spent any real time with the military, he'd know they typically don't want reporters to cheerlead for them. In my experience, all the troops on the ground want is a fair shake (senior commanders may or may not want such candor). If something is working, they want you to tell that story, and if something is going wrong, they want that story out there too. One reason for the latter is that often the media can serve as a back door to get some problems fixed that the chain of command may be ignoring.

Finally, Joe is advocating a 1940's media strategy for wars that are being fought in the 21st Century. We can't roll back the mass access to print, television, the Internet, cell phones, etc. and push the news on grainy films at the theater.

The real irony here is that PJTV, a 21st Century, Internet-based news organization is sending a reporter--who doesn't want reporters to report on war--to report on a war. And apparently Joe would love to return to the days when the news was influenced by the government and seen at the theater.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD gets a shoutout in the January issue of Vogue in a profile of CNN's Campbell Brown:

She spends her mornings with the papers and the blogs: Politico.com, Realclearpolitics.com, William Kristol's The Weekly Standard, and the Huffington Post.

Speaking of Vogue, Fashion Week Daily has heard some "extremely insider rumors" that editor Anna Wintour might be "in the running for an official post in the Obama administration--like, say, an ambassadorship to England or France." Restoring America's image abroad--yes, we can!

AP: "Hawaii Island Where Obama is Vacationing Loses Power."

From today's Thomas L. Friedman column:

"China may have great airports, but last week it went back to censoring The New York Times and other Western news sites. Censorship restricts your people’s imaginations. That’s really, really dumb."

I can think of about half a dozen other things Chinese censorship is, besides "dumb." Immoral and unjust, to name two.

Still, this column is thought-provoking. You read a lot about the shoddy state of Kennedy Airport, the Acela Amtrak train, etc. But you hardly ever read about the sources of such degradation. It's hard to believe that lack of funding is the main problem, though that may be the case.

Even if it is the case, however, lack of funding can't be the only problem facing American infrastructure. After all, the United States is still the richest country in the world. When we talk about infrastructure spending, we ought to spend some time talking about the human element: the lack of public oversight; inefficient and sclerotic public authorities; and an individual preference for private transportation -- the automobile -- over public.

The Times falls for a prankster posing as the mayor of Paris.

NBC's First Read did some counting and discovered that Barack Obama, Time's person of the year, appeared on 27 percent of the magazine's covers in 2008. If you include mentions of Obama's name along with his face, the figure shoots up to 48 percent.

Three guesses as to whom Time magazine chose as its person of the year.

Washington area readers of the Washington Post might have missed in yesterday’s paper a small notice “To Our Readers” informing us that the price of an issue on newsstands and in vending machines will go from 50 cents to 75 cents. This followed Sunday’s announcement that the paper will be dissolving its “Sunday Source” section: “The decision to end the section is part of an effort at The Washington Post to rethink and restructure our arts, entertainment and lifestyle coverage in a way that is most useful to our readers.” But not to fear, the Post reassures us, our “favorite Source features” like “Road Trip,” “Eco Wise,” and “Trendspotter” will find a home in other sections. None of these I was exactly wedded to. But what seems to be on the chopping block is the “Three Wise Guys” column by Joe Heim, Justin Rude, and Dan Zak. If so, that would be a real loss. The columns were reliably irreverent, self-deprecating, and a breeze to get through. In short, it was a pleasure. And yet another victim of the decline of print.

The New York Times's Baghdad Bureau Blog does a good job of rounding up opinions of Iraqis on yesterday's shoe-throwing incident by an Iraqi "journalist" that targeted President Bush during a press briefing in Baghdad with Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. Clearly there is a wide range of opinions by Iraqis on this incident. Some view it as an acceptable act of defiance, but many, even though they may not like President Bush, believe the incident was uncivilized, rude, and unprofessional for a journalist.

Scanning through this extensive compilation of quotes from Iraqi, I noticed something interesting. In a few cities, there was 'unanimous' support for the shoe-throwing. This was odd, based on the wide range of views expressed. Why were views in some cities uniform?

I decided to look a little closer at Najaf, one of these cities where there was a Sadrist demonstration in support of the "journalist." Interestingly enough, the first person quoted caused my antenna to perk up. Here is what the stringer from Najaf wrote:

"These demonstrators are refusing the president of evil as well as renewing their refusal of the [security] pact," said a man named Hazim Araji. "And we have coordinated such demonstrations in the whole of Iraq."

The name rung a bell. Well, it turns out Hazim Araji isn't just your average Iraqi "man." He is in fact a senior aide to Muqtada al Sadr. Araji organized today's protest in Najaf that called for the release of the shoe-throwing "journalist."

Why didn't the Times stringer point this out? Did the stringer ever leave the Sadrist protest in Najaf? Why didn't the Times's layers upon layers of editors catch this? Perhaps their editors should look a little closer at the stringers they are using in Iraq. Perhaps they are practicing the same form of "journalism" as the feted shoe-thrower.

Our long national nightmare is over: Word is out in tech circles that all of Fox broadcasting will be in HD starting in 2009. Which includes Fox News Channel.

No longer will the visages of Brit Hume and Megyn Kelly be clouded in hideous low-definition. It's a great day for America.

So Obama didn’t make the cover of Newsweek today. Instead, a traditional-looking Bible with a rainbow ribbon bookmark did. The attendant story, penned by Lisa Miller, makes “the religious case for gay marriage” and is called “Our Mutual Joy.”

Here’s the first graph:

Let’s try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does. Shall we look to Abraham, the great patriarch, who slept with his servant when he discovered his beloved wife Sarah was infertile? Or to Jacob, who fathered children with four different women (two sisters and their servants)? Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel—all these fathers and heroes were polygamists. The New Testament model of marriage is hardly better. Jesus himself was single and preached an indifference to earthly attachments—especially family. The apostle Paul (also single) regarded marriage as an act of last resort for those unable to contain their animal lust. “It is better to marry than to burn with passion,” says the apostle, in one of the most lukewarm endorsements of a treasured institution ever uttered. Would any contemporary heterosexual married couple—who likely woke up on their wedding day harboring some optimistic and newfangled ideas about gender equality and romantic love—turn to the Bible as a how-to script?

Go to getreligion.com for help navigating this dire mess and ask for Mollie Hemmingway, who asks Miller a very good question: “But if you are going to pretend that opposition to same-sex marriage is based Sola Scriptura, could we at least get our Scripture right?” Read her whole (and excellent) analysis of the article here.

On a related note, this spring the New Mexico-based Revision Studios will publish the Princess Diana Bible, which argues that God thinks it’s better to be gay than straight. Why Pricess Di? Apparently, just because she did “many good works.” The PDB uses the King James Version and changes some of its words to make the Bible fit its agenda. (Note that the KJV is in the public domain and thus tweakable, unlike newer translations held under copyright.) Adam becomes “Aida,” a woman’s name. And so, in the beginning, God created woman and woman. (How could they be fruitful and multiply?) You can read all of Genesis at princessdianabible.com.

Time's Washington bureau chief Jay Carney swoons:

From Obama's 60 Minutes interview, this seemingly obvious but all-too-rare, refreshingly non-ideological declaration about how best to govern:

We've gotta come up with solutions that are true to our times and true to this moment. And that's gonna be our job. I think the basic principle that government has a role to play in kick starting an economy that has ground to a halt is sound.

I think our basic principle that this is a free market system and that that has worked for us, that it creates innovation and risk taking, I think that's a principle that we've gotta hold to as well. But what I don't wanna do is get bottled up in a lot of ideology and is this conservative or liberal. My interest is finding something that works.

And whether it's coming from FDR or it's coming from Ronald Reagan, if the idea is right for the times then we're gonna apply it. And things that don't work we're gonna get rid of.

Talk about a welcome change from the ideology-first recent past.

I assume that that line about the "the ideology-first recent past" is a reference to the guy still living in Barack Obama's White House. Don't you remember the right-wing ideologue who signed McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform, who pushed for McCain-Kennedy immigration reform, and who signed No Child Left Behind, a bill co-authored by Ted Kennedy?

Just remember that when Barack Obama tries to pass legislation to nationalize health care, eliminate the secret ballot in union elections, and fund abortions with taxpayer money, he's not being ideological. He's just trying to find "something that works."

Courtesy of the inimitable Ken Levine.

Not that this is news to conservatives, but it’s still worth reading Howard Kurtz’s column in today’s Washington Post, in which he states, “If anyone doubts there is a liberal entertainment establishment, it has been vividly on display” during this presidential campaign. Kurtz then compares Obama’s treatment at the hands of Ellen Degeneres (who asked the senator tough questions like, “Michelle was on the show, and she was talking some smack about your moves”) with McCain’s appearance on Ellen: “DeGeneres chided him on the issue of gay marriage, saying, ‘It just seems like there is this old way of thinking that we are not all the same.’” (Both candidates in their recent debates openly opposed gay marriage.) Kurtz then goes on to make similar contrasts on shows such as The Late Show with David Letterman and The View. (Barbara Walters tells Obama, "Maybe we shouldn't say this. We thought you were very sexy." Joy Behar calls McCain a liar.)

According to the Center for Media and Public Affairs, Kurtz reports, “the McCain ticket was the target of 475 jokes by Letterman and Leno from Sept. 1 to Oct. 24, while the Obama ticket was zinged just 69 times.... McCain just can’t catch a break in the pop culture wars.”

Not that this is news to conservatives.

Heh.

An AP caption describes those pictured in this photo as "Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., [who] are dressed as Joe the Plumber":

But CBS News reveals that one of the guys is a leader of the College Republicans, and although another is, in fact, a plumber, he's not even an American! So it turns out McCain supporters dressed up as Joe the Plumber are really McCain supporters ... dressed up as Joe the Plumber.

In other news, John McCain is not really a Georgian.

Tina Brown's Daily Beast looks as if it's trying to live up to its legendary namesake. In today's edition, Scott Horton purports to describe how Bill Kristol made Sarah Palin. Horton begins with this telling story:

In June 2007, a cruise liner sponsored by the political journal The Weekly Standard set anchor in Juneau, Alaska. Editors and guests of the publication were then treated to a reception with Governor Sarah Palin. It was a moment of discovery to equal Hernando Cortez's landing at Veracruz. A writer for London's Daily Telegraph interviewed one of the participants in the Juneau junket about the meeting with Palin:

"She's bright and she's a blank page. She's going places and it's worth going there with her." Asked if he sees her as a "project," the former official said: "Your word, not mine, but I wouldn't disagree with the sentiment."

A key organizer and participant in the Palin meeting was Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, who can fairly lay claim to having "discovered" Palin for Washington political circles. Palin's name appeared in fifty-seven Weekly Standard articles since the Juneau meeting--starting with a paean entitled "The Most Popular Governor" that ran right after the reception.

While not wanting in any way to diminish the storied influence of my boss, a fact-check is in order here. I was on that fateful Alaska cruise. And it didn't happen that way. At the most pedantic level, THE WEEKLY STANDARD didn't "sponsor" a cruise liner. Like many magazines (and other subcultures, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to NASCAR devotees to country music fans), The Weekly Standard hosts an annual cruise. During the trip to Alaska, fewer than 20 percent of the people on the ship were there as cruisers attending the magazine's seminars.

In any event, shortly before the 2007 cruise to Alaska, Gov. Palin's office got word that the cruise ship with our editors and guests aboard would be docking in Juneau for a few hours. So they invited Bill Kristol, Fred Barnes, and their wives to meet the governor during the brief stop in the capital. The Kristols and Barneses had lunch with the governor and a few members of her staff. There was no "reception." Neither guests of the magazine nor other members of the magazine staff were present. I should know--I was jealous I wasn't able to tag along.

As for whether or not the reality of this meeting still counts as "a moment of discovery to equal Hernando Cortez's landing at Veracruz," William Boot might have put it that way, so it seems fair to let Horton have some literary license.

Horton, however, quotes a person he claims was present at the "reception" in Juneau, attributing this to a story from the London Telegraph that says no such thing. He can't have been reading the Telegraph very carefully. The paper mentions THE STANDARD cruise, but quotes no guest from the cruise. The quotes Horton reproduces, the Telegraph attributed to an anonymous staffer from the American Enterprise Institute who is simply talking about Palin. Horton has conflated these two bits to turn the quote into something said by someone who was present at the creation. Another moment Boot would be proud of.

As for THE STANDARD's supposedly endless pumping of Palin--you bet! But, alas, there have so far been only 41 stories in our pages mentioning Palin, not 57, as Horton says. And the vast majority of them (32 to be precise) ran after Palin was named as McCain's running mate. Between the "moment of discovery" in Juneau and Palin's addition to the McCain ticket, the magazine published five items mentioning her. Of those, only one was principally about Palin. It was the story "The Most Popular Governor," which was written by Fred Barnes.

Horton's dispatch, in short, wasn't ready to be sent in by cleft stick, or any other mode of transmission. Other than that, The Daily Beast seems like it's off to an auspicious start. We wish them all the best.

Women want him; writers for the New Yorker want to be him.

Good to see the Grey Lady is doing everything it can to deepen the economic crisis. Check out this amazing correction:

An article about the effect of the Wall Street crisis on Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs cited two sources who were said to have been briefed on a conversation in which John J. Mack, chief executive of Morgan Stanley, had told Vikram S. Pandit, Citigroup's chief executive, that "we need a merger partner or we're not going to make it."

On Thursday, Morgan Stanley vigorously denied that Mr. Mack had made the comment, as did Citigroup, which had declined to comment on Wednesday. The Times's two sources have since clarified their comments, saying that because they were not present during the discussions, they could not confirm that Mr. Mack had in fact made the statement. The Times should have asked Morgan Stanley for comment and should not have used the quotation without doing more to verify the sources' version of events. (Emphasis added)

So the Times’ sources weren’t present when the alleged comment was made, and couldn’t confirm it. Which begs the question – what threshold does one have to cross before the Times accredits you as a source?

While of course it’s fun to poke fun at the Grey Lady, this particular item is no joke. The ridiculous rumor that the Times breathlessly peddled as fact unquestionably harmed Morgan Stanley’s stock price, damaging its shareholders and other stakeholders in a financially meaningful way. Whoops!

From the New York Times:

In the press galleries at the convention, journalists wrinkled their noses in disgust when Piper, Ms. Palin’s youngest daughter, was filmed kitty-licking her baby brother’s hair into place. But to many Americans — including some I talked to in the convention hall — that looked like family church on Sunday, evidence of good breeding and sibling regard.

HT: NewsBusters

Blogger Charlie Martin has helpfully compiled all of the smears that the left has hurled at Sarah Palin. 54 and counting!

Given that we’re more than halfway to the century mark in Palin smears, I think it’s time to take another brief look at the left’s method of smear dissemination. Yesterday on a blog hosted by the prestigious magazine the Atlantic, a post popped up at 11:49 a.m. with the breathless title, “Here We Go.” The post read in its entirety, “Todd Palin's former business partner files an emergency motion to have his divorce papers sealed. Oh God.” The post linked to the Alaskan court system where you could see the motion if you cared to click through.

Although the author didn’t care to make his innuendo explicit, the insinuation was clear – the National Enquirer had previously reported on what it called “a rumor” that the former business partner in question had had an affair with Sarah Palin. The breathless title and the brevity of the post implied that the smoking gun for the affair laid in the court filings that the former business partner wished to conceal. Naturally, because the purported scoop had the imprimatur of the Atlantic, many other news sources picked it up in rapid order.

Quicker than you can say “conspiracy theory lunatic,” this particular lunatic theory jumped off the tracks. The Court denied the motion to conceal the papers, allowing the curious to sniff through them. Shock of shocks, Sarah Palin’s name wasn’t even mentioned in the filings. Nor was there anything regarding an affair with her. In this particular wild goose chase, the goose flew free.

Thus, the method of the smear mechanism reveals itself – print a lot of speculative crap, all while maintaining a malign indifference as to whether or not you can prove said speculative crap. Actually nailing down a story before running it? That’s so 20th century, at least in the virtual pages of the Atlantic. Doing actual reporting to confirm life-damaging rumors before circulating them? Such quotidian tasks are obviously beneath an Atlantic blogger’s pay grade.

One more thing of journalistic interest occurs: The “news” about the motion to seal the divorce papers appeared in the virtual pages of the Atlantic first, not the National Enquirer or the Daily Kos as one might expect. Obviously, Atlantic field reporters haven’t trekked up to Alaska to monitor every random court filing. Therefore, someone had to tip off the Atlantic’s chief rumor spreader about the motion to seal the divorce papers. It would be interesting to know at whose bidding the Atlantic staffer in question is spreading unfounded smears.

I’m sure in the interests of full disclosure, the magazine and its chief rumor spreader will rush this information to the public. Right after they apologize for yesterday’s smear du jour turning up empty.

UPDATE: Blogger Dan Riehl points out that the obscure angry left blog Dakota (that boasts a Technorati ranking of 2) linked to the court documents in question 24 hours before the Atlantic did. Whether someone at the Atlantic is Dakota's sole reader is unknown. Regardless, I apologize for the error. Of course, the larger point of anAtlantic staffer eagerly spreading unverified smears remains unaffected.

UPDATE II: In the spirit of distinguishing between facts and rumors as well as suspicions and knowledge (something that Sarah Palin's detractors have been quite diligent about), it should be noted that there is no evidence that Andrew Sullivan has been in contact with the Obama campaign.

She goes to work on an editor from US Weekly with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch.

Mickey Kaus has a typically thoughtful, elegant, and counter-intuitive assessment of why, exactly, the press has been so irresponsibly hostile toward Sarah Palin. I won't spoil it, but it involves a detailed accounting of the how the internet and traditional media have evolved over time in a new dialectical, coming to grips with one another and their roles in a shifting technological and journalistic space. Kaus believes that it was actually the press's manifest embarrassment at being caught ignoring the John Edwards story that has spurred them to reexamine how they should approach Sarah Palin.

"They waited with Edwards. They don't want to go through that again," Kaus says. "It helps, of course, that this week's rumors involve a Republican."

You don't say.

Philadelphia Daily News columnist Fatimah Ali warns that, "If McCain wins, look for a full-fledged race and class war, fueled by a deflated and depressed country, soaring crime, homelessness--and hopelessness!"

I'm not sure about the race and class war stuff, but I'm sure we will see a huge increase in homelessness--or at least mentions of homelessness in the media.

Back in 2001, Andrew Ferguson observed that the return of Republicans to the White House would mean:

the reemergence of all kinds of things we haven't seen since -- well, since the old President Bush was in the White House. Avarice and selfishness are just the beginning. Say hello to homelessness, for instance: We are about to see a horrifying deterioration in the plight of our nation's street people. We haven't heard much -- anything, really -- about the homeless since, oh, roughly January 20, 1993. As it happens, the number of people living on steam grates has remained pretty much constant from the middle 1980s, when they filled the airwaves and graced the cover of countless magazines, to the present day, when they are all but forgotten. They are about to be remembered.

Naturally, on February 16, 2001, just a few weeks after Bush's inauguration, the Washington Post ran a front-page story slugged "Indicators Show D.C. Homelessness Getting Worse."

Fatimah Ali is just running ahead of schedule.

Don LaFontaine, known as the "voiceover guy" because of his numerous voiceovers for movie trailers, has died. Here's my favorite LaFontaine moment:

Earlier today, we took a look at Alan Colmes’ comments about Sarah Palin’s most recent pregnancy. Colmes wrote:

Rogers Cadenhead gives the timeline associated with the birth of her newest child. She had a speech in Dallas and, even after the water broke, continued with her activities, and then boarded a plane for home. She did consult by phone with her doctor. Still, a Sacramento, Calif., obstetrician who is active in the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said when a pregnant woman's water breaks, she should go right to the hospital because of the risk of infection. That's true even if the amniotic fluid simply leaks out, said Dr. Laurie Gregg.

While Colmes’s sudden concern for fetuses so long as they reside inside the body of conservative politicians is touching, some people inferred from this idiotic post that Colmes was suggesting that Palin’s putative poor judgment caused her baby to be born with Down syndrome. After sending the initial post down the memory hole, Colmes addressed this concern:

“I in no way mean to suggest that her child’s Down Syndrome was in any way related to decisions she made. In fact I never mentioned Down Syndrome in the post. However, I apologize that my post was not more clear on that point. That is my fault, and I’ll take responsibility for not being more clear on that point. “

Why anyone would infer bad faith when someone is belittling a politician’s handling of her own pregnancy is beyond me. Nevertheless, good of Alan to sort of man up.

At the other end of the crackpot conspiracy theory spectrum, we have Andrew Sullivan who seemingly blogs for the sole purpose of posing the existential question, “How many times can one man kill his own reputation?” Sullivan promulgates a theory that categorically rejects the notion that Palin irresponsibly handled her pregnancy. Why? Because Palin was never pregnant in the first place! Instead, she pretended to be pregnant and give birth (while a sitting governor!) in order to cover for her daughter who was in fact having the baby out of wedlock.

In his original post on the matter, Andrew stated that the rumor is “buzzing across the Internets” before calling them “unfounded and unseemly.” A full 41 minutes later, however, he characteristically disagreed with himself, inveighing, “This baby was a centerpiece of the public case for Palin made by the Republicans. They made it an issue - and therefore it is legitimate to ask questions about it.”

Speaking of the unseemly, contra Andrew, the story has not been buzzing across the Internets. Prior to Andrew propagating the rumors, they remained confined to the fever swamps where even on the Huffington Post the commentary was generally of the “Good god this is stupid” variety. At the Daily Kos, many of the commenters to the rumor-mongering diary lamented its idiocy and ugliness.

Since I know you’re dying to know the kind of persuasive logic that the Kos diarist displayed that piqued Andrew Sullivan’s interest, I offer the following excerpt:

“The final point of interest is that Trig Palin has been diagnosed with Down's (sic) syndrome (aka trisomy 21). This is an interesting point, as chances of having offspring with Down's (sic) Syndrome (sic) increases (sic) from under 1% to 3% after a mother reaches the age of 40. However, 80% of the cases of Down's (sic) Syndrome (sic) are in mother's (sic) under the age of 35 , through sheer quantities of births in this age group.”

Someone better tell Alan Colmes – the Kos Kid has him dead to rights.

Both Andrew Sullivan and Alan Colmes did the exact same thing – they disseminated attacks so vile and idiotic they would never dare put their own names behind them. They used their platforms, platforms that lunatics who come up with such crackpottery typically lack, to get the attacks much more attention than they originally would have received.

Colmes and Sullivan did the exact same thing in another regard. Both men, in eagerly publicizing crackpot theories, showed the boundless desperation and ugliness that Sarah Palin will face. If ever there were examples of “kitchen sink” political tactics, the blogging efforts today of Sullivan and Colmes provide them.

And both men have provided early returns on our question, “How low will the left go?”

Quoth lefty blogger Publius after Obama's Invesco coronation:

I think McCain's decision to announce the VP pick tomorrow may be too clever by half. I mean, it will certainly draw some attention. But it's not like the press will completely ignore Obama's speech tomorrow or over the weekend. In this sense, announcing tomorrow will prevent McCain from getting maximum coverage of his VP selection.

Whoops!

From the Politico, “MSNBC Prez Defends Convention Team” by Michael Calderone

Things are getting ugly at MSNBC:

In addition to Olbermann, MSNBC personalities Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough and David Shuster were involved in Denver controversies.

On Monday evening, Olbermann interrupted Scarborough while he was talking about McCain being competitive in the polls. “Jesus, Joe, why don’t you get a shovel?” Olbermann remarked.

On “Morning Joe” the following day, a clearly agitated Scarborough went off on Shuster during a discussion of Iraq, which quickly devolved over several cringe-worthy minutes into personal attacks, such as Scarborough telling the world how his colleague missed the show three times by oversleeping. "Are you Rip Van Shuster?” Scarborough asked. “Have you been sleeping for the past couple of months?”

But Scarborough, a former Republican congressman from Florida, became enraged when Shuster made a reference to “your party.” Asked by Scarborough what his party was, Shuster said he was an “independent.”

"I feel so comforted by the fact that you're an independent,” Scarborough said, in a mocking tone. “I bet everybody at MSNBC has independent on their voting cards. Oh, we're down the middle now.” (Shuster left the set, but returned later to hug it out, "Entourage"-style.)

This reminds me of a time when I was doing a story for this magazine on Larry Summers’ troubled tenure at Harvard and the left-wing professors who were trying to run him out of the Yard. After the story ran, I spoke with one of the liberal professors that I had interviewed and he expressed surprise that my story had a bias and wasn’t strictly neutral. I expressed surprise over his surprise. I make no bones about my biases, and any sentient reader of this magazine quickly notices a decided rightward tilt.

So I’d be among the last to complain about another news service showing bias. Indeed, I appreciate MSNBC’s willingness to wear its biases on its virtual sleeve, and find that dynamic far preferable to the shopworn biases that creep into someone like Wolf Blitzer’s coverage all while he maintains a phony pose of neutrality.

MSNBC remains an interesting case for other reasons. Until recently, it and its mother ship were respected news agencies. Now that they’re morphing into purveyors of opinion and propaganda, the respect is vanishing.

Just as I read the left wing blogs, I watch MSNBC. Keith Olbermann is the main man there, and right wingers who deny his talent sound as out of touch as left wingers who deny Rush Limbaugh’s talent. What’s more, Olbermann is hardly the only partisan on cable news. Sean Hannity brings a distinct viewpoint to his show, as does Glenn Beck. Not that anyone watches Beck, but it’s still worth noting.

But there’s something different about the Olbermann show. Unlike Hannity and Bill O’Reilly who will have guests from all over the political spectrum, Olbermann’s Countdown is an elaborately constructed echo-chamber. Virtually every guest agrees with the host’s sentiments. Rachel Maddow, one of Olbermann’s most frequent guests who is about to get her own MSNBC vehicle, is an engaging television presence but she and Olbermann concur on all matters. So Olbermann “interviewing” Maddow is a pointless exercise. A monologue (or “special comment”) would do just as well.

Olbermann’s show has become the television equivalent of a left wing blog where group-think dominates and dissenting views are most assuredly not welcome. It’s ironic - when people who don’t watch Fox criticize Fox, they have an idea in their head of something that looks a lot like Keith Olbermann’s show. But on Fox, unlike the changing MSNBC, all views are welcome.

If MSNBC continues in its current direction, it will lose all respect as a news organization. But that may be good business. Offering opinions is cheaper and more popular than gathering news. The issue going forward will be how long it takes before the act grows stale. Speaking just for myself, seeing people agree with each other for hours on end doesn’t make for particularly compelling television. Right now, Olbermann occupies a sweet spot where he reflects the distilled anger of the American left. But that anger will lessen with George Bush’s departure and perhaps vanish if Barack Obama wins.

It’s also tough to figure why Olbermann is unwilling to get it on with people with whom he has ideological differences. He’s a glib guy, sharp and quick on his feet. And I’m certain there are a lot of conservatives out there who wouldn’t mind appearing on his show to express the other side of things.

According to the New York Post, our occasional contributor and star of Weekly Standard cruises, Mike Murphy, was bumped from MSNBC Monday night, and a TV-watching friend didn’t see him anywhere on air Tuesday night. This after MSNBC had touted the signing of its new contributor, who has starred in semi-regular appearances on Meet the Press with Tim Russert, and who would provide some welcome political diversity, and wit, to MSNBC’s broadcasts.

Could it be that MSNBC is uninterested in diversity—or wit?

Could there have been a better line in today’s Washington Post op-ed section than from George F. Will’s column?

On ABC's "This Week," Richardson, auditioning to be Barack Obama's running mate, disqualified himself. Clinging to the Obama campaign's talking points like a drunk to a lamppost, Richardson said that this crisis proves the wisdom of Obama's zest for diplomacy and that America should get the U.N. Security Council "to pass a strong resolution getting the Russians to show some restraint." Apparently Richardson was ambassador to the United Nations for 19 months without noticing that Russia has a Security Council veto.

But there is also this snippet from Ruth Marcus’s scathing analysis of the John Edwards fiasco:

In Edwards's exact words, explaining why he denied tabloid stories about his affair because, he says, they weren't completely true: "Being 99 percent honest is no longer enough."

He was once derided as the Breck girl. Now it turns out we're talking Ivory soap, 99 and 44/100ths percent pure.

But the thing about honesty: It's the last 1 percent--even that last .56 percent--that's the tough part.<

Marcus later elaborates on “John Edwards's resort to the exculpatory language of pop psychology to explain his behavior. ‘I went from being a senator, a young senator to being considered for vice president, running for president, being a vice presidential candidate and becoming a national public figure. All of which fed a self-focus, an egotism, a narcissism that leads you to believe that you can do whatever you want.’” She adds, “Right. The adulation made him do it. I don't think this man is anywhere in the neighborhood of 99 percent honesty.”

Okay, there was one other sentence that topped the entire section:

“Tom Toles is away.”

Ron Suskind has written another book. It's getting lots of attention. And the main charge is almost certainly false -- which is the same thing that happened the last time Ron Suskind wrote a book.

In his new book, Suskind claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a document reporting that Mohammad Atta had trained in Iraq in the summer of 2001, and that the CIA did so. On its face the claim is suspect, as anyone who has been paying even casual attention to White House-CIA relations over the past several years understands that the relationship has been frosty. The CIA resisted even minor requests from the White House regarding Iraq and terrorism -- including one instance in which the agency refused, for months, to label as "al Qaeda" the al Qaeda operatives in Baghdad in 2002. The Agency insisted on calling them "Egyptian Islamic Jihad" operatives despite the fact that EIJ and al Qaeda had formally merged years earlier and that EIJ had been the trunk of the al Qaeda tree for more than a decade. So this same CIA that for months resisted the more accurate description of these operatives in order to deny the Bush administration a political argument is suddenly acting on White House orders to forge documents? Um, that's unlikely.

And then there are the specifics of the forged document. The letter has Mohammad Atta training in Iraq at a time when he was shuttling back and forth between the U.S. and Spain. There are still gaps in the government's timeline on Atta's whereabouts, but not gaps that would allow him to go through serious "training" in Iraq for any extended period of time. And according to the original report on the letter, the missive not only included the report that Atta trained in Iraq but also advanced claims that al Qaeda operatives facilitated a shipment from Niger to Iraq. So this letter purports to provide evidence on two of the most contentious issues of the war...in three pages. It was clear to me, without ever laying eyes on it, that it was not only a hoax but a really bad hoax. It was so bad, in fact, that I never even made any phone calls to White House or CIA sources to check it out. (I recall laughing about it with one White House source over lunch.)

To believe Suskind's account, then, you would have to believe: 1) that the Bush administration ordered the CIA, in writing, to forge a letter that was a rather obvious hoax; 2) that the CIA, hostile to the Bush administration and leaking against it at every turn, eagerly complied.

Politico's Mike Allen, who broke the story, reported that Suskind "claims that such an operation, part of 'false pretenses' for war, would apparently constitute illegal White House use of the CIA to influence a domestic audience, an arguably impeachable offense."

Sounds damning. But it's hard to take the country to war on such "false pretenses" in March 2003 when the first report of the letter's contents doesn't appear until December 2003. And if the Bush administration went to the trouble of manufacturing such evidence isn't it likely they would have used it? That never happened.

In a passage that is either wrong or misleading, Suskind also writes about Dick Cheney, Watergate and the "complex strategies" -- including a "signaling system" that Cheney supposedly employed to manipulate and protect the president.

“After the searing experience of being in the Nixon White House, Cheney developed a view that the failure of Watergate was not the break-in, or even the cover-up, but the way the president had, in essence, been over-briefed. There were certain things a president shouldn’t know – things that could be illegal, disruptive to key foreign relationships, or humiliating to the executive.

“They key was a signaling system, where the president made his wishes broadly known to a sufficiently powerful deputy who could take it from there. If an investigation ensued, or a foreign leader cried foul, the president could shrug. This was never something he'd authorized. The whole point of Cheney’s model is to make a president less accountable for his action. Cheney’s view is that accountability – a bedrock feature of representative democracy – is not, in every case, a virtue.”

It's hard to tell from this passage if Suskind understands that Cheney was a relatively low-level bureaucrat in the Office of Economic Opportunity and later the Cost of Living Council and, more important, that did not serve in the Nixon White House during Watergate. The experience taught Cheney much about economics, but there was nothing "searing" about his time in the White House that relates to Watergate since he was already gone by the time the break-in took place.

Suskind doesn't have a very good record on such matters. George Tenet, one of the main sources for Suskind's last book, The One Percent Doctrine, refuted the anecdote that produced the book's title and shaped its entire narrative. Bill Kristol wrote about it at the time Tenet's book was published:

Tenet defends Dick Cheney against the ridiculous claim made in Ron Suskind's book, The One Percent Doctrine, that Cheney urged his colleagues to ignore evidence that did not serve his war- mongering purposes.

Tenet says Cheney asked a CIA analyst named "Kevin K." if Langley thought al Qaeda had already acquired a nuke. Kevin responded, "Sir, if I were to give you a traditional analytical assessment of the al-Qa'ida nuclear program, I would say they probably do not. But I can't assure you they don't."

Cheney, according to Tenet, "then made a comment that in my view has since been misinterpreted." Tenet's Cheney replies to Kevin: "If there's a one percent chance they do, you have to pursue it as if it were true."

Suskind twists this to mean that Cheney was instructing others to ignore contrary evidence. Tenet doesn't buy it.

the vice president understood instinctively that WMD must be managed differently because the implications were unique--such an attack would change history. We all felt the vice president understood this issue. There was no question in my mind that he was absolutely right to insist that when it came to discussing weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists, conventional risk assessments no longer applied; we must rule out any possibility of terrorists succeeding in their quest to obtain such weapons. We could not afford to be surprised.

So much for the One Percent Doctrine.

I'm late to this. Andrew Breitbart, author of "Hollywood Interrupted," Drudge Report contributor and founding magnate of the Breitbart-dot-empire, has started a weekly column on Hollywood and politics for The Washington Times.

His first column is here. Here is how he describes the life of a conservative in Hollywood. "There's simply no lifestyle choice that receives a worse response at dinner parties. Convicted murderer? Has anyone optioned the rights to your story? Avowed Marxist? Viva la revolucion! Scientologist? Do you take Visa or Mastercard? Syphilitic drug abuser? Let's talk! Conservative? You should go."

If you like this, and you should, check out his complete evisceration of some lefty in this exchange on the same subject from last year in the Los Angeles Times.

Beautiful.

James Taranto runs an amusing regular feature called "Wannabe Pundits," in which he collects examples of sports, science, and entertainment writers who unexpectedly veer into embarrassing political commentary. This Newsweek interview with Christopher Nolan, the director of The Dark Knight, is a great example of the genre. Nolan's interlocutor, entertainment writer Devin Gordon, tries not once, not twice, but thrice to get Nolan to draw an absurd analogy between Batman's world and today's America. To wit:

"It's also something of a grim time in our country, which is why so many themes in this movie feel relevant."

And:

"The film implies that Gotham's latest wave of psychos exist partly because of Batman, not in spite of him. His presence has unintended consequences in the same way that the U.S. presence in Iraq has consequences."

And:

"So it's not a stretch to look at Gotham and see shades of Baghdad?"

Nolan wisely avoids this line of questioning. He doesn't want to alienate any potential moviegoers with a superfluous and unoriginal political lecture. Leave that to Newsweek.

Andrew Sullivan links to a list of odd U.S. sex laws and quotes this one:

"In Connorsville, Wisconsin, it is illegal for a man to shoot off a gun when his female partner is having an orgasm."

It just so happens that I lived on a farm a half mile from Connorsville during the first eight months of my life. I kid you not.

Needless to say, I didn't become a legal expert in these matters during that short time, but I'm nearly certain this law doesn't exist. Connorsville is an unincorporated village, i.e. it has no mayor or town council to pass laws.

The 97 or so residents of Connorsville are subject to the jurisdiction of the town of New Haven. According to my legal counsel back home, New Haven has no ordinances against, um, discharging firearms.

A new Pew Research study on trends in online political news consumption shows that only 40 percent of all adults report getting news or information about the election via the Internet. Forty percent?

Imagine that. Some Americans aren’t hunched over a computer screen waiting for the next polling update on Real Clear Politics or cursing their Blackberry browser because it’s too slow pulling up THE WEEKLY STANDARD Blog.

But the report also suggests it won’t be long before even more Americans get their political news online. Consider this trend.

At this point in the 2004 election cycle, 31% of Americans had used the internet to get political news and information. The jump to 40% who say this now is even more striking because the population of online political users already exceeds the number of Americans who had used the internet for politics in the entire 2004 campaign. Moreover, the proportion of Americans getting political news and information on any given day in the spring of 2008 has more than doubled, compared with a similar period in 2004. In May and June of 2004, about 8% of adults were using the internet on a typical day to stay in touch with political developments. In April and May of this year, 17% of adults are getting political news online on a typical day.

Pew also notes the growth of two other online political modes--10 percent report using social networking sites for election activities and 35 percent watch online videos (such as on YouTube) about politics. Each of these figures has grown phenomenally.

So even if a majority of Americans don’t do what you’re doing right now, they will be in the next few years--or maybe even months.

In his response to a letter from ADL's Abe Foxman, Joe Klein doubles down on his claim that "Jewish neoconservatives" are pushing for a "a pre-emptive attack on Iran's nuclear program. Their gleeful, intellectual warmongering ... is nauseating."

Foxman responds here.

Here:

The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives--people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary--plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel.

Yup. It was Joe Lieberman and Commentary--not Pat Buchanan and, now, Joe Klein--who "raised the question of divided loyalties".

Jennifer Rubin and Max Boot respond to Klein over at Contentions.

I was too shocked and too sad yesterday to post anything about my friend Tim Russert's sad passing, but I'll try today. One thing that made Tim so special was that, while he was tough and knowing about politics, he was never cynical. He had heroes in his political life and saw politics as an essentially good thing with a need for heroes, as rare as they may be. Tim was also different in that he was once a very good operative himself, so he understood the culture of politics from the inside. Tim liked politicians and from his operative's experience he was able to view them in more dimensions than the average journalist. From that greater understanding came greater insight, which combined with his ferocious work ethic earned him such well-deserved respect. Tim will be missed in many ways. He was a great friend to many, a mentor to scores more, an inspiring father, and the beloved Knute Rockne of NBC's Washington bureau. He was also the tallest sentry standing guard at civility and seriousness' weary gate against the encroaching barbarity of cable TV excess. Hopefully that gate will hold. Tim would want it that way.

The Washington pundit world divides into roughly two kinds of people: those interested in themselves first, issues second, and other people, if at all, a distant third. The second, much smaller group is made up of people like Tim Russert, who reversed that order.

I don't typically get nervous before doing a television show, but I was quite anxious about my first appearance on Meet the Press. I had long admired Russert and, like virtually everyone who watched the show, found him incredibly intimidating. I told this to Tim's executive producer, Betsy Fischer. When I arrived, Tim greeted me warmly and engaged me in a 20-minute conversation, mostly about football and family. I assumed that Betsy had told him about my nerves, and that he had gone out of his way to make me comfortable, so I asked her about it. She had said nothing. It was just Tim being Tim.

After each show that features a political roundtable, Russert would sit with his guests for a catered breakfast. We chatted briefly about the show and politics, but spent most of the time talking about things that matter more--football and family.

Four years later, this past January, I was traveling with the McCain campaign in Florida when Betsy called last-minute to see if I could do Tim's cable show. I was on my way to the studio when I realized I didn't have a tie. I called one of the other panelists, Politico's Jonathan Martin, to see if he had an extra. He only had one. Not a big deal, I thought, it's cable.

Martin arrived in something of a panic. He had dropped his tie as he was exiting the cab that had brought him to the studio. I told him not to worry--"It's cable."

"It's Tim Russert," he responded. "You wear a tie for Russert."

NBC's political director, Chuck Todd, walked in as we were getting makeup. Tim followed moments later. I explained that I didn't have a tie because I was irresponsible and Martin didn't have a tie because of bad luck. Russert, who has made a living making guests on his show uncomfortable, went out of his way to make us feel comfortable.

"None of us will wear one," he said. "It's cable."

When you are Jennifer Loven of the Associated Press. George W. Bush yesterday went out of his way yesterday to emphasize his preference for a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis. But in this hilarious dispatch Loven explains that when Bush says "diplomacy" he's using code words for military action.

“Within the coded language of the U.S. attitude toward Iran, several small changes in Bush's rhetoric Wednesday added up to a difference. Three times, he called a diplomatic solution ‘my first choice,’ implying there are others. He said ‘we'll give diplomacy a chance to work,’ meaning it might not. He also offered, without even being asked a question about Iran, that ‘all options are on the table’ -- a longtime standard refrain, not heard as much lately, that neither confirms nor denies an intention to use military force.”

Remind me again why Americans don't trust journalists.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Patrick McIlheran (a conservative on the paper's editorial board) treats us to some appropriate mocking here.

Money quote:

So, the guy says diplomacy is his first choice. How sinister. He wants to give diplomats time to work, the warmonger. He says all options are on the table, and isn’t that closed-minded?

Maybe if Bush declares his intention to take out Iran's nuclear facilities Loven will explain that he's ready to talk. Nah.

Ari Fleischer, now a media consultant working for the team, thinks so.

"Remember when (Vice President Dick) Cheney was really unpopular in 2004? Bush was asked if he was going to dump him from the ticket. A head coach starts out 0-4; the questions become about firing the coach or benching the quarterback. It's a similar mentality. When something goes wrong, the press zeroes right in on it."

So, why is Fleischer a Dolphins fan?

"It's embarrassing, but I loved Flipper when I was a little kid," Fleischer said. "When there was a football team named the Dolphins, that was it."

Last Thursday, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) hosted its first blogger briefing, which featured both liberal and conservative online media outlets. CNAS is a relatively new kid in Washington’s crowded and competitive think tank market. The two key CNAS people, CEO Dr. Kurt Campbell and President Michèle Flournoy, both worked at CSIS before setting up their own think tank in February 2007.

Prior to this week’s blogger briefing I had thought of CNAS as a (moderate) Democratic-leaning think tank where top-notch national security experts are essentially “parked” before they move to the Pentagon in January 2009, 2013, or however long it may take before the administration switches from one party to the other.

During our discussion, however, the CNAS leadership was more than eager to stress its bipartisan credentials and analytical outlook. In particular, Dr. Campbell vigorously disputed the notion that CNAS would only be relevant in a potential Obama administration. “We have deep, deep ties to the McCain team, especially when it comes to issues such as climate change, Asia, and the health of our military.” Also, he was proud to point out that Admiral Mike Mullen had selected CNAS (over many other think tank competitors) for his first public address as the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in October 2007. This is quite impressive given that fact that CNAS did not even exist eight months earlier.

Michèle Flournoy, in turn, provided a quick overview of CNAS’s upcoming second annual conference--titled “Pivot Point: New Directions for American Security”--which will be held at the Willard hotel on Wednesday, June 11 (registration closed at 5:00 pm this Friday, but people can still register on-site). Here again, the speakers’ line-up--ranging from Bill Kristol and Senator Lindsay Graham to Madeleine Albright and John Podesta--underscores CNAS’s ambition to be a top-notch think tank that wants to go beyond the traditional Democrat-Republican divide. At the conference, CNAS will also formally release six new reports on issues like American grand strategy, Iran, Iraq, and Asia. as well as the national security implications of climate change.

In his column in yesterday’s New York Times, Tom Friedman waddled into the Obama “talk with our enemies” thicket:

The fact is, Mr. Obama was right to say that he would talk with any foe, if it would advance U.S. interests.

I swear, I hate to sound like a broken record, but that’s not at all what Obama said. For the umpteenth time, let’s go to the video tape:

QUESTION: In 1982, Anwar Sadat traveled to Israel, a trip that resulted in a peace agreement that has lasted ever since.

In the spirit of that type of bold leadership, would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?

OBAMA: I would.

Lord knows I’m not as sensitive to subtlety as Tom Friedman, but I don’t see anything about “advancing our interests” in either the text or the subtext above. Perhaps Obama’s actual pledge was so mind-blowingly idiotic, Friedman couldn’t make it compute and had to substitute a more sensible pledge in its place.

Of course, what Friedman did here is erect an extremely clumsy straw man. Even working at Neocon central, I’ve never heard anyone say we should avoid talking to other nations, even our enemies, when it’s in our interest to do so. You’d have to be pretty dense to believe otherwise.

The point of difference is determining when it’s in our interests to talk with our enemies. And this is where Barack Obama occupies a fringe so lunatic that Tom Friedman refuses to acknowledge it. Obama apparently believes that it is always in our interests for an American president to engage in shuttle diplomacy with our malefactors.

Now, it may just be that Obama believes that it’s only in our interests to have such meetings when a golden throated orator such as himself is representing us. After all, his self regard is becoming legendary. Or he may believe that even John McCain should catch the first flight to Pyongyang after his Inaugural to begin “bridging the gap” with Kim Jong Il. Like so many of Obama’s positions on serious issues, his stance here is half-baked and still “evolving.”

Someone here should say something about the Scott McClellan’s Bush-bashing book that has turned out to be the rage of the day in the blogosphere. Having drawn the short straw, the task falls to me.

First reaction: Who cares?

Second reaction: Knowing a little about how the publishing industry works, McClellan’s memoirs would probably only have been a viable project if he took the tack that he did. McClellan could hardly write a serious book about the Bush administration. There were many more qualified hands for that job, e.g. Douglas Feith. More to the point, let’s face it – no one would have read or cared about the reminiscences of a charmless and charisma-deprived former press secretary unless there was a hook.

So McClellan’s hook had to be that he has seen the light since leaving the dark shadow of the president he served. Unfortunately for McClellan, his bid for a “strange new respect” is off to a predictably stumbling start. Daily Kos front pager “Bill in Portland Maine” wrote this morning:

MASSIVE JEERS to Scott McClellan. The latest former Bush lapdog---he was press secretary from '03 to '06---to come out of the woodwork has several juicy nuggets in his hot-off-the-presses tell-all book. Bottom line: he confirms everything that we dirty hippie bloggers were screaming about at the top of our lungs, but which the traditional media ignored because...well, because Scott McClellan stood at his little White House podium and denied it all, lying out of his fat little elitist face as the stenographers printed his crap without scrutiny.

Once again, we come face to face with a White House official who could've done the right thing...but instead decided that the lives of American troops, Iraqi civilians, Katrina victims, and a network of covert CIA operatives were worth less than the luster of his master's lapel pin. When our country needed him to tell it straight, he hid behind propaganda and spin and bogus talking points and outright bamboozlement

As I intimated up top, I don’t care much about Scott McClellan and never have. My indifference for the man is boundless. But the just-concluded McClellan saga provides some valuable information regarding the Bush White House. For too long, the president retained lackeys who were poor at their jobs because he prized loyalty. Quite frankly, after seeing McClellan maladroitly dispense of his press secretary responsibilities for a few years, it’s hard to imagine what he could possibly have brought to the table other than the promise of loyalty. Now that the tell-all books are beginning to flow, the White House’s management strategy is looking ever more dubious.

Hopefully both of the president’s potential successors are paying attention.

Ask fifty Washington reporters for an assessment of Scott McClellan and forty-nine of them will give you some version of this: He's a nice guy who was in way over his head. (Most of them will be tougher in their analysis of his intellect.)

Given the imminent release of McClellan's "surprisingly scathing" book about the Bush administration, in the words of super-reporter Mike Allen, expect him to be praised as insightful and wise beyond his years in the coming weeks.

Some time last week, the New York Times’ Frank Rich scored tickets to see the highly lauded revival of "South Pacific" that’s currently playing on Broadway. Being the Times’ former theatre critic before he turned his all-knowing eye to politics, this must have been quite the trick. Everyone loves the show, and Rich did too. But if you think Rich skipped out of the theatre humming “Some Enchanted Evening,” you simply don’t know Frank Rich.

(The show) increases our admiration for the selflessness of Americans fighting in Iraq. They, unlike their counterparts in World War II, do their duty despite answering to a commander in chief who has been both reckless and narcissistic. You can’t watch “South Pacific” without meditating on their sacrifices for this blunderer, whose wife last year claimed that “no one suffers more” over Iraq than she and her husband do.

While it’s always nice to see Rich and his ilk declare solidarity with the troops even as they cheer their every setback and ignore or more often deny their progress, I still take strong issue with the assertion that “you can’t watch” the "South Pacific" revival without working yourself into a righteous rage over George W. Bush. I’m so confident that Rich's assertion is incorrect, I’ll even be willing to put it to the test if someone gives me tickets. (Orchestra seats please, but not too close.) Indeed, I’d even wager that the show is a hit because theatre-goers enjoy themselves while watching it, and not because the show drives them into an angry lather over current events.

You have to wonder what will become of Frank Rich when George W. Bush departs from the stage in eight short months. Have the events of the past seven years so scarred Rich that he’ll spend the rest of his career making strained analogies between entertainment vehicles and this particular president, even after Bush has devoted himself to clearing brush in Crawford full time?

This latest column proves how Frank Rich truly has become the mental patient from an old joke: A guy walks into a psychiatrist’s office, and the psychiatrist begins showing the guy Rorschach images and asking the patient what he sees. To each image of blots and scribbles, the guy responds, “Two people making love.” After this happens a dozen or so times, the doctor pronounces, “I’ve diagnosed your problem. You’re obsessed with sex.” The guy responds, “Me? You’re the one who kept showing me all those dirty pictures!”

Think how well the joke still works if you substitute “Frank Rich” for “the guy” and “George W. Bush” for “two people making love.” The punch line could be, “You’re the one who keeps showing me all those pictures of the worst president ever! The blunderer! The way he pranced on an aircraft carrier…”

The only problem is the punch line would probably go on for hours.

A most predictable editorial:

Mr. Bush — and, to his great discredit, Senator John McCain — have argued against a better G.I. Bill, for the worst reasons. They would prefer that college benefits for service members remain just mediocre enough that people in uniform are more likely to stay put.

They have seized on a prediction by the Congressional Budget Office that new, better benefits would decrease re-enlistments by 16 percent, which sounds ominous if you are trying — as Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain are — to defend a never-ending war at a time when extended tours of duty have sapped morale and strained recruiting to the breaking point.

Their reasoning is flawed since the C.B.O. has also predicted that the bill would offset the re-enlistment decline by increasing new recruits — by 16 percent.

Even for the editors at the New York Times this is amazingly, and willfully misleading. They do not even acknowledge the existence of an alternative (McCain-Graham) GI Bill, let alone examine the substantive arguments in favor of it. Reihan offered a more even-handed approach in assessing the two bills (it helps that he mentioned the existence of the other bill):

Overall, the Graham-Burr-McCain approach seems more likely to yield an effective fighting force composed of women and men interested in making a long-term commitment. The Webb bill, in contrast, could lead to more college-bound Americans signing up, but it will also probably mean a higher number will leave the military once they reach the maximum benefit level. It's no surprise that McCain, who has a shot at being commander in chief, would rather not see reenlistment rates plummet. Webb, in contrast, who is always fighting the war over the war, is far less likely to have a philosophical objection to making wars like our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan far more expensive to fight.

The New York Times, committed as it is to fighting no wars at all, does not even acknowledge the potentially deleterious effect the Webb bill would have on the capacity of the U.S. military to fight, opting instead to focus purely on the numbers of new recruits versus those who opt out in favor of added benefits, i.e. the size of the force. If the priority is to win the war in Iraq, and the wider war on terror, than the effect of losing 16 percent of your force only to have them replaced by new recruits is ominous. That's not to say there isn't a strong case for Webb's GI Bill, but that case doesn't include making Bush and McCain out to be warmongers indifferent to the concerns of the troops.

Andrew Sullivan links this report from Iran's Press TV:

Iraq's most revered Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has strongly objected to a 'security accord' between the US and Iraq.

The Grand Ayatollah has reiterated that he would not allow Iraq to sign such a deal with "the US occupiers" as long as he was alive, a source close to Ayatollah Sistani said.

The source added the Grand Ayatollah had voiced his strong objection to the deal during a meeting with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in the holy city of Najaf on Thursday.

Other important news from Press TV this week includes an essay by Dr Nicholas Kollerstrom:

In his essay, Dr Nicholas Kollerstrom argues that the alleged massacre of Jewish people by gassing during World War II was scientifically impossible.

It's troubling that Obama's signature foreign policy issue is the promise of face to face meetings with Iran's holocaust denying leader. That his cheerleader in chief in the blogosphere would link wholly unsubstantiated propaganda from Iran's English-language, holocaust-denying website in order to make the case for that foreign policy doesn't instill a lot of confidence either.

HT: Hot Air Headlines

HT: the Page

For political junkies, it may be a finding against interest, but this recent Pew report demonstrates that the content of cable news coverage and Americans’ news interest are out of sync. Media is heavily focused on the 2008 presidential race, devoting nearly 40% of its total coverage to this topic in mid-May. During the same period of time, however, one out of three (31%) Americans said gas prices were their greatest news interest, followed by information about the recent earthquakes in China (22%).

As Pew notes, obsession with politics is most pronounced on the cable side of the media business:

There were dramatic differences in coverage across media sectors last week. Cable TV news focused on the campaign almost to the exclusion of other top news stories. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism's (PEJ) News Coverage Index, national cable TV news outlets devoted 74% of their coverage last week to the campaign and only 4% to the Chinese earthquake. By contrast, network TV news and national newspapers split their coverage about equally between these two stories.

Moreover, the recent heavy focus on politics among cable outlets is not a new phenomenon:

Throughout the year, cable news has consistently devoted more coverage to the presidential campaign than have other news sources. And cable news coverage of the campaign has typically exceeded the public's interest in the election.

And, while cable news coverage of the presidential campaign has increased in the past month, according to Pew, public interest in the campaign is well off its high:

Interest in the campaign declined from 30% the previous week, and is down substantially from earlier in the campaign. In mid-February (Feb. 11-17), 46% cited the presidential campaign as their top news story, more than double the percentage last week.

Yet despite the surplus of political coverage, a news deficit still exists when it comes to Republicans, unless of course it’s about the McCain campaign’s relationship to lobbyists. Despite some important speeches from the presumptive nominee about his plans as president, Pew reports this:

John McCain continues to lag behind Obama and Clinton in terms of media coverage and public visibility. While news coverage of McCain was up significantly last week, only a small minority of Americans (17%) heard a lot about McCain's speech outlining his plans for his presidency, including his prediction that most American troops will be withdrawn from Iraq by 2013. Some 45% heard a little about the speech and 37% heard nothing at all. Only 22% of Republicans heard a lot about the speech.

I suppose this all makes sense. After all, if Keith Olberman actually had to explain the intricacies of why gas price have gone up -- instead of taking cheap shots at President Bush or smothering Barack Omama with political wet kisses -- he might have to do some homework.

On May 10, New York Times reporter Larry Rohter offered this analysis of the back and forth over Obama pledge to meet with Ahmadinejad:

But important nuances appear to have been lost in the partisan salvos, particularly on Mr. McCain’s side. An examination of Mr. Obama’s numerous public statements on the subjects indicates that he has consistently condemned Hamas as a “terrorist organization,” has not sought the group’s support and does not advocate immediate, direct or unconditional negotiations with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president.

The "examination" apparently didn't extend to debate transcripts, and Rohter has since acknowledged his error in a correction posted just six days later:

An article on Saturday about Senator John McCain’s criticism of Senator Barack Obama’s Middle East policy incompletely described Mr. Obama’s position on negotiating with the leaders of countries, including Iran, with which the United States currently has little contact. While Mr. Obama and his aides have indeed described various conditions and limitations on such negotiations, Mr. Obama himself, in a Democratic debate in July 2007, also said he would be willing "to meet separately, without precondition" with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.

"Incompletely described." What a lovely euphemism for shoddy, biased reporting. Of course, the correction is all the more interesting as Obama is currently making the case that there is no distance between himself and his aides on this issue. Meanwhile, ABC reports today on Obama's "evolving" position on talks with A'jad. And somewhere Joe Klein is still insisting that Obama never said he'd meet with Ahmadinejad--the Obama campaign says so itself!

HT: Ben Smith

No one has commented here yet on the New Yorker article declaring conservatism dead. My weak stomach makes mining liberal blogs unappealing, but I’m sure there are plenty of posts applauding this obit. But before the left gets too excited, a few words: even if conservatism is dead, it’s not at all clear liberalism is alive. Americans have not elected an openly liberal president since Lyndon Johnson, who took office under politically sympathetic circumstance and got reelected based on his support for the Vietnam War (not Great Society). There were also certain fears that conservative forebear Barry Goldwater would trigger a nuclear war.

At the very end of the article, it becomes apparent how premature this protracted obituary is when author George Packer concedes John McCain might still get elected president. He’s right because conservatism still has a pulse. A McCain presidency could usher in a new Republican “brand” that emphasizes strong government (as opposed to big or limited government) and American greatness. Voters long to hear that Fareed Zakaria is wrong (whether or not he is), and that their kids will not be the last to call America the greatest nation in the world. Conservatives still have the opportunity to show that patriotism can be an enlightened sentiment, espoused with elegance and wit.

In communicating this message of American exceptionalism, Republicans can continue to capitalize on popular resentment for liberal academia. Packer’s various assertions about the role of college education in creating a Democratic majority are utterly misguided. Although more people are going to college, the number of Ivy League educated people has remained about the same. More college education doesn’t necessarily translate into more liberal zombies to rep Obama’s po-mo campaign. Not everyone is going to college to study liberal arts, and even those who do are not necessarily entrusting the task to Harvard. Rather, an increasingly large subset are matriculating at religious private colleges that stress conservative values.

Jim VandeHei and Josh Kraushaar report that "the GOP is heading into the 2008 election without a single minority candidate with a plausible chance of winning a campaign for the House, the Senate or governor." First, note the weasel words: "plausible chance of winning." That's meant to exclude candidates like Allen West. Why didn't VandeHei and Kraushaar simply write: "The five to ten GOP candidates who have a shot of winning Democratic seats are white"? Well, that's not provocative enough to make it up on Drudge, now is it?

Also, VandeHei and Kraushaar ask: "So who's to blame for this diversity deficit?" They cite Jack Kemp, who says it's due to a "pitiful" recruitment effort, and a former black GOP candidate, who says it's because the GOP is broke. Good points. But VandeHei and Kraushaar never mention the vile attacks by liberals upon GOP minority candidates. For example, Democrats darkened Bobby Jindal's skin in a 2003 election, and even after his victory, he still endures accusations of "being a 'potato': brown on the outside, white on the inside," as the Washington Post reported.

And who can forget the case of 2006 Maryland Senate candidate, Lt. Gov. Michael Steele? The Washington Times reported: "attacks against the first black man to win a statewide election in Maryland include pelting him with Oreo cookies during a campaign appearance, calling him an 'Uncle Tom' and depicting him as a black-faced minstrel on a liberal Web log."

So Howard Dean's got a pretty good racket. First, slam the GOP as a "white Christian party." Then ruthlessly attack GOP minority candidates for betraying "their people." When the GOP fails to recruit a decent number of minority candidates, sit back, relax, and wait for the mainstream media to publicize your talking points.

HT: BuzzFeed

Sunday night, in advance of the theatrical release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the Sci Fi Channel aired its special, Mystery of the Crystal Skulls, hosted by NBC’s Lester Holt. Not knowing much about this occult subject (unlike, say, Big Foot or the Amityville Horror), I thought I would check it out.

But I was tuning out after the first 15 minutes. Not only did the interview subjects seem way out there (you can always tell by the hairstyles), but one particular segment had me flipping over to a rerun of After Hours with Daniel Boulud: Some of the show’s “experts” claim the Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012. As Sci Fi’s website explains, “if we wish to comprehend their deepest mysteries, we must hurry. According to the prophecy, only by reuniting all or nearly all of the 13 crystal skulls can humankind unlock secrets that will allow us to avoid the apocalypse predicted by the ancient Mayan calendar.... The countdown for the salvation of the human race has begun.”

So why an apocalypse? Is a meteor on its way to Earth? Not quite. While our doomsday is being explained in a voiceover, what we see onscreen is a montage of man-made pollution including smokestacks and, ever so briefly, the image of American troops (I assume, by their desert fatigues, in Iraq). Yes, if we refuse to drive hybrids and don’t use CFLs, and if we remain in Iraq, the world will come to an end.

In retrospect, Senator McCain should have included in his speech last week finding those crystal skulls before his term expires. He’d win in a landslide.

W.C. Fields had a joke about the closing of bars on Election Day: "That’s taking democracy too far!" Sen. Joe Lieberman rightfully feels the same way about al Qaeda and its newest recruiting tool, now available as close as your child’s bedroom:

Searches on YouTube return dozens of videos branded with an icon or logo identifying the videos as the work of one of these Islamist terrorist organizations. A great majority of these videos document horrific attacks on American soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan. Others provide weapons training, speeches by al-Qaeda leadership, and general material intended to radicalize potential recruits. […]

[YouTube] guidelines state that “[g]raphic or gratuitous violence is not allowed. If your video shows someone getting hurt, attacked, or humiliated, don’t post it.” Many of the videos produced by one of the production arms of al-Qaeda show attacks on U.S. forces in which American soldiers are injured and, in some cases, killed. Nevertheless, those videos remain available for viewing on YouTube. At the same time, the guidelines do not prohibit the posting of content that can be readily identified as produced by al-Qaeda or another [Foreign Terrorist Cell].

YouTube had no problem censoring problematic material when it was launched in China. Nor does it hesitate to remove copyrighted music, movie or TV clips when requested to do so. But al Qaeda’s footage of American soldiers getting killed falls under the heading of, what--job recruitment tools? Home movies?

I guess the logo in the corner of the screen--which means, "I’m Osama bin Laden and I approved this message"--cleans up any potential copyright problem.

Men's Fitness now has him ranked as one of the 25 "fittest guys" in America. Along with, you know, Tiger Woods, Wladimir Klitschko, Brady Quinn, and assorted other professional athletes and dudes with 5 percent body fat.

Is there anything he can't do?

See Jonathan Chait rant.

On Friday I noted this column by Bruce Ramsey in the Seattle Times. Rather than rebuke the president for his speech in Israel comparing those who sought to appease Hitler with those who would now appease terrorist groups and their sponsors, Ramsey defended Chamberlain's appeasement outright:

What Hitler was demanding was not unreasonable. He wanted the German-speaking areas of Europe under German authority. He had just annexed Austria, which was German-speaking, without bloodshed. There were two more small pieces of Germanic territory: the free city of Danzig and the Sudetenland, a border area of what is now the Czech Republic.

Ramsey has since written a follow-up post in which he laments that his reinterpretation of the events at Munich "inflamed a few hundred people." He also complains about the "Internet jeering section that considers [his] a weakling's argument." Yet, in a display of unabashed weakness, he also appeased his critics by rewriting the offending paragraph. His editors do not note the change, but the piece now reads:

The narrative we're given about Munich is entirely in hindsight. We know what kind of man Hitler was, and that he started World War II in Europe. But in 1938 people knew a lot less. What Hitler was demanding at Munich was not unreasonable as a national claim (though he was making it in a last-minute, unreasonable way.) Germany's claim was that the areas of Europe that spoke German and thought of themselves as German be under German authority. In September 1938 the principal remaining area was the Sudetenland.

It would seem there's a built-in advantage to arguing against those who favor appeasement--they'll roll over for anybody. Hitler, Ahmadinejad, right-wing bloggers, it doesn't matter. Just make your demands and Ramsey stands ready to submit.

HT: AoS

Here's the transcript:

CNN'S DANA BASH: "You remember these interviews were done shortly after Hamas won the Palestinian elections. Lou, the McCain campaign just in the past couple of hours, found a link to more of Jamie Rubin's interview from back then. In it, I'll read you a quote from the rest of or at least more of the interview, In that quote Sen. McCain says, 'I think part of the relationship will be dictated by how Hamas acts, not how the United States acts.' Now the McCain campaign, as you can image, says that this is proof that Senator McCain has been consistent all along, and I should tell you that CNN asked Jamie Rubin earlier today for the rest of the interview or at least for a transcript and he said he didn't have it. He said he only had this particular quote he said that was e-mailed to him."

CNN'S LOU DOBBS: "Well that seems, certainly to, as you report, to substantiate precisely what Senator McCain is saying."

Yes, it does seem to substantiate precisely what Senator McCain is saying. Rubin initially claimed that McCain "was ready to do business with a Hamas-led government." But the full transcript shows that any business with Hamas was contingent on Hamas meeting certain conditions, i.e. renouncing violence and recognizing Israel's right to exist. This is no different than his position today.

Rubin now offers a pathetic defense of his smear at the Huffington Post, complete with the exculpatory response from McCain that engagement would depend on Hamas, not the United States. But does anyone believe that he had not seen the full transcript before writing his piece in the Post? Or that the paper's editors would have allowed him to publish this smear if they'd seen the full transcript themselves? The Post got hoodwinked, and they must be furious. It's hard to imagine they don't rebuke Rubin with a prominent correction in tomorrow's paper.

The GI Film Festival in Washington, DC:

The GI Film Festival (GIFF), a 501 c(3) non-profit organization, is the first film festival in the nation to exclusively celebrate the successes and sacrifices of the American military through the medium of film. The four-day festival will be held on May 14-18, 2008 in Washington DC.

The GIFF will present films from new and established international and domestic filmmakers that honor the heroic stories of the American Armed Forces and the worldwide struggle for freedom and liberty. Some of the films screened will be fan favorites. Others will be screened for the first time. All will in some way express the courage and selflessness of our fighting men and women and the value of their work.

The 2008 festival is particularly relevant, given the long chain of anti-military movies that tanked at the box office this past year. Organizers are screening an impressive list of films that offer a somewhat different view of the American GI and the United States in general. As far as the latter goes, I'm particularly interested in The World Without Us, a short alternate reality film involving a neo-isolationist US President (Ron Paul maybe?) who retreats to our pre-World War II foreign policy. Here's the trailer:

The festival extends to Sunday. You can buy tickets here

The New York Times Magazine is running a long profile by political reporter Matt Bai on John McCain’s foreign policy vision this weekend. Although the story of McCain’s foreign policy expertise and record is sufficiently sterling that even the Times has a hard time sliming him, it’s not for lack of trying.

In particular, the article’s treatment of the surge is a real piece of work. Bai declares that the surge is “unpopular with a lot of military leaders”--a blanket assertion that then wafts away. He also declares the Iraqi security forces a failure, citing as his single piece of evidence that “some 1,000 Iraqi troops deserted during a crucial battle in Basra.” (Apparently, he didn’t see the front page of his paper on Monday, which reported that “forces loyal to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al Maliki” have since “largely quieted the city, to the initial surprise and growing delight of many inhabitants,” and that “the principal factor for improvement that people in Basra cite is the deployment of 33,000 members of the Iraqi security forces.” Whoops.)

Against these authoritative generalities on the part of the author, McCain is the only source Bai cites to defend or explain the surge. In his 8,000-plus word magnum opus, Bai never gets around to mentioning, for instance, the 90-plus percent reduction in violence in Baghdad the surge brought about, or its success at routing al Qaeda in Iraq from parts of the country that had once been declared “lost” to the jihadists.

These are not exactly minor details, given that it was in no small measure such hard proof of the surge’s success that propelled John McCain to the Republican nomination, vindicating his national security acumen and illustrating precisely why he is qualified to be the next commander-in-chief--subjects that a reporter, writing a profile of John McCain’s foreign policy vision, might want to mention.

Bai’s most despicable little dig, though, comes in the form of the following passive aggressive parenthetical, as McCain explains America’s progress against al Qaeda in Iraq:

“Is it long and hard and tough? Yes,” McCain told me. “Has Al Qaeda been beaten? No, but they certainly have been diminished.” (To the dismay of many of his critics, McCain often uses “Al Qaeda” as a shorthand for the Iraqi insurgent group that calls itself Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.)

Ah yes, the famed “Iraqi insurgent group” that just happens to “call itself Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia”! This, of course, would also be the same “Iraqi insurgent group” that is led by non-Iraqi foreign fighters; that has pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden; that receives direction and support from Ayman al Zawahiri and other al Qaeda senior leadership; and that--according to a recent National Intelligence Estimate--is al Qaeda central’s “most capable affiliate” and “the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack the Homeland.”

It’s easy to see how “dismayed” John McCain’s critics must be at him suggesting some sort of close relationship between the groups! One can only wonder who, exactly, John McCain might have picked up this dangerous and deeply misinformed “shorthand” from. One possibility…

"As you can see, we've reduced considerably the areas in which Al Qaida enjoys support and sanctuary, though clearly there is more to be done. Having noted that progress, Al Qaida is still capable of lethal attacks." –General David Petraeus, testifying before Senate Armed Services Committee on April 8, 2008

Over at Real Clear Politics, Tom Coburn responds to Michael Gerson's "contemptuous and factually loose" Washington Post column that smears the "Coburn seven" for not caring about AIDS victims enough:

Part of Gerson's moral outrage is focused on my controversial stance that AIDS treatment dollars be spent on treatment. I want to preserve PEPFAR's original formula that sends at least 55 percent of all dollars to AIDS treatment so widows and orphans and actual patients, not program officers and consultants, will be the primary beneficiaries of the program. This formula is made all the more important because the new authorization calls for a three-fold increase in funding from $15 billion over five years to $50 billion over five years. Moreover, this smart and well-designed policy, which Gerson once supported but now scorns, is a major reason why PEPFAR has been a Marshall Plan-like response, rather than a Katrina-like response, to the AIDS crisis in Africa.

In a review of Gerson's book, Matthew Continetti thoroughly diagnosed the problem with Gersonism:

In Heroic Conservatism, Gerson specifically targets "libertarian indifference to the poor." But this is a caricature. I know a few libertarians, and none of them are indifferent to poverty. They just think economic growth and self-reliance are more effective than the federal government at lifting families out of destitution. Thinking so does not make them unvirtuous people, and it doesn't strengthen public debate to suggest as much.

What makes Gerson's attacks all the more infuriating is that he has a double standard for fiscal conservatives and social liberals. See, for example, this Gerson column criticizing Obama's position on abortion. Gerson cites Obama's support for partial-birth abortion and opposition to a bill that would protect "born-alive" infants who survive attempted abortions. He calls Obama's position "extreme" but never attacks Obama's motivations. In fact, Obama can redeem himself by spending taxpayer money on programs to support adoption, contraception, etc. (Never mind that Obama favors taxpayer funding of abortion, which would increase the abortion rate far beyond what these programs could do to lower it.)

Like the bizarre allegation of "libertarian indifference to the poor," Gerson accuses Coburn of being "indifferent to human suffering." Surely he isn't, and it doesn't strengthen public debate to suggest as much.

Edward N. Luttwak is one of the foremost strategic thinkers of our time, a far-sighted man given to challenging conventional wisdom in a manner guaranteed both to get public attention and generate controversy. This one-time enfant terrible of strategic analysis, author of such classic works as Coup d'Etat, A Practical Handbook, Grand Strategy of the Soviet Union, The Pentagon and the Art of War, and his masterwork, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace, has a penchant for seeing things that others miss, and pointing this out with such logic and clarity that, in retrospect, it seems strikingly obvious.

Thus, when the Soviet Union collapsed and Francis Fukuyama was declaring the End of History, and Thomas Friedman was discovering that The World is Flat, Luttwak wrote the book Turbocapitalism (1999) in which he pointed out that economic globalization, while bringing a multiplicity of benefits to many people around the world, has not been an unalloyed good, and was creating problems of social alienation, resentment and radicalization that had the potential to stir ethnic and religious conflict around the world. But of course!

By way of disclosure, Edward Luttwak has been a friend and mentor to me; he was my teacher at Georgetown University, he gave me my first real job, and once upon a time, we wrote a book together. That does not mean, however, that we are attached at the hip. We have had some pretty furious disagreements, most notably about the First Gulf War. I did not buy into a lot of his theories on "geo-economics" as presented in Turbocaptialism. More recently, I have had cause to disagree with a number of his editorials and articles related to the Middle East and the ongoing war on terrorism. But whether I agree or disagree, when Edward Luttwak speaks, I pay attention, because what he has to say is always thought provoking and frequently brilliant.

Luttwak stirred up a tempest in a teapot with his recent op-ed in the New York Times, provocatively entitled "President Apostate?" Luttwak writes that Barak Obama, running as a charismatic candidate, has generated in his supporters some very high expectations which he may have problems in meeting. "A case in point," writes Luttwak, "is the oft-made claim that an Obama presidency would be welcomed by the Muslim world." It is said that just as Obama's being "half African" stirs up enthusiasm in that region, so his being "half Muslim" will win over people in the Muslim world. But Luttwak rightly points out that in Islamic eyes, there is no such thing as "half Muslim"--one either is or is not. One's status as a Muslim is determined either by conversion or by birth, and under Islamic law, reflected in the civil law of most Islamic countries, a child automatically receives the religion of his father. Thus, Obama's father being a Muslim automatically makes Obama a Muslim according to Islamic law.

That Obama's father later abandoned Islam, and that Obama from his youth was raised as a Christian, holds no water under Islamic law. Once a Muslim, always a Muslim. Those who abandon the faith are, as Luttwak correctly points out, apostates (Arabic irtidad). All of the major schools of Islamic jurisprudence are unanimous in determining that under Sharia, a man who abandons Islam in word or deed should be punished by death (on the fate of a female apostate, there is a division of opinion, some jurisprudents opting for death, others for imprisonment). While only a few Islamic countries have embedded this in their civil law, in most countries the civil law does not protect freedom of conscience, and the civil authorities have, in general, not gone out of their way to protect people who convert from Islam to other faiths.

The cover story in this week's issue of Newsweek includes this bit of objective analysis:

The Republican Party has been successfully scaring voters since 1968, when Richard Nixon built a Silent Majority out of lower- and middle-class folks frightened or disturbed by hippies and student radicals and blacks rioting in the inner cities. The 2008 race may turn on which party will win the lower- and middle-class whites in industrial and border states—the Democrats' base from the New Deal to the 1960s, but "Reagan Democrats" in most presidential elections since then. It is a sure bet that the GOP will try to paint Obama as "the other"—as a haughty black intellectual who has Muslim roots (Obama is a Christian) and hangs around with America-haters.

Not surprisingly, the McCain folks are unhappy with the piece, and Mark Salter has responded with a letter to the editor that can be seen here. Salter says that any suggestion the McCain campaign will run on the issue of "race and the false charge that [Obama] is a Muslim is scurrilous." He goes on:

Without a trace of skepticism, your reporters embraced the primary communications strategy the Obama campaign intends to follow: any criticism of their candidate is a below the belt, Republican attack machine distortion that should discredit the authors. And any attempt by our campaign to counter that suggestion will be dismissed as a rant.

It's worth reading the whole thing. It's also worth noting what Salter does not say. After furiously denying that the campaign will make an issue out of Obama's race or religion, Salter makes no mention of whether hanging around with America-haters is fair game. But the GOP won't need to "paint" anything to make that case. Obama pal William Ayres hated America enough to wage his own little war against the military, for which he is still unrepentant, and was photographed proudly stomping on the flag long after the two had become friends. And even Obama concedes that Rev. Wright is a legitimate issue. If these realtionships are to be considered out of bounds by the press, then as Salter writes, "every issue that raises doubts about his policy views and judgment is part of a smear campaign." That's just spitting into the wind though.

New York Times reporter Larry Rohter wrote yesterday:

But important nuances appear to have been lost in the partisan salvos, particularly on Mr. McCain’s side. An examination of Mr. Obama’s numerous public statements on the subjects indicates that he has consistently condemned Hamas as a “terrorist organization,” has not sought the group’s support and does not advocate immediate, direct or unconditional negotiations with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president.

As we've noted, Obama has made numerous public statements advocating immediate, direct and unconditional negotiations with Ahmadinejad--the man who last week honored Israel's 60th anniversary by calling the Jewish state a "stinking corpse." But more than that, his own website states:

Obama is the only major candidate who supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions.

Did Rohter's examination of Obama's public statements not extend to debate transcripts or a Google search of the candidate's website? Obama's call for direct talks with Iran at the presidential level and without precondition is at the very core of his foreign policy approach, and yet somehow this fact was lost in the partisan salvo that is Rohter's piece.

HT: Hot Air

John McCain did the Daily Show last night, and acquitted himself quite well. While performing decently in such venues has become an important part of our distended presidential selection process, it's not the be-all-and-end-all. If it were, we could just be done with everything and appoint Mike Huckabee Supreme Leader for Life.

Over at Hot Air, Allah noted that Stewart went easy on McCain and commented, “To my continued surprise, Perino, Tony Snow, and now even the GOP nominee were treated to 10 minutes of schmoozing with only one or two glancing blows mixed in.” There's a simple reason for this phenomenon, and it ties in with the whole Democrats-appearing-on Fox controversy of last week.

If you’re running a radio or TV show and invite a guest on, you have to be civil or that guest and like-minded guests will never return to your show. So even if being a courteous host isn't in your nature, you still bend over backwards to be nice when someone with differing views winds up on your set.

I can only think of one incident where a host really went after someone he differed with. That was when my friend and mentor, radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt (who I regularly guest-host for), interviewed Tom Tancredo, and suggested that the McCain/Kennedy immigration bill should in fact be known as McCain/Kennedy/Tancredo because Tancredo's ruinous and inflexible actions had brought McCain/Kennedy into being. Tancredo didn't much care for that suggestion, and the conversation got a bit heated. Some time after the interview, Tancredo vowed to avoid the Hewitt Show for the rest of the campaign. In case you’re wondering, the Hewitt Show survived in spite of a dire case of Tancredo deprivation.

Still, the lesson to be learned from a broadcasting perspective is that if you don't bend over backwards to be nice to people you oppose, it will be one and done - they won't come back for a second appearance if they deem the first one unsatisfactory. You may have noticed that when Bill O’Reilly has a major public personality as a guest with whom he has serious philosophical disagreements, he turns into a big pussycat whether the celeb in question is Ben Affleck, Rosie O’Donnell or Hillary Clinton. Other big named potential guests (even one that rhymes with Shmobama) could look at the experience of such predecessors and conclude that they would get a fair shot in the No Spin Zone.

That's what made the controversy over the Democrats appearing on Fox News so idiotic. Brit Hume may or may not be a conservative, but the relevant fact is that he's a fair newsman. I'm quite certain that Hume has never done anything that triggered outrage from the left like George Stephanopoulos’s conduct of the last Clinton/Obama debate did. Chris Wallace also plays it straight, and a Howard Dean-type knows that he can appear on Fox News Sunday and get a fair shot.

To get back to where we started, John Stewart obviously enjoys chatting with relevant newsmakers. Personally, I think it enriches his show (although I think the Colbert Report remains much funnier). If Stewart started giving his conservative guests rough treatment or sought to embarrass them, they would stop appearing.

Again, McCain did well last night. He should go back as often as Stewart will have him.

Philip Bobbitt, author of The Shield of Achilles, has just written a new book, Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century. In it, he talks of the need to rethink our approach to the war on terror, our concept of conventional warfare, and our understanding of victory (i.e., the Geneva Conventions need to be rewritten).

Not that I’ve read the book yet--Bobbitt was the featured speaker at a luncheon sponsored by the Hoover Institution and elaborated on his latest work. He points out the problem of the way we view terrorism as opposed to the way Europeans see it: They think in terms of the IRA, ETA, and the RAF, as opposed to viewing the problem as they once did the barbarians who sacked cities throughout Europe over the centuries or even the pirates of the Caribbean who captured Panama in 1602. (Ah yes, the Curse of the Black Pearl!)

Bobbitt refutes many commonly accepted notions, such as one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. “We have a right to put our children on a bus without fear of interdiction or violence. Those who commit such violence are terrorists.”

Why, asked a journalist, has there not been an attack on American soil since September 11? According to Bobbitt, the strategy has changed. Because of how “spectacular” the attacks were on 9/11, other acts have terror such as subway bombings are no longer seen by the terrorists as good enough. In addition, we tend to underestimate the value in capturing a member of a terrorist cell. If one is held captive, says Bobbitt, the other members assume the prisoner is talking and thus, the cell breaks up. Luck plays an important role as well and we’ve been fortunate to foil certain plots ahead of time. On the other hand, he is quick to remind us that seven years may seem a long time but it isn’t. Terrorists waited patiently for eight years to relaunch an attack on the World Trade Center.

With regard to torture, the author refused to rule it out McCain-style. There are, he said, too many instances where controversial extraction techniques have resulted in the prevention of terrorism.

Now in case you are wondering, Bobbitt is a Democrat who worked for the Clinton administration, though he seemed optimistic that both Obama and McCain would be more than able to handle the challenges of securing the nation.

Not that this was a focal point, but Bobbitt states that the number of Americans killed because of terrorism from the 1960s to today is comparable to victims of lightning strikes and death by allergic reactions to peanuts.

I’ve said this before and I will say it again: We need to have a War on Peanuts.

Robert F. Worth writes in the New York Times:

"Kuwait used to be No. 1 in the economy, in politics, in sports, in culture, in everything," [Ali al-Rashed] said, his voice floating out in the warm evening air to hundreds of potential voters seated on white damask-lined chairs. "What happened?"

It is a question many people are asking as this tiny, oil-rich nation of 2.6 million people approaches its latest round of elections. And the unlikely answer being whispered around, both here and in neighboring countries on the Persian Gulf: too much democracy.

Of course, Kuwait’s neighbors include Iraq (a democracy, whether the Times likes it or not--and get this quote: "There are Arab republics--in Yemen, Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Iraq and Tunisia--but despite their democratic forms, those countries have generally been more autocratic and repressive than the region’s monarchies."). The article refers to Qatar, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi, which are neighbors in the sense of being downstream along the Arabian Gulf, but by that measure Iran (a theocracy that is most emphatically not a monarchy of any variety) is much more a neighbor, being just across the Shatt al Arab. Then there is this opinion offered as news:

All this has left many Kuwaitis deeply disenchanted with their 50-member elected legislature. The collapse of the Bush administration’s efforts to promote democracy in the region and the continuing chaos in Iraq, just to the north--once heralded as the birthplace of a new democratic model--have also contributed to a popular suspicion that democracy itself is one Western import that has not lived up to its advertising.

Apparently they weren’t disenchanted in 2006 when, as the article describes, they pushed through an "Orange Revolution" to expand their freedoms. Odd, when you think about it, considering that the "chaos in Iraq" is "continuing" at a fraction of what it was in 2006. Coincidentally, everyone Worth quotes gripes about democracy only to add that it's "our last hope" or "isn’t the problem." As Abe Greenwald points out, it seems the "only attributable monarchy-envy comes from Worth himself."

Our friend David Frum offered some provocative thoughts earlier in the week on the changes that are afoot in the media:

Ratings are declining and circulations are plunging. Advertising revenues are tumbling, layoffs, buyouts, marquee properties sold, bought and sold again. Yet, troubled as the news media business is, media as a human activity is pulsing with dynamism, creativity and invention. There's just one problem. Nobody wants to pay for any of this, which is why salaried journalists are coming to feel like the steelworkers of the 21st century.

Perhaps some brilliant person will devise a new model to revive and sustain the big, professional news corporation, now under so much pressure, but what if it does not work? In that case, the future of the American media may look a lot like the past.

A century and a half ago, the American news media were small, polemical, often heavily subsidized by political parties and relatively poor. Horace Greeley started the New York Tribune with $1,000 in capital. That was obviously more money in 1841 than it is today, but even then, it was not so much money, not the kind of money needed to start a railway or a foundry, more like the kind of money used to start a nice looking Web site today.

Frum is quite right - the old media are dying. One of the things that is killing them is their dual pretense of objectivity and neutrality. If Dan Rather was fairer or more objective than the Huffington Post, he had me fooled.

So what will rise from the ashes of the old media castles? What we'll likely have is a Wild West of information where news consumers will have to seek out truth on their own. This isn't unprecedented. After the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Tombstone's two newspapers gave starkly different accounts of the affair, one championing the Earps and the other the Clanton/McLaury faction.

Horace Greeley ran for president at the tail end of his career and invented Andrew Jackson's most famous quote at the start of it ("John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!"). Newsmen with an agenda are nothing new under the sun. And the market will reward those with a fidelity to the truth and punish those who demonstrate the opposite. Please see the pathetic Mr. Rather currently toiling away on something called HDNet for comforting evidence of that fact.

The prospect of not having a newspaper or news source of record may frighten some people since it would be new territory for the modern era. But far more frightening is a thankfully bygone era when a media powerhouse like Walter Cronkite could call the Vietnam War lost because he didn’t understand what had happened with the Tet Offensive. Worse still, so impeccable was his credibility that the country would believe him.

Better to have a nation of citizens actively engaged in finding the truth than assuming they're getting the truth from what's in fact an unreliable source.

Hillary's been trying to goad Obama into scheduling another debate. He won't bite, and she's done everything but call him chicken (though her supporters have shown no such restraint). Yet Obama looked deep within himself to muster the courage for an appearance on Fox News Sunday this weekend, after more than a year of avoiding the harsh interrogation techniques of Chris Wallace. It sort of made Obama seem, if only momentarily, like he had a little backbone.

So what does Hillary do? She one-ups him with an appearance on The Factor tonight. It's the talk show equivalent of landing under sniper fire in one of the world's most dangerous warzones. Except Sinbad's not there. Or your teenage daughter.

It could get ugly, but she's got nothing to lose.

CBS News reporter Richard Butler was rescued by Iraqi troops in Basra on April 10 after being held captive for two months. Throughout his ordeal, his hands were kept in restraints and a sack kept over his head, although he was able to hear plenty of Hezbollah propaganda and ringtones. His sparse diet caused him to lose 42 pounds.

Not pretty. But it could have been worse:

Butler said he felt it was better to be kidnapped in Iraq then taken into custody by Americans in Afghanistan.

"I was pleased I wasn't being mortarboarded in Guantanamo or being held for six and a half years like an Al-Jazeera cameraman, for instance," he said.

Absolutely. American troops are renowned for torturing network reporters. You read about that all the time. Poor bastards are dropping like flies at the hands of our soldiers. It's a real scandal.

In related news, the ratings for CBS News hit a record low last week.

Don’t worry about Richard Butler, by the way. He’s recovering at his home. In France. But you just knew that, right?

(And I know what you’re thinking: Hezbollah ringtones?!)

David Denby, the lesser half of the New Yorker's critical duo, made a revealing couple of comments in his review of Iron Man. First, he takes issue with the character's origin, deriding the fact that Tony Stark was "captured and enslaved by Wong-Chu--a chubby Commie tyrant. One might blush at this memory of sinister Orientalist Cold War pop, but the updating of the material for 'Iron Man' hasn't made it any smarter. The director, Jon Favreau, and two writing teams . . . have enlisted Iron Man in the war on terror."

Because, you see, just like the Communist threat in Vietnam, the terrorist threat in Afghanistan isn't worth worrying about! Oh, silly Favreau, why can't you just see that the terrorists just want to be left alone? Denby then goes on to write "the freelance fanatics . . . waterboard Tony Stark, which, considering what some American interrogators and their surrogates have done to suspects recently, is enraging to watch. Such are the ways of pop: we cast our sins onto others."

That's right: the filmmakers are merely projecting America¹s shortcomings on her enemies. After all, terrorists never do anything wrong. They treat their prisoners with compassion and respect. Nope, no torture or beheadings in the mountains of Afghanistan. If the terrorists really wanted Tony Stark to do their bidding, they would have reasoned him into submission. Thanks, Professor Denby.

[Check out Sonny's new blog at AFF. --ed.]

David Axelrod says of Rev. Wright's performance yesterday:

“Obviously, it’s not ideal,” said David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s senior strategist. “It’s pretty clear that Reverend Wright is not out there to help Obama — he’s out there to help himself. It’s a sideshow, and the media is consumed by it.”

And the "analysis" from Alessandra Stanley in today's New York Times:

Now it turns out that Mr. Wright doesn’t hate America, he loves the sound of his own voice. He is not out of touch with the American culture, he is the avatar of the American celebrity principle: he grabbed his 30-second spots of infamy and turned them into 15 minutes of fame.

It would be easier if they just gave Axelrod a column.

At the National Press Club this morning, Rev. Jeremiah Wright deflected a number of questions by accusing the press of being uninformed. When asked to explain his remarks that 9/11 was payback for American misdeeds, Wright replied: "Have you heard the whole sermon?" The moderator said she had heard most of the sermon, and Wright retorted: "No, no, the whole sermon, yes or no? No, you haven't heard the whole sermon? That nullifies that question."

At one point, the moderator asked: "You just mentioned that Senator Obama hadn't heard many of your sermons. Does that mean he's not much of a churchgoer? Or does he doze off in the pews?" Wright answered: "He goes to church about as much as you do. What did your pastor preach on last week? You don't know? OK." And that was that.

When asked if he still believes the U.S. government created HIV "as a means of genocide against people of color," Wright asked the moderator if she had read Emerging Viruses: AIDS And Ebola: Nature, Accident or Intentional? Then, Griff Jenkins, a Fox News correspondent who apparently wrote the question, stood up and asked Wright to answer the question. "No questions from the floor," Wright shot back. All questions from the press were submitted to a National Press Club moderator, who did not press Wright on follow-up questions. Wright said, "I believe our government is capable of doing anything," but he never directly answered whether he thinks the U.S. government created HIV.

Again and again, Wright was not held to account for his own disputed claims, such as his contention that in his post 9/11 sermon he was merely quoting the ambassador from Iraq that "America's chickens are coming home to roost." To be fair, most of those in the press gallery didn't openly applaud Wright during his speech--as did Christopher Hayes of the Nation and Nadia Charters of Al-Arabiya TV, who were both sitting (appropriately) to the left of me.

Attacking the politics of Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay is like subjecting Penthouse Forum to literary criticism. So when I took in a matinée of the stoner sequel last Friday, I was prepared to overlook the film’s distasteful depiction of our president. I was even prepared to disregard the fact that, aside from Harold and Kumar, no one has ever been sent from American soil to Guantanamo, and the only U.S. citizen ever imprisoned there was released once his citizenship became known.

What crossed the line, however, is that the American soldiers stationed in Guantanamo Bay were portrayed as rapists. Political operatives at the Homeland Security Department are fair game, but I don't think I'm going out on a limb in saying that the film's suggestion our troops sodomize detainees disrespects the many soldiers stationed there who are making great sacrifices to protect our country.

Although it’s hard to believe that Harold and Kumar will be released in any Middle Eastern country, I have no doubt that many foreigners would take this parody of Bush administration policies seriously. Do recall the Turkish film, Valley of the Wolves Iraq, showed U.S. doctors harvesting the organs of detainees to send to Israel.

An inconvenient truth:

On Friday, it was revealed by ABC News that one of the famous shots of supposed Antarctic ice shelves in the film [An Inconvenient Truth] was actually a computer-generated image from the 2004 science fiction blockbuster "The Day After Tomorrow."

Adding delicious insult to injury, this was presented by one of ABC's foremost global warming alarmists Sam Champion during Friday's "20/20".

This brings up a couple of questions. One, how did it take a matinee-idol weatherman to point out this gigantic bit of fraud? (Champion’s usual gig is warning of wind gusts on Good Morning America.) Two, between the truth-stretching, crafty editing, and outright lies of movies like Farenheit 9/11 and An Inconvenient Truth, doesn’t the concept of "Academy Award-winning documentary" sound terribly, uh, fictional? Or have moviemakers been drowning in fantasy so long that they can no longer distinguish between fiction and reality?

No word yet on if Gore & Co. received permission from 20th Century-Fox, the studio that released The Day After Tomorrow, to use the iceberg clip--or if they simply liberated it for the good of the people.

David Gergen from a March 14 broadcast on CNN:

Well, because there's a long tradition, Anderson. And among black leaders to have a different view of American history, going all the way back to Frederick Douglass, who was one of the greatest American heroes of the 19th century, you know, who -- who gained his freedom from slavery in a great order.

He was invited the a July 4th celebration to give a July 4th speech in 1852, and he showed up and said, "You know, you whites see July 4 very differently from what I see it. This is not a day of celebration for us."

And I have found that in my classroom with black students frequently. When they speak their minds and when they speak their hearts, they have a very different view. I've had a young woman tell me, "July 4, we still can't celebrate it in my family, because of what's happened to us."

And I think that we as whites have to be understanding and empathic toward that and try to understand that, that people who are African-Americans legitimately have a different perspective on what American history has meant and take that into account as we hear this.

And it's not a lack of patriotism. It is a different form of patriotism. Actually, Reverend Wright may love this country more than any of us but feel we've fallen short of what we preach and believe.

Exit question: Is it wrong to enjoy David Gergen’s monumental moronitudousnes on a kitsch level?

Alternate exit question: Is it possible to distinguish between the America of 1852 and the America of today?

Do you find yourself somehow inexplicably drawn to CNN's coverage of the primaries? I do, but for months I didn't know precisely why. There was something so comforting about the format, something so familiar. Then it dawned on me: The studio set-up, the double panel of guests, the host going to each table to get his answers. Quite cleverly, CNN producers have modeled their election team of pundits around the legendary 1970s game show, Match Game.

Host Wolf Blitzer is Gene Rayburn, Leslie Sanchez is Brett Somers, David Gergen is MacLean Stevenson, Gloria Borger is Betty White, Bill Bennett is Richard Dawson, and Paul Begala is Charles Nelson Reilly (strictly because they share the same vocal range).

We just can't seem to change channels because, subliminally, we're waiting for Wolf to say, "Jeffrey Toobin left his blank in San Diego."

The New York Times featured an intriguing profile of Robert Downey Jr. this Sunday. Star of the upcoming Iron Man, Downey is best known as the most-wasted talent of his generation (both literally and figuratively). His drug problems became so bad that he even spent some time in the clink; since his last stretch he seems newly dedicated to sobriety. Downey also emerged with a different take on society:

"I have a really interesting political point of view, and it’s not always something I say too loud at dinner tables here, but you can’t go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal. You can’t. I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone else, but it was very, very, very educational for me and has informed my proclivities and politics every since."

It’s unlikely that Downey will start campaigning for McCain any time soon (note the hint of intimidation that lingers in the air when he mentions "polite" Hollywood conversation), but it is nice to see that he’s putting his life back together and taking a measure of personal responsibility for his previous difficulties. Read the whole profile and make sure to check out Iron Man when it is released May 2.

The Washington Post ran a story on McCain's temper over the weekend, but the piece seems to be falling apart amid accusations that the reporter distorted, exaggerated, and perhaps even fabricated some of the events he described. McCain aide Mark Salter responded yesterday that:

If one half of it were true, it would give me pause. As it happens, the piece is 99% fiction....

The story about the Young Republican in 1982 is entirely fictional. The Bob Smith incident is entirely fictional. The Karen Johnson story is entirely fictional. Most of the others are exaggerated beyond recognition.

Salter also claims that his own words were taken out of context to exaggerate the details of an argument between Sens. McCain and Grassley in 1992. Now Salter's version has been confirmed by former Senator Bob Kerrey. Jonathan Martin reports that Kerrey disputes the Post's account, which had him intervening to prevent the argument from turning physical:

"First, I did nothing to intervene; the two Senators worked it out on their own," Kerrey wrote in a comment posted this morning under his name at 7:45....

The two senators were both "extremely angry," Kerrey adds, but McCain was "at no time threatening."

Kerrey, a Democrat and Hillary Clinton backer, concludes: "My experience is that [McCain's] anger always has a purpose and in this case the purpose was to defeat Senator Grassley's argument which he did decisively."

Everybody knows McCain has a temper, but none of these events seems to have happened the way they were reported, if at all. Still, and maybe it's just the warmonger in me, I tend to think McCain's disposition is more of an asset than a liability. Don't the American people want a president who's actually pissed off when he gets a phone call at 3 am saying the Iranians, or al Qaeda, or William Ayers (or all three working together) have just killed a bunch of Americans.

Woody Allen will film his next movie in New York, and then promptly return to Europe to do three more pictures in Spain. Everyone knows the pint-sized Jewish auteur was in something of a lull before departing for England to shoot Match Point, Scoop, and Cassandra’s Dream. And he just completed the Vicky Cristina Barcelona, in you guessed it, Spain. But New Yorkers shouldn’t take his so-called boycott too personally. One of the key reasons I would guess he’s plans to shoot another three pictures in Spain after a brief return to New York is all the money the government is giving him. As it were, the Barcelona city government dished out $1.6 million for Allen’s last picture. Of course, they claim it’s a "public investment"--not a government subsidy--but a government subsidy by any other name still smells . . .

In defense of Allen though, I must say the conventional wisdom that he did nothing of value between Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point is slander. Two of Allen’s great works--or at least best writing--are from the 1990s. I am thinking of Bullets Over Broadway and the Sweet and Lowdown. And though Allen is not typically associated with the conservative movement, there are several gems in his canon for the (precious few) right-leaning souls out there who actually have a sense of humor. Consider the scene in Annie Hall when Allen goes over to his ex-girlfriend’s apartment at 3:00 am to kill a spider.

ANNIE: I called you; you wanna help me ... or not? H'h? Here.

She hands him a magazine.

ALVY: (Looking down at the magazine) What is this? What are you, since when do you read the National Review? What are you turning in to?

ANNIE: Well, I like to try to get all points of view.

ALVY: It's wonderful. Then why don'tcha get William F. Buckley to kill the spider?

This isn’t Allen’s only amusing potshot about conservatives. In Bananas, when he goes to buy a pornographic magazine, National Review is hanging between Hustler and Playboy.

Blockbuster:

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The piece goes on for some ten pages, with one damning revelation after the next.The Pentagon distributes talking points, provides special access to retired generals, and even arranged a meeting for them with the Secretary of Defense. You'll also be very surprised to learn that many retired generals have business interests in the defense industry.

The paper offers no evidence that any of these men were using their influence to directly further a personal interest (unless one counts "networking"), and it offers no evidence of coercion on the part of the administration. So the charge is a lack of transparency, and it rests on the assumption that Americans are too stupid to surmise the likely ideological and institutional biases of a former general officer in the United State military.

Of course, Americans are not so stupid, and I suspect most will appreciate the irony of the New York Times judging retired military officers as insufficiently objective in their analysis of the war in Iraq.

Noted lefty homophobe Spencer Ackerman lasted a full three days in his new job as a blogger for the Center for American Progress before writing something entirely beyond the pale:

May Bush and bin Laden die in exactly the same way: alone, afraid, and in captivity.

Frankly, I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner--Ackerman was fired from his last respectable job for threatening to crush his editor's skull with a baseball bat. Though in fairness, as vile as this comment about the president is, it may represent a form of progress for Ackerman. At least he's no longer engaging in personal threats. But who knows what tomorrow will bring...

Is this the corollary to the rule that as Iraq becomes more peaceful, it is reported on less and less? The story I'm referring to is the poll finding that the people of Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom no longer see the United States as the greatest threat to world peace. Instead, a majority say that distinction belongs to China:

The poll, carried out by the Harris agency between March 27 and April 8 and published on Tuesday, found that 35 percent of respondents in the five largest EU states see China as a bigger threat to world stability than any other state. Last year, that figure was 19 percent, and in 2006 it was only 12 percent. In contrast, the US has slipped back into second place, with 29 percent of the respondents viewing it as the biggest threat, down from 32 percent in 2007.

Last year the American media gave extensive coverage to the Harris poll, and to a contemporaneous Pew poll that showed a decline in the image of the United States abroad. The New York Times saw fit to wring its hands over what Iraq was doing to perceptions of our country around the world. Perhaps the paper of record will give the president a slap on the back and an 'attaboy' now that the surge has -- apparently -- restored our standing in the eyes of our European allies?

The New York Times reports that food preferences actually reveal who you will likely vote for in November.

If there’s butter and white wine in your refrigerator and Fig Newtons in the cookie jar, you’re likely to vote for Hillary Clinton. Prefer olive oil, Bear Naked granola and a latte to go? You probably like Barack Obama, too.

And if you’re leaning toward John McCain, it’s all about kicking back with a bourbon and a stuffed crust pizza while you watch the Democrats fight it out next week in Pennsylvania. …

Dr Pepper is a Republican soda. Pepsi-Cola and Sprite are Democratic. So are most clear liquors, like gin and vodka, along with white wine and Evian water. Republicans skew toward brown liquors like bourbon or scotch, red wine and Fiji water.

When it comes to fried chicken, he said, Democrats prefer Popeyes and Republicans Chick-fil-A.

Democrats drink Evian water and eat food marketed as "Naked." Surprise, surprise. Times reporters have this odd vision of modern political campaigns as involving lots of discussion about "soccer moms" and other stupid names given to niche voting blocs. They also seem to think brain scans are a big part of the game. Now the next big thing is what food voters eat. I have no doubt there are many so-called “microtargeting experts” out there. It is telling that Mark Penn prides himself as one of them, since he completely overlooked the big picture in steering the Hillary campaign into a brick wall.

Here’s a scoop: food preferences don’t often change, yet candidate preferences do. When someone who previously thought he was going to vote for Obama decides ultimately to pull the lever for McCain, he doesn’t switch from Bear Naked Cereal to Fiber One. And many of the food differences identified in the article clearly have more to do with regional differences than party affiliation. In parts of this great nation, they drink Dr. Pepper. New York just isn’t one of them. And as several WEEKLY STANDARD contributors will attest, Popeyes Chicken is loved by all.

Ethan Gutmann, author of "Carrying a Torch for China," this week's cover story for THE WEEKLY STANDARD, noticed yesterday that his story couldn't be found through Google News search, though it showed up in a search just the night before. In light of other suspicions that Google might be doing the bidding of the Chinese government, I called up Google for some answers.

Google product manager Josh Cohen told me that indexing for Google News is "completely done via algorithms" and articles are not screened based on "qualititative aspects." He added that Google will only take down articles upon the request of a publication's own publisher or if a third party obtains a court order. He said we simply were experiencing a "technical issue." For example, another story, "Vultures of the Left" by Dean Barnett, doesn't show up in Google News, Cohen says, because Google's program misinterpreted the article's lede "On April 18, 2007" as the dateline.

Other quirks and glitches are apparently responsible for articles disappearing from Google News. Gutmann's article can now be found in Google News, so it seems that Google should get the benefit of the doubt. If any funny business were going on, then Matthew Continetti's editorial on China, "Gold Medal in Tyranny," probably wouldn't show up.

Of course, Google bears some responsibility for creating an atmosphere where suspicions can thrive in the first place. The real problem of censorship overseas still exists, and Google did not help matters by creating a censored version of it's search function in China back in 2006. Cohen defended Google's policies in China, saying that "China can certainly block whomever they want" on the mainland. "In other countries, they can block whatever sites they want to and that's obviously something we can't control."

As Gutmann noted in a 2002 WEEKLY STANDARD piece "Who Lost China's Internet?" Western companies have been playing this game for some time now.

The BBC’s Peter Taylor has been reporting on terrorist groups for the last four decades. He doesn’t seem to hesitate in describing al Qaeda as far more dangerous than anything that preceded it. But ultimately Taylor and other journalists, describing how terrorists they’ve interviewed managed to transcend or rebut "governmental stereotypes," simply underline the limited utility of understanding the people who are trying to kill us.

To the extent understanding terrorism will help us defeat the enemy or transform the Middle East, there is surely value in it. More often than not, however, I find journalistic work like Taylor’s exhibits what Paul Berman properly dubbed the "rationalist naiveté." And moral equivalence is never far behind. Taylor admits, "When I talked to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and the fedayeen--or militants--on the Israeli-occupied West Bank, I could understand why they felt the way they did and why they were prepared to hit back against Israel." How long before Taylor or some other journalist will say the same about al Qaeda?

An interesting story from the Times on the woman who broke bittergate wide open last Friday night at HuffPo:

Ms. Fowler said she found his response "professorial" and judgmental toward blue-collar voters and that even though she supports him, she was "taken aback" by them.

“I’m a religious person, and I grew up poor in a very wealthy family -- sometimes we didn’t have enough to eat, but my larger family was rich,” she said. Her father was a hunter. “Immediately, the remarks just really bothered me. For the first time, I realized he is an elitist.”

Fowler thought about it for a few days, nervous that it might damage Obama, before deciding to run with it. The Times noted that Arianna herself was "on a cruise in the Pacific" when the story broke, and that "she may not even know about the stir it created." Not true. Arianna wrote in to the paper with this update:

"I was indeed in Tahiti, but fully wired. Not only watching what was happening on our site and everything online about Mayhill's post, but watching regularly updates on CNN International! There was no escaping this story, even in the South Pacific. As for my feelings about the political fallout, here is my post from this morning."

Shockingly, Huffington's take is a bit different than her reporter's. She insists there's nothing at all "elitist" about Obama's comments, and she accuses Clinton of "twisting Obama's words in a way that confirms every right-wing demagogic caricature of her own Party." Actually, you know what confirms every right-wing demagogic caricature of the Democratic party? Arianna Huffington attempting to rebut charges of snobbery with a story filed from a yacht off the coast of Tahiti.

Last night's episode of Bill Maher's Real Time featured evangelical atheist Richard Dawkins (the very poor man's version of Christopher Hitchens), explaining why scientists can't be certain of much of anything:

I think any scientist would be unwise to commit himself to saying there definitely is not anything. I mean, I can’t definitely commit myself to saying there are no fairies. I’m pretty sure there are no fairies. [laughter] But, I think it would be unscientific to do what the extreme religious people do and say, “I know there is a god.”

It's an interesting contrast to comments by NASA scientist James Hansen earlier this week complaining about a high school textbook that didn't portray global warming as a fact rather than a theory:

IHansen has sent Houghton Mifflin a letter stating that the book's discussion on global warming contained "a large number of clearly erroneous statements" that give students "the mistaken impression that the scientific evidence of global warming is doubtful and uncertain."

So Hansen is certain that global warming is real and the greenhouse gases are the cause. As are Bill Maher, Barack Obama, Al Gore, and every other luminary of the left. Immediately following his interview with Dawkins last night, Maher proceeded to mock Christians for their skepticism of global warming (or indifference, as he would have it), explaining it as a result of their belief in the Rapture. But hasn't the left embraced global warming as their own version of the Rapture? They do not harbor any doubt, but believe with the fervor of religious conviction that the end of civilization will come as a result of consumerism. And they seem completely unaware that in believing this, they have shed the very skepticism that is supposed to define the secular left.

Also notable from last night's show was Richard Clarke claiming of Bill Clinton, "He doesn’t make mistakes." Right.

Jamie Kirchick has a piece at the Advocate titled "Liberals and Their Invisible Homophobia." This jumps out:

The liberal journalist Eric Alterman, a columnist for The Nation and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress think tank, is a particularly nasty example of the liberal homophobe. Two years ago he challenged gay, HIV-positive journalist Andrew Sullivan to prove a claim Sullivan had made about Alterman regarding military action in Afghanistan, offering to pay “$10,000 to the AIDS charity of Sullivan’s choice.” He mocked Sullivan, “who is HIV positive and likes to discuss this fact with reporters,” for his “remodeled bathroom in P-town.” Alterman regularly refers to Sullivan as “little Roy,” after Roy Cohn, the gay aide to Sen. Joe McCarthy who died of AIDS complications.

Kirchick offers a litany of other examples, but this makes twice in one week that we've seen employees of the Center for American Progress pointed out as particularly unabashed in their gay bashing. Alterman hasn't deigned to respond to the charge, and neither has Spencer Ackerman, who earlier in the week referred to Kirchick as "twinkletoes" on his personal blog before intimating that he'd gotten his position at the New Republic through some form of gay prostitution.

It's not often that I agree with Andrew Sullivan, but today he flags Ackerman's post as a "classic" case of liberal homophobia, which the Center for American Progress seems to tolerate without any concern at all. On the upside, given Ackerman's penchant for lashing out at his colleagues and berating his superiors in print, as he does yet again today in a very entertaining post, perhaps we will soon get a much better understanding of how decisions are made at CAP, if only through the eyes of a paranoid lefty with a martyr complex.

So a German opera house is staging Verdi's A Masked Ball "in the ruins of New York's World Trade Centre." This rendition also "features naked pensioners and Mickey Mouse masks, Hitler salutes and Elvis impersonators." One critic who attended rehearsals observes, "Mr Kresnik's anti-capitalist staging is unlikely to be celebrated for its subtlety." That would be the understatement of the year. Dancing and singing and performing Hitler salutes at the ruins of the WTC is about as subtle as the invasion of Poland.

The absurdity of the situation is apparently lost on the director, who candidly describes his work as "a populist critique of modern American society." Has opera ever been a populist enterprise? Does the director honestly expect the disenfranchised will hear, let alone act on, his call to arms? Which brings me to one final point: isn't a lecture from Germany about human rights still a century or two premature?

At Hit & Run, Nick Gillespie flags this video that originally appeared at Radar. The video shows a debate between Candy Lightner, the founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and Alex Koroknay-Palicz of the National Youth Rights Association. It aired Monday on Fox News. The response from Marty Beckerman at Radar:

Thanks for protecting us at home and abroad, ya mindless juvenile killing machines. No drinky for you!

The Marine Corps has already taken steps to remedy this injustice by lowering the drinking age "from 21 to 18 for Marines on liberty overseas and for leathernecks taking part in official on-base command functions -- including the birthday ball." It would make sense for the other services to follow suit. If you may be asked to die for your country (though killing for one's country is always preferable), then you ought to be entitled to all the rights and privileges that citizenship affords. Meanwhile, the accusation that the government sets the draft age at 18 because those soldiers are too young to "think for themselves," well, I think Beckerman gets it right with his headline: "MADD Founder Hates Troops Almost As Much As She Hates Alcohol."

In response to this op-ed in the New York Times, CUNY Hunter College professor Jessie Daniels, Ph.D., writes:

While some might argue that having a prominent writer for the New York Times such as Bill Kristol address racism and sexism at all is a sign of progress (a point I can sometimes be persuaded by), the fact that he frames his analysis in the language of “either/or” shapes the larger debate and influences the way people think about these issues. And, in so doing, his limited, and limiting, way of framing these issues diminishes the possibilities for a wider audience to understand them in a way that’s both complex and useful.

That's just the last graph of a piece that goes on for several thousand words lambasting the boss over his failure to comprehend the complexities of race in a manner acceptable to Jesse Daniels, Ph.D. The only problem, the op-ed in question was written by Nicholas Kristof. According to her bio, Daniels, who has a Ph.D., "has taught a variety of courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels." These include Sex and Gender Roles, Black Feminist Thought, and the Politics of Queer Sexuality.

Of course, one fears the real tragedy here is that the sloppiness displayed by Jessie Daniels, Ph.D., may lead people to question the intellectual rigor that characterizes these otherwise serious fields of study. Or maybe I'm being too harsh, Kristof does sound a bit like Kristol.

From Alec Baldwin's latest at the Huffington Post:

McCain is another right-wing, retro, deficit-loving, never-seen-a-defense-appropriation-I-didn't-like tool. But there are a lot of people in this dumbed-down country that will buy that.

There are a lot of people in this "dumbed-down" country that wish it were so, but of course nobody in the United States Congress has been a more vocal critic of defense appropriations than John McCain. The fact that he scuttled the corrupt Boeing tanker deal, which led to prison sentences for officials from both the Air Force and Boeing, has caused him considerable grief from 'defense appropriation loving tools' on the right and the left this year as the contract was ultimately handed to the Airbus-Northrop team.

Which leads me to the stunning conclusion that brother Stephen may, in fact, be the brains of the Baldwin operation.

This post appeared on Spencer Ackerman's blog this afternoon:

TWINKLETOES, YOU'RE BREAKING MY HEART:
Forgive me, but this post is for the dudes. You know how you come out of the shower -- at the gym, say -- and you're toweling off, and you feel all dry, but then you put on your underwear and you realize: Dammit, I forgot to dry under my [...]. Sometimes I wonder, could you pay someone enough to dry your [...] area for you?

Anyway, after I read this review of Heads In The Sand I finally realized: so that's why Marty keeps this dude around.

--Spencer Ackerman

The review in question was written by Jamie Kirchick, former assistant to TNR editor Marty Peretz and a frequent contributor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Jamie is also gay, in case Ackerman didn't make that entirely clear in his post.

There's no way this kind of thing would be tolerated at any respectable institution on the right, but according to the New York Times, Ackerman will be moving his blog to the website of the liberal Center for American Progress later this month. One wonders if the flagship think-tank of the progressive movement will think twice before moving his archives as well.

That's the headline at the Huffington Post, but even by their own sorry standards it's a disgrace.

What McCain actually said today:

The dramatic reduction in violence has opened the way for a return to something approaching normal political and economic life for the average Iraqi.

I don't think it would be a particularly bold to claim that, of the highly trafficked political websites in this country, the Huffington Post is the most propagandistic. The dreck that they publish from Hollywood actors and Democratic politicians is hyper-partisan, juvenile, and generally uninformed, but not shockingly so. It's the headlines that are egregious.

When HuffPo was started up it was supposed to be the left's answer to the bias they perceived in the Drudge Report. Instead we've now got our very own version of Pravda--and with a similar sense of journalistic integrity.

Stephen Colbert fans know that Congressmen will appear on his Comedy Central show at their own political peril. Rep. Lynn A. Westmoreland (R-GA) for example, admitted to Colbert that he could only name three of the ten commandments and that he thought of himself as a "Georgia Peach." Not to be outdone, Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) said he liked cocaine and prostitutes because it’s the "fun thing to do."

But what might be a media consultant’s nightmare could turn out to be a fundraisers dream. This forthcoming paper by University of California at San Diego political scientist James H. Fowler in the journal PS: Politics and Political Science finds that Democratic Congressmen appearing on Colbert’s segment "Better Know A District" get a 44 percent bump in their fundraising after participating in his show. Fowler summarizes his study in this recent Los Angeles Times piece. Alas, Republicans, according to Fowler, show no similar "humiliation windfall."

HT: Monkey Cage

Apparently excessive blogging can be deadly, so I'll try and keep it light today.

Matt Stoller has a post up on how the Democrats should go about "framing Petraeus" this week. Stoller chides the Democrats for a lack of message discipline. He says:

Some of them want to drill into the tactics of the surge, some want to discuss larger national security questions, and some want to concede the surge worked but that the Iraqis are somehow at fault.

At fault? You mean Iraqis might be responsible for the disastrous success of the surge?

Via Hot Air, Time magazine's Bobby Ghosh reports that "every Iraqi who offers me a view on American politics seems to be praying for a McCain victory." Apparently Ghosh didn't get the memo that the only reliable sources inside Iraq are commanders in Sadr's militia.

Joe Klein questions the patriotism of anyone who doesn't share his optimism about universal health care, social security, and alternative energy. I thought dissent was patriotic, but apparently "it is more patriotic to be optimistic about the chance that our collective will--that is, the best work of government--will succeed, rather than that it will fail or impinge on freedom." Somehow I don't think Klein counts preventing civil war and ethnic cleansing in Iraq as "the best work of government."

Ezra Klein responds to Jamie Kirchick's scathing review of Matthew Yglesias's new book. Klein accuses Kirchick of failing to read the book cover to cover, the implication being that even people who are paid to read the book can't make it all the way through. This Klein might be on to something.

And finally, Charlton Heston passed away late last night. Heston was a subscriber to this magazine and I've posted a letter he once wrote us in response to a piece on Shakespeare by Paul Cantor. It's an excellent read. Also McCain put out this statement on Heston's passing:

"Our hearts and prayers go out to the family and friends of Charlton Heston. In taking on epic and commanding roles, he showed himself to be one of our nation's most gifted actors, and his legacy will forever be a part of our cinema. Off-the-screen, Charlton Heston was also a real-life leader. He served his country and proudly gave his voice in support of some of our most basic rights. He was devoted to the cause of freedom for all Americans from the battle for civil rights in the 1960s to protecting Second Amendment rights in the 1990s. At this time of grief, let us honor a life that has truly touched millions."

Our friends on the left are also honoring Heston, but for some reason Arianna Huffington has shut down the comments on this story at her site. Surely many of her readers want to express their thoughts and prayers at the passing of a man who's done so much to protect their Constitutional rights, no?

Last week Think Progress blogger Amanda accused John McCain of plagiarizing a speech from Admiral Timothy Ziemer only to retract the story hours later. Amanda, last name unknown, had failed to check with McCain's office before running her "exclusive," and she failed even to check McCain's website to see if he had used similar language in the past. In fact, he had. In a 1995 speech to the VFW, a speech predating Ziemer's, McCain had uttered the same phrases he was now alleged to have plagiarized. Amanda apologized for her sloppy reporting, but apparently she didn't learn much from the episode.

Today she runs a story about North Carolina Rep. Patrick McHenry under the headline: "Rep. McHenry calls U.S. soldier in Iraq a ‘two-bit security guard.'"

Well, it isn't true. Think Progress provides the video, but at no point does McHenry indicate that the "security guard" is an American soldier. In fact, if Amanda had bothered to call McHenry's office, she would have learned that the security guard was one of the foreign contractors so reviled by the left--an individual who in any other circumstance Amanda would likely label a "mercenary." I did call McHenry's office and the congressman's press secretary offered this statement from his boss:

It was a poor choice of words to describe the foreign contractor, but anyone who was there knows that I delivered a speech praising the heroism and sacrifice of those who are serving our country in harm's way.

The choice of words does not paint McHenry in the most flattering light...calling a security guard a "two-bit security guard" isn't exactly a classy move. But once again, Think Progress has failed to maintain even the minimum standards of the profession. How Amanda got from "security guard" to "U.S. soldier" is unclear, unless it was only intended to smear, like the false accusation she leveled at John McCain last week.

Five eligible right-wing blogettes are profiled here, and several of them won’t date liberals. As Cassy Fiano explains, "How smart can this guy be if he thinks John Kerry is a great politician?" Truer words have never been spoken. I’m sure any number of Weekly Standard Blog readers (at least 90 percent of which I assume are male) are so spellbound by Ms. Fiano that they’d risk a weekend at Gore Vidal’s Italian villa for a first date with her.

If only all the featured ladies were just as enthralling. Consider Dawn Eden, the author of The Thrill Of The Chaste:

It’s easy for a man to keep this illusion of being a great, sensitive romantic if he knows he’s just going to sleep with you and then say good-bye. Anybody can be Mr. Love God for one night or one week or one month.

I have no doubt that a date with the author of The Thrill of the Chaste would be exhilarating--wait, actually, I do doubt it. Hence the conservative proverb, "Be right, live left."

Daniel Larison responds to this post from earlier today in which I asserted that "there is no doubt that the mujahideen followed the Red Army back to Moscow after the war. The slaughter at Beslan, the apartment bombings in Moscow--there have been any number of terrorist acts perpetrated on Russian soil by people who fought against the Red Army in Afghanistan."

Larison's response:

It may come as some surprise to Goldfarb, but Chechnya belonged to the Soviet Union, Chechens were Soviets and it is more likely that there were ethnically Chechen conscripts in the Red Army fighting on the Soviet side than Chechens fighting alongside the mujahideen in Afghanistan.

Thanks for the geography lesson, Dan. But I was vaguely aware of this fact. I was referring to people who fought in Afghanistan, like say Abu Omar al-Saif, and later took their jihad to Chechnya. Al-Saif, a Saudi, was connected to the 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow as well as the slaughter of several hundred children at Beslan (he financed the operation). As I said, there were any number of Arabs who fought against the Red Army in Afghanistan and, in the wake of the Soviet withdrawal, continued their war against Russia--taking the fight all the way to Moscow in this case. It doesn't strike me as particularly "ignorant" to wonder if the Russians might not have been better served by killing the guy in Afghanistan when they had the chance, rather than in Dagestan in 2005--but hey, terrorists don't follow you home, right?

I know some of the folks at the American Conservative think that rolling up in the fetal position and playing dead is the best response to international terrorism. I think it'd be just swell if they took the same approach to blogging.

Oliver Stone, the moviemaker that everybody but ticket-buyers loves, is in the midst of shooting his latest project, W, the story of President George W. Bush. According to Marcus Baram of ABC News, it’s--and stop me if you’ve heard this before--a “warts and all portrayal” of the man. If Stone is involved, you can be sure it’s mainly warts. His previous presidential bio, Nixon, could have been called White House of Frankenstein, with its scary thunderstorms, spooky shadows, and the titular hero lurching through hallways with a Bible in one hand and a bottle of Scotch in the other. The usually superb Anthony Hopkins played Nixon with a peculiar Irish brogue, adding to the hallucinatory feeling.

And there’s plenty of drama in W if this excerpt from Baram’s piece is any indication:

When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld purportedly confronts Bush in 2002 about his obsession with Saddam: "What's the big deal about Saddam? Bin Laden's the trained ape that wrought this hell on us," Dubya's response sounds like a line out of "The Godfather": "You don't go after the Bushes and get to talk about it. Ya got me?"

"The trained ape who wrought this hell on us"? Did Rumsfeld--hell, does anybody--speak like this in real life? I have a feeling that W will be as hilariously over-the-top as Stone’s script for the perversely entertaining Scarface, probably the funniest drama since talkies began.

MTV’s antiwar picture, Stop-Loss, bombed at the box-office, taking in only $1.6 million on its opening day. This comes in spite of near universal fanfare and loads of free-media. A studio exec dismisses the poor showing anyway, saying, "No one wants to see Iraq war movies." That’s not quite right. What people don’t want to see are preachy antiwar movies about how awful their country is. At least not while we have 150,000 troops in Iraq.

During World War II, plenty of war-films did extremely well, and they did so by telling inspiring stories about the very best our country and allies had to offer. Hollywood’s most talented directors made films about U.S./British moral superiority, not its equivalence. One of my favorites is William Wyler’s Mrs. Miniver, which Winston Churchill called, "propaganda worth 100 battleships." After completing the film, Wyler even enlisted despite being eligible for an exemption. Mrs. Miniver reached the screen in the same year as Casablana.

Even the Vietnam War, which inspired some great work, can be distinguished from Stop-Loss and the like. The antiwar movies of that era--most notably, Apocalypse Now, Born on the Fourth of July, The Deer Hunter, Full Metal Jacket, Good Morning, Vietnam, and Platoon--all followed the conclusion of hostilities. What we’re seeing today, with Hollywood actively tearing this country down from within, is quite unique.

A photo in today’s New York Post features two men in Basra. Both wear masks that completely cover their faces. One stands with an assault rifle in his hand and what appears to be electrical cord in the other. His comrade-in-arms is hunched over a bucket and what appears to be a rock. The caption:

Shiite thugs prepare a roadside bomb in Basra yesterday, where government forces have ratcheted up their campaign against the terrorists.

It would be nice if the unidentified photographer (the credit goes to AFP/Getty Images) gave a heads-up to the proper authorities. However, I’m betting journalistic objectivity takes precedent. Somebody’s got to look out for our way of life, after all.

In response to Fitna, the much anticipated short-film released by Geert Wilders earlier this week (which we posted on our site here, although Liveleak has since removed the video after threats were made against members of their staff), UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had this to say:

"We must also recognize that the real fault line is not between Muslim and Western societies, as some would have us believe, but between small minorities of extremists, on different sides, with a vested interest in stirring hostility and conflict."

Where is this small minority of extremists on our side of the fence? If Ban is talking about Wilders, and it appears that he is, then he draws an outrageous and false equivalence. Admittedly drawing outrageous false equivalences is the UN's trademark, but comparing a mediocre 15-minute film to the attack on the World Trade Center pushes things to a ludicorus extreme. Hot Air notes the irony of Ban's characterization of the film as "offensively anti-Islamic" given that Article 19 of the UN's Universal Declaration on Human Rights states:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

This is unequivocal, and yet Ban's criticism plainly seeks to inhibit Wilders's freedom to hold opinions and to impart those opinions through the media. And where are the left's free speech advocates? I don't see even a mention of the film at any of my favorite lefty blogs.

Jay Cost has a smart post about numbers, dynamics, and the humility of predictions:

I agree that Clinton is more likely to lose than win. I also do not necessarily disagree with these low estimates. However, I disagree with the way these estimates are occasionally presented. There is sometimes an implication that these are precise predictions - when in fact a prediction like this must be very imprecise. This is why I was so vague in offering my own estimate last week.

There are reasons to expect imprecision in this kind of situation. Precision depends in part on the number of variable factors that create that which we are predicting. The more things that must happen for the prediction to come true, the less precise it is. Take an example. Suppose we are predicting whether a pitcher will strike out a batter. We can be reasonably precise. After all, there are just two factors to account for - the pitcher and the batter. Suppose, on the other hand, we're predicting who will win the World Series. Precision is very difficult here. After all, our prediction depends on thousands of factors shaking out in a certain way.

As if on cue, Slate has launched its clever (yet un-counterintuitive!) Hillary Deathwatch which calculates that Clinton's chance of winning the nomination is 12 percent.

Not 13 percent. Not 11.5 percent. 12 percent.

The big exclusive from Think Progress:

Yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) gave a foreign policy speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council....

These lines are not McCain’s own. As TP reader 5th Estate discovered, they were in fact taken largely from a 1996 speech by ret. Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer. Below is a comparison of McCain’s address yesterday with Ziemer’s in 1996.

We were never that impressed with the flap over Obama's plagiarizing of a Deval Patrick speech. Stealing great lines is what politicians do. My only observation at the time was that Patrick delivered the lines better (click through to see the video for yourself). But this time, it turns out that Ziemer had ripped off a 1995 McCain speech! Ambinder gets the scoop in an email from Mark Salter, who delivers a link to the original speech delivered by McCain to the VFW.

Think Progress has since updated their post explaining they "regret the error." Errors do tend to happen when your source can only be identified as "5th Estate." Over at the Huffington Post, which gave top billing to the phony story before disappearing it off the front page, the article remains uncorrected. But we have to give Arianna credit, she did correct her piece from earlier this week in which she accused McCain of not knowing the difference between Sunni and Shia before mixing up Syria and Iran herself. I'm sure she'll get around to posting an update to this story as well.

Update: A reader objects to the title of this post: "Think Progress did not just 'get sloppy.' They're sloppy in everything they do and routinely get stuff wrong. This just happens to be a very high-profile mistake. But it's of a piece with their hackwork, not a departure from it."

Just to prove that one of us in the right-wing attack machine is jiggy with the kids, let’s examine the recent article in the Los Angeles Times regarding the 1994 murder of rapper/drug dealer/sexual abuser/humanitarian Tupac Shakur. In trying to implicate fellow rapper Sean "Puffy" "P. Diddy" Combs in the crime, reporter Chuck Phillips based his theory on, quoting the Times:

FBI records in which a confidential informant accused two men of helping to set up the attack on Shakur -- James Rosemond, a prominent rap talent manager, and James Sabatino, identified in the story as a promoter . . . [The] two allegedly wanted to curry favor with Combs and believed Shakur had disrespected them.

I know what you’re thinking: Violence among rap artists? What is the world coming to?

But that’s not the meat of the story. No, it was when the Smoking Gun website did its own investigation of the Times piece. It seems that Phillips based his entire thesis on interviews with James Sabatino, a conman described by his father as "a disturbed young man who needed attention like a drug." The FBI "records" were not only forgeries, the Smoking Gund discovered, but badly-spelled forgeries at that, created on a typewriter three decades after the feds switched to computers. Sabatino’s claims of being a Diddy insider were false to the extreme.

So what do we have? A news outlet that’s seen better days. A reporter with an agenda. A delusional conman churning out forgeries of official documents easily disproven by people in pajamas. Ring a bell with anyone? (Hint: CBS. Dan Rather. Bill Burkett. Pres. Bush’s National Guard "documents.")

Perhaps these professional journalists need to take a lesson from the hated bloggers. Like, oh, how to be professional.

Journalists are often confronted with ethical dilemmas: Do I let personal feelings get in the way of a straight reported story? Suppose I am friends with someone mentioned negatively in my article? Will an unfavorable profile of a subject end my access to that person for all time? Despite the temptations, I cannot stress enough the importance of remaining true to the profession.

And there couldn’t have been a more tempting situation than the one I found myself in last Monday night. The public relations firm JSH&A, “named by PR Week as one of the top boutique agencies in the country” according to its website, invited me to a dinner at the Palm hosted by one of its clients, Jim Beam. The more than 50 guests each ponied up $125 for a four course meal not only paired with Jim Beam products (primarily Knob Creek, but also Booker’s, Baker’s, and Basil Hayden’s), but also infused with bourbon. For instance, the Ahi tuna carpaccio was served atop a Basil Hayden brown sugar reduction. The prosciutto-wrapped sea scallops were glazed with Knob Creek. And my grilled pork chop came with Booker’s Creole mustard sauce. All of which, by the way, were exquisite.

Of course my fellow journalists did not pay $125 for the experience. It is strictly assumed that we might favorably mention the client in return for the free dinner. But if Jim Beam is hoping for free publicity (once again proving there are no free meals), it is mistaken. I do not feel obligated in any way to mention that Kentucky bourbon is a true American spirit--in fact, the official spirit of the United States by law since 1964--and that Knob Creek in particular possesses a maple sugar aroma, full body, and a richness only made possible by its nine-year aging process in charred American white oak barrels. Or that Basil Hayden’s is a silver medal winner, light in body with just a gentle bite, and ends with a clean finish. Not to mention gold medalist Baker’s, with a whopping 107 proof, yet containing a vanilla-caramel aroma and silken texture. Not on my watch.

The dinner also featured a lecture by the distinguished whiskey professor Bernie Lubbers, who made it clear there was a war going on. Between bourbon and vodka. (The latter of which was met by boos from the bourbon-crazed crowd.) I asked Bernie how much bourbon he drinks as part of his job. Said the professor: “I don’t want to think about it” and later added, “enough.” He is a great American selling a great American product. And if you don’t like bourbon, in the words of Barney Gumble, “go back to Russia!”

But like I said, it would not be appropriate for me to shill something I got for free. Nor would it be entirely appropriate for Jim Beam to send to my office a bottle of Basil Hayden’s. Or a case.

A pilot’s gun discharged aboard a passenger plane last weekend. As the Washington Post reports:

A gun belonging to the pilot of a US Airways plane discharged as the aircraft was on approach to land in North Carolina over the weekend, the first time a weapon issued under a federal program to arm pilots was fired, authorities said Monday.

The “accidental discharge” Saturday aboard Flight 1536 from Denver to Charlotte did not endanger the aircraft or the 124 passengers, two pilots and three flight attendants aboard, said Greg Alter of the Federal Air Marshal Service.

“We know that there was never any danger to the aircraft or to the occupants on board,” Alter said.

Under a program created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, pilots and others are allowed to carry a firearm so that they can defend against any act of air piracy or criminal violence, he said.

Even though gun control is not quite as hot an issue as it was during the heyday of school shootings and the Million Mom March, I’m kind of shocked this story didn’t make the front-page. Which isn’t to say the coverage has all been fair. We can thank ABC for the incendiary headline, “Trigger-Happy Pilot?” What great journalism! Imply the pilot was a trigger-happy lunatic firing shots at random into the air, then inform the reader he was in fact just doing his job.

Here’s a better question: how long before the Democrats propose eliminating the program? After all, the risk of harmless, accidental discharges--one in six-and-a-half years--can’t possibly outweigh the possible benefits of averting a single terrorist attack.

I can't believe what I'm reading. In a rather ordinary and predictable piece, Arianna Huffington has accused John McCain of having only a "tenuous grasp on what is happening in the [Middle East] region." This because he declared that Iran is providing support to al Qaeda in Iraq (and, according to Petraeus, was behind yesterday's attack on the Green Zone). Fine, as the Center for American Progress's Brian Katulis told me the other day, the intelligence on this is in a "gray area," and a subject of debate within the intelligence community. Reasonable intelligence professionals can and do disagree. McCain subsequently released multiple statements that made the same point, if more diplomatically, than the statement he immediately clarified in Jordan. But in the midst of this attack, Arianna writes (and this is a screen capture, though I added the red circle using my Microsoft Paint skills):

Does running a blog for a bunch of Hollywood types not, in Arianna's words, "magically translate into foreign policy expertise and judgment"? Because Syria is most certainly a transit point and safe haven for al Qaeda fighters heading into Iraq. (As Petraeus says in an interview to which Huffington links in this piece, "The flow of foreign fighters and suicide bombers that help al Qaeda typically is through Syria.") Does Arianna not know the difference between Sunni and Shia, or Syria and Iran? Apparently not.

In discussing new government research, the New York Times focuses on the role of income inequality on life expectancy while neglecting the still larger gender-based disparity. Perhaps the fact that women live longer doesn’t even qualify as news. After all, everyone already knows that men live on average to about 74 while women live for a gazillion years. On the other hand, it is certainly surprising that the “most deprived” women generally live longer than the “least deprived” men.

Neither class or gender disparities have conspiratorial origins despite the suggestion of many politicians. The disparities in part arise from personal choices that the rich and poor, men and women make. Only at the very end of the article do we learn that the least affluent die earlier not just because they are less likely to have health insurance, but also because they are more likely to smoke and eat unhealthy foods. I would guess poor women live longer than affluent men because money alone doesn’t buy common sense, and men are far more likely to engage in risky activity.

Another angle overlooked by the Times is what these stats suggest about Social Security. It’s not necessarily a winning messaging strategy for personal retirement accounts, but the current system acts less as a social safety net than a mechanism to redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich and from men to women.

Michael Rubin has a good write-up at the Corner. I covered this yesterday here, but what I didn't know until reading Rubin:

To support dismissing President Bush’s stated concerns, they cite Joseph Cirincione. Fair enough, but wouldn't basic integrity mandate that they mention that Cirincione is not a disinterested analyst, but rather is advising Barack Obama?

That would seem like useful information for the Post to include. Instead, Cirincione is identified merely as an "expert on Iran and nuclear proliferation." His expert opinion: Bush's comments were "as uninformed as [Sen. John] McCain's statement that Iran is training al-Qaeda." That sounds objective...

Bush spoke directly to the Iranian people yesterday in an address broadcast over Radio Farda:

"[The Iranian government has] declared they want to have a nuclear weapon to destroy people -- some in the Middle East. And that's unacceptable to the United States, and it's unacceptable to the world..."

For some reason the Washington Post's Robin Wright took exception to this statement:

But most striking was Bush's accusation that Iran has openly declared its nuclear weapons intentions, even though a National Intelligence Estimate concluded in December that Iran had stopped its weapons program in 2003, a major reversal in the long-standing U.S. assessment.

Robin Wright seems to have taken a break from this story for the last few months, since anybody who's been following it knows that it's not the president who has recast the NIE, but the intelligence community. In an interview with WTOP on February 26 of this year, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell explained:

As you know, there’s been confusion about what Iranian intentions are with regard to nuclear weapons. You know from our National Intelligence Estimate we released, we highlighted the fact that a specific portion of the program had been cancelled, and that was the technical design of the warhead.

What I’d just highlight for you is there are three parts to a nuclear-weapons program. First, you have to have fissile material. Second, you have a nuclear-weapons warhead design; and third, a means of delivery of that warhead, given that you had such a warhead. And what we highlighted that was cancelled was the specifics on the warhead design. They are still pursuing fissile material – which that is the most difficult challenge in a nuclear program. And they’re still doing the ballistic missile design and testing, which is probably the second-most difficult part.

It is an open question as to whether Iran has since restarted work on the warhead design. Regardless, given their progress in producing the fissile material, Iran could produce a workable nuclear device in "6 months to 12 months," according to testimony by McConnell to the House Intelligence Committee on February 7.

Also, in order to contradict the president's statement, Wright quotes Joseph Cirincione, a highly partisan "expert." Cirincione says "Iran has never said it wanted a nuclear weapon for any reason. It's just not true." So Wright's attack boils down to little more than the fact that the Iranians themselves haven't fessed up (despite talk of wiping Israel off the map and the "accidental" discovery of blueprints for a nuclear warhead during an IAEA inspection of an Iranian facility). Of course Cirincione takes a rather laissez faire view of proliferation. Last fall, when the Israelis took out what was widely reported to be a North Korean nuclear facility inside Syria, Cirincione told Foreign Policy magazine that "if North Korea gave them [the Syrians] anything short of nuclear weapons it is of little consequence." Perhaps he thinks that, likewise, until the Iranians actually assemble the device, it is of little consequence.

Other experts take a different view. One such is Gary Samore, a top arms control official in the Clinton administration and a director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, who told the Los Angeles Times in December that "The halting of the weaponization program in 2003 is less important from a proliferation standpoint than resumption of the enrichment program in 2006." You wouldn't know it from Wright's piece, but this view represents something of a consensus within the intel community as demonstrated by McConnell's statements over the past few months. Bush was simply stating the obvious, even if Robin Wright, Joseph Cirincione, and Mahmoud Ammadinejad don't agree with the assessment.

Tom Barnett's piece in the April issue of Esquire is blamed--or credited--with bringing about the fall of Adm. William Fallon, who will step down soon as commander of U.S. Central Command. Barnett portrayed Fallon as a guy who stood up to the president on Iran. Barnett also portrayed Fallon as a scourge of "hardliners led by [Vice President] Cheney," "neocons," and "supporters of Israel."

Now, not too long ago, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was also known as a hardliner, and even in some circles as a "neocon." Of course, such people use the term "neocon" as nothing more than shorthand for either "hardliner" or "friend of Israel," which makes it sound like a coinage of the department of redundancy department.

But guess who wrote a profile of Don Rumsfeld three years ago, one at least as fawning as the one of Fallon? Why none other than Tom Barnett.

The piece, which appears in the same magazine's July 2005 issue, is entitled "Donald Rumsfeld: Old Man in a Hurry: The inside story of how Donald H. Rumsfeld transformed the Pentagon, in which we learn about wire-brushing, deep diving, and a secret society called the Slurg." Here is what Barnett has to say on the first page of the piece:

It is from this suite of rooms that Rumsfeld has become one of the most loathed and revered men in the world. The man is too impatient, too damned arrogant, too beyond politics, and just too stubborn for his own good. He is the famously combative, two-time SecDef (both youngest and oldest ever) who chews up and spits out experienced reporters in what are easily the most skillfully performed press conferences since John Kennedy walked the earth. He has brilliantly executed a couple of wars, and badly botched a peace. Let us stipulate all these truths just to move the conversation along.

But something else has been going on in this office, and it's nothing short of the most profound transformation of the U. S. military since World War II--a historic process that will, paradoxically, yield a force Americans haven't seen since our frontier days. The United States had one Defense Department on January 20, 2001, and it will have a very different one by January 20, 2009. Donald H. Rumsfeld, thirteenth and twenty-first secretary of defense, is the reason why.

Does one whiff a touch of opportunism floating on a tainted breeze?

I would also note that when Robert Kaplan wrote a piece for the June 2005 issue of the Atlantic Monthly entitled "How We Would fight China," Barnett referred to it on his website as "Kaplan's strategic lap dance for the U.S. Navy and Pacific Command?"

He continued: "'Sell out' isn't too strong a term for what Kaplan does in this piece. As someone who's worked for the Navy for a decade and a half, I don't think I've ever seen analysis that whores itself more for the most over-the-top strategic fantasies of naval leaders who feel embittered and betrayed by the end of the Cold War. This is U.S. Navy and Pacific Command propaganda at its best."

Oh, by the way, guess who was commander of Pacific Command at the time of the Kaplan piece. None other than Adm. William "Fox" Fallon.

Hmm. It sounds like Barnett did Kaplan one better. If Kaplan's piece on Fallon's PACOM in 2005 was a lap dance, Barnett's fawning piece on Fallon last week might best be described by a word that ends in "job".

TNR's Jason Zengerle takes issue with Steve Hayes's post from Iraq this morning. After a lengthy excerpt, Zengerle writes:

The above, by the way, isn't from the Onion but from the Weekly Standard's website. I know it can be a bit hard to tell the difference.

It's called reporting. And that's a pretty rich comment coming from a magazine that reads like Best American Short Stories.

Reason publishes a ridiculous rant today from Terry Michael on the surge. Michael is a former DNC press secretary and heads up the "non-partisan" Washington Center for Politics & Journalism. He's not much of a journalist, but his politics are clear:

When it comes Iraq, neoconservative true believers have been allowed to set the bar of "success" below ground level. In this, they're aided by media siding with power instead of challenging it, all while congressional Democrats cower in their cloak rooms....

Except for a few pieces in left-liberal journals and blogs, Democrats have simply allowed neoconservative propagandists to define the terms of what has become a one-sided monologue about "victory," voiced by elective warriors who employed deception about phantom weapons of mass destruction to market a multi-trillion dollar travesty; claimed a paper tiger thug was our enemy, when the real culprits of the 9/11 attacks still hide in caves, not spider holes; imagined Iraqi embrace of pluralistic democracy, in a tribal culture with no indigenous movement for it; and fielded an imperial American occupying force, drawing jihadists to Baghdad while fomenting civil war that raged outside a surreal "Green Zone," as our puppet government dithered.

I guess what bothers me about this kind of hysterical shrieking is that Reason would publish it. The guy is so hot he couldn't even be bothered to throw in the occasional period. And he puts it right there, nobody but a few "left-liberal journals and blogs" will publish this kind of nonsense because any objective analysis of the situation in Iraq shows that there has been a dramatic improvement in security as a result of the surge. Reasonable people can argue over whether that's enough to justify a continued presence, whether the country will tear itself apart if U.S. forces leave, but no serious journal is calling the regime in Iraq a puppet government, or ranting about "an imperial American occupying force." It's a DNC press release...and what self-respecting libertarian would care what a Democratic party hack has to say about the surge anyway? Could Reason find nobody to write a rational take-down of the surge? Maybe not.

Last Sunday, our friend Charlotte Allen wrote a gentle spoof for the Outlook section of the Washington Post on the general subject of feminine ditziness, suggesting that at times members of her and my gender could be ineffectual, overemotional, sometimes irrational, and, now and then, "dim." Readers swooned, feminists shrieked (Katha Pollitt in a riposte on the Post’s website), and Post higher-ups raised the white flag of contrition, unaware, so it seems, that exactly two days later--on Tuesday, March 4--the paper itself had run two major stories that proved every point Allen made.

On page one, a feminist warhorse, still mourning the death of the ERA many years earlier, told a room filled with unoccupied chairs that the reason men voted for Barack Obama was solely to thwart women’s hopes. "Would they like white man instead of a black man? Of course. But they’ll take a black man over a woman. I never thought, in 2008, that we’d still be dealing with this." Well, neither did we, and that wasn’t the worst of it. Obama was being...polite. He had the gall to pull Hillary’s chair out when the debates started, "immediately establishing the upper hand in their interaction," and putting the uppity girl in her place. "You can bet that’s a calculated move," the feminist said, "and it’s absolutely demeaning." Any day now, he may hold the door open, and things will really get ugly. Are there no depths to which men will not go?

"One Way or Another, Women Will Decide it," went another big story--this time on A7, with pictures--with more of the deeply oppressed. One is a nurse who has suffered a lifetime of grievance, from her father who refused to let her shoot pool as a child, to doctors who expect some respect from the nurses, to her husband, who soaked the "Hillary!" sign she put up in the garden when he watered the lawn with a hose. Then there is the body-piercing artiste from South Austin (a typical voter if ever there was one) who weighed in with her unique take on events:

The tattoo gun vibrated in Wendy Ramirez’s hand as she leaned over the man’s arm, gracefully etching the outline of a woman’s torso onto his skin. For 18 years she has worked in this male-dominated field, having to endure such comments as "Little girl, you don’t know what you’re doing."..."Many men don’t respect women," she says.

There is the black woman, torn between loyalties: "When Hillary Clinton announced she was running, I was like, hands down, that’s it. I’m voting for her. Then I see this stream of light that is Barack Obama, and at first I was like, what is he, crazy? I felt pressure on both sides," she says. And there’s the white lawyer, who’s strictly for Hillary: "A friend of mine, a black man, said to me, 'My ancestors came to this country in chains; I’m voting for Barack.' I told him, 'Well, my sisters came here in chains, and on their periods; I’m voting for Hillary.'" Evil slaveholders made women have periods! Who knew?

Then, there’s the piece that ran in the Nation (main home of Ms. Pollitt), written by a cluster of feminists (Gloria Steinem among them) who met to make sense of it all:

Two days after the Texas debate…a group of old friends broke out the good china for a light breakfast of strong coffee, blueberry muffins, and fresh-squeezed orange juice….it was a casual gathering, but one that settled down to business quickly…How, we wondered did a historic breakthrough moment for which we have all longed and worked…risk becoming marred by having to choose between "race cards" and "gender cards"….What happened, we wondered, to the last four decades of discussion about tokenism and multiple identities and the complex intersections of race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and class?

Well, gee, we don’t know, girls, except that maybe all this talk of "identities" created a climate in which valid critiques of the tactics or policies of individual candidates became a lethal assault upon every non-white or woman who ever drew breath?

And, what action did they take at this "power breakfast"? Well, none, except deciding to meet again, and eat even more muffins. "As we gathered up the empty plates, we recommitted ourselves to further joint discussions about how to attain that collective better future, however many early mornings, late nights and urns of coffee into the future that make take." Whatever it takes. Who says women don’t have the stomach for really gut-wrenching political battles? Realities such as these make satire redundant.

Don’t hush, sweet Charlotte. You make even more sense than you know.

From Andrew Sullivan:

What I think this misses are the cultural and social consequences of beating Obama (or McCain) this way. I don't mean beating Obama because the Clintons' message is more persuasive, or because the Clintons' healthcare plan is better, or because she has a better approach to Iraq. I mean: beating him by a barrage of petty attacks, by impugning his clear ability to be commander-in-chief, by toying with questions about his "Muslim past", by subtle invocation of the race card, by intermittent reliance on gender identity politics, by taking faux offense to keep the news cycle busy ("shame on you, Barack Obama!") and so on.

Obama "clearly" has the ability to be CinC? Huh? Are we not even allowed to debate this because Andrew has swooned?

Simon Woods, a volunteer for Hillary Clinton, writes in the Telegraph about the Obama Dipdive videos:

The Obama campaign uses a religious calling as its central rhetorical trope: "I'm asking you to believe," reads the banner across the top of barackobama.com. His appeal to voters is an archetype of religious conversion: instead of being asked for support, Americans are exhorted to "join the movement"....

It's not an argument for better government; it's an exhortation to see the light. It's not a plan for the Presidency, but a leap of faith.

This idea came to a head in Obama's Super Tuesday speech, with those much talked about phrases: "We are the change that we seek… We are the ones we've been waiting for." This is the language that the second Will.I.Am song has taken on. This marked a new level of discourse, and journalists wrote warily about its "messianic" feel.

But I think that misses the point. The real problem with this is not the cod-religious congratulation of being the chosen ones, but a quieter, more insidious message: that the campaign itself is the change he talks about.

That seems about right to me. The Dipdive videos were the creepy culmination of the Obama campaign's messianic rhetoric. And they even seemed to make the campaign's most fanatical supporters a bit queasy.

Obama's rhetoric was always empty, but coming from the man himself, eloquent as he is, everyone seemed willing to overlook how silly it all was. Once you get Jessica Alba and Scarlett Johanson repeating the same phrases and chanting his name as though he were some kind of political immortal--well, it all became far more transparent.

From the Atlantic's new Current:

U.S. military personnel have been raping Okinawans for the last 60-plus years.

The author does concede that "the overwhelming majority of U.S. military personnel aren't sociopaths." At least not before they get deployed to a war zone, after which they become prone to puppy killing, murder, and suicide. One might add that journalists have been smearing the military for 60-plus years, but the overwhelming majority of them support the troops. Or so I'm told.

That's the take from ABC News:

What, then, provoked one U.S. Marine to let himself be videotaped apparently flinging a yelping puppy over a cliff, bursting into laughter at the sound of the animal's body hitting the ground below? The tape of the apparent incident has rocketed around the Internet, provoking a firestorm of criticism.

The motivation for such an act, if it did indeed occur, may be as complex and deep as the U.S. war that has dragged on for more than four years, experts told ABCNEWS.com. Chief among them: Having to live with the constant fear of being injured or killed might have led this Marine to take his aggression out on a defenseless animal, several psychologists said.

I'm not convinced the tape is real, or more specifically that the puppy was alive. Either way, the tape is a disgrace and all involved ought to face serious consequences. But still...this is ridiculous. The Danger Room's Sharon Weinberger offered the best explanation:

I'd also hesitate to make a political point about how war dehumanizes people, which is of course true, but doesn't necessarily explain why someone would toss a puppy off a cliff. Teenagers across America have been doing sick stuff to puppies and kitties for years. Guess what: suburbia dehumanizes, too.

So, assuming the video isn't faked, the guy may have thrown the puppy off the cliff because war dehumanized him; he may have tossed a puppy off the cliff because suburbia dehumanized him; or maybe he and his buddy were just a couple of heartless idiots with a camera. Take your pick.

Which is to say--it's impossible to know what motivated these Marines to throw a puppy off a cliff, or if they did at all. And this wouldn't be the first story of U.S. soldiers killing dogs that turned out to be a publicity stunt.

Karl Rove is stationed in front of a MacBook Air on Fox News tonight, leaving me to wonder will our dark lord’s use of the machine destroy Apple’s hipster street-cred? Will Apple’s monopoly on the too-cool-for-school market vanish as word spreads from Dupont Circle and Williamsburg to hipster capitals across America?

If Rove’s computer is part of an endorsement deal with Apple, Steve Jobs should fire the responsible executive. Alternatively, if Rove bought that sexy Mac of his own volition, let me be the first to ascribe some malevolent motive to him: this is clearly a plot to instill existential angst among all the Apple snobs who fantasize about Rove carrying out his evil Republican high jinks on a PC. Hail Rove.

The Pentagon hosted a conference call today with bloggers in order to promote the Defense Department's latest report to Congress on the military power of China. When the DoD first started this outreach program, there was a great deal of criticism--the Pentagon was spoon feeding administration talking points to conservative bloggers, they said. Well, that was never quite the case, the Pentagon has allowed any and all bloggers to participate in these calls. The effect: today's call was dominated by lefty bloggers explaining to the Pentagon why the United States shouldn't concern itself with China's build-up, and why Beijing's bulking-up is entirely reasonable. Take my friend David Axe, for example:

Axe: Can I follow up on that? It seems that it might be possible that the increase in China's defense investment is actually perfectly consistent with their economic growth, in that what we're seeing is not anything that's unreasonable or out of proportion to China's means, especially in light of just how impoverished, in a sense, China's military was for so long. Couldn't we see this as just reasonable investment to somewhat modernize a vast, creaky, out of date military?

DoD: [silence]...that's a good question. In fact, if you look at the Xinhua press reports today on their announcing the 17.6 percent increase in their defense budget, that is something that we do hear...

Translation: yeah, that is the Chinese government's talking point.

But the most remarkable moment came in this exchange between Defense officials and Atlantic correspondent James Fallows, who was calling in from Beijing:

Fallows: I have two question about the transparency theme of your report, which I have not yet seen myself. One involves a comment one of you made a few minutes ago saying there needs to be more explanation from the Chinese about why they are increasing their budget so much when there was no threat to their territory. I just wanted to raise a question about that because, of course, from the Chinese point of view, Taiwan is their territory. And so I'm just wondering how you deal with that part of their perspective that they view Taiwan as part of their territory. More broadly, is there a way that you've been able to assess or interpret some of the more disturbing and non-transparent moves of the last few months, that is the antisatellite test and the problems with naval port calls?

DoD: Yes we do address both of those issues, we talk specifically to the Taiwan Strait situation in Chapter 6 of the report. That continues to be--preparing for potential conflict in the Taiwan Strait continues to be one of the primary drivers of China's military build-up. China continues to deploy some of the most advanced equipment to the three military regions opposite Taiwan. They continue to increase the numbers of short range ballistic missiles deployed to garrisons opposite Taiwan. So from that perspective, we do see the PLA focusing on really developing the capacity to use military force in the Taiwan Strait, if they're called upon by the senior party leadership in Beijing.

Fallows: I wonder if I could interrupt. I may have explained myself poorly. I'm just [inaudible] the premise of the question, which is why are they spending more money when there's no threat to their territory; from their point view, there is a threat to their territory.

DoD: Okay. I understand that's their position....I can articulate what U.S. policy is, and I understand what Beijing's argument is...

It was sort of stunning to listen to, and the response from the Defense official was not unlike Tony Snow's famous quip to Helen Thomas, "Well, thank you for the Hezbollah view." Whatever angst the left once had about these calls, they can rest assured that the propaganda isn't going from the Pentagon to the bloggers, but vice versa.

Crackpot.

Those of us who follow the activities of the 9/11 truth movement know that one of the gateway drugs into the conspiratorial mindset was 9/11: The Big Lie, a book by Frenchman Thierry Meyssan. In it, he argued that a missile--not a passenger jet--struck the Pentagon. The book did very well in France, selling over 300,000 copies in the first months of its release, and has since been translated into 28 languages.

Marion Cotillard, who took home the best actress award at the Oscars this year, apparently spent a little too much time with Meyssan’s book. She thinks the twin towers were knocked down as part of an insurance fraud scheme.

"We see other towers of the same kind being hit by planes, are they burned? There was a tower, I believe it was in Spain, which burned for 24 hours.

It never collapsed. None of these towers collapsed. And there [New York], in a few minutes, the whole thing collapsed."

Realizing just how insane this sounds, the UK’s Telegraph reports that “faced with losing millions as the notoriously patriotic Hollywood [wait, what was that?] film industry reacted against her vitriol, Cotillard claimed there had been a misunderstanding.”

Hm. I suppose there could have been a misunderstanding. Of course, after denying 9/11 she went on to claim that the moon landing also might have been faked. She'll fit right in.

The news from Anbar Arianna.

American forces suffered 29 casualties in February, 25 of which were from hostile fire. This represents a drop of roughly 30 percent from the month prior. Good news, right? Wrong. Think Progress reports today:

Iraqi civilian casualties rose 36 percent in February.

“Violent civilian deaths in Iraq rose 36 percent in February from the previous month,” according to Iraqi government figures. The rise from 466 violent civilian deaths in January to 633 in February “was the first increase after six consecutive months of falling casualty tolls.” “February’s casualty figures spiked after female bombers killed 99 people at two pet markets in Baghdad on February 2 and a suicide bomber killed 63 people returning from a Shi’ite religious ritual south of Baghdad on February 24.”

It's strange how when American casualties are up, that's all we hear about, but now, suddenly, the left is overwhelmed with concern for the Iraqi people (what do they think will happen if American troops withdraw?). So what if American casualties have gone down and stayed down. So what if Iraqi civilian casualties have dropped for six straight months. They're up this month, and this is the worst possible spin one could put on the current situation, so that's what the left will report. It's instructive, however, to go back to that excellent piece in the Small Wars Journal last summer by David Kilcullen, COIN advisor to Gen. Petraeus:

Personally, I think we are doing reasonably well and casualties have been lower so far than I feared. Every single loss is a tragedy. But so far, thank God, the loss rate has not been too terrible: casualties are up in absolute terms, but down as a proportion of troops deployed (in the fourth quarter of 2006 we had about 100,000 troops in country and casualties averaged 90 deaths a month; now we have almost 160,000 troops in country but deaths are under 120 per month, much less than a proportionate increase, which would have been around 150 a month).

A proportional increase from last summer would have us at 150 dead a month. Instead we have 29. But you can see how Arianna spins it. If As-Sahab had a New York bureau, would it cover the news from Iraq any different than the Huffington Post?

The Atlantic has started a new feature called the Current. I gather it's something of a group blog for the magazine's staff, but so far it looks like it's mainly an outlet for the slightly off-kilter rants of the magazine's associate editor (and WEEKLY STANDARD contributor) Reihan Salam. Here's his take on Prince Harry:

...Perhaps the real trouble is that men of royal blood, by their nature, need new lands to conquer. Why not give Prince Harry a crack contingent of Gurkha fighting men and set him loose on some war-ravaged region, where he can establish his own princely state as a latter-day white rajah? Consider Canada, a nation torn by ethnic strife and religious hatred, where daily life has become a miserable struggle to survive amidst endless gun battles waged by rival gangs of crazed ice-dancing rebels and the soaring loonie has sent the economy into a tailspin. Only Prince Harry can restore order, and so he must.

You'll definitely want to bookmark that site.

Also, the American, house organ of the American Enterprise Institute, has just added a new feature to its website. It's called Americana. You'll want to check that out as well.

I have always thought that Dick Morris was hit or miss -- that half his writing was quite insightful, but the other half was very weak. His latest column falls into that latter category -- and it makes me think he's looking for work with the Obama campaign:

The best evidence of Obama’s readiness to lead the nation is the ability with which he has run for president. After all, what is more difficult, complicated, or challenging than getting elected president? What other life experience better illustrates one’s qualification to hold the office than a manifest skill in seeking it?...

As we have watched Obama surmount the hurdles that lay in his path, we cannot help but be impressed with his judgment. Adam Wallinsky, who served on Bobby Kennedy’s staff, once singled out good judgment as JFK’s most salient characteristic. Obama has faced so many delicate questions and issues and seems always to have the right feel for how to handle them.

Will he be a good president? If he is half as skillful in serving as he has been in running, he can’t miss.

So the fact of having run a great campaign demonstrates one's readiness for the office? Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter ran strong, shrewd campaigns. Were they great presidents?

And winning the nomination is the best possible experience to prepare one for the Oval Office? Is it really better than serving as governor, or vice president, or Supreme Allied Commander Europe?

I think Morris' distaste for Hillary may have gotten the better of him this time.

My colleagues and I at the THE WEEKLY STANDARD wanted to express our condolences to our friends--and Bill's colleagues--at National Review, and above all to Christopher and the rest of the Buckley family. We'll all be publishing well-deserved tributes and appreciations. For now, I'd say just this: What a man! And what an achievement!

William F. Buckley, Jr, died this morning at his home in Connecticut. Our friends at National Review already have posted some poignant reflections. There will be many, many more.

I didn't know him at all before I came to Washington, but I read everything he wrote. And he is one of the chief reasons that I'm a writer.

This is a great hour -- William F. Buckley on Charlie Rose, a retrospective.

R.I.P.

In Thusday night's debate, Barack Obama said:

You know, I've heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon--supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq.

And as a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition, they didn't have enough Humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.

First ABC's Jake Tapper talked to the captain to verify his story. He found the captain credible and gave the all clear, despite the fact that the captain told him that there was no ammunition shortage in Afghanistan. NBC also spoke with the captain, but they weren't quite so quick to declare the case open and shut:

The captain told NBC News that he was talking about not having enough ammunition and no Humvees for training, but that his unit underwent a three-week crash course in Afghanistan before they saw combat.

The captain, who spoke on background because he's still active duty, said that his unit temporarily had to replace their .50-caliber turret-mounted machine gun with a weapon seized from the Taliban because they couldn't get a needed part fast enough.

Obama had claimed that U.S. forces didn't have ammunition for their fight against the Taliban as a consequence of the war in Iraq. There is no evidence that this is the case. Furthermore, U.S. troops weren't capturing Taliban weapons "because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief." They had a broken gun and they temporarily replaced it with a weapon that had already been captured. Big difference. And you know what...if Obama had misremembered this story because he'd spoken with the captain so long ago, it might not be such a big deal. But Obama had never spoken with the captain. His staff had. And so Obama mangled the story.

As an aside, the only other person who's weighed in to support Obama's claims is Phillip Carter. Talking Points Memo, Andrew Sullivan, and others link to Carter as though he's some kind of authority on the subject. He may be, but he's also "doing some work for the Obama campaign," a fact that Obama's supporters in the blogosphere seem all too happy to ignore.

Update: Carter is on Obama's Veterans Policy Committee. Shouldn't TPM note that when the quote Carter as saying Obama's story is "eminently believable"?

Barbara Ehrenreich became a celebrity based on her book Nickel and Dimed, a personal memoir about how difficult and frustrating it can be to get by in America as a minimum wage worker. She later wrote about the 'futile pursuit' of the American Dream. Her writing led Adam Shepard to simulate Ehrenreich's experience as a low-wage worker with limited prospects and no recourse. His conclusions, however, are dramatically different from those of Ehrenreich. In his book Scratch Beginnings, he says that Ehrenheich's work was flawed from the beginning, and that the American Dream will never die. His experience says that raising the minimum wage won't help low-wage workers, and that opportunity exists for all.

Shepard has posted a video on YouTube about his experience:

Shepard's book seems well worth a read. Check out his website for more information. There's also a very good look at his experience in a New Hampshire paper here.

Headline:

US: Bombers didn't have Down syndrome

Read further into the article and you learn:

"Both had recently received psychiatric treatment for depression and/or schizophrenia. From what we know now there's no indication that they had Down syndrome," Smith said, citing records obtained by the military.

Smith also said one of the women was married but that neither had criminal backgrounds. He said it was not clear how they were linked to al-Qaida in Iraq, which the military has said was behind the bombing.

The director of the Ibn-Rushd psychiatric teaching hospital in central Baghdad, Dr. Shalan al-Abboudi, said that one of the pet market bombers, a 36-year-old married woman, had been treated there for schizophrenia and depression, according to her file. Refusing to identify her, he said she received electric shock therapy and was released into the custody of an aunt.

There is a difference between using the mentally retarded as suicide bombers and using depressed, schizophrenic mental patients. But isn't the point that al Qaeda is unable to enlist jhadis bent on martyrdom to perform these missions, and instead must take advantage of those who are unable to reason properly?

A few thoughts from your Cardinal on Le Affair McCain. . .

1.) A 71 year old man . . . A 40 year old slinky blonde. I'm French. What's the big deal?

2.) McCain should thank the New York Times. The age issue is now gone.

3.) No allegation of corruption, no favors, both sides deny an affair. Why is this even a story, and why is the timing so partisan?

4.) Now that the matter of staff being worried about the perception of improper appearances between candidates and snazzy women is enough to spark a front page New York Times story, will the Times be soon publishing an exhaustive 11-part series on former President Bill Clinton? Just wondering . . .

5.) The Big Winner in all this? Obama. Hillary's last ditch Pantsuit and Bayonet charge now blown out of media for 72 hours.

6.) Biggest Loser? The New York Times. Embarrassing nothing-burger. Shame on them.

Shouldn’t Obama’s flak be joking about this instead of lodging an official complaint and getting some peon at MSNBC in trouble?

“It happened during the opening of ‘Hardball’ Monday evening. Matthews was previewing a story on the controversy over Obama's use of another politician's words, and a picture of bin Laden briefly flashed on the screen beside him with the headline ‘Words About Words.’

“The Obama campaign immediately called NBC to complain, and Matthews apologized on the air a few minutes later. When ‘Hardball’ was rerun later that night, a picture of Obama replaced the picture of the terrorist leader. . . . Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor noted the apology and said the campaign had no other comment.”

Elsewhere in the article, it is noted that many spell checkers suggest Osama as a correction for Obama. I’d prefer to be in the camp of WEEKLY STANDARD contributor Reihan Salam--spellcheckers suggest his first-name be changed to Reagan.

The Jerusalem Post reports:

In an uncommon act of journalistic contrition, the BBC has apologized for equating former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri and Hizbullah terror chief Imad Mughniyeh as "great national leaders."

The BBC took the unusual step after Don Mell, the Associated Press's former photographer in Beirut, lambasted the parallel, drawn by BBC correspondent Humphrey Hawkesley in a BBC World report last Thursday, as "an outrage" and "beyond belief."

American journalist Mell was held up at gunpoint by Mughniyeh's men as his colleague Terry Anderson, AP's chief Middle East correspondent, was kidnapped in Beirut in March 1985.

The BBC issued a statement Friday acknowledging that "the scripting of this phrase was imprecise."

That's one way to put it.

He gets to that point at the end of his column, titled "Getting the Military Out of the Nuclear Business." The bulk of the piece isn't so much dedicated to defending the title as it is Arkin clumsily fumbling around the findings of an Air Force Blue Ribbon commission. An example:

While all the focus has been on the dual mission of aircraft and bombers to maintain nuclear deterrent and conventional war-fighting capabilities, even in the case of the nuclear-only land-based missile force, the service is struggling to maintain expertise. According to an internal Air Force report, the problem in the land-based missile force is that officers who are assigned to the Minuteman wings are also assigned to strictly conventional weapons and space-related jobs, diluting their nuclear competency.

Wrong. Air Force missileers spend all four years of their "missile tour" focused on ICBMs--space and conventional weapons play absolutely no role. After that initial assignment, missileers have traditionally moved on to either a space assignment, an ICBM instructor or missile flight test officer at Vandenberg AFB, or go on to Air Force weapons school.

What the panel is suggesting is that because ICBM launch officers have little interaction with the actual missiles (they sit in underground missile alert facilities miles from the "sorties"), the missileer career path should be modified to include a tour as a missile maintenance officer. There is no "diluting" in ICBMs, though I've heard from some bomber pilots who lament their split conventional/nuclear strike duties.

Arkin stumbles along:

In a way, the Air Force's nuclear workforce crisis mirrors that Army's own recruiting crisis: No doubt there are many who are in uniform because they are patriotic and desire to serve the country, but for many who serve in the military, it is increasingly an occupation, one hampered by the fact that the national pool and commitment is lacking.

Wrong again. In 2007, the Air Force had to cut 20 some missile officers at the lieutenant and captain level because they were overmanned in the field. In fact, a quick phone call to Air Force Personnel Command confirms that current 13S (ICBM) manning levels are "optimal." And there's never been a shortage of young men and women willing to fly bombers. There's no Army recruiting "crisis," either.

Now my favorite part. After incorrectly interpreting the report, and drawing a false conclusion based on what seems to be little or no research, Arkin decides that nukes either need to be handed over to the Department of Energy (which retains non-military control of nuclear weapons) or outsourced:

Josh Patashnik writes at TNR:

Marty Lederman is right that it would be nice if McCain would spell out which techniques he thinks are appropriate for the CIA to use--because his anti-torture credibility is sinking pretty rapidly.

And thus a 23 year-old reporter-researcher at the New Republic questions the "anti-torture credibility" of John McCain.

Cover at the Corner Peter Wehner takes Mark Helprin to task for a piece in the Wall Street Journal that, while dealing mainly with the manifold sins of talk radio, also includes the following bit on the conduct of the Iraq war:

To begin with, American columns should have cut through Baghdad after three days and exited three weeks later, leaving Saddam dead and a pliant Iraqi strongman to keep the country harmless or suffer the same quick take-down. Rather than being broken on the wheel of irreconcilable Muslim factions, a supple and intact American power would have shattered Arab elation following Sept. 11, and then by threatening their rule been able to discipline the various police states of the region into eliminating their terrorists. Far more efficient that way, without six and more murderous and unavailing years in which neither a single democracy has appeared nor will one. The surge is merely coincident with a change in Sunni strategy. Instead of watching the U.S. and Iran arm the Shiites for a major sectarian war, the Sunni choose to avail themselves of American arms while simultaneously removing the lunatic jihadists nipping at their heels.

Wehner's critique of this statement deals mainly with the strategic ramifications of such a rapid withdrawal, such as the descent of Iraq into anarchy, the creation of a power vacuum to be filled by al Qaeda, the opportunity for Iran to extend its influence to the far side of the Persian Gulf, etc. All of which is true, but there is another and more general aspect to be considered.

As a military analyst, I see Helprin's prescription for Iraq as breathtaking in both its arrogance and its ignorance of military affairs. It is a striking example of the contrast between what Karl von Clausewitz called the difference between "war on paper" and "real war." Helprin breezily asserts that the U.S."should have cut through Baghdad after three days and exited three weeks later," which makes one wonder if he has ever looked at a map of Iraq and checked out the distances. Not even the Soviet Army, in its deepest Cold War fantasies, ever believed it could advance at such a rate--indeed, not even George Patton's legendary Third Army in World War II was able to do so. As for pulling out in three weeks, this statement merely confirms the old adage that "amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics." If getting to Baghdad was a challenge, getting all our forces back from Baghdad, intact and with all of their supplies and equipment, would have been a prodigy of arms.

A professional looking at Mr. Helprin's plan would only shake his head in disbelief. Helprin seems to think that war is simply a matter of drawing up some plans on a map, handing the plans to the commanders, and telling them to go. It is never so easy, in part because the enemy might have something to say about one's plans, but also because of that pervasive phenomenon that Clausewitz called "friction." In On War (which almost as many claim to have read as claim to have read the Bible), Clausewitz writes, with people like Helprin in mind:

Joel Surnow's decision to walk away from 24 has prompted an outstanding requiem, of sorts, from conservative writer/director Jason Apuzzo:

Before Hollywood started working for al-Queda [sic] my biggest complaint with them was how left-wing cliches were killing films and television. Once you know how the simple liberal mind works — once you crack that code – you can see plot-twists coming from a mile away. Liberal purity has created more cliches and ruined more thrillers and action films than I can even begin to count.

I don’t know the man, but Surnow seemed to consciously understand that over the decades a liberal socialization had taken place with television audeinces which would allow him to create truly shocking plot twists by playing on what we’ve expected from liberal Hollywood for decades and then turning those expectations on their ear.

Black presidents torture? Torture works? The bad guys really aren’t white? A black first lady is the villain? The hippie kid really is a snivelling punk? The protagonist loves his country? The guy who played John F. Kennedy is torturing his own son because his country comes first? Terrorism is always a bad thing? Non-white people are terrorists? Guns do good? And those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

There have been many complaints that “24″ wasn’t truly conservative. True. But again, that’s a good thing because ideological purity ruins drama. You never knew what was going to happen on “24″ because the plot wasn’t beholden to any ideology and this freed the creators to keep the twists coming from any direction.

Apuzzo also sends word that Nicole Kidman will be playing the role of... Valerie Plame. No doubt that flick will do just as well as other recent liberal fantasies turned feature films.

Anne-Marie Slaughter is the dean of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School and her name has been tossed around as a possible secretary of state in the next Democratic administration. I think we can now assume that she won't be working for Obama in 2009. Today she writes at the Huffington Post:

In other words, many white men in the South may be voting against Hillary more than they are voting for Obama. That's not good news for the Clinton campaign. But it isn't necessarily good news for the Obama campaign either. Just because these voters prefer Obama to Hillary does not mean that they will vote for Obama over McCain, no matter what the polls say. It's very hard to believe that when the chips are down they're not going to vote for the guy who looks like them.

ABC News reports on Obama's Virginia victory today under the headline "White Men Boost Obama," but by Slaughter's logic, this is only because they're sexist. It's possible, but in the absence of any evidence to support the theory it's a strange observation for an academic to make. Perhaps Dean Slaughter is pondering a second career as a crude polemicist.

I just got through my first call-in radio show for the BBC, where I was invited on to 5 Live to discuss the "fairness" of the military tribunals at Gitmo. The program's other guest was Andy Worthington, who's apparently written a book on the culture of torture at the military prison. Before running out the door, I thought I'd see what I could find out about Mr. Worthington. His latest piece at Counter Punch begins:

It really doesn't get any worse than this.

Candace Gorman, lawyer for Abdul Hamid al-Ghizzawi, a Libyan detainee at Guantánamo, reports that her client has been infected with AIDS. Mr. al-Ghizzawi explained to his lawyer in a letter that he was told about his infection by a doctor at Guantánamo, adding that he believes that the infection took place in 2004, when he was given a blood test, which "resulted in alarm amongst the hospital staff," although he was not given any explanation for the alarm at the time.

That's right...the U.S. military is now infecting detainees with AIDS, which I suspect would have come as no surprise at all to the program's callers had Worthington cared to share the news with them. Most of the calls ended in some sort of deranged rant about how the United States was complicit in the 9/11 attack, and how there would be no justice at all until the politicians running this country were held accountable for their crimes. The host let them all have their say without interruption. Mixed in were a very few calls of the "good riddance to bad rubbish" variety, but when one of these callers recommended summary execution as a simple solution to the Gitmo problem, his comment was deemed "offensive." Of course, offensive is a relative term. The host didn't hesitate to read aloud text messages from his listeners labeling me a terrorist for my nuanced view of waterboarding (it may be torture, but as a matter of policy it is not currently considered as such, and I personally don't lose any sleep over it).

Best of luck with the Sharia, I say.

Is it really so crazy that David Shuster would draw a connection between politics and prostitution? The Clinton campaign is making hay out of this for their own reasons--and they may even get a nice sympathy bump out of the whole thing--but why would MSNBC suspend the guy? The only cause for suspension is his pathetic apology...("to the extent that people feel I was being pejorative, I apologize about that").

What's really interesting is that just a few days after calling upon Obama to schedule more debates--a request Obama politely declined--the Clinton camp is now threatening to cancel the MSNBC debate scheduled for Feb. 26. Could the reversal have anything to do with her recent fundraising turnaround?

The highlight of this afternoon at CPAC was the presentation of the Blogger of the Year award to the highly deserving Ace of Spades. I suspect that most of our readers are familiar with Ace's blog, but if you have not yet bookmarked it, by all means do so. Ace has a gift for cutting through political BS, for dissecting the fatal flaws behind liberal arguments, and for doing so with humor.

In accepting the award today, he gave an incisive speech on the death of democracy and the rise of tyranny, accompanied by an analysis of how Ronald Reagan re-invigorated the two-party system.

Seriously.

The accompanying picture might -- or might not -- be what Ace really looks like.

From Reuters:

Police in Myanmar have given DVD hawkers strict orders not to stock the new Rambo movie, which features the Vietnam War veteran taking on the former Burma's ruling military junta, a Yangon resident told Reuters on Friday.

Despite the prohibition, pirated copies of the movie are widely available on the streets of the former capital, where it is fast becoming a talking point among a population eager to shake off 45 years of military rule.

"People are going crazy with the quote 'Live for nothing, die for something'," one resident said, referring to the tagline of the fourth Rambo installment, which opened in the United States this week....

"This movie could fuel the sentiment of Myanmar people to invite American troops to help save them from the junta," one Yangon resident told Reuters by e-mail.

Can we get a Rambo movie about Iran, please?

HT: Hit & Run

Our friends over at National Review clearly prefer Romney, but as Romney's prospects fade that support has begun to mutate in to what some are calling McCain Derangement Syndrome. Yesterday at the Corner, this post questioned McCain's competence based on the fact that he'd lost five aircraft during his time as an aviator. (You can see a description of each incident here, hosted by the ridiculous Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain.) Today, Thomas Sowell takes a turn:

When confronted with any of his misdeeds, Senator McCain tends to fall back on his record as a war hero in Vietnam.

Let’s talk sense. Benedict Arnold was a war hero but that did not exempt him from condemnation for his later betrayal.

The passage speaks for itself, but the point to make here is that if McCain's critics want to have a debate over who would make the best commander in chief, what the candidates did at age 30 is largely irrelevant--and to the extent that it is relevant, it's not a debate that they can win. Still, every time they question his patriotism--which this passage most certainly does--they not only discredit their own arguments, but they play to McCain's strength. And it's just plain creepy.

Check out the new journal edited by Lawrence Kaplan:

We've been beating up the New York Times a bit over their report earlier this week of the first death of a U.S. soldier in an MRAP, the heavily-armored vehicles that offer increased protection against IEDs. See here, here, and here for background, but the problem with the Times report is that several soldiers had been killed, prior to this incident, in BAE's RG-31 MRAP and also in Force Protection's Buffalo MRAP.

The apparent contradiction stems from the fact that MNF-I, the source for the story, now claims that the BAE RG-31 is not an MRAP, causing considerable confusion here and at BAE, which clearly labels the truck as an MRAP on its website (requests for information from the company provided no further explanation). Stars & Stripes attempts to clarify:

“This is the first death resulting from an IED attack on an MRAP,” said Rear Adm. Greg Smith, a spokesman for Multi-National Force-Iraq, in a statement Tuesday.

However, servicemembers have been killed in older versions of MRAP vehicles before Saturday, said Michael Aldrich of Force Protection Industries, which makes MRAP vehicles.

In November 2006, three servicemembers were killed in an older version of an MRAP vehicle known as the Buffalo, and in the summer 2007, two servicemembers were killed when a Joint EOD Rapid Response Vehicle was hit by an explosively formed penetrator, Aldrich said Tuesday.

In May 2007, the Defense Department stood up an MRAP task force to send newer versions of the MRAP vehicle downrange as quickly as possible. Since then, 1,463 MRAP vehicles have been delivered to U.S. troops in Iraq, as of Jan. 16.

So anyone killed in an "old" version of MRAP, i.e. those delivered before June of last year, is not being counted by MNF-I? This seems like a pretty arbitrary distinction. I am told that later models of the RG-31 do have thicker side armor to provide greater protection, but apparently MNF-I does not consider any version of RG-31 to be an MRAP (see Update:x2 here).

Now a friend sends along this tidbit:

On page 53 of the 23 January 2008 Balcony Brief delivered to the Chief of Staff of the Army, it was noted that 50 + RG31 MK5 MRAPs were on their way from South Africa from Kuwait. ON the PAO page it noted the leading Army story was "First MRAP Death."

And of course, when the Army reports to Congress on the status of the high-profile program, it does include all MRAP vehicles in its tally. Secretary of the Army Pete Geren told Congress in November that "by the end of April 2008, we project that we will have fielded almost 4,100 MRAPs." It's all very confusing.

This from from Defense Industry Daily, a trade magazine that doesn't normally take potshots at the Times and has no ideological axe to grind:

In fairness, the rest of the New York Times article is better than the title. Nevertheless, that title raises legitimate questions about the NY Times' journalistic practices. Especially coming as it does on the heels of their recent article "War Torn: Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles", which portrays US veterans as damaged and dangerous despite a murder rate that's actually considerably lower than the rate for equivalent US population as a whole. That NY Times article has also been sharply questioned by local papers who went out and did substantive research instead.

The New York Times' standards for reporting on the US military and the defense industry have become a legitimate news issue of their own, and a deserving subject of coverage. As DID's archives will attest, there are certainly more than enough legitimate controversies and debates in the USA that revolve around military procurement programs. There is no need to make them up.

The report also notes persistent and "persuasive" arguments against the Times's claim that this was "the first death resulting from an I.E.D. attack on an MRAP." We've been arguing the point all week, and have offered what I think is incontrovertible evidence that this is a bogus claim.

The Times needs to print a correction.

And lose a war:

Under no circumstances can Petraeus be fired....

Leaving Petraeus in Baghdad -- presuming that President Bush doesn't reassign him before leaving the White House -- isn't without risks, either...

That leaves an unconventional option. The president can give Petraeus a promotion he can't refuse...

This from Spencer Ackerman's latest on how the Democrats can destroy General Petraeus once they gain the White House in 2008, thus preventing the GOP from drafting the general for the 2012 election. The problem with Ackerman's conclusion, leaving aside the inherently creepy nature of the exercise, is that it is all wrong. Here's where Ackerman finally settles on a method for humiliating the man:

It would be shrewder to give Petraeus one of the two most prestigious command assignments in the military as the final assignment of his career. (The military would probably see that as more respectful move, as well.) Putting Petraeus at Central Command would have an added benefit for a Democratic president: he would be tasked with overseeing a plan to draw troops down from Iraq, thereby making him complicit in the undoing of his chief political advantage.

Put the man at CENTCOM. That will not destroy his reputation, and it may well allow the military to secure victory despite a Clinton administration. Which is why this is precisely the assignment supporters of the war favor for Petraeus. From there he could oversee the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, the mentality it takes to write a piece like this is a marvel.

Okay, so this is a bit in the weeds, but as Roggio explained yesterday, this New York Times story falsely reported the "first fatality inflicted by a roadside bomb on an MRAP, the new Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected armored vehicle that the American military is counting on to reduce casualties from roadside bombs in Iraq."

There have been several U.S. soldiers and Marines killed in action while patrolling in MRAP vehicles. As early as late 2006, three U.S. military personnel were killed in a Force Protection MRAP in Iraq according to the company's vice president, Mike Aldrich, who I interviewed early last year. Also, as Badger 6 noted yesterday, he lost three of his own men in two separate incidents involving RG-31 MRAPs made by BAE Systems.

But now Badger 6 has posted an update that includes this non-apology apology to the New York Times:

We here at Badgers Forward always strive to be accurate. MNF-I apparently does not define the RG31 as an MRAP. Based on my training, education and usage of the vehicle I disagree and after reviewing the information I have been working on the folks at MNF-I at least agree that my categorization of the vehicle in that manner is accurate. The RG31 was sort of the grand-daddy of them all and the other vehicles have many design features of the RG.

Why is MNF-I insisting that the RG-31 is not an MRAP? I've seen the RG-31 at a number of exhibitions and the vehicle has always been described as an MRAP. And as you can see in the picture above, taken from BAE's website, the company does, without a doubt, consider the vehicle an MRAP. I've put a call in to a company rep to try and get to the bottom of this. But it's pretty clear that MNF-I and the New York Times are making a distinction here that will come as news to anyone who's been following this program or been involved in it, including the company that makes the vehicle.

The fact of the matter is that soldiers have died in MRAP vehicles in the past. This does not detract from the overall value of the MRAP program, but it does mean that the New York Times was incorrect to claim that this was some kind of first. If their source for the story was MNF-I...well, they got bad information, and they should print a correction.

Michael Medved writes:

It’s obvious that the big winner in South Carolina was John McCain (grabbing 33% of the vote in a hard-fought win and 19 of the 22 awarded delegates), but it’s also worth pausing for a moment to identify the primary’s biggest loser.

That loser wasn’t Mike Huckabee (who ran a strong second with 30% of the vote and will certainly continue his underdog campaign), nor was it Fred Thompson (who placed third with 16%, despite talk of his last minute surge) or even Mitt Romney (with a feeble fourth place finish, despite investing more money in the state than any of his rivals).

The big loser in South Carolina was, in fact, talk radio: a medium that has unmistakably collapsed in terms of impact, influence and credibility because of its hysterical and one-dimensional involvement in the GOP nomination fight.

Of all McCain's heresies, real and imagined, none grates on talk radio listeners more than his role in last year's failed immigration reform/amnesty. But Duncan Currie parses the numbers of McCain's South Carolina victory on THE DAILY STANDARD today, and it's apparent that McCain's record on immigration "is not the insurmountable obstacle it appeared to be last year." Still, if voters have moved on, or at least made their peace with McCain, it's clear that talk radio has not. Medved again:

In other words, the talk radio jihad against Mac and Huck hasn’t destroyed or even visibly damaged those candidates. But it has damaged, and may help destroy, talk radio

It's certainly an interesting conclusion considering the source.

The United Nations has backed a $100 million film fund. The idea behind the project, Variety reports, is to combat stereotypes in movies.

"For a lifetime, it seems, I have agonized over the way stereotypes, reinforced by popular culture and the media, can set the emotional and political stage for policies that result in chronic misunderstanding," Queen Noor, the U.S.-born wife of the late King Hussein of Jordan, was quoted as saying in Variety. It's unclear whether the United Nations is providing financial, or simply emotional, support.

In other news, Oliver Stone has announced that his next project is "Bush," a movie about the life of President George W. Bush. Here's what Stone told Variety about the project:

"It's a behind-the-scenes approach, similar to "Nixon," to give a sense of what it's like to be in his skin," Stone told Daily Variety. "But if "Nixon" was a symphony, this is more like a chamber piece, and not as dark in tone. People have turned my political ideas into a cliche, but that is superficial. I'm a dramatist who is interested in people, and I have empathy for Bush as a human being, much the same as I did for Castro, Nixon, Jim Morrison, Jim Garrison and Alexander the Great.

"Here, I'm the referee, and I want a fair, true portrait of the man. How did Bush go from an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world? It's like Frank Capra territory on one hand, but I'll also cover the demons in his private life, his bouts with his dad and his conversion to Christianity, which explains a lot of where he is coming from. It includes his belief that God personally chose him to be president of the United States, and his coming into his own with the stunning, preemptive attack on Iraq. It will contain surprises for Bush supporters and his detractors."

Before you scoff, it's worth remembering that World Trade Center was a pretty good piece of filmmaking.

The Iowahawk and the devoted folks at the Treacher Center have put together a special investigative report with "statistical guidance from the New York Times."

A Denver newspaper columnist is arrested for stalking a story subject. In Cincinnati, a television reporter is arrested on charges of child molestation. A North Carolina newspaper reporter is arrested for harassing a local woman. A drunken Chicago Sun-Times columnist and editorial board member is arrested for wife beating. A Baltimore newspaper editor is arrested for threatening neighbors with a shotgun. In Florida, one TV reporter is arrested for DUI, while another is charged with carrying a gun into a high school. A Philadelphia news anchorwoman goes on a violent drunken rampage, assaulting a police officer. In England, a newspaper columnist is arrested for killing her elderly aunt.

Unrelated incidents, or mounting evidence of that America's newsrooms have become a breeding ground for murderous, drunk, gun-wielding child molesters? Answers are elusive, but the ever-increasing toll of violent crimes committed by journalists has led some experts to warn that without programs for intensive mental health care, the nation faces a potential bloodbath at the hands of psychopathic media vets...

The stories cited in the opening paragraph, while instructive, are by no means isolated. Google searches return hundreds of crimes attributable to workers in America's media industry, and millions of pages containing the terms "journalist" and "murder." They are as shocking in their detail as they are in their number.

You'll want to read the whole thing. By the way, every incident of a media member running amuck mentioned in the piece is a true story, and the Hawk links to the original source.