HAVEN'T WE BEEN DOING THIS SINCE ABOUT 1942? Guardian headline: "America to build super weapons".

NASA HIRES CONSULTANT ON SHUTTLE INSULATION: Scott Ott has the details.

ENDGAME: CNSNews reports "Push to Recall California Governor Enters Final Week".

WIN ONE FOR THE SWIMMER: Check out this howler from Ted Kennedy:

"I'm not sure where Arnold [Schwarzenegger] gets his political instincts. People often say that for Kennedys, it's in the water."

Chutzpah, thy name is Teddy.

FROM THE SUBLIME TO THE RIDICULOUS: Stephen Green has a worshipful obituary of Katherine Hepburn. Meanwhile in Mark Steyn's obit of Strom Thurmond, Steyn describes his own "light petting session" with Thurmond, an ex-Southern Democrat who made Bill Clinton's sexual exploits look like amateur hour.

And also in the sublime to the ridiculous category, "Mean Mr. Mustard" has a side-by-side comparison of Hepburn and one of today's female stars.

INSTAPUNDIT UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds, as everyone reading this blog probably already knows, is on vacation this week. He sent me a photograph of some of his sightseeing though. Here's a version I cropped to fit on this page. Click on it for more detail....

Stephen Den Beste has another holiday snapshot of Reynolds, and links to even more.

ASK AND VERILY, YE SHALL RECEIVE: Last week, I posted, both here and on Blogcritics:

Considering how much James Lileks raved over Spider-Man last year (and rightly so), I'll be very interested in reading his take on The Hulk, the textbook example of how not to make a film of a comic book character.

Lileks' review of the film (actually, more a review of the comic book, but why carp?) is the subject of his latest "Strib" column.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Howard Dean can roll up his sleeves all he wants at public events, but as long as we see that heart tattoo with Neville Chamberlain's name on his right forearm, he's never going anywhere," Dennis Miller said. Miller presented his stand-up routine at a Bush fundraiser.

(Man, I never thought I'd type that last sentence.)

Duncan Currie has some thoughts on Miller becoming a man of the right.

PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE: Reuters reports that "After Monday Microsoft won't be taking support calls for the venerable operating system", Windows NT 4.0 Workstation, and another Windows OS is also being phased out:

The next Microsoft operating system on the block will be Windows 98. As of Jan. 16, 2004, the now-five-year-old OS will be laid to rest.

Tuesday, however, also marks a milestone for Windows 98. As of July 1, no-charge assisted support for the OS disappears. For-fee support continues for another six-and-a-half months.

My wife and I are still using Windows 2000 on all but two of our home and office PCs (which have Win98). Fortunately, it looks like they're still supporting that OS--for now.

NEW ESSAY ON BLOGCRITICS: "Recording Music Goes Through The Looking Glass".

MORNING IN AMERICA UPDATE: "Markets on course for global five-year high".

Like I said back in February...

THE MOYNIHAN GAMBIT: I've long been a fan of Stanley Crouch, ever since I first saw him on Charlie Rose's show in the late 1980s or early 1990s. In his latest New York Daily News column, he praises Bush's outreach towards blacks, as he dedicated June Black Music Month at a White House event entitled Harlem's Song:

If this event was indeed part of a grand strategy, Bush seems well on his way to redirecting the ethnic tone of the Republican Party in a way that may not automatically make black people feel friendly toward it but that could, over time, bring issues of importance to Afro-Americans to the front and put party affiliations in the back.

I thought about all of that walking around the White House as the rehearsals were going on. Integration was everywhere. It felt good to see the military personnel and all the guests representing the many faces of the nation just as much as they did under President Bill Clinton.

Further, with Bush's emphasis on educational policy, with his appointments of Rice and Powell, with his pledge to refurbish Frederick Douglass' home, with his $15 billion relief package for black Africa and with his recent admonishment that federal law enforcement agencies should not profile any ethnic community unless the issue of terrorism is at hand, this President is changing his party.

Were Bush to go further and make it clear that federal assistance will be made available to all communities bent upon removing the anarchic thugs who, to cite one example, have been responsible for the killing of 10,000 people in Los Angeles over the last 20 years, many would have to stand up.

That would be a policy coup that neither the civil rights establishment nor the Democrats - or black Americans - could easily dismiss.

I agree. And Bush has the perfect slam-dunk triangulation strategy to go with it, and leave Hillary gasping for air:

When he announces the program, he can simply quote from Daniel Patrick Moynihan's classic essay, "Defining Deviancy Down":

In the words spoken from the bench, Judge Edwin Torres of the New York State Supreme Court, Twelfth Judicial District, described how "the slaughter of the innocent marches unabated: subway riders, bodega owners, cab drivers, babies; in laundromats, at cash machines, on elevators, in hallways." In personal communication, he writes: "This numbness, this near narcoleptic state can diminish the human condition to the level of combat infantrymen, who, in protracted campaigns, can eat their battlefield rations seated on the bodies of the fallen, friend and foe alike. A society that loses its sense of outrage is doomed to extinction." There is no expectation that this will change, nor any efficacious public insistence that it do so. The crime level has been normalized.

Consider the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. In 1929 in Chicago during Prohibition, four gangsters killed seven gangsters on February 14. The nation was shocked. The event became legend. It merits not one but two entries in the World Book Encyclopedia. I leave it to others to judge, but it would appear that the society in the 1920s was simply not willing to put up with this degree of deviancy. In the end, the Constitution was amended, and Prohibition, which lay behind so much gangster violence, ended.

In recent years, again in the context of illegal traffic in controlled substances, this form of murder has returned. But it has done so at a level that induces denial. James Q. Wilson comments that Los Angeles has the equivalent of a St. Valentine's Day Massacre every weekend. Even the most ghastly re-enactments of such human slaughter produce only moderate responses. On the morning after the close of the Democratic National Convention in New York City in July, there was such an account in the second section of the New York Times. It was not a big story; bottom of the page, but with a headline that got your attention. "3 Slain in Bronx Apartment, but a Baby is Saved." A subhead continued: "A mother's last act was to hide her little girl under the bed." The article described a drug execution; the now-routine blindfolds made from duct tape; a man and a woman and a teenager involved. "Each had been shot once in the head." The police had found them a day later. They also found, under a bed, a three-month-old baby, dehydrated but alive. A lieutenant remarked of the mother, "In her last dying act she protected her baby. She probably knew she was going to die, so she stuffed the baby where she knew it would be safe." But the matter was left there.

The police would do their best. But the event passed quickly; forgotten by the next clay, it will never make World Book.

Did I say "leave Hillary gasping for air"? Maxine Waters would reach for the smelling salts as well.

BLACKOUT CITY: Sorry for the lack of posting today--the power and cable modem were up and down all day. We were without power for several hours in the morning, then got it back, but the cable modem took several hours more to come back. Then we lost power around 6:30 p.m. At that point my wife and I did what any sensible couple in that situation would do: headed out for sushi.

We're back. Power's back. Cable modem's back.

For now....

(Incidentally, I can't blame this one on Gray Davis. It's been over 100 degrees for the past two or three days, and apparently, a transformer in our neighborhood simply buckled under from the heat. Probably something similar affected Comcast's cables.)

KINSLEY'S LAW IN ACTION: Michael Kinsley once famously said that the definition of a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth. Check out this classic from Rep. Patrick Kennedy:

As sometimes happens with Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), he let his mouth race ahead of his brain Wednesday night at a gathering of Young Democrats at the Washington nightspot Acropolis. After presidential candidate Howard Dean spoke, Kennedy delivered an impassioned peroration against President Bush's tax cut. We hear that Kennedy told the crowd: "I don't need Bush's tax cut. I have never worked a [bleeping] day in my life." With that he got the audience's attention -- the dropping-jaws kind.

Fortunately though, no baggage screeners were harmed during the speech.

STROM THURMOND DEAD AT 100: Just posted on the Drudge Report, no link to a story yet.

UPDATE: Now there is.

UPDATE: You just know that someone in the late night talk show crowd will make a crack at Thurmond dying on the same day that Supreme Court struck down Texas' sodomy laws.

UPDATE: Well, that didn't take long, did it?

THIS COULD BE INTERESTING: Could Hillary be replacing Tom Daschle as minority leader in the Senate? Orrin Judd has some thoughts.

DIGGING THE SCENE WITH THE DEAN MACHINE: James Taranto looks at Howard Dean, his temper, and his equivocations, and decides:

It is precisely because of his "faults" that Dean has a shot at the nomination. David Brooks has the best explanation of the Dean phenomenon, albeit in an article that mentions Dean only in passing. In brief, the Democrats who make up the party's base are mad--in both senses of the word. So blinded are they by their frustration at being out of power, and by their inexplicable hatred of President Bush, that they are astonishingly detached from reality. That Dean is determinedly wrong about Iraq is, for this constituency, a selling point. They are too. As an executive of Meetup.com, which has become an online center for grassroots Dean organizing, tells Fox News: "Howard Dean has a rabid following." (Good thing he's a physician.)

"None of this necessarily means Dean will win the nomination", Taranto adds, although "even if Dean doesn't win, he is likely to hurt the prospects of whoever is the Democratic nominee."

In other words, read--as the "It" phrase of 2003 goes--the whole thing (and Brooks' article as well.)

THE SMOKING BEANS: In addition the cache of nuclear parts discovered yesterday, MSNBC also reported:

U.S. troops also discovered about 300 sacks of castor beans, which are used to make the deadly biological agent ricin, hidden in a warehouse in the town of al-Aziziyah, 50 miles southeast of Baghdad, the capital. The castor beans were inaccurately labeled as fertilizer.

U.S. search teams have also been led to a site near Nasiriyah, a key Euphrates River crossing 200 miles south of Baghdad, where Iraqi informants said Scud missiles were buried.

Uh--inaccurately labeled? Wouldn't deceptively labeled be more accurate?

In any case, As Byron York writes, the “Bush Lied” meme is rapidly falling apart.

Why the GOP picked New York for their convetion next year: James Taranto has an excellent theory. Besides all of the 9/11 connotations of course, there will be thousands of protestors outside the convention hall. Taranto writes that "TV crews will be unable to resist them--thus treating voters across the country to images of Bush's opposition as a bunch of extremists and freaks."

Brilliant strategery!

NUCLEAR COMPONENTS DISCOVERED IN IRAQ, according to MSNBC, which says, "U.S. intelligence officials have found decade-old plans and equipment for a nuclear weapons program in Iraq, indicating that former President Saddam Hussein might have been able to restart the weapons programs he built before the first Gulf War, U.S. officials told NBC News on Wednesday."

UPDATE: Instapundit has more.

MAYBE THE TIMES ARE A-CHANGING: Media Research Center has two surprising quotes from late night talk shows:

-- Friday's Special Report with Brit Hume on FNC and Fox News Sunday both played this Jay Leno joke from the June 19 Tonight Show on NBC:
"And former Vice President Al Gore says he's looking to develop a liberal cable TV and radio network to counteract Fox and all the conservative shows. Gore says there's no outlet in this country for the liberal viewpoint. You know except ABC, NBC, CBS, HBO, Bravo, BET, Showtime, Lifetime, MTV, Oxygen, National Public Radio and IFC. Other than that, there's nothing!"

-- Guest-hosting the June 20 Late Show Friday night on CBS, actor Kelsey Grammer, who holds the record for playing the longest-running ever sit-com character (“Frasier Crane” on both Cheers and Frasier), delivered this joke during his opening monologue:
"So it seems I've been playing the same effete, pompous character on television for 20 years, and I know what you're thinking: 'Wow, Peter Jennings looks terrible!'"

That one earned the audience's laughter and applause -- and mine too.

By the way, nice of Leno to label NBC a liberal channel, something their news organization would deny until the cows came home.

ACROSS THE ATLANTIC IS BACK: But temporarily at a numeric URL, whilst waiting for DNS propagation takes place.

(Why yes, I did just say "whilst", yes I did.)

The Dixie Chicks dedicated a song to Michael Moore during their stint at Madison Square Garden.

THE NEW L-WORD: Last week Ronald Bailey of Reason noted that John Kerry was quoted in June 16 & 23 issue of The New Yorker as saying, "The Bush Administration agenda isn't conservative Republicanism, and it's not radical Republicanism--it's extreme libertarianism."

Bailey asked:

Two thoughts: (1) Bush a libertarian? What's Kerry been smoking?

(2) Among Democrats, is "libertarianism" now a demonizing term that is the moral equivalent to "card carrying ACLU member" for Republicans?

Apparently so. Because check out this ad hominem attack from Gephardt aide Erik Smith, digging his boss ever-deeper into the ground after his executive order gaffe:

"The fact that this question comes from libertarian law professors should speak for itself"

I wonder if the new L-word has been focus group tested recently for its negative connotations among soccer moms? If so, expect to see it dropped quite a bit into speeches and rebuttals.

BLOGCRITICS: I just updated the list on my Web site of the more substantial posts I've made to Blogcritics.org, since the site began late last summer.

Man, I've written a lot of stuff there!

LEON URIS PASSED AWAY OVER THE WEEKEND. Charles Johnson has the details.

ADVANTAGE ED: Back on February 4th, we asked, "did environmentalism kill Columbia?" and looked at the role the EPA played in requiring NASA to change the formulation of the foam used on its external tank.

Today, Stephen Den Beste writes:

In a conclusion I think few will find surprising, it now appears that Columbia was lost because foam insulation broke loose from its external fuel tank during boost and struck its wing, causing damage to the ceramic tiles on the wing which resulted in catastrophic failure during reentry.

The foam on the fuel tank is sprayed on. In 1997 the formulation used was changed. The new version of the foam seems to be much less satisfactory and has a greater tendency to come off, and this change may end up being the "root cause" of the deaths of 7 good people.

So why was the foam changed? The new foam is "environmentally friendly". The older formulation utilized Freon, the new one doesn't. And the danger from foam fragments was identified five years ago from analysis of the first flight to use the newer foam formulation.

They should have changed back immediately once that had been found. They should change back now.

He's right. As we said, way to go, Carol Browner (and Bill Clinton).

And way to go Rachel Carson, as well.

CALIFORNIA TREMORS: Jack Kelly has some thoughts on the recall Davis movement and its nationwide implications. I'd quote from it, but you're better off reading the whole thing.

UNSAFE IN THE GOP: Will Ralph Nader run as a Republican?? This AFP article claims he might:

Nader says that if the Greens reject him, he might choose to run as an independent, or possibly even as a Republican, which would pit him against George W. Bush in the primary.

"Wouldn't that be interesting? A Republican run?" he muses.

Why yes, yes it would. Nader would be slaughtered in the primaries, but it would be lots of fun to watch.

(Link found via Hollywood Halfwits, which has lots of other fun content.)

THERE'S GOT TO BE A MORNING AFTER: Way back on February 26, I wrote, "It's waaaaaay too soon to say this with any certainty, but there's a very good chance that it's Morning in America for George W. Bush."

Today, Orrin Judd posts that it's...Morning in America.

How can I argue with that?!

GETTIN' SQUIGGLY WITH IT: David Frum sums up the Supreme Court's non-decision decision on affirmative action perfectly:

Suppose you were a moderately conscientious university administrator trying to figure out what is OK and what is not. You are just as confused today as you were the day before yesterday. Preferential treatment for certain racial groups is constitutionally permissible and maybe even mandatory – but explicit quotas are forbidden (that’s the holding of the Bakke case back in the 1970s) and so are numerical bonuses of the sort that Michigan used. How are you supposed to run an admissions system on the basis of that information?

Once upon a time, we expected the Supreme Court to hand down broad principles of law that people could use to guide their behavior. But in recent years, the current court has taken to issuing ever-more specific decisions with ever-narrower application. Four years ago, my one-time professor Cass Sunstein wrote a whole book praising what he called “judicial minimalism.” His hero was Sandra Day O’Connor, whose whole jurisprudence boils down to a series of snap, arbitrary judgments: “This gerrymander is too squiggly: No.” “This one is not too squiggly: Yes.”

Sandra Day O’Connor is by all accounts a perfectly lovely person. People who have worked with her tell me that she is a very smart lawyer. But these cases in which she was the decisive vote exemplify her failure to do the job that people pay judges, and especially Supreme Court judges, to do. Courts are supposed to settle disputes. O’Connor decisions, by contrast, tend to provoke endless rounds of further litigation, as redistricters try to guess how squiggly a district can be before it becomes too squiggly and universities attempt to anticpate how much racial preference is too much. This isn’t law: It’s a high-stakes version of the children’s guessing game, “Getting warmer; getting colder.”

Read the whole thing.

McDONALD'S: Helping to reduce global warming! Well, in a convoluted way, at least.

SHADES OF 1972: Has Dick Gephardt just planted his own ticking time bomb?

His quote makes a nice bookend with Kerry's spectacular gaffe last week.

UPDATE: And apparently, Howard Dean didn't exactly ace Meet The Press.

FLASHBACK: Dave Kopel made the 1972 connection back in February. Click here to read his prescient comments.

TEN YEARS AGO TODAY, Andrew Sullivan found out he was HIV-positive. Through the miracle of modern medicine, he's still here, and has some thoughts on life--and death.

"ALL PUBLIC EVENTS IN SHUTESBURY ARE FRAGRANCE FREE", according to the Web site for the Massachusetts town. Reason's Jacob Sullum has some thoughts on a growing--and silly--trend.

THE USS RONALD REAGAN: Well, it's not quite USS yet-it's a PCU, a "Precommissioning Unit". But it was accepted by the Navy on June 20th.

(Link via Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, whose blog is still--I believe the technical term is "busticated", but I'm not sure.)

METROSEXUALS AND RURASEXUALS are meeting at a swinging shindig at The Brothers Judd Blog!

They all intersect at Samizdata.net, in a very interesting post. Be sure to read the comments.

UPDATE: I was about to post in Samizdata's comments, but figured I'd post this here as well. Tom Wolfe's From Bauhaus To Our House does a pretty good job of explaining how modern architecture came to be the dominant form of architecture in the US, and does a thorough job of deflating the egos and pretensions of Corbu, Mies, Gropius, Johnson, et al.

There's a lot of modern architecture that I really like, but Corbusier's housing projects and city planning were uniformly disastrous. It always amazes me to see them worshipped 30 years after the first American housing projects based on his designs (such as Pruitt-Igoe) were first dynamited. (There's footage of Pruitt-Igoe, both before and after its spectacular demolition in Koyaanisqatsi, incidentally.)

In contrast, Corbusier's private residences of the 1920s, where he got his start as an architect-for-hire, were pretty nifty. But they were individually commissioned, by wealthy clients who knew what they were getting into, and specifically wanted that style--a far, far different experience than those residents of projects such as Pruitt-Igoe and Cabrini-Green, who had modern architecture inflicted on them.

ON THE BLEEDING EDGE OF HOME THEATER: My review of Home Theater For Dummies is up on Blogcritics.

BUYING TIME: Charles Johnson writes, "Iran is using the same cheat-and-retreat tactics that Iraq got away with for years, to buy time for its nuclear weapons program. And the United Nations is, of course, perfectly willing to play along."

HULK SMASH PUNY FILM INTO GUITAR PICKS! The film version of The Hulk is truly, truly dreadful. Save your money, wait for the DVD, where you can (a) rent it and (b) fast forward to the action sequences which are only so-so, but far better than the scenes leading up to them. The only way to like the Hulk is to (a) like and (b) identify with Bruce Banner before he's subjected to the "lethal gamma rays". There was nothing to like about any of the human characters, and the CGI Hulk was surprisingly phony looking (and acting).

The film sort of resembled King Kong meets Austin Powers, with its combination of goofy split screens and Andromeda Strain-like government lab deep underground in the middle of the desert (which could double as a pretty good set for the next James Bond or Austin Powers movie.) I know the split screens were supposed to create a comic book-like atmosphere, but instead, all they reminded me of were Austin Powers and the same 1960s films (such as The Thomas Crown Affair that it tried to parody.)

The Australian newcomer Eric Bana was a reasonably good blank cipher to play Bruce Banner. He's wasted in the role, but that's the director and screenwriter's fault, not his. Jennifer Connelly is wonderful eye-candy (if a bit anorexic looking), and Nick Nolte goofily chewed the scenery as Bruce's dad, David (the late Bill Bixby not able to take the part, alas). But what was the deal with Sam Elliot's moustache? It looked like the same strange Montgomery-like style that Michael Bates, the warden in A Clockwork Orange wore.

Actually, in a way Eric Bana is part of the problem: Michael Keaton was an established star by the time he played Batman for Tim Burton. He had just come off Clean and Sober where he established that he can do more than blackout comedy and slapstick. Despite the dire warnings of the comic book crowd, because Keaton was a known and likable star, you identified with him as the tortured Bruce Wayne, and felt for his plight as an orphan--a man-child living alone (aside from his faithful butler) in an isolated mansion and wearing a silly costume at night

As I said, since there's no humanity to Bana's Banner, there's no reason to feel sympathetic towards the Hulk.

And what was with the Hulk not killing anyone (other than the odd giant radioactive poodle of course)? King Kong, whom the Hulk is clearly modeled after (with more than a touch of Frankenstein, of course), killed dozens of people in the 1933 film--and yet everyone felt for the big lug when he was blasted off the top of the Empire State Building.

(By the way, key tip for future reference: anytime there's a film with a giant radioactive poodle, you know you're in serious trouble. And it was one of the film's highlights, for crying out loud.)

Speaking of "what was with", what was with Bruce's father experimenting with gamma rays in 1966? Bruce was supposed to be four at the time, meaning he was born in '62, making him 40 or 41 in this film--which was clearly set in the present day. Yet the Bana and Connelly are both in their early 30s, and both of their characters are played as if they're 30 or younger. Perhaps Ang Lee should have set the film in the late 1980s, and had Josh Lucas's Talbot character give a "greed is good" speech.

Truly an awful film--and dreadfully slow pacing, to boot. Easily 30 to 45 minutes of the film could have been cut out, and nobody would have missed them. And it's surprising to see Hollywood make such a blatantly anti-military (and anti-technology) film so quickly after 9/11.

Ang Lee, who knows better, was recently quoted as saying, "I'm trying to make a delicacy out of American fast food". He should have started with better ingredients. McDonalds' food is fine for what it is: fast food. But trying to make filet mignon out of a Big Mac is a futile. And fast food at the movies can be surprisingly satisfying: last year's Spider-Man was a textbook on how to make a fun summer movie version of a comic book character. Considering how much James Lileks raved over Spider-Man last year (and rightly so), I'll be very interested in reading his take on The Hulk, the textbook example of how not to make a film of a comic book character.

In the meantime, if the next batch of Fender heavy celluloid guitar picks I buy has a lime green tint to them, I'll know where they came from.

WMD DOCUMENTS: Possibly discovered by U.S. Forces.

I'm not getting my hopes up, but it should be interesting to see how this one plays out.

YET ANOTHER REASON FOR THE RECALL DAVIS PETITION: He just tripled California's car tax--but there are efforts to reduce it, or repeal it entirely.

"DEAD AND DAMNED"--that's Trent Telenko's take on the Democrats after 9/11.

Maybe that's why the ACLU has updated their direct mail campaign to be less shrill and leftist, as Reason's Ronald Bailey and Tim Cavanaugh note.

JONAH GOLDBERG WRITES, "The gays have won. The problem is no one will admit it", adding:

The challenge for social conservatives, it seems to me, is to make the best of what they consider a bad situation. But that would require making some painful capitulations -intellectual, moral, philosophical and financial. It would also require gay activists to understand that they've won and that the best course of action for them would be magnanimity in victory. Unfortunately, this is all unlikely since both camps are in denial about how far gays have come.

Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Reynolds have some thoughts as well.

FAR AWAY, SO CLOSE: There's a possibility that we could be seeing more regime change both near and abroad. This AP headline--"Iran Blocks U.N. Nuke Watchdog's Moves"--along with James Lileks' recent column, has an ominous sense of deja vu about it. Iran's mullahs are obviously gambling that after liberating Iraq only a few months ago, that we're not prepared to have a repeat anytime soon. But Lileks' second option would certainly be a useful interim step.

Meanwhile, Orrin Judd has news that Karl Rove has been consulting with the recall-Davis movement. As Orrin writes, "Well, the White House has had great success with regime change lately..."

On both fronts, as saying goes...faster please.

I THINK I SWALLOWED THE RED PILL: Blogger has radically changed the look of their Blogger Pro interface. This should be interesting...

(By the way, you'd think the spell checker in Blogger Pro would know how to spell blocker, blacker, bicker Blogger, for chrissakes!)

WE ARE THE EIGHTIES: Wilson Goode praises President Bush. Err, that is, the ex-Philadelphia Mayor (infamous in the mid-'80s for his role in the MOVE fire) praises George W. Bush's faith-based initiative:

"What the president has proposed is that faith-based programs have access to funding, that is happening in a way that has never happened before," Goode told CNSNews.com.

"I think [Bush] has done a good job in leading, I think that he has done a good job in getting the issue out in front of the people. We all are better off because of that," Goode added.

Goode took part in a panel discussion following Tuesday's screening of the PBS documentary, God and the Inner City, which was funded by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and Manifold Productions, Inc.

Interesting.

THE MAN WHO SUED THE WORLD: There's a new Website, called John Banzhaf Watch, aimed at monitoring "the trial lawyer who dreamt up the tobacco lawsuits that drained billions of dollars from a legal industry and made lawyers like JB billionaires. That's billionaires with a B!" Their homepage goes on to say:

JB is the head of a new troubling movement that believes there is no such thing as PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY! Recently at a debate in Washington, D.C. he said before hundreds of disbelievers that personal responsibility was "crap!"

At stake is not only the abrogation of personal responsibility, but also the future of the $115 billion fast-food industry -- and perhaps the entire food industry. A potential flood of obesity-related lawsuits could cost the restaurant industry hundreds of millions of dollars, legal experts say. Industry executives say that could result in job losses and restaurant closings.

And this is just the beginning.

What's next? Will he sue car makers for making cars that potentially kill? Will he sue cereal companies for making Lucky Charms so darn tasty and thus potentially addictive? Will he sue his mother for not teaching him better eating habits as a youth?

Whatever his next target, we'll be watching. In the meantime, stay tuned for more information about the progress of his obesity litigation. Already, he's helped win over $12 million from McDonald's in the first obesity lawsuit. Next, he's going after all six of the major fast-food chains -- McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut.

They suggest some ways to fight back, as well.

BEING THERE: Peter Sellars believes that "the arts are important now because they prevent terrorism", as Tom Peyser of Reason describes his philosphy.

Not surprisingly, Peyser is all over the man whose motto seems to be "Will Epater les Bourgeois For Food".

TRUST AND TAX RATES: Interesting comparisons by Richard W. Rahn of the Discovery and Cato Institutes.

EVA BAER-SCHENKEIN: The Greg Packer of television?

I JUST READ MAUREEN DOWD'S REVIEW of one of Stephen Green's latest posts. (He's back, by the way!) In it, she quotes Green, talking about Hillary, and saying, "Let's get this out of the way right out front, so there's no mistaking where I come from...she's a pretty effective senator for the people for the great state of New York. And...Bill Clinton's...a fun guy to hang out with."

I have a feeling though, that Dowd may have left a few things out, so...read the whole thing for yourself.

THE JOHN KERRY/GEORGE ROMNEY CONNECTION REVEALED. Sullivan wrote just last night, "The one thing that knowledgeable people have told me about John Kerry is that he doesn't know when to stop. He has no controlling mechanism when he goes on the attack. To accuse this president of deliberately lying to get this country into war is therefore a typical piece of Kerry excess. I think Kerry will pay dearly for it in the long run - and maybe even sooner."

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Kerry himself warned of Saddam's WMD efforts...in 1997!

THE ANTI-REVIEW: While Rolling Stone ushered in the genre of "rock journalism" in the late 1960s, it, and the magazines that followed, also ushered in the genre of the anti-review. The anti-review typically happened when either (a) the writer was handed an album so outside his ken that he had no idea what to say about it and blocked, or (b) hated the album so much that he decided to simply make stuff up in a pique of condescending anger mixed with wild improvisation.

With that in mind, over at Blogcritics.org, I look at one of the great anti-reviews of all time, Creem's 1970 anti-review of Led Zep III.

I'LL TAKE THE SECOND OPTION AS WELL, PLEASE: James Lileks looks at Bush, nuclear proliferation, and Iran, and finds that the president has two choices.

The second option would also work rather nicely in North Korea, I suspect.

BE SURE TO WEAR YOUR TINFOIL HELMET, next time you ride your Segway. John Hawkins links to "a positively bizarre story in USA Today. According to USA Today technology writer Kevin Maney, President Bush fell off a Segway not by accident, but as part of a plot to hurt Segway and thereby help the oil industry."

Hawkins has excerpts from the column. Be sure to check out the comments to the post as well.

MOCK THE VOTE: Tim Cavanaugh of Reason has some thoughts on the movement to recall Gray Davis.

UPDATE: And so does Nick Schulz, my editor at Tech Central Station.

HOUSE OKs PERMANENT END OF ESTATE TAX: This AP article suggests the bill will die in the Senate, but Stephen Moore, of the Club for Growth, said:

Supporters are two to four votes short of the 60 needed in the Senate to repeal the estate tax.

Moore predicted Republicans will take the issue to Senate elections and ask voters to elect lawmakers who will close that gap. "It becomes an issue that can galvanize conservative voters," he said.

By the way, check out this hilarious ending to the piece:

Seth Goldman, president of Honest Tea in Bethesda, Md., said eliminating the estate tax will create "an entitled class" and suppress entrepreneurship.

"There are those who claim that an estate tax is un-American, but I believe that the idea of an inherited upper-class is un-American," he said.

What--Greg Packer wasn't available to deliver that quote?

"ARMAVIRUMQUE" (pronounced "Prince", to borrow a phrase coined by Ted Barlow) is the new Weblog of the New Criterion. Or the New Criterion's new Weblog. Or the Weblog of the new New Criterion.

In other words it's new--and very good. Click on over and have a look.

HOW THE LEFT WAS WON: Bruce Bartlett writes, "There were a number of factors that cemented the Democratic majority from 1932 to 1994 (interrupted only by two Republican Congresses from 1946-48 and 1952-54, and Republican control of the Senate from 1980-86)."

As to how that majority was cemented, how it was eventually defeated, and what future awaits both parties, read the whole thing.

"NOT SO STUPID WHITE MEN FIGHT BACK": The Times of London looks at Michael Moore.

Read the whole thing, as that hip saying that all the cool kids use goes.

(Link via Andrew Sullivan.)

MALKIN GETS RESULTS: National Review Online's Kathryn Jean Lopez writes, "Michelle Malkin writes this about her police chief, published today, and then, today, he resigns. Coincidence?"

A few weeks ago, at the height of the Times' scandal, I wrote that Chief (now ex-Chief) Charles A. Moose was last year's Moose-meme. Now he appears to be peddling furiously to keep his 15 minutes of fame going.

AZADI, ARAK, ESHGH! A meme is born. (Scroll down the comments to find out how to get an Azadi, Arak, Eshgh! button of your own!)

"IS CALVIN PRAYING FOR YOU?": Tom Johnson weighs in on those ubiquitous (and annoying) "Calvin peeing on a Chevy/Ford/Harley/Yamaha" stickers:

The irony here, as everyone knows, is that Watterson is Mormon, and therefore highly religious, and had nothing to do with these stickers (and wouldn't allow his characters to be licensed for anything, stickers included.) Regardless, the stickers are now a regrettable part of our culture, and like anything so ubiquitous, comes to represent a sort of mentality of everyone - whether you've got the sticker on your car or not.

The big question is, what is it with rivalries like this? Could it be more inconsequential? Ooo, so you don't like Chevy. What happens if your friend buys a Chevy? Can you still be friends with them, or have they gone over to the dark side? Or do you stay with them - because you're a friend - to be there to help them up when they inevitably suffer the consequences of their bad decision? I can't think of a better way to tell people that Americans have far too much free time on their hands than with a sticker that advertises your immense dislike of a particular manufacturer's version of what is decidely a luxury item.

Exactly.

A LOVE SUPREME: My review of the recent Impulse two CD-set of Coltrane's seminal album is now up on Blogcritics.

Be sure to check out my review of Ashley Kahn's making-of book as well!

INSTAPUNDIT'S O'REILLY-A-RAMA: Glenn Reynolds has one-stop Bill O'Reilly-hates-the-'Net coverage. Start here, follow the links, and then pop over to Reynold's MSNBC column.

MRC's Brent Baker writes, "In a 2,700 word article on neoconservatives with ties to the Bush administration, this week's Newsweek applied the 'neoconservative' label an amazing 25 times, or nearly once every 100 words, the MRC's Tim Graham observed. And that's not counting the 'neocon' in the story's headline, which would bring the total to 26."

It's kind of ironic that neocons have become the new boogie men for the left wing, in just a few short months. In December, during the Trent Lott scandal, Jonah Goldberg was complaining that a Charles Krauthammer column "reinforces an unfair liberal slander that only 'neoconservatives' are fully moral and serious conservatives."

But then, this isn't the first time in the past eight months or so that the left has turned on a dime.

INOCULATION: Bob Novak writes that Hillary has taken a page from Bill's book a decade ago.

FORD'S NEW FERRARI KILLER: From Harrison, we go to Henry, as Forbes looks at the 2004 Ford GT, which has knockout looks--and a knockout price ($150,000).

FORD IN MOUTH DISEASE: While I was waiting to get my hair cut last week, I read a fawning profile of Harrison Ford in this month's Biography magazine, which accompanies A&E's cable show (which now has its own spin-off channel as well). Why is Ford on the cover this month? Because he has a new movie to promote, of course. (Hollywood Homicide--he's very good in it, but the film itself is a mess. My wife and I saw it this past weekend.)

The Biography article unfortunately isn't online, but there was a paragraph in it that stood out like a sore thumb. I'm paraphrasing, but this is pretty close: "Ford, a committed environmental activist, says, 'the current administration has done nothing for the environment. On a scale of one to ten, I'd give them a one.'"

Great Harrison--alienate half your audience. Actually, probably more, as the Chomsky-smoking crowd considers itself waaay too hip and ironic to bother with films as bourgeois as the Indiana Jones and Star Wars movies, or the Tom Clancy films, where your box office clout was made.

In the meantime, I'd love to know what Ford would say to this recent post by Dr. Weevil, on an environmental clean-up that Bush will never receive credit for.

POSEUR ALERT (as Andrew Sullivan would say): "I'm trying to make a delicacy out of American fast food"--Ang Lee, the director of The Incredible Hulk.

And while the movie Hulk still smashes trains, planes and automobiles, Russell Scott Smith of the New York Post writes, "when the Hulk picks up a tank, spins it over his head and tosses it 500 yards away, the camera deliberately shows the soldier escaping, completely unscathed".

Of course. Because the Hulk killing people would be too dark and violent.

My sources, at great personal sacrifice, were able to retrieve a copy of the final shooting script for The Matrix Revolutions, the final film in the Matrix trilogy, coming this fall. I can now reveal how the film ends. EXCLUSIVE--MUST CREDIT EDDRISCOLL.COM:

EXTERIOR, ZION TEMPLE: Zion is smashed, the robots have won. Sentinel robots and AGENT SMITH are closing in on NEO and TRINITY.

NEO: Trinity, this is it. I thought I was The One, but I was wrong. I'm sorry. I've let you down.

TRINITY: It's OK. You tried. It was a noble goal. The Matrix was simply more powerful than we were. I love you.

The two embrace and kiss for the last time as the Sentinels move in for the kill.

DISSOLVE TO: A darkened room, where a couple is in bed. As the man wakes up and turns a light on, we can make out that it's the bedroom of a tastefully decorated Chicago apartment, circa 1990.

BOB NEWHART: Honey, you won't believe the dream I had this time!

SUZANNE PLESHETTE: Oh dear, not that New England country inn dream again, Bob.

BOB: No, it was weirder than that! You were in a leather catsuit, and Chicago was a computer simulation. The street names were right, but it looked exactly like Syndey Australia! Our neighbor Howard was a bald, mystical black man named Morpheus, and Carol lived in the projects and gave us our marching orders, and was called The Oracle. When we weren't fighting robots, we were dancing in the mud in some underground city called Zion. And I could fly!

SUZANNE: Go back to sleep Bob.

DISSOLVE TO END CREDITS, fade out on MTM "kitten" logo.

Of course, now that I've revealed it, Warner Brothers is probably scrambling to reshoot those scenes...

WHY I DON'T HAVE COMMENTS ON THIS BLOG, PART MDCCXXXIX: The robot article in Tech Central Station has some unitentionally hilarous comments on it (scroll down to end of article). Perhaps the first one set the tone, where a reader complained that I should have written an article about our coming natural gas crisis rather than robots. I probably should have analyzed the Zapruder film, Paul Wellstone's death, and figured out what was in the case in Pulp Fiction as well, but I didn't--I wrote about what I wrote about, sorry.

The newest comment is a corker as well:

How sad. Old folks are to be kept in isolation, cut off from family and society, served (clunkily) by robots. How sad that this is our vision of the future, especially when robotics and computers could be used instead to enrich us all and free people from the need to do meaningless work. But no, increasing productivity means workers face cutoff from the economy, and must accept lower wages. Everyone who can must take whatever crappy jobs they can find. All the people who aren't home taking care of their elders will instead be in boiler rooms phoning them with schemes to rip them off. The twilight of capitalism. What a travesty.

Let's deconstruct this one, shall we?

Old folks are to be kept in isolation, cut off from family and society, served (clunkily) by robots.

When my mother-in-law (who passed away in February) had a series of strokes beginning around the fall of 2000, she was far from cut-off from society. My wife and I flew regularly across the country, to visit her in Manhattan. (Most of my blog entries from the East Coast last year were for that very reason). She also regularly saw her family and friends who lived in the area. But they couldn't be there all the time, which is why we hired a home healthcare aide, a considerable expense. Engleberger's idea for a robot isn't designed to replace either family or an aide, but to supplant them, during those inevitable times that neither can be present.

How sad that this is our vision of the future, especially when robotics and computers could be used instead to enrich us all and free people from the need to do meaningless work.

When did I say this was "our" vision of the future? I simply reported what one entrepreneuaral inventor told me over the phone. Also, aren't machines already enriching us already? Your dishwasher and garbage disposal in the kitchen are robots of a sort--simply very, very stupid robots. The Roomba robot vacuum cleaner is a slightly more sophisticated robot. And as I said in the article, these devices are the equivilent of where personal computers were in the mid-1970s. Think about the applications that your PC runs today, compared to (if you even experimented with computers in the late 1970s) the BASIC programs you tinkered with back then.

Everyone who can must take whatever crappy jobs they can find. All the people who aren't home taking care of their elders will instead be in boiler rooms phoning them with schemes to rip them off. The twilight of capitalism. What a travesty.

Holy head-spinning jump to conclusions, Batman! Have we smoked a little too much Jeremy Rifkin?

Besides, if it is the "the twilight of capitalism", why are you worried about phoning your elders "with schemes to rip them off"? Once the state replaces capitalism, I'm sure the state will have better jobs for you than simply phoning your elders.

But before we consign capitalism to the dustbin of history, let's flashback a bit. At its lowest point in the early 1930s, at the very bottom of the Depression, the Dow closed at about 40. When it reopened on September 17th, 2001, a week after three fully fueled aircraft plunged into the two towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it closed at 8,921.

CODE NAME EGO: Marc Weingarten of the New York Observer reviews Code Name Ginger: The Story Behind Segway and Dean Kamen’s Quest to Invent a New World, by Steve Kemper.

WOULD HENRY FORD HAVE BEEN "ALLOWED" to build the Model-T today? You probably already know the answer, but Tom Bray has an interesting look back to when America was a more risk, and entrepreneur-friendly nation.

STEVE WINWOOD RETURNS, with a new CD. I have details over at Blogcritics.

THIS IS PATHETIC: If you're name is David Nelson, you're in for the hassle of your life if you fly. Whether you're Ozzie and Harriet's 66 year old son, or this fellow:

Take 73-year-old David Nelson, a retired building manager from South Pasadena. His name provoked mass confusion at LAX last August, when he was trying to get to Madison, Wis., for a high school reunion.

Eventually a manager appeared and said, "I'm sorry, your name has appeared on the watch list."

Then Nelson was surrounded by a swarm of security officers -- "I guess so I wouldn't make a break for it," said Nelson, who walks with a cane.

* * * Indeed, several David Nelsons said airline officials told them the name was listed because a man named David Nelson once barged into an airplane cockpit. Federal officials would not confirm the story.

The main problem, Kennedy said, is the shroud of secrecy that surrounds the TSA's name-matching technology, Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening Program (CAPPS), which was rolled out after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The TSA acknowledges the existence of a "no fly" list that contains names of suspected terrorists and others who are barred from boarding a commercial aircraft. The agency also acknowledges a so-called "selectee" list of those identified for extra scrutiny before boarding.

Melendez described the selectee list as "very dynamic and always changing. It's really not even a list at all."

If it's very dynamic, then why have all of these Nelsons been stopped at airports? Somebody needs to update the database, or at least allow for descriptive information (height, weight, hair color, age) to go with a name.

UPDATE: Asparagirl has some thoughts as well.

THE NEW RORSCHACH TEST: Yup, that pretty much sums it up.

I REALLY SHOULDN'T POST LATE AT NIGHT. I'm always afraid I'll misread headlines. For example, at this late hour, this UPI headline looks to me like it says:

"Naked comic frightens shark to death" But that can't be right, can it?

Naaaah.

(Originally posted 1:08:17 AM; moved forward due to Blogger archive bug.)

A CLASS ACTION SUIT AGAINST SPIKE: "Millions of dogs named Spike have launched a class action suit against director Spike Lee, alleging that the terminally petulant filmmaker misappropriated the name 'Spike' in an attempt to associate himself with tough canines", writes Happy Fun Pundit, who has an exclusive interview with retired veteran Warner Brothers character actor Spike the dog.

COLD BURN: Science journalist Russell Seitz (one of the rare guys who looks good in a bow tie), writing in Tech Central Station says that "Preoccupied with constant vigilance on ozone depleting gases, and greenhouse heavyweights with the lifetime of Methuselah, the Jeremiah's of the atmospheric modeling world neglected to pay much attention to the flyweight champion of the Greens, hydrogen."

Seitz says that "As usual, the answer required a lot of calculation, and Cal Tech scientists only applied themselves to the requisite calculating when it became evident that the Bush administration was getting serious about the future of the hydrogen economy."

A growing amount of hydrogen has radical implications for the Earth's ozone layer, as well as the potential for global cooling:

But there's more, and it will not give Greenpeace joy.

Clouds happen. The higher water vapor goes, the more counterintuitive things it can do. Above the stratosphere lies the mesosphere, where higher grows colder, again. There is no law that says natural history has to be simple, and sure enough, after the mesosphere comes the thermosphere, where higher is very hot indeed. But in the high region where the stratosphere and mesosphere merge, water can turn to ice, and wispy, but spectacularly reflective noctilucent clouds can alter the Earth's albedo. The paler the planet gets, the less solar energy heat it collects, and when that energy gets reflected by the highest of clouds, it's the stratosphere that feels the cooling.

What's more, adding hydrogen can change the concentration of hydrogen dependant chemical species, like the hydroxl radical, which affect the lifetime in the atmosphere of everything from methane to carbon monoxide. So all previous modeling work will have to be repeated with corrections for the hypothetical future hydrogen that has so far been overlooked.

As Seitz says, "Pass the popcorn; this is getting interesting again." He's right--read the whole thing. (Possibly a couple of times--it's writing that's dense with scientific jargon, but fascinating stuff nonetheless.)

UPDATE: Speaking of scientists and global warming, Iain Murray, a member in good standing of The Volokh Conspiracy, says, "greenhouse theory is manipulated":

The base theory suggests warming that isn't happening to the extent it should. Science then suggests something else. A new theory is produced, or an old one updated, to make the new data fit with the base theory. Worst-case scenarios are dreamed up and promulgated, normally worse than before. Action is then demanded now from policy-makers to avert the worst-case scenario.

Whatever this is, it isn't real science. It's science distorted to fit a politically-accepted view of nature. Those who question the progress of the science are vilified and pilloried. Galileo would recognize what's going on here, I think.

Even more damning, Shell of Across The Atlantic compares the global warming scientists to creationists.

Ouch.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Sgt. Stryker weighs in on a similar story.

A STORY MADE FOR DAVE BARRY: "Flush Toilets Called 'Environmental Disaster'", reports CNSNews.com

JURASSIC TERRORISTS: Reason reviews The Weather Underground, now playing a limited engagement in New York City, with a wider release to follow.

WILL THERE BE A DAIMLER-LESS CHRYSLER? If it prevents things like this from happening in the future, I'd say it's a very good thing.

FOR THE RECORD: This series of events did not happen to me the first time I got on a Segway.

(I did bob and weave for a few seconds, however.)

GIFT IDEAS: Know someone in your life who's wound just a little...too...tight? Who mutters words like "Trilateral Commission", "Bilderbergers", "Illuminati", or believes that the earth is controlled by giant lizards, or that the mothership is hovering just out of site above?

Then have we got a gift for you!

BILL CLINTON SUDDENLY MORE POPULAR WITH REPUBLICANS: Scott Ott has exclusive new poling data, courtesy of Dick Morris.

REBUILDING THE IRAQI STOCK MARKET is being spearheaded by an ex-American stockbroker who joined the Army in the wake of September 11. Group Captain Mandrake has the details.

TWO MEDIA DEATHS: AP reports that Oscar winner Gregory Peck dies at 87, and broadcaster David Brinkley dies at 82.

THE NEXT TAX CUT: Kevin Hassett has some ideas on what he thinks could be next in what (hopefully) is becoming an annual event.

H.O.T. TOPIC: Jeff Taylor of Reason looks at high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes as a way to break the logjam that commuter lanes, with their characteristic low automobile occupancy, causes on Washington DC's highways.

Naturally of course, the idea of scrapping the commuter lanes altogether is never considered. But I'd be more than willing to pay extra to use a commuter lane if I'm driving alone in rush hour.

It makes sense--which is why it's probably doomed in the Beltway.

THE END OF HISTORY: John Derbyshire neatly sums up the last seven years of politics:

The principal political fact about the Clinton presidency is that during it, politics in the U.S.A. came to an end. That's a bit of an exaggeration; but from the long view, 20th-century American politics was a struggle between those who wished to expand the scope of government — most especially the federal government — and those who wished to resist that expansion. The resistance was a long rearguard action, as the government and its expenditures grew from the 1930s to the 1990s — even, as David Frum documented in Dead Right, through the Reagan years. Margaret Thatcher called it "the ratchet effect": when the Left was in power, government grew fast, when the Right was in power, it grew more slowly — in a very good year, not at all.

That struggle ended in the spring of 1996, with the Clinton-Gingrich-Dole compromise on the federal budget. That marked the defeat of the main conservative enterprise, the end of any real hope of reducing the size of our federal government. This defeat seemed at the time to be merely tactical — an exceptionally masterful, fluent, and unscrupulous president had outwitted the slow-footed Republican leaders of Congress, cumbered as they were, in the role of Senate Majority Leader, with one of the most spineless politicians the U.S.A. has ever produced. Clinton's brilliant State of the Union speech, and Bob "Whatever" Dole's pathetic response to it, encapsulated the situation. Hopes of shrinking the government were dead. In 1996 the tax bite — federal, state, and local — on an average two-earner family hit 41.5 percent, the biggest in history, bigger even that in WWII.

Less obvious at the time, liberalism was also dead. It had died in November 1994, when the Republicans took Congress. This was a clear popular defeat for big government liberalism. The people had spoken: They did not want any extravagant new government programs. It was not that the era of big government was over; only the era of expanding government was over. The 1996 debacle demonstrated that the people did not want a smaller government, either. All polls showed that Americans at large were unhappy about the government shutdowns of 1995, and blamed congressional Republicans for them. The lesson our political classes read from the events of 1994-6 was: The people don't want any more government, but they don't want any less, either.

Well, perhaps a wee bit less. That 41.5 percent has declined slightly since 1996 and a conservative president was elected in 2000 by a constitutional fluke. On the whole, though, we are in a period of ideological stasis, and that period really commenced in the last few months of the first Clinton presidency. This situation is frustrating for both liberals and conservatives. The liberals have lost their momentum. They want to add big new government programs — that's what liberalism is all about. To do that, they must either increase taxes, or kill current programs. The voters won't let them do the first, and the lobbyists won't let them do the second. (No government program can ever be ended. That is one of the iron laws of modern American politics. Remember the mohair subsidy? It's b-a-a-c-k.) Conservatives are just as frustrated, since by the same token they have no real hope of reducing the size of the government. Ideologically, we are deadlocked, and have been since the mid-1990s.

Given the recent number of backdoor attempts to influence morality (taxes on fast foods, new puritanism, increasing attempts to punish motorists, etc., etc.,) liberalism is far from dead--it's simply gone underground, where it can do its pernicious harm far more stealthily. But certainly in Washington, stasis is the norm.

Assuming George W. Bush wins re-election in 2004, what will break it?

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Howard Kurtz writes:

How's the Hillary book playing? Here's Jay Leno:

"Hillary is everywhere. Last night she's on with Barbara Walters, this morning she's on with Katie Couric and tomorrow with Diane Sawyer. This is the first time Hillary has been on more women than Bill."

Incidentally, her book, as the massive PR-blowout subsides, is already sliding down the Amazon charts.

AT HOME WITH LES PAUL: Jim Beckerman of NorthJersey.Com has a nice profile of the father of the electric guitar, who recently turned 88, and continues to play every Monday night at New York's Iridium Club. (I only hope I'm as active--or as sharp--when I'm 88!)

For my profile of Les, written last year just before his 87th birthday, click here.

If you're at all interested in American popular music, you owe it to yourself to stop by the Iridium Club to see Les play, if you're in New York on a Monday Night. He's a tremendous entertainer, and a marvelous guitarist (gee, there's a shock!) who can still work a crowd like nobody's business.

R2D2 VS. C3PO: Is there a robot in your future? Dr. Joseph Engelberger, one of the fathers of robotics, says yes, in my latest Tech Central Station piece.

This was an offshoot of the article I wrote for this month's issue of Nuts & Volts. Engelberger is the man they named the prize the winners receive on the DIY Network's new Robot Rivals TV series. I called him for an interview, expected to get about five minutes or so of quotes about what it's like to do the TV series.

Instead, I got about a half hour on his vision for an affordable home healthcare robot. about 10 minutes into it, I realized there's an article there all by itself.

Fortunately, the folks at TCS agreed!

By the way, my copy of the June Nuts & Volts arrived a couple of days ago. The editors there did a terrific job of laying out my piece on Robot Rivals, and have lots of photos of the principals behind, and some of the robots featured on the show.

Orrin Judd writes that Berlin is considering resurrecting their 60 foot high statue of Lenin.

Ironically, there's already a statue on Lenin in the US. A 30-foot high representation of Vladimir Ilyich is displayed prominently on a street in Fremont, a suburb of Seattle.

No really--Seattle has a statue devoted to one of the most evil, destructive men in history--and they're proud of it! When we were there during Memorial Day weekend, we stopped by the Guitar Center that was near our hotel, both so I could explore, and to kill time. I bought a few CD-ROMs of Acid Loops, and the clerk, a bearded, but otherwise surprisingly clean-cut fellow in his mid-30s or so noticed my out-of-state credit card and asked what we were planning to see that day. My wife mentioned she'd like to see the canals and locks in Fremont (just across the bridge from our hotel), and the clerk said, "yeah, they have a state of Karl Marx there. It's really cool!"

He didn't notice the death ray I was projecting. I had to bite my tongue to not say, "nahh, I'd like to check out the Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler statues first. Then I'll check out Marx." Instead I just took my purchase and waited to get in the car before blowing a gasket.

It's actually not Marx, it's Lenin, which I discovered after a little Googling. But either way, it's been frequently noted that a huge mistake on our part was not holding Nuremberg-like trials for the apparatchiks and party members of the Soviet Union after the Cold War ended. It might have caused more people to think before erecting statues to mass murderers--especially in the US.

THERE IS NO LEFT-WING BIAS AT ABC. And when I say there is none, I do mean there is a certain amount, as ABC as hired long time Bill Clinton crony Rick Kaplan as senior vice president in day-to-day charge of World News Tonight, Nightline, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, and the ABC News Political Unit.

The Media Research Center, which profiles Kaplan's long history of flak catching and string pulling for the Clintons and Al Gore says, "If you liked the liberally slanted war coverage on ABC earlier this year, you should love ABC during Campaign 2004".

BOB NOVAK WRITES that Gray Davis recall movement looks real in California.

I was clearly wrong when I wrote in February, "I doubt this will amount to much".

It will be very, very interesting to see how this plays out, and, if he survives, how Davis will react to it.

In other California news, Virginia Postrel looks at how the "if it sounds good, do it" boomtime spending of the state has come back to haunt it.

LIES AND BIAS AT AFP: Charles Johnson writes, "Wow. Get a load of the captions for these two photos from our pals at Agence France Presse".

AFP: Where we make Reuters look fair and balanced!

THE BLAIR SWITCH PROJECT: Another Jayson Blair pops up, this time at a small town newspaper in Missouri:

A sports writer for a small-town Missouri newspaper has been fired for plagiarizing sports columns and a movie review written by nationally syndicated film critic Roger Ebert.

Michael Kinney, 29, was fired by The Sedalia Democrat after an investigation prompted by a reader who called the paper last month to report similarities between a movie review by Kinney and one written by Ebert.

Editor Oliver Wiest, in a special column published Sunday, said he fired Kinney June 5.

The Democrat is a daily newspaper with a circulation of about 11,800 in Sedalia, a central Missouri town 100 miles (160 kilometers) east of Kansas City.

Wiest said he searched the Internet and "found several similar instances of plagiarism from online sources in Mr. Kinney's movie reviews dating back to late last year.''

(Link found via The Internet Movie Database.)

USING THE T-WORD: Why won't NPR call those who attack innocent Israeli civilians terrorists?

A MODEST PROPOSAL: Steven Den Beste has a few interesting ideas about what to do with North Korea.

IS THE TSA BIASED AGAINST MILITARY AND POLICE VETS? Jeff Johnson of CNS News reports that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was accused by current and former employees of being against screeners who had "prior military and law enforcement experience and those who currently serve in the National Guard and reserves. TSA officials denied the charges.":

Alfunzo Staley spent 15 years in the Marine Corps before he returned to his home in Detroit, Mich., and joined the Air Force Reserve to become a paramedic. Eager to use his military experience to help his country after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he applied for a job with the TSA and was hired.

But when Staley was called up with other paramedics in his unit for chemical and biological weapons injury training in advance of a possible deployment as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom, he was shocked at his TSA supervisors' response.

"Federal law requires federal agencies to award 'leave without pay' status to members of the Armed Forces Reserves who are called to duty," Staley explained. "Instead, the TSA awarded me AWOL (Absent Without Leave) status."

When Staley submitted the required forms to be absent from his TSA job to attend mandatory military training, he claims he was first told simply that he could not miss work for that purpose. But had he followed his TSA supervisor's instructions and skipped the training, he could have been court-martialed and sentenced to a military prison.

After obeying his military orders, Staley claims his TSA supervisors charged him with being AWOL. When Staley disproved that accusation, he said the time off was then charged to his military leave, which is dedicated to a reservist's annual two-week commitment.

Finally, the TSA allegedly tried to deduct Staley's military service commitment from his vacation time.

There are several other, similar examples in Johnson's article.

Right after the 'don't call me a blogger' quip, Drudge gets off a great riff:

Roger Ailes told me early on, you don't need a license to report. You need a license to do hair.

Exactly. So why didn't Camile Paglia and her associate ask Drudge what his beef with bloggers is?

I once called Matt Drudge a Jurassic blogger, but Drudge officially does not like the "B" word. Ken Layne, on the spiffy new L.A. Examiner site, writes:

Drudge doesn't like the idea of everybody doing the same thing he does: posting stories on a Web page. Weirdly, a few years ago the hatted one was all excited about millions of people running their own one-person news services. Now that it's happened, he ignores it. Doesn't matter; we still love us our Drudge Report.

Yes we do--although Matt probably hates knowing that for thousands of his readers, he's now become a one-two punch in the links department with InstaPundit.

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT: One of the great "midnight movies" of the 1970s, and a terrific documentary about The Who, is coming to DVD sometime this year. No release date listed on its official Website, other than "coming in 2003", but it sounds like a massive restoration project.

Between the Beatles' Anthology, Standing in the Shadows of Motown, the new Led Zeppelin DVD, and now this, 2003 has been a great year for rock DVDs.

Now if we could just get the Beatles' Let It Be on DVD. It's scheduled to be released this fall--hopefully with lots of outtakes and bonus materials, to help make the disintegration of the Beatles less painful to watch.

John Podhoretz writes that the real problem with The Times isn't the Jayson Blair and Rick Bragg scandals. "The problem with the Times is that it's become a left-wing sheet. And a cowardly one at that. It has been hiding its increasingly arrogant agenda behind its century-old reputation as the Newspaper of Record:

I've worked for two newspapers - this one and the Washington Times. One of the primary qualities that has distinguished these two papers from most others in the country is that they do not pretend to be something they're not. They are run by conservatives. Readers know it, and are given the opportunity to read them and judge for themselves whether the information in them is improperly colored by the ideological views of the owners and managers.

In the world of professional journalists, this lack of pretense is considered a black mark against these institutions. They are criticized and held in lesser regard precisely because they have the integrity to be honest with their readers about what they are. Howell Raines, back when he was Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, refused to acknowledge that the Washington Times was even a newspaper. He called it a "journalistic entity" - which, I have to say, is far more than he is right now.

Ouch.

Podhoretz adds that "Pinch" Sulzberger "believes The New York Times is a country unto itself, for which profound sacrifices must be made. His ludicrously inflated notion of what is, after all, his own family business almost guarantees that the resignations of Raines and Boyd won't mark the end of the paper's Age of Solipsistic Scandal."

Exactly.

SORRY FOR THE LACK OF POSTING: Working on a couple of long-form articles for the 'Net.

GRIESE IS THE WORD: Brian Griese agreed to two-year contract with the Miami Dolphins, the team that his father once led at quarterback.

"I LEAD A NORMAL LIFE": The Arab News writes about Saudi Arabia’s leading executioner Muhammad Saad Al-Beshi, who beheads "up to seven people in a day", but nonetheless says, "I Lead a Normal Life".

So let me get this straight--Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins make Dead Man Walking, but turn a blind eye at a system that allows men like Al-Beshi to flourish.

Meanwhile, Hollywood cranks out pro-gay films and TV series, such as The Birdcage, and Will and Grace, but has no problem befriending Fidel Castro or Yassar Arafat, who lead regimes that routinely arrest, torture and kill gays without batting an eye.

"Beam up, Scotty", as one colorful ex-Congressman used to say!

(Link found via James Taranto's "Best of the Web Today", who writes, "Hey, It's a Living".)

ASHCROFT ATTEMPTS A MOST UNUSUAL POWER GRAB, according to Scott Ott, writing from the Hall of Justice. (Or is it the Batcave?)

"WE ARE ALL BULLWORTHS NOW": Reason has a surprising look at race in the movies and on TV.

GEE, SHALL I GIVE MONICA A SHOWER? Would Monica mind if we have cigars inside her? I'll bet five or six men could fit in Monica, if they squeeze really tight!

Long before we met, my wife has owned an '87 Toyota Land Cruiser. It's built like a tank, and a true workhorse.

And it now has a new name...

MICKEY KAUS checks in on Raines and Bowd's resignations, as he pronounces his patented Howell-O-Meter RIP after only one use:

Quick thoughts: 1) It's not as if the NYT is going to stop being a liberal paper. But maybe the Times' annoying tendency to unashamedly equate Upper West Side liberal sentiments with "objective" reporting ("Call It journalism," as Boyd said of theTimes' embarrassing Augusta crusade) will temporarily abate. It always seemed to me, however, that the trend became apparent under the editorship of Joseph Lelyveld, who has now been brought back as interim editor. 2) If this had happened 10 years ago, when the Internet didn't exist, Raines would still be running the place. The Times staff would be just as unhappy, but they'd be unable to instantaneously organize and vent their displeasure on Romenesko and elsewhere. It was this suddenly-transparent internal opposition, more than the constant pummeling from bloggers, that brought Raines down.

He's very likely right on that last bit, although Glenn and especially Andrew's work certainly may have sped the process up.

THE MONEY QUOTE: Dick Morris on Hillary Clinton on National Review Online:

The fact is that Hillary and Bill have had a relationship based on a sick cycle of accusation-denial-admission-reward for decades. He is accused of an affair. He denies it. He admits it when he has no choice. Hillary forgives him and then Bill showers gifts upon her in gratitude. For putting up with Gennifer Flowers and going on 60 Minutes to "stand by her man," she got control of health-care policy. For Monica, she got a Senate seat. Some guys give necklaces, some give Senate seats.

Those curses and mutterings you're hearing are from the seemingly 57 Democratic presidential candidates, obsessing how once again, the Clintons have sucked the oxygen out of the room, and deflected attention away from them, and whatever message they each have.

KEY QUESTION ABOUT THE TIMES: What does the Moose think about all of this?

CHANGING TIMES: Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd have resigned from the New York Times. InstaPundit and Drudge have regular updates. Andrew Sullivan (who's owned this story from the start), should also have lots of coverage.

Given what we know about "Pinch" Sulzberger, it's hard for me to see that much hope for the Times, at least in the short-term. Hopefully though, they'll morph into something closer than the Washington Post, biased to left, but generally well respected.

UPDATE: More on "Pinch", via The Weekly Standard.

WMDS FOUND IN IRAQ (AGAIN): "Banned missile programme found in Iraq: report".

SUMMER READING LIST: Need a book to take the beach? Orrin Judd (not surprisingly) has some suggestions.

DO THE WRONG THING: Spike Lee sues Viacom, over the new name for TNN, "Spike".

If Spike wins, then I am going to be all over Universal for EdTV.

(But I'm not holding breath. On the other hand, I doubt the new Spike network will be running She's Gotta Have It or Do The Right Thing any time soon.)

ADVANTAGE, DASCHLE! Well, sort of. There's finally some sensible environmental legislation. AP reports that "New government rules effective Wednesday no longer require environmental studies before trees are logged or burned to prevent forest fires. The rules also limit appeals of such projects."

It will be fun watching the environmental left condemn this, since the rules basically echo the same legislation that Tom Daschle quietly slipped into a spending bill last year to exempt his home state of South Dakota, back when he was Senate majority leader.

ADVANTAGE ED! Back on July 29th 2002, I predicted that one day, the Dow would hit 9000. People laughed at me (just as they laughed at great men like Bob Hope), but finally, less than a year later I was proven right. Which just goes to show that some dreams do eventually come true.

(Oh wait--you mean its high was almost 12,000? Nevermind...)

Seriously--it's nice to see the Dow (and the Nasdaq) starting to creep upward again.

ROBOT RIVALS: If you get the DIY Channel, and have seen their "Robot Rivals" TV series, I have an interview with its producer, host, and other people involved in the show in the latest issue of Nuts and Volts magazine.

Wake the kids, feed 'em with diet pills, and go out and buy a few hundred copies at your local store!

SHOPTALK: Paul Greenberg nails (a few of) the Times' problems in its post-"L'affaire Blair" blues.

NIXON IN JULY 1974: Andrew Sullivan and Slate's Jack Shafer argue that Howell Raines is as toxic as Richard Nixon was just before Nixon's resignation--and the clock is ticking, as Sullivan writes.

SNAPSHOTS OF A ECO-HYPOCRITE: Of Barbra Streisand, Michelle Malkin writes:

People who live in 10,000-square-foot oceanfront mansions shouldn't throw stones.

That hasn't stopped Barbra Streisand from lecturing her fellow Californians about their energy use ("We must make concrete changes in our lifestyles to help solve this energy crisis . . . try to line dry (clothes) . . . only run your dishwasher when it is fully loaded . . . ") and lambasting President Bush's environmental policies ("Bush has discouraged energy conservation every step of the way -- suing California for passing a law requiring more fuel-efficient vehicles and even proposing a tax cut for SUV owners!").

Now, this multiple home-owning, custom-built SUV-riding, California coastline-hogging diva has lobbed a $50 million lawsuit at an eco-activist who posted photos of her massive estate on the Internet.

Malibu Babs says the litigation is about protecting her privacy. She claims that the aerial pictures, posted on www.californiacoastline.org by Kenneth Adelman, violate anti-paparazzi laws and "provide a roadmap into her residence."

But Adelman's site does not list Streisand's address, nor do the photos contain the star's image. Adelman and his wife are wealthy environmental do-gooder types who created a Web site to document erosion along the California coastline for scientists and land-use researchers. The photos of Streisand's home are just a few among the 12,000 in his online archive. "He's not doing this for profit, or stalking anyone," Adelman's lawyer Richard Kendall told the Los Angeles Times. "He is engaged in a public-interest effort to document the entire coast to preserve it from degradation. He's not about to carve out exceptions for celebrities who don't want to be identified as owning coastal land."

Moreover, as the editors of The Smoking Gun Web site, which has posted Streisand's lawsuit filed under seal last week, point out, maps and images documenting the location of the entertainer's property are publicly available elsewhere on the Web sites of Mapquest, the Los Angeles Office of the Assessor, and the U.S. Geological Survey. Streisand has yet to sue them.

Hey, the year isn't over yet.

WOODY ALLEN GETS PATRIOTIC, well, for France that is. Peter Schramm has the details, and some thoughts.

(Link found via Orrin Judd, who writes, "Their first choice was Noah Cross."

Heh.

Incidentally, as Michael Graham wrote in Redneck Nation, I used to love Woody Allen, "until he went southern and started sleeping with his children."

WHO'S FUDGING THE BUDGET? Brent Bozell looks at four different ways the media has distorted President Bush's tax cut.

WE ARE ALL MADE OF STARS: Robert Alt quotes Dennis Kucinich, a Democratic candidate for the White House, who sounds like he left his heart at Woodstock. Alt writes, "Suddenly, his stance in favor of legalized medical marijuana makes perfect sense."

Stay by the phone Jerry--Kucinich may need a running mate!

UNVEILED: Sultaana Freeman (formerly Sandra Keller) is the woman who is trying to sue the state of Florida to allow them to photograph her wearing a full Muslim headdress for her driver's license.

Want to see what she looks like under her veil? The Smoking Gun has a her photo...from her 1999 conviction for battering a foster child, which she pleaded guilty to. (Maybe the Florida DMV should simply print that photo on her driver's license.

Fascinating article titled "A Liberal Trademark", by Frederick Turner in Tech Central Station:

Over the years all the real arguments for the left-liberal position, involving evidence and rational deliberation, have been exploded one by one. Thus rational discussion itself has become a sign of bad taste, of a pugnacious Appalachian kind of insensitivity, with a hint of a possible tendency to tobacco chewing, gun racks, talk radio, pickup trucks, wife-beaters and incest. There is left but one simple rule for the new upper crust: by all means prefer victims to oppressors, but always prefer oppressors to true liberators.

The class rationale for this odd paradox is complex. Karl Marx was right when he identified the phenomenon of a class having policies even when none of its members would necessarily recognize them - and the people I am talking about here are eminently nice, even good people, who would be horrified by the class motives they serve. But here it is: their class privileges are preserved by means of the continued existence and allegiance of a peon caste who will vote for the upper crust's leaders at home, and confuse and frustrate the great class enemy, the U.S. military, abroad. (If you want to "shock and awe" one of these folks, just mention that your son is in the Army. The look of horror is instantaneous, though it vanishes quickly.)

True liberators, as we can now see, would deprive the world of victims, and thus dry up the supply of peons that constitute the new class's constituency. This is why, even though the new class disliked Saddam Hussein, they hate Bush infinitely more. Just as Palestinian refugee camps justify the failures and secure the tenure of Arab despots, so the poor and downtrodden of the world justify the ascendancy of the new upper crust. At home, school vouchers are opposed in the teeth of the urban poor that want them, because decent education might help put an end to the urban poor who vote for upper crust leaders. The same goes for the inclusion of privatization in the Social Security portfolio, and any form of tax relief that might result in turning the majority of Americans into owners, and into people too proud to consider themselves victims. And without victims, where would Lady Bountiful be then?

If one has had the privileges - or aspires to them - of a "liberal" education in the post-1960s academy, the privileges of "set" and caste, one subconsciously doubts whether one's own talents would sustain one if one were cast out. One's unexamined intellectual premises have an unsound feel to them, so that one doesn't want to "go there." It's not what you know, but who you know, so the greatest terror is to be shunned by the in-group. And this is where the fear comes from.

In this light it seems rather amazing that, as I and others have begun to notice, so many people are coming out of the closet and daring to ask why the emperor is wearing no clothes. Has the courageous spirit of our young men and women warriors started to revitalize the intellectual kidney of the home country? What is going on here?

Read the whole thing. And for more takes on this issue, see David Brooks' Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, and several of the essays in Tom Wolfe's recent Hooking Up.

THE JOY OF AUCTIONS: For a mere $4.5 mil, you too can have your own aircraft carrier. For another $19K, you can own a couple of hijacked Cuban aircraft to land on them!

My God, what hath eBay wrought??

CAN BILL MOYERS be an anchor and a funder? After reading Stephen F. Hayes' recent Weekly Standard piece, Tim Graham has some thoughts.

BABES WITH FLAMETHROWERS: What can I say, I'm a sucker for the simple things in life.

(Makes a nice double-feature with The Swedish Bikini Team, incidentally.)

"DECREPIT TYRANTS" is who Congressman Tom Delay says that China is run by. He's dead-on target, but I can't help think of Michael Kinsley's famous remark that a major gaffe only occurs in Washington when someone speaks the truth.

UPDATE: Scott Ott explains what really happened...

A BOLD NEW CANDIDATE HAS ENTERED THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE, and he needs your support. Start by reading this key speech to his constituents.

FOLLOW THE MONEY: ActivistCash.com looks at Mothers Against Drunk Driving:

If truth-in-advertising laws applied to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, its name would be changed to Mothers Against All Drinking of Any Kind. MADD’s crusade has turned into a prohibitionist movement. Instead of targeting repeat offenders and those who are truly too impaired to drive, the twenty-first-century MADD endorses policies that would target social drinkers.

Of course--because the New Puritans know what's best for the rest of us.

"GIN SWINGS": Nick Passmore, writing in Forbes.com, explains his passion for gin, and its history:

These days, however, it seems that European nobility and movie stars have become just as swept up in the vodka craze as anyone. But I, for one, want nothing to do with it. I approve of vodka for Bloody Marys or when munching on caviar, but nothing will take the place of gin for me. Whether on a hot day sipping cool gin and tonics, or out on the town nursing a martini, gin swings.

A man after my own heart.

RETROSPECTIVE: Eric Olsen reviews the new best of Suzanne Vega CD:

I forgot how much I love the dry, talcum powder balm that is Suzanne Vega's voice - Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera and the other junior divas could learn a thing or three about the value of underplayed expression from Vega, who conveys more meaning and feeling in an inhalation than do many over-emoters in entire careers. Vega has a new career retrospective out and it does the job very well.

I'll second that emotion, although my favorite neo-folkie moment (I think it qualifies) was Sarah McLachlan's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, one of the best produced CDs of the 1990s.

IMMANENTIZING THE EPA: Jonathan Alder puts Christine Todd Whitman's tenure as head of the EPA in perspective, and concludes, "The EPA administrator’s resignation is not a loss but an opportunity."

I'm not holding my breath waiting for things to improve there, however.

Thomas Sowell compares India to the US, and concludes, "The key to the denigrators is that they do not compare the United States to other countries but to the Utopia in their imagination. Those who do this seem not to understand that it was the attempt to create political heaven in the 20th century that lead to the unprecedented hell of totalitarianism". Read the whole thing.

(And then click over here if you've never heard the phrase, "immanentizing the eschaton" before!)

FLASHBACK: Back on December 15th, 2002, I wrote:

Vietnam is doubly instructive here--it was the high-water mark of the anti-war movement, which gained traction because the US military was ineffective in Vietnam, partially due to using tactics developed 25 years earlier in World War II. (And yes, that's a gross simplification, and Robert McNamera, Westmoreland, and Johnson's rules of engagement didn't help things. But you get the idea.)

But each component of the military radically changed its tactics after Vietnam. The anti-war movement is still stuck in a 30 year old timewarp.

And it's got to feel strange for them, to find the military's thinking more modern than theirs.

Not coincidentally, the same holds true of the press. On April 28th, Brit Hume spoke at Hillsdale College and said:

If you go back and look at American military operations beginning with the Grenada invasion and including Panama, the Gulf War, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, and you study what U.S. military spokesmen said about how those conflicts were going at each stage, you’ll see that they were right, and that they told the truth, by and large. No doubt they made some mistakes, but there was nothing like the large deceptions and misrepresentations that made so many journalistic careers in Vietnam. The military learned its lesson in Vietnam, and it has not behaved that way since. You’d think journalists would have noticed. They haven’t, but it’s not too late: When retired General Jay Garner or his successor says that things will work out in post-war Iraq, it might be wise for Western journalists to wait more than a month to declare him wrong.

And when he's not, to not turn your backs on a nation being reconstructed.

HOLLYWOOD ENDING: Joel Engel writes on Danny Glover's claims of McCarthyism (using the Lileksian definition of the word, incidentally), as a result of being dropped by MCI, after his pro-Castro comments:

It is a colossal irony that an actor earning two million easy bucks as a TV pitchman only and entirely because a vast swath of the American public felt affection for him, should now scream McCarthyism after he bulldozed those good feelings with comments which an even wider swath found insulting, hateful, and, yes, stupid. Like Bing, MCI has every right — in fact, as a public corporation, it may have a fiduciary obligation — to protect the company from a boycott organized by customers voting their disgust through the only method available to them.

Such give and take is the bloodstream of a democracy. Inoculating anyone, even celebrities, from the consequences of their speech would only weaken the First Amendment. While it guarantees our right to make complete fools of ourselves, it doesn't guarantee good reviews.

Glover and [Sean] Penn can't seem to get that. And given how relentlessly the issue keeps popping up, they probably won't unless they ask themselves how they'd expect the public to react if, say, Julia Roberts decided to endorse David Duke for president.

Exactly.

IS TONY BLAIR ABOUT TO BE CHARGED FOR WAR CRIMES? Paul Craig Roberts, writing in the The Washington Times, says yes, and adds, "President George Bush escapes being charged as the U.S. is not a signatory to the ICC".

So when is the ICC going to arrest Arafat, someone from the house of Saud, and/or a member of al Qaeda?

FRANK TIPS FOR MEETING WITH JACQUES CHIRAC, by Frank J., who would make Drew Bundini Brown proud.

"A COUNSEL OF DESPAIR": Andrew Sullivan on what Mickey Kaus has dubbed "bell curve liberals".

SEAN PENN ROCKS THE ADVERTISING WORLD: Scott Ott has the details.

NEW PURITANS WATCH: California is about to take another freedom away: soon driving with a cell phone will be illegal.

BIAS BY OMISSION: Charles Johnson writes that "more than 100,000 marchers took part in the Salute to Israel parade on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan today", but...."There is not one word about the parade in Yahoo News. Neither the Associated Press nor Reuters apparently thought it was worth mentioning, even in passing. Nothing in the New York Times either. Five AP photographs show up at Yahoo, all but one focusing on the tiny number of anti-Israel protesters—with an especially nice shot of the twisted Neturei Karta freaks".

As Johnson says, "Wow". I guess if you're not pro-terrorist, you're not worthy of coverage at the Times.

UPDATE (6/2/03): Johnson writes that the Times finally got around to covering the march. But he's none-to-thrilled about their usual, pro-terrorist slant.

HEY, MAYBE I SHOULD QUERY THESE GUYS: Jeremy Lott looks at Modern Drunkard magazine:

Readers soon learned that, though they are usually happy drunks, the staff of Modern Drunkard Magazine are dead serious about their booze. In fact, that they were denied entry to the Absolut Vodka party at this year's Bar and Nightclub Convention. Shown the door on the hilarious grounds that they were promoting drunkenness, the Drunkards retaliated by passing out hundreds of copies to people going into the melee. Though the guards tried to confiscate the issues, they finally gave up "when a growing group of hasslees started wondering why the literature they were carrying was any of Absolut's business."

This orneriness -- this refusal to be cowed by convention or moderation -- is one of the things that makes this magazine so fascinating. When the Drunkards give readers tips on how to beat an intervention, or take aim at the latest anti-alcohol "propaganda," or enlist the lubricious exuberance of some of America's founders ("dedicated, rampant boozers") in the service of tying one on, they are merrily trampling on all sorts of cherished American taboos.

Given the rise of the New Puritans of the left, Modern Drunkard's timing as a counterforce looks impeccable.