DENNIS MILLER: Conservative (or at least libertarian) hero. Here is are some of riffs from Wednesday's Tonight Show with Jay Leno:

-- “Sean Penn, for instance, is urging restraint. What could we possibly say to Sean to get him on board? If only Saddam Hussein was a paparazzi.” (Penn once punched a photographer.)

-- “The only way the French are going in is if we tell them we found truffles in Iraq.”

-- “The French are always reticent to surrender to the wishes of their friends and always more than willing to surrender to the wishes of their enemies.”

He also took on liberals for opposing school vouchers when public schools are a disaster and offered this blast at the ACLU's priorities:

“The ACLU spent this entire holiday season protesting public displays of the nativity scene. Yeah, that's the problem with America right now: Public displays of Christ's birth, that's the problem. It's unbelievable to me. The ACLU will no longer fight for your right to put up a nativity scene, but they'll fight for the right of the local freak who wants to stumble onto the scene and have sex with one of the sheep.”

I always loved Miller when he hosted "Weekend Update" on SNL. He's been the only successful replacement to Chevy Chase's original stint as "anchorman" (27 years ago, when Chase was actually funny). And I guess spending all that time around Al Michaels when the two hosted Monday Night Football really paid off.

I THINK YOU MISSED IT, FRANK: "World champion chess computer software program Deep Junior pounced on a glaring error by Garry Kasparov Thursday to draw level with the Russian grandmaster half-way through their six-game match in New York."

(Hal, and Frank Poole, couldn't be reached for comment.)

HERE AT EDDRISCOLL.COM, we try to avoid material that would be of prurient interest. We endeavor, always, to maintain a high level of dignity, and an even, proper tone.

Therefore, we would never offer a link to something as crude, boorish and in poor taste as this cartoon is.

It just wouldn't be our...style. So please don't open the above link (found via Stephen Green) whatever you do.

Thank you.

MORE STUPIDITY BY DAIMLERCHRYSLER: What are these guys thinking??

Here's our previous coverage.

PHIL OF IT: "CPO Sparkey" of Team Stryker has Phil Donahue's number down cold:

The reason why Phil's new show has done so badly is because the people can see that the "the godfather of talk TV" has no clothes. Bill O'Reilley doesn't pander; he calls people to account for their words, doesn't let them evade questions or go on filibusters to prevent others from talking, and to stop such tactics Bill must interrupt them. This often shocks Pundits et al. of the left who've grown used to being slow-pitched by like-thinking journalists. When I saw Barney Frank red with rage on Bill's show one night, I could imagine him thinking, "You're only supposed to only do this to THEM!" You can call it rude, but I call it compelling TV journalism.

Another quote from [Bruce Kluger of USA Today's] hit-piece:

Therein lies the problem: Donahue has not lost one bit of smarts since his heyday. American TV has.

That's the problem with so many on the left: they're bigots. They think that most everyone in flyover country is an uneducated rube. Honestly, Phil's tactics are well known, just ask Neal Boortz. Yet, when the people start to see the snake oil salesmen for what they are, it's not the message or the messenger, but the receiver who's at fault for not accepting the message. It's obvious to me, anyway, that such left-leaning pundits really only care about the "right" kind of people.

In the article by Kluger that Sparkey quotes, he writes, "Donahue is the Obi-Wan Kenobi of conversation: genuine, affable, well mannered and well informed...."

But Obi-Wan was killed by a stronger version of one his peers, wasn't he? I guess the symbolism holds up: O'Donahue is number one in the cable TV ratings and Phil may be collecting unemployment checks in the not-too-distant future.

KEEPING KIFFIN: The Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers have very wisely given an a new three-year contract to Monte Kiffin, their defensive mastermind.

One of the interesting, and I'm not sure if expected, byproducts of free agency and the salary cap has been the increase of importance in NFL coaches--both head coaches, and their assistants. Once a team reaches the Super Bowl, it's going to be disassembled because teams can't afford to keep their players. So the only consistency is going to come from their coaching staffs.

Very wise of the Bucs not to let Kiffen go.

SMART HOMES FOR BLOGGERS: While we kick politics around every day here, my primary metier (hey, if Nicholson can use it in Chinatown, I can too...) is writing about technology, including home automation and home theater. My review of one of my favorite home automation books, and some suggested additional reading, is now up on on Blogcritics.

UPDATE: In a nice bit of syncronicity, James Lileks' latest Bleat--inspired by a visit to a renovated 1970s shopping mall-- also looks at technology and the future (as well as all the possible futures of the past):

The Mission style was the vanguard of its day, as was the International Style, as was the Mall design of the 70s; they were all a taste of things to come presented for our approval.

But now we don’t know what the future is supposed to look like.

Ever seen the front of those machines they use to bore subway tunnels? Concentric rings of sharp teeth gobbling and moving, gobbling and moving. That’s the culture we live in now - it consumes today as it bores towards tomorrow, and it’s always fixed on the next six inches it needs to eat. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems as if we stopped looking ten, twenty years ahead, stopped conjuring up these worlds in which everything looked new and improved. If that’s so: why?

Perhaps it’s because the present makes those old visions of the future look infantile and silly. We’re not wearing one-piece jumpsuits and taking meals from a pill-dispensing machines, or flying off to work on jetpacks. We have the stuff that counts. We have computers and communicators; we have a global information network, a space station, robot war machines, cybernetic implants. And we still wear jeans and eat hamburgers, and Elvis had a number one song in Airstrip One last year.

The very idea of the future is undergoing a renovation - it’s not a city on the other side of a wall. The best lesson may be this: there is no wall. In the end the very idea of “The Future” may turn out to be a 20th century conceit, the reason the globe churned itself up fighting one rancid conception of utopia after the other. The future is back to being what it always was: an accumulation of tomorrows, not a wholesale refutation of today.

Now we’re fighting the ultimate futurists: men who concept of the future denies the idea of progress. Their future is a snake biting its tail. Our future: sitting in an early 20th century chair in a mid-century mall connecting to the wireless network with your laptop to make revisions on a project due next summer. It’s not necessarily an inspiring vision; it does not seek to remake mankind and perfect its impurities. It does not promise heaven on earth. But this only means that tens of millions won’t be sacrificed in a lunatic attempt to bring it about.

Exactly.

STANDING ROOM ONLY: Al Sharpton sure can pack 'em in! The caption reads:

"Democratic presidential hopeful Rev. Al Sharpton responds to President Bush's State of the Union address during a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2003. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)"

Charles may have been the only person in the room, besides Sharpton. No word yet on what he thought of Sharpton's speech.

(Link found via Reason's Hit & Run blog.)

AXIS OF JACKHAMMERS: Sorry for the lack of posting this morning. We've begun some fairly extensive remodeling on the house, and this morning was complete chaos, as big portions of our garage floor, and front and rear sidewalks were jackhammered into oblivion to begin the first phase of work.

Mr. Blandings, I feel for you.

SECURITY AND PATRIOTISM UPDATES: Dave Barry is on the case, explaining what happened to my trousers.

My review of Michael Graham's new book is online at Blogcritics.

TEMPEST IN A DIXIE CUP: Interesting little dust-up created by a pro-Communist site called Counterspin regarding InstaPundit and myself. Here's the Professor's response. Click on over to Counterspin from it, and you'll see our name briefly mentioned, as well as a link to the original InstaPundit post that started everything. Counterspin seems to have confused me with James Lileks, whose thoughts on A.N.S.W.E.R. I was quoting (and clearly labeled as such), which is awesome company to associated with--maybe I can borrow a cup or two of chops from him.

A TALE OF TWO STAR TREKS: Flak Magazine compares Starship Exeter, which was made for $1.98 and a lot of love, to Star Trek: Nemesis, which was budgeted at 70 million dollars. Guess which comes out the winner?

IT'S NOW OR NEVILLE: Rod Dreher links to this New York Times report, and writes, "European intelligence services are finding evidence that Islamic militants throughout the continent are preparing a wave of poison attacks and other assaults on Europe in the event of war with Iraq. This would explain, in part, the reluctance of Europeans to support the coming war. But you have to wonder: do you people really think you can appease these Islamofascist bastards forever?"

DAVE, I'M AFRAID: The San Jose Business Journal says, "Your computer could be killing you"

(Link via Matt Drudge.)

Almost makes you want to take up smoking, instead!

WE'RE GOING IT ALONE IN IRAQ. Just us and...

...over 12 other countries. Patrick Ruffini has the list, which is growing.

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal has assembled quotes by eight of their leaders.

UN inspectors uncover proof of Saddam's nuclear bomb plans, according to the UK Telegraph.

Meanwhile, England's Independent reports that Iraq has admitted possessing four empty chemical warheads in addition to the 11 empty warheads it said had not been disclosed to UN weapons inspectors because of an "oversight".

KEITH RICHARDS IS A MAGNIFICENT BASTARD, according to Dean Esmay.

After reading Esmay's post, I'm very much inclined to agree!

THE ART OF PLAY CALLING IN THE NFL: Good analysis of an underappreciated art by Dan Pompei of the Sporting News.

WHAT HAPPENED TO BUY LOW, SELL HIGH? David Frum writes:

Two years ago, I would have predicted that Social Security reform would take precedence over healthcare, if only because conservative ideas about Social Security were so much more developed than those about health. The collapse of the stock market seems to have changed that – and it now looks as if Social Security is to be shoved off to the indefinite future.

He's probably right, but why? How difficult would it be for George W. Bush to look Congress dead in the eye and say:

"We need to get going on this now. The stock market is off its historic highs, which means most stocks are on sale. And as those stocks begin to rise (and they will, if you pass my tax cuts, etc.), those members of the American public who chose to own them in their Social Security plans instead of getting three percent on Treasury Bonds will have that much more of a head start for when they retire."

I don't think that's too difficult a concept for most people to get. So why can't a Republican president put his mouth where his money is?

COMPARE AND CONTRAST THESE TWO DRUDGE HEADLINES:

CBS News Post-Speech Poll Gives Bush Major Boost...

Veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas: W. Bush 'is the worst president in all of American history'...

Helen, here's a fork; you're done.

UPDATE: James Taranto writes, in Best of the Web Today:

Helen Thomas, American journalism's crazy old aunt in the attic, apparently is quoted in the Torrance (Calif.) Daily Breeze as saying President Bush "is the worst president in all of American history." We say "apparently" because we haven't actually been able to click through to the link; readers of the Drudge Report seem to have overwhelmed the Breeze's servers. The Wall Street Journal Survey on Presidents, conducted in 2000, found that James Buchanan, who served one term (1857-61) ranked as the worst president in American history. Unfortunately, we're not old enough to remember how Helen Thomas covered his administration.

Heh.

STEVEN DEN BESTE IS NOT HAPPY: He's dubbed Bush's speech the "State of the Weasel" address.

UPDATE: Stephen Green begs to differ:

The UN, it sounds to me, can choose either to be a part of the existing coalition, or it can go get screwed -- perhaps at their new HQ in Geneva. (OK, so I read some wishful thinking in there at the end.)

In any case, I'm more reassured now than I was a week ago, not less.

We'll see. Let's just say I like Lileks' opinion that this speech is the first of a processional, rather than Den Beste's take, but that could purely be wishful thinking on my part. Check back in two or three weeks--we'll know by then.

UPDATE: Steven's feeling better about things, after a night's sleep and a lot of email and thinking.

THE PROCESSION: One more quote from Lileks. I think he's absolutely right that the SOTU speech is is the first of several comming in short succession, with a definite pattern and buildup in mind:

Compared to last year, an underwhelming speech - but the more I think about it the less that bothers me; it’s probably the right speech for the time. Hard bones to gnaw, not fresh meat you can chomp and bolt. This will be seen as the first of four speeches - the SOTU, the Bush/Blair speech, Powell’s UN speech, and Bush’s address from the Oval Office the night the war begins. I think it was written with that procession in mind, which might explain its tenor.

JOE CAMEL: I'd call the following paragraphs the money quote from James Lileks' coverage of the SOTU, but that would mean I'd miss the ten other money quotes:

Defeating Iraq isn’t the camel’s nose in the tent - it’s the camel’s head in the bed of every other Arab leader.

Let's say I'm a 44-year old Iraqi man with a two-year old girl and a wife who worked in the Ministry of Justice and came home every day weeping because someone else had been taken away, I would hear this speech and be filled with piercing fear and incandescent hope and the two emotions would wrestle every day until it was over. When you think about it, a postwar Iraq might actually be safer from WMD than New York City. It’ll be over for them.

We’ve no idea when it’ll be over for us.

Read the whole thing. (Nice shot of USAF Gen. B. Turgidson, by the way!)

BETTER THAN A FOOT MASSAGE: Jules and Vincent rap about the UN, and "the little differences" there.

I'll have a Royale--hold the sarin--to go.

VERY WISE OF THE PRESIDENT to place InstaPundit deep within NORAD before the SOTU speech. But don't they have LAN jacks there?

WHILE HE HAD NEVER VOTED REPUBLICAN IN HIS LIFE, Sgt. Stryker explains why he voted for Bush. And he had very, very personal reasons for doing so.

BILL PARCELLS IS PUTTING TOGETHER the blueprint for the Dallas Cowboys.

1986's THE STATE OF THE UNION, when President Reagan spoke of the Challenger disater, as well as the deaths of other great explorers, is remember by Arthur Silber.

SOTU: Want wall-to-wall State of the Union Coverage? Click here for Patrick Ruffini, here for Orrin Judd, and here for Laurence Simon. (I'll add a link to Glenn Reynolds when he's posted his comments.)

As for the Democrats' response, Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Green are in agreement that the Democrats have found, as Jonah writes, the "perfect recipe for minority party status".

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan has posted his comments. In a similar vein to Jonah and Stephen, he writes:

In many ways, this was a Kennedy-like speech, a speech a Democratic president could have made, if the Democratic Party hadn't fallen into such moral and strategic confusion. Self-confident, convinced, as he should be, of the benign nature of America's role in the world, ambitious, and warm, it was a tour de force of big government conservatism, mixed with Cold War liberalism.

UPDATE: Blogging newcomer Dennis Rogers agrees with Cosmo's dad, and VodkaMan.

UPDATE: Asparagirl chimes in with a subtle point that Bush made.

WAR AGAINST IRAQ...OR HUSSEIN? Patrick Ruffini, linking to the New York Times' article on Saddam's body count that we linked to on Sunday writes:

A "war against Iraq" seems like a dangerously inappropriate term after reading an account like this. This is a war against Saddam, not against Iraq.

It's semantics of course, but I disagree; we're at war with Iraq, simply because Saddam Hussein is Iraq. He controls that nation in toto, just as Hitler controlled the German Reich from 1933 to 1945. And to the extent that the vast majority of armed forces follow their lead, when you're at war with a dictator, you're at war with his country.

Of course, once the dictator is removed from power (one way or another), it's another story.

I'D LINK TO THIS, but then I'd be proving Janeane Garofalo's point.

OFFICIAL "NEWS SOURCE" OF THE AXIS OF WEASELS: Steven Den Beste checks in with "Good old Reuters" and their "Old European" slant on things.

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN': What would it take to replace about one-third of the petroleum used in transportation, (approximately 10% of the total energy demand of the U.S.) with wind powered energy? This article in Tech Central Station says that:

To generate that amount of energy, the wind turbines would have to occupy approximately 210,000 square miles of area. That's 25% more than the size of California (assuming all of California were suitable for wind resource siting, which it is not).

True, the turbines would be spaced apart so that the wind freely meets the blades, leaving room beyond the footprint of each wind turbine for some limited use. So in a sense, California would not be entirely turbine-towered. But it would not be wilderness, either, owing to power lines, service buildings and roads threading the landscape. Moreover, there would be blade throws, tower topplings, destroyed viewsheds and significant kills of endangered birds such as raptors.

Technology has in the past and will continue to go a long way toward solving the problems faced by society. But such enthusiasm for technology needs to be grounded in scientific reality. And wishing that wind power will soon support thriving modern economies won't make it so.

Which is why I chuckled when reading that New York Governor George Pataki has "recently joined a growing chorus calling for a renewable future":

"Within the next 10 years," Pataki said in his recent State of the State Address, "at least 25 percent of the electricity bought in New York will come from renewable energy resources like solar power, wind power, or fuel cells."

The answer my friend...

BARRET ROBBINS UPDATE: Robbins, who was the chief source of the Raider's distractions prior to the Super Bowl, is under a suicide watch, according to this ESPN.com article. ESPN quotes a "source close to the Oakland center" who says that Robbins "was believed to have stopped taking his prescription medication for depression 'some time ago.'"

IT'S REPORT CARD DAY! Small Victory's sources have snuck out a copy of Saddam's report card. Let's just say that Saddam's grades are made lower by his not playing nicely with others...

"JEWISH PRACTICES": Virginia Postrel (recovering from Lasik surgery), highlights a fascinating letter from a reader in Brussels on the long-standing connection between anti-Semitism, anti-free markets and anti-globalization in Germany.

Leave it to 1930s Germany to consider "free gifts" in marketing as "Jewish practices". And to 2003 German protesters, to do this.

THE MUMIA CONNECTION: Why do antiwar contributions go to Mumia Abu-Jamal’s defenders? Byron York explains.

Well, now we know why there are so many "free Mumia" shouts at pro-dictatorship rallies.

Will they protest for this guy's release, as well?

PROTEST THE WAR, EARN EXTRA CREDIT: "An open letter was recently sent out via e-mail to faculty and staff at the University of California, Santa Barbara by supporters of the “Campus Community Peace Group,” co-organized by two UCSB professors.", according to Stanley Kurtz. Kurtz adds:

The letter suggested that professors offer extra credit to students who attend, and write a report, on anti-war events. In effect, these professors want to use grades as bribes to get students to protest the war. If that isn’t an abuse of professorial power for political purposes, what is?

Good question.

"DYNASTY? BUCCANEERS AIN'T JOAN COLLINS": Don't look for them to repeat next year, says Rick Gosselin of the Dallas Morning News.

DATA CREEP: Brian Doherty of Reason asks, "If Gunowners are in a Database with Criminals, Then..."

CONGRESS DECLARES 2003, "The year of the blues".

It usually is, whenever they're in session.

CATS AND DOGS: Steven Den Beste is praising Hans Blix. No, really! Den Beste writes:

Credit where credit is due: the Blix report to the Security Council seems to be reasonably truthful and fair. He didn't try to justify or ignore or cover up the fact that Iraq is not actually wholeheartedly cooperating with the disarmament process, and clearly pointed out the fact that the effort to interview Iraqi scientists had been a bust. He pointed out that the 12,000 page report filed by Iraq was nearly all old material, and that little or none of it applied to the years after 1991. He pointed out that there were substantial stocks of weapons known to still exist when the inspectors left in 1998 which had not been accounted for.

It is not what I had expected, and I am impressed. It seems to be an accurate appraisal of what has happened, and it is equally clear that it shows that Iraq has not actually embraced this as an opportunity to voluntarily disarm, as it was required to do.

* * *

In fact, reactions from all over the world were totally predictable. Everyone had already decided what they would say even before Blix and El Baradei made their reports, but with Blix frankly stating that Iraq has not fully cooperated it makes some of those responses seem a bit lame. For instance, Germany's Joschka Fischer stated that "war is no answer" and said that the inspections required more time. I'm told by a friend in Germany that this may well not be Fischer's own opinion, but it doesn't really matter. Germany still opposes war and always will as long as Schroeder is chancellor, unless Germany itself becomes the victim of a major terrorist attack.

In the mid 1980s, Robin Williams used to do a funny routine (back when he really was funny, and before he turned into Mr. Weep-a-Rama in the movies) that because British bobbies were unarmed, all they could do when faced with an armed criminal was to yell "Stop! Or...I'll say 'Stop!', again!"

The EU--because they are unarmed bobbies, wants to say the same thing to this armed criminal.

Hey France and Germany...it's now or Neville!

YOU DON'T SAY! AP headline: "U.S. Moving Toward Showdown With Iraq"

TERRY TATE, OFFICE LINEBACKER!!! This was one of the better commercials during the Super Bowl yesterday.

James Lileks dubbed it his favorite ad:

One simple idea: huge human meat-anvil is hurled at frail cubicle dweebs, and after he knocks them down he berates them. Hilarious, utterly unconnected to the product, but when it was done I could hear the word REEBOK throbbing in my brain in great loud red letters.

Funny, I was just the opposite--I remembered the ad, but couldn't remember what it was selling. Hope Terry won't pummel me into the not-so-frozen tundra of my backyard because of that.

2008 Update: Can't say I'm as crazy about Terry, now that he's beating up on women.

SLOGAN OF THE DAY:

Created by Michael Ubaldi, for his uBlog. Be sure to read the post below it.

(Link via Team Stryker.)

"ALL THAT PUBLICITY IS A PLOT": Joanne Jacobs has lots of fun deconstructing Janeane Garofalo's theory that the media puts anti-war celebrities on the air only "so they can marginalize the movement".

DEAN OF IRONY: George Will writes:

In his speech last week at a Roe v. Wade celebration—a pandering festival attended by all the aspirants—[Howard] Dean said he is running because "I don’t like extremism." Then he said that unless Bush is defeated, "Next thing, girls won’t be able to go to school in America. You watch."

C'mon Howard--that line is so 1986!

APOLLO 1: Today is the 36th anniversary of the tragic fire that killed three astronauts, including the second American into space, and the first American to walk in space. Orrin Judd has a contemporaneous news article and a quote from Tom Wolfe.

UPDATE: Rand Simberg has more, including this telling line:

A key difference between this accident and the Challenger catastrophe was that in Apollo, we had a goal and a schedule. Accordingly, we dusted ourselves off, analyzed the problem, addressed it, and kept to the schedule.

With the Shuttle, the political reality was that there was no particular reason to fly Shuttles--no national commitment would be violated, no vital experiments wouldn't be performed, no objects would fall from the sky on our heads, and no elections would be lost, if the Shuttle didn't fly.

So, two and a half years after the Apollo I fire, we landed men on the Moon. Two and a half years after STS 51-L, the fleet was still grounded. It didn't fly again until two years, nine months later.

Maybe this (if it's true) will instill a sense of purpose at NASA for their manned space flights. God knows they need it.

WEAPONS OF MASS DISTRACTION: Modern art was used as torture during the Spanish civil war:

A Spanish art historian has uncovered what was alleged to be the first use of modern art as a deliberate form of torture, with the discovery that mind-bending prison cells were built by anarchist artists 65 years ago during the country's bloody civil war.

Bauhaus artists such as Kandinsky, Klee and Itten, as well as the surrealist film-maker Luis Bunuel and his friend Salvador Dali, were said to be the inspiration behind a series of secret cells and torture centres built in Barcelona and elsewhere, yesterday's El Pais newspaper reported.

Most were the work of an enthusiastic French anarchist, Alphonse Laurencic, who invented a form of "psychotechnic" torture, according to the research of the historian Jose Milicua.

Too bad this didn't come to light 30 yeard ago. Monty Python could have gotten much mileage out of this article:

"Stop, or I'll Mondrian!"

"For years, Spanish scientists had worked for a way to break the impass of their civil war. Finally, they invented...The Killer Kandinsky!"

"Biggles! Hand me...(long dramatic pause)...The Picasso!! Buhwahahaha!!!!"

(Link found via NRO's The Corner.)

ESPN'S JOHN CLAYTON reminds us that the Super Bowl trophy is named after a coach, not a player, something that Al Davis has forgotten--twice.

CHIRAC'S VISION: What the world will look like in 2004, if Bush doesn't liberate Iraq.

THE PERFECT STORM: John Gruden knew so much about his former team and its quarterback "that he designed a perfect game plan that his Tampa Bay Buccaneers used to rout the Oakland Raiders 48-21 in the Super Bowl on Sunday", according to this AP article:

``Jon Gruden was Gannon,'' Bucs defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin said. ``Nobody can be like Gannon like Gruden can. He taught Gannon. He was in Gannon's head.''

Gruden got into Gannon's wheelhouse so much that the NFL's MVP threw a season-high five interceptions, three of which were returned for touchdowns by Tampa Bay's stifling defense.

In Thursday's practice, Gruden even took over as quarterback on the scout team and ran several plays.

``The film illustrates that I did complete two or three passes. I was very intimidating under center,'' Gruden joked after the game, surrounded by his wife and three young boys.

Peter King adds that he thought Gannon "would play an outstanding game Sunday":

Gannon was hot going into the Super Bowl. Reigning MVP. Great run in the playoffs. And the way he was abused by the Bucs defense showed just how special the Tampa Bay unit was, and is. Gannon's first 10 drives:

1. Seven plays, 14 yards, field goal.

2. Three plays, one yard, punt.

3. Three plays, six yards, punt.

4. Three plays, eight yards, interception.

5. Three plays, 11 yards, interception.

6. Three plays, minus-one yard, punt.

7. Six plays, 19 yards, punt.

8. Three plays, four yards, halftime.

9. Three plays, eight yards, punt.

10. Two plays, eight yards, interception.

Score after 10 Oakland possessions: Tampa Bay 34, Oakland 3.

I found it laughable listening to the Raiders after the game passing off the incredible dominance of the Bucs defense as their own deficiency. "It wasn't their speed," said Callahan. "It was us not executing."

"I'm not going to pay their defense any lip service," said Porter, the Raiders wideout. "It wasn't their defense. It was us not executing."

Attention Raiders: You didn't execute because that defense kicked your rear ends. It's a pretty simple thing. And now, it's a defense for the ages.

No wonder Warren Sapp looked like he was beaming enough to light up San Diego, as he pulled an enormous full corona out of its wrapper at the end of his press conference.

IS CANADA COMING ON BOARD? This post by Charles Johnson certainly seems to indicate that.

I DIDN'T WATCH THE SUPER BOWL IN HDTV (I replaced the HDTV tuner in my den with an UltimateTV PVR a couple of years ago), so I don't know the game looked in high-def, but this article says it was pretty good. And it "was so much more technically advanced and esthetically pleasing than its first HDTV Super Bowl in 2000, it was almost like comparing black and white TV to color."

Too bad the game was such a blowout, however.

Oliver Willis has coverage of some of the highlights, however...

OLIVER WILLIS IS FOOTBALL BLOGGING: Click on over for regular updates during the Super Bowl.

We've got about 15 people scheduled to show up (with about seven here already), so don't expect many updates until later.

SOUNDS LIKE MATERIAL BREACH TO ME: Hans Blix is about to issue his report on Iraq. Check out the opening two paragraphs from this AP article:

Iraq's arms declaration is incomplete, its scientists aren't cooperating with inspections and Baghdad is obstructing the use of a U-2 plane which could be helpful in the hunt for weapons of mass destruction.

After two months on the job, the chief weapons inspectors, who will issue their current assessments to the Security Council on Monday at 10:30 a.m. EST, can't confirm claims by the Bush administration that Iraq is rearming. Inspectors still don't know what happened to Iraq's stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons or how much time they have left to find the answers.

And then there's paragraphs one, two, four and five of the UN resolution regarding Iraq, all of which Iraq is in violation of.

It's going to be a fascinating State of the Union speech on Tuesday...

UPDATE: Colin Powell, the most dovish member of the administration said today that "he has lost faith in the inspectors' ability to conduct a definitive search for banned weapons programs", according to this AP article.

The New York Times runs the numbers, but doesn't bother to provide a total at the end. However, if amount of dead from both sides during the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s are included (and of course, it's entirely possible that both sides inflated those numbers), then the number of dead is easily in the seven figures.

The author of this piece speaks disparagingly of Hussein's Stalinist techniques, including his use of "handlers" to control foreign journalists. We tried to contact Walter Duranty for a rebuttal, but he couldn't be reached.

(Sorry to carp. I'm just happy to see the Times onboard with denouncing Hussein.)

"BACK AND TO THE LEFT"--Oliver Stone's new movie is his ultimate conspiratorial fantasy, as he tries to make Fidel Castro look like a good guy. Here's Page Six of the New York Post:

OLIVER Stone has earned the wrath of many Cuban-Americans by cozying up to Fidel Castro to make "Commandante," his flattering documentary about the communist dictator. Stone, who lobbed softball questions to Castro and let him come off as a witty charmer, seemed to be gloating at Sundance. "It is amazing," said one moviegoer. "He sits there and announces that Fidel could at any time say 'cut,' and redo any scene that he didn't think was flattering. The whole movie consisted of Fidel doing p.r. for himself, tossing out jokes and avoiding any questions that would make him admit to any sort of torture or cruelty." The highlight of the documentary is a scene where Stone expresses amazement that the tyrant had "never seen a psychiatrist." Stone asks Castro several times about the possibility of his seeing a shrink. Castro finally puts his head in his hands and sighs loudly.

For more on film directors and and their love for left-wing dictators, click here. And here.

GOIN' HOME: ESPN is reporting that Raiders head coach Bill Callahan put Barret Robbins, his Pro Bowl, All Pro center, on a plane back to Oakland, because he missed virtually all of yesterday's practice. As the announcers on ESPN said, Callahan wants to make a statement that no one player is bigger than the game.

It will be interesting to see how the distraction of Robbins' actions, and how Callahan adjusted to it, will affect the game today.

Here's an earlier report, from ESPN's Web site, written before Robbins was sent home.

THE MAJORITY OF ESPN'S "PANEL OF EXPERTS" are saying the Bucs will win the game.

NOT A GOOD WEEK FOR CARTOONISTS: Bill Mauldin passed away, in addition of course, to Al Hirschfeld. Flak Magazine has a memoriam to the great World War II artist.

On Wednesday, James Lileks wrote:

Nowadays, if you point out that someone's a Communist, you might well be accused of - dum dum DUMMMM - McCarthyism. The term has morphed from its original meaning. It no longer means falsely accusing someone of being a Communist. It now includes correctly identifying someone as a Communist, or ascribing a taint to someone because they don't reject the Communists in their midst. (I'll admit there's a significant difference between the two.)

Yesterday's New York Times, has finally gotten around to reporting on A.N.S.W.E.R.'s communist ties, almost a week after several other publications on both sides of the aisle did. The Times' article has these lines, printed without comment or dissent by the reporter who wrote the article:

In an interview today, Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a spokeswoman for Answer, said questions raised about the group's role were "classic McCarthy-era Red-baiting."

"When you select out the Socialists or Marxists," she said, "the point is to demonize and divide and diminish a massive, growing movement."

In reply, Glenn Reynolds writes:

It's not McCarthyite to call people who are communists, communists. Communists, as devoted followers of murderous totalitarianism, deserve to be called to account every bit as much as their Nazi colleagues. And in the 21st century, they can hardly pretend to be ignorant of their ideology's true nature.

But they're always ready to use the "M" word at a moment's notice, thus, as Lileks writes, perverting both its meaning, and the events in America during the 1950s.

1/29/03 UPDATE: For those clicking in from Counterspin, here's Glenn Reynolds' response to his post, which I'm pretty much in agreement on.

By the way, Counterspin seems to have confused me with James Lileks, whose comments I posted above, along with Glenn's. But that's OK--Lileks' chops as a writer are so great, that I'm more than happy to be confused with him!

WHO'S GOING TO THE NFL HALL OF FAME THIS YEAR? Click here and find out!

LOOKING FOR AN EXCITING VACATION GETAWAY? Why not consider Mordor. Thousands of people already have!

(If that's too expensive a destination, you could always visit the nice children at Hogwarts.)

(Link found via William Whittle.)

CURSE OF THE FOUL MOUTH: The Wall Street Journal says "Bad language used to be associated with the lower classes--hence the term 'vulgarity.':

But it is now an affectation of celebrities and macho corporate go-getters. Even sailors and peasants watched their language around ladies and children, but now family gatherings at the ballpark must endure obscenities from neighboring fans. Women are swearing the same blue streak as men, and young children don't seem to have their mouths washed out with soap. A recent Washington Post op-ed lamented the common experience of finding oneself in a subway car "filled with cursing students."

It would be easy to say that in this time of impending war, that vulgarity is even silly to worry about. And yet, somehow, our fathers and grandfathers got through two world wars and the Depression without (at least publically) sounding like they were "sailors and peasants".

James Lileks an excellent Bleat on this very subject a few months ago.

THOUSAND WORDS DEPARTMENT: Hilarious photo of pro-dictatorship protestors found by H.D. Miller on his Travelling Shoes blog.

"WHICH DO YOU CHOOSE, THE HARD OR SOFT OPTION?"*: Andrew Sullivan is on Raines patrol tonight.

* Why yes, I did just quote The Pet Shop Boys; "West End Girls" was one of my guilty pleasure songs in the 1980s.

BLOGCRITICS UPDATE: I just re-posted my thoughts on William Whittle's recent essay on Jimmy Stewart there.

UPDATE: It's drawing some interesting comments...

TAKE THAT ARIANNA! John Merline reports that from 1990 to 2001:

Sales of cars - a category of autos that excludes SUVs, minivans and pickups - have been falling steadily for decades. They dropped 10% between 1990 and 2001, according to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which keeps track of this for the federal government. Worst hit in recent years have been subcompact cars. They saw sales cut in half in the past decade.

Sales of SUVs, meanwhile, climbed an eye-popping 312%

* * * Despite all this, overall fuel economy of all the passenger vehicles on the road actually climbed 6.6% between 1990 and 2000, according to the Energy Information Administration. And the highway fatality rate dropped 27.4%.

Gee, people in big, heavy cars are safer in a crash? Whoda thunk it!

HAWK BITES WEASELS: James Taranto writes that "France and Germany's unexpectedly strong pro-Saddam tilt has had at least one salutary effect, the Washington Post reports: It's turned Secretary of State Colin Powell into a hawk."

Given the number of American allies who have come onboard, Taranto says, "So it's France and Germany, standing alone against the world and in defense of Saddam Hussein. Somebody should have warned Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder of the dangers of unilateralism."

What can you expect? The countries that make up old Europe always act like cowboys.

MY TAKE ON FRANCE: What can you say about a country whose president is "in complete solidarity" with French farmworkers who destroyed a McDonald's restaurant, but not in complete solidarity with removing a vicious, lying, mass-murdering dictator?

As Jonah Goldberg wrote a couple of years ago:

An anti-U.S. activist and author named José Bové is a French folk hero because he led a goon squad of angry farmers in dismantling a local McDonald's with crowbars. An angry judge gave Bové a whopping 20 days in jail. Politicians bravely denounce the company. Jacques Chirac, the French president, recently declared, "I am in complete solidarity with France's farm-workers, and I detest McDonald's food."

But anti-Americanism only partly accounts for the phenomenon. For example, protesters will often attack a Mickey D's even if the U.S. embassy is more convenient. When Breton separatists wanted to send a signal to Paris last month, they blew up a McDonald's, killing a 28-year-old breakfast-shift leader. (It was a mixed signal, to be sure, because McDonald's is even less popular in Paris than in Brittany.)

Of course, you can say the exact same thing about the American far left, who thinks of nothing of suggesting that a McDonald's be blown up, or killing policemen, and destroying US government property, but who actively prevent helping the truly opressed: the people of Iraq.

THE OTHER PARAGRAPHS: "CPO Sparkey" of Team Stryker analyzes paragraphs one, two and four of the resolution against Iraq. We looked at paragraph five earlier today.

As Sparkey writes:

If the rule of law is to mean anything, then it must be enforced. Governments that pass laws that they can't or don't intend to enforce simply encourages - not deters - more crime. Those of you who seek UN approval and mandate remember this. Remember the way the UN is behaving here. Passing laws and resolutions that it really doesn't have the will to enforce except on those who are most likely to obey them anyway.

AXIS OF WEASELS ROUNDUP: A double-barreled dose of fun-filled French bashing, as Stephen Green and Jonah Goldberg pile-on. Meanwhile, conservatives increase pressure on DaimlerChrysler, and Steven Den Beste says, "I think there really must be something wrong with the water in Europe".

Woody Allen was right...

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Glenn Reynolds writes, "If I were Scott Ott, I'd be saying "Buwahahaha!" Something he wrote on his computer yesterday is giving French and German diplomats heartburn today. If that's not the American Dream come true, I don't know what is."

COLD COMFORT: Nick Schulz asks, does a frigid January mean the threat of global warming is over?

PARAGRAPH FIVE PAYS OFF: Way back on November 9th, we mentioned "the seldom discussed Paragraph Five of our resolution regarding Iraq", and linked to this post by Bryan Preston, who wrote:

there is some quiet self-satisfaction among the Brits and Americans that paragraph 5 -- the silver bullet -- went through with little fuss. This says the inspectors must have "immediate, unimpeded, unrestricted and private access to all officials and other persons" and that the inspectors "may at their discretion conduct interviews inside or outside of Iraq, may facilitate the travel of those interviewed and family members outside Iraq." This means an open ticket to the West for all the best brains in Iraqi who would like to leave. It is also the guarantee that Iraq can be declared in material breach if access to any designated scientist, technician, official or civilian is denied. And the CIA and Britain's SIS have drawn up a very long list.

Check out the first two paragraphs of this AP article:

As Iraq awaits a key report by chief U.N. arms inspectors, a senior Iraqi official says Baghdad is still unable to meet a key U.N. demand — persuade Iraqi scientists to submit to private interviews with U.N. arms controllers.

In New York, deputy U.S. Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz charged that Iraq had threatened to kill its scientists if they cooperated with U.N. weapons inspectors.

Add that to the previous chemical weapons discovery, and the subject of this article--that Iraq refuses U-2 overflights to assist the inspectors--and the evidence keeps mounting.

The Super Bowl should be fun, but Bush's State of the Union address is going to be the real must-see TV next week.

NO MEDIA BIAS TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: From an AP report on the Super Bowl:

Gone from the site of the NFL's biggest game are the armored military trucks and camouflaged soldiers that gave last year's game such a chilling feel.

Unless you're Al Qaeda, why would--especially just a few months after 9/11--American soldiers and their vehicles give you "a chilling feel" at a football game?

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN. THIS IS YOUR BRAIN BOOTING UP. This is Jasper's brain booting up. Any questions?

STANDING ATHWART HILLARY, YELLING "STOP!": 15 years before Hillary Clinton wrote It Takes a Village, Ronald Reagan, with great foresight, wrote his review:

"...it rests on the assumption that your kids belong to the state. If we buy that assumption then it is for the state -- not for parents, the community, the religious institutions or teachers -- to decide who shall have what values and who shall do what work, when, where and how in our society. That assumption isn't a new one. The Nazis thought it was a great idea."

--Ronald Reagan in Human Events, February 1979.

MAN BITES MARX DEPARTMENT: Remember those mirror sites I linked to on Tuesday? "Mean Mr. Mustard" has entered Berkeley's version of them.

(Link found via Joanne Jacob.)

LET SHARPTON BE SHARPTON, says Rod Dreher.

By the way, it is amazing, Reichstag-like timing, that Al's headquarters burned down the day after he announced his run for the presidency. Marinus van der Lubbe, call your office!

In other news, Cynthia McKinney may be the Green Party's candidate for presidency in 2004. No, really!

UPDATE: "This marks the second time Sharpton’s office has been destroyed by fire. About eight years ago, his office on 125th Street also burned, coincidentally as he ran for U.S. Senate."

BUG CHASER UPDATE: When Matt Drudge originally posted about the Rolling Stone "Bug Chaser" article, which claimed that "25% of New HIV Cases in USA are Men Who Sought Out Virus", my first take was:

I have no doubt that there's a certain percentage of whom this is true. (It's a sick world out there.) But 25 percent? Seems awfully steep to me.

Looks like I'm not the only one who's disputing those numbers.

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY:

NEVER CRITICIZE CHRYSLER! Back on Saturday, I posted this. Today, while my wife and I were driving to San Francisco for a couple of appointments, our Dodge Intrepid ran over a nail (or something) while turning off Highway 80 and got a flat. Coincidence?

Of course. But it's damn annoying, nonetheless. Nothing like changing a tire on Pine Street at 2:00 in the afternoon.

ANDREW'S HOME RUN:

But for us, it's important to remember why we're fighting Saddam. The answer is September 11. Those who want to find some specific evidentiary link between al Qaeda and Saddam don't begin to fathom what war is. It is not the pursuit of one distinct goal after another, depending on the exigencies of international law or diplomacy. That's called foreign policy. War, in contrast, is the attempt to destroy an enemy. The enemy is Islamist terrorism and its state sponsors. Strategically, the overthrow of the Saddam regime is absolutely central to this objective. It will deal another psychological blow to the reactionaries who want to ratchet Islam back a few more centuries and wage war on the free societies of the West. It will remove one huge and obvious source of weapons of mass destruction potentially available to the enemy. It will provide a military base from which to continue the war against al Qaeda and its enablers across the Middle East, specifically in Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia. And it will reassert the global hegemony of the United States and its Anglosphere allies. That's why we fight. It isn't a pre-emptive war. It's a reactive war - against what was done to this country throughout the 1990s, culminating on that awful September day. We are fighting to honor the memory of the dead and to defeat a brutal enemy that would inflict even more carnage if they possibly could. And we fight to defend the principles of a liberal international order, principles that the United States and the United States alone has long been responsible for upholding. Our loneliness in this struggle should not therefore be a cause for concern. It is, in fact, a sign, once again, that we are on the right path.

Perfectly stated.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE, in the New York Times on "Why We Know Iraq Is Lying". Rice says, "Iraq is still treating inspections as a game. It should know that time is running out."

Read the whole thing, which Andrew Sullivan calls "Condi's Home Run".

He's right.

FUN IN THE DESERT: My article on America's other rocket program is up on Tech Central Station.

For some additional photos, check out the first draft of the article, which originally appeared shortly after this site went online.

THE SPIRIT OF '73: Tim Cavanaugh of Reason reports on an ugly nostalgia that's sweeping the globe.

For my take on the 1970s--or at least its politics--click here.

Michael Kelly nails A.N.S.W.E.R., and the folks who blindly march with it:

There is, increasingly, much that happens in the world that the [New York] Times feels its readers should be sheltered from knowing. The marches in Washington and San Francisco were chiefly sponsored, as was last October's antiwar march in Washington, by a group the Times chose to call in its only passing reference "the activist group International Answer."

International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) is a front group for the communist Workers World Party. The Workers World Party is, literally, a Stalinist organization. It rose out of a split within the old Socialist Workers Party over the Soviet Union's 1956 invasion of Hungary -- the breakaway Workers World Party was all for the invasion. International ANSWER today unquestioningly supports any despotic regime that lays any claim to socialism, or simply to anti-Americanism. It supported the butchers of Beijing after the slaughter of Tiananmen Square. It supports Saddam Hussein and his Baathist torture-state. It supports the last official Stalinist state, North Korea, in the mass starvation of its citizens. It supported Slobodan Milosevic after the massacre at Srebrenica. It supports the mullahs of Iran, and the narco-gangsters of Colombia and the bus-bombers of Hamas.

This is whom the left now marches with. The left marches with the Stalinists. The left marches with those who would maintain in power the leading oppressors of humanity in the world. It marches with, stands with and cheers on people like the speaker at the Washington rally who declared that "the real terrorists have always been the United Snakes of America." It marches with people like the former Black Panther Charles Baron, who said in Washington, "if you're looking for an axis of evil then look in the belly of this beast."

Read the whole thing.

IN MEMORIAM: Wonderful tribute to Al Hirschfeld by Andy Ross in Flak Magazine:

Hirschfeld served as a historian, marking moments of a culture immersed in and enthralled by entertainment. Cataloguing the 20th century, Hirschfeld showed the world the faces of an aging art form. Live performance, with its caked makeup and exhausting hoofing, has no existence beyond the moment it shares with its audience. Without celluloid or videotape, all theater had to make it immortal was Hirschfeld.

Great descriptions of Hirschfeld's deceptively/masterfully simple style as well

HOW A CHINESE DOT.COM BECAME THE DARLING OF THE NASDAQ: According to this Reuters article, Sohu.com has risen 800 percent in six months.

MY KIND OF SNEAK PREVIEW: Hopefully the real thing will be employed very shortly.

(Found via Tim Blair.)

DRUDGE HEADLINE: "25% of New HIV Cases in USA are Men Who Sought Out Virus".

I have no doubt that there's a certain percentage of whom this is true. (It's a sick world out there.) But 25 percent? Seems awfully steep to me.

THE SADDAM HUSSEIN/GODFATHER II CONNECTION REVEALED.

But what does G.D. Spradlin think about this?

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: Earlier today, Glenn Reynolds posted about an Instapundit mirror site.

Well, if you're blog is listed on Glenn's blogroll, there's a very good chance you've got one too!

Unbelievable!

UPDATE: Silly me--here's the URL of the creation page. I didn't realize that any and all sites could be mirrored.

INSERT FOOT INTO MOUTH DEPARTMENT: I'm sure, looking back in the almost one year that this blog has been in existence, you can find more than a few turns of phrases that we wish we could take back (that may have just been one of them). But did Howie Kurtz really intend to say this, as found by James Taranto on The Journal's "Best of the Web Today"?

"If colleges don't consider race at all, some of them would end up looking like the Republican side of the House. (Number of blacks: zero.)" Does Kurtz really think no blacks can meet the standards of certain colleges?

Taranto also has this one by Hillary--who I expect to put her foot in her mouth from time to time:

"Yes, we want to be judged by the content of our character and not the color of our skin. But what makes up character? If we don't take race as part of our character, then we are kidding ourselves."--Hillary Clinton at a Martin Luther King Day ceremony, quoted in today's New York Sun.

I think Kurtz was simply trying to be clever and reached too far. But I'm sure Hillary believes exactly what she said above.

As Taranto said, "Oh well, it was only a dream".

UPDATE: Pejman Yousefzadeh has some additional thoughts on Hillary's speech.

LIFE IMITATES THE ONION DEPARTMENT: Charles Johnson writes:

Oh man. If the news keeps getting weirder, we’re going to have to start labeling items with big PARODY / NOT A PARODY signs.

Today Iraq promised to help the UN inspectors, by forming Iraqi teams to hunt for their own banned weapons.

By the way, this is NOT A PARODY.

But this is.

As is this.

This is, too.

And so is this... I think.

IS NPR PART OF THE VAST RIGHT-WING MEDIA CONSPIRACY? Err, no. But Orrin Judd--with an assist from Ann Coulter--analyzes who makes up its largest group of listeners.

"ISN'T THAT ILLEGAL"? Andrew Sullivan on race and the newsroom.

"A RERUN OF A BAD MOVIE": President Bush says:

"This business about more time, how much time do we need to see clearly that he's not disarming?" Bush told reporters after meeting with economists to tout his tax-cutting plan.

* * * "It appears to be a rerun of a bad movie. He is delaying. He is deceiving. He is asking for time. He's playing hide and seek with inspectors. One thing for sure is, he's not disarming," Bush said. "So the United States of America, in the name of peace, will insist that he does disarm and we will keep pressure" on Iraq."

In a flash of impatience, Bush said of reluctant allies, "Surely our friends have learned lessons from the past."

Of course, one reason that some "allies" are so reluctant is that they may have contributed to Iraq's arms buildup.

In other Iraq news, inspectors may have discovered Saddam's ongoing nuclear weapons program. Meanwhile, former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter is rumored to have booked recording sessions with Pete Townshend.

UPDATE: Steven Den Beste does a little supposing about what happens if after we're victorous in Iraq, we announce German and French complicity in helping Iraq build WMDs.

William Whittle begins a long essay on the current state of Hollywood celebrities and the anti-war/pro-dictatorship positions of today's Hollywood by describing his chance encounter with Jimmy Stewart in the late 1980s.

Let's flashback even further to about 1966. Compare the apathy and arrogance of today's celebrities with this photo of Stewart, a brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve, at about age 58, looking like God in a flight suit, walking away from a B-52F, after a mission over North Vietnam.

I have no idea how many flights Stewart made over Nam--but even if it was just one for this photo-op, think of what he had to go through: the 5000 mile flight from Los Angeles to at least Guam, where most of the B-52s flew out of during the Vietnam war, the risk of getting shot out of the sky by crack North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gunners and killed or captured, plus the timeout from his career, when by the 1960s, he was earning at a minimum, in the very high six-figures per movie. I'm sure that when the call came, if Stewart or his handlers quietly said, "err, no thanks", the Air Force wouldn't have pressed the issue. But, just as he did in WWII, Stewart served his country.

Now, flash-forward 35 years. John Travolta owns his own Boeing 707, a plane based on technology Boeing developed for the B-52 and the earlier B-47. Imagine him flying in a '52, a B-1, or a B-2 anywhere except on a Hollywood soundstage. To paraphrase one of the anti-war movement's heroes, it's not easy if you try! George Clooney is busy taking cracks at George Bush and Charlton Heston. Sheryl Crow is busy checking her aura. James Lileks recently put the whole phenomenon into perspective:

Imagine you’re living in WW2, and you learn that Glenn Miller had kiddie-diddler urges, Dick Powell is in Berlin on a fact-finding mission, Hitchcock is insisting that the Blitz could be solved with diplomacy and understanding, and the Andrews Sisters showed up for an awards banquet wearing T-shirts that criticized Lend-Lease. Hitler the Second would be running Germany today, because the beautiful people would have convinced America that scrap drives were a plot by the rubber-industrial complex.

Of course, during the 1940s through the 1950s, when Stewart was at the height of his popularity, Hollywood stars--or at least their agents and producers--instinctively knew that they earned their wealth, from their audiences. As Whittle wrote:

I can clearly recall Jimmy Stewart on The Tonight Show telling Johnny Carson that everything he had -- all the money and fame and admiration and privilege – he owed to the good people who were kind enough to come to the darkened theater and part with their hard-earned money. He said it was a privilege and a small price to pay to give back whatever he could to those fine, generous people.

Compare that to the celebrities of today and how far they're removed from their audiences.

(Link to Whittle's essay found via Asparagirl.)

AL HIRSCHFELD, DEAD AT AGE 99: A wonderful artist, and by all accounts, a fine man. He will be missed--by not the least of which, The New York Times, where his work appeared for many decades.

THE VAST CONSERVATIVE MEDIA CONSPIRACY: Brent Baker of the Media Research Center writes that on FNC's After Hours with Cal Thomas, "when Lesley Stahl denied there's any liberal bias and claimed the networks are packed with conservatives, Thomas asked her to name a conservative at CBS News. She couldn't."

DENNIS PRAGER EXPLAINS "why the great majority of Jews and nearly all blacks vote Democrat", in the first of a two part series.

ANATOMY OF A FIRING: How, and why did Steve Mariucci of the San Francisco 49ers get the axe? Peter King of Sports Illustrated has the details.

SERIOUSLY THOUGH, Super Bowl XXXVII is tailor-made for the NFL. Raiders versus their old coach? Crank up the hype machine!

UPDATE: Skip Bayless of the San Jose Merc gives the Bucs the edge.

FINAL RESULTS OF THE NFL playoffs are in. Look for Eagles versus Titans in the Super Bowl.

I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, but I was proud to have taken part in this protest on Saturday.

For a round up on what the other 1/578th of America was doing, click here.

THE STONES--STILL BEING HASSLED BY THE MAN, even after all these years!

(Shouldn't Michael Bloomberg be ashamed of himself?)

UPDATE: "Acidman" has some thoughts.

BACK FROM A WEEKEND EXCURSION TO RENO, with some surrealistic moments along the way. Highlights to follow tomorrow.

OH WELL, GUESS I WON'T BE BUYING ANOTHER DODGE.

And this didn't do much for Mercedes' reputation, either.

SOMEONE NEEDS TO TELL HIM TO READ DEN BESTE: AP headline says "Saddam: Iraq Ready for War With U.S."

I'VE NEVER WATCHED FARSCAPE, the Sci-Fi Channel TV series, but according to this article, it's very big in Afghanistan:

At Bagram Air Force Base in northern Afghanistan, soldiers couldn't picket [to protest Farscape's cancellation], so they gathered to watch tapes of the show and write letters of protest instead. When other fans heard about this, they raised money to send the soldiers a "care package" of DVDs, photos and T-shirts. One European fan commented sardonically, "This is the first time I've felt positive about the American military lately."

The thought of a mine-clearing unit obsessing over a TV program that features living alien spaceships is surreal. But it also challenges the popular image of fans as isolated geeks who have lost touch with reality.

The article quotes Spc. Howard W. Bushey III, who organized the Bagram rally, on what he finds so appealing about the show.

THE TYRANNY OF "BUT": Victor Davis Hanson has a terrific piece on war and words in National Review Online.

EXACTLY.

(Link via InstaPundit.)

JACOB SULLUM ON ARRIANA HUFFINGTON, and her anti-SUV hysteria:

I'm sure Huffington, who turned in her SUV for a snazzy little gas/electric hybrid and never misses a chance to preach the virtues of conservation, will take the next step by eliminating unnecessary trips in taxis, limos, and airplanes. It may hobble her book tour, but perhaps that's just as well. If she sells too many copies, her publisher will have to send out more, and the trucks that carry them won't be burning water.

I'm sure she'll do just that. Just as Al Gore refused to use Air Force Two after he wrote Earth in the Balance.

THE BLOGOSPHERE/VETERANS STADIUM CONNECTION: This Sunday's NFC championship game marks the last Philadelphia Eagles game at Veterans Stadium. (Click here for my coverage from mid-December of the last regular season "Iggles" game there.)

Patrick Ruffini and Asparagirl also have coverage of the Vet. Including myself, this makes at least three bloggers who've attended games there when we lived in the area. (And Sgt. Stryker and I have each seen separate Pink Floyd concerts there--go figure.)

I wonder if it's something they put in the Budweiser there that causes people to blog.

Probably not, but it's better than booing Santa Claus.

SECRET TiVO FEATURE REVEALED, on Blogcritics.

Cool!

TARANTO ON BUSH AND MICHIGAN:

Had Bush and the Republicans stood behind Lott, it would indeed have been much harder to present the Michigan stance as a principled one. And it's noteworthy that many of the conservatives who were most emphatic in calling for Lott's ouster--people like Ward Connerly and Abigail Thernstrom--are also among the strongest critics of racial preferences. The Connerlys and Thernstroms of the world rightly do not want to be associated with those who take the same position as they on this issue--but for what is very much the wrong reason.

There's a lesson here for our friends on the Democratic left, though one they probably won't learn. Republicans and conservatives have generally been much better at policing their own ranks for extremists and haters. Pat Buchanan, for example, no longer commands any respect within the Republican Party or the conservative movement, and David Duke never did.

In contrast, look at the freak show that makes up the American left: Jim McDermott, Al Sharpton, Cynthia McKinney, Patty Murray, Maxine Waters, Ramsey Clark, Noam Chomsky--the list could go on and on. Obviously one could make many distinctions here: Clark and Chomsky are not active in Democratic politics; most Democrats don't actually endorse McKinney's anti-Semitism or McDermott's pro-Saddam stance; Patty Murray may be more naive than evil.

And of course the Democratic Party includes many serious and sober political leaders. But the point is that they don't make these distinctions, at least not publicly. They don't repudiate the McDermotts, Sharptons and Chomskys of the world, the way conservatives repudiate their Lotts, Dukes and Buchanans. The result, to take the Iraq issue as an example, is that if there is a principled antiwar position, it gets drowned out amid the voices of extremism, who run the gamut from hyperpartisan to downright anti-American.

Speaking of downright anti-American, be sure to read about the terrorist speaking at Duke, on your way to the above quotes.

POSTINDUSTRIAL WAR: Good article by Michael Barone.

To read where this concept began, click here.

ARCHEOLOGICAL TERRORISM is the theme of this post by Charles Johnson:

Among their many other crimes, the PLO is systematically destroying priceless Jewish religious artifacts from the Temple Mount, and undermining the foundations of the ancient temple. Steven Plaut writes about this archaeological terrorism, and accuses the Sharon government of cowardice for failing to confront it: The Destruction on the Temple Mount.

Archaeological terrorism is par for the course, isn't it?

IT WON'T BE A STYLISH MARRIAGE: The Washington Post reports that an anti-war group revives LBJ's hoary old 'daisy' ad.

The Media Research Center adds, "...And the CBS News staff didn't find a thing wrong with it."

"It's almost as if ABC and CBS are trying to create their own reality so they can report on it", MRC writes.

Gee, ya think so?

THE FIRST ISRAELI ASTRONAUT IS IN SPACE: Columbia launched in what AP reports is "the most heavily guarded space shot in NASA history".

Here's a briefing on the most precious cargo they're carrying.

COSMO IS ON TOP OF THE NORTH KOREAN SITUATION. Not the women's magazine, the small furry Cosmo--the other white meat.

MR HUSSEIN'S NEIGHBORHOOD: Why yes, I can say "material breach".

Charles Johnson writes:

Saddam is playing games with the inspectors, letting them find a few empty warheads; it won’t be enough to trigger the war, but every peace creep and Saddam apologist will be screaming, “See! The inspections are working! Give ’em another year!”

Of course, one of Johnson's readers really sums up the whole situation: "I wonder when Greenpeace will denounce Saddam for not recycling his empties."

UPDATE to the above quote by Johnson: he's found his winner.

THE JAGS' EXPECTED NEW HEAD COACH IS Jack Del Rio , according to ESPN.com.

JEFF BROKAW SAYS "yes, I'm buying the Pete Townshend alibi!", and explains why.

Brian Doherty of Reason seems to agree with him, as does Howard Owens of Blogcritics.

INTERESTING EMAIL FROM A READER:

Did my wife slip me some acid last night, or did I see a report on ABC stating that our Peace Prize winner is thinking of running for Zell Miller's Senate seat when Miller retires in 2004. The report said that Carter did not want the seat to fall into Republican' hands. I have found nothing about it in the print medium.

Given the drubbing that Carter took in '80, the blow-out drubbing that his vice-president received in '84, and then the salt in Mondale's wounds this past November, Carter may want to think twice before entering. If Carter's record is discussed (the original, and definitive "worst economy in fifty years", the hostages, his shameful sell-out of Israel, and his visits with our enemies), he's eminently beatable.

SHOOTING CROWS IN A BARREL: Sometimes it's just too easy, especially when you're Andrew Sullivan, and you're Fisking Sheryl Crow's deeeeep thoughts.

HYPERBOLIC: I love this line in the latest Reason Express:

D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams wants to add 100,000 residents to the District's population over the next 10 years. He compares this, in terms of its importance, to the 1969 moon shot.

Of course it is.

LIND HIM A CLUE: Ever wonder how books by Rachel Carson and John Maynard Keynes ended up on the National Review Top 100 Non-Fiction Books of the 20th Century list?

Blame Michael Lind, whom Orrin Judd does a lengthy and thorough smackdown of.

FLASHBACK: Here's a piece on Lind from December of 2001 written by Jonah Goldberg, who once suffered what he calls a Lind "hissy fit".

TRUTH IN ADVERTISING: According to the Internet Movie Database, the working title for Madonna's new album is "Ein Sof", the Hebrew phrase for endlessness.

Speaking of which, she's been ordered by Warner Brothers brass to re-record the album, as its "too extreme".

(Be warned--the above link contains one seriously scary photo of Madonna, taken just before every vein in her neck exploded.)

REVEALING ON-AIR FREUDIAN SLIP BY GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS.

FRIENDS DON'T LET FOOTBALL PLAYERS DRIVE: Bad season for NFL players and automobiles:

Cowboys player free on bail after fatal hit-and-run

Back on September 25th, we posted about Randy Moss's arrest for pushing a traffic agent half a block with his car.

WHITEWASHING HISTORY: Jonathan Foreman, writing in England's Daily Telegraph, says that Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York "portrays racist mass murderers as victims":

Martin Scorsese is rightly the most lauded living American film-maker - a beacon of integrity as well as a brilliant talent. But his bloody, visually gorgeous new epic, Gangs of New York, set in Civil War-era Manhattan, distorts history at least as egregiously as The Patriot, Braveheart or the recent remake of The Four Feathers. In its confused way, it puts even the revisionism of Oliver Stone to shame.

The film works so hard to make mid-19th-century Irish-American street gang members into politically correct modern heroes (and to fit them into Scorsese's view of American history as one long ethnic rumble) that it radically distorts a great and terrible historical episode.

Read Foreman's excellent article as to why and how.

GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE DEPARTMENT: Andrew Sullivan writes:

Like many people, I've long since given up on reading most of the editorials in the New York Times. Unlike those in the Washington Post, they don't seem designed to persuade anyone. They posture and preen and pronounce. But they don't seem intended to engage.

Yesterday, Steven Den Beste wrote this about the "peace" movement:

One comes to the conclusion that they are actually playing to each other. Like the apocalyptic Christians who stand on a street corner and shout the message that "Repent, for the end is coming soon" one comes to the conclusion that they're doing it more to prove their moral purity than because they actually expect to make any difference. It's not that they think they can sway the political middle; they don't even care to try. They're parading for each other, to prove commitment to the cause. (And a healthy dose of Tu Quoque never hurts, either.)

Talk about circling the wagons.

UPDATE: Adam G. Mersereau has some additional thoughts on the "peace" movement in National Review Online.

ESPN'S JOHN CLAYTON ON MARIUCCI:

A year ago, Mariucci was tempted by the money and power of having the dual roles in Tampa. He would have been a $4 million major player in this league, but in the end, he turned it down because his family wanted to remain in the Bay area. The Bucs bit the bullet and traded two first-round choices, two second-rounders and $8 million to Oakland for Jon Gruden.

The flirtation with the Bucs' job hurt Mariucci organizationally. His fine coaching job this season put him back in a position for York to make an offer about an extension. But one thing wasn't going to happen. York wasn't going to allow Mariucci to do anything more than just coach.

It's not that Mariucci is wrong. The timing was bad. For the first couple years of this decade, NFL owners were handing out duel titles and big coaching contracts like candy at Christmas. Nearly half of the teams had head coaches in full charge of the football operations.

Things are changing this year. Mike Holmgren lost his general manager duties in Seattle, but kept his salary and status as coach. Tom Coughlin was let go as the single person in charge of the Jaguars. Bill Parcells had to take a job as coach only for Jerry Jones in Dallas.

The reality of things is that as much as Mariucci is the perfect coach for one of the youngest starting lineups in football, it probably was time for him to move. Had he accepted an extension for $3 million a year, that wouldn't have changed the feeling that he was an outsider in the organization. The person who hired him is still in Cleveland.

Should he go to Jacksonville, Mariucci might get more money than in San Francisco. He might get a little more power, although owner Wayne Weaver wants a sharing of the power between a coach and a personnel director.

As for the 49ers, they can go a number of different directions. Dennis Green is a perfect candidate as long as he casts aside his desires to run the front office, too. Looking internally, the team could go for Jim Mora Jr., the team's bright young defensive coordinator.

ADVANTAGE ED! Back on October 8, we reported about Internet2, a consortium of universities and businesses that are designing technology for a possible ultra-high-speed successor to the current Internet. (Actually, we've been writing about Internet2 since around late 1999 or early 2000, it's only been recently that these articles started showing up on the actual Internet, as opposed to on dead tree.)

Anyhow, my wife found this on her My Yahoo home page:

Yahoo! News - Arecibo's Internet2 Connection Gives Researchers Greater Access

Cool story about an even cooler technology.

REPORT: STEVE MARIUCCI OUT AS 49ers HEAD COACH. "A 49ers spokeswoman would not confirm the report, but said that the team has scheduled a news conference for Wednesday at 3 p.m. EST."

UPDATE: It's official. Next stop, Jacksonville?

ANOTHER INTERNET ANNIVERSARY: Five years ago today, Monicagate was born, via Matt Drudge, by far the most visible of the many scandals "emanating from the [former] President's pants", as Jonah Goldberg once put it.

Meanwhile, tax-evasion charges have been filed against a miracle-cure peddler pardoned by Clinton as part of the infamous 177 pardons he issued before leaving office in 2001.

James Lileks writes:

So now I have to remove Sheryl Crow AND Pete Townsend from my iTunes playlist. Ms. Crow has informed us that war is bad for our karma, and that it can be avoided by “not having enemies.” She has a point. Cancer can be avoided by not having any flesh, but given the alternative, I’ll opt every time for a world stuffed with bright meat. I try not to make enemies, but damn if they don't keep volunteering for the job.

Here's the money quote, though:

People who use children for their sexual gratification should be walled up and left for dead. I guess that makes them my enemy. And in Ms. Crow’s world, that’s my problem.

Imagine you’re living in WW2, and you learn that Glenn Miller had kiddie-diddler urges, Dick Powell is in Berlin on a fact-finding mission, Hitchcock is insisting that the Blitz could be solved with diplomacy and understanding, and the Andrews Sisters showed up for an awards banquet wearing T-shirts that criticized Lend-Lease. Hitler the Second would be running Germany today, because the beautiful people would have convinced America that scrap drives were a plot by the rubber-industrial complex.

Actually, I'm sure I'll get fooled again. I said to my wife tonight that I'm really batting a thousand when it comes to teenage idols: Coppola worships mass-murders, Pete Townshend is suspected of being a pedophile, and then there's the whole Woody Allen debacle.

Oh and Brian Eno, a man whom produced some wonderful records with U-2 and the Talking Heads has a world view that's the polar opposite of his originality as a musician. Not really a teenage idol, but his thoughts on the recording process were hugely influential to me when I first began recording my own songs in my late teens on a four-track. Another interesting guy who probably never should have opened his mouth about politics.

Steven Den Beste has some thoughts on the whole protest movement. I think he's dead-on target with this point:

One comes to the conclusion that they are actually playing to each other. Like the apocalyptic Christians who stand on a street corner and shout the message that "Repent, for the end is coming soon" one comes to the conclusion that they're doing it more to prove their moral purity than because they actually expect to make any difference. It's not that they think they can sway the political middle; they don't even care to try. They're parading for each other, to prove commitment to the cause. (And a healthy dose of Tu Quoque never hurts, either.)

Certainly this is true in Hollywood, which is an astonishingly insular and monolithic community, at least when it comes to politics.

Den Beste's essay is well worth reading in its entirety, as usual.

UPDATE: A reader says, "While you are at it, you might as well also remove John LeCarré from your library after reading this.

Ugh.

UPDATE UPDATE: Charles Johnson is much more articulate on LeCarré than my comment above:

Unbelievable. If the deluded fools keep popping their heads up at this rate, we’re going to need an Idiotarian of the Week contest. Now it’s John LeCarré, hitting every anti-war trope; it’s all about oil, it’s a personal vendetta between Bush and Saddam, it’s a religious war (but not a word about radical Islam!), US media is suppressing the debate (hah!), et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam.

THE TERMINATOR: Has Gray Davis just opened the door for Arnold Schwarzenegger to become the next governor of California? Patrick Ruffini thinks so.

THE CINCINNATI BENGALS NAME Marvin Lewis as their head coach. He's been an excellent defensive coach with the Ravens and Redskins, but he'll certainly have his work cut out for him, to turn the hapless Bungles Bengals around.

WHEN THE PETE TOWNSHEND PEDOPHILE CHARGES BROKE over the weekend, I was stunned. It really felt like Woody and Soon-Yi all over again, and I took it very personally, because it was someone who's career and art I grew up with--was shaped by. Here was another of my teenage idols, somebody who, despite his excesses and shortcoming, I felt was one of rock's most intelligent men, who's career and reputation had just self-destructed (and the key word is self: nobody put a gun to Pete's head and told him to download kiddie porn). Beyond my own selfish considerations, what must his wife and daughters think of him?

At this point in time, I still don't know what to add to the story, but Damian Penny is all over it, and has lots of thoughts of his own. Start here, and then scroll down and/or up, depending upon when you're reading this.

LIFE IMITATES SEINFELD: Back in the mid-1990s, Seinfeld had a hilarious episode where Kramer invented "The Bro", the bra for aging guys who need, err...just a little extra support.

Somebody's watched the rerun of that episode one time too many.

(Link found via NRO's The Corner)

THE ULTIMATE RINO: With Jumpin' Jim Jefford having finally jumped, Lincoln Chafee, despite the history encapsulated into his first name, is the definitive RINO, that is, a Republican in name only. Check out this quote, courtesy of Jay Nordlinger:

Every now and then, you find a statement that encapsulates everything — or something — perfectly. I found one such statement from the mouth of Lincoln Chafee, the senator from Rhode Island.

Here’s what he had to say about the Bush economic program: “I can’t see giving away any more of our revenues, which we’re doing in tax cuts.”

Ponder those words: “giving away” (which is socialist-speak for taking less of a person’s income); “our revenues” — the very ownership of that money.

As Nordlinger says, "Folks, this is just too perfect. Hang on to it."

Rush Limbaugh, call your office. You could do a whole show on Chafee's line, (if you haven't already).

THE MILES DAVIS, GEORGE W. BUSH CONNECTION, PART II. Back on November 7th, I wrote:

IN A SILENT WAY: Miles Davis knew how to make silence work for him as a musician--by carefully choosing when not to play, he made what he did play that much more eloquent. George W. Bush seems to understand that that can work equally well for politics.

I remember saying to my wife at the time, that I must be the only guy who would compare George W. Bush with Miles Davis.

But Suzanne Fields' January 9th column is an essay titled, "Celebrating compassionate cool", in which she writes:

Conservatives like leaders who are like themselves. George W. lives in the White House but we know he's also at home on the range, which he visits often. Bill Clinton lived out wild fantasies without a sense of place, not even Hot Springs, which is why he almost never went "home."

The world has become a more dangerous place since 9/11 and we may soon be in a hot war. That requires a cool hand. Cool, of course, changes with shifting cultural and political forces. When Donald Rumsfeld, our 70-year old secretary of Defense, began holding widely watched press briefings on television, the press started treating him like a rock star. American Maturity, the magazine for retired folk, featured him in an article on "Eldercool."

Cool in the modern vernacular began with jazz. Miles Davis, the brilliant trumpeter, is credited with "the birth of cool," a relaxed, smooth style in reaction to the hard bumping, jumping, grinding, flashy, vulgar rhythms of bebop. Cool, like jazz, is easy to recognize but difficult to explain. If you have to ask, as Louis Armstrong said of jazz, you ain't cool.

It's a great essay--she has some excellent thoughts about the coolness of conservative women (see also John Derbyshire's essay from early 2001, for some additional examples of cool conservative babes), and this paragraph, which I love:

Conservative cool comes with a preference for uncomplicated leaders, plain guys who could play linebacker. Liberals want showoffs with lots of hair, to idolize as quarterbacks even if they throw more interceptions than touchdowns. Conservatives are more likely to go to church; liberals are more likely to worship trees and snail darters in their natural habitat.

I'm far from a regular churchgoer. But on the other hand, I don't spend a whole lot of time worshipping snail darters, trees, Xenu, or Gaia, either.

BIG-ASS RIBS, race and Republicans, and liberal journalism professors--all in Rich Galen's latest Mullings. Be sure to read the whole thing, including his "Secret Decoder Ring", which is where you will find the big-ass rib in question.

And it's big!

WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO AOL AFTER CASE LEAVES? This Reuters article has some thoughts.

FOR THOSE CHILDREN NOT ON RITALIN: headbanging baby gear debuts.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF UN-AMERICANISM: Victor Davis Hanson, as usual, is right on the money:

Eschewing any reference to truths of this kind, adherents of postmodernist relativism assess morality instead by the sole criterion of power: Those without it deserve the ethical high ground by virtue of their very status as underdogs; those with it, at least if they are Westerners, and especially if they are Americans, are ipso facto oppressors. Israel could give over the entire West Bank, suffer 10,000 dead from suicide bombers, and apologize formally for its existence, and it would still be despised by American and European intellectuals for being what it is--Western, prosperous, confident, and successful amid a sea of abject self-induced failure.

One is bound to point out that as a way of organizing reality, this deterministic view of the world suffers from certain fatal defects, primarily an easy susceptibility to self-contradiction. Thus, a roguish Augusto Pinochet, who executed thousands in the name of "law and order" in Chile, is regarded as an incarnation of the devil purely by dint of his purportedly close association with the United States, while a roguish and anti-American Castro, who butchered tens of thousands in the name of "social justice" in Cuba, is courted by congressmen and ex-presidents even as Hollywood celebrities festooned with AIDS ribbons sedulously ignore the thousands of HIV-positive Cubans languishing in his camps. Kofi Annan gushes, Chamberlain-like, of Saddam Hussein, "He's a man I can do business with," while the ghosts of thousands slain by the Iraqi tyrant, many of them at his own hand, flutter nearby; for this, the soft-spoken internationalist is lionized.

Few have exploited the contradictions of this amoral morality as deftly as Jimmy Carter, who can parlay with some of the world's most odious dictators and still garner praise for "reaching out" to the disadvantaged and the oppressed. As president, Mr. Carter evidently was incapable of doing much of anything at all when tens of thousands of Ethiopians were being butchered; but as chief executive emeritus, he has managed to abet the criminal regime of North Korea in its determination to fabricate nuclear bombs and lately, having been rewarded with the Nobel Peace Prize for peace, has brazenly attempted to thwart a sitting president's efforts to save the world from the Iraqi madman.

Read the whole thing.

Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who served under Lyndon Johnson, and now seems to serving under Saddam Hussein, is in hot water from both Christians And Muslims for calling Jesus Christ a terrorist:

Rev. Lou Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, scolded Clark for his comments and demanded an apology on behalf of Christians and Muslims.

"Mr. Clark has made a very serious error and he needs to apologize both to the Christians and to the Muslims, because the Muslims hold Jesus Christ as a great prophet equal to Muhammad," Sheldon said. "He has insulted and offended people on both sides of the Christian-Muslim line ... I hope he's forthcoming right away with an apology."

"Jesus never said, 'Kill your enemy.' He said, 'Turn the other cheek," Sheldon said. "It appears that Mr. Ramsey [Clark] does not know the New Testament."

"One cannot be a Muslim unless one believes in the miraculous birth of Christ and in his great mission of promoting love and brotherhood," said Sayyid Syeed, secretary general of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). "We consider him as a model, we consider him as a great prophet, a teacher and a comforter whose birth we believe was a great miracle."

Meanwhile, the AG of another liberal Democratic President is considering running for the US Senate.

P.J. O'Rourke, call your office...

UPDATE: Orrin Judd writes:

Add another nomination to the list--along with Al Sharpton in the Presidential; Cynthia McKinney in GA; and Carol Mosley-Braun in IL--of those races where the National Party has to work to knock off a member of its base. The Democratic Party is going to spend the Spring of '04 opposing blacks and women who are running for office. That should be good for turnout in November.

SADDAM'S IDIOTS: Jonah Goldberg writes that in the past, "V.I. Lenin, the founding dictator of the Soviet Union, had a pithy phrase for the Western liberals who took the side of the Soviets in political debates. He called them 'useful idiots.'",

Today, Goldberg writes, "we have a new and improved version of useful idiots; we call them 'human shields.'", and examines a recent would-be idio...err, "human shield" who's on his way to Baghdad.

ADVANTAGE ED! Back on December 24th, we wrote about the payback that ex-Redskins, current Chargers coach Marty Schotteinheimer extracted when his bête noire, Deion Sanders, publicly said he was wanted to play for the Raiders:

Schottenheimer has taken away the one thing Deion craves more than cash: the spotlight. Because the Chargers now own his rights, if he wants to play football again, it’ll have to be for Marty and the Chargers.

Three days later, Skip Bayless of the San Jose Mercury wrote:

Sanders found his NFL rights suspended in his version of Dante's "Inferno.'' He wound up with the longest playoff shot: Schottenheimer's San Diego Chargers. He's free to negotiate with them -- fat chance -- while they can park him on their reserve/retired list for the duration of his Redskins contract.

Several league sources anticipate Sanders will tee off on Schottenheimer this Sunday on "The NFL Today.'' The man who ran Sanders out of football has kept him out. Sanders is still stuck on TV, and Davis is still backed into a corner.

We don't always do it, but when we do, it's nice to beat someone to the punch!

Speaking of the Raiders, with 50 seconds left, it's Raiders 30, Jets 10. Is a Super Bowl featuring John Gruden versus his old Raiders in the offing? Tune into next week's AFC and NFC championships to see!

IS THE MOOCH A MEMORY? While the Bucs were blowing out the '49ers, Fox's NFL announcers, Troy Aikman, Collinsworth and Joe Buck spent much of the fourth quarter speculating that 49ers head coach Steve Mariucci was toast.

In contrast, these quotes by John York, the owner of the 49ers sound like there will be mo' Mooch next season.

But obviously, anything could happen in the interim, particularly when Mariucci has Bill Walsh and Terry Donahue looking over his shoulder.

UPDATE: Len Pasquarelli of ESPN.com has some thoughts:

"The more plausible scenario is that Niners ownership and general manager Terry Donahue will offer Mariucci an extension, but at a salary below the current market value for a coach of his tenure. Then rather than accept such a deal, Mariucci could simply announce that he will enter 2003 as a lame duck, and become a free agent after that season.

Management would then be forced with the decision of whether or not to keep Mariucci around for the final season of his contract.

IT WAS A GOOD WEEK FOR CONSERVATIVES, according to David Limbaugh.

SILICON VALLEY RENT PLUNGES: high-tech commercial real estate fell almost 30 percent in 2002, extending a slide that began a year earlier.

[engage sarcasm mode]Of course, raising taxes should cure that![/sarcasm]

DOES THE US NAVY HAVE A DISCIPLINE PROBLEM? Donald Sensing, who served in the Army until 1995 has some thoughts.

Speaking of the Army, this is no great insight, but I wonder what those "Army of One" ads are doing for discipline and entitlement.

Of course, Sensing does have one novel suggestion for how to make an example of a sailor who screws up.

POISON PILL: CNS News reports on state governments and raising taxes:

As new governors take office and state legislatures return to work in the first days of 2003, many states are considering tax increases in order to balance their budgets. But a study just released by the National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF) concludes that higher taxes are the wrong solution for states to balance their books.

John Berthoud, president of the NTUF and author of the study, believes "a review of the last state budget crisis clearly shows that resorting to tax hikes will slow economic recovery and thus prolong the budget agonies that many states are experiencing."

The study said states that enacted tax hikes in the early 1990s experienced slower income, less employment and less population growth during the ensuing decade.

"The message of history is clear," Berthoud observed. "Ratcheting up taxes is a devastating poison pill for state economies.

Of course. But that isn't stopping his Gray-ness from raising California's taxes, to bail him out of the mess that he created.

IF GOD DROVE A MOTORCYCLE, this is the one he'd pick.

Wow!

Orrin's right. This makes the Segway look more than a little pathetic.

I wonder if I can convince an editor that a product review is in order...?

SCARY STUFF: Leaning to the Right says that the FDA approved the use of Prozac for children as young as seven years old.

Wow. How many young kids are going to be alternatively on Ritalin or Prozac?

She has an excellent alternative suggestion, however.

OLDIES ACTS DRIVE CONCERT TICKET SALES: Aren't new rock acts embarrassed to sell less tickets than Cher and Neil Diamond ??

Dave Kopel writes that "Despite the gloomy headlines and tone of these stories, the facts from the articles told another story":

Christmas sales set an all-time record, up 1.5 percent from last year's best-ever sales. The increase in sales was the lowest in 30 years, but a small increase from a record high is still a new record high.

Since inflation was about 2 percent, the population is slightly larger and the number of post-Thanksgiving shopping days fewer in 2002 than in 2001, an accurate headline and article might have said "Christmas sales stable," instead of the overly gloomy picture painted by most of the media.

InstaPundit agrees (or more accurately, Kopel agrees with InstaPundit--since InstaPundit's post is dated... the day after Christmas).

AT $41.00, IT'S THE WORLD'S MOST EXPENSIVE HAMBURGER, and Asparagirl has the skinny on it.

Too bad The Four Seasons stopped serving their $8.00 baked potato. It would be the perfect compliment.

HITLER AS FRUSTRATED ARTIST: Speaking of dictators (as we were yesterday), Rex Reed likes the new film Max, James Bowman doesn't. (But both agree that the best reason to see it is Noah Taylor's apparently riveting performance.)

If that topic doesn't give you pause for thought...

Coming soon: Hitler as frustrated homosexual.

DIDION AND SONTAG: Andrew Sullivan slices, dices, and Fisks Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, and finds their dated rhetoric wanting.

THE PARTY OF THE UNBELIEVERS (And no, I don't mean Objectivists): OpinionsGalore has some thoughts on why newscasters have been quick to identify religion within the GOP, "but never reported the Democratic voting and policy activism of those without religion".

WHERE'S JOE BIDEN WHEN YOU NEED HIM? James Taranto describes Gray Davis's State of the State speech as "Great Moments in Euphemism":

California's Gov. Gray Davis delivered his State of the State speech Wednesday, an address "seen by many as the most important of his career," according to the Los Angeles Daily News. The speech bore a remarkable resemblance to President Clinton's first State of the Union address. These two quotes come from Hotline Last Call, a subscription-only newsletter from National Journal:

Davis: "When governors speak from this podium, they ordinarily discuss a range of issues. But these are not ordinary times. We have one overriding task before us. We must come together to create new jobs and get our economy back on track."

Clinton: "When presidents speak to the Congress and the nation from this podium, they typically comment on the full range of challenges and opportunities that face us. But these are not ordinary times. For all the many tasks that require our attention, one calls on us to focus, unite, and act. Together, we must make our economy thrive once again."

By the way, speaking of recycling, Davis has called for raising taxes to balance the state's budget, something that certainly did wonders for George H.W. Bush and Herbert Hoover's careers.

TWO SILICON VALLEY ENGINEERS INDICTED for allegedly stealing American technology for Red China. They are the first to be charged under a 1996 economic espionage law.

NEXT TIME SOMEBODY DREDGES UP THE HOARY OLD "BABY KILLERS" RIFF FROM THE 1960s about American soldiers, show 'em this photo on OpinionsGalore.

SPORTS BLOGGING: William Sulik has a pretty good preview of this weekend's Jets versus Raiders AFC playoff game.

My take? Put your money on Heidi.

TURNING THE TABLES: Samizdata.net looks at self-defense against would-be carjackers. I love this paragraph--but read the whole thing:

When a propagandist tells you that you shouldn't rely on anecdotes and that it's a more complicated issue, that means that the people he's arguing against are winning the anecdote war and have succeeded in simplifying the issue in a way that he doesn't like. He's trying to complicate it by adding his argument to the one that is winning.

Exactly. And hopefully Samizdata can turn a few tables of their own in England.

UPDATE: On a related note, check out 74-year-old J.C. Adams, an extremely brave Georgia convenience store owner.

ANWR RETURNS. For our previous coverage on the Bush administration's attempt to help reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and its persistent and predictable foes, click here.

ATLAS SHRUGGED, SOUTH AMERICAN STYLE: Too bad Ayn Rand isn't around to see this.

CALLING CENTRAL CASTING: Right after 9/11, National Review Online started a column titled "Kumbaya Watch", which ran for a few months on their Web site. You can practically hear this person playing that tune on her acoustic guitar.

Incidentally, great quote posted by one of Charles Johnson's readers:

"Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me.'''

George Orwell, 1942

RADICAL CHIC AND MAO-MAOING THE MAO PRINT: Thanks to the Brothers Judd and InstaPundit for linking to my piece (below) on Francis Ford Coppola and Chairman Mao. (Be sure to check out the Brothers Judd post--they have a link to an audio interview with Walter Murch).

For more recent Hollywood idiotarian action, check out today's Bleat by James Lileks.

UPDATE: I should have included The Money Line from Lileks' Bleat about Scorsese, which InstaPundit highlighted. It perfectly sums Coppola and Mao as well:

Maybe directors like dictators because they understand the desire to have final cut.

At least Kubrick had the good sense to admire a more historical dictator, who had less technology available to slaughter people with.

CONYERS AND RANGEL: the Happy Fun Pundit interview.

By the way, HFP are celebrating their first anniversary as a blog! Click on over to join in the fun--and see the stone knives and bearskins their blog began on.

Instead of my usual urbane voice of reason, allow me to risk sounding like Floyd R. Turbo for a moment. I was recently sent a copy of The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film, written by Michael Ondaatje, to review for Blogcritics. It's a series of interviews with Murch on the artistic choices that he made when editing the classic films he's worked on over the years, including Francis Ford Coppola's best films--The Godfather movies, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now. Those are all staggering movies (The Conversation is criminally underrated), and Murch is, without a doubt, one of the most talented editors to emerge in the "new Hollywood" of the 1970s. And it appears to be a well-written, very readable book, which, while I haven't finished digesting it (I'll post a proper review of it on Blogcritics--this isn't it), I can easily recommend to any film buff.

But the photo above, which I scanned from the book, "knocked me for six", as the English would say. Here's Francis Ford Coppola, at the height of his powers, shortly after making his fortune from the first two Godfather movies. It's taken, I believe, in Coppola's Napa Valley mansion, in what I assume is either his dining room, or perhaps a conference room.

In any case, notice the Warhol Mao print, and its placement directly behind Coppola, who it's safe to assume always sat at the head of the table. It was clearly hung there to establish some sort of "we're both powerful men" relationship.

Perhaps (and I'm being really charitable here), Coppola was making a statement about how dictatorships are powerless before the power of mass media (Warhol of course, cranked these prints out like mad). But probably not. Imagine dining with someone who had a print of Hitler, Stalin, or Castro (heck, that last one is probably still hanging in more than a few unrepentant leftists' homes). Wouldn't you have some second thoughts about your host?

What is it with the left and their love of evil men who have the murders of tens of millions of people on their hands? Is it the desire to seek some sort of weird, Palpatine-like father figure? Is it a belief that all of the evidence against their heroes is slanderous? (I'd pull off an Orwellian, "seeking the love of Big Brother" reference here, but that would be awfully cliched.) Or that the genocide they commit--all those broken eggs---is justified?

Remember this photo next time Sean Penn goes to Baghdad. Or Spielberg to Havana.

UPDATE: Here's the review of the Murch book. Surprisingly--and enjoyably--free of overt politics, with the obvious exception of the above photo.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More on this topic, here.

THE BILL COSBY/SOUTH KOREA CONNECTION, as found by InstaPundit.

(Editor's note: who's this Ed fellow Glenn keeps talking to? It's not me! (At least he's not talking to Jonah's couch.))

AUSTIN BAY WRITES that "What the US Needs is a Liberal Hawk".

"NOW FOR SOME NYT SMACKDOWN!" Opinions Galore has an opinion (not surprisingly) on the Grey Lady and Charles Pickering's resubmission to the Senate as a judicial nominee.

SHAKEDOWN: Ward Connerly writes on how the NFL caved in to Johnnie Cochran.

AN EXCELLENT ANALYSIS of Bush's economic plan by Bob Novak.

THERE'S GOING TO BE ANOTHER BIG APPLE BLOGGER BASH (try saying--or even typing--that ten times fast!):

THE VAST RIGHT WING MEDIA CONSPIRACY: It's even more powerful than we first thought!

WHICH IS THE WORLD'S FASTEST GROWING RELIGION? The answer may surprise you.

GROUP CAPTAIN MANDRAKE IS IN LOVE.

Of course, if the object of his affections reciprocates, then we'll talk!

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN Geraldine Ferraro and Neil Cavuto spar? Naturally, when Ferraro can't answer Cavuto's questions about her assumptions regarding taxes and policy, it gets personal.

DAWN OLSEN WANTS STIMULATION--and a lot of it!

JIMMY--AND THE NEW YORK TIMES--ONCE LIKED IT, TOO: When you hear Democrats tut-tutting President Bush's plan to reduce taxes on dividends, remember this article by Bruce Bartlett:

In 1976, Democrat Jimmy Carter made elimination of the double taxation of corporate profits a key campaign theme. "We presently tax corporate income when it's earned and we also tax dividends to shareholders," he said. "I would favor taxing income only once," Carter told Fortune magazine.

When President Carter took office in 1977, he reiterated his goal of taxing corporate income only once and had the Treasury Department examine the issue. He received support from many voices of liberalism in this effort. For example, Americans for Democratic Action called for abolition of the corporate income tax at its convention in May. On September 11, the New York Times editorialized in favor of this action.

Unfortunately, Carter failed to include any proposal for reducing or eliminating double taxation in his 1978 tax-reform plan. The reason, interestingly, appears to have been opposition from the Republican-leaning corporate community. According to an article by Robert Samuelson in the National Journal in September 1977, businesses basically killed the idea.

According to Samuelson, corporate executives suddenly had a lot of problems with the idea of eliminating double taxation once confronted with its possible reality. Some worried about increased pressure to pay out dividends. This especially concerned small businesses that normally don't pay dividends. Executives also feared a loss of control over retained earnings, which they could invest as they chose. And they saw many specific tax breaks as better for them.

Bartlett says that "President Bush is right to try and relieve the double taxation and overtaxation of corporate income. Not only will it increase the economy's long-term growth potential, but it could provide short-run stimulus by boosting the stock market."

And besides, he can point to Jimmy and the Times' blessing!

MOVE 'EM OUT: Scott Ott reports that Bush has offered the Palestinians a new homeland.

I rather like his choice of locations. But where does that leave moving Israel to Baja?

WE WEREN'T PLANNING TO EAT THERE...now we're really not coming in! PETA, who never saw a PR stunt they didn't like, is boycotting Kentucky Fried Chicken. James Taranto writes:

"People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said Monday it is launching a boycott against KFC because of alleged animal-rights abuses by the chain of fried-chicken restaurants," the Associated Press reports. PETA's Web site devoted to the boycott declares that "chickens are inquisitive and interesting animals and are thought to be at least as intelligent as dogs or cats." Well, whatever. Does PETA really think its boycott is going to be effective? After all, how many animal-rights nuts chow down on Original Recipe drumsticks anyway? Besides, if chickens were so intelligent, they'd cross the road to get away from Colonel Sanders.

How do you protest a restaurant whose food you wouldn't eat in the first place?

CAN'T SAY I BLAME HIM: Steven Den Beste really, really doesn't want the French supporting us in Iraq:

The British will come, and will be welcome. I will be proud to have them by our side and I know that our men in the theater will feel the same way. We will happily rely on them, and know that they won't let us down.

But as to the French, WRONG. I do not want them anywhere near our men in combat; I do not trust their government in this and I do not want our men to be relying on French combat support, because it may vanish at a moment's notice on orders from Paris. I don't want their jets in the sky over our men, I don't want their ships near ours, and I don't want their soldiers within a hundred miles of ours on the ground.

These are the people who, last March, offered jets to support Operation Anaconda and who, when issued orders to bomb a certain location during the heat of battle, refused to do so. We will not have a repeat of that. You don't get a second chance to leave our guys hanging their ***es in the breeze without support.

Hey, there's a reason why they're called the cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

"TOO MUCH MERCY FOR PATTY MURRAY" says Brent Bozell:

Murray placed the apparently compassionate superstar terrorist on a higher moral plane than the United States. While Osama allegedly built hospitals and day care centers, “We have not done that. We haven’t been out in many of these countries helping them build infrastructure. How would they look at us today if we had been there helping them with some of that, rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan?”

The U.S. dumps billions of dollars in aid across the largely undemocratic Middle East every year. If Osama built a hospital, the U.S. rebuilt Afghanistan. Are we to believe that Sen. Murray…forgot? And how can you measure popularity in a tyranny?

Gregg Herrington, a staff writer for the local newspaper, the Columbian, saw the gaffe as it happened. He reported the remarks the next day, and made sure readers knew that the Senator’s remarks were the real deal, transcribed from a recording. The newspaper was inundated by Internet interest when the Drudge Report posted the Murray story on December 20. Talk radio, led by Rush Limbaugh, hopped on. The Washington Times followed up. Fox News nibbled on the story in snippets on “Special Report with Brit Hume,” “The Beltway Boys,” and “Fox News Sunday.”

But where were all those national media outlets that the liberals say are now dominated by the right wing? Where were those broadcast networks that had reported so dutifully every (mis)statement by our former majority leader? ABC, CBS, and NBC had nothing to say on Murray’s remarks, nothing at all. It popped up on NPR and CNN chat shows when GOP politicians brought it up, but hosts left it hanging.

What about our great print outlets? There was nothing in the news pages of The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, or USA Today. They could devote their covers to Trent Lott, but Time and Newsweek had no room anywhere for a mention of the Murray gaffe. Ditto, U.S. News and World Report.

The only liberal media outlet that noticed was The Washington Post, with a couple of paragraphs in a political roundup on Sunday, December 22. Then on Christmas Day, the Post’s editorial page mustered a remarkably lame defense, headlined “Inept but Entitled to Her Say.” The Posties called the reaction to Murray “the massive overreaction to perfectly useful ideas that have been badly stated or misinterpreted.” Despite admitting Murray’s facts were “very wrong,” they claimed “it ought to be possible to discuss America’s image in the Islamic world, and the kinds of mistakes the United States has made there.” The problem with the Post argument is that Washington-state Republicans are now asking for precisely that – a discussion with Sen. Murray about her goofball theories – and she’s not responding.

Maybe she could tag-team with Michael Moore.

LAW PROFESSOR, BLOGGER, SITH LORD, MUSICIAN: In the January issue of Poptronics magazine, I have an article titled "Virtual Graffiti" (why yes, I am a Led Zeppelin fan!) on home recording that features several quotes from an interview I conducted in the fall with Glenn Reynolds, the Dark Lord of the Sith Blogosphere.

You know, other than that strange moment when I somehow had an asthma attack as he pinched his fingers together and mentioned "these aren't the questions you're looking for", he's really a much nicer guy than his recent photos would indicate!

Seriously though--if you've ever thought about using your PC to make your own music, or if you'd just like to read about what Professor Reynolds does during the 30 seconds or so a day when he's not blogging or teaching law, this article might be a great place to start.

Pick up a copy or ten at your newsstand today!

THE SHIZZOLATER: Ever wonder what this Blog would sound like if Snoop Doggy Dog instead of yours truly was the host?

Yeah I know--me neither.

But now you can find out!

Here's some of the text on our home page...

Links to all of those great Bloggers, and many more can be found on the Links page, which is a great jumping off point for a variety of sites, on all sorts of topics, as well as classic articles by other authors that have "that certain something extra".

The Articles and Essays pages not surprisingly, link to articles and essays of mine that are available on the ‘Net. These pages also link to material that's exclusive to this site.

The FAQs and About Me pages explain everything you ever wanted to know about me—and more. (Probably lots more!) And the Photo pages allow you to see what I look when I'm not sitting behind a desk and typing.

For easy searches of all of the material on this site, click on the Google-powered Search page.

And here's that text run through the Snoop Doggy Dog Shizzolater (yes, I censored some of the naughtier words, prude that I am:

Links izzall of those bomb diggity Bloggers, 'n many mo' can be found on da Links page, which is a bomb diggity jumping off point fo' a variety of sites, on izzall sorts of topics, as well as classic articles by other authors that has "that certain something extra" n' s**t.

The Articles 'n Essays pages not surprisingly, link articles 'n essays of mine that are available on da ‘Net n' sh*t. These pages also link material that's exclusive this site."

The FAQs 'n About Me pages explain everything yo' ass ever wanted know 'bout me—'n mo' n' shit. (Probably lots mo'!) And da Photo pages allow yo' *ss see what I look when I'm not sitting behind a desk 'n typing."

For easy searches of izzall of da material on this site, click on da Tha G-double-O-G-L-E-powered Search page, know what I'm sayin'?

As Orwell wrote:

'You haven't a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston,' he said almost sadly. 'Even when you write it you're still thinking in Oldspeak. I've read some of those pieces that you write in the Times occasionally. They're good enough, but they're translations. In your heart you'd prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning. You don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of words.

Ahh, but I do...

WHY NOT THE GOP? Robert A. George asks "Why would a black person even think about becoming a Republican?", and answers his own question with:

Greater involvement of blacks within the Republican Party can do the same. Both parties would have to respond to the concerns of the black voter - on a host of issues. Both parties would have to compete for votes.

No longer a one-party voting bloc, African-Americans could then take find pride in the knowledge of having power and influence in the broad spectrum of the nation's political system.

Read the whole thing.

(Link found via The Brothers Judd.)

PENN VS. STATE: Penn Jillette, the taller and vocal half of Penn and Teller, gets, err...tweaked...by "federal leather-sniffers" (his words) at (I believe) McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas.

Mr. Jillette is not happy.

(Link found via Reason's "Hit & Run" blog.)

SCREWED BY HER MAJESTY: CPO Sparkey, part of Team Stryker, writes "If you wonder why you don't read more about good Muslims fighting the "War on Terror," consider the experiences of one Reda Hassaine as related by Jake Tapper in his article The Spy Who Came in From the Mosque".

I'd like to think we'd treat our ex-spies better, but I honestly don't know if we would. But we'd better, if we hope to receive, as Sparkey writes, a "flood of Muslim volunteers to help rid Islam of the murdering tyrants."

COMING TO AN ISLAMOFACIST DICTATOR NEAR YOU: Thousands of US troops are heading for the Gulf.

COMING TO A BIG APPLE NEAR YOU: "New York Wins 2004 GOP Convention".

"HELEN THOMAS SHOULD NOT HAVE A WHITE HOUSE PRESS PASS", says Kathryn Jean Lopez on National Review Online's "Corner" blog.

I agree. She's gone far beyond reporting to a weird combination of proselytizing and hectoring--but the boohooing that would occur from all corners of the "conservative" (snort, chuckle, guffaw) press if she was ever denied a press pass would far outweigh the hassle of her usual loaded questions.

And Ari Fleischer sounds like he can handle himself pretty well around her.

RICH LOWRY LOOKS AT racial parody in the NFL.

BRITAIN'S GUN BAN AND INCREASING GUN CRIME: Group Captain Mandrake has some thoughts.

SGT. STRYKER has an important safety tip when it comes to depleted uranium.

We should all (or, more or less half of the population, should) heed his advice.

NON-NUCLEAR EMP? Hidden within a Steven Den Beste essay on our upcoming war with Iraq, entitled "Whither Surprise?" is this little jaw-dropper:

I also think it is highly likely that we will turn out to have a significant new capability to use non-nuclear means to generate ElectroMagnetic Pulses (EMP), for purposes of destroying inadequately shielded semiconductors and other electronics. That's never been used in any significant way in war before, and this may be the first. We might well demonstrate the ability to immobilize an entire column of vehicles with a single airburst which harms no one. Even an army as obsolescent as that of Iraq relies heavily on transistors. If we turn out to have the ability to destroy transistors in a wide area, we could turn large formations of very expensive equipment into inanimate junk very rapidly. Such non-nuclear EMP weapons would be particularly interesting because they would cause virtually no casualties.

That's just staggering. Read Den Beste's essay for other, slightly less-staggering surprises that we may have up our sleeves, to be put on the table, fairly shortly.

POLICING THEIR OWN: Pejman Yousefzadeh writes that "evidently...a racist on the Democratic side of the aisle is running for President."

(You've probably guessed who it is already. I wonder, if during the Trent Lott fiasco, if anybody asked Al, Bubba, Hillary, Leiberman, or any of the other folks who were (quite appropriately in this case) trashing Lott what they were going to do about the skeleton in their closet--who's err...ring...was kissed by every Democratic presidential candidate in the previous election. And you've probably guessed the answer to that, as well--and you'd be right.)

THE FIRST ANNUAL FISKIE AWARD was handed out earlier today by Charles Johnson, after voting by the readers of Little Green Footballs. Tough to argue with the results.

HOW FAR DO YOU GO when retaliating against an enemy? Steven Den Beste has some thoughts in a long, but typically fascinating essay.

ANOTHER AFL GREAT PASSES AWAY: Sid Gillman, the architect of the modern passing game during his days as the first head coach of the San Diego Chargers of the old American Football League, died on Friday at age 91.

Earlier this week, Joe Foss, the AFL's first commissioner also died.

TEAM STRYKER EXAMINES THE OFFICIAL USMC PALM PILOT. Highly advanced technology, and sophisticated programming team up in the latest gadget to make our fighting men's lives easier.

IT'S OFFICIAL: ESPN reports that Bill Parcells was "officially introduced as the Cowboys' new coach".

WHEN LUDWIG MET CHELSEA: Fifty years ago, Austrian free-market economist Ludwig von Mises was the laughing stock of American intellectuals for his free-market, pro-capitalism economic ways.

Today, he's the toast of a Manhattan art gallery!

TIME TRIPPS UP: Sidney Goldberg says there's something curiously missing from their recent nomation of three women as "Persons of the Year":

So let Time trumpet the virtues of the three women whistle-blowers. But it would have been nice if it had made, in passing, a small salute to a woman who sacrificed all for exposing the truth and served the country well.

See our earlier coverage here.

JOE FOSS, FIRST AFL COMMISSIONER died Wednesday at age 87. Foss lead quite a life--he was also a Korean War ace, elected governor of South Dakota in 1955, hosted the television show The American Sportsman on ABC, and was president of the National Rifle Association from 1988-90.

UPDATE: Foss was making news as recently as January of 2002.

CAN LIBERALS EVER HOPE TO COMPETE IN TALK RADIO? Orrin Judd has some thoughts.

UPDATE: They're not doing so hot on cable TV news channels, either.

ANOTHER UPDATE: James Taranto has some rather amusing thoughts:

Well for crying out loud, guys, why not dare to dream big? American liberalism is pretty pathetic if its highest aspiration is to mimic Fox, Heritage and Rush. Here's a much more ambitious goal: Why not counter the vast right-wing conspiracy by taking over the "mainstream" media? And if it's research you want, maybe you should set your sights on America's system of higher education. If you could get liberals onto college and university faculties, they would have the opportunity to mold young minds as well as influence the political debate.

Imagine a world in which more than 80% of journalists vote Democratic, and in which left-liberal scholars vastly outnumber conservatives at colleges and universities across the country. It'd be a liberal dream, right?

There's more--definitely check it out.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, INTERNET! January first marks the 20th anniversary of the day that the 'Net was switched to the TCP/IP protocols, and its usage began to skyrocket. (I don't know about you, but I was just dipping my toe--not to mention my TRS-80--into CompuServe at the time.)

For more on the very early days of the Internet, check out my essay, "How the Web Was Won".

UPDATE: And January first marked the two year anniversary of Virginia Postrel's blog, a favorite of ours at EdDriscoll.com HQ.

WHY ARE THE ROLLING STONES giving a free concert to frighten us all about global warming? Christopher C. Horner has an amusing essay on Tech Central Station:

Maybe I've gotten into Keith Richard's stash, but wouldn't it be great if the inane Stones moralizing this February ushered in a similar sobering in the consciousnesses of the unwashed? Would it not speak volumes about man's capacity for critical thought if Greenpeace were to at least picket energy-slurping rock concerts agonizing over the alleged horrors of prosperity.

OK, so let me get this straight--the Stones (who in their youth were celebrated for peeing on gas station walls, worshiping the devil, hiring the Hell's Angels to police a concert, and other acts of insightful example) are flying in via jet planes, hiring 57 tractor-trailers to haul their gear, hiring a stadium of some sort where 10,000 gasoline-burning cars will drive in, and using tens of thousands of watts of electricity, all to promote the dangers of global warming.

Back in the mid-1960s, after a trial concerning a particularly famous drug arrest, Keith Richards yelled at the judge, "We are not old men. We don't need your petty morals."

Congratulations Mick and Keith--you've just officially become old men--and boring, too.

THAT'S NOT FLYING, IT'S FALLING WITH STYLE! Dean Esmay goes skydiving--and lives to tell the tale.

Happy New Year!