So when Ashcroft was nominated to be AG, many on the left took swipes at him as a racist. They noted his warm relationship with the Southern Partisan, a Confederacy-glorifying periodical. They noted his talks to the Council of Conservative Citizens, another notoriously bigoted organization.

Seems to me, one could have made one of two conclusions vis-a-vis Ashcroft at the time: either he's a racist, or he's a principled "states' rights conservative," willing to weather the racist label in order to uphold the principles of federalism.

Seems clear to me now that Aschcroft doesn't give two shits about states' rights or federalism (see the five posts below). Seems to me he's hellbent on imposing his morality on the rest of us, the Tenth Amendment be damned.

Draw your own conclusions.

Finally, here's an old column about how the AG is using federal DEA thugs to handcuff, harass, and assault sick people who use marijuana to make themselves feel better. This, in spite of the fact that voters in California -- where the raids took place -- already expressed their approval for medicinal marijuana.

So much for "states' rights."

His latest crusade? Prosecuting Internet bong retailers. Because there's nothing better for the DOJ to be doing. Because all the al-Qaeda cells have been uncovered, captured and prosecuted. Because there's no more terrorism threat. Because the biggest threat to yours and my safety right now is not Islamist militants or al-Qaeda operatives, but mom-and-pop CD stores who also happen to sell "tobacco" pipes that could, conceivably, also be used to smoke marijuana.

Because there's nothing better for Ashcroft and U.S. Attorneys to do than to harrass people who sell clay bongs to other folks who want to smoke marijuana within the privacy of their own homes.

So much for "states' rights."

Via Alina, here's a link to the "Ashcroft Directive," which prohibits states from allowing pain-struck, terminally ill people an out from their suffering. The directive came after the state of Oregon voted to allow "assisted suicide" as an option for people for whom life is no more worth living.

So much for "states' rights."

Nat Hentoff -- a personal hero of mine -- disects PATRIOT II, which I promise will knock the Libertymeter a good five points leftward if passed.

So much for "states' rights."

Richard Cohen on how the AG is forcing the death penalty on communities where it's just not kosher.

So much for "states' rights."

Apparently, Germans are lusting for the good ol' days of communism. You know -- gulags, bread lines, secret police.

A theme park is on the way.

Ach, du meine gute.

Just read. And be sad.

From Robert Novak's syndicated column:

The Democratic filibuster against judicial nominee Miguel Estrada has little to do with the 41-year-old Honduran immigrant. It is part of a grand design to talk to death a succession of conservative judges selected by President Bush. Democrats are intent on keeping the Senate from voting on any appellate nominations that do not meet the party's specifications.

This extraordinary design, without precedent in two centuries of judicial nominations, was launched Jan. 30 in the office of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle. Present were Assistant Leader Harry Reid and six Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats. With all pledged to secrecy, the fateful decision was made to filibuster Estrada's nomination.

"I would object and fight against any filibuster of a judge, whether somebody I opposed or supported. If we don't like somebody the president nominates, vote him or her down."

For more on Estrada, check this solid piece from Benjamin Wittes.

Remember David Wells' perfect game five years ago?

Turns out he was "half-drunk" when pitched it. He'd just come from a Saturday Night Live cast party.

And I'm guessing he went to Scores afterward to celebrate. Fat, drunkard, man-whore, terribly talented -- what's not to like about this guy?

Oh yes. He plays for the Yankees.

I caught the latest attempt at a Bill Maher television show last night, "Real Time." It was spectacularly awful.

There was a time when Bill Maher was sort of edgy. Smart even. Now? He's just a dick. And his politics have degenerated from quasi-libertarian to boring and cynical.

Maher kicked things off with a should-we-or-shouldn't-we Iraq debate against Congressman Dana Rohrabacher. I don't think I've yet seen two worse portrayals of either side of the debate. Both pro-war and anti-war advocates should implore Maher and Rohrabacher to never, ever speak on their respective behalves again.

Maher then threw it to a stand-up comedian he said he "discovered" in a night club and wanted to share with America. I guess I shouldn't have expected much. Maher's not funny anymore, so it ought not be surprising that his taste in comedy sucks, too. The guy was lame. Terror alert jokes. Duct tape jokes. Ha, ha.

Then, the panel -- a modified version of Politically Incorrect. Last night: Ann Coulter (who Maher said will be a "regular," which means I most certainly won't be), a typical angry black academic who rails against racial stereotypes but really is, truth be told, a walking one, and Larry Miller, the very funny, surprisingly conservative actor from Best in Show and the upcoming (I can't wait) A Mighty Wind.

Coulter was at her whiny, self-indulgent, predictably polemical worst. Not to mention the gag-inducing banter between she and Maher about how much the like to go "clubbing" together.

Miller was funny, but he rarely got a word in.

The show's saving grace came at the end, with comedienne Sara Silverman. There aren't many women who can make me laugh. Silverman does. She's a riot. She actually is edgy. Probably doesn't hurt that she's pretty damned hot, too. She threw out some racial humor that I'm certain had black professor guy fuming -- if only the cameras had panned to him.

But Maher managed to ruin the only redeemable portion of the show, too. Alluding to Silverman's home-wrecking fling with guy's guy Jimmy Kimmel, Maher said after Silverman left the stage, "...and to think, she kisses Jimmy Kimmel's cock with that mouth."

Classy.

Lest you get too comfortable now that the terror alert's been downgraded, check out this screed, published on a prominent Islamic website, and translated by MEMRI.

Then have a drink.

I don't know what to make of this online magazine. It's like Nerve, if Nerve were written and published by high school students. Public high school students (and I went to a public high school, so spare me the nasty feedback).

Is this a Real Ultimate Power parody? Or are these kids really trying? I can't figure it out.

It is funny. On some level. I'm just not sure which level.

....and my dog, too, is a racist.

It's weird, I was just talking about this the other night. I remember in St. Louis, when I lived on a racially integrated block. There was this old, retired black guy who insisted, every time he saw us on a walk, that he come down and "get his rub." He'd reach down to pet her, and Harper would move behind my legs and growl at him. Then some white kids would walk home from school and she'd saunter right up and nuzzle them.

That's pretty much par for the course. And silly as it makes me feel to admit it, it can be downright embarassing sometimes. I almost feel like I should apologize. Yes, I know, that's ridiculous. But what do you say when you're in mixed-race company and you're dog wil only socialize with the white people?

To make matters worse, she's a hyopcrite. She herself is a mixed breed -- Sharpei and lab.

R.I.P.

My Fox column -- on the abortion debate and Rep. Kucinich -- is live.

Six weeks, two moves, one blizzard, a flood, and several lost vacation days after this happened, I'm almost completely moved in now.

I live in the Landmark area of Alexandia. Not optimal (the commute is hell), but not terrible.

Old Town, one of my favorite neighborhoods in the Washington area, is just a short hop away. Old Town's a lot like Georgetown, only with half the traffic, tourists, and drunk bastards. Lots of history, a nice waterfront, streetside musicians and performers when the weather's nice, and it's the most dog-friendly place I've ever experienced. Not one, but two bars host "doggie happy hours," where, yes, you're encouraged to bring your pup. No, the dogs don't drink. But that would be fun, too.

Also, Old Town's host to Misha's -- a prima hipster coffee shop. And the Torpedo Factory, a collection of art studios (yes, it was once a torpedo factory) that sidles up next to the Potomac. Trails along the river touch Mt. Vernon to the south, and feed all the way into Rock Creek Park, in Maryland, to the north.

The new apartment is nice. Spacious. And all my own.

I'm blogging from my new laptop (blegging update: 21 donors, $300+, thank you!), via my new high-speed cable line. I'm sipping a celebratory glass of port. It's snowing outside. On the stereo, Thelonius Monk and John Coltrane, live, together, from the Five Spot Cafe, 1957. The dog sleeps at my feet.

Corey Flintoff Unleashes Sonorous, Pleasantly Modulated String Of Obscenities

WASHINGTON, DC—Upon injuring a toe Sunday, Corey Flintoff, newscaster for NPR's All Things Considered, unleashed a string of rich, pleasantly modulated obscenities. "God fucking dammit," Flintoff warmly intoned after dropping a heavy-duty router on his foot while working in his garage. "Stupid fucking cocksucking son of a bitch." Added Flintoff in a lush baritone: "Goddamn motherfucking shit-for-brains. This is NPR." Next-door neighbor Cheryl Thomas, who overheard the tirade, said Flintoff's delivery was so melodic, she was unaware that he was swearing.

Black people can vote in Ohio, now!

Bad news: their options.

I'm all about the running joke.

Get your creative juices flowing.

A former colleague of mine is quitting his white collar job and moving to Florida to pursue his dream of....becoming a backhoe operator. I'm not kidding. And no, this isn't the plot to the sequel of Office Space.

But that's not where he asks your help. He's also starting a blog, one that will mix libertarianism and Florida. That means lots of Sembler bashing, I hope.

But he needs a name. Florida, libertarianism, backhoe. He also likes to drink. Alot.

See what you can do.

Honestly, if this isn't straight out of the Simpsons...

What happens when a bunch of (presumably old and male) Big Beef executives and cattlemen put their heads together and launch a website aimed at pitching the glories of swingin' juicy meat to teenage girls?

Cool 2B Real!

Maybe the funniest laughs-per-pixel website this side of Modern Humorist. Only every bit of it is unintentional.

Check out the Snacks page, complete with the survey "Which type of beef do you most like to eat with your friends?" and "sprinkle some beef crumbles and melted cheese on an English muffin for a nutritious snack before rollerblading!"

Mmm. Beeeeef crumbles.

Priceless. Someone should get fired for this.

What's up with Ohio politics these days? You have Robert Taft, easily the worst governor in America. You have Jerry Springer pondering a run for the Senate. And then you have Dennis Kucinich, who's the subject of a thrashing in my Fox column tomorrow.

Knowing little about him, I was at first intrigued by Kucinich's candidacy for the presidency in 2004. He's staunchly anti-war, and has for all his career been an opponent of abortion -- not an easy position to take in the party of "choice."

I'm still in intrigued, but not in a way that makes me think he might be worth voting for. Rather, I'm intrigued in the same way I'm intrigued by that guy in the Jim Rose circus who lifts cinder blocks with his nipples.

Immediately after announcing for the presidency, Kucinich renounced his 90% lifetime rating from pro-life groups, and iterated his utter, complete support for Roe. Regardless of your position on abortion, you have to be awed at the transparency and shamelessness of his flop. Reminds me of when Steve Forbes went from an advisor to Republicans for Choice in 1996, to clutching rosaries outside the Planned Parenthood in 2000 -- all because he realized he'd need the Christian right's support to get through the primaries.

And, don't be fooled. Kucinich's anti-war position isn't borne of reason or thorough analysis, but out of hysteria and conspiracy theories.

The fine folks at the Center for Consumer Freedom tell us that he's also the point man in Congress for anti-genetically modified foods radicalism.

Joe Klein, the liberal Newsweek editor and pundit calls Kucinich "a buffoon." Richard Cohen, the liberal Washington Post columnist calls him "a fool." And these are the guys who generally like Democrats.

After his shameless abortion flop, I've no choice but to fit him with the worst label in my bag o' rhetoric:

He's a typical pol.

The esteemed Cato senior fellow and superb lecturer is doing a college speaking tour on globalization. All the events are open to the public -- you needn't be affiliated with the universities where he's speaking.

I strongly encourage you to try to attend if he's speaking near you (heads up, my Chicago friends -- April 9th).

Bonus: It's free.

Also, I hear that on a few dates, Incubus will be opening for him.

I'll just point this out. You draw your own conclusions:

That most lamentable duct tape suggestion last week by a Homeland Security official -- which drove countless panicked citizens out to buy the product -- has been widely derided as useless and pretty crazy.

But maybe not so crazy. Turns out that nearly half -- 46 percent to be precise -- of the duct tape sold in this country is manufactured by a company in Avon, Ohio. And the founder of that company, that would be Jack Kahl, gave how much to the Republican National Committee and other GOP committees in the 2000 election cycle? Would that be more than $100,000?

His son, John Kahl, who became CEO after his father stepped down shortly after the election, told CNBC last week that "we're seeing a doubling and tripling of our sales, particularly in certain metro markets and around the coasts and borders." The plant has "gone to a 24/7 operation, which is about a 40 percent increase" over this time last year, Kahl said. The company had more than $300 million in sales in 2001.

And Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge keeps pushing the product. "You may want to have a safe shelter for four or six hours," he told PBS's Jim Lehrer on Wednesday, "until . . . the chemical plume moves on." So "you may need that duct tape."

And if a few false alarms generate millions for staunch political supporters, well, shucks, that's just gravy.

"If you're at a peace march, and the guy next to you has a sign saying 'Bush is Hitler,' stop the peace stuff for a second and beat his ass."

--Dennis Miller, on The Tonight Show.

"On the whole, observe the same rule about gin martinis -- and all gin drinks -- that you would in judging female breasts: One is far too few, and three is one too many."

--From a list of tips from the hard drinking Christopher Hitchens in the March Vanity Fair..

"Translations are like women -- the beautiful ones are never faithful, and the faithful ones are never beautiful."

--A French saying, relayed to me at a lecture this week. The lecturer was at the time talking about movie adaptations of books, but it's still kinda' clever, if not entirely true.

“I'm gonna guess it was political science, but I'm not sure, it might have been history. I'll check. I hadn't thought of that one.”

-- Presidential hopeful Carol Moseley Braun, when asked what she majored in during college.

Hmm...

Obviously well-educated. Race-baiter, corrupt, ex-girlfriend of Nigerian dictator....

Yeah. Search me, Carol. I can't understand why no one came to see your I'm-running-for-president press conference, either.

Say, if the connection between Pat Robertson and al-Qaeda is stronger than the connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, shouldn't we start aligning troops outside the 700 Club?

Here's a preview of the upcoming third season of the best show on television.

Yes. It's better than the Sopranos.

Odd. Real estate in Iraq is soaring. And so is the Baghdad stock market. Optimist folk, these Iraqis. But cautious. Check out the dynamics in this story between the reporter and his interviewees:

Why is the market so hot? Inflation is part of the answer. The dinar was trading at the anemic rate of roughly 2,300 to the dollar last week. Just don’t mention the possibility of a collapse if Iraqi secret police might be listening. “It has nothing to do with the dinar,” a Karbala real-estate broker insists nervously. “It’s because the population is growing rapidly, and Karbala draws so many Islamic pilgrims from Iran.”

...Few people dare to say what the market will do after the war. The prospect of regime change is a risky topic. But watch what Iraqis are doing; their optimism is unmistakable. The Baghdad stock exchange is soaring, and private construction plans are pushing ahead.

...Asked why the market is surging now, both men pause a bit too long and then speak a bit too quickly. “The area is a desirable one,” says Isa. In the same breath, Majeed answers: “We love our country.”

Fifteen donors, a little over two hundred bucks.

And one very pissed off reader.

I can't retire any time soon. But, frankly, I say not bad. Better than I expected, anyway.

Warm, hearty thank yous to those of you who gave. If you're still thinking about giving, please note: the deadline is....well....never.

Those states most vigilantly anti-tobacco have begun spending tobacco settlement money on...golf carts...and dump trucks....and public television, and not on prevention programs, as promised.

Two reasons for this:

1) Despite budget shortfalls, states have not only refused to cut spending, they've actually increased hires and government programs. Thus, they're forced to divert settlement money to programs supported by interests with more political clout than, for example, the American Cancer Society.

2) States have become dependent on the revenue generated by tobacco taxes (taxes disproportionately paid by the poor, by the way). Therefore, they really don't want to stop you from smoking. Because if everyone quit smoking, all that cancer-causing revenue would dry up. No more golf carts, no more dump trucks. Mark my words: If the day comes when the last trial lawyer forces the last tobacco company into bankrupcy, you'll see state goverments get into the business of making cigarettes.

The Washington Post's resident libertarian has a theory.

$800,000, to be specific.

A few readers responses to my last Fox column, cut and pasted from the Fox website:

Vernon Henning writes:

Thanks for showing us that the efforts of private companies around the world to help their communities can be motivated by profit and still be praiseworthy. Phony altruism and "high-mindedness" that yields no benefits for real people is worthless.

Ron Thomas writes:

It probably goes back to the old adage, "Money is the root of all evil." However, the correct wording is, "Love of money is the root of all evil." Profit is not bad, but profit for bad purposes is evil as well.

Bob Phinney writes:

I was especially pleased to see you point out that "all we see on television are the stone throwers and rabble rousers." It only takes five or six people to fill the lens of a TV camera, but the news makes it sound like the whole population was taking part. Maybe we should insist that TV news (like the right-hand mirrors on our cars) carry a message saying "objects in this video may be less numerous than they appear."

Terry Cullen writes:

People have misconceptions about the McDonaldization of the world. It has provided the world with the two greatest commodities: technology and information. As you make so clear in your article, McDonald's raises the bar on cleanliness, efficiency and competition. From an economic standpoint, the introduction of McDonalds into a foreign economy raises the level of competition. This results in a trimming of fat, so to speak, and betters consumer prices. I would equate this to dropping Michael Jordan into a pick-up game. Yes, some people leave because they can't compete. But, the ones that stay flourish and have gained innumerous insights into how to be the best.

Margie Lamb writes:

It is nice to read some positive comments about these two companies. Just because they are corporations doesn't make them all bad. Some of these frivolous lawsuits need to be stopped. It seems like these companies are making a contribution to society and more of this needs to be brought to everyone's attention.

Charley Hupp writes:

In 1950, I was a bachelor in Springfield, Ill. Breakfast, if I had orange juice, cost $1.75. I can have a breakfast today, 2003, at "fast food" restaurants in the USA for about the same price! Automobiles and houses cost about 10 times as much now as they did back then. In addition, you have less chance of getting food poisoning at one of the fast food franchises as in a fine (and expensive) restaurant. These franchises have many quality checks and monitor their quality checkpoints. These restaurants have done a marvelous job and deserve all of the success that they have enjoyed.

Milan Campbell, Jr. writes:

All we ever hear is negative news from anti-business sources and criticism from the rank and file about the fat cats. Well, the fat cats write the checks, take the risks, put in the hours, and are more than likely to be educated. For this and more they are smeared as all being villains. Hollywood moguls and stars make at least as much as most executives and they are held in a much more favorable light. Business executives are sometimes ruthless, cutthroat and out for the bottom line at any cost, however most contribute mightily to their communities, and most people would rather lead the lifestyle but are unwilling to pay the price. The average citizen, our country, and the whole world better realize we need these corporations!

Another old one, but good one.

You know, I hate to pick on a family just after they've lost a daughter, but doesn't this sentence, in an article about the recently deceased Jesica Santillan, really reach out and grab you by the throat?

The Santillan family declined to donate any organs from Jesica's body, Puff said.

Teeth whitening is now illegal in England.

Seriously.

Happy 200th anniversary of judicial review, everyone.

...congratulations!

My dad sends this item from the FT.

Seems that Germany wants to tell us how to run our economy, too. Hey, at least Amtrak will start running on time, right?

This also raises another important question:

When did my dad start reading the Financial Times?

That's a term coined by the kids over at NRO's The Corner. It's a hybrid of "blogging" and "begging." They came up with it to describe how they're regularly hitting readers up for contributions, National Review magazine subscriptions and ideas for Rich Lowry's or Jonah Goldberg's syndicated columns.

Warning: I'm about to bleg.

I want you to buy me a laptop.

Let me explain:

No, I'm not impoverished, or afflicted with a life-threatenging disease. In fact, things are fairly hunky-dorey at the moment.

As you know, I'm moving, again. In a few hours, in fact. My new place has DSL access, if I care to sign up. One problem: I don't have a computer of my own. Generally, all of my blogging is done from work (note to boss: on my own time, of course), though for the past few weeks I've had access to my temporary roommate's computer.

So last week I was talking to the esteemed PJ Doland, host of this site, and he suggested I ask you, my readers, to pitch in and buy me a laptop. "You provide a service," he said. "You've written, what, about a half million words over the last year? It's like a magazine, only we get an issue every day."

Shucks. He flatters me. But that does make at least a little sense. And, after all, it isn't as if I'd be asking for money to buy myself a trip to Rio, or to get Steven Den Beste a hooker. I'm asking for money to get a laptop, so I can blog from home, so you'll have more fun stuff to read.

I'm going to skip the "I'm providing you a service" line, though. Because that sounds as if I'm laboring over this thing for your benefit. That's really not true. I'm fairly certain I have far more fun writing on this site than you have reading it. Especially when y'all start entertaining me by racking up 60+ comments on a post.

So last Friday after work I posted a request for money from you to pay for a laptop, for me. Odd thing -- I felt dirty about it, and took it down. PJ scolded me. "Why would you feel dirty?" he asked. "People do it all the time."

True. Andrew Sullivan raised $80k a few months ago in a "pledge drive." Of course, I'm no Andrew Sullivan. He's a far better writer than I. Also, I failed at Catholicism, conservatives irk me, and I haven't even experienced so much as a same-sex locker-room towel-snapping incident.

I digress.

"What do you have to lose?" PJ asked.

Well, nothing, really. At worst, I get $35 from y'all and I learn that the revenue-generating blogsite idea is still way, way off. Considering that there are dozens of sites out there just like this one -- many of them not asking you for money -- that's probably the outcome I should expect.

At best, a fair-sized chunk of the 3,000+ of you who visit this site on a daily, sometimes-daily or weekly basis pony up $5, $10, or $20 here and there, and I can pay off a snazzy new bit of hardware.

So let's see what happens:

I would like to ask you to please give a donation to me for the purchase of a laptop computer.

OK. Done.

You can donate with a credit or check card by clicking the button on the left, and following the Paypal instructions. If you're not wild about putting your credit card through this newfangled Internet thingy, but still want to help out, email me, and I'll give you an address where you can send a check.

Finally, let me say that this certainly will not become a regular thing -- me asking you for money. Oh sure, I'll remind you of the tip jar every now and then, as I already do. But this will be the first and last specific incident of shameless, blatant begging. I'll give you an update on how things turned out, but, no worries, I'm not going to hit you over the head with daily requests for more laptop money.

Oh, and for full disclosure, I have already bought the computer -- on credit. Your donation will save me from paying interest.

OK, off to move.

I'm with Gene Healy and Joanne McNeil -- amen to the esteemed, wicked smart, and fantastically talented Jonathan Rauch's essay on the social introvert. It's me to a tee. I'm a social fellow. I enjoy drinks with the gang, banter, good conversation. But dammit if I don't need a couple of hours every day to get my head in order. I would guess that most people who are drawn to writing also naturally crave solitude.

That's why I'm stoked about my new digs. It'll be just me and the pooch, now. When I want social, I'll pick up the phone.

If that is, the D.C. weather will ever let me move into those digs. Was going to move last weekend. Blizzard. Was going to move today. Flood. Must move tomorrow. Weather man says to expect 45+ mph wind. What next? A plague of locusts?

I tried like hell to get through the phone lines of the Donahue show last night. The topic was Iraq. On the panel: Arianna Huffington, Armstrong Williams, Mo Rocca (who's pretty much everywhere these days) and National Review's Joel Mowbray.

Here's the thing: all four panelists plus the host had different views on the coming war. And yet, somehow, I managed to disagree -- fairly vehemently -- with every last one of them. Usually, you can at least count on The Daily Show's Rocca for some comic relief. But he was oddly serious last night.

What led me to the phone was the UN discussion. Donahue showed two clips -- one of the raucous applause given after the French foreign minister denounced the United States to the security council, and the other of the silence that greeted Sec. Powell's Powerpoint "Iraq sucks" presentation.

My question: Who the fuck cares?

Lest we forget, this is the same organization that gave bloody Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe -- a man who has encouraged blacks to retake land from whites, by murdering the landlowners if necessary -- a standing ovation at last summer's "sustainability" conference -- and booed Powell for merely mentioning Mugabe's human rights record afterward. And Chirac, for his part, just hosted Mugabe in Paris, giving the bastard some modicum of legitimacy -- despite protests from human rights groups the world over.

Donahue somberly contrasted the two clips on his show, as if we should all take a day off work Monday to reflect upon and mourn for just how little French and UN diplomats think of us.

Take a look at this chart, which I found via Amy Phillips' fine site. Are Phil Donahue and Arianna Huffington really ready to entrust our national security to a panel made up of countries that regularly murder journalists, have little toleration for religous freedom, and, when it comes to letting people earn and keep their own money, make Noam Chomsky look like Milton Friedman?

Are we really going to let Angola, Cameroon, China, Guinea, and Syria decide when we are or aren't threatened? Are we really going to let Libya decide if the United States is violating the human rights of captured terrororism suspects?

Are we going to entrust our sovereignty to the votes of countries that don't let their own people vote?

Of course, as soon as I found myself sympathizing with Mowbray and Williams, both went off on how Bush's position on Iraq is driven by his personal faith in God (and how that's a good thing), how they wouldn't mind at all if North Korea, Iran, and Saudi Arabia were next on the Rumsfeld hit list, and on, and on, and on, until I found myself hitting redial again and again, hoping they'd let someone -- anyone -- make the point that:

A) Iraq is a bad idea.

B) Entrusting our sovereignty to a body of thugs, kleptocrats and dictators, too, is a bad idea.

Why can't producers find someone to go on these shows to make that case?

I didn't get through.

I don't know about y'all, but I think there is such thing as too much technology. Just because you can add bells and whistles doesn't necessarily mean you should.

Case in point, the new-look ESPN website.

Sara Rimensnyder (easily one of the best names in the blogosphere) points to a nasty little story about asset forfeiture idiocy in Los Angeles. Cops are seizing the cars of men merely suspected of trawling the streets for prostitutes. That's right. Suspected. You don't need to be convicted, or even charged. If cops even suspect that you're looking for some action, they can take your car and sell it, and the proceeds benefit -- guess what -- the local police department.

Asset forfeiture is (again -- no surprise) a remnant of the Drug War, only one of many examples where anti-drug hysteria managed to trump the Bill of Rights. It posits the ridiculous idea that a piece of property, not its owner, can be guilty of a crime. This entry from the comments section to Sara's post is particularly well-stated:

Yes, this probably will stand up in court, and it doesn't matter whether the "john" is found guilty. Asset forfeiture is rooted in an obscure, metaphysical common law doctrine in which the *property* is deemed guilty. Even if the "criminal" is acquitted, the state usually may still retain the property in civil proceedings with a lower burden of proof.

When I did law school over a decade ago, I was flummoxed at encountering cases in the books like "United States v. 1988 Silver Buick Riviera," or "State of Michigan v. $." See, the state sues the property, and of course, property doesn't have any rights.

Only a few years ago the Supreme Court upheld asset forfeiture in a case in which a wife who jointly owned a car with her husband sued the State of Michigan to get it back, and lost. That her spouse had sex with a woman for money in the vehicle was all that mattered.

Congressman Henry Hyde has writen a small, very fine little book exposing the horror of this monster: "Forfeiting our Property Rights." Therein, he rightly identifies the War on (people who use) Drugs as the catalyst for the state's renewed interest in this ancient doctrine -- beloved of yesteryear's monarchs -- that had almost fallen into total disuse. Hyde calls for an open look at drug policy, with all reforms on the table.

Drug laws have eroded our 4th Amendment protections as well as property rights, and have engnedered a prison industrial complex that has detroyed tens of thousands of lives. Asset forfeiture is but one facet of this horror.

Longtime readers know that I once optimistically speculated, and even had a small bit of evidence for, the proposition that the Rolling Stones -- particularly Mick Jagger -- might have a libertarian streak in them.

Unfortunately, that optimism was shattered when the Stones recently played a global warming "awareness" concert.

The King of the Insight Scoop, Mickey Kaus, now dredges up some embarassing financial dealings that call into question the Stones' commitment to Mother Earth:

The Rolling Stones recently played an anti-global-warming benefit in Los Angeles for the Natural Resources Defense Council, which identifies gas-guzzling automobiles and power plants as the cause of the warming problem. The Stones were introduced by ex-President Clinton and opened their set with the song "Start Me Up" -- which they just happened to have recently licensed to the Ford Motor Company for use in TV spots in which it's used to promote the fuel-thirsty, greenhouse-gas-emitting Ford Explorer SUV. ... Reader Rimshot: Alert reader B.S. writes: "Isn't it hypocritical of them to deny that good things can come from really old fossils."

So I was watching a Conan O'Brien rerun the other night (isn't it great that Comedy Central shows them now?). The guest was TheAgitator.com-designated supervixen Katie Holmes.

Imagine my shock and horror when Katie said, and I quote: "I'm not much of a dog person."

What? Really?

And I was so sure she was the one!

Katie, dear. You almost had me. Too, too bad. I guess Katie's loss is Kirsten's gain. I was having a tough time choosing between the two, anyway.

1) I know, I've been jocking it for weeks, but if you haven't yet bought the album Don't Give Up On Me by Solomon Burke, please, go do so. If you click on the link, you can do a doubly good deed: you can get yourself an album of fine soul, and you can make me a buck or two!

I can't get enough of the CD. Take what might be the best male soul voice still singing. Add a series of songs written by some of rock's most colorful poets. Add the smoky production vibes of a fairly unknown but enormous talent. Together, you have a masterful collection of music. Imagine if Sam Cooke's sugary vocals, or Otis Redding's wail had sung not about "the science book," and "the French I took," but about "half a mile from the country fair, and the rain came pourin' down," or "her folks they said our life together, sure was gonna' be rough/they never did like mama's homemade dress, papa's bankbook wasn't big enough."

That's what you've got. A passionate, soulful, heartbreaking voice bellowing out poetry from Van Morrison, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Joe Henry, Brian Wilson, Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe.

I had hoped to write a thorough review for Blogcritics, but it looks like someone beat me to it -- by several months. If you don't want to take my word for it, check out the Amazon reviews, or the All Music review, or the Rolling Stone review.

I think I might need to revise my "Favorites of 2002" list.

2) Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the latest from Richard Ashcroft. His first solo effort, Alone With Everybody has inched its way into TheAgitator.com's "heavy rotation" collection -- a fine collection of contemplative, soothing, cerebral rock. There's some of that on his second CD -- the just-released Human Conditions -- but not nearly enough. It's not really a bad album, it's just not in the same league as Ashcroft's initial effort, or really anything he did with The Verve. I was even more disappointed because I couldn't wait for the domestic release, and so spent twice as much to get the import a couple of weeks earlier.

But who knows, maybe it'll grow on me.

3) Thanks to Julian and Tom Palmer, I have new stuff to check out, too. I may go pick up some Moondog today.

Here's an old tour rider for the band Great White.

Considering that the manager of another night club -- the famed Stone Pony in Asbury Park, NJ -- now says the band used pyrotechnics without informing him or his stage manager a few weeks ago, I'd guess that Great White has made its last demand for backstage Evian.

All this time, I thought I had discovered it.

Joanne again finds a gem.

This was from the personals listings on Craig's List.

OK, gang. The G.W. Bush Libertymeter officially takes flight today.

I decided to start the needle at 45, on a 100 point scale. That'll give us some room to meneuver. I think it also makes a fair amount of sense, as it's about halfway between complete totalitarianism and the ideally limited government.

I'd say that's about where we're at right now.

Thanks to Brian Kieffer (or, as you know him, "BKieffer) for the programming and design work.

Tim Blair asks, where were the millions of anti-war protesters when this happened?

I opposed it. And I wrote my congressmen to let them know. But Blair's point is a good one. Even if you assume the worst about Bush's motivations -- that he's going after Iraq to settle an old grudge, to right an historical oversight by his pops, or that it is indeed "all about oil" -- all of those reasons, it seems to me, while unacceptable, are at least more morally defensible than Clinton's -- he bombed to deflect attention from his diddling of an intern.

So....where were the protesters in December 1998?

An old, old link -- but one I'd forgotten about, and certainly one of the all-time greats.

It's the Mighty Stephen Hawking, astro-physcisist and gangsta' rapper. Or, as he says on the site, "all my shootin's be drive-bys."

My favorite cuts (from the album, A Brief History of Rhyme):

Entropy
F*ck the Creationists
The Mighty Stephen Hawking

(Links go to audio.)

Listen to the lyrics. They move fast, but they're worth your attention. They're close to brilliant.

A 20 year old political prodigy is running for mayor of Wichita, Kansas.

Goolsby smiled as he answered questions at the lectern, made eye contact with his audience and stayed on message. He was arguably the most natural candidate.

Audience members applauded when he announced that he wants to:

Impose term limits and a public vote of confidence on the city manager, to make city government's top administrator more accountable to citizens.

Elect municipal judges to ensure they're not beholden to the agendas of City Council members who appoint them.

Increase property tax revenue by selling city-owned property, including the Hyatt Regency Wichita, which is his employer.

A few days later, while waiting for his one-on-one candidate interview with representatives of the Wichita Independent Business Association, Goolsby was a picture of calm.

"They're just people," he said, leaning back in a conference room chair. "They're not the Spanish Inquisition."

Questions from Wichita Independent Business Association members didn't rattle him.

Why, as a first-time candidate, did he choose to run for mayor?

"I've always seen myself as a leader. And my ideas are fresh and unvisited, so they should be championed by a mayor, not a City Council member."

Concerned about your job given your public stance on the Hyatt?

"My job's very secure. I'm judged on performance, not off- the-clock business."

Why, unlike other candidates, are you raising issues about the structure of city government?

"It's a basic question. Do you want a government that's for the people, or a government that's for the government?"

Clever.

More big fun with NY Times corrections:

Because of an editing error, a front-page article yesterday about diplomatic developments in the Iraq crisis misidentified the Bush administration official who said about the weapons inspectors in Iraq, "At some point it will become obvious that it's time for them to go." It was an administration official speaking on condition of anonymity, not Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser.

Jesse Walker has a nice appreciation for Johnny Paycheck, now that the honky-tonk legend has cashed his last.

On a completely unrelated note, Jesse also cites this nod to SUV drivers, who have apparently been doing nice things for people since Mother Nature's terrorist attack last weekend (I also pilfered this little nugget for the Cato site).

Civil, neighborly-minded SUV drivers has definitely not been my experience this week. Frankly, I've found SUV drivers to be every bit the bastards they were before the snow hit.

Twice yesterday, for example, I was precariously inching down my snow-caked road, which had been plowed, but was down to just one lane. Twice I was approached by an oncoming, four-wheel-drive, off-roadin', high-traction, big-tired SUV. And twice the sumbitch driving the truck refused to yield the road, forcing me and my sporty, no-traction, warm-weather-only Alero to climb atop a small snowbank on the side of the road so as to make way for His Asswipeness. One guy even shook his fist at me for not yielding the road sooner. How silly of me! He, after all, was driving an Ess-You-Vee.

Grrr.

I've also found them constantly riding my ass over the past three days, apparently annoyed that my caution (and I tend to drive fairly fast) on iced-over roads was impeding their want to flaunt the speed limit with their two-plus tons and all-wheel-drive -- thus throwing tarry, slushy wheel-grime on the windshields of the civilized driving public.

Forget oil. If Arianna Huffington could prove our reliance on the Middle East for wiper fluid, she'd have my vote to ban them in a week (I'm joking. But only a little).

I repeat. I'll never, ever own one of those things.

To redeem my libertarian-ness, I'll link to this piece by Jerry Taylor, another admitedly well-argued defense of the damned things.

From Al Kamen's "In the Loop" column:

The extraordinary amount of pork in the latest appropriations bill got so big that even those lawmakers who protested appear to have become a bit overwhelmed.

A few weeks ago, while the big swine were snortin' and snufflin' at the endless trough, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) issued a press release including some 160 pages listing "objectionable" provisions.

One included "Language providing an increase of $600,000 above fiscal year 2002 level for increased investigation of the nutritional needs of pregnant and nursing women, and children from contraception to adolescence, at the Children's Nutritional Research Center, Houston, TX."

Jacob Sullum beat me to it, but this NY Times piece on McCain-Feingold would be a riot if its repercussions didn't involve, you know, laws that you and I are required to follow every day.

If you don't feel like reading the whole thing, the gist is this: lawmakers are resorting to taking classes to help them understand the intricacies of the beheamoth bit of campaign finance legislation. And even then, they don't really understand it.

Hey, welcome to the wonderful world of federal regulation, friendly congresspersons! Gets a bit hairy when you actually have to start living by the laws you pass, doesn't it?

What's amazing is how few of our elected representatives actually read the bill they voted for.

"We sometimes leave our audiences in a state of complete shock," says a lawyer who teaches the intricacies of McCain-Feingold to Democratic legislators. The seminars elicit "a sort of slack-jawed amazement at how far this thing reached."

And this, from Rep. Robert Matsui, a champion of the bill:

The new chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Representative Robert T. Matsui of California, who voted for McCain-Feingold, says he has been surprised by its fine print.

"I didn't realize what all was in it," Mr. Matsui said. "We have cautioned members: `You have to really understand this law. And if you have any ambiguity, err on the side of caution.' "

Matsui, you may remember, has also been a leading opponent of private Social Security accounts, often attacking the idea with particularly biting vitriol when the TV cameras are rolling. You have to wonder if the good congressman from California has read the appropriate briefing papers, backgrounders and white papers, or if he really has the slightest idea what exactly it is he's attacking, or defending.

After all, if he doesn't even read the legislation that applies to him before voting on it, how much time do you think he's really spent studying Social Security?

As a congressman, Social Security doesn't really affect him at all.

To this list.

Wrong suspect.

"Sorry."

Perusing the referral list at the lower right, I found Rachel, a fellow, though smaller, libertarian agitator. This, apparently, is her "favorite blog." Honored and flattered, I am.

Guess I need to stop linking to the R-rated stuff.

Jane Galt/Megan McArdle is taking a recess from blogging after getting a deluge of hate mail. But Jane, that's the best part! Honestly, if a column of mine triggers a rush of mail, I sometimes have time to only skim over the plaudits and praise, but I always, always, always make time to read the hate mail. One, because if there are holes in my logic, I want to know what they are. But two, if I had any doubts about how right I am, the sheer idiocy of hate-mailers almost always clears them up.

If it's true that misery loves company, I'd encourage Jane to check here, and here, and here, and here, and here.

So do you remember that Seinfeld episode where Jerry's dentist converts to Judaism just so he can tell Jewish jokes?

"Are you offfended as a Jew?" Elaine asks.

"No, I'm offended as a comedian!" Jerry retorts.

I feel that way sometimes with this whole Iraq thing. I sometimes want to convert to the pro-war side just so I can tell anti-French jokes.

Like this one from George Will's Newsweek column:

Q: How many French soldiers does it take to defend Paris?

A: We don't know. It's never been tried.

Yes, Saddam's a bastard. No, there's really nothing redeeming about him. But this, from failed Hoosier politician Peter Rusthoven is riddled with excess and lazy attempts at argument:

The facts on Iraq could not be clearer. Saddam Hussein is a megalomaniac, Adolph Hitler’s twin in character and in hatred for America and Jews. He not only threatens but yearns to match or exceed his Vaterland role model in disastrous impact on the world, leaving millions of lost or shattered human lives in his wake. He is steadily squirreling away vast stores of horrific chemical and biological agents - which even the French and today’s Germans know he has - for just that purpose.

He is also feverishly pursuing nuclear capability, with progress to date of which no one can be certain. He lies and cheats, evades and deceives, with a contemptuous ease Der Fuhrer would envy. This is the twisted, demonic soul, on full display for all the world to see, who has added “weapons of mass destruction” to our children’s vocabularies, and threatens to add unspeakable horrors of actual mass destruction to their futures.

That's not to say, of course, that the anti-war side is immune to hyperbole. My dovish comrades are even worse about it, I'd say.

I propose a new rule for debate: bring up Hitler -- in any context -- and you lose. Saddam as Hitler? You lose. Bush is Hitler? You lose. Sharon is Hitler? You lose. (And I know what you're thinking, and you're right: Saddam's much, much "eviler" than either Bush or Sharon. But he's not Hitler -- if only because he's not nearly as cunning, or articulate, or powerful.) Same goes for extended Hitler analogies such as comparing Chirac or Schroeder to Chamberlain. You lose. And, you lose.

OK, yes, I watched the Joe Millionaire finale (apparently, almost everyone did), pissed as I was that Fox drug out to three hours what could have taken fifteen minutes. At any rate, a few observations:

1) The "twist." How lame. Amidst rumors that Evan and Zora were secretly brother and sister, that Sara and Zora had figured out the secret and were conspiring against the show, that Evan was gay -- the much-anticipated "twist" was no more than a sappy fairy tale ending.

2) The blow. Sara reveals to an audience of millions that she went down on Evan in the woods, with cameras just a hair out of reach. That was the night's best "twist."

3) The smoke. How refreshing! After Sara gets dissed, she confides in the Monica Lewinski doppelganger reject from earler rounds (I can't remember her name) out on the patio. There, right in front of the cameras, they both indulge in a smoke! What will the tobacco Nazis think!?! You just don't see that much anymore.

4) The con. I'm fairly convinced that after Evan told her his secret, and before she met him in the ballroom, the show's producers let Zora in on the fact that if she agreed to continue to date Evan, she'd get a half million bucks. It all ended just a little too neatly.

5) The shame. Yes, I'm completely embarassed that I know this much about the show.

Here’s an oldy but goody from Wired on the late, great optimist libertarian, Julian Simon.

Here's the real story.

Here's The Onion story (very funny, but not a work-safe click, or for the easily offended).

Now, you tell me the difference between the two.

Why I live in the suburbs:

Police have released a videotape showing witnesses doing nothing to help a man after he was fatally shot at a gas station.

The station surveillance tape shows the Jan. 31 slaying of Allen Price, 43. It also shows one man continuing to pump kerosene after looking briefly at the body. He then pays for the kerosene and drives off.

The camera also recorded several cars pulling away from the station after the shooting, with at least one car pulling up to the kerosene pump beside Price after he was shot.

Police interviewed people on a passing city bus but they say no one saw anything.

The tape shows Price standing at a gas pump while another man stands nearby at another pump, then it shows a suspect running up, shooting Price in the head and then running away.

Police said the man at the nearby pump did nothing and, at one point, even stepped over Price's body.

Police said dozens of people on a passing Metro bus also saw the shooting. Only one person has called investigators.

This link has video.

We don't have those kinds of problems in the suburbs. Unless you have an emergency case of appendicitis, and happen to live next door to man-hating lesbians.

Before the whiteout, I went out with some friends Saturday night. Visiting a friend of mine from California were two attractive elementary school teachers. Naturally, I spent a good deal of the night talking with the single one.

Things were progressing nicely, when for some odd reason, she felt compelled to reveal to me something no one else in our group knew. To get through college, she said, she had appeared in a number of "crusher" videos. If you're a fan of the show "The Practice," you'll know what I mean. These are videos of women in high heels stepping on bugs and slugs and rodents (in the TV show, the crusher fetishist was played brilliantly -- I'm not kidding -- by none other than Henry Winkler). Apparently, there are men who pleasure themselves to the sight of high-heeled feet squishing bugs. If memory serves, congress -- ever eager to address such pressing important issues -- banned such videos after "The Practice" episode aired.

At any rate, my new friend said she'd get up to $500 per session, and that the movies rarely showed more than her shoes, her calves, and her knee-highs (remember, this is a fourth grade teacher).

I found the stories immensely amusing. She said she got fed up when they asked her to star in a "movie" where they paid her to step on the face of a female friend of hers. That was the whole movie. One girl stepping on another girl's face. The friend stormed off the set in tears, and with that, my new friend "got creeped out" and quit the business. The most surprising thing about the stories was that the entire enterprise wasn't run by some greaseball in a leizure suit and gold chains, but by a 20 year-old female friend of my new friend.

I wonder -- am I the only guy left who still gets turned on by the good, old fashioned female body? No bugs. No whips. No evacuation of bodily fluids. No people stepping on each other. I wonder what these crusher fetishists do when they see a bug zapper. Do Raid commercials turn them on? What if you're a bug fetishist and a giantism fetishist? Would such a person find Eight Legged Freaks the best movie ever made?

I just like women. And I'm starting to feel like I'm the weird one.

According to at least one witness, many of the 21 dead in last night’s Chicago nightclub stampede were smaller, frailer women — trampled and thrown aside by burly men fleeing mace-armed security guards.

Eric Muller vs. Rep. Howard Coble.

Muller wins.

Nice to see that the right has learned a thing or two from the left about racial demagoguery. The latest meme:

Opposition to war with Iraq is a form of racism.

I guess the argument says that not buying the idea that bombing Iraqis will make them free means we doves don’t think Iraqis (and Arabs in general, I guess) are smart enough or capable enough to govern themselves once we’ve “bombed them to liberty.”

Nice try.

We got some heavy snows in my twenty-plus years of living in Indiana. But I have never, ever seen anything like what we’re getting in D.C. right now. It’s so spectacular to watch, I really don’t even mind the inconvienence. There’s not much wind, so drifting is mininmal. It’s really just a thick layer of white, everywhere, knee-deep.

It’s so odd to watch the news. They cut to the traffic cameras on the Beltway (I-495) and there is literally no one on the road.

I trudged ten blocks to the grocery store last night. It was only minimally staffed. The deli, seafood, butcher and bakery sections were closed. People milled about as if they’d just been through a war. The shelves were bare as I’ve ever seen at a grocery store (though still far from being empty). Almost every other business in eyeshot was closed.

The best part has been taking my dog for walks. Even on the street that runs by my (temporary) house, she’s rarely less than chest-deep. At times, she’ll disappear completely into a drift, then poke out from the other side.

Those of us with cars I think can forget about going anywhere for the next couple of days (SUVs, anyone?). I did a little driving yesterday morning, but that was when we were at about a foot, and I’m still amazed I didn’t get stuck. We have more than twice that now.

And it’s still coming down.

No, I didn’t move this weekend.

James Landrith is dreaming.

But then, isn’t that what February and March are for? To give Cubs’ fans eight weeks of hope?

Glen Whitman points out that for all Lott's transgressions and creepy online antics, no substantial evidence has surfaced to call the credibility of More Guns, Less Crime into question.

From what I've read, he's right.

And yet, I still encourage you to take it.

Link via Joanne McNeil.

Two from the Washington Post magazine that had me chuckling out loud.

1) Gene Weingarten interviews the author of the worst novel written last year.

2) Dave Barry. Just Dave Barry.

Compelling examination of affirmative action in today's WaPo from a former member of the US Naval Academy admisisons committee. Tidy summation sentence:

"If we're aiming for colorblindness, we can't get there via color-definition."

A primer on the "filibuster."

Slate’s Tim Noah calls out Bill O’Reilly’s phoniness.

I do still oppose war with Iraq. But watching the UN in (in)action dredges up some old irritants I have about leftists. Specifically, why is it that the leftist solution to all problems is to a) pass more laws, and then, b) refuse to enforce them?

Bear with me, here.

Remember all the hubub about President Clinton's fundraising tea parties? About the whoring out of the Lincoln Bedroom? About Al Gore's solicitous calls from his official office digs? Remember Gore's initial (and, in my opinion, most honest) defense? His defense was that the ends justifies the means. In this case, that bending a few campaign finance laws was acceptable, because the alternative was Republicans in power.

So was it any surprise, then, that the Democrats were so gung-ho about campaign finance reform? Of course they were. Of course they were eager to pass more rules. Why? Because they have no intention of following them. Pass the law. Watch the Republicans follow it (or more accurately, watch them squirm to find loopholes). Continue with business as usual, only with added political advantage (yes, I know, the CW at the moment is that McCain-Feingold actually helps the GOP more than the Dems, but that's assuming both parties are following it to the letter).

This is S.O.P. for leftists. The answer to every problem -- more laws. Not that Republicans aren't guilty of the same thing. But Dems are worse. And Republicans at least make an effort to enforce the laws after they're passed. Democrats pass the laws, then give us all kinds of reasons why we shouldn't enforce them, then demand we pass more laws when the problems the laws were meant to solve don't go away. See gun control. See campaign finance. See the knee-jerk rash of "corporate governance" legislation.

What does this have to do with Iraq? It's the same scenario, only on an international scale. UN resolution 1441 called for Iraq to disarm, and to comply with UN weapons inspectors. It didn't call for Iraq to play, er, "hide the missile." It didn't call for Iraq to mislead the inspectors, then begrudgingly concede inches of turf at a time, just to prolong the bombs from falling. It called for disarmament, and open access for inspectors. It is overwhelmingly obvious to me that Iraq has not abided by 1441, that Iraq has clearly breached both the spirit and the letter of the resoultion.

And so what is the jelly-necked UN reaction? Pass another resolution. Don't enforce the existing resolution. Pass a new one. Wait for Iraq to break it. Pass another one. It's typical leftist pussyfooting.

The UN is a joke. It is, as our president said, a debating society. A toothless (thank God) joke of an organization whose sole purpose is to give diplomats from pissant countries a forum to inveigh against the evils (and by "evils," I mean "prosperity" and "freedom") of the capitalist, hegemonic West. You want more evidence? I give you....

A) The United States -- not perfect, but nonetheless the one nation that's done more for civil liberty than any other in the history of man -- was booted off the human rights commission...to make way for the Sudan, a country that still operates a fucking slave trade.

B) That same human rights commission is now chaired by Libya.

C) Iraq...Iraq is next in line to chair the disarmament committee.

D) They'll be followed by....Iran.

You can't make stuff like this up. For the love of satire, the Onion couldn't make stuff like this up. It wouldn't be funny. It's too absurd.

UN diplomats are walking, (endlessly) talking, parking-ticket ducking examples of the perils of democracy -- perils our founding fathers thankfully recognized and at least attempted to guard against.

Here's a rule I'd like to see enforced at all future UN general assembly and security council sessions: if women or ethnic or religous minorities or non-property owners or political dissidents aren't allowed to vote in the country of any given delegate -- that delegate is prohibited from voting in the UN. Seems simple enough, doesn't it?

Don't get me wrong. I'm happy the UN won't be sanctioning bombing under the authority of 1441. Not only because I oppose the war, but because I relish watching this organization shoot out its own kneecaps.

So why, you're asking, do I oppose the war? If the U.N. passed 1441, and Iraq breached it, shouldn't we commence bombing? And if I oppose the bombing, but admit that Iraq is in material breach, then aren't I no better than the brie-nibbling ferrets I'm criticizing?

Well no, not at all. First, I do like brie. But second, my position is not that we should bomb Iraq when the UN says we should, and that if the UN were to grow a pair and stand behind its resolutions, and authorize military action, then war would be hunky-dorey. Not at all.

My position is that we should make up our owned damn minds about when we should bomb another country. My position is that we should bomb Iraq when Iraq becomes a threat to our safety and security, and not a moment before. And I don't think we're there yet. I don't really even think we're on our way there.

But if that day should come, not only would "what would France think?" be the last damn thing I worry about, I'd actually hope the UN would oppose our acting to defend ourselves -- and with all its diplomatically immune, expense account lavishing, illegally parking, America-hating-but-they-all-send-their-kids-to-Sidwell might. Because then, every bomb we did drop would not only exact a bit more safety and security for us here in the States, but would also extract the last remaining droplets of relevance from this giant diplomatic masturbation society.

It's so friggin' hard to be a libertarian.

Just took the pooch for a walk. The sidewalks are pure ice. So we play this game where I hold tight to the leash, she spots a squirrel, then I play like Alberto Tomba, sliding perilously behind, slalom-ing twixt shrubs, parked bicycles and recycling bins. Unlike the notorious playboy Tomba, however, I didn’t have the hot tub of groupies waiting for me after my run down the cul-de-sac slopes.

Perhaps in four years, we can introduce the “suburban slalom” as a demonstration sport at the winter games.

…the NY Times would like to make you feel guilty. Seems that prime Ecuadoran roses are making Ecuadoran rose farm workers sick. Europe, of course, is furious. But then, given Europe’s ridiculous farm subsidies and trade protections, I doubt many Ecuadoran roses find their way to Europe, anyway.

There is a solution of course. We could try to engineer roses big and beautiful as Ecuadoran roses, but which emit their own pest repellent, thus making the wheeze-inducing insecticides used in Ecuador unnecessary.

Ah…but Europe doesn’t like that idea, either. Guess the only thing for the sophisticated, worldly, sensitive gentleman to do is opt for daisies.

Apparently, some women prefer those, anyway.

…economists don’t have much sex.

Speaking generally, of course.

So I'm moving this weekend. For the second time in a month.

The forecast?

Eight to sixteen inches of snow by Sunday night.

From Clarence Young:

In my international business travels and learning experience I know that McDonalds put heavy amounts of capital, training and created thousands of jobs in Russia before it opened its first restaurant. I also know that President Vincente Fox of Mexico worked his way up through Coca-Cola driving delivery trucks, training for sales and ultimately a management position with the company before being elected as president of his country.

As for dissent, well, here's one slightly different take on things.

And I really don't know what to make of this, a suit alleging that Coca-Cola hired right-wing paramilitary thugs to knock off union organizers in its Columbia bottling plants. My guess is that if there's any merit at all to the suit (and consider that the source is a far-left activist news network), it was done by the individual bottling plants, without Coke's involvement.

Bottling plants are largely independent from Coca-Cola, Inc. But who knows. If any of you have any dirt on this suit you'd like to share, I'd be much obliged.

In my opinion, this guy won.

At life. That's it. He won. If I'm 85 and I get arrested for boinking my girlfriend in public, that's what my epitaph will say.

"He won."

Amusing.

But my favorite part is the soundtrack.

So Alina invites my scrutiny with this link from Nerve, a Valentine's Day list of the best love songs from the last, um, 69 years. I can't resist.

Glaring admissions, there are.

Among them:

Jackie Wilson, "Your Love" -- If forced to pick just one, this would be my favorite song. Ever. In the history of songs.

The Temptations, "My Girl" -- Obvious, yes. But how could any list exclude sunshine, on a cloudy day?

Otis Redding, "My Lover's Prayer" -- Otis at his achiest.

Nick Cave and Johnette Nopalitano, "The Ship Song" -- "I must remove your wings, and you, you must learn to fly..." Cave's creepy barritone and Nopalitano's angelic cry mingle with rapturous results.

Solomon Burke, "Flesh and Blood" -- Written by Agitator.com favorite Joe Henry. From Burke's new CD, which you should now run -- don't walk -- run to go purchase. Play it tomorrow as you wine and dine your inamorata. You will get laid. I promise.

Billie Holiday, "My Man" -- Her sultry, playful, seductive best. Wish I could've have seen her live.

Madonna, "Live to Tell" -- OK, ok. Before you ask me to hand over my penis, let me explain. This really is a great song. And I was turned on to it a few years ago while at an Evan Dando show. Opening act was Pixies guitarist Joey Santiago, doing a solo thing. He covered the song, and it was spectacular. Listen to it again. Go ahead. I won't tell.

Louis Armstrong, "A Kiss to Build a Dream On" -- Easy, laid-back romance. Really the only way Louis' raspy wail could've pulled "romance" off.

Van Morrsion, "Tupelo Honey" -- Bob Dylan once said this song has been around since the beginning of time, Van just happened to have been the mechanism the Gods chose to find it and deliver it to us.

Bob Dylan, "Just Like a Woman" -- Speaking of Dylan, I guess I'd pick this one if I had to choose just one, by a hair over "Most of the Time." Like most of his bests, it's beautiful in its simplicity. "She makes love just like a woman,/But she breaks just like a little girl."

Woody Guthrie, "Ingrid Bergman" -- As performed by Billy Bragg and Wilco. Guthrie's randy but lovely tribute to the Swedish Godess/actress.

Sam Cooke, "You Send Me" -- At first I thought it was just infatuation...

Velvet Underground, "Pale Blue Eyes" -- Captures love's frustrations, and, ultimately, helplessness -- all in cool, minimalist VU fashion. Linger on.

Chris Isaac, "Somebody's Crying" -- You want "longing?" We've got "longing."

Elvis Presley, "Suspicious Minds" -- My favorite from the King.

The Black Crowes, "Girl From a Pawnshop" -- Had to include something from my favorite band. An overlooked gem. Also, check out the bluesy "Bad Luck Blue Eyes Goodbye."

Stevie Wonder, "Isn't She Lovely?" -- A love song to the mother of Wonder's child, where the "she" is Wonder's baby daughter, "less than one minute old."

Led Zeppelin, "Thank You" -- Big wedding song way back when I was just a wee little Agitator.

Sinead O'Connor, "Nothing Compares 2 U" -- "Haunting" is usually the word used to describe this song. Would be even better if Prince had spellcheck.

Elvis Costello, "Alison" -- His aim is true.

Guns n' Roses, "Estranged" -- More of a breakup song than a love song. But Jesus, what a song.

I'm sure I'm overlooking dozens more. If it's sex songs you're after, check here. We covered that months ago.

On the subject of "Republicans were just as bad as Democrats," here's a piece I wrote a few years ago on Justice Ronnie White, who was balled by Republicans for really, really stupid reasons.

Some on the left have suggested that President Bush renominate White as a gesture of good will. I agree. I think it would give him and the GOP an enormous PR boost with blacks, and it would make it enormously difficult for the Democrats to continue to pull what they're pulling with Estrada.

I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that Republicans too played obstructionist to President Clinton's judicial nominees (and to several important DOJ appointed positions, most notably Bill Lann Lee). Given my growing contempt for the Republican Party, it causes me no great pain to say that the GOP was just as belligerent then as the Dems are now (though in general, I'd say GOP-appointed judges do less damage than Democrat-appointed judges).

Clinton's solution was a nifty little end-around called a "recess apointment." That is, he'd wait until congress went home, then he'd make his appointments. Said appointments could then serve for one full year without a confirmation vote. Once ensconced in their positions, it became difficult for the GOP-controlled congress to vote them down.

Laura Ingraham, whom I normally find a little annoying, had a delicious suggestion on Imus this morning. Given the Democrats' obstruction of the Estrada nomination, she said that Bush too should make a recess apointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals -- but that he should appoint....are you ready?....Robert Bork! -- the judge whom the Democrats blackballed back in the Reagan administration to start this fifteen-year game of good-for-the-goose in the first place.

I'm not crazy about Bork. But my respect for Bush would jump to the stratosphere were he to attempt such a ballsy move. And I bet Bork would do it.

Also, I just have to draw attention to this wonderful line from lefty blogger Daily Kos's coverage of the Estrada filibuster, heaping praise on Senator Handsome:

The opposition is being plotted by Daschle, Reid, and the Dems on the Senate Judiciary Committee. As a member of that committee, John Edwards is taking a laudable high profile on the issue.

I'm sure you can come up with a few of your own.

So former President Clinton's chief of staff for the solicitor general (Ron Klain, whose mug you might remember from the Florida recount), the ABA, and every living former solicitor general of the United States has signed off on the nomination of Honduran immigrant-to-Harvard Law Review Editor Miguel Estrada to the U.S. Court of Appeals. Still, the Democrats plan to fillibuster his confirmation vote -- an underhanded parliamentary move unprecedented in U.S. history.

Why? They say it's because he has "refused to answer questions." But as Byron York reported yesterday, it's really because he's conservative, and it will be nearly impossible for the Democrats to block the nomination of a qualified, Hisapnic, but very conservative Supreme Court nominee once he's already aboard an appeals court.

Senator Mary Landrieu announced her support for Estrada during the 2002 campaign in a Spanish-language commercial. She won, thanks largely to big support from Hispanics. Not three months after Election Day, she's flipped. She'll vote with the fillibustering Dems -- and break rank with fellow Louisiana Sen. John Breaux. She says her flip was due to "a misunderstanding" between her campaign staff and the Hispanic advocacy group who ran the ad supporting. Funny how she waited until three months after the election to clear that up.

What should we learn from this?

If you're Hispanic, and you want some political power in this country, it is simply not permissable to have political opinions of your own. Check with Tom Daschle first. He'll tell you how you're supposed to think.

UPDATE: Classic hypocrisy from Sen. Hillary "Billing Records" Clinton. She says she's upholding the filibuster because Estrada "wasn't forthcoming" in his answers to judiciary committe questions. She's also demanding the White House release internal briefs Estrada wrote while working in the Clinton Justice Department! (Estrada, incidentally, also argued in favor of using RICO statutes to prosecute anti-abortion protesters -- hardly the undertaking of a militant "anti-choicer"). And yes, this was the same Clinton administration that claimed "executive privilege" any time a congressional oversight committee asked for so much as an 8x10 glossy of Janet Reno.

Said Hillary:

When you stonewall the Judiciary Committee ... when you act as if you just came out of nowhere and don’t have an opinion on anything, everybody knows that’s a charade.

V-Day disaster.

Link goes to audio.

My latest Fox column is an ode to Coca-Cola and McDonalds.

....so what the hell happened to the monkey?

I guess there really is an Internet site for every twisted fetish.

This is just wrong.

A much-needed and remarkable defense of libertarianism on the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal! Dammit, I wish I had more time. There's so much in this piece that's worth examining. Here's an excerpt, but I strongly recommend reading the entire piece.

Conservatives are against gay marriage, they are often ambivalent toward immigrants, and patronizing toward women; they view popular culture as mostly decadent and want to censor music, movies, video games and the Internet. They crusade against medical marijuana. For their part, libertarians argue for legalizing drugs; they are in favor of abortion and against the government prohibition of sex practices among consenting adults. They abhor censorship. In the conservative caricature, libertarians believe in sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll--but it is not far from the truth. Unfortunately, these debates are often animated by the fact that conservatives see libertarianism only as the face of what it defends: transgendered persons adopting children, video games of violent sadism and, yes, cloning. Simply put, the shocking and repellent decline of civilization. But for libertarians, these are merely some of the many aspects of a civilization that is advancing through vast and minute experiments. The exercise of freedom trumps the discomforts of novelty.

Here's Washington Times coverage of the D.C. gunlawsuit brought by Gene, Tom Palmer and the gang.

Send it to one you love.

So what the heck does it mean?

Well, it's bastardized Latin for "against the world." It's actually the name of the first Internet column I wrote about five years ago for a website called JournalX. The publisher of that site later ripped off his friends and family and did some time in the pokey. But that's another story.

I kept the name because I liked it, and because I like holding on to some small piece of my first sort-of crack at a regular gig, even though it was unpaid, and I'm fairly certain no one read it.

But the important question -- as Dave Barry might point out -- is, wouldn't "contramundum" be a great name for a rock band?

The answer is yes, it would.

I have much to say on Powell's UN presentation. Unfortunately, spare time for indulgent rants is at a minimum for a little while. I will say, however, that the timing and coincidence that comes with this story stretches credibility to it's mozarella-stringy thinnest.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said a new message has surfaced, believed to be Osama bin Laden claiming a "partnership with Iraq."

Powell said he reviewed a transcript of the message, which he said was to air on the Al-Jazeera Arab news satellite television channel, which operates out of Qatar. "(Bin Laden) speaks to the people of Iraq and talks about their struggle and how he is in partnership with Iraq," Powell said.

Asked for reaction to Powell's claim, Al-Jazeera denied it had such a message from bin Laden, saying news of it was a rumor that has been circulating for several weeks.

Color me skeptical.

Fellas -- the perfect V-Day gift.

Here's more eBay wierdity. Who pays four bucks for this?

Joe Bob Briggs mourns Lana Clarkson, allegedly shot dead by music God Phil Spector.

An anti-war advocate after my own heart.

Tech Central contributor Marni Soupcoff doesn't like blogs.

O.K., I know. I shouldn't start a web log.

But sometimes the fiction of an audience rapt and captivated by my inane musings and favorite web clips just seems too hard to resist. For the sake of everyone in cyberspace, however, I will try to withstand the temptation to fulfill my delusional blogging dream.

Too bad some of today's more recent snooze-inducing bloggers didn't resist the urge, too.

If you don't like blogs....

a) don't start one of your own,

and,

b) don't read them.

I don't really see what the problem is. It's not as if someone's sitting next to you on the bus, whispering blog posts in your ear.

Damn am I proud of that title.

Mark Hemingway reviews Neal Pollack's latest book.

Gene Healy, Bob Levy, Tom Palmer and several others are filing suit for the rights of D.C. residents to defend themselves with handguns. Currently, D.C. bans handguns, and imposes ridiculous restrictions on most all firearms (one party to the suit is a D.C. Special Police Officer who guards the Thurgood Marshall center by day, but is prohibited from taking his gun home with him at night).

Probably not coincidentally, D.C.'s is consistently among the highest murder rates in the country (nearby Arlington, Virginia, you may be curious to know, has much more relaxed gun laws -- and a much lower incidence of violent crime: not necessarily a cause and effect scenario, but compelling nonetheless).

It's time to put to bed the idea that making guns illegal leads to fewer guns. It doesn't. It means the people who abide by the law can't have them, and are then at the mercy of people who flout the law.

The scaremongers over at CASA have found a new gateway drug: caffeine! A new report from CASA says a disproportionately high number of girls who drink coffee move on to cigarettes and alcohol (and we all know that it's a short shute to crack from there). Excerpt:

The report reveals that caffeine is a little known risk factor. Girls and young women who drink coffee are significantly likelier than girls and young women who do not to be smokers (23.2 percent vs. 5.1 percent) and drink alcohol (69.8 percent vs. 29.5 percent). Young women who drink coffee began smoking and drinking at earlier ages. Parents are the first line of prevention. CASA's Formative Years survey showed that most girls (61.6 percent) who had conversations with their parents about substance use said that the conversation made them less likely to smoke, drink or use drugs.

Prevention programs should target girls at times of highest risk and be sensitive to the reasons why girls use drugs, how they get them and conditions such as depression that increase their risk.

Health professionals should screen young female patients for substance use, depression, sexual and physical abuse, poor school performance, eating disorders, and stress and provide appropriate referrals.

Government should invest resources in research, prevention and treatment that focus on the special needs of girls and women.

The media should refrain from presenting glamorous images of women smoking and drinking or making positive associations between smoking or drinking and thinness or sex appeal; refuse to accept alcohol advertisements for television and for magazines with high proportions of young female readers; and include more programming and articles that convey prevention messages against smoking, drinking, drugging and excessive dieting.

As for media outlets glamorizing smoking, Gene Healy, this means you.

(Link via Hit and Run)

Again, you'll probably find less blog for your buck (or lack of buck, I guess) this week. If all goes to plan (and over the last two weeks nothing has gone to plan), I'll be moving again over the weekend, which means most of my free time will be spent packing.

Actually, the number of entries will probably be the same. Just more linking, less writing.

A friend sends this, pilfered from the FreeRepublic boards:

So I floated a gimmick idea to the ever-talented Brian Kieffer about a new toy I wanted to try. It's called the "GW Bush LibertyMeter." Basicially, it's a measure of how well our president is protecting our freedom.

Here's what he came up with.

Hell of a job, no? On the far right, you have "State," or complete government control. On the far left, "Anarchy." The scale runs from 1 (total state control) to 100 (absence of a state). Somewhere between 80 and 90, you have "Utopia," or, ideal, constitutionally-limited government (yes, I know, such a society would be far from utopic, but it would be ideal, and I wanted to give the somewhat-clever nod to Nozick).

I'm still trying to figure out how to mount the LibertyMeter on a page with my site's includes, but in the meantime, I have a question for you:

Where should we set the meter to start? In other words, on the 100-point scale I've outlined above, where would you say we are now?

Keep in mind, we'll need some meneuverability if we're going to have fun with this thing.

So here's the obligatory dip into narcisism.

One year of TheAgitator.com. I guess we should first play the "where did we start" and "where are we now" game. I started by hosting the site on an Internet advertised server. About six weeks later, P.J. Doland offered to host the site on his servers, for a generously agreed-upon fee that I'm fairly certain can't be beaten.

So the first traffic reports I have are from early March, not early February. The site was registered on February 8th, though my first post wasn't until February 13th. Also, note that the archives begin in April. That's because I lost my February and March archives when I switched to Blogger Pro. PJ was able to salvage them in text form, but I can't bring myself to take the time to repost six weeks of year-old posts that I doubt will ever be read.

Also, note that I moved to Moveable Type last summer. Therefore, headlines before, say, August, were generated automatically. So some of them are merely the first six words or so of each post.

The numbers below are traffic numbers for late March of last year (which, to be fair, didn't include the traffic I get from a Fox column), from April of last year, and for comparison, the latest numbers from January of this year:

March 2002.
April 2002.
January 2003.

Or you can just click here, and peruse all the numbers.

Not bad. From about 15 unique visitors per weekday to about 2,000.

As of yesterday, the Blogstreet website ranked TheAgitator.com number 377 out of 80,614 weblogs. By my calculations, that puts us in the top .46 % of blogsites on the web.

Alexa says we're ready to break into the top 100,000 of websites on the Net.

And we just had our 4,000th comment.

OK. So there's the gloating.

Now, how 'bout some "greatest hits?" These would be the posts and columns that generated the most buzz, traffic, comments, etc. They are:

Social Security: Nursing Gen-X Apathy
My first Fox column. Actually, it ran in December of 2001, a couple of months before I started up the website.

A Day at the Protests, April 20, 2002.

Firsthand account of my day amongst the anti-globo protesters.
Part I
Part II
Here's the Tech Central Station column that came of the day.

Wealthy? Give Me a (Tax) Break!, April 10, 2002.

Fox column describing my surprise at being deemed "wealthy" by the IRS. Triggered lots of email and this appearance on Fox News Channel.

Drug War Casualties, May 23, 2002.

Way too much went on with this one to summarize. Investigative piece I wrote for FoxNews.com that generated a ton of mail, eventually was pulled from Fox, and damn near got me sued. I'd have won, of course. If you have a few hours and want to fill yourself in, the approporiate links are below.

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI (this is the column itself)
Part VII
Part VIII
Part IX
Part X
Part XI
Part XII
Part XIII
Part XIV
Part XV
Part XVI
Part XVII
Part XVIII
Part XIX

There will be a part XX, too. A major magazine will be running a lengthy piece on the Straight, Inc. saga in May.

Soda, Pop or Coke?, July 7, 2002

A map breaking down which regions of the country use which words struck me as similar to the Election 2000 map. I did a poor man's anaylsis. Ended up being my post trafficked post to date.

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V

Pork Addicts and Hypocrites: The Fallacy of HOV Lanes, May 23, 2002

What I thought was a fairly dry, but journlism-heavy piece for Tech Central somehow caught some key links and sent a swarm of traffic to the TCS site.

Trying to Throw His Arms Around the World: Bono and Foreign Aid, June 17, 2002.

Generated mountains of hate mail from Bono-philes.

Tomorrow's News, Yesterday, July 17, 2002

I'm including this satirical bit just because it's one of my favorite pieces I've written. It didn't really generate much buzz, but parts of it (read the graphs about Trent Lott) proved fairly prophetic -- even better when you consider that the whole piece was about the day the Net (and blogs) became prophetic.

Government Worse Accountant Than Corporations, August 1, 2002

I wrote this during the brouhaha over corporate governance. This, and the column below mustered close to a thousand email responses.

Paycheck Withholding: A Con on Taxpayers, August 29, 2002

Sent Charlotte Twight's book to #25 on Amazon.com.

Freedom Rock!, October 17, 2002

The libertarian's mix CD. Made lots of listservs and libertarian portals. I got feedback on this one from lots of smart, prominent libertarians, many of whom I never thought I'd get the opportunity to speak to, much less have reading my blog. Was fun to write, too.

The Swedish Invasion, November 27, 2002.

I've been meaning to ask Tech Central to pull this. This might be called a "lowlight." In an effort to be cute, I made a number of mistakes in this piece (I misread the Swedish unemployment charts for one. Not to mention that I credited Sweden for having produced the Vines -- it was Australia.) Yes, I need to tell Tech Central to pull it down. The mistakes aren't excusable, but I still don't think they seriously undermine the premise of the piece.

Targetting the Social Drinker is Just MADD, December 9, 2002.

First hit with a big paper.

Trent Lott's Lost Power, December 18, 2002.

Lots of hate mail.

Tiger Woods: Inactivist of the Year

Pretty proud of this one, too. One of my better conceived and tighter columns, I think. A little humor thrown in, too.

I guess that's about it. Unless you have requests. I'll leave you with my very, very first post, on February 13th of last year:

I guess today marks the unofficial launch of "The Agitator." A few thoughts on the name. I thought about "radleybalko.com," but decided it didn't have much marketing potential. So I faced the dilemma of trying to come up with something fairly catchy that hadn't already been thought of and/or bought up by the couple hundred or so million people who already have Web pages, or who squat domain names for a living. I've been reading quite a bit lately on Thomas Paine. Save for a few regrettable positions he took late in life, Paine's become something of a hero of mine. And one root almost always associated with Paine is "agitate." He was an "agitator for freedom," he "agitated" the crown, he was pretty much an agitator of power wherever he found it. He helped convince a nation of Calvinists to along with the American Revolution, then pissed most of them off in "Rights of Man," where he warned against theocracy.

I got to thinking that most of the people I admire throughout history have geen agitators of one kind or another. The founding fathers of course agitated to the point of revolution. Abolitionists, suffragists, civil rights leaders -- all were pests -- hornets at somebody's picnic. When you think about it, most of the people throughout history who we remember fondly, we remember because of discoveries, statements, writings, art or acts that irritated the kings, clergy or intelligensia.

Of course, the move to agitate has to be of pure motivation -- knowlege or liberty, I'd say. Some of history's great bastards are agitators, too. Today, the writers and political leaders and pundits I like most tend to be contrarians. The people who keep power on its toes. Not always. But mostly.

So "The Agitator" makes sense. More importantly, it was available.

The Styx tune wins Brink's "worst rock song" contest. Most important, Brink's summary of what truly qualfies as a "worst rock song:"

Brian Doherty raises a philosophical objection to my whole conception of what makes a bad rock song. He says the really bad songs are not the goofball, quirky ones, but the bland, soulless, derivative drivel. Of course he's right, if by "worst" you mean the songs you really wish had never been written. But that's not how I think of bad rock songs. The truly bad ones are treasures: They're the ones you love to hate, the ones that fill you with life-affirming joy as you rain down scorn and derision on them. The difference between mediocre dreck and the truly godawful is the difference between Jerry Bruckheimer and Ed Wood -- the former is just a waste of time, while the latter is something for the ages.

The headline says "Savage Sought for MSNBC Slot."

Excited, I was. Dan Savage with his own TV show? Intriguing!

Alas. The Savage in question was Michael, the right wing talk radio nut, not Dan, the colorful sex advice columnist.

Note to MSNBC: You can't out-Fox Fox. Want to climb out of the ratings basement? Find your own niche.

How 'bout the first blog-related TV show? Hmmm....

...this nice shout-out from the InstaMan on his new MSNBC blog-like thingy.

"Kill Jews if you must. Just please don't kill donkeys in the process."

The new rightist daily New York Sun newspaper just lost all it's creditbility.

The protesters probably do have a claim under the right to free speech. Never mind that it’s not the speech that the city is objecting to — it’s the marching in the streets, blocking traffic, and requiring massive police protection.

So long as the protesters are invoking the Constitution, they might have a look at Article III. That says, “Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.”

There can be no question at this point that Saddam Hussein is an enemy of America. Iraq was the only Arab-Muslim country that did not condemn the September 11 attacks against the United States. A commentary of the official Iraqi station on September 11 stated that America was “…reaping the fruits of [its] crimes against humanity.” A government employee in Iraq reacted to the loss this month of the space shuttle Columbia by telling Reuters, “God is avenging us.”

And there is no reason to doubt that the “anti-war” protesters — we prefer to call them protesters against freeing Iraq — are giving, at the very least, comfort to Saddam Hussein.

Watch Jerry Taylor destroy this Maryland state senator who wants to ban parents from smoking in their own automobiles.

(Link goes to video.)

Slowly move back from your computer. Do you see her? Pretty neat, eh? If I had place to live right now I'd buy one, and hang it there.

More here. Warning: this is the tamest painting on the page. Probably not a work-safe click, unless your boss is nearsighted.

We've survived one full revolution around the sun, gang.

TheAgitator.com officially turns one year old on Saturday. I'm giving you advance notice so you can plan your own, private celebrations with your families. It's a special, special season.

Check back here for cool retro-anniversary stuff.

(Hint: What were people wearing way back when TheAgitator.com launched? What was the price of milk? Who was in the White House?)

John Hawkins at Right Wing News is running his own blog awards, the "Warblogger Awards." He asked yours truly to be one of the hundred or so voters (er..."The Academy," if you will). I'm honored, though I'd qualify my votes by noting that I'm probably neither right wing, nor a warblogger (warblogger meaning a blogger who supports the war).

Nevertheless, I dutifully submitted my ballot, which went thusly:

The Funniest Blog: Neal Pollack

The Most Bloodthirsty Blog: Cold Fury

The Best Original Content For A Blog: Julian Sanchez

The Best Fisker: Mickey Kaus

Best Female Blogger: Dumb category. No vote.

Best Group Blog: Hit and Run

Best Looking Webpage: Reverse Cowgirl (for obvious reasons)

Most Underrated (Which blog do you think gets far less credit than it deserves?): Instapundit. Just kidding. Post Politics.

Favorite Editorial Writer Who's Not A Blogger: Nat Hentoff

Most Missed (The best blog that's out of business now): I can't think of one.

Best Linker (Which blog has the most interesting links to other pages?): Joanne McNeil

Best Unknown Blog (The best blog few other people have heard of): Alina Stefansescu

Best Non-American Blog: Libertarian Samizdata

The Least Annoying Left Of Center Blogger: Talk Left

Most Annoying Blogger: Richard Bennett

Most Overrated Blog: Brad DeLong

Name Your Favorite Member Of The Bush Administration Other Than Bush: Paul O'Neil. Oh. Wait a minute...

The Best Blog Overall (5 Selections Allowed):

Jim Henley
Hit and Run
Instapundit
Libertarian Samizdata
Talk Left

I also suggested a few extra categories:

Best Story Broken by a Blogger: John Lott/Mary Rosh -- Julian Sanchez/Marie Gryphon

Best College Blog: Hoosier Review, The Bitch Girls

Biggest Blog-Related News Story: Trent Lott

Best Blog Focusing on Local Issues: Bill Hobbs, Chip Taylor

Best Anti-war blog: Gene Healy, Jim Henley, Alina Stefanescu

Best Blog By Someone Already in Journalism: Geitner Simmons

Best Sensible Drug Policy Blog: Mark Kleiman

Best Virginia Postrel Memorial "Blog Magazine" (Infrequently updated blogs that would otherwise merit mention elsewhere): Brink Lindsey, Will Wilkinson.

...from the drug war. Note that the feds moved to have Rosenthall imprisoned immediately. Note that Rosenthall was growing pot for the city of Oakland. Note the smell of dung in the air.

That's the headline to an article from the Onion hall of fame.

But Gene Healy says it's true. Smoking is cool. And cool people either a) smoke, or, b) hang out with people who do.

Mary Rosh -- quickly becoming the Internet's favorite fictional sweetheart -- made the pages of Slate, U.S. News, and Michelle Malkin's synicated column.

I hear that she's now dating Julian Sanchez.

Tomorrow night.

7 pm. Rendezvous Lounge at 18th and Kalorama.

I'll be the little kid with the megaphone.

Time to update the ol' resume. TheAgitator.com was mentioned in none other than Beef Magazine.

This should not be confused with my upcoming photo spread in Beefcake Magazine.

How cold is it?

No, it's not another light-bulb-genre joke.

Read here, if you're up for some afternoon fun-with-backward-thinkers.

Note the difficulty all are having figuring out just what a "blog" is.

(BTW, link goes to a white supremacist site. Might want to skip it if you're at work.)

From a CBS interview with Ted Turner:

“I don’t think my father was abusive - my father was a strict disciplinarian, but he and I were extremely close,” says Turner, who adds that his father used to beat him with a wire coat hanger. “He made me spank him one night and – and that was very, very hard… It was much easier to be spanked than to spank your father.”

Thanks to reader Chris "Holy Schnikies" Farley for the link.

Fark! users make a photoshop contest out of an old forwarded email gag.

The Center for Consumer Freedom's 2002 Awards for nanny state alarmism.

Mo Dowd's running with the story this morning.

Very cool.

The annotated American Pie -- the Don McLean song, not the movie, which I thought was straightforward enough that it didn't need annotation. And by "Don McLean," I mean the singer of American Pie, not the ex-UCLA basketball star.

Just do the poor chap a favor. Forward the link to interested friends and family. But tell them that, if given the chance, they should never, ever ask the guy what the song "means." From what I've read, he's likely to be asked that question just a few more times before he snaps.

(Link via Hoosier Review.)

That's a Tim Buckley reference. How many of you caught it?

Jeremy Lott isn't happy with my Peggy Noonan/Dolphins post below. He writes:

I like Radley Balko but whenever he strays onto the topic of religion, he has a particular fetish for shoe leather. In response to a (rather lame) poem about God's mysterious ways, along with some stupid speculation about the space shuttle explosion, he opines, "No, I don't think it's entirely fair or accurate to compare Islamic zealots (loopy, dangerous, usually murderous) with Christian zealots (wacky, downright loopy at times, but not usually savage or murderous). But honestly, sometimes the Christian right crowd begs for the comparison." (Yeah, please compare us to the Taliban. No, really, we like being lumped in with misogynists and murderers.)

In response to a (rather lame) poem...

Well, not a poem really. Lyrics to a bubblegum Matthew Sweet song. A great tune, but no, not exactly profound. But that was sorta' the point.

...along with some stupid speculation about the space shuttle explosion, he opines, "No, I don't think it's entirely fair or accurate to compare Islamic zealots (loopy, dangerous, usually murderous) with Christian zealots (wacky, downright loopy at times, but not usually savage or murderous).

Jeremy adds emphasis to the "not usually" part of my description of Christian zealots as savage or murderous. I'm not sure why he objects to the language I used. I was distinguishing Islamic radicals, who generally are rather barbarous, from Christian radicals, who generally aren't. Would Jeremy rather I have written that Christian radicals are never, ever dangerous or murderous or savage? Mmmm. No. I can think of a few widows of abortion doctors who might beg to differ. That just wouldn't have been accurate. Note, I didn't write that all Christians are crazy or wacky or loopy. And I certainly didn't write that all Christians are murderous or barbarous or savage. I wrote that Christian zealots tend to be wacky and goofy (like all most religous radicals, in my opinion), but that they aren't usually dangerous.

...But honestly, sometimes the Christian right crowd begs for the comparison." (Yeah, please compare us to the Taliban. No, really, we like being lumped in with misogynists and murderers.)...

Well, let's see...

Iraqis say the Space Shuttle Columbia's breakup was an "act of God," and we all laught at their silly, radical, unreasoned superstition. But, then, Christian bloggers say that the Space Shuttle Columbia's breakup over a town called "Palestine" 'twas an "act of God," and, what?, I'm supposed to take them seriously? What, really, is the difference between the two, other than that one stems from Muslim mysticism and the other from Christian mysticism?

Jeremy concludes...

Balko then proceeds to ridicule Peggy Noonan for writing that she believed Elian Gonzalez's rescue was a product of divine intervention. Then he asks, "But then, why would God let Elian be sent back to Cuba--a remnant of Reagan's Soviet-spawned evil empire--particularly at the behest of she-devil Janet Reno?" The kicker: "HE works in mysterious ways, I guesss."

Look, some people "get" religion; others don't. The thing that pisses me off about so many secularists isn't that they believe what they believe. It's that they look with disdain upon those who believe something different than they do. According to Balko, religion is a very silly idea, espoused by very silly people, who should promptly knock it off and all think like he does. Somehow that doesn't strike me as a very libertarian approach, let alone a tolerant one.

I certainly don't look with disdain or contempt at anyone who takes his faith seriously (though, taking a lesson from Rand, I do think religion is partly resonsible for society's obsession with humanitarianism -- which causes far more harm than good, and, correspondingly, its contempt for selfishness -- which, IMHO, is the secret to human prosperity).

Frankly, I'm rather, well, agnostic on the matter. A strong personal faith generally strikes me to think neither more or less of a person. It's how it motivates them to act, I guess, that matters. My own personal experience in fact shows a bit of a dichotomy. People who I've later found to be of strong personal faith have been people who, upon first meeting, have tended to keep it to themselves. Conversely, I've found that the louder and more obnoxious folks are about their God stuff, the less likely they are to abide by the morality they lay down for the rest of us.

That's just a general impression, of course. I'm sure that if pressed I could name a handful of exceptions on both ends.

But I do think it's best to keep personal faith out of public policy. And if you're going to prosyletize on the op-ed pages, particularly about divinely-summoned dolphins rescuing little boys from sea to prove that America is God's Country, yes, I think you're asking for a little ridicule.

Same thing if you're opining in on, say, NRO, about the possibility that God made the Space Shuttle blow up to send a message about what He thinks U.S. policy should be in the Middle East.

Megan McArdle thanks the Republican party for its concern.

Reminds me of a letter I got a few years back from the Christian Coaltion. It said something to the effect of "Thanks you for your generous donation of $0.00 dollars last year. We hope you'll continue to..."

I wrote back.

Something to the effect of "Dear Mr. Tate... [Randy Tate was the Exec. Director at the time]. You're certainly welcome. Consider my donation to be an accurate measure of my support for your organization. In fact, I plan to triple my donation next year."

A World Connected compares Japan's Toyota Corporation, beneficiary of liberal (read: open, free, desirable) trade policies, to India's Hindustan Motors, longtime "beneficiary" of oppressive, protectionist policies. With comical results.

More on protectionism tomorrow. Specifically, a few fun things I learned from listening to Cato's Dan Griswold lecture yesterday.

Tom G. Palmer with sage thoughts on....

...Columbia

...Virginia's law enforcement priorities

...collective rights.

So a baby seal walks into a bar.

Bartender says, "What'll it be?"

Baby seal says, "Anything but a Canadian Club."

....or does this picture give anyone else a case of the warm and fuzzies?

Once again, to slightly paraphrase Thomas Friedman, "no two countries (save for the one Clinton shamelessly bombed to save his political ass) with a McDonalds have ever gone to war."

Who wants to open a franchise in Baghdad with me?

But I'm defending one this time. Sort of.

This piece of scrud is disgusting and vile and abhorrent and bigoted. About what you'd expect from Taki, the bankroller for Pat Buchanan's new rag, The American Conservative. Bonus nastiness points for a) referring to himself in the third person, and, b) almost stumbling onto, and therefore nearly ruining, a legitimate argument (the correlation between crime and the welfare state).

But this? It's even worse.

So lemme get this straight, Mr. Attorney General...

You once gave an interview to the neo-confederate Southern Partisan magazine in which you droned on about "states' rights." Given the magazine's political proclivities, that would presumably include the right to buy and sell black people.

But when it comes to the "rights" of states to let sick people use marijuana to help them feel better, it's time to call in the federal thugs, eh?

Just so we're clear....

...for the housing lead, Joanne.

But I'm not sure I have what these guys want.

Picasso's brutal depiction of the agony of war is being censored by the U.N. Seems that a reproduction of the work that once hung in a press area of the U.N. building has been covered up in advance of U.S. diplomats' plans to make the case for war in the room later this week.

We can't have an artist's portrayal of war's atrocities hanging in the background just as our leaders are building alliances, now can we?

So by some unspeakable stroke of horrible, horrible luck, I was told by my roommate today that our landlord would like to take our apartment for himself. We've been asked to move out by March.

That would be my new apartment. That would be the apartment that I just moved into three fucking days ago, the apartment into which I just yesterday unpacked the last load of my stuff.

Is there a God of rental properties? And have I done something to anger Him?

I give up.

I'll be on Washington/Baltimore radio today at 5:34pm ET.

It'll be the Don Kroah show on 105.1 FM if you're in the area.

If you're not in the area, you can listen live by clicking here.

I'll be discussing this column.

Remember all those highly personal but very important census questions back in 2000, such as, "how do you get to work every day?"

Gub'mint's excuse went something like, "we need this kind of demographic data so we know how to allocate resources."

So I guess that means that Indianapolis can expect a couple million from the feds to keep up its mass transit subway, ferry and trolley systems.

Even though...um...Indy doesn't have a subway. Or a ferry. Or a trolley.

Q: How many typical blog comments section posters does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Four. One to change the light bulb, one to accidentaly change it again, one to apologize for changing the light bulb twice, and one to apologize for the apology.

That's the breakdown, per U.S. citizen, of President Bush's $2.23 trillion dollar budget.

I cannot understand my God
I don't know why it gets to me
One day my life is filled with joy
And then we find we disagree
All depending on his
Divine Intervention

Does he love us does he love us?
Does he love us does he love us?
I look around and all I see is destruction
We're all counting on his
Divine Intervention

--Matthew Sweet, "Divine Intervention"

I suppose it's only natural that people turn to faith in times of despair. But really, isn't this getting a little bit ridiculous? Let's turn the tables a bit. Why do some of us chuckle at the absurdity of this but think plausible just as absurd scenarios as this one?

No, I don't think it's entirely fair or accurate to compare Islamic zealots (loopy, dangerous, usually murderous) with Christian zealots (wacky, downright loopy at times, but not usually savage or murderous).

But honestly, sometimes the Christian right crowd begs for the comparison.

I find it appropriate that NRO's Rod Dreher linked his comment on the Columbia coincidences to a piece by Peggy Noonan. This is the same woman, you might remember, who postulated on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal a few years ago that Elian Gonzalez was rescued at sea by miraculous dolphins sent by Jesus Christ himself (personally, I think they were summoned by Aquaman, at the behest of the Justice League, who dispatched Aquaman after catching Elian's adorable but imperiled mug on the league's giant "Trouble Alert" monitors).

But then, why would God let Elian be sent back to Cuba -- a remnant of Reagan's Soviet-spawned evil empire -- particularly at the behest of she-devil Janet Reno?

HE works in mysterious ways, I guess.

More on this from Julian.

I'm terza rima, and I talk and smile. Where others lock their rhymes and thoughts away I let mine out, and chatter all the while. I'm rarely on my own - a wasted day Is any day that's spent without a friend, With nothing much to do or hear or say. I like to be with people, and depend On company for being entertained; Which seems a good solution, in the end. What Poetry Form Are You?

Gorgeous night in D.C. last night. Upper 40s, sunny, perfect running weather. I did about 6 miles last night, a breeze after being confined to the God-awful treadmill for two months. Here's what streamed through
my super-cool Nike armband MP3 player thingy:

Buffalo River Home, John Hiatt

Go Faster, The Black Crowes
"Saw what I came to see/I don't wanna' see no more/I don't think it's diseased,/but it sure is sore."

Let It Roll, Little Feat
Ooh, she's like a smooth stretch of highway,/like a cool summer breeze./If my baby's running right,/we might lose control tongiht..."

Tough It Out, Webb Wilder

Joy!, Gay Dad

Outsmarted, The Hives

Communication, INXS

Stand, Blues Traveler

Spread Your Love, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

I Woke Up This Morning, The Mooney Suzuki

By the way, some of you asked what I think of the Nike player. I do recommend it, because there's nothing else like it on the market. But it has a few flaws. First, short battery life. Second, no "shuffle" or "random" option. Third, the software they enclose for ripping is very basic. It's terribly slow, and if you don't want to wait an hour for each CD to rip, you have to pay extra for an upgrade. Finally, the earphones are awful. I got so tired of them falling out of my ears that I went out and sprung for another pair.

Still, if you already have a hard drive full of MP3s, or don't mind waiting for the ripping, it'll quickly become indespensable if you're a run-to-music kind of person.

Gregg Easterbrook think so.

I say privatize it.

Ugh.

Note that the stuff that killed him was legal.

I bet we'll see more of this kind of thing. And I bet that sooner or later, someone's going to start demanding we do something about it.

In truth, there's really nothing we can -- or should -- do about it. At least collectively. The kid was a dumbshit. And there will always be dumbshits willing to do dumbshit things to impress other dumbshits.

Thank you, Thomas Friedman. I was having such a hard time with the fact that my opposition to the war with Iraq had put me squarely in the same camp as the Germans (historical guardians of peaceful turn-the-other-cheek-ism, right?) and, worse, the French (noted historically for their stoic guardianship of liberty, and their bold stands against oppression, right?). Friedman draws a clear and distinct line between principled war opposition and Euro war opposition.

Thank goodness. I feel clean again.

I'll excerpt at length, but I encourage you to read the whole darned thing.

BRUSSELS -- Last week I went to lunch at the Hotel Schweizerhof in Davos, Switzerland, and discovered why America and Europe are at odds. At the bottom of the lunch menu was a list of the countries that the lamb, beef and chicken came from. But next to the meat imported from the U.S. was a tiny asterisk, which warned that it might contain genetically modified organisms — G.M.O.'s.

My initial patriotic instinct was to order the U.S. beef and ask for it "tartare," just for spite. But then I and my lunch guest just looked at each other and had a good laugh. How quaint! we said. Europeans, out of some romantic rebellion against America and high technology, were shunning U.S.-grown food containing G.M.O.'s — even though there is no scientific evidence that these are harmful. But practically everywhere we went in Davos, Europeans were smoking cigarettes — with their meals, coffee or conversation — even though there is indisputable scientific evidence that smoking can kill you. In fact, I got enough secondhand smoke just dining in Europe last week to make me want to have a chest X-ray.

So pardon me if I don't take seriously all the Euro-whining about the Bush policies toward Iraq — for one very simple reason: It strikes me as deeply unserious. It's not that there are no serious arguments to be made against war in Iraq. There are plenty. It's just that so much of what one hears coming from German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and French President Jacques Chirac are not serious arguments. They are station identification.

They are not the arguments of people who have really gotten beyond the distorted Arab press and tapped into what young Arabs are saying about their aspirations for democracy and how much they blame Saddam Hussein and his ilk for the poor state of their region. Rather, they are the diplomatic equivalent of smoking cancerous cigarettes while rejecting harmless G.M.O.'s — an assertion of identity by trying to be whatever the Americans are not, regardless of the real interests or stakes.

And where this comes from, alas, is weakness. Being weak after being powerful is a terrible thing. It can make you stupid. It can make you reject U.S. policies simply to differentiate yourself from the world's only superpower. Or, in the case of Mr. Chirac, it can even prompt you to invite Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe — a terrible tyrant — to visit Paris just to spite Tony Blair. Ah, those principled French.

This Economist interview with the brilliant capitalist is getting some deserved play around the blogosphere. The nut: fight terrorism with capitalism, but to make capitalism work, we need to make the poor feel as if they're part of the system, not the pulp the system spits out. My favorite line in the article, however, is this one:

Marx and Engels, Mr de Soto's pet dogs, were so named because “they are German, hairy and have no respect for property”. It is a carefully chosen joke, for respect for property is at the heart of Mr de Soto's economic creed..."

Brink Lindsey wants your nominations.

I'll need to give this some thought. But just off the top of my head, Toni Basil's "Mickey" comes to mind.

Here are the numbers.

Nicely done, gang. Up about 25% from December. We're pulling in 1,729 people per day, 1,927 per day on weekdays. And we rarely get under 1,000 people on a given day, even on weekends.

My plan to take over the world continues apace.

I know I promised I wouldn't criticize celebrities for speaking out on politics, but come on...isn't this a bit much?

Check out this AP story, written just minutes before the explosion.

Also, this guy can go to hell. Arrogance? Damn straight, arrogance.

Jim Henley is right. What's most unfortunate about the Columbia tragedy is that none of us will remember this morning's events with the same clarity and vividness that we remember Challenger. That's sad for the heroes who died this morning, who were of course every bit the fearless explorers their martyred predecessors were.

I'm afraid also that this will set back U.S. space exlporation indefinitely. And that's awful. The problem is that we have one federally-appointed agency that closely guards the window to the great beyond. You want to get to space in the U.S., you go through NASA. Now that NASA's hurting, and will almost certainly halt all its missions far into the forseeable future, it's probably safe to say that space exploration's on semi-permanent hiatus.

I'll withhold the urge to make political hay of this, but if it's political hay you're hungry for, here's a piece I did on NASA several months ago.

Maybe the best thing to do now is to reprint two speeches that have been invoked elsewhere in the blogosphere. The first is the speech Ronald Reagan gave after the Challenger explosion. The second is, thankfully, a speech never given. It's the speech Richard Nixon would hav given had the Apollo XI crew not come home. Both are excellent reminders of why the pursuit of knowledge and discovery is every bit worth the risk and losses we took morning and two decades ago.

Reagan:

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd planned to speak to you tonight to report on the state of the union, but the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans. Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country. This is truly a national loss.

Nineteen years ago, almost to the day, we lost three astronauts in a terrible accident on the ground. But we've never lost an astronaut in flight; we've never had a tragedy like this. And perhaps we've forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle; but they, the Challenger Seven, were aware of the dangers, but overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly. We mourn seven heroes: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. We mourn their loss as a nation together.

For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we're thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, "Give me a challenge and I'll meet it with joy." They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us.

We've grown used to wonders in this century. It's hard to dazzle us. But for 25 years the United States space program has been doing just that. We've grown used to the idea of space, and perhaps we forget that we've only just begun. We're still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.

And I want to say something to the school children of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's takeoff. I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them.

I've always had great faith in and respect for our space program, and what happened today does nothing to diminish it. We don't hide our space program. We don't keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That's the way freedom is, and we wouldn't change it for a minute. We'll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue.

I want to add that I wish I could talk to every man and woman who works for NASA or who worked on this mission and tell them: "Your dedication and professionalism have moved and impressed us for decades. And we know of your anguish. We share it."

There's a coincidence today. On this day 390 years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, "He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it." Well, today we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake's, complete.

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God."

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind's most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.

In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man's search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.

For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.

I'd also recommend reading Carl Sagan's wonderful book, Cosmos. It's almost 25 years old now. It's a bit dated, and Sagan's socialist politics poke through here and there. But it's terribly inspiring, grandly written, and a great reminder of how important it is that we continue to extend the boundaries of the human footprint.

Julian's cyber-sleuthing in the John Lott affair has been picked up by the Washington Post, and will appear in an upcoming issue of U.S. News and World Report.

The story is really too bizarre for words. I'm thinking now that "Mary Rosh" would be a great name for a band.

Jesse Walker, with a primer on "neoconservatives."