ANOTHER WIN for Lance Armstrong. Some people were spitting mad about it.

HOWARD KURTZ NOTES SOME MEDIA SPIN:

Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV’s allegations that President Bush misled the country about Saddam Hussein seeking uranium from Africa was a huge media story, fueled by an investigation into who outed his CIA-operative wife. According to a database search, NBC carried 40 stories, CBS 30 stories, ABC 18, The Washington Post 96, the New York Times 70, the Los Angeles Times 48.

But a Senate Intelligence Committee report that contradicts some of Wilson’s account and supports Bush’s State of the Union claim hasn’t received nearly as much attention. “NBC Nightly News” and ABC’s “World News Tonight” have each done a story. But CBS hasn’t reported it — despite a challenge by Republican Chairman Ed Gillespie on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” noting that the network featured Wilson on camera 15 times. A spokeswoman says CBS is looking into the matter.

Ed Morrissey offers a handy — and striking — chart of who’s covered what, and more importantly who hasn’t, and observes: “Either this demonstrates a severe liberal bias in the media, or a mass epidemic of attention-deficit disorder amongst American journalists.”

To quote Mickey Kaus: “Yoo hoo! Poynter people! Over here.” . . . Though they seem to be missing in action on this story, as well.

And Wilson’s missing, too — from Kerry’s website.

UPDATE: Rand Simberg suggests that Media Attention Deficit Disorder calls for a massive government program aimed at finding a cure.

SILENT RUNNING has its regular roundup of Sunday talking-head shows.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL has interviewed some of the Convention bloggers and published the results. There are photos, too.

ROGER SIMON writes on the “Zabar’s zeitgeist.”

That explains it. I was always more of a Balducci’s guy. Either way, it’s a niche market.

SANDY BERGER UPDATE — very interesting plot twist:

Berger has acknowledged removing his handwritten notes taken during a review of classified documents. That’s a violation of National Archives policy. And he says he mistakenly took the copies of the aforementioned memo, different drafts written by Bush-bashing anti-terrorism coordinator Richard A. Clarke. Some of those copies remain missing.

But a new scenario has Berger, who only took notes on an initial visit last fall, placing material — again, related to the millennium terrorists threats — into the files on his second and third visits.

Plus, there’s this interesting development:

And adding an entirely new layer of intrigue to the story is word that telephone calls made by Berger during those latter two visits may have been monitored by an “unauthorized agency.”

Hmm. Who might that be, I wonder? (Via Dave J.)

THE MARRIAGE PROTECTION ACT doesn’t seem to do anything to, you know, protect marriage, despite the claims of its supporters. At least, I don’t think it’s making my marriage any safer. And I don’t see that it makes marriage as an institution safer, either.

I also think that it’s of dubious constitutionality, and even more dubious wisdom. I’m not sure that it’s even tactically smart from a political sense — but I suppose I could be wrong about that.

HUGH HEWITT’S NEW BOOK has risen onto the New York Times bestseller list. Quoth Hugh: “I’ll take #35 and a mention over #36 and anonymity any day. Print off a copy and take it with you on your book store hunt for the book.” He credits the blogosphere.

JOHN STOSSEL ON JOHN EDWARDS: Reportedly, Barbara Walters didn’t like this piece.

JOHN KERRY ON TERRORISM: “Oddly passive.”

SOME POTENTIAL FOREIGN POLICY LESSONS — first, this report on Arafat and The Wall:

Palestinian businessmen have made millions of dollars supplying cement for Israel’s controversial wall with the full knowledge of Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader and one of the wall’s most vocal critics.

A damning report by Palestinian legislators, which has been seen by The Sunday Telegraph, concludes that Arafat did nothing to stop the deals although he publicly condemned the structure as a “crime against humanity”.

The report claims that the cement was sold with the knowledge of senior officials at the Palestinian ministry of national economy, and close advisers to Arafat.

It concludes that officials were bribed to issue import licences for the cement to importers and businessmen working for Israelis.

No wonder he gets along so well with Jacques Chirac:

When French presidents invoke “the national interest,” often as not it means they’ve cut a deal they’d really rather not explain. But when Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan came courting President Jacques Chirac in Paris last week, hoping the ever-reluctant French would back Turkey’s bid to join the European Union, the cash-and-carry policymaking was right out front.

As one senior Turkish official told NEWSWEEK, the intention was to “spread a package of economic benefits” before Chirac that “France could not reject.” Sure enough, Turkish Airlines announced it would purchase 36 Airbus planes worth more than $1.5 billion. Erdogan also hinted he might be in the market for France’s big-ticket nuclear technology. And just as surely, after years of implicit opposition and fence-straddling, Chirac suddenly decided that support for Turkey’s candidacy suits “the national interests” of France.

Perhaps we should switch our foreign policy approach to a mixture of bribes and beheadings. It seems to work.

BY NOW, everybody in the blogosphere knows that Wonkette will be covering the Democratic Convention for MTV. Some people wonder how a blogger can rise so high, so fast, and some of them think it’s because Ana Marie Cox is more attractive than your average blogger. But me, I credit the much-coveted Cappozzolaunch!

“BOUNCED BLOGGERS” — a piece on bloggers who didn’t get to blog the Democratic Convention.

ERIC MULLER has more criticisms of Daniel Okrent’s apologia:

An unashamed product of the city whose name it bears? Since when is the paper called “The Manhattan South of About 120th Street Times?” The notion that the Times’s coverage (especially its cultural, fashion, and social coverage, which is mostly what Okrent writes about today) reflects the interests of most of the people who live in Northern Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx, and Brooklyn, and damned near all of the people who live in Staten Island, is laughable. The truth is that the New York Times (in its cultural, fashion, and social coverage) is a newspaper that is an unashamed product of a segment of the city whose name it bears.

More comments on Okrent here and note Ed Morrissey’s observation:

If the Times merely represented itself as a city newspaper, I’d buy that. But the Times holds itself out as “The Paper of Record”, a national newspaper with national coverage and impact. If the Times truly wants to be that, then the editors need to quit relying on The Big Apple as The Big Excuse and position the paper to reflect its market. Otherwise, with Okrent’s admission, it can no longer claim to be the Paper of Record, but the Paper of the Liberal Mindset, analogous to the fine but overtly slanted London Guardian, the mouthpiece of the Labourites.

I think Okrent’s column may actually mark the first step toward such a move, perhaps as part of a downsizing and re-branding effort dictated by market forces. The New York Times as a paper that serves a niche market? It’s already become that. They’re just recognizing it.

I wonder, though, if the new version of the paper will be able to afford a subscription to Google?

UPDATE: Patterico, however, is praising Okrent’s piece and suggests that the Los Angeles Times could learn from his example.

THEY KNOW IT WHEN THEY SEE IT:

Michael Moore’s contentious film Fahrenheit 9/11 has opened in Poland, with some film critics likening it to totalitarian propaganda.

Gazeta Wyborcza reviewer Jacek Szczerba called the film a “foul pamphlet”.

He said it was too biased to be called a documentary and was similar to Nazi propaganda director Leni Riefenstahl. . . .

“In criticising Moore, I have to admit that he has certain abilities – Leni Riefenstahl had them too,” Mr Szczerba said in his review.

Ouch. Ann Althouse observes:

It is heartening to see that exposure to propaganda breeds resistance to it.

There are many huge differences between Moore and Leni Riefenstahl, though. Quite aside from the fact that she was working in support of Hitler and Moore is working against Bush (and Bush is no Hitler, despite some noise to the contrary), Riefenstahl would have snorted at the lack of artistry in Moore’s work.

No doubt.

BLOGGERS AT WAR: Porphyrogenitus survived basic training and offers some observations, though he’s now off at Advanced Individual Training.

ISRAEL CREATES an all-female combat air squadron — and there’s some interesting speculation as to its mission.

UPDATE: I don’t know if any squadron members are shown here.

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY LIBERAL DOCUMENTARIES, and so few conservative or libertarian ones? That’s a question asked in this article from the Washington Post.

One reason, of course, is lack of infrastructure — film festivals, distributors, and powers-that-be in general tend to give films that take the “wrong” stance a chilly reception. I don’t expect to see Michael Wilson at Sundance, for example.

But the article does ask: “why couldn’t there be, for example, a documentary about the rise of political correctness on American campuses? ”

Why, indeed?

UPDATE: Larry Ribstein thinks that the market for documentaries is inherently left-leaning. I’m not so sure about that.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT: A controversial film that makes the White House look bad? Can’t have that, says the American Film Institute. We’re patriots!

TOM MAGUIRE notes a major factual failure at The New York Times. (“Too bad they don’t have Google – maybe the Times could spring for a subscription.”)

I wonder if this is connected to Okrent’s admission?

ED DRISCOLL notes a Daniel Okrent admission. “Okrent’s admission has repercussions throughout virtually all of America’s media.”

GUINNESS ICE CREAM? Why not?

ANOTHER ITEM FROM THE ONION turns out to be eerily prophetic.

I think I remarked a while back that The Onion wasn’t as funny as it used to be. Maybe it’s not their fault. Maybe the world has just gotten too bizarre for parody. . . .

HORSE. BARN. DOOR:

Officials at the National Archives were so concerned about Samuel R. Berger’s removal of classified documents last year that they imposed new security measures governing the review of sensitive material, including the installation of full-time surveillance cameras, government officials said Friday.

The new policy, issued March 31 to security officers at the archives, lays out toughened steps for safeguarding research rooms used by nongovernmental employees who are given special access to classified material. And it demands “continuous monitoring” of anyone reviewing such material.

The restrictions were put in place as a direct result of the Berger episode, said a government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity surrounding the continuing investigation. . . .

National Archives officials have reached no judgments on Mr. Berger’s motives in removing the documents, and one law enforcement official said, “We don’t know what he was thinking when he did it.”

Nonetheless, officials at the National Archives viewed the episode as troubling enough that they reviewed their security procedures and issued new guidelines for dealing with nongovernmental researchers like Mr. Berger.

Wouldn’t want any more of those inadvertent losses, I guess.

DAVID BROOKS NOTES that the 9/11 Commission is echoing the blogosphere:

We are facing, the report notes, a loose confederation of people who believe in a perverted stream of Islam that stretches from Ibn Taimaya to Sayyid Qutb. Terrorism is just the means they use to win converts to their cause.

It seems like a small distinction – emphasizing ideology instead of terror – but it makes all the difference, because if you don’t define your problem correctly, you can’t contemplate a strategy for victory. . . .

We’ve had an investigation into our intelligence failures; we now need a commission to analyze our intellectual failures. Simply put, the unapologetic defenders of America often lack the expertise they need. And scholars who really know the Islamic world are often blind to its pathologies. They are so obsessed with the sins of the West, they are incapable of grappling with threats to the West.

We also need to mount our own ideological counteroffensive.

He’s right.

UPDATE: Reader M. Simon emails:

It actually started a long time ago. It was recently articulated by an Iraqi. “Democracy, whiskey, sexy.”

Brooks is too smart by half.

OTOH you can’t fool me because I’m too stupid. i.e. The Emperor has no clothes.

Our very being is our best advertisement, offensive, and counter offensive all rolled into one.

Have you forgotten why they hate us?

No. It’s occurred to many other readers that if Saudi oil weren’t in Saudi hands, it would make a big difference, too.

This post by N.Z. Bear from 2002 anticipates Brooks’ point — which doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth making again.

ANN ALTHOUSE CORRECTS BARBARA EHRENREICH: “Being lower middle class doesn’t make you dirty or despicable.”

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT! “Dems bar Nader from Convention.”

SLATE IS FOR SALE, but what I found most interesting was this bit: “Slate drew 4.6 million unique visitors last month.”

I’m not sure how they count it, but some blogs — including this one — aren’t too terribly far behind that number.

DO FREE DOWNLOADS HURT SALES? Well, the 9/11 Commission Report is number one on Amazon even though it’s available for free online.

Not dispositive, I suppose, but interesting.

COLBERT KING writes that Sandy Berger is a test case for governing-class accountability:

Keep the focus where it belongs. Did Sandy Berger violate the rules regarding the protection of classified information entrusted to him, and if he did, will he be held accountable for his actions? . . .

Well, I don’t know Berger or even love him except as my neighbor, in accordance with the Scriptures. But I do know that there are men and women in service to our nation who have paid a dear price for their mishandling of classified materials. They, too, were presumably known and loved by others. Nonetheless, their failure to properly safeguard sensitive information landed them in trouble with their government. Should Sandy Berger, because he is connected, be given a pass for taking classified materials out of the National Archives without permission? . . .

The question is, was Sandy Berger’s violation due to negligence — at best — or was it deliberate — at worst? And should he be held accountable for his actions? Or is he too important and well-connected to be treated like everyone else? What’s the answer, Washington?

What, indeed?

VALERIE PLAME BREACHES SECURITY? Tom Maguire notes a rather odd defense of Joe Wilson. (Read this post from Maguire, too.) They seem to be getting more and more strained.

Add that to Peter Beinart’s on-air crackup over Sandy Berger and this stuff isn’t a very auspicious sign for the Democrats.

Perhaps they need to take a hint from this poll.

The Kerry Campaign seems to have figured things out, though — the Joe Wilson “RestoreHonesty.com” website is gone from the Kerry page. And — as Nick Queen notes — searches for Wilson on the Kerry site now turn up nothing.

Wilson’s been airbrushed, which seems like an admission that those who have been defending him were wasting their time. (For those interested in history, here’s a preserved copy. Reportedly, they’ve even cleared the Google cache on this one! [LATER: Google cache found here.])

UPDATE: Rand Simberg observes: “Somehow, I suspect that, even after getting rid of Berger and Wilson, he’s still got a lot of ballast to dump if he wants to win this fall, and he won’t be able to do it without alienating the base. And his judgement (or lack thereof) in embracing them in the first place is one of the reasons that I’ll have to hold my nose and vote for Bush this fall.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Wow, there’s lots of airbrushing going on over at the Kerry site.

But Wilson’s still speaking at the Democratic convention!

And he’s still signed on for the Salon cruise!

You know, for the people who don’t care about credibility. But for those who do, you can always search the web for RestoreHonesty.com and find the truth right at the top.. . . .

I’M SUPPOSED TO BE ON CNN at 3:00 Eastern today, talking about weblogs and politics.

UPDATE: Short, but not bad. It’ll air again Sunday at 5, if you missed it.

ANOTHER UPDATE: This story from the CNN website contains some additional quotes from the interview.

IT’S BEEN A WEEK OF TERRORISTS, STOLEN DOCUMENTS, and other disturbing news — I think it’s time for some catblogging. This is our other cat, Precious, as photographed by the Insta-Daughter. Happy Friday night!

GIRLIE MEN T-SHIRTS? I prefer the Security Mom ones myself. . . .

JAY ROSEN has thoughts on national greatness journalism.

LINDA RONSTADT GETS WALKED OUT ON AGAIN:

LIVERMORE – Linda Ronstadt’s political message sent close to a hundred concert-goers home early Thursday evening.

What had been a mellow evening at Wente Vineyards, with the crowd even serenading her with “Happy Birthday” at one point, turned into a rush for the exits by some fans angry by her encore tribute to filmmaker Michael Moore.

“She just had to do it,” one fan steamed as he headed for the parking lot. “It was good until the end,” another yelled to TV crews waiting outside the concert.

Sheesh.

DAVE WINER HAS SET UP CONVENTIONBLOGGERS.COM, collecting blog posts from all the bloggers at the Democratic convention — including blogging delegates.

LANNY THE LEAKER? He’s not denying it.

UPDATE: Now he is.

WAS IT SOMETHING WE SAID? Gerard van der Leun notes that New York Times stock is at a one-year low. He wonders if that’s why the Times seems so gloomy about the economy.

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll has more thoughts.

NEW PRIVATE SPACEFLIGHT LEGISLATION is ready to move, and it doesn’t sound bad:

The bill — known as the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004, or H.R. 3752— lays out the definition of a suborbital space passenger vehicle, solidifies the process for licensing such vehicles, and allows paying passengers to fly into space at their own risk. . . .

The months-long holdup had to do primarily with language defining suborbital space vehicles, which fall under the oversight of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation. The definition is considered important because any vehicle that doesn’t fit the description might have to go through the far more stringent licensing process for commercial aircraft, which is managed by a different part of the FAA. . . .

In addition, the licensing process would become more streamlined, and for the first time, private companies would be allowed to fly paying passengers into outer space — as long as the would-be passengers signed forms acknowledging that they were flying at their own risk.

I think this is a significant step forward. And as I’ve written before, I think that space tourism is an essential driver for lowering costs in human spaceflight.

ON THE OFFENSIVE: Bush poses questions for black voters at the Urban League speech:

Does the Democrat party take African American voters for granted?

Is it a good thing for the African American community to be represented mainly by one political party?

How is it possible to gain political leverage if the party is never forced to compete?

Have the traditional solutions of the Democrat party truly served the African American community?

Does blocking the faith-based initiative help neighborhoods where the only social service provider could be a church?

Does the status quo in education really, really help the children of this country?

Does class warfare — has class warfare or higher taxes ever created decent jobs in the inner city?

Are you satisfied with the same answers on crime, excuses for drugs and blindness to the problem of the family?

I doubt this will pay off big in this election cycle, but it’s very interesting to see.

BERGER UPDATE: DRUDGE is flashing a New York Sun item on Sandy Berger. The bottom line:

“In his meeting with Tenet, Berger focused most, however, on the question of what was to be done with Bin Ladin if he were actually captured. He worried that the hard evidence against Bin Ladin was still skimpy and that there was a danger of snatching him and bringing him to the United States only to see him acquitted,” the report says, citing a May 1, 1998, Central Intelligence Agency memo summarizing the weekly meeting between Messrs. Berger and Tenet.

In June of 1999, another plan for action against Mr. bin Laden was on the table. The potential target was a Qaeda terrorist camp in Afghanistan known as Tarnak Farms. The commission report released yesterday cites Mr. Berger’s “handwritten notes on the meeting paper” referring to “the presence of 7 to 11 families in the Tarnak Farms facility, which could mean 60-65 casualties.”According to the Berger notes, “if he responds, we’re blamed.”

On December 4, 1999, the National Security Council’s counterterrorism coordinator, Richard Clarke, sent Mr. Berger a memo suggesting a strike in the last week of 1999 against Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Reports the commission: “In the margin next to Clarke’s suggestion to attack Al Qaeda facilities in the week before January 1, 2000, Berger wrote, ‘no.’ ”

In August of 2000, Mr. Berger was presented with another possible plan for attacking Mr. bin Laden.This time, the plan would be based on aerial surveillance from a “Predator” drone. Reports the commission: “In the memo’s margin,Berger wrote that before considering action, ‘I will want more than verified location: we will need, at least, data on pattern of movements to provide some assurance he will remain in place.’ ”

In other words, according to the commission report, Mr. Berger was presented with plans to take action against the threat of Al Qaeda four separate times — Spring 1998, June 1999, December 1999, and August 2000. Each time, Mr. Berger was an obstacle to action. Had he been a little less reluctant to act, a little more open to taking pre-emptive action, maybe the 2,973 killed in the September 11, 2001, attacks would be alive today.

It really doesn’t matter now what was in the documents from the National Archives that Mr. Berger says he inadvertently misplaced. The evidence in the commission’s report yesterday is more than enough to embarrass him thoroughly.

(Emphasis added.) Ouch. The Sun is right to stress that this doesn’t make Berger responsible for the 9/11 attacks, of course. But it does suggest that he was the wrong man to hold the job he held under Clinton, and that he was a poor choice as senior foreign policy adviser for the Kerry campaign. As Martin Peretz said, “He clearly still has McGovernite politics, which means, in my mind, at least, that he believes there is no international dispute that can’t be solved by the U.S. walking away from it.”

I hope John Kerry doesn’t share those instincts, which proved tragically wrong in this case. But then why did he choose Berger as an advisor?

UPDATE: Especially with this track record, which I had forgotten about until a reader sent me this BBC story from 1999, found via Newsfeed:

President Clinton has defended his National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, against demands for him to resign over the alleged theft by China of US nuclear secrets.

Eighty opposition Republicans earlier wrote to Mr Clinton saying they wanted Mr Berger to resign.

“Mr Berger has failed in his responsibility as this nation’s national security advisor by not properly informing you of the most serious espionage ever committed against the United States,” the lawmakers said in the letter.

They said he knew of concerns about Chinese espionage, but delayed taking action.

What is it with this guy and secrets? And delays in taking action, or telling his boss?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Kerry supporter Brendan Loy has thoughts: “I have to admit, at first blush, this (if true) gives even me pause about Kerry’s choice of advisers. After all, if you want to judge a man, one thing you need to do is look at the type of people he surrounds himself with.”

LEON KASS is big on the idea of disgust as a moral touchstone. Julian Sanchez interviews Martha Nussbaum, who isn’t.

I just got her new book, Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law, today, and so don’t have much to add about it beyond what’s in the interview.

Two books I have had a chance to look through, though are Hugh Hewitt’s and Maureen Dowd’s. The Insta-Wife read Hewitt’s book and liked it a lot; it looked pretty good to me, too, though it’s an interesting mixture of big-picture and grassroots rolled into one.

Dowd’s book is, basically, a bunch of her columns sorted by topic. If you like her columns, you’ll like the book. If you don’t, there’s not much value-added.

BLOWBACK IN BOSTON: A minor embarrassment for the DNC.

UPDATE: More here.

INTERESTING FIND in the 9/11 Commission report:

In this sense, 9/11 has taught us that terrorism against American interests “over there” should be regarded just as we regard terrorism against America “over here.” In this same sense, the American homeland is the planet. But the enemy is not just “terrorism,” some generic evil. This vagueness blurs the strategy. The catastrophic threat at this moment in history is more specific. It is the threat posed by Islamist terrorism —especially the al Qaeda network, its affiliates, and its ideology.

As we mentioned in chapter 2, Usama Bin Ladin and other Islamist terrorist leaders draw on a long tradition of extreme intolerance within one stream of Islam (a minority tradition), from at least Ibn Taimiyyah, through the founders of Wahhabism, through the Muslim Brotherhood, to Sayyid Qutb. That stream is motivated by religion and does not distinguish politics from religion, thus distorting both. It is further fed by grievances stressed by Bin Ladin and widely felt throughout the Muslim world—against the U.S. military presence in the Middle East, policies perceived as anti-Arab and anti-Muslim, and support of Israel. Bin Ladin and Islamist terrorists mean exactly what they say: to them America is the font of all evil, the “head of the snake,” and it must be converted or destroyed.

It is not a position with which Americans can bargain or negotiate. With it there is no common ground—not even respect for life—on which to begin a dialogue. It can only be destroyed or utterly isolated.

(Emphasis added). This language was found by Wizbang, which notes that the Washington Post seems to have missed the significance of this statement.

UPDATE: Related thoughts from Cathy Seipp — though the discussion in the comments soon degenerates into requests for Cathy to wear fewer clothes when appearing on television.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Interresting comments here: “After reading some of the reactions from around the sphere, it’s clear that the report really is a Mirror of Erised in pdf form – most people don’t see the truth, but what their hearts desire.”

And Reid Stott says it’s all about Congressional priorities:

They say their legislative agenda is so full of such important things, things apparently more important than protecting America from future attack, it’s highly unlikely any of the commission’s dramatic recommendations will even be considered by Congress before the election.

The election. You know, the one they claim will probably be preceded by an Al Qaeda attack. Can’t deal with this, until after that.

At which point we’ll have to create a new commission, call it the 11/1 Commission. In three years, we’ll get their recommendations. If there’s anybody in Congress left alive to give them to. . . .

Indeed.

THE FLIGHT 93 ENDGAME:

Once the hijackers were in control, they knew that passengers were using cell phones and seat-back phones to call the ground “but did not seem to care,” according to the report. Yet clearly what the passengers learned in those phone calls inspired their counterattack on the cockpit. . . .

“It might not have occurred to him that they were certain to learn what had happened in New York, thereby defeating his attempts at deception,” the report said. . . .

The report does not clarify whether the hijackers’ goal for Flight 93 was the White House or the Capitol, but indicates that the hijackers tuned a cockpit radio to the frequency of a navigation beacon at National Airport, just across the Potomac River from the capital, erasing any doubt about the region of their intended destination.

At three seconds after 10 a.m., Mr. Jarrah is heard on the cockpit voice recorder saying: “Is that it? Shall we finish it off?”

But another hijacker responds: “No. Not yet. When they all come, we finish it off.”

The voice recorder captured sounds of continued fighting, and Mr. Jarrah pitched the plane up and then down. A passenger is heard to say, “In the cockpit. If we don’t we’ll die!”

Then a passenger yelled “Roll it!” Some aviation experts have speculated that this was a reference to a food cart, being used as a battering ram.

Mr. Jarrah “stopped the violent maneuvers” at 10:01:00, according to the report, and said, “Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest!”

“He then asked another hijacker in the cockpit, `Is that it? I mean, shall we put it down?’ to which the other replied, `Yes, put it in it, and pull it down.’ ”

Eighty seconds later, a hijacker is heard to say, “Pull it down! Pull it down!”

“The hijackers remained at the controls but must have judged that the passengers were only seconds from overcoming them,” according to the report, which seems to indicate that the hijackers themselves crashed the plane. “With the sounds of the passenger counterattack continuing, the aircraft plowed into an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 580 miles per hour, about 20 minutes’ flying time from Washington, D.C,” according to the report.

Seems like this article by Brad Todd holds up pretty well, almost three years later.

SABOTEURS: Amir Taheri writes on the U.N. role in Iraq.

THE 9/11 COMMISSION AND “TERROR IN THE SKIES” — both discussed over at GlennReynolds.com.

A SURPRISING REAGAN / CLINTON CONNECTION: Or maybe it’s an essential quality for being re-elected. . . .

JAMES LILEKS:

A while ago I noted that I had ceased to rely on my paper for international and national news. The web’s competitive advantage is overwhelming. Now I turn straight to the Metro section, because the web can’t yet match the resources and reach of a newspaper. If I were king of the forest, I’d turn the A section into the Metro section. For most papers beside the big swingin’ Johnson dailies, the A section is a lost cause; its lunch has not only been eaten but digested and excreted, and most newspapers think it’s still on the plate with its garnish intact. Newspapers to me no longer look like great sober edifices inscribing the details of history as the parade clatters past. They just look like group blogs. Without the honest admission of bias.

Yep.

REPORTING ON TERRORISM BEFORE 9/11 comes in for criticism.

DAVID WARREN: “No matter who is President after November, it appears the U.S. and Iran are now on course for another history-making collision.”

MATTHEW CONTINETTI ASKS: “Are these journalists going to fall on their swords for politics? . . . Is Wilson saying that Kristof published something different from what he told him? It’s quite a charge.” And it’s one you’d think people would answer.

MORE ON HELEN CLARK’S ANTISEMITISM IN NEW ZEALAND, from Ted Lapkin in The Australian.

“MUGGED BY VIACOM:” John Lehman expresses his dissatisfaction with the 9/11 Commission’s process. (Via Ed Morrissey).

BUSH’S STRATEGERY: Steven Den Beste and Gerard van der Leun offer their takes. Are they right? Beats me, but they’re interesting.

CARNIVAL OF THE LIBERATED: Soundfury’s roundup of Iraqi blogs is up.

Al-Hurra needs to get over its problems.

A BUSH-TWINS CAPTION CONTEST and much, much more — all over at InstaPunk. Where the blog name is derivative, but the blog content isn’t!

STICKY FINGERS: The funniest Sandy Berger photoshop yet.

READER ROB WILES EMAILS:

I tuned in to the NBC nightly news just to see what sort of misleading spin would be offered on the latest developments in the Berger situation.

Lo and behold, he didn’t even mention it.

I guess that’s how it is. I never thought the media bias that is SO obvious was THAT blatant and widespread.

Just thought you might like to know.

I didn’t watch Brokaw tonight, but I’m not surprised. Though it seems to me that the media folks are doing long-term damage to their position for short-term political gains.

HOW TO BECOME A LAW PROFESSOR: Orin Kerr has some links to useful information for those who may be interested.

A LOST AND FOUND NOTE FROM THE GEORGETOWN STARBUCKS — I hope the poor guy finds those lost papers. . . .

HERE’S A LINK TO A SEARCHABLE VERSION of the 9/11 Commission report.

TOM MAGUIRE FINDS A NOT-SO-CRYPTIC REFERENCE TO SANDY BERGER in the 9/11 Commission report:

How about that? How many times have we heard Clinton say that he missed Bin Ladin by just a few hours? Yet the after-action report is missing, so the Commission relied on Sandy Berger’s testimony.

My guess is that someone would have asked about that, and once on the subject of Berger and missing after-action reports, the story of the criminal investigation could hardly be kept quiet. Hence, a pre-emptive leak by someone close to the commission to avoid distraction. . . .

Well, I’ll know I am on to something if I don’t see it in the Times tomorrow.

(Emphasis added.) Go there, and follow the links. This just may answer some important questions about what Berger was up to, and why the leak happened when it did.

THE 9/11 COMMISSION BOTTOM LINE: “We believe we are safer. But we are not safe.” Ed Morrissey has more.

“REYNOLDS SHAMED:” I’m being seriously dissed by Andrew Stuttaford. Next he’ll be questioning my patriotism! Those right-wing smear artists will stop at nothing, you know.

AN OBLIQUE REFERENCE TO SANDY BERGER? A reader sends this passage from page xvii of the 9/11 Commission Report:

We have not interviewed every knowledgeable person or found every relevant piece of paper.

Heh. More interesting stuff here.

UPDATE: On Berger, reader Kyle Kveton emails:

Let’s leave aside who leaked, why it leaked, or even whether all he took were copies. He has said he “believes” the documents he didn’t return were “inadvertently destroyed.” What if the “loveably sloppy” former NSA didn’t destroy them? What if they’re still around–out there somewhere? What assurances can he give us that those highest level classified documents haven’t been taken by someone else? Where did he leave them? Were they in his “sloppy office” where a cleaning crew could pick them up? Did he even try to secure them after they were removed from the archives? Let’s ask Berger and his lawyers to answer those questions.

I wish somebody would.

PHOTOBLOGGING THE CONVENTIONS: The ExposureManager folks have set up a special free site for bloggers covering the political conventions to make photoblogging easier.

I hope that a lot of the bloggers there will post photos — and maybe even video — of what’s going on, along with their reports.

JEFF JARVIS WILL BE ON CNN TONIGHT, talking about how we’ve changed since 9/11.

HEH: Google, circa 1960.

RAND SIMBERG is answering Mickey Kaus’s questions about the Berger document-theft scandal and classification.

TOM MAGUIRE JOINS THE CROWD razzing The New York Times for its miserable and dishonest coverage of the Sandy Berger document-theft scandal. (More here, too.)

I got an email from a journalist asking me to assess Bill Keller’s Times so far. I’d say the answer is — not really any better than under Howell Raines.

THE FAILURE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION: Ryan Boots asks, “what did the Commission tell us that we didn’t already know?”

And here’s what he wants to know:

-What has changed in airline safety since 9/11?

-Are we still frisking grandmothers and six-year-olds and letting Mohammed Atta-lookalikes cruise through metal detectors? If so, why?

-How well is the Patriot Act really working? Is it preventing terrorism? Is it helping track down al-Qaeda cells? What aspects of the Patriot Act work, and what portions of it don’t?

-What is being done to protect industrial infrastructure, such as nuclear plants and sources of water?

-What has been done to strengthen border security? (snicker)

-Have the immigration loopholes exploited by the 9/11 hijackers been closed? If not, why not?

I haven’t perused the report yet, but I don’t think it answers these questions. And I agree that they matter.

RELIGION CRUSHING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH: Virginia Postrel has a frightening tale.

UPDATE: Where’s the religion, here? It’s the “religion” of animal rights in Britain, a comparison that Virginia makes quite explicitly. A lot of readers seem to be missing that, though.

ONE SUSPECTS THAT MOST BIG MEDIA OUTLETS, already none-too-eager to cover the Sandy Berger Trousergate fiasco, will use the release of the 9/11 Commission report as an excuse to ignore it.

If I were Karl Rove, I’d encourage Republicans to counter this by prefacing all comments on the report with something like this: “In light of the ongoing criminal investigation involving charges that former Kerry foreign policy adviser Sandy Berger stole top secret documents from Commission files, we can’t be sure that the Commission had all the facts at its disposal, but. . . ”

But I’m not Karl Rove.

UPDATE: Rove may want to follow my advice, though. Reader Robert Jacoby emails:

Here are the top stories on my (customized) yahoo news page, all AP stories:

1) 9/11 Panel Suggests Intelligence Overhaul
2) Video Shows 9/11 Hijackers’ Security Check
3) U.S. Reports 94 Cases of Prisoner Abuse
4) House Takes Up Gay Marriage Issue Again
5) Marines Kill 25 Insurgents in Ramadi
6) Threatening Note Found on Amtrak Train
and

7) ‘Fahrenheit 9/11′ Making GOP Nervous

I’ll spare you the rest of the headlines. Not one of the 20 stories on that page says anything about Berger. Now it makes sense for most of the stories to be there, but why the Michael Moore story and not the Berger story? That has much deeper implications that a movie. I get similar results for my customized Netscape page, including the Moore story. Not only are the news outlets ignoring Bergergate, they are in its place pushing anti-Bush stories.

I guess Evan Thomas was right.

UPDATE: Daniel Drezner says that my advice to Karl Rove is terrible. Good thing I’m not Karl Rove!

HERE’S THE LINK to the 9/11 Commission report. I can’t get it to open at the moment, because of high traffic I suppose. I’ll try later. In the meantime, the folks at The Corner are posting tidbits.

SUCCESSFUL ANTITERRORISM: Giving credit where it’s due. But have you ever heard of Diana Dean? And why not?

JAMES LILEKS’ SYNDICATED COLUMN is on the Sandy Berger affair:

Hey, it’s happened to us all. You have an orange for lunch, your hands get sticky. Things happen, and besides, none of the memos could possibly have cast the Clinton team in a bad light, of course.

But let’s play everyone’s favorite game, “What If He Was a Republican?” Imagine Dick Cheney caught filling his socks with documents on pre-Sept. 11 security procedures. Imagine a hidden camera snapping shots of Condi Rice slipping secret memos into her foundation garments. We wouldn’t be hearing about impeachment, we’d be debating the probity of rolling a guillotine toward the White House, and whether the heads should be arranged alphabetically on the fence spikes, or by seniority.

So what do we do with a guy who not only treats his trousers as a diplomatic pouch but was national security adviser during the years when al-Qaida feasted on American laziness?

Blame Bush, if you listen to David Sanger and Eric Lichtblau.

ANDREW SULLIVAN: “C’mon, Keller. You can do better.”

WAS KERRY THE ONLY ONE WHO DIDN’T KNOW? I found this quote from the otherwise-unimpressive New York Times story interesting, and it gets more interesting as I think about it:

On Wednesday evening, Mr. Berger’s spokesman, Joe Lockhart, said: “Mr. Berger never passed any classified information to the Kerry campaign. Any suggestion to the contrary cannot be supported by any facts.”

At the Kerry campaign, officials say they were taken by surprise by the accusation. It appears that Mr. Berger did not disclose the investigation to Mr. Kerry’s aides. Mr. Lockhart said that was because “we were dealing in good faith with the Department of Justice on this matter for many months, and part of our agreement was that this was not to be discussed beyond Sandy’s legal team.”

So Berger knew he was under investigation. As we’ve seen earlier, Bill Clinton says that he knew months ahead. And, I guess, so did Joe Lockhart, serving as Berger’s “spokesman.” (Hence the “we” and “our” — and who else might be included in those terms? And why does a retired government official have a spokesman, anyway? Beats me.) Yet John Kerry says that he “didn’t have a clue.”

If I were Kerry, I’d worry about what else my staff wasn’t telling me.

UPDATE: Reader Jim Geraghty emails:

There’s one element strangely missing from this story. Kerry has said he didn’t know, and high-level Kerry advisors with good records of veracity have said the campaign didn’t know until the story broke.

So where’s the anger?

I’m not expecting Kerry himself to snarl, “No, that [BAD WORD]ing two-faced son of a [ANOTHER BAD WORD] didn’t tell me about a FBI investigation, even though he found the time to tell Bill [REALLY BAD WORD]ing Clinton!” But where are the anonymous quotes from Kerry’s supporters trashing Berger? Where are the “how could Berger do this to our guy” comments?

According to Kerry’s version of events, Berger just stabbed his party’s man in the back by not telling him about the FBI investigation. Doesn’t anybody in the Democratic party want to call Berger a jerk?

This is a dog that has been very, very quiet lately.

Good point. They let him go swiftly, but didn’t act all that upset for what by any measure is a major blow to their campaign. That would tend to support Kevin Drum’s Democratic leaker theory.

MORE: “Bill Clinton may be laughing, but I’ll bet John Kerry isn’t.” I’m not sure.

SOME THOUGHTS on what weblogs add to news.

IRAQ, IRAN, SAUDI ARABIA, AND MORE: Check out Dan Darling’s war news roundup.

Because there’s more to the news than ketchup, or Sandy Berger’s socks.

And speaking of ketchup-blogging, Sean Hackbarth is at it again, with this proviso: “Cheap gimmick not endorsed by Glenn Reynolds.”

Because there has to be one cheap gimmick that I don’t endorse. . . .

DARFUR UPDATE: The Washington Post editorializes:

It is as though, in the wake of the West’s failure to prevent Rwanda’s genocide, the gods of history are asking, okay, if we give you a second chance and months of warning, will you do better? So far the prospect that 300,000 to 1 million people may perish — an estimate offered more than a month ago by Andrew S. Natsios, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development — is failing to galvanize serious action.

Genocide works, because, fundamentally, the world doesn’t care. And the genocidaires can always find ready allies.

MAUREEN DOWD’S BACK, and Stephen Green is paying attention. Well, somebody has to.

GREG DJEREJIAN says that The New York Times has no shame in its treatment of the Berger story:

Rarely have I seen a major newspaper play a story in such brazenly partisan fashion.

It truly beggars belief.

Check out today’s lead NYT story on the unfolding Sandy Berger scandal by Eric Lichtblau and Dave Sanger.

Boy, is it a whopper. . . . Your baffled NYT readers might be excused, at this juncture, from thinking George Bush himself was stuffing docs down his socks and trousers.

Read his dissection. I think this tells us that they’re really scared that this story has real substance, and legs. As with Pravda, you have to read between the lines. And this Washington Post story may explain why they’re scared:

Last Oct. 2, former Clinton national security adviser Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger stayed huddled over papers at the National Archives until 8 p.m.

What he did not know as he labored through that long Thursday was that the same Archives employees who were solicitously retrieving documents for him were also watching their important visitor with a suspicious eye.

After Berger’s previous visit, in September, Archives officials believed documents were missing. This time, they specially coded the papers to more easily tell whether some disappeared, said government officials and legal sources familiar with the case. . . .

The government source said the Archives employees were deferential toward Berger, given his prominence, but were worried when he returned to view more documents on Oct. 2. They devised a coding system and marked the documents they knew Berger was interested in canvassing, and watched him carefully. They knew he was interested in all the versions of the millennium review, some of which bore handwritten notes from Clinton-era officials who had reviewed them. At one point an Archives employee even handed Berger a coded draft and asked whether he was sure he had seen it.

At the end of the day, Archives employees determined that that draft and all four or five other versions of the millennium memo had disappeared from the files, this source said.

This makes the “inadvertence” defense look less plausible, and the uniqueness of each draft — with different people’s handwritten notes — explains why he might have taken them all.

No wonder the Times people are frantically spinning. Ed Morrissey has more thoughts, and also links this story on more suspicious-sounding behavior:

WASHINGTON – Former national security adviser Sandy Berger repeatedly persuaded monitors assigned to watch him review top secret documents to break the rules and leave him alone, sources said yesterday.

Berger, accused of smuggling some of the secret files out of the National Archives, got the monitors out of the high-security room by telling them he had to make sensitive phone calls.

Berger also took “lots of bathroom breaks” that apparently aroused some suspicion, the source added.

It is standard security procedure to constantly monitor anyone with a security clearance who examines the type of code-word classified files stored in the underground archives vault in the building where tourists view the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Asked if guards left Berger alone in the classified reading room while he made calls, archives spokeswoman Susan Cooper replied, “I’m not going to say I haven’t heard that.”

Curiouser and curiouser. I suppose that it’s possible that this could all be innocent — but it sure doesn’t sound that way, does it?

UPDATE: Martin Peretz writes in The New Republic:

I do not like Sandy Berger; and I have not liked him since the first time we met, long ago during the McGovern campaign, not because of his politics since I more or less shared them then, but for his hauteur. . . . Still, here’s his story about the filched classified materials dealing with the foiled Al Qaeda millennium terrorist bombing plot from the National Archives: He inadvertently took home documents and notes about documents that he was not permitted to take from the archives; secondly, he inadvertently didn’t notice the papers in his possession when he got home and actually looked at them; and, thirdly, he inadvertently discarded some of these same files so that they are now missing.

Gone, in fact. One of his lawyers attributes this behavior to “sloppiness,” which may better explain his career as Bill Clinton’s National Security Adviser and certainly describes his presentation of self in everyday life. But it is not an explanation of his conduct in the archives or, for that matter, at home. . . .

So my question is: Did Berger, who knew that he was under scrutiny since last fall, alert Kerry to the combustible fact that he was the subject of a criminal probe by the Justice Department and the FBI? My guess is not. Kerry is far too smart, too responsible to have kept him around had he known. But if Kerry didn’t know, it tells you a lot about Berger, too much, really.

(Emphasis added in all cases.) Yes. And, I should note, the New York Times’ frantic spinning of such a major story tells us a lot about the Times. Too much, really.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More disappearing documents here. Interesting.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Dave Johnson finds the phone-call bit intriguing: “Who was he calling and what where they talking about? The Feds should subpoena his Cell phone records. Then they need to see who that person called. This story has legs.” Perhaps they’ve already done that.

WHILE I BLOG ABOUT SOCKS, AND KETCHUP, Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrell have authored a scholarly paper on blogs.

WHAT ABOUT THE SOCKS? My emailers, left and right, seem to care a lot. I don’t. Fawn Hall’s underwear, I care about. Well, at least abstractly, in a 1987 sort of way. Sandy Berger’s socks — no. (I envision the old-fashioned kind, with garters, though they’re probably more like these high-fashion items). Close enough.

Anyway, The Daily Howler is raining scorn on the socks story, though he doesn’t engage this report. My position: Who cares? What I’d like to know is, in general, what was taken and why.

[Sock-blogging and Ketchup-blogging in one night? You need a vacation -- Ed. I'm not sock-blogging -- I'm blogging about not sock-blogging! . . .Riiigghht. --Ed. No, really. Now this is sock-blogging. A shameful thing. But sexy camisoles are another matter entirely. . . . I'm heading back to Kaus's. It's getting too exciting over here. --Ed. Good luck. He's got socks, too!]

OUCH, AGAIN:

It’s deja vu all over again – it was only two years ago that Sandy Berger was promoting to TIME magazine a bold Clinton response to Al Qaeda that had been shelved by the incoming Administration.

However, a visit to a Congressional committee jogged his memory (scroll to “A Story Sullivan Likes”), and the Man with a Plan became the Man with a Nice Powerpoint Presentation – Sandy Berger admitted that the TIME story was, well, a story.

Again, ouch.

OUCH:

John Kerry to Tom Brokaw tonight:

Brokaw: “Did you know that [Berger] was under investigation?”

Kerry: “I didn’t have a clue, not a clue.”

Brokaw: “He didn’t share that with you?

Kerry: “I didn’t have a clue.”

Ouch.

HOW DID BERGER GET STUFF OUT OF THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES? Apparently, the rules are different for the big shots:

WASHINGTON — Pens are forbidden, pencils provided. Each scribbled piece of paper is checked, then stamped. Cell phones and jackets go into lockers. Prying eyes make sure nothing precious walks off.

Researchers digging into the nation’s history at the National Archives are watched every step of the way.

Despite precautions like those, former Clinton national security adviser Sandy Berger somehow came away with material he wasn’t supposed to have. . . .

The process is somewhat different for those who have security clearance or otherwise are allowed access to classified information, as Berger was.

“He was a special case,” Kornbluh said. “He was a former government official who was there to look at still-classified material.”

Some users are more equal than others. I hope that this new policy will be applied evenhandedly, though. Or maybe I should say “evenfootedly.”

DONALD SENSING looks at developments with China and Taiwan.

HMM. I’M GUESSING THAT THERE’S A CONNECTION between these two headlines:

Presbyterians divest themselves from Israel

Protestants May Lose Majority In U.S. Population

I’m a Presbyterian, though somewhat nominally. And one reason it’s nominal is the lack of moral seriousness in the church, as in many denominations. They have nothing — at least nothing worth listening to — to say that I can’t hear on NPR. Like the Anglicans in Britain, they worship political correctness (the URL for the Presbyterian Church is, appropriately enough, pcusa.org), and it has feet of clay. Er, or something clay-like.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

I’m an elder in a PCUSA church and I am firmly convinced that the thing holds together–so far–solely becauses the pewdwellers have no clue what HQ is doing. HQ is in Louisville, but I’ve been dealing with that bunch of SDS retreads since they were on Riverside Drive in New York. They have been on the wrong side of just about everything that’s been important in the last thirty years. In the days of the Cold War, I used to inquire if there were as many as one issue of US military or foreign policy in which the PCUSA disagreed with the USSR. Of course, in many cases one side or the other (presuming they were different sides) had a position and the other didn’t. But nobody at HQ ever could tell me one where the two sides disagreed. They got mad when I asked. Once my term is over–end of the year–I am likely to leave. It’s getting tougher to look my Jewish friends in the eye.

The spread of antisemitism to the left is shocking. The spread of antisemitism to the Christian left is more shocking. But maybe that’s my naivete showing.

HEY, THAT’S MY CATCHPHRASE: But it’s a good one.

ENOUGH ON THE SCANDALS OF THE WEEK: Now I want to address the most unimportant political question of the day, while also undermining claims from Old-Media Pooh-Bahs that bloggers never do original reporting. Stinging from such accusations, I decided to do a side-by-side taste test of Heinz Ketchup and the new upstart, W Ketchup — thus answering a question that, to the best of my knowledge, Old Media outlets have shamefully ignored. Is it because they’re afraid of the truth? Let’s go to the test results.

Regular InstaPundit readers will know that I am a committed Heinz Ketchup partisan, and should keep that in mind in reading these results. (We bloggers wear our biases on our sleeves — take that, Poynter people!) Nonetheless, I wanted to give this new guy a chance to win me over. To ensure fairness, I ordered the W Ketchup off their internet site — no free-sample corruption here, despite my fond hopes therefor. It’s easy to be incorruptible when nobody’s offering to buy you anyway. . . .

The test apparatus is pictured at right — a plate, the two contenders, and a standardized product, McDonald’s French Fries, which should make this experiment fully replicatable by interested readers. The Heinz bottle is bigger than W — but so is John Kerry, so that seemed fair. And the French Fries are a traditional all-American product, like George Bush — but they’re French in origin, like John Kerry. That’s as fair and balanced as I can make things.

The expert taste panel, consisting of me and the Insta-Daughter, alternated between fries dipped in Heinz Ketchup, and fries dipped in W Ketchup, until we felt comfortable arriving at an opinion.

The unanimous victor — no hanging chads here — was Heinz. The W Ketchup wasn’t bad — somewhat sweeter than Heinz, which is no surprise given that its ingredient label lists “high fructose corn syrup” ahead of vinegar, while the Heinz label reverses the order. (The W Ketchup also has 5 more calories per serving). This too seems to reflect the candidates’ personality, with Kerry coming across as the more astringent. (Some people, however, are concerned about this: “A bigger worry for Democrats is that enough voters might decide that Kerry offers too much vinegar and not enough sugar.” But in ketchup, at least, a higher vinegar-to-sugar ratio turns out to be good thing.)

But the result is a bit of a role reversal: While W Ketchup is a perfectly respectable contender, it’s not enough to knock the reigning incumbent off his throne.

Of course, spoiling the already silly, but widely invoked, use of a ketchup contest as a proxy for the political contest is the proudly non-partisan status of the H.J. Heinz Company, and the lack of any connection, as far as I can tell, between the W Ketchup folks and President Bush. (And Teresa Heinz’s connection to the Heinz company itself is, despite the claims of the W Ketchup folks — “Choose Heinz and you’re supporting Teresa Heinz and her liberal causes, such as Kerry for President” — rather limited — though I’d like to own a similarly “limited” 4% of Heinz stock myself. . . .) And I suppose it was never much of a contest, as even potent anti-Kerry partisans freely admit the long-standing superiority of Heinz ketchup. Bush supporters can thus spin this as a triumph for traditional values.

Nonetheless, for those wondering whether W Ketchup can stand up to Heinz, the answer is that as a candidate it can cut the mustard, but its appeal isn’t strong enough to cut into the base.

STEPHEN GREEN: “Terry McAuliffe wants all the records of the Sandy Berger investigation released . . . Fine by me — if we also get to see what documents Berger pants-pilfered out of the National Archives.”

UPDATE: Related thoughts here:

We’ll grant that visions of a former National Security Adviser stuffing classified documents down his trousers or socks makes for good copy. But count us more interested in learning what’s in the documents themselves than in where on his person Sandy Berger may have put them when he was sneaking them out of the National Archives.

For the evidence suggests that the missing material cuts to the heart of the choice offered in this election: Whether America treats terrorism as a problem of law enforcement or an act of war. . . .

If it’s all as innocent as Mr. Berger’s friends are saying, there’s no reason not to make them public. But there are good reasons for questioning Mr. Berger’s dog-ate-my-homework explanation. To begin with, he was not simply preparing for his testimony before the 9/11 Commission. He was the point man for the Clinton Administration, reviewing and selecting the documents to be turned over to the Commission.

Yes.

THE TIMING OF THE LEAKS: Reader John Lucas has an observation:

Berger could have released it himself last year, but chose not to do so, even though he proclaims his innocence. He can’t now be heard to complain about the timing, since that was always in his control.

Good point.

UPDATE: Here’s a chronology of timing questions. Boy, there’s been a lot of that.

FIGHT MEDIA CONCENTRATION IN THE BLOGOSPHERE! Read the Carnival of the Vanities.

THE JOE WILSON IMPLOSION: The Washington Post editorializes:

Mr. Wilson chose to emphasize the latter point, that no deal was likely — but that does not negate the one Mr. Bush made in his speech, which was that Iraq was looking for bomb material. This suggests another caution: Some of those who now fairly condemn the administration’s “slam-dunk” approach to judging the intelligence about Iraq risk making the same error themselves. The failure to find significant stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons or an active nuclear program in Iraq has caused some war opponents to claim that Iraq was never much to worry about. The Niger story indicates otherwise. Like the reporting of postwar weapons investigator David Kay, it suggests that Saddam Hussein never gave up his intention to develop weapons of mass destruction and continued clandestine programs he would have accelerated when U.N. sanctions were lifted. No, the evidence is not conclusive. But neither did President Bush invent it.

Then there’s this story, with further problems for the “Bush Lied” claim:

An upcoming report will contain “a good deal of new information” backing up the Bush administration’s contention that Saddam Hussein pursued weapons of mass destruction, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., said Tuesday.

The report will be out in September. Some people will question its timing.

And speaking of timing, this chronological post on Joe Wilson from David Adesnik is worth reading.

And, finally, Tom Maguire responds to Joe Wilson’s latest attempt at rebutting his critics, which Maguire finds unpersuasive:

My goodness, he is awfully coy about his anonymous leaks to the media before he went public. Those leaks drove the public debate, and do not seem to have stood up to careful examination. Perhaps his memory betrayed him – he ought to re-read his own book, pages 330-332. Or re-read his chat with Vanity Fair. One wonders whether this is when Mr. Wilson acquired his familiarity with smear campaigns. Was he also orchestrated, or simply a one-man band?

Read the whole thing. And I love this observation from one of Tom’s commenters:

This was an IQ test for the elite media (and others) — and the scores have indicated that Johnny has “special needs” and can no longer be schooled with the rest of the kids. A little understanding of the world and 15 minutes with Google and a broadband connection, salted with at least some understanding of intel, sufficed to conclude that Wilson had little of interest to add (as the CIA apparently instantly concluded). That was BEFORE the Brits confirmed their confidence in the assessment and explained no forged documents were available to them in making it, and BEFORE various parliamentary groups took a look and pronounced the assessment reasonable.

As I’ve said before, the story never made sense even on its own terms.

HEH: “Berger Returns U.S. Constitution to Archives.”

HAMMER AND CRESCENT: More on the Euro-left’s alliance with radical Islam. “A potential electoral force is emerging from the anti–war movement. But why is a supposedly ‘progressive’ grouping making room for religious conservatives?”