“CUT OFF THE HEAD OF THE PIG who says our religion exalts violence and hate.”

RESPECTFUL photoshopping.

CAPTAIN ED: “I cannot tell CQ readers how disgusted I am with Speaker Hastert.” He’s referring to reports that Hastert knew of Rep. Foley’s behavior but did nothing.

I have been no fan of Hastert all along, of course. I wonder if this story ties in somehow with his over-the-top outrage regarding searches of Congressional offices in the William Jefferson case.

UPDATE: One of Capt. Ed’s commenters is citing TV reports that Hastert asked Foley to resign as soon as he saw the IMs. I haven’t seen those, but stay tuned. Lots of discussion, some of it informed, here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: John Hinderaker weighs in.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: TigerHawk is absolutely right, which means that — in a phenomenon as regular as the sunrise but more frequent — Glenn Greenwald is wrong again.

JOHN WIXTED ON BOB WOODWARD and “secret” levels of violence in Iraq:

A shocking fact the administration has kept secret? Please. As I noted, information about the number of attacks on American troops — including this particular statistic of one attack every 15 minutes — is not secret. Instead, it is very publicly available in the form of a big graph on page 22 of the Iraq Index (published by the Brookings Institution). In fact, that’s probably where Woodward himself got the information. Some secret. The Iraq Index has been publishing attack statistics for a long, long time for anyone who is interested. . . .

But this talk of withdrawing troops is made with reference to the anti-American insurgency only, with no mention at all of sectarian violence when that is the real problem. In other words, like Bob Woodward, they gloss over the most important detail — the one that undermines their position. The insurgency is not getting worse, but sectarian violence has gotten worse. If we leave, it will get worse still, and the Iraqi experiment in democracy could easily fail. And that’s why calls for a timetable for withdrawal reflect a strategically unwise, anti-humanitarian attitude.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Read this item, too.

156 to 1: “Yes, if only there was some sort of media outlet — I don’t know, a newspaper or something — who could tell us about the important issues.”

DEAN BARNETT: “It may have escaped you, but ’24’ is not a documentary, nor is it a scholarly inquiry on effective interrogation techniques.”

TOM MAGUIRE has thoughts on torture. He’s a bit hard on Andrew Sullivan, but not as hard as Sullivan is being on me — Sullivan has brought out the waterboard of blogging, reprinting emails from readers of his who say they’ll never read me again, only Sullivan, from now on. Okay, it’s actually more like the endless-replaying-of-Barry-Manilow of blogging.

I’ve gotten some emails from readers wondering why Sullivan seems to think that my blog is the most important aspect of the torture debate, especially as — once the Bush-bashing and posturing is set aside — my position and Sullivan’s aren’t really very different. (As I wrote a while back, “What would I do? Ban anything that causes injury or outright pain. I’m not so sure about sleep deprivation and things like that. I’d permit playing Barry Manilow, too.” Okay, so now I’m rethinking the Barry Manilow part.) I’ll spare you the text of those emails; I used to wonder about that, but I’ve pretty much given up. Andrew will blog about what he wants to blog about, and I will blog about what I want to blog about. And that state of affairs will bother, well, at most one of us.

Meanwhile, note this comment by Tom Holsinger.

UPDATE: Reader Steven Jens demonstrates that the email thing works both ways:

I’d just like to say that I will never read Andrew Sullivan again. I have been increasingly put off by his hysteria, his double standards, and his rumored habit of squeezing the toothpaste from the middle of the tube. Time Magazine has given him a bully pulpit, and it’s a shame that he can’t be as wise, reasoned, or downright handsome as you are.

Heh. I think we’ve just seen the future of the blogosphere. And it scares me.

UPDATE: Uh oh. Manilow-blogging is spreading.

ANOTHER UPDATE: It’s an out of control blog phenomenon!

CHARLES DUNLAP WARNS about military involvement in law enforcement:

Converting the war-fighting mind-set of the professional military to one that readily accepts the risks — and delays — inherent in policing under our Constitution can be extremely challenging and confusing to those wielding the guns and attempting to establish order.

Nonetheless, some military officers welcome domestic law enforcement roles. In a world where hijacked airliners, anthrax-infested envelopes and other serious threats arise close to home, there is a certain appeal to their thinking. And praise for the better-late-than-never Katrina effort has created an attitude friendly to domestic security duties among many in uniform.

What are they missing? Appreciation for the erosion that law enforcement duties could cause in the public affection and admiration the military wants — and needs — to sustain itself as an all-volunteer force. Americans in the end do not like heavy-handed security efforts, regardless of how well-intended they are, and typically react quite negatively to them. Think Kent State, Waco and Ruby Ridge.

He’s right. Typically soldiers make bad police, and using soldiers as police for very long tends to make them bad soldiers, too.

UPDATE: More thoughts from Prof. Kenneth Anderson.

FOLEYGATE: “The perfect blogstorm.”

RECHARGING the cars of the future.

PROF. KENNETH ANDERSON: “Are academic bloggers prepared to be quoted in the MSM?”

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON DOESN’T LIKE JIMMY CARTER MUCH: “In his dotage, Carter is proving once again that he is as malicious and mean-spirited a public figure as he is historically ignorant. And for all his sanctimonious Christian veneer, and fly-fishing, ‘aw shucks blue-jeans image, he can’t hide an essentially ungracious and unkind soul. . . . Carter’s Waterloo, of course was the Iranian hostage crisis. It was not just that his gutting of the military helped to explain the rescue disaster. Far more importantly, we can chart the rise of radical political Islam with the storming of the American embassy in Teheran and the impotent response of Jimmy Carter.”

WELL, YES: “Al Qaeda increasingly reliant on media.”

GEORGE ALLEN AND JAMES WEBB: “A Confederacy of Dunces.”

Heh. It’s not a campaign to inspire admiration.

ILYA SOMIN: “California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently signed into law five almost completely ineffectual post-Kelo eminent domain reform laws. . . . the enactment of post-Kelo reform laws that look impressive to the public, but actually achieve nothing, is all too common.”

MICKEY KAUS ENGAGES IN A BORDER-FENCE GLOATFEST at the expense of a lot of people — including the New York Times, about which he writes: “Readers who wanted to know what was actually happening would have been much better off reading Captain Ed.” Isn’t that always the case?

Meanwhile (via Kaus) Tom Maguire notes many other media errors and misrepresentations. Michael Duffy of Time is singled out.

UPDATE: Don Surber doesn’t think the media problems are helping the Democrats.

LARRY KUDLOW SAYS WE’RE ENJOYING “A GOLDILOCKS ECONOMY:”

“We are enjoying a goldilocks economy, not too hot and not too cold.” In other words, there’s no economic bubble out there that’s about to go “pop.”

Recent economic reports confirm this: Factory production is strong. Core inflation has settled down. Excluding energy, consumer prices haven’t moved all that much in the last three years. In the third quarter, real consumer spending is running 3.2 percent at an annual rate, ahead of the second quarter average. Non-defense capital-goods shipments (excluding aircraft) are 7.6 percent ahead of the second quarter. After-tax real disposable income is 5.4 percent higher than last year. And tax revenues are rolling in, with both states and the U.S. Treasury reporting record revenue collections.

Rising stocks, falling gas prices, low tax rates and the Goldilocks economy are powerful pluses for election-year Republicans. With so many indicators leaning positive, the Democrats aren’t even talking about the economy anymore.

That last is the revealing bit. Just remember that, even in the Goldilocks story, the bears do eventually come home.

MICHAEL BARONE looks at poll numbers on Iraq, and finds they’re not what you might expect given the tenor of media coverage.

HERE’S A ROUNDUP ON EVENTS IN BAGHDAD, from Pajamas Media.

UPDATE: Omar reports from Baghdad that things have calmed down:

The situation in Baghdad calmed down soon after we made the previous post. Saturday has been so quiet so far, never a single explosion happened as far as I know and there was hardly any sound of gunfire in or around our district in Baghdad.

What can be noticed about this particular curfew is that it’s being strictly enforced by Iraqi and US forces in Baghdad. During most previous days of curfew, vehicles and pedestrians were occasionally seen on the streets but this is not the case today.

Apparently the authorities got the idea that something bad was about to happen, and moved to scotch it.