I’VE WRITTEN ABOUT SECRET SERVICE MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS BEFORE: But now Drudge is reporting that an outside audit shows over $3 billion unaccounted for.

HOWARD DEAN, FISCAL CONSERVATIVE:

One-time presidential candidate Howard Dean, whose campaign fund went from boom to bust, is pleading with donors to open their pocketbooks one more time and help him retire at least $400,000 in debt. . . .

The candidate was so confident the money would continue to flow that he became the first Democrat to skip public financing and rely solely on his own fund-raising ability to finance his campaign.

That confidence also carried through to his spending decisions. Flush with money, the campaign aired expensive ads early on and established a costly nationwide ground game. By the end of 2003 — before the primary contests even started — Dean had spent nearly every dollar he had taken in.

Hmm. Maybe the primary system actually works.

HERE’S ANOTHER in a steady stream of reports along these lines:

76 million people own a gun in this country. And now more than ever, the number of women who are buying and learning to fire guns is increasing.

Maybe they’re inspired by guys like this one:

A senior citizen using the men’s room yesterday at a popular Middletown eatery was approached by a would-be robber waving a knife. The potential victim responded by pulling out his own weapon – a handgun.

A thin, white male between 25 and 30 years old tried to rob the 68-year-old Langhorne man about 9:30 a.m. at the Great American Diner and Pub, 1201 E. Lincoln Highway, Middletown Sgt. Ken Mellus said.

The Langhorne man is licensed to carry the gun, police said. No shots were fired and the suspect fled.

This is the proverbial guy who brought a knife to a gunfight.

ALBRIGHT LIED — PEOPLE DIED:

THE HAGUE — The prosecution in Slobodan Milosevic’s war crimes trial moved yesterday to rest its case two days early as the chief prosecutor conceded her team had not produced “the smoking gun” to convict the former Yugoslav president of genocide, the most serious charge against him.

No doubt we’ll see handwringing, doubts about intelligence reliability, and charges that the Clinton Administration “sexed up” intelligence and misrepresented

Milosevic as a genocidal dictator in order to build support for unilateral action that even Wesley Clark called technically illegal — but justified on the basis of an “imminent threat” of genocide, one that is now, of course, completely undermined by the absence of a “smoking gun.” Massive criticism of the Clinton Administration’s warmaking, which landed us in a “Balkan quagmire” from which we have yet to extricate ourselves, is sure to ensue.

Yeah, right, that’s going to happen.

UPDATE: Some related comments here.

SOME THOUGHTS ON JOBS AND MASSAGES, inspired by Virginia Postrel, are in my TechCentralStation column today.

MORE SHAMEFUL RACIST REMARKS FROM A MEMBER OF CONGRESS:

U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown verbally attacked a top Bush administration official during a briefing on the Haiti crisis Wednesday, calling the President’s policy on the beleaguered nation “racist” and his representatives “a bunch of white men.”

Her outburst was directed at Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega during a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill. Noriega, a Mexican-American, is the State Department’s top official for Latin America. . . .

Noriega later told Brown: “As a Mexican-American, I deeply resent being called a racist and branded a white man,” according to three participants.

Brown then told him “you all look alike to me,” the participants said.

I agree with this assessment of Brown’s remarks:

That’s unacceptable language, no matter who says it. Representative Brown needs to suffer at least as much criticism as Trent Lott did for praising for a fellow who ran on a segregationist platform. Lott’s statement could be interpreted as support for segregation. Representative Brown needs no interpretation…what she said was simply racist.

Fortunately, however, the Bush Administration has people who are capable of standing up to racism, and pointing out the idiocy of those who engage in it:

After her comments about white men, Noriega said he would “relay that to (Secretary of State) Colin Powell and (national security adviser) Condoleezza Rice the next time I run into them,” participants said. Powell and Rice are black.

Rep. Brown’s colleagues in Congress need to condemn this racist behavior immediately. And she should probably resign. Perhaps she can get a guest slot on Howard Stern’s show, where she’d fit in just fine.

UPDATE: David Adesnik notes that there’s sexism here, too:

Everyone seems to be up in arms about the racial aspect of Corrine Brown’s remarks. But how about the sexism? In this day and age, people still try to undermine successful women by impying that they are not feminine enough. Calling Condi a white man just plays into that kind of prejudice.

Indeed it does. No doubt NOW will be demanding an apology from Rep. Brown shortly.

JAMES LILEKS weighs in on the Howard Stern matter, and he’s not siding with Howard:

The future of civilized conversation depends on men brave enough to ask educated Nigerian immigrants if they ever ate a monkey, and whether men who appeared on Paris Hilton pron tapes slammed a partner up the butt.. God bless Stern. It’s good to know he’s speaking out on the issues that matter, and paying the price.

Bravery, thy name is Howard. And I expect that you will stop screening calls now. I mean, there’s a guy in the Bronx who wants to make a point about the filthy sp-cs down the hall – who are you to say he’s wrong?

It’s hard for me to get too exercised about this. I’m opposed to censorship, but Stern was “censored” by his employer. I’m capable of getting exercised about such things, sometimes, but not this time. And if Rush Limbaugh had been canned over the kind of racial comments Stern made, and allowed on the air, nobody would be crying “censorship.” Instead they’d be saying that it showed the inherent racism of his show and his audience.

Well? You want to make a case for complete deregulation of broadcasting, it’s fine with me. But if you’re not willing to do that, then you’re a hypocrite, because under pretty much any kind of a plausible content standard Stern loses. And you can’t defend Stern’s talk while calling for the removal of Michael Savage, Dr. Laura, or other folks that lots of people seem willing to silence, or see silenced, without being a hypocrite.

UPDATE: Radio DJ Big Rick Stuart has more on the Stern affair, noting:

Stern doesn’t work for Clear Channel (CC). He works for Viacom/CBS/Infinity. He show is taken on syndication deals from Viacom to 6 Clear Channel stations. The 6 stations are not that big of a deal, it isn’t a bold move or whatever people are saying.

It was up for awhile at the Drudge Report but now I haven’t seen it. According to what was posted at Drudge a caller on his show asked the guest if he ever banged a famous n*gger and do they smell like watermelon. I don’t know the exact quote but those were the words that got him in trouble. . . .

Is the issue Freedom of Speech? Well that’s what Stern says, and even what Rush said today according to Drudge. I guess anybody who gets fired from an on air media job could say the same thing. People have been fired for a long time for saying some stupid sheet on the air. Freedom of Speech? If Stern really thinks people will buy that he is crazy. The freedom to hear a woman have mayonnaise rubbed on her butt then have Howard throw slices of bologna and see if it sticks? Come on. So once you get a job on the air you can never ever be fired for something you say because of freedom of speech? Uhh no it don’t work that way. Can you unjustly be fired for content of your show? Oh for sure.

Read the whole thing. Here’s the link to the Drudge piece on Limbaugh’s defense of Stern.

SOLDIERS ARE COMMITTING SUICIDE AT AN ALARMING RATE — in the Bundeswehr. David Kaspar has some interesting statistics, which suggest that the German army could save lives by sending troops to Iraq.

SOME LOVELY PICTURES of the Smoky Mountains in February, by Matthew Cromer. I nearly drove up there today, but decided that I had too much to do and stayed home to work. Obviously, I was an idiot, with this sort of thing 30 minutes from my door.

Let this be a lesson to me. . . .

UPDATE: I noticed that Matthew uses a Sony DSC-F828 digital camera, which I’ve heard mixed reports about (the problem is noise and chromatic aberration in low-light settings). I asked him about his experience and he replied:

I’m pretty happy with the 828. It does have one major flaw which is a tendency to purple fringing in some lighting conditions It’s pretty easy to deal with for an advanced photoshop user, but annoying. . . .

The reason I got the 828 is because I shoot mostly landscape images and need as much resolution as I can get, and because I like composing with the LCD on the back. The LCD will pivot up and down which is very nice for shots taken overhead or close to the ground. It’s also nice (to me) to be able to take pictures with the camera off my face. You can’t do that with an SLR because none of them (today anyway) have live LCDs. I also shoot video of the kids which is very nice.

I love the ability to shoot high-quality video with sound. But since I often shoot indoors or in poor light, I don’t think this one’s for me. He’s sure done some first-rate work with it, though.

CARIBPUNDIT has a lot of news on developments in Haiti.

JEFF JARVIS: “When Janet Jackson’s outfit opened, it opened a door not on her breast but on censorship.”

He has some choice words for the Bush Administration.

UPDATE: Joe Gandelman, on the other hand, calls it a taste malfunction on Stern’s part.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Interesting bipartisan disagreement in the comments to Jeff’s post.

HERE’S MORE on anti-semitism at the United Nations.

IS THE UNITED STATES USING BIOLOGICAL WARFARE IN IRAQ? Apparently, so, as this war critic reports:

“The consequences of the geranium bombs have yet to be seen, but from what I have seen in the pediatric wards, which stretch for blocks and blocks in Baghdad, they will be even worse.”

It may turn out to be a perennial problem. . . .

INTERESTING NANOTECHNOLOGY GOINGS-ON in Europe, according to the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology. The European NanoBusiness Association — which appears to be somewhat more, er, restrained in its public-relations strategy than its American counterpart — is involved.

THE NEW REPUBLIC NOTES something that quite a few readers emailed me about last week — an article in the New York Times that didn’t seem to know the difference between Arabs and Muslims, two overlapping, but distinct, sets. I didn’t note it — I can’t blog every boner at the Times — but I’m glad that someone else has noticed.

REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES ARE STARTING TO BUY BLOGADS, reports Bill Hobbs. The only thing that surprises me is that it’s taken so long.

ENRON ON THE EAST RIVER: Roger Simon continues to stay on top of the U.N.’s still-unresolved disappearing oil-for-food money scandal.

WHAT IS ALAN GREENSPAN TALKING ABOUT these days? Rather a lot, really.

A READER SENDS THIS:

Quran (9:11) — For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a
fearsome Eagle. The wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughout the
lands of Allah and lo, while some of the people trembled in despair
still more rejoiced; for the wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of
Allah; and there was peace.

Pretty cool, except that I’m fairly sure it’s bogus. Sura 9 is “Repentance,” and in my copy of the Koran (the 1955 Arberry translation) verse 11 reads:

Yet if they repent, and perform the prayer, and pay the alms, then they are your brothers in religion; and We distinguish the signs for a people who know.

Sorry to bust a bubble here. Since this seems to be one of those endlessly forwarded email items, you may see it soon, if you haven’t already.

UPDATE: A whole lot of people have sent the link to this Snopes debunking of the bogus Koran quote. A couple even accused me of being behind the times, reaching for an actual book rather than going to Snopes first. Well, it’s right there on the shelf, you know, and I paid $11.50 for it (used) at the Yale Co-Op some years ago, so I figured I ought to get my money’s worth. . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: More debunking here.

SOME REFLECTIONS ON KERRY’S “LACKLUSTER” LEADERSHIP from the Yale Daily News. I’d say the statute of limitations has run on these events.

HE’LL BE STANDING UP when he comes before the judge, and not just out of respect:

An armed robbery went awry this morning when a store manager shot the suspect in the back and buttocks.

Embarrassing. (Via the self-defense blog, where I learn about this stuff first even when it’s in my own home town.)

TOM MAGUIRE: “Bush blew it on the gay marriage question.” Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Alex Knapp has thoughts on why Bush is getting more heat than Kerry when their positions are essentially the same.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Best of the Web notes a sudden surge in support for states’ rights among some unlikely candidates.

A PHONY JOBS DEBATE: Robert Samuelson says that Kerry and Edwards are lying about unemployment, and that the press knows it and doesn’t care:

[N]o one considers it dishonorable to blame a president falsely for job loss (or to credit him falsely for job gains). The dishonesty is so routine that it’s respectable. The press abets the hoax because it must report what candidates say and because it favors campaign combat over substance.

Read the whole thing.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE VANITIES is up. Bras are featured.

WHAT CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT WOULD YOU FAVOR? Neal Boortz is running an online poll. The gay marriage amendment is only one choice among many, and at the moment it’s in last place.

UPDATE: Jay Solo has some thoughts.