ERNEST MILLER DOES SOME INTERVIEWING OF HIS OWN, and explodes a bogus L.A. Times claim about Trekkies and pedophilia.

One suspects that the LAT’s editors would have been more careful had the claim been made regarding other distinct and insular minorities.

JAMES LILEKS IS WRITING ABOUT BRATZ:

The Bratz are now Baby Mommaz. Yes, the hooker-in-training dolls have children. Bratz are the main reason I do not keep a supply of bricks around the house, because everytime the commercials come on I wish to pitch something kiln-fired through the screen so hard it beans the toy exec who greenlighted these hootchie toys. The Baby Bratz are as bad as you can imagine: “Bottles with Bling.”

The Insta-Daughter has emerged from her Bratz phase (some Bratz-blogging from back in the day here and here: “And if you don’t know about the Bratz, well, it just means that you’re in the wrong demographic. Relax, you’re not missing much.”)

The good news is that after Bratz you get The Sims, which teaches a variety of constructive life lessons that Bratz don’t offer.

ANN ALTHOUSE NOTES A SLUMP IN INTEREST for both liberal and conservative talk radio,and puts it down to the boringness of today’s debates:

I’d say people get tired of talking about politics all the time. And — the article doesn’t mention this — the debate about Social Security was mind-numbing! Also, even though I’m especially interested in the topic, the subject of judges, religion, and the filibuster is really tiresome. What are the good topics?

How about the history of the filibuster! I think this has its parallels in the blogosphere, too. Some people wish I were blogging more about politics, but I find Social Security and filibusters boring as well. Sorry. More words of wisdom: “If you satisfy some listeners, you lose others. You can’t please everyone, and putting together an interesting mix is an art.”

And the blogosphere is a place with millions of channels.

THE VOLOKH CONSPIRACY is hosting a discussion regarding the constitutionality of the new abortion bill.

CATHY SEIPP HAS THOUGHTS ON HOLLYWOOD and history.

IT’S THE FIRST CARNIVAL OF COMEDY, hosted over at Imao.

BOTH TIGERHAWK and Ankle-Biting Pundits are live-blogging the Bush press conference.

UPDATE: TigerHawk link was busted before; fixed now. Sorry.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The mainstream media, of course, ignored the special blogger press conference segment. But here’s a transcript.

JOHN WALT says that the pro-filibuster protest that I photoblogged yesterday was part of a MoveOn campaign. I can’t say I’m surprised.

MY BROTHER EMAILED that this link makes him very happy. I can see why. Congratulations, bro!

IS CANADA THE NEXT FAILED STATE? Austin Bay ponders.

OOPS:

Sen. Ken Salazar said Wednesday he regrets referring to Focus on the Family and its founder James Dobson as “the Antichrist” – a term among the worst slurs in Christianity.

Salazar issued a statement Wednesday evening, backing down from a remark he made Tuesday night during an audio interview aired on KKTV of Colorado Springs.

If the Republicans are overplaying the religion card, well, so are the Democrats, in a different way. A plague on both of their houses, I say. But only one of the minor ones, like the frogs.

UPDATE: No, not these frogs. Which are toads, anyway.

I’M KIND OF BUSY this afternoon, which means that blogging may be light. But if you’re interested in the future, check out the Carnival of Tomorrow, a collection of futuristic posts. And you can tour the Indian blogosphere at this week’s Blog Mela. India and the future seem to go together anyway, these days.

“CORSET-PIERCING:” Not an urban legend (heck, I knew that, and I don’t stay in close touch with the fetish community these days), but not terribly appealing, either. But there’s this added attraction: “They usually can’t heal properly because they are a surface piercing in an area prone to rejection and they use a type of jewelry that isn’t really suitable for permanent use in the area.”

Whatever turns you on, I always say.

IN THE MAIL: Richard Zacks’ The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805. Looks like an interesting account of one of the more exciting episodes of early American military history.

LEBANON UPDATE: Michael Young is reporting from Beirut:

BEIRUT — It was enlightening, though not surprising, that in the days leading up to the Syrian Army’s pullout from Lebanon, which was completed on Tuesday, a peculiar activity took place. Syrian soldiers removed statues and other effigies of the late Syrian President Hafez Assad and his son Bassel, who was killed in a car crash, fearing the Lebanese would vandalize them and show what a sham the long-vaunted “brotherly relations” between Lebanon and Syria really were.

The Syrian withdrawal, which was imposed by a combination of international pressure and domestic Lebanese protests, ends a 29-year-old military presence. During that time, particularly after the war ended in 1990, Syria ran Lebanon like a protectorate, and was the final decision-maker on everything of consequence in the country, including who would be president, prime minister and Parliament speaker, who would be appointed where in the public administration, even who could be invited to political talk shows — and much else both high and low.

At the same time, Syria extorted vast sums of money from the Lebanese economy, usually in collaboration with local politicians. According to a report written by a Lebanese businessman for a presentation before the French Senate in 2003, Syria may have extracted through illicit activities alone as much as $41 million from Lebanon between 1991 and 2001. While the figures cannot be confirmed, they square with many other estimates circulating in recent years.

Read the whole thing. And don’t miss the Spirit of America Lebanonblog, where Michael Totten is continuously updating from the scene.

TIM RUSSO HAS THOUGHTS on the FEC and blogging.

ARE THE DEMOCRATS TRYING to come across as wimps? First there’s the bogus brouhaha about Bolton being “abrasive” (another Moynihan? Horrors!). Now Mickey Kaus notes that Education Secretary Margaret Spelling is a regular thug:

It seems she once called somebody “unAmerican” and contacted Utah’s governor instead of its education superintendent! She even threatened to cut off federal funding if Utah flouted the law’s requirements for getting federal funding! If that’s Dillon’s idea of “bare-knuckle politics” he must have grown up in an ashram.

Call me crazy, but “the party of Tom-Daschle soft-talkers” seems like a bad branding move to me.

OUR “FRIENDS,” THE SAUDIS: Not so much, really. As Dan Darling notes: “I mean, how else should we take their chief justice calling for jihad against US forces in Iraq as well donating cash towards said endeavors? And from the comfort of a government mosque, no less.”

I continue to regard the Bush Administration as insufficiently serious where the Saudis are concerned, though I’d love to turn out to be wrong about that.

I’VE MENTIONED KNOX COUNTY SCHOOLS’ rather draconian attendance policy, and how that conflicts with the school system’s own unseriousness at times, but yesterday took the cake. My daughter had a wonderful time — on a day-long “field trip” to see the local minor-league baseball team play. Enjoyable, yes? Educational? Not so much.

IT’S NOT LIKE THERE’S A WAR ON, or anything.

RAW-FILE ENCRYPTION: A tempest in a teapot?

CANADA UPDATE: Damian Penny says that Paul Martin is desperate.

PROTESTS IN EGYPT have passed a crucial milestone: They’re now producing photos of protest babes. This should have Hosni Mubarak worried.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, here’s a report of a protest by Syrian dissidents, in Damascus.

I THINK THAT ANDREW SULLIVAN IS GUILTY OF OVERREADING my earlier comments on the religious right. Unlike Sullivan, I don’t think we’re in the grip of a theocracy — unless “theocracy” is defined as “a population that doesn’t support gay marriage,” in which case the point is true, but trivial.

I do think that the Republican Party is making the very mistake that I warned against immediately after the election, in Reason:

“Great election, kid. Don’t get cocky.” That could be Han Solo’s advice to President Bush. But it’s not the advice he’s getting from either the left or the right. Eager to explain away Kerry’s defeat in a way that lets them feel morally superior, many on the left are saying that it was all about “moral values,” particularly gay rights and abortion. Eager to expand their power in the second term, advocates for the Christian Right have been swift to agree.

Listening to them would be a big mistake for Bush. There’s no question that incidents like the Janet Jackson breast episode have angered a lot of Americans who feel that the entertainment industry doesn’t respect their values. And gay marriage polls badly even in the bluest of blue states. But there’s little reason to believe Americans eagerly cast their votes in November in the hope that busybodies would finally start telling them what to do.

In their book The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge explain how the Republican coalition could go wrong: “Too Southern, too greedy, and too contradictory.” Taking the advice of advocacy groups left and right is likely to send the Bush administration in that direction. Is Karl Rove smart enough to realize that?

The answer would seem to be “no.” I do think, though, that Andrew’s constant complaints about theocracy aren’t helping and indeed make even his valid points less persuasive. Andrew did a wonderful job of convincing undecideds — and even some decided-againsts — to think positively of gay rights and gay marriage, but lately his tone has been such that I doubt it’s winning many converts. I support gay marriage, though no doubt with less intensity than Andrew, but it’s clearly a minority position in the country, and last year’s courtroom “victories” seem to have done more harm than good. You go from being a minority position, to a majority position, by convincing people that you’re right. It’s not clear to me that playing the theocracy card will do that. Because either the American people agree with the “theocrats'” program, in which case there’s not much difference between theocracy and democracy, and you’d really better start changing some minds, or they don’t agree with it, in which case they’ll discipline the Republicans at the next election — assuming that the opposition doesn’t discredit itself to an even greater degree first. Trust me — you don’t want to sound like Al Gore.

UPDATE: Related thoughts, here, from Daniel Drezner, and here, from Chris Lawrence.

[LATER: Sorry — Chris Lawrence link was wrong before. Fixed now.]

THE IRS FLUNKS AN AUDIT:

The Internal Revenue Service’s employee tuition assistance program has spent more than 60 percent of its funds — or $4.4 million in two years — on administrative costs, employing the equivalent of 30 full-time workers while turning away hundreds of employees for lack of funds, an inspector general audit has found.

(Via TaxProf, which also has a link to the audit itself).