HERE’S SOMETHING I HAVEN’T SEEN BEFORE: A pro-filibuster protest at my local mall this afternoon. Signs read: “U.S. Senate — Nuclear Free Zone,” and something I couldn’t make out regarding “right-minded judges.”

ANNE HAIGHT IS WENDY’S-BLOGGING — and giving fear-mongers the finger.

FOR PROFESSORS, HAVING A BLOG means that no research idea is ever wasted! And here’s more on academic blogging, in the Baltimore Sun.

MORE ON THE NEW YORK TIMES’ REVISIONISM, at The Mudville Gazette.

UPDATE: Tom Maguire emails:

The Times was pummeled in Nov 2003 for this revisionism – Andrew Sullivan
(the old Andrew) had two timely posts.

Link

Link

EJ Dionne, *not* a Righty, criticized Bush after the 2003 SOTU for offering
*three* rationales for war, and asked him to pick one.

Link

Finally, here is the speech Feb 26, 2003 speech to which the NY Times
referred.

Link

Really, the Times — and those others who are trying to rewrite history here — ought to be ashamed. No one denies, of course, that Bush talked about WMD, but what’s inexcusable is the way the critics are now trying to deny that he talked about anything else.

Roger Simon adds this observation:

T]he Times’ own executive editor wrote a long, positive profile in their magazine (before the war) of Paul Wolfowitz, in which the Deputy Defense Secretary speaks ad infinitum about the democracy argument. What I think is really going on here is liberal embarrassment. They have been caught on the wrong side of history. Worse, the anti-idealistic side.

Good point.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tom didn’t say he posted on this, but he did. Read the whole thing, which goes beyond the comments above, but this point is worth quoting:

Years later, the Times may be imagining that, since disarmament was the only reason that liberals wanted to hear, it must have been the only reason Bush offered.

Well, they knew better at one time, and perhaps they will again.

Especially if we keep reminding them!

A MEDIA TIPPING POINT? My TechCentralStation column is up.

RICH, BLOGGY GOODNESS: This week’s Carnival of the Vanities is up.

A DESPERATE BID FOR ATTENTION at Air America.

UPDATE: Here’s some valuable historical perspective.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF EDUCATION is up, featuring education-bloggers from all over.

MORE VIOLENCE IN TOGO.

NOW THIS IS JUST OUT-AND-OUT DISHONESTY AT THE NEW YORK TIMES:

The only plausible reason for keeping American troops in Iraq is to protect the democratic transformation that President Bush seized upon as a rationale for the invasion after his claims about weapons of mass destruction turned out to be fictitious. If that transformation is now allowed to run off the rails, the new rationale could prove to be as hollow as the original one.

I’ve already provided a link-rich refutation of this revisionist history, and this claim that democratic transformation was some sort of new rationalization is, not to put too fine a point on it, an out-and-out lie, readily fact-checkable and in fact already fact-checked, that the Times should be ashamed of.

What’s more, the Times editorial board should be very careful not to confuse “wrong” with “fictitious,” given its miserable performance on the war.

UPDATE: Reader Greg Wallace notes that The New York Times editorial board apparently doesn’t even read its own earlier work. Like, say, this from February 27, 2003:

President Bush sketched an expansive vision last night of what he expects to accomplish by a war in Iraq. Instead of focusing on eliminating weapons of mass destruction, or reducing the threat of terror to the United States, Mr. Bush talked about establishing a ”free and peaceful Iraq”…

Sorry, but this is just a pathetic performance by the Times, and warrants a correction. And an apology.

ANOTHER UPDATE: James Bennett (not the Anglosphere one) has further thoughts.

MICKEY KAUS refers to “the semi-mysterious slump of President Bush in the polls.”

I don’t think it’s much of a mystery, and I agree with Bush pollster Matthew Dowd that it has something to do with Terri Schiavo. (“The country’s generally unhappy, and maybe they think the Terri Schiavo case is taking away from things that Congress or Washington ought to be working on.”) Only it’s broader than that.

The Democrats’ weakness is that people worry that they’re the party of Jane Fonda. They tried — but failed miserably — to convince people otherwise in the last election.

The Republicans’ weakness is that people worry that they’re the party of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. They tried, successfully, to convince people otherwise in the last election, but they’re now acting in ways that are giving those fears new life. Add to this the fact that the war is going well, weakening the national security glue that holds Bush’s coalition together, and a drop is natural: People who reluctantly backed Bush because Kerry was just unacceptable on national security are now seeing their worries about domestic issues as more credible.

Perhaps the Republicans think this will all be forgotten by 2006, or at least by 2008. And perhaps they’re counting on the Democrats to remain so feckless on national security that it won’t matter. Perhaps they’ll be right, but they’re certainly suffering short-term declines in the polls that hurt the President’s ability to act right now. I think that if he had a 60% approval rating, or even a 53% approval rating, he’d be making more progress on Social Security reform and on his various nominations. Was it worth this damage to solidify the social-conservative base? They seem to think so, but I’m not so sure.

UPDATE: Caught a few minutes of Limbaugh as I was running errands this afternoon. He seemed to be playing defense on this issue ferociously enough to convince me that there’s something to it.

Rand Simberg and Rob Huddleston, on the other hand, think this is much ado about nothing.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Will Franklin says it’s all about consumer sentiment

CAPTAIN ED says that the Duelfer Report’s language on WMD and Syria is being misrepresented.

THE SUPREME COURT’S ENTHUSIASM FOR FOREIGN LAW seems to have its limits:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday curbed the reach of a federal law that prohibits convicted felons from possessing guns, ruling 5 to 3 that the law does not apply to those who were convicted by courts in foreign countries.

The majority arrived at that conclusion by interpreting the statute’s reference to a conviction in “any court” to mean “any court in the United States.” Justice Stephen G. Breyer’s majority opinion said that in the absence of any indication that Congress even considered the issue when it enacted the law in 1968, the court should apply a legal presumption that “Congress ordinarily intends its statutes to have domestic, not extraterritorial, application.”

Justice Breyer said the gun law would create anomalies if applied to foreign convictions, because foreign legal systems have made different choices of what conduct to regard as criminal. Citing the Russian criminal code as an example, he said that someone might be regarded as a felon “for engaging in economic conduct that our society might encourage.” A foreign conviction does not necessarily indicate that a person is dangerous, Justice Breyer said.

That’s true, and I’m delighted to see such a forthright acknowledgment that American values differ sharply from those of other countires.

On the other hand, quite a few domestic felony statutes have nothing to do with dangerousness, and I wonder if the promiscuous designation of crimes having no significant moral or dangerousness component as “felonies” might itself be a due process violation.

JEFF JARVIS is asking for car stereo advice.

PUBLIUS NOTES more protests in Belarus, where the opposition is not letting itself be cowed.

PHIL CARTER: “Nine months after the 9/11 Commission issued its report, America sees little follow-through on many of the Commission’s critical recommendations.”

He also says there’s been a failure of responsibility over Abu Ghraib, though I suppose that’s not entirely surprising given the way it has been politicized.

UPDATE: More homeland security problems here.

MICKEY KAUS notices that Fox News’ viewership lead over CNN is shrinking. But he misses the obvious explanation, which is that CNN has been actively courting bloggers for months. What else could it be?

SHOULDN’T FAKE RACIST HATE-MAIL be punished as severely as the real thing? It’s just as damaging.

NORM GERAS ASKS: “What is it that has led to this intellectual and political debacle of so much of the left of (roughly) my own generation? The pathology of anti-Americanism? The failure to call certain political phenomena by their proper names? A loss of nerve and/or moral perspective in face of a capitalism seemingly everywhere triumphant? Perhaps (three times). But a debacle is what it is – the loss to progressive opinion of half a generation or more of those who might otherwise have been expected to pass on a mature wisdom to younger others. Instead, this shameful legacy.”

And here’s another example.

ANOTHER BLOW TO FRENCH SELF-ESTEEM:

PARIS — The United States’ bread-baking skills were crowned superior to those of France and the rest of the world the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie, the World Cup of Baking, held in Paris, France.

The 2005 U.S. Bread Bakers Guild team was coached by Didier Rosada and included Jeffrey Yankellow, both of the San Francisco Baking Institute. They beat 11 other countries’ teams to win the competition, the Bread Bakers Guild of America reported today.

And even the metric system is growing less Francocentric.

AND THE 2008 REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE IS . . . well, we’ll see if he’s predicted by this poll.

TED FRANK REPORTS THAT HE IS TAKING THE BOEING — “though I’m not sure that metaphor works for a lawyer taking a paycut.”

CATHY SEIPP turns over the Mom card.

GEORGE W. BUSH — CLOSET DEMOCRAT? The rich are paying a greater share of taxes, and the poor a lesser share, than in 1979.

UPDATE: Brendan Nyhan leaps to Bush’s defense by arguing that taxes haven’t really gotten more progressive, and that the rich really are getting richer. Whew! That’s a relief.

On the other hand, judging by this photo, maybe “closet Democrat” wasn’t quite the right closet.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

ANOTHER UPDATE: This Matt Welch slamming of the Bush photo-op seems about right to me.

IT’S NOT TOO LATE to sign up for BlogNashville, happening May 5 & 6 in, er, Nashville. It promises to be the biggest blog conference yet, and I think it’ll be worth the trip. I certainly plan to be there.