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.