Just got in from doing a little work at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. While I was at the base, the First Fighter Wing did a "Heritage Flight." A Heritage Flight features several airplanes from a Wing or Squadron's history flying together for photographers and/or spectators.

In this case, I was treated to the greatest fighters from the first and second halves of the Twentieth Century flying in close formation with the reigning greatest fighter of the Twenty-First Century. Cool stuff.

If you missed it, they'll do the same flight again at the Langley Air Show in a few weeks. Catch 'em if you can.

UPDATE: Don't say I never post anything cool for you guys:

The redoubtable Lileks had a run-in with a BestBuy drone over the weekend:

At the checkout counter the clerk asked for my phone number. “Why?” I said. I hate this new wrinkle. I just hate it. I hate the fact that I can’t buy a frickin’ candy bar without a procedure that rivals a mortgage application. I’m always interested in the rationale they give.

“We need the phone number before we can let the merchandise leave the store,” the clerk said. Practiced response, right out of the employee handbook.

My reaction to this kind of thing is a firm, and not-always-polite "No," repeated as necessary when the clerk gives me a 'you-can't-do-that' look. I refuse flatly to give any personal information to any store that doesn't need it--i.e., if they're delivering something to me, fine, you can have my address and a contact number--work, not home. Otherwise, you don't have any business having that information, and I'm not giving it to you, especially if I'm paying with cash (I've long since quit writing paper checks at stores). I used to avoid Radio Shack stores explicitly because of the third-degree they'd give me when all I wanted to do was buy a patch cable (they've since quit asking for your name, address, and a note from your mother for every purchase).

As for the business about 'We need the phone number before we can let the merchandise leave the store', no offense to James, but that would have sent yours truly into a frothing gimme-my-damn-money-back-and-who's-the-biggest-boss-I-can-yell-at rage. If I'm paying you for something, don't you ever tell me you're going to hold my privacy hostage before I get what I've already paid for.

Maybe it's just me, but life's too short for that crap. I would hope the smarter retailers have figured that out--but BestBuy has never been accused of hiring smart people, have they?

Dash Rip Rock, the greatest bar band that never quite made the big time, has joined the hordes of podcasters with a recurring show hosted by founder Bill Davis. A feast for Dash-o-philes and a treat for just about anybody who likes music, it's chock full of demos, rarities and live tracks, as well as comments and stories from Bill and a sampling of his faves from other artists. Check it out, it's Dash-tastic.

Speaking of Dash fans, if anybody out there can hook me up with a copy of "Ned, Fred and Dickhead," the live disc Bill mentions in podcast #1 (which features a killer version of "Operator" from that CD, recorded by the original Dash lineup in 1986), or even just tell me where I can buy a copy, you will get a Genuine Certified Thing. Drop me a line if you know where I can get that one.

Zacarias Moussaoui pleaded guilty Friday to conspiring with the Sept. 11 attackers and declared he was chosen by Osama bin Laden to fly an airliner into the White House in a separate assault.

Over the objection of his lawyers, Moussaoui calmly admitted his guilt in a courtroom a few miles from where one of the hijacked planes crashed into the Pentagon in 2001, setting up a showdown with prosecutors who quickly reaffirmed they will seek Moussaoui's execution.

"I will fight every inch against the death penalty," Moussaoui told U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema as he became the only person convicted in a U.S. court in connection with the Sept. 11 plot that killed nearly 3,000 people.

The unshackled Moussaoui, wearing a beard and green prison jumpsuit, told the judge he had not been promised a lighter sentence for his guilty pleas. Then he added, "I don't expect any leniency from the Americans."

Nor should you, you murderous son of a bitch.

Link

Wow:

The Canadian company that Saddam Hussein invested a million dollars in belonged to the Prime Minister of Canada, canadafreepress.com has discovered.

Cordex Petroleum Inc., launched with Saddam’s million by Prime Minister Paul Martin’s mentor Maurice Strong’s son Fred Strong, is listed among Martin’s assets to the Federal Ethics committee on November 4, 2003.

Among Martin’s Public Declaration of Declarable Assets are: "The Canada Steamship Lines Group Inc. (Montreal, Canada) 100 percent owned"; "Canada Steamship Lines Inc. (Montreal, Canada) 100 percent owned"–Cordex Petroleums Inc. (Alberta, Canada) 4.6 percent owned by the CSL Group Inc."

Yesterday, Strong admitted that Tongsun Park, the Korean man accused by U.S. federal authorities of illegally acting as an Iraqi agent, invested in Cordex, the company he owned with his son, in 1997.

[snip]

According to the today’s New York Sun, "the next chapter in the United Nations crisis may erupt over U.N. investigator Paul Volcker’s membership on the board of one of Canada’s biggest companies, Power Corporation, since a past president of the firm, Canadian tycoon Maurice Strong, is now tied to the oil-for-food scandal."

The missing facts are: Not only are Volcker and Strong hooked with the ties that bind to Power Corporation Inc., a company under investigation in the oil-for-food scandal, Prime Minister Paul Martin was launched into the business world with Canadian Steamship Lines by Paul Desmarais’s Power Corporation Inc. and his predecessor Jean Chretien’s daughter, France is married to Paul Desmarais’ son, Andre Desmarais.

On national television last night, Prime Minister Paul Martin appealed for time in a six-minute address to the Canadian public, promising an election after the final Gomery report probing the mega-million dollar Liberal Party Adscam scandal.

Martin’s public address to Canadians coincided with the very day that his long-time mentor Maurice Strong was tied to the $65-billion UN oil-for-food scandal.

This illuminates the motivations behind the Canadian Liberal Party's antipathy towards Operation Iraqi Freedom a bit, doesn't it? Then again, I guess when your ideal for governance and policy is Chirac's France, this kind of thing isn't all that suprising.

Hat tip to the Blogfaddah for the article and post title.

The first time I read this New York Sun story, I almost figured it was a put-on. I mean, it's got 'punchline' written all over it: Ted Kennedy's brother-in-law pleads guilty to political corruption related to Hillary Clinton's campaign, it's revealed that he's been a secret informant to the FBI for years, and oh, by the way, he's also under investigation for trying to lure young girls into his car using a fake police light. But it's not a joke--it's a real story.

And what a story! It's got corruption, Kennedys, secret informants, Clintons, even weird sexual allegations. You'd think it would be the lead headline from coast to coast.

But funny thing--you can't find it much of anywhere. It's nowhere to be seen at CNN.com, even on the Politics page. It's not on the front of the New York Times website, and the only mention within the site is a canned AP story.

Gee, I thought the Times was supposed to be the 'newspaper of record,' with the best reporters in the world--they couldn't even spare one of them to cover a story involving the Democratic Party's two most prominent elected officials, Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton?

The Washington Post, allegedly the Times' biggest competitor for political news, doesn't mention the story at all. A search for "Raymond Reggie" at WaPo gets no relevant hits.

Golly, I wonder why not.

But have no fear, I'm sure Steve Lovelady and the Columbia Journalism review are on top of things, and will weigh in with a scathing Corey Pein condemnation in no time.

Of course, it'll be a condemnation of the Sun for daring to print the Reggie story in the first place...

Very interesting piece on here by Paul Graham, who was around in the early days of web start-ups. It's about how public-relations firms inject memes into the mainstream media for their clinets. In Graham's words,

PR is not dishonest. Not quite. In fact, the reason the best PR firms are so effective is precisely that they aren't dishonest. They give reporters genuinely valuable information. A good PR firm won't bug reporters just because the client tells them to; they've worked hard to build their credibility with reporters, and they don't want to destroy it by feeding them mere propaganda.

If anyone is dishonest, it's the reporters. The main reason PR firms exist is that reporters are lazy. Or, to put it more nicely, overworked. Really they ought to be out there digging up stories for themselves. But it's so tempting to sit in their offices and let PR firms bring the stories to them. After all, they know good PR firms won't lie to them.

Further down, Graham notes that the standard PR methods aren't working so well with one particular manifestation of new media:

Remember the exercises in critical reading you did in school, where you had to look at a piece of writing and step back and ask whether the author was telling the whole truth? If you really want to be a critical reader, it turns out you have to step back one step further, and ask not just whether the author is telling the truth, but why he's writing about this subject at all.

Online, the answer tends to be a lot simpler. Most people who publish online write what they write for the simple reason that they want to. You can't see the fingerprints of PR firms all over the articles, as you can in so many print publications-- which is one of the reasons, though they may not consciously realize it, that readers trust bloggers more than Business Week.

I was talking recently to a friend who works for a big newspaper. He thought the print media were in serious trouble, and that they were still mostly in denial about it. "They think the decline is cyclic," he said. "Actually it's structural."

In other words, the readers are leaving, and they're not coming back.

Why? I think the main reason is that the writing online is more honest. Imagine how incongruous the New York Times article about suits would sound if you read it in a blog:

The urge to look corporate-- sleek, commanding, prudent, yet with just a touch of hubris on your well-cut sleeve-- is an unexpected development in a time of business disgrace.

The problem with this article is not just that it originated in a PR firm. The whole tone is bogus. This is the tone of someone writing down to their audience.

Whatever its flaws, the writing you find online is authentic. It's not mystery meat cooked up out of scraps of pitch letters and press releases, and pressed into molds of zippy journalese. It's people writing what they think.

Good stuff. Check out the rest, and have a look at Graham's archives while you're at it.

One of the greatest athletes ever is set to retire:

Lance Armstrong, the Texan who became the lone star of cycling's biggest race, will end his improbable ride from death's door to cloud nine after a final three-week journey around France.

With emotion in his voice, Armstrong said Monday that the 2005 Tour de France from July 2 to July 24 would be his final race as a professional cyclist, win or lose.

Go out winning, Lance.

Got my taxes off like a good little sheep hours before the midnight deadline on Friday. There was a think wad of papers in that envolope, so I added a second stamp just to be safe.

We had a dinner party on Saturday (Cuban night - we ate really, really well), so I forgot to check the mail. Sunday, I remembered. What was in with the usual assortment of catalogs and mortgage re-fi offers? That's right: My federal tax return, with a notice that I owed nine cents postage. Added another stamp, and stuck it in with Monday's mail.

I'm not gonna get in trouble for that, am I?

The Bleat is back.

Doctors are more dangerous than gun owners.

The National Guard Experience.

Read and scroll, kids. Just read and scroll.

It's too late for me to look up the reference, but I'll give it to you the way I remember it.

In the run-up to WWII, some uppity-up in Japan's Imperial Government got word from the ambassador in Berlin about how Hitler was scapegoating the Jews for, well, damn near everyandanything. His comment: "If only Japan had Jews!"

That came to mind reading about the recent protests in China:

Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing refused Sunday to apologize or pay compensation to Japan for violent anti-Japanese demonstrations in which demonstrators smashed windows of Japanese diplomatic and business establishments in China.

How do you say Kristallnacht in Chinese?

Granted, the Kristallnacht reference is hyperbole; Beijing isn't about to round up the local Japanese and corral them into concentration camps. But the tune still sounds eerily familiar.

Germany had Jews, who it was claimed, secretly controlled money and production. In today's China, the Japanese play a similar role. German Jews somehow stabbed Berlin in the back, and caused them to lose WWI. China blames Japan for not completely owning up to atrocities committed in another war. Hitler wanted Poland for historical reasons, and as a springboard to greater conquests in the East. China covets Taiwan for historical reasons, and perhaps as a springboard to greater conquests in the South.

I don't mean to imply that China is about to get the world into another global conflict. But Beijing seems to have at least - or at last? - found its Jews.

Fascinating conjecture from The Belmont Club, which, thanks to an Instalanche you've probably already read. But in case you missed it, here's a key bit:

But if the EU is a really an attempt to turn the continent into a French colony it has once again run into Paul Johnson's observation that a "colony is lost once the level of settlement in exceeded by the growth rate of the indigenous peoples" except now it is in the context of Eastern European entrants. At the heart of French electoral resistance to the EU Constitution is an unwillingness to accept the free-market policies that non-French members want.

...

Europe if not now then soon must accept that enlargement by itself can never fully compensate for the fundamental weakness of its demographics and economy. Even a ship as large as the Titanic eventually fills with water. French EU Foreign Minister Michel Barnier could not have spoken more eloquently of the dead-end French policy had become when he said the EU had no contingency plan in the event of a rejection. "We have no plan B. You cannot have a plan B. It is 'Yes' and that's the only way to discuss this item, so we go 100 percent for that outcome". If wishes were horses then beggars would ride.

While I think France has lost her glory, and while I also beleive the EU constitution is a disaster-in-the-making, I don't wish Europe any ill. I say all that, even if Europe does contantly remind me of General Eisenhower's quip: "War without allies is bad enough; with allies, it is hell."

Like them or not, Europe is still a member of this wonderful thing called Western Civilization. We (and they) are better off with a stronger Europe than a weaker one.

And with that said, the more I read of Europe's troubles, the more I fear a new (and however unlikely) new European War.

After six weeks of owning the damn thing, iPod tells me its most-played song is Cheryl Lynn's "Got To Be Real."

Some things I just don't need to know.

UPDATE: In what I think must be an act of contrition, iTunes just decided to play "Go Down Gamblin'" very, very loud.

Who says the MSM doesn't take cues from the blogs? Check out Drudge. Looks like Martini Boy may have more than one lawsuit to file...

Hat-tip to prolific Vodkacommentor Chuck(le) Pelto.

Via Slashdot, here's a wonderful article about the engineers in Apollo 13 mission control (today is the 35th anniversary of Odyssey's safe splashdown). Although it's in an electrical engineering professional journal, the piece is extraordinarily well-written, and should be understandable and enjoyable even if you don't happen to have a technical background.

There's way too much good stuff to quote, but here's a tidbit that I recognized from my own career experience as a flight test engineer:

Confidence was part of the bedrock upon which mission control was built. When prospective controllers joined NASA, often fresh out of college, they started out by being sent to contractors to collect blueprints and documents, which they then digested into information that mission controllers could use during a mission, such as the wiring diagrams the lunar module controllers had used to figure out how to power up the Aquarius. After that, the proto-flight controllers started participating in simulations. The principal problem NASA had with these neophytes was "one of self-confidence," explains Kranz. "We really worked to develop the confidence of the controllers so they could stand up and make these real-time decisions. Some people, no matter how hard we worked, never developed the confidence necessary for the job." Those not suited for mission control were generally washed out within a year.

Having spent several years as a young engineer in the telemetry room for live-fire missile tests, I can vouch for that last conclusion. There are some guys (and gals) who are never going to be ready to wear the headset and man "the button." That's not their fault, and it's better for everybody if they're identified early, so they can move on to a job they're better suited for.

Anyway, the article is a really great read, chock-full of stuff that didn't make Ron Howard's fine movie, or even most of the documentaries since 1970. Check it out.

UPDATE: From an AP story about the engineers who came up with the now-famous square peg/round hole CO2 scrubber fix:

Among the biggest concerns was whether the astronauts had duct tape, Smylie said. He later learned duct tape was commonly used on the spacecraft to clean filters and for other tasks, such as taping bags of food to heating lamps.

"I felt like we were home free," he said. "One thing a Southern boy will never say is 'I don't think duct tape will fix it.'"

Damn right.

Sylvester Brown, a columnist in St. Louis, offers up this trite eye-roller to the Blogfaddah, in response to a Reynolds post on US efforts to oust dictatorships in favor of democracies, by force when necessary:

Sorry, bloggers. When it comes to regime change and nation-building, I can't follow the wisdom of Bush and his crew. I lean more toward the words of a real straight shooter, Mohandas Gandhi:

"The spirit of democracy cannot be imposed from without. It has to come from within."

Gandhi, of course, is the patron saint of pacifism for the Western Left. What they tend to leave out in quoting the above and other pacifistic platitudes is Gandhi's extremism, if his philosophies were carried out to their logical conclusions. Concerning the threat of Hitler's Germany, Gandhi counseled Winston Churchill to surrender peacably, and then pursue a strategy of non-violent resistance.

Now, you do know what happened to everybody who pursued non-violent resistance against the Nazis, don't you? What do you think the world would look like today, had Churchill and Roosevelt taken that advice?

Gandhi, like Nelson Mandela in South Africa and Martin Luther King, Jr. in this country, had one tremendous advantage in their own quite remarkable efforts--they were opposing governments and/or structures that were, in the end, ameniable to moral persuasion. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Saddam--these were not reasonable men who could be shamed or convinced into stepping down quietly and calling elections. These were barbaric monsters who recognized no higher morality than their own whims. Today's closest parallel to Gandhi is the Dalai Lama, and all his own pacifism has won for his people in Tibet is fifty years of brutal Chi-Com occupation, with no end in sight.

Brown should know as much, and I suspect he probably does, but between the old leftie blame-America syndrome and simple Bush-hatred, he apparently can't bring himself to admit the obvious. Rather sad, really.

A while back, Vermont's socialist congressman Bernie Sanders went into a frothing rage when Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan credited the United States for having "the highest standard of living in the world" at a congressional hearing.

Sanders responded, quite angrily, "No, we do not. You go to Scandinavia, and you will find that people have a much higher standard of living, in terms of education, health care and decent paying jobs. Wrong, Mister."

Now, I'm no Nostradamus, but I feel secure in predicting that Bernie isn't going to get his normal enjoyment out of reading the Sunday New York Times today. The Times (to my surprise and the paper's credit) ran a really interesting and data-chocked analysis by Bruce Bawer, an American freelancer living in Oslo, Norway, comparing the standards of living for Americans and various Scandinavians. Bawer includes both telling anecdotes from his own experience:

After I moved here six years ago, I quickly noticed that Norwegians live more frugally than Americans do. They hang on to old appliances and furniture that we would throw out. And they drive around in wrecks. In 2003, when my partner and I took his teenage brother to New York - his first trip outside of Europe - he stared boggle-eyed at the cars in the Newark Airport parking lot, as mesmerized as Robin Williams in a New York grocery store in "Moscow on the Hudson."

One image in particular sticks in my mind. In a Norwegian language class, my teacher illustrated the meaning of the word matpakke - "packed lunch" - by reaching into her backpack and pulling out a hero sandwich wrapped in wax paper. It was her lunch. She held it up for all to see.

Yes, teachers are underpaid everywhere. But in Norway the matpakke is ubiquitous, from classroom to boardroom. In New York, an office worker might pop out at lunchtime to a deli; in Paris, she might enjoy quiche and a glass of wine at a brasserie. In Norway, she will sit at her desk with a sandwich from home.

It is not simply a matter of tradition, or a preference for a basic, nonmaterialistic life. Dining out is just too pricey in a country where teachers, for example, make about $50,000 a year before taxes. Even the humblest of meals - a large pizza delivered from Oslo's most popular pizza joint - will run from $34 to $48, including delivery fee and a 25 percent value added tax.

Not that groceries are cheap, either. Every weekend, armies of Norwegians drive to Sweden to stock up at supermarkets that are a bargain only by Norwegian standards. And this isn't a great solution, either, since gasoline (in this oil-exporting nation) costs more than $6 a gallon.

... and a great deal of statistical analysis from several sources:

All this was illuminated last year in a study by a Swedish research organization, Timbro, which compared the gross domestic products of the 15 European Union members (before the 2004 expansion) with those of the 50 American states and the District of Columbia. (Norway, not being a member of the union, was not included.)

After adjusting the figures for the different purchasing powers of the dollar and euro, the only European country whose economic output per person was greater than the United States average was the tiny tax haven of Luxembourg, which ranked third, just behind Delaware and slightly ahead of Connecticut.

The next European country on the list was Ireland, down at 41st place out of 66; Sweden was 14th from the bottom (after Alabama), followed by Oklahoma, and then Britain, France, Finland, Germany and Italy. The bottom three spots on the list went to Spain, Portugal and Greece.

Alternatively, the study found, if the E.U. was treated as a single American state, it would rank fifth from the bottom, topping only Arkansas, Montana, West Virginia and Mississippi.

As a native of Alabama and current resident of Georgia, I must admit that I take no small satisfaction in the last. Continuing:

In short, while Scandinavians are constantly told how much better they have it than Americans, Timbro's statistics suggest otherwise. So did a paper by a Swedish economics writer, Johan Norberg.

Contrasting "the American dream" with "the European daydream," Mr. Norberg described the difference: "Economic growth in the last 25 years has been 3 percent per annum in the U.S., compared to 2.2 percent in the E.U. That means that the American economy has almost doubled, whereas the E.U. economy has grown by slightly more than half. The purchasing power in the U.S. is $36,100 per capita, and in the E.U. $26,000 - and the gap is constantly widening."

Believe it or not, there's plenty more. Read the whole thing, and try to imagine Sanders' apoplexy as he was flipping through the Times this morning...

This is going to ramble a bit, so bear with me.

There's quite a bit of blogosphere and MSM turmoil today over the Senate judicial fillibuster controversy. The latest rumblings are thanks to (a) reports that the Republican Senate leadership is getting ready to move on a procedural vote to end fillibusters of judicial nominees, and (b) Republican Senate leader Bill Frist's decision to associate himself with a televised push by the Family Research Council next week to drum up support for some of the stalled Bush nominees.

Frist first.

I've never been particularly impressed with Frist. Seems like a decent fellow, but I don't get the hoopla. For one thing, he's not a particularly good politician. He was picked out to replace Trent Lott (whom I have even less use for) because he was seen as a straight-arrow, and that's all well and good, but I thought he was too inexperienced for the job at the time, and he hasn't done much since then to convince me otherwise, or that he has the leadership qualities for a really critical position like Majority Leader. I really don't get the Frist-for-President stuff, for those reasons and others. I don't think he'd be a competitive candidate, even in the primaries.

And I think he's making a mistake by associating himself so closely with the Dobson effort. There's nothing wrong with Christian conservatives organizing to support nominees they approve of, any more than anything being wrong with Ralph Neas or the ACLU organizing lefties to oppose them (I wish some on the left and liberterian side of the blogosphere could bring themselves to admit that), but it's also just as inappropriate for Frist to be as in bed with the Dobson group as it is for Neas to be calling the dance steps for the Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee.

That said, I think an awful lot of blogosphere commentators are letting their knee-jerk reactions to the "Christian Right" cloud their judgment, not so much regarding the Dobson stuff, as to the entirety of the fillibuster issue. A minority of a minority in the US Senate has installed what amounts to a religious test for court nominees, and folks, that's dangerous no matter whether it's being imposed in favor of or in opposition to religion and the religious.

Take Bill Pryor, for example. Pryor was the Attorney General of Alabama before being nominated by Bush, and he'd worked his way up through the prosecutors' ranks to get there (I have a little second-hand knowledge of the guy thanks to a close friend who used to work for him). Pryor was denied a Senate vote by the likes of Dick Durban, Barbara Boxer and Chuckie Schumer very explicitly because Pryor is a devout Catholic, and thus (at least according to the fillibusterers) can't be trusted on abortion.

Sorry, folks, but that's a religious test, and a patently unconstitutional one. It's no different than if Lott were to stand up and say, "I'm going to block the nomination of this Democratic judge because she's a gol-darned atheist." That would be entirely inappropriate, and so is the Boxer-Schumer rejection of Pryor for being a committed Catholic. Either one (and I don't use this phrase lightly) leans hard towards being flatly un-American.

Besides which, Pryor's record does not indicate anything like "extreme" actions based on his religion. I frankly wouldn't have that much of a problem with blocking the nomination if we were talking about somebody as irresponsible and self-serving as, say, Roy Moore, but Pryor isn't even close to being a Roy Moore.

Want a few more examples? Janice Rogers Brown (another naitive Alabamian, oddly enough) and Manuel Estrada (who dropped out of the process in disgust) were blocked on purely racial terms. We know now from leaked Democratic strategy memos that their nominations were seen as untenable purely because the Dems thought either of them would be hard to vote against as possible future Supreme Court nominees.

That's got nothing to do with either of their records, and it's got no legitimate place in the process of "advise and consent." Not liking a nominee's future prospects is not a defensible reason for opposing that nominee. You want to win that fight, win it in the elections for the guy (or gal) who does the nominating, not after the fact.

The blatantly racial blockings of Brown and Estrada ought to be raising a lot more hackles on the principled left and center than they are. And I'm sorry--these nominees are no more "extreme" on their side of the fence than leftie heartthrob Ruth Bader Ginsberg is on hers (quite a bit less so, in my admittedly biased opinion). A little more intellectual honesty on matters like that would be appreciated, but frankly, it's not something I expect.

The Boston Globe got caught making up a story about a seal hunt in Canada that didn't actually happen, and had issue a retraction and fire the freelancer who wrote it--although the story about the phony story comes from Reuters, so for all we know, the paper in question might actually have been the Birmingham News or Podunk Post.

But assuming that Reuters is accurate for a change, a question: what happened to the editors who approved it? Fact-checkers? You know, all those valuable tools (and I mean that in every sense of the word) who allegedly make Big Media "journalists" superior to us pajama types? Are they still on the payroll? And why weren't their names publicized along with that of the fired freelance reporter?

Somebody notify Alex Beam. There's print dreck in his paper.

Taxes are done, and I may have a lawsuit on my hands. Nothing exciting - just some people who might not have been following instructions.

Anyway, if I'm a bit distracted the next few weeks (like I haven't been the last few weeks?), you'll know why.

Thursday's biggest news story is this:

It's official! The MPAA has rated Star Wars - Episode III: Revenge of the Sith "PG-13 for sci-fi violence and some intense images".

Why is that a big deal? Well, to normal people, it's not. But it does give the Star Wars geek a new hope that George Lucas didn't kiddie-down yet another SW movie.

Sometime in the last act, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker are going to come to blows. Master and student, comrades in arms, best friends – pitted against one another in a good vs evil pan-galactic slugfest. Ought to be pretty heavy stuff, especially since Kenobi is going to disassemble Skywalker with his lightsaber, then drop what's left into a volcano. Then remember that Kenobi is the good guy. And then remember that in the end, the good guys lose.

Tough to get all that across in any meaningful way in a PG movie – we aren't talking Ewoks this time, kids. We're not talking fireworks over victory parades. We're talking about the good guys all ending up dead or exiled, infants made into orphans, and the hero turned into a cross between Frederick Bernard Snite, Jr., Steve Austin, and Montgomery Burns.

Anyway, after the last couple Star Wars movies, I wondered if Lucas still had it in him to do something as weighty as The Empire Strikes Back. We won't know for sure until May 19, but the PG-13 rating looks like a positive sign.

After reading a post from a recently-returned vet on Instapundit, Old Man's War author John Scalzi is generously emailing digital copies to any deployed military member in Iraq or Afghanistan. I just sent a copy of the post to my brother-in-law (Army, Afghanistan); if you know somebody over there, you ought to do the same, and maybe buy a dead-tree copy for yourself as a thank-you (I haven't read "OMW" yet, but Martini Boy was raving about it a while back).

As for Mr. Scalzi, from one Heinlein fan to another, good on ya'. I tip my evening cocktail in your general direction.

More photoblogging from Lebanon.

An item on military procurement from DefenseTech:

19 percent of the Pentagon's acquistion budget -- the money to research and buy things -- is being devoted to super-secret items, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. That comes out to about 28 billion dollars, almost double what was spent in 1995.

Not only is there a war on, but it's a war fought largely in the shadows. A bigger black budget makes a lot of sense. Remember though that "black spending" often means "wasteful spending," and we don't have any way to audit it.

Booker T. & The MG's make you walk better.

The EU isn't letting France and Germany twist its arm on selling arms to China:

Europe seemed farther away than ever from lifting its 16 year-old arms embargo on China today, following statements by German officials and a vote in the European Parliament that urged linking the embargo question to human rights improvements in China.

"We want to reach a consensus, but this requires that everyone in the European Union votes in favor," Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, said in a parliamentary debate on the embargo question. "For this it is necessary for China also to move."

"It is in China's power to sign the human rights conventions relatively soon," Mr. Fischer continued, calling on China specifically to "ease administrative detentions and above all move towards a peaceful settlement of the disputes across the Taiwan Strait."

Alsotoday, the European Parliament, meeting in Strasbourg, France, voted 431 to 85, with 31 abstentions, on a resolution urging the European Union not to lift the arms embargo.

Ironically, Fischer's Green Party is one of the main obstacles to lifting the ban.

John McCain wants to block free scientific inquiry, too.

Charming:

Most Americans believe bloggers should not be allowed to publish sensitive personal information about individuals, according to a new survey.

Web hosting company Hostway this week released the results of its poll of 2,500 Americans on blogging. Eighty percent of respondents did not believe that bloggers should be allowed to publish home addresses and other personal information about private citizens.

A further 72 percent favored censorship of personal information about celebrities, and 68 percent, information about elected or appointed government officials such as judges or mayors.

Thanks to McCain-Feingold, the American public may very well get its wish.

NOTE: For years I've joked that the best way to improve the First Amendment would be to put a period after the initial clause. These days, that's a very unfunny joke.

Don't forget to tune into RightTalk Radio at 3pm Eastern for Jeff Goldstein, Bill Ardolino, and special guest star, Charo.

Progress - real progress - in the Middle East.

Been meaning to link to Greg, Down Deep in Texas, for ages now.

Guess I can scratch that off my list now.

Seriously, Greg's got some good stuff.

NOTE: Hey, Collier -- he's a BSG fan, too.

Years ago, I learned never to date a woman who spends her free time writing goth poetry, illustrated with giant, teary, disembodied eyes. Since we split up (OK, she dumped me - twice) I've hardly ever said her name. Just referred to her as The Spooky Chick. Hell, not even the nickname is very original. I stole it from the Nine Types of Girlfriends strip from Matt Groening's "Life Is Hell." The panel features a girl in a black turtleneck (natch), waving her arms and saying, "This interpretive dance will explain how I feel about our relationship. The panel text read:

Woman from Mars

Also known as: The Babbler, Spooky Girl, Screwball, Loony, Bad News, Artistic.
Advantages: Entertaining, unfathomable.
Disadvantages: Will read her poetry aloud.

I took two things away from that relationship (other than all her friends) -- a total-body itch any time I hear The Indigo Girls, and an enduring love for really bad angst poetry.

With that last item in mind, click on over to The Hatemonger's Quarterly. They got something special going on.

VodkaPundit was featured on CNN again tonight. Trey Jackson has the video.

I was folding laundry. Melissa was watching TV. I heard bits and pieces of this week's "CSI: Miami," and got so interested I sat down and watched the end of it.

Short version.

The IRS screws up a decimal or three, and tries to screw a guy out of 33 million dollars in taxes he never owed. (Of course, you know how Tax Court works. You have to pay what they claim you owe until you prove you don't have to. They'll forfeit any taxes and penalties you unjustly paid, but the IRS never gets penalized.) So when they guy can't make his monthly vig, the IRS starts seizing his stuff, and puts him out of business. Then, in a made-for-TV confrontation, the guy's two young sons shoot and kill the IRS agent. There was something about an even more-evil IRS agent, but I didn't catch all of it.

In the end, our hero CSI chief humiliates the IRS and sets everything right. Except, of course, for the nice kids who never meant to become killers. Lesson learned: Rapacious government is bad.

But how often do we see a government agent as the bad guy? An IRS screw-up is one example, but there are countless others that would make for good TV drama. How about a man who loses everything to asset forfeiture, even though he never committed (or was even charged with) a crime? Distraught, he kills somebody. Or what about a nice couple who put everything into some nice beach propery, then go broke when the EPA declares their property a wetland? Distraught, they, uh, kill somebody. I'm sure you can think of your own examples – it's not that difficult. For inspiration, you can always read the news.

And that reminds me of "Ghostbusters." No, really.

When that movie came out 20-plus years ago, the secondary bad guy was a cruel and vainglorious EPA agent. Since the heroes hadn't filled out the necessary permits in triplicate, the EPA guy shut down the ghost "containment field" and set Hell loose on New York City. What are the odds that today we'd see a character like him?

The "CSI: Miami" show was nicely timed to nearly coincide with Tax Day. We're all a little angry about all that money we paid, and CSI let us vent some of that frustration. But you know that, come April 16, we and TV will go back to business as usual. Our frustration spent, we'll go back to being sheep. To keep us out of the slaughterhouse the other 51 weeks of the year, we could use a little more drama.

So, c'mon, TV networks – give it to us.

John "Loser" Kerry is soliciting emails from military families regarding sacrifices and hardships they've suffered as a result of family members serving in Iraq. My brother-in-law is just such a family member, so I sent off the following "Dear John" letter:

Dear John,

My sister's husband served over a year in Iraq, including the entire ground war and the first year of reconstruction. He missed the second year of his first child's life to do so, and he has just deployed to Afghanistan, where he'll miss the first year of his second child's life.

He is proud to serve, and we are proud beyond words of him and his sacrifices. And we are ashamed that you, as a US Senator and would-be president (that'll be the day), would be soliciting military families to give you sound bites for your personal political gain.

Shame on you, you pathetic vulture. Release your Form 180.

As PoliPundit notes, Kerry isn't interested in stories of heroism or honorable service or good works. He's just looking for gripes and camera-ready tales of "victims" that he can parade before the press. That's disgusting. That's the kind of stuff you'd expect from a Michael Moore or hell, from Bagdhad Bob himself.

And this guy wanted to be commander-in-chief.

Tom Friedman:

I fear that we may now be entering the most dangerous period since 9/11. Why? Because I've always believed that one of the most important reasons there has been no new terrorist attack in America has to do with the U.S. invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan. It is not only that the Bush administration has taken the fight to the enemy, but that the enemy has welcomed that fight.

Of course, that's something VP readers have know for quite some time. On to the meat:

The reason things may be getting more dangerous now is that the formation of a freely elected government in Iraq may signal that the Baathist-Jihadist insurgency is being gradually defeated. The U.S. may even be able to withdraw some troops. And there is nothing worse for the Baathists and Jihadists than to be defeated in the heart of their world - and, even more so, to be defeated in the heart of their world by other Arabs and Muslims who are repudiating the Jihadists' vision and tactics.

I fear that when and if the Jihadists conclude that they have been defeated in the heart of their world, they will be sorely tempted to throw a Hail Mary pass. That is, they may want to launch a spectacular, headline-grabbing act of terrorism in America that tries to mask, and compensate for, just how defeated they have become at home.

Sleep tight. But not before you read the whole thing.

Doing taxes.

Feh.

One of the guys at AutoWeek's comments board came up with a great idea: "Slogans Automakers Should Have Used."

Here are three from the original guy to get you started:

The New 5-Series: We fixed the E39 until it broke.

Corvette Convertible: Tans your bald spot faster.

Aston Martin DB9: Yes, this car will get you laid.

I'd add these:

Hyundai: It'll get you there - eventually.

Mercedes: So complicated, not even Germans can work them.

Plymouth: Why aren't you buying Dodge?

Feel free to add your own.

According to the usual gang of idiots in Germany, killing Chechens is hunky-dory:

When US President George W. Bush visited Germany last February, tens-of-thousands of angry demonstrators turned out in Mainz and all across Germany to vent their outrage at the Iraq war and the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Now, less than two months later, Russian President Vladimir Putin is in Germany. And a whopping 30 protesters showed up to demonstrate the bloody Russian war and widespread human rights violations in Chechnya.

Read the whole, revolting thing.

NOTE: I shouldn't act so surprised. It's not like Germany never approved of leveling Russian cities.

The MSM comes to the defense of bloggers! No, really:

SAN JOSE, Calif. - More than a half-dozen news organizations are supporting three online reporters who wrote about a top-secret product that Apple Computer Inc. says was protected by trade secret laws.

In December, Apple sued 25 unnamed individuals - possibly Apple employees - who allegedly leaked confidential product information to three Web publishers. The Cupertino-based company said the leaks violated nondisclosure agreements and California's Uniform Trade Secrets Act.

In Apple's attempts to identify the source of the leaks, the company asked the reporters' Internet providers to turn over e-mail records.

The reporters - Monish Bhatia, Jason O'Grady and another person who writes under the pseudonym Kasper Jade - tried to block the subpoenas. They said that identifying sources would create a "chilling effect" that could erode the media's ability to report in the public's interest.

Let me get this straight. We're journalists when we're taking on a big, bad corporation. But when we're taking on big-name politicians, we're pajama-wearing cranks.

Whatever.

Remember all that blizzard news you read about Colorado on Sunday? Yeah, well, it melted already. You won't see that on Fox. Oh, the bigger drifts are still around, and the big piles the neighborhood kid made shoveling our driveway are still big piles – but they're all smaller. Most every place with actual weather likes to joke, "Don't like it, then wait a minute." But around here, it's the real deal. If I'd have had worn a heavier shirt, I would have taken the top down today, too.

Still, Melissa took a snow day. When she got up at Oh Dark Thirty, there was an unmelted, unshoveled two-foot drift in front of the garage door. She could either call in to work – where hardly anyone else was going to show up – or wake my nightowl self up and ask me to shovel.

No surprise which option she chose. I'm grumpy in the morning – and that's at eight AM. At six, fuggidabouddit.

She got stuff done around the house she's been meaning to do, but didn't want to waste a weekend day doing. I didn't get much done at all, because I'm not used to having another human body here during working hours.

Yes, I know fatherhood will change all that. But while I'm cutting myself some slack, you should, too. I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.

Spent my time doing piddly things, like getting all my Internet shortcuts re-arranged. When the link list in any given subfolder is longer than your screen, it's time to get organized. What did I discover? That for the first time maybe ever, the majority of my links directly involve spending money.

There's a "Shopping" folder, with links to Amazon and such. But there's also a Food folder, to places like Dean & Delucca, a store where I can find stuff I can't find here in town. There's a folder for Cars, one labeled Software, and another dedicated to online camera shopping. Oh, and Music and Clothes, too. And one for Household Items.

I have links to Consumer Reports, Epinions, Ken Rockwell's photo reviews, and… you get the point. When I'm not spending my time (and time is money) blogging on the web, then I'm spending my money there more directly.

What the hell happened?

The Internet used to be the place I went to read about the things I'd already bought, to find reinforcement for my buying decision. (And if that's not a metaphor for blogging, then I'm not wearing pajamas. OK, I'm not actually wearing PJs, but a joke's a joke. Anyway.) Sometime around 1999, I set up an Amazon account. Used it for books (sometimes), music (rarely), and all my DVDs. Now I'm buying camera lenses there which cost more than I used to make all summer. And I'm doing it sight unseen.

There's a level of trust on the anonymous Internet you usually only find with certain family members and very dear friends. How'd that happen?

I have an idea how it happened, but I can tell you for sure how it started.

One of the first things I bought on Amazon was a CD box set as a Chanukah gift for my Grandfather Green. It was a hard-to-find item, one I'd been trying to get for a couple years already. Two minutes on Amazon beat two years of hitting every record store on the Front Range. Proud, I told Granpa what I'd done. The conversation that followed, I think, sums up how trust developed on the Internet.

Granpa: You gave your credit card number to a machine?

Me: Yeah.

Granpa: How could you do that?

Me: You order things on the phone, right?

Granpa: Right.

Me: You're giving your number to some minimum wage employee with access to Neiman's entire stock. I gave mine, scrambled, to a computer without an axe to grind. You tell me which is safer.

Granpa laughed, and that was that.

Meanwhile, the trust grew. It's easy to buy a book or a CD/DVD online – you know what you're getting. But now I -- me, a very tactile shopper -- am buying clothes online. Stuff I used to have to touch, now I just click and get. I trust my e-merchants so much, that I'm sure they won't sell me crap. And if they do, I trust them well enough to take it back – without too many questions, either.

Want to know a secret? Couple years ago, I got Melissa a Pocket PC for Christmas. Getting it set up for her, I dropped it on the hardwood floor, and killed the thing. This was on Christmas. I'd bought it two months earlier. And yet Amazon took it back and replaced it without even charging me for shipping – all in violation of their 30-day return policy.

Try doing that at Dillard's, where the sales clerk looks at you funny, and double-checks and triple-scans that stupid yellow barcode sticker, just to make sure you're not some petty criminal.

What it comes down to is, Amazon trusts me. Dillard's doesn't. And though I'd really like to touch those new pants before I buy them, most often now I buy them online. Sight unseen, touch unfelt.

They trust me. Therefore, I trust them.

The shortcuts don't lie.

Could we live to be 1,000?

I dunno. But I do know this much: If I'm still blogging in 2573, just frickin' kill me already.

Richard Lyon writes:

Congratulations to the MSM are in order. They threw caution to the wind, along with professional standards, and tenaciously pursued the "Schiavo Talking Points Memo" story. Because this was deemed harmful to the Republicans, they fervently pursued what was, evidently at the time, no more than a memo of unknown and questionable provenance. The gamble paid off. They managed to tarnish the Republican Party when this unseemly, but not criminal, memo was discovered to have have been written by a heretofore faceless party operative. They are vindicated and I don't suspect that they will bother to address the questions regarding their rushing this story to press or the other irregularities associated with their coverage which would lead one to question their motives.

Now that this mystery has been solved, professional standards and their professional objectiveness will demand that the MSM finally investigate the circumstances behind the "Rathergate Memo", an obviously forged document which was released with the intent of impacting a Presidential election, a federal crime. Of course, this investigation might reflect badly on someone sympathetic to the Democrats.

I don't suppose that I should hold my breath.

Hey, CBS kind of sort of fired some people - isn't that enough?*

*You knew I was being sarcastic, right?

"Today, over sixty-one thousand Iraqis are alive (and free and perhaps voting) because of American policy."

I don't subscribe to the body-count calculus of war. Really, Hitler only wanted to kill 12 million Jews, plus a few million more gays, Gypsies, and other "undesireables." Left to his own devices, Hitler would have killed far fewer people than ended up dying because nations and people chose to fight him.

Of course, that leaves out the 100 million Slavs Hitler would have enslaved and dislocated to make labor and room for his "Greater Germany" in European Russia. Body-Count Calculus leaves out a similar fact in Iraq : No matter whether the war has claimed more Iraqi lives than it saved, today's Iraqis are free.

The US (North and South) lost 600,000 lives in the Civil War. Had we let the South go its own way, all those lives would have been spared. But slavery would have lived on.

I do not subscribe to the body-count calculus of war -- but sometimes it sure is nice to know.

What she said.

Sometimes, even a Congressman can make some sense:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Rep. Christopher Shays said Sunday that fellow Republican Rep. Tom DeLay should step down as House majority leader because his continuing ethics problems are hurting the GOP.

"Tom's conduct is hurting the Republican Party, is hurting this Republican majority and it is hurting any Republican who is up for re-election," Shays told The Associated Press on Sunday.

What Shays forgot to say was, "Also, DeLay is just a slimy rotten bastard."

Arthur Chernkoff has it in spades.

UPDATE: I finally finished reading his latest update, and he doesn't have the good news in spades -- he has it in clubs, diamonds, and hearts, too.

More trouble in Washinton State's long-disputed gubernatorial election:

That's appalling," says Secretary of State Sam Reed, a Republican who has frequently drawn praise from Democrats for being evenhanded. "You just don't do those things." Even the office of Democratic County Executive Ron Sims admits that "an outside review is probably a good idea" if for no other reason than to address Republican suspicions about the 94 new King County ballots. GOP lawyers point out that two-thirds of the new votes were cast in King County precincts that Republican Dino Rossi won. Ms. Gregoire won seven in 10 King County precincts.

All of this means that the May 23 date set for a trial on a GOP lawsuit seeking to declare the election invalid and to hold a new one this November takes on added significance. Mr. Gorton points out that "a court [can] void any election where the number of illegal or mistaken votes exceeds the margin of victory." In the case of last year's race for governor the number of uncounted ballots unearthed just this April is fast approaching Ms. Gregoire's margin of victory.

I've long argued that the democratic process is much more important than the result of any single election. (Or as Megan McArdle so eloquently put it: "Having a legitimate democratic process is far more important than having someone whose policies I agree with in office.")

A voided election is always, always my last choice. That said, it looks like the Washington election might have been tainted so badly that nothing but a do-over will do.

If you missed it yesterday, here's the tale of Patrick Byrne and the "65% Solution."

Joe Gandelman's moderate voice was heard at a recent Standford blogging symposium:

During the campaign both Right and Left Blogs not only preached to the choir. Most left and Right blogs seldom made a real ATTEMPT to win over people who might still have open minds. People who thought web logs and the Internet had a role in persuading would be disappointed if they monitored blogs on both sides as closely as I did — and I do.

THE REASON: Each side was absolutely convinced they were going to win. Each side had a mindset. Each side quoted almost exclusively those web logs with whom they agreed and often belittled or blasted those that did not agree with them. Weblogs comprehensively helped firm up partisan world view — a perspective — a party line — and kept their respective partisans informed and to a certain extent in line. This wasn’t done as part of a genius, imposed grand plan — It happened via each blogger’s preference.

Read the whole thing - as always, Joe has some interesting stuff to say.

For my own part, I didn't much try to persuade people to vote for Bush for two reasons:

1. It's a futile effort. Most people reading blogs are politically aware enough to know who they're voting for long before Election Day.

2. I wasn't that hot on Bush to begin with.

Nevertheless, I take Joe's criticism in the spirit it was intended: "We bloggers can do better." And I'll try to, come 2008.

Assuming, of course, there's a candidate I can actually get behind.

Big story from the New York Times:

WASHINGTON, April 10 - Two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the American-led military campaign in Iraq is making enough progress in fighting insurgents and training Iraqi security forces to allow the Pentagon to plan for significant troop reductions by early next year, senior commanders and Pentagon officials say.

Reporter Eric Schmitt continues:

The American military's priority has shifted from waging offensive operations to training Iraqi troops and police officers. Iraqi forces now oversee sections of Baghdad and Mosul, with American forces on call nearby to help in a crisis. More than 2,000 American military advisers are working directly with Iraqi forces.

More Iraqi civilians are defying the insurgents' intimidation to give Iraqi forces tips on the locations of hidden roadside bombs, weapons caches and rebel safe houses. The Pentagon says that more than 152,000 Iraqis have been trained and equipped for the military or the police, but the quality and experience of those forces varies widely. Also, the Government Accountability Office said in March that those figures were inflated, including perhaps tens of thousands of police officers who are absent from duty.

Interviews with more than a dozen senior American and Iraqi officers, top Pentagon officials and lawmakers who have visited Iraq yield an assessment that the combination of routing insurgents from their sanctuary in Falluja last November and the Iraqi elections on Jan. 30 has given the military operation sustained momentum, and put the Bush administration's goal of turning Iraq over to a permanent, elected Iraqi government within striking distance.

This is all good news, even though all of it is delivered with caution: We ain't out of the woods yet, both Schmitt and American military commanders repeat throughout.

And yet...

Most of what we see on TV or on the front pages of most newspapers has led us to believe we've been losing ground in Iraq this whole time. That the insurgents were unbeatable. That the election was doomed. That Iraq's political growing pains were certainly the latest signs of failure.

And then - boom! - out of seemingly nowhere, comes a report that the Coalition is feeling confident enough, and the Iraq is growing strong enough, that it will soon be time to draw down our troop strength.

Of course, chickenhawk bloggers and their readers have been linking to and providing positive news stories for months now. But for the rest of the American public, today's front page news will come as no small shock.

The MSM should have learned to get ahead of (or at least on) the curve following their failure to get the story right during Afghanistan's election. If not then, then at least they should have gotten a clue after getting it all wrong in the lead-up to Iraq's election.

Get on the ball, boys - the public is tired of MSM-induced whiplash.

Drudge has the juicy stuff on the new Hillary Clinton book by Edward Klein:

"The revelations in it should sink her candidacy," a source close to Klein warns the DRUDGE REPORT.

MORE

Last week, Clinton stalwart Ann Lewis fired off an email to supporters warning of the 'Swift Boat' tactics coming against the former first lady turned senator.

Now the coming sales pitch for ' THE TRUTH ABOUT HILLARY What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She’ll Go to Become President' reads: 'Just as the swift boat veterans convinced millions of voters that John Kerry lacked the character to be president, Klein’s book will influence everyone who is sizing up the character of Hillary Clinton...

Klein, who Drudge desribes as "a liberal" is the author of such high-minded books as "Farewell, Jackie: A Portrait of Her Final Days," and "The Kennedy Curse : Why Tragedy Has Haunted America's First Family for 150 Years."

Klein is almost certainly a muckraker and opportunist. Not that there's anything wrong with that -- muckraking oppurtunists often make for fine reading. But he could also very well be a stalking horse for Hillary.

Look, everybody knows that long before Campaign 2008 is over, all the dirt on Hillary will finally come out. For her, it's far better to get this stuff out now, two-plus years before the primary race begins in Iowa and New Hampshire. Ann Lewis's memo makes the point clear.

John Kerry didn't have to deal with the Swift Boat Vets until after the convention. Kerry's steadfast refusal (in typical Kerry fashion, steadfast for a few weeks only) to challenge the Vets for Truth hurt him critically, in the last, vital weeks of summer. By the time he scrambled to catch up with the charges against him, he looked like he was scrambling.

As things stand now, Hillary gets to preempt Klein by accusing him of Swift Boat Vet-tactics (the "Borking" of the Naught Decade), and then will get two years for everyone to forget the revelations. By the time her primary candidates harken back to the Naught-Five book, it'll all be old news. By the time her Republican candidate slings the same dirt, we'll all be really bored with it.

That makes Klein's book a stalking horse if I ever saw one.

I'm not a golfer, and not a particularly big fan of the game, but today's Masters final is flat-out mesmerizing. Entertaining whether you really care about the game or not. Chris DiMarco just pulled into a tie with Tiger Woods at the 18th hole after trailing all day, and now they're going to a playoff.

Go turn it on. This is really worth watching.

UPDATE: Woods got a birdie on the first playoff hole to DiMarco's par, giving Woods his fourth Masters title. Even if golf means nothing to you (it means very little to me), if you missed this, you really missed something.

Hey, Green! Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah!

It's 75 and perfect in the ATL. Bob loves it.

Oh, and dinner is a grilled pork tenderloin in roasted garlic marinade with sweet potatoes.

Yesterday, I ran my errands with the top down. Today, I'm staying in and cooking chili.

It's a good day for chili.

Brad DeLong picked a fight with Jonah Goldberg last week, criticizing a Goldberg column about the dearth of Republicans on college faculties. Among other things, DeLong offered up a litany of reasons why "engineers and scientists" that he says he's talked to aren't Republicans.

Unlike DeLong, I'm actually an engineer. Based on DeLong's list of supposed non-starters, I'm guessing most of the "engineers and scientists" that he spoke to teach college at Berkeley (like DeLong himself), or at the very least live in the Bay Area. In approximately six years of college and graduate school (BS, Auburn, MS, Texas) I probably had two or three engineering professors who were identifiably far enough to the Left to be called Democrats. The rest (at least those who noted politics at all) were a pretty conservative bunch. The leftie count was higher among graduate assistants, and considerably higher among the physics profs--but I think I can say without serious fear of contradiction that physics departments worldwide have a reputation for general weirdness (you can make of that whatever you like).

In over ten years of professional work, I think I've encountered maybe four working engineers who would admit to voting for a Democrat. There are a few who lean liberterian, but they're also in a considerable minority. The overwhelming number of engineers whom I've encountered (at least those who voluntarily express political opinions; I don't go around asking) are conservatives who vote for Republicans.

Not unlike in DeLong's case (although he's too pompous to admit it), this is undoubtably due to a great deal of self-selection. I've worked almost exclusively for defense contractors at Southern military bases during my career, and you don't normally find MooreOns coming out of the woodwork in those places.

What does it all mean? Very little, other than the simple fact that like minds do tend to congregate together. Lefties are more likely to teach at Berkeley. Conservatives are more likely to work for the military.

Not much of an insight, I know--but the point was obvious enough for Brad DeLong to miss it, and go out of his way to be a jerk in the process. Which, come to think of it, is also hardly a surprise...

If all goes according to plan, I'll be a dad in the next year or so. So it's time to grow up, and give up the convertible.

My first was a 1977 Mercedes SL 450, purchased in 1997 with less than 100k on the odometer. The ragtop canvas had been replaced the previous year, something I knew the salesman wasn't BSing me about: It wasn't at all faded and I needed to put forth Herculean effort to get the damn thing to lock down for the first few months. I loved that car. I'd still be driving that car today, if I hadn't wrecked it.

The accident was in 2001, and I wasn't ready to quit convertibles just yet. I knew (but Melissa didn't), that we'd be getting married before long – so another classic old car was, in my mind, out of the question. Time for something with four real seats. Well, if you wanted four seats and a droptop in 2001 without spending more than $30k, you could buy either a Chrysler Sebring or a Toyota Solara.

Those weren't a whole lot to choose from. I went with the Chrysler.

Why? Coupla reasons.

The 2001 Solara was a "chop job." In other words, Toyota took a Camry chassis and chopped the top off the thing, and gave the rest of the body some reinforcement. The Sebring frame was designed from the bottom up (or the top down?) to be a convertible. That's an important distinction, when it comes to little things like strength, rigidity, body shudder, etc.

Also, the Chryslers of that era looked extruded, as if a single and very solid piece of steel had somehow been forced through a very shapely die. The extruded look was more apparent in the larger LH-body cars (think the LHS, Concorde and 300M, and their Dodge Intrepid sibling), but it filtered down nicely to the smaller cars, too (the various Sebring/Stratus models).

The Toyota looked not extruded but excreted. I don't mean the Solara looked literally like shit, but it did seem as though it was made of some semi-soft material plopped down onto a hard surface. The excreted look isn't just a Toyota thing – it's become common across all the big Japanese manufacturers. The new Nissan Quest will serve as Exhibit A.

I've had the Sebring for four years now, and I've been quite happy with it, given that it was a compromise purchase forced by an untimely accident. On the other hand, it's had no mechanical problems, and I haven't spent any money on it other than gas and routine maintenance. It's not, however, a car I want to put a pregnant wife or a baby into. A ragtop is fine for just me, but I want steel covering my family, all the way around.

Also, I want something sporty, something fun to drive – I'm hoping to be a dad, not a corpse. But four doors are a must – I don't want to be wrestling a baby seat out of the back of a coupe.

Rear wheel drive is preferred, just because it's a helluva lot more fun to drive. "Oh, but you live in Colorado, don't you want all-wheel drive?" Listen: Melissa already drives a Pacifica. If we absolutely positively have to get the baby (Preston Davis Green for a boy, girl's name to be decided*) somewhere in bad weather, we'll take the wife's car. On the other hand, the cars I'm looking at do all have AWD as an option – something for me to think about.

And I don't want to drive a land yacht. When I say it needs to seat four, I mean it needs to seat four – not five, not a platoon of Girl Scouts. No full-size sedan for me, thankyouverymuch. Not before I'm 50, anyway.

Oh, and don't hate me, but I'd prefer an automatic tranny. Much as I'd rather do my own shifting, I swore off it a few years ago. Got stuck in Denver traffic in a manual just one time too many. By the time I'd finally cleared the DTC that last time, my left leg felt like jelly. If I didn't spend so much time in that damn town, I'd insist on a real transmission. But I do drive a lot in Denver, and I don't want to do so with a manual.

So. The new car has to: Seat four; have four doors; have rear wheel drive; put out at least 250 horses; cost not much more than $40k, preferably (much preferably) less. And a little luxury, please – I'm closer to 40 now than to 30. What choices does that leave me? Here's the list:

2005 Cadillac CTS 3.6L, $37k with options.

2005 Chrysler 300C, $34K with options (actually, around $30k or less with Melissa's Lockheed-Martin DCX discount).

2006 BMW 330i, $43k with options.

2006 Infiniti G35, $37k with options.

NOTE: The Mercedes-Benz C-class should make this list. It's in the same price range as the BMW, it meets all my other criteria, and it's a joy to behold. But it has such serious reliability issues that I won't even consider it. Onward, then.

The Caddy is more car than I'm really looking for, with 85 fewer ponies than the Chrysler 300C and for a lot more money. Really, it makes the list only because it's in the zone, not because I much care for it – although I'm on the love side of Caddy's new love it/hate it styling.

Thanks to Melissa's job, I can get a great deal on the 300C, and at 340 horses, it's by far the most powerful (and least expensive) of the bunch. On the other hand, its looks – which I loved from the get-go, when I saw the first prototype – are already starting to bore me. That could be important, for a car I plan on keeping for seven or eight years. Reliability is another issue for a car I'll own that long, and although Chrysler has made great strides, they ain't there yet.

Beemer's new 3-series is a beauty. There's no sign of Bangle Butt or Bangle Droop (look at the ass of last year's 5- and 7-series for the former, and the side of the Z4 or 1-series for the latter). At 255 horses, Bavaria's inline six puts out the same power as the CTS – but it puts all that power right on the road in a way the CTS can't. Nothing, but nothing, drives like a Beemer.

The G35 is in kind of a sweet spot. It puts out more power than anything save Chrysler's massive 5.7-liter HEMI, but with a driving experience closer to the BMW. It's not the cheapest of the lot, but Infiniti's entry still comes in six thousand dollars (wow!) less than the 330i. That's some serious coin.

Obviously, I'm leaning mostly towards the 300C or G35 – but I'm also looking for readers who have real-world experience with any of these cars. So, please, if you have anything to tell me, click on the Comments and let me know.

One more thing. My next car will be one of these four. Please, don't try to sell me on the merits of a Chevy Impala SS, the Lexus IS 300 (it has that "excreted look," even the new one), the Jaguar X-type (it's a fleet car now, for Whomever's sake!), the Acura TL (boring to drive and has front wheel drive), any SUV, wagon, or minivan of any kind, or any car not already on this list.

That aside, please share your thoughts.

Heh.

Finally, a plan for the WTC that just plain looks and feels right.

Michael Totten's Lebanon Blog is up and running.

A Day at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo

Feel free to feed the giraffes.

I'm not entirely certain, but I think this is a mammal of some kind.

This friendly little guy tried to steal my wallet.

A bird, or possibly a rare cactus.

As evidenced by this, and most protest rallies, evolution isn't always geared towards beauty.

They must be married.

A monkey. See? I know some stuff.

According to the sign, this is a condor. I'd thought it was a vulture. If I'd have known how freakin' ugly they were, I would never have gotten so concerned about their endangerment.

I loved this old guy. Just loved him. Must've taken 30 shots like this one. Unfortunately, I was shooting through dirty glass and so the resolution left a lot to be desired. Still - I loved this old guy.

Penguins rock.

This was the only lion(ess) in view - the rest were napping behind a rock. I've got to get back to Big Cat Country at the St Louis Zoo for better pics. If you've never seen it, BCC is probably the finest exhibit of its kind, anywhere.

It's hell on the lungs and legs, but there are some advantages to building a zoo on the side of a mountain. Views like this one made me swear off the flatlands forever. Oh, and this ain't bad, either:

As always, we finish with a gratuitous puppy picture.

Bad case of Spring Fever. Really bad. Like, trembling sweats and drooling and stuff.

On the other hand, I did go to the zoo. Pictures to follow.

Back shortly.