No blogging today. See Instapundit for much good information.

I do not now pity the parents of the dead who stand here; I would rather comfort them. ... For where the rewards of virtue are greatest, there the noblest citizens are enlisted in the service of the state. And now, when you have duly lamented, every one his own dead, you may depart.

-- Pericles

I'm going to start drinking now.

Some good news for a change: Howard Coble (R-National Association of Broadcasters) is no longer on the House Subcommittee on Telecomunications and the Internet and Rick "Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act" Boucher is on the committee.


Too bad Coble and his bipartisan cronies (e.g., Dianne Feinstein (D-Disney)) are still in Congress at all after selling the cultural birthright of the American public for a shitload of lobbyist cash, but this is definitely positive news.

(Via Doc Searls)

Blogging may be light to nonexistent this weekend. Much work to do.

<nixon>Let me make this perfectly clear </nixon> I have nothing against those who are opposed to the imminent war with Saddam. I don't agree, but I could be wrong. Those who are predicting that this will be Vietnam War II rather than Gulf War II could be right. I find it far more likely that Saddam will be in exile or (preferably) at the end of a rope by the calends of February, but they COULD be right. And certainly they have the right to disagree with government policy, just as others have the right to disagree with them (hint: holding someone up to public ridicule doesn't constitute "censoring" or "silencing" them).

At worst, most of the marchers were naive. They had no idea who was sponsoring, organizing, and funding this march. That sort of thing has probably happened to all of us at one time or another. Most of us learn from the experience, and ask questions in the future. Hell, I once got conned into signing a reasonable-sounding petition that I later learned was being circulated by a Lyndon LaRouche front organization. Dumb, yes, but not evil. That's my opinion of the vast majority of the participants in the Campus Crusade for Stalin.

My real beef is with those who knew about ANSWER, knew that they supported Stalinst murderers, and went anyway. Sorry, there is no excuse for them. None.

I'd imagine that more than a few Parisians are choking on their morning croissants over this. Hilarious. (via Little Green Footballs)

Note: It occurs to me that when I mention other sites, I should be linking to them. Apologies for not being consistent about this so far. I'm new at this.

Yippie-ky-yay, motherfucker!

Good grief. I'd hate to see how this yutz treated his cadaver in med school.

Just appalling.

In a C.S. Lewis passage I was reading the other day, he observed that the princes, goosegirls, and swineherds common in fairy tales didn't seem at all exotic to the people for whom the stories were written.

I suppose in a modern day fairy tale the evil queen could be replaced with a crackhead mother, and abandoning the child in the forest to be torn apart by beasts could be equated with sending the kid into the foster care system.

Unfortunately, we seem to have a distinct shortage of kindly woodcutters nowadays.

Update: The executive director of the foster care agency notes, in part, that "the home was clean". Yeah, I guess keeping the children chained up would cut down on the amount of housework, wouldn't it?

One of the "peace activists" who attended the ANSWER march claimed that not showing up would be a sign of "vanity".

Oh, ego was involved in this, all right, but it wasn't on the part of the people who stayed home. In my notional Real Life to Film isomorphism, the image of the marchers' motivation can be found in Riefenstahl's Triumph des Willens, not Attenborough's Gandhi.

Another update: this idiotic "Moonie" parallel continues to be drawn. Let's play "similarities and differences" here, shall we?

Moon: Korean.

Kim Jong Il: Korean.

Moon: Nut case.

Kim: Nut case.

Moon: Fabulously wealthy through conning idiots into giving him money.

Kim: Fabulously wealthy through being the dictator of an Orwellian slave state.

Moon: Hasn't killed millions of people.

Kim: Has killed millions of people.

You're right, Atrios. They're EXACTLY the same. Better run this through the spin cycle again. I don't think it's quite done.

Atrios is busy spin-doctoring, using the old "but what about this bad thing YOU did" tactic.

Unfortunately, that won't fly. There are people who don't read the Washington Times, don't listen to Rush Limbaugh, didn't vote for (either) Bush, didn't vote for Reagan, spit on the "Reverend" Moon and all his works, and don't even drive down the streets in gold-plated SUVs, running over baby seals and stopping occasionally to kick peasants in the face with iron-soled boots, who nevertheless think marching with Stalinists is a repulsive act, and that those who engage in such activities have the moral conscience of a malignant rectal polyp.

In short, people like me.

Perhaps the fact that Noam Muhfuckin' Chomsky and his mimeoheads slag the ANSWER goons at every turn should give you a wee hint that it's not just the paleoconservatives who think that you guys fucked up. Though they're certainly idiotarians de la crainte et de détester, only a cretin would attempt to claim that Chomsky's gang is "right wing".

Then again, this is Atrios (the Bizarro Free Republic) that we're talking about here.