Unqualified Offerings

Eric Mauro writes

I liked that Cogent [Provocateur] post. I think his last couple paragraphs about fooling people are going to hit home with more voters than Bush etc expect. One piece of the “why” puzzle he misses is that the WMD story was nurtured through both Republican and Democratic administrations. Khidir Hamza was turned from [...]

My god. The Cogent Provocateur has uncorked what may be the first blog post to merit the word magisterial. It’s basically why you shouldn’t worry about my nightmare. The best writing about “missing WMDs” yet. Period. And I don’t mean just the best thinking either. This item, has more fine turns of phrase and more [...]

Kos argues that “libertarians (with a small ‘L’) have a more natural home in the modern Democratic Party than with the GOP.” Perry de Havilland, in a lengthy rebuttal, says that “Kos does not understand the nature of the pool they [sic] are fishing in.” I’m inclined to cry, like Alvie Singer in Annie Hall, [...]

A couple of academic researchers are conducting a survey on why people read weblogs, presumably because other academic researchers have not, making the results publishable. You can take the survey here.

Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.com has given us a link and further he knows
us and can verify that our survey is for academic purposes only.

Me, I [...]

Here’s a list of all the places you can get a new, limited-edition Richard Thompson EP coming out in advance of his new album. (Yeah, I’m old. I still say album.) Contents:

one song from ‘The Old Kit Bag’ [the forthcoming full-length CD], two live recordings of songs from Thompson’s ‘Semi-Detached Mock Tudor’ album, and two [...]

Here’s a good survey of Israeli blogs from the Israel21c website (”A Focus Beyond the Conflict”). It’s by Israeli blogger Allison Kaplan Sommer. (Link via Head Heeb.)

I’m in the process of updating the blogroll and such. So say hello to
Amitai Etzioni
Body and Soul
Calpundit
Dave Tepper
Josh Buermann
Kevin Holtsberry
Kieran Healy
Listen Missy
Mac Diva
Matthew Yglesias
Road to Surfdom
Tacitus
Ted Barlow
Unruled
Will Wilkinson
in their new homes to the left.
Warning to a select group of confreres: I may soon redo the New Crew section entirely, making it more “new” than most [...]

Tim Cavanaugh of Reason, raining on your parade:

The beauty of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld is that he harbors no illusions about a serene future, for Iraq or for the United States. He knows, even if he doesn’t quite come out and say, that we’re going to be in the Middle East forever. There will [...]

Calpundit, noting yet another 55-gallon drum that turned out to be just a 55-gallon drum:

The fact that preliminary analysis is ultra cautious and doesn’t usually pan out is perfectly normal.
Given that this is normal, however, the real question is quite different: why is the Pentagon releasing these preliminary results every time one pops up?

Not [...]

Julian said the other day that with the end of the war it’s possible to resume reading Andrew Sullivan again. This turns out to be largely true, but it doesn’t mean Sullivan is any more right than he was beforehand. Take today’s item about the Telegraph’s report of a planned 1998 meeting between the Iraqi [...]