Unqualified Offerings

From the New York Times . . .

In a significant retreat in American efforts to seize weapons held by Iraqi citizens, American and British officials said today that Iraqis would be allowed to keep AK-47 assault rifles in their homes and businesses.
While American officials gave no public explanation for amending what had been a much [...]

Mnemonic
30 days has September
Also June and November
All the rest have 31
Except for February, which is just weird
And April, which has lasted 61 freaking days so far!
2003: God Apologizes to the Water Table.

Fabulous Natalie Solent meditation about stickers on a professor’s office door. No, really. Go read.
UPDATE: Usual Blogspot crap means the link is bad. Go to the main page and scroll down to “Selective political myopia.” The item is much better than it sounds.

Obviously new reader Amit Singh writes

Yes, it’s all true what you said. The people in Iraq will despise American troops and turn on them with a vengeance. It happened in Afghanistan. Oh wait, no it didn’t. Well, it happened when we occupied Japan after WW2. Oh wait, it didn’t. Germany. Nah, that didn’t happen [...]

Reader Melinda Haire tipped me to this SFGate.com story on A. Crassicauda, Baghdad’s sole death metal group. Their big ambition: get the hell out of Iraq.

All their songs are in English. Heavy metal should be either in English or German, says rhythm guitarist Faisal Talal. “Arabic doesn’t fit.”

I’m pretty sure A. Crassicauda is old news [...]

Ribble Fizz writes “the more I read the post the more certain I am that you were being facetious . . . ” Two other e-mailers, presumably standing in for 100 other readers, seemed convinced I must sincerely believe “dog allies” exist and had been questioned by Iraqi weapons. (See “Mr. Language Person Attacks,” below.)
There’s [...]

Some backup:

Already this week, ambushes carried out in Hadithah, Baghdad and Fallouja have left four U.S. soldiers dead and 15 others wounded.

Tyler Marshall, LA Times.

I put on my shiny tinfoil hat and interpret this story:

BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S. troops raided the Palestinian Authority’s mission in Baghdad and arrested 11 people after ransacking the building, a Palestinian official said Thursday. A top U.S. general said eight people were arrested.

The US story is that the PA mission had “unauthorized weapons.” The [...]

I couldn’t skip work today to take in Jacob Sullum’s appearance at CATO to discuss his new book, Saying Yes: in Defense of Drug Use. But this excerpt on the real addictiveness of heroin is fascinating.

This headline is just wrong:
Iraq weapons questions dog allies
Come on, people! Subject-verb agreement, please:
Iraq weapons question dog allies. The verb “question” does not take an s with the plural subject, “Iraq weapons.”
You’ll have to read the article to find out whether the dog allies answered any of the questions from the Iraq weapons or not.