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 […]

More from the LA Times. Excerpt:

By failing to secure suspect sites, Kay and others warned, the Pentagon could not guarantee that critical blueprints, weapons parts, precursor chemicals and other valuable material have not been spirited out of the country for sale to other nations or to terrorist groups.
“They’ve increased the proliferation threat,” Kay said. “And […]

The Brits are thinking of trying MP George Galloway for treason for a speech he made during the recent unpleasantness in Iraq urging troops to refuse to carry out their orders, according to the Observer:

The Observer can reveal that the Director of Public Prosecutions is considering pursuing the Glasgow politician for comments during the Iraq […]

So, um, in a narrow, technical sense, also a wider, general sense, Free Comic Book Day was not yesterday. Like I said it was. Erroneously. Somehow I convinced myself that it was May. And here it’s only just warming up. Reader Mary Kay Kare caught the error too. My apologies to any readers who actually […]

180 pounds, 36″ waist. That’s the first uptick on weight since I started the diet, rising from 179 pounds last week. I blame Easter, OR it’s not a problem OR it’s the first sign of trouble. The pessimistic view is that my week is ending up with multiple “free days” in it. There’s Wednesday night’s […]

Officially it’s a Jesse Walker correction, but it’s a problem with his USA Today op-ed, caught by Steven Postrel, that I should have noted myself when linking the article. Jesse runs Steven Postrel’s letter and his response.

Tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day, when a dying industry tries to win back a handful of its lost market share in tandem with the release of a major movie. (This year, it’s X-Men 2.) The variety of free comics available is astounding, from Donald Duck through X-Men to indie and small press titles, even […]

I’ve gotten a couple of inquiries recently, so I should probably announce that yes, I do have an RSS feed, here.

Tacitus has an interesting item on the hard-to-find Iraqi Bad Things, in which he asks

(Kos suggests impeachment if WMD are not found in six months; does that mean Clinton should have suffered an additional impeachment once it was clear that the Serbs weren’t perpetrating genocide upon the Kosovars?)

Well of course he should have. I’m glad […]

Arthur Silber’s weblog seems to have changed addresses. At the new domain, he has the usual cornucopia of quality, including lots and lots of stuff on Senator Rick Santorum (R-Spanish Inquisition).