Harry and Norm both point us to Pooter Geek (don’t ask) who brings us this fine example of local public art:

Sue From BBC Local Radio: I’m standing in the grounds of an ordinary central Cambridge apartment block where local resident Damian Counsell has found himself at the centre of a controversy following his construction of a sculpture he has called, somewhat provocatively even he must admit, “You Bet Your Sweet Ass It Was In My Name.”

Read the whole thing, as they say…

Iraq the Model is reporting this great news:

In what looks like a massive recession for Muqtada and his followers; “Mehdi Army” decided to give in all their medium and heavy weapons to end their violent activities and obey the laws as a first step enter the political and electoral process.

The “conditions” that were put by Muqtada in return are no more than an attempt to tell the public opinion that this is not a surrender, as the “condition” related to the release of the arrested members of “Mehdi Army” was followed by the statement “except those found guilty of crimes” and this is an important development and a clear acceptance for the existing administration.. Another important development was that for the fist time Muqtada’s spokesman referred to the coalition forces as the multinational forces, not the occupation forces or aggressors and the usual crap.

Damn! I’m hoping this (and the earlier news about Syria) is at least half correct.

I’ve written about the media ‘cocoon’ before. It’s Mickey Kaus’ creation, and I think he nails it with this formulation.

…the pro-Democratic wishful-thinking approach that caused so many Southland readers to be bracingly surprised at the result of the recent California recall election. … The point isn’t that there are no voters who have soured on Bush, or that souring on Bush isn’t a real phenomenon. The point is that reporters and editors at papers like the Times (either one!) are exquisitely sensitive to any sign that Democrats might win, but don’t cultivate equivalent sensitivity when it comes to discerning signs Republicans might win. (Who wants to read that?) The result, in recent years, is the Liberal Cocoon, in which Democratic partisans are kept happy and hopeful until they are slaughtered every other November.

I believe that the media monoculture – which a journalist acquaintance described as “establishment first, then liberal” – is to all appearances shilling wildly for a Kerry victory and the Democratic Party. That tilt is, sadly, one of the major barriers to the success of the Democratic Party.Last week, the party line on the Australian elections was that the (relatively conservative) Liberal party might barely hold on to the Prime Minister’s seat while losing seats in the Parlaiment. See this prediction from the ABC’s (Australian Broadcasting Company’s) pollster:

Prime Minister Mr John Howard will lose seats, win the election narrowly and announce his retirement at the first sign of economic downturn.

Opposition leader Mr Mark Latham will rise in popularity and lead Labor to victory in three years.

Those are the predictions of ABC election analyst Mr Antony Green, who gave his only public speech yesterday ahead of the October 9 federal poll.

“My prediction would be that the Government will get back with a loss of a couple of seats,” Mr Green told a lunch held by industry group Australian Business Economists.

In fact, here’s what happened:

As Howard went to church Sunday in Sydney, counters resumed tallying votes for the 150-seat lower house of Parliament that gave his Liberal Party 71 seats, up from 68, the government’s junior coalition partner the Nationals 12, down from 13, the opposition Labor Party 56, down from 65 and four seats to minor parties.

Many on the right here in the U.S. see this as a good omen for Bush’s re-election chances, and I am somewhat in agreement.

I am more certain that Kerry and the Democratic Party would be better served by a media that gives them (and us) a clearer view of what is really going on.

One reason I believe that Bush is going to win (not the same as stating that I want him to – or not) is that the ‘feel’ of the media coverage of this election reads much like the pro-establishment coverage of the recall election here in California. It was going to be a close victory for Gov. Davis.

It wasn’t.

The results were 55% – 45%.

Let’s keep those numbers in mind, come November.

Chris Bertram writes disapprovingly, suggesting that Berman’s ‘philistine reaction’ misreads the grandeur of Che’s life – a grandeur which cannot, Bertram suggest, be sullied by facts. Literally…

Lack of success and damaging facts should not necessarily be enough to deprive a hero of heroic status: Achilles was flawed, and Achilles was cruel, and Achilles failed, but we still respond to him.

Yes, but do we respond to Achilles as a hero, or as a kind of glorious monster?

But this isn’t about Brad Pitt.Go read Bertram’s post.

Then read this old post of mine.

From Isaiah Berlin:

You would have found common sense, moderation, was very far from their thoughts. You would have found that they believed in the necessity of fighting for your beliefs to the last breath in your body, and you would have found that they believed in the value of martyrdom as such, no matter what the martyrdom was for. You would have found that they believed that minorities were more holy than majorities, that failure was nobler than success, which had something shoddy and vulgar about it.

From me:

Sound familiar?

What began to matter wasn’t the endless small adjustments to “objective” reality or to work with others – what mattered was your wholehearted willingness to pull down the temple rather than submit, and your ability to project your dreams and ideals – objectively, your fantasies – into the world and to try and make the world conform to them, rather than the other way ‘round.

Bertram admires Che because of, not in spite of, his attachment to the ‘ideals’ as opposed to the mundane:

…he did turn his back on a comfortable future as a communist bureaucrat to pursue the goal of the revolutionary liberation of humanity.

The attachment of the progressive left to that ideal – to the liberation of humanity that comes through a revolutionary stroke, rather than the endless small acts and hard work that build and nurture real life, real freedom, and exemplify real love for humanity – is the malign center of Bad Philosophy as it exists today. When we can extract it, real progress can begin.

It’s time for good news…but if this is true, it’s more than good. From AP via Ha’aretz:

Syrian President Bashar Assad is offering to make peace with Israel and says he is ready to cooperate with the United States in stabilizing Iraq, a former senior State Department official said Wednesday.

“Something is going on in Syria and it is time for us to pay attention,” said Martin Indyk, assistant secretary of state for the Near East and U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Clinton administration.

In a three-hour meeting with the Syrian president last month in Damascus, Indyk said he detected a “clear change” in Assad’s views on a number of fronts.

On peacemaking, Assad offered to hold talks with Israel without preconditions, Indyk said, and had made several overtures to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that the latter rebuffed.

but wait, there’s more…

On the domestic side, Indyk said, Assad spoke “about the need to reform the government.”

“It’s worth watching and it is worth testing,” Indyk said at a seminar at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, of which Indyk is the director.

Indyk said Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa was not at his meeting with Assad, evidence the former American diplomat said that change was under way and that al-Sharaa “and others in the old guard are being systematically silenced.”

but wait, there’s still more…

On Iraq, Assad “figured out he was on the wrong side” and has switched to cooperation with the U.S. occupation forces in the country, Indyk said.

On support for terrorism, Assad was responding to U.S. demands by moving some leaders of militant Palestinian groups out of Damascus, Indyk said.

Last month, Syria was praised publicly by Secretary of State Colin Powell for dismantling military camps in the hills near Beirut, Lebanon.

Libya, and now possibly Syria. Two mainstays of state support for terrorism, both possibly moving toward civilization.

In response to this Atlantic Magazine article on Korea’s Great Beloved Leader Comrade Kim Jong Il, Chalmers Johnson (serious author of a number of books on foreign and defense policy) writes a letter to the editor, copied here entire:

The sheer viciousness of B. R, Meyers’s personal attack on Bruce Cumings (“Mother of All Mothers,” September Atlantic) moves The Atlantic ever closer to the standards of fascist journalism. Cumings is easily the most distinguished historian working on modern Korean affairs in the United States today. To suggest differences in political approach to North Korea between Cumings and Selig Harrison is simply embarrassing, since both authors come to the same conclusions. Myers’s condemnation of any attempts to understand North Korea puts him in a class with Undersecretary of State John Bolton and other know-nothings who have been in change of American foreign policy since 2001. Even though George W. Bush told Bob Woodward that he loathes Kim Jong Il, it was Cumings who first noted what Bush and Kim have in common: neither would have amounted to anything without their daddies.

Back in October of 2003, uber-blogger Atrios was threatened with a libel suit by Donald Luskin. My response then was:

God knows, I’m not a fan of Atrios, who I think is part of the Jackie Goldberg/ suicidal-lemming wing of the Democratic Party.

But this is just embarrassing.

Well, we’re not done with blogger libel lawsuits, I guess. Wizbang points out that liberal blogger David Niewert, of Orcinius, is saber rattling re Wizbang’s harsh treatment of Professor Hailey’s incoherent and oft-changing claim that the Ra^thergate documents were in fact done on a typewriter.I went over and read Niewert’s posts, and then the background posts by Paul on Wizbang (one was redacted for tone, which I’ve done as well) as well as a quick scan of the Professor’s work to see what I thought.

In reverse order:

The professor’s work is barely coherent, and I’m having a hard time – given an unwillingness to approach it like one of Joyce’s works – making any sense of his claims, except for two, that based on scaled up fuzzy images, he’s claiming that the font isn’t Times Roman and that the letter patterns show signs of irregularity consistent with a typewriter. The stated claims go far further, but I can’t get from his data to his claim, so let’s just put it aside for the moment and suggest that an expository rhetoric tuneup might be in order. I certainly didn’t see anything that shook my belief that the documents were electronically generated (and I won’t go into why right now).

Wizbang’s posts, given the inferred tone from the apology were pretty snarky, and I do wonder why Paul would call the guy’s boss (the head of Hailey’s) about this.

To me there’s a clear line between arguing against someone’s points and rattling their personal cage. When you call someone’s boss, wife, etc. and finger-wag that they’ve done something naughty on the Internet, you’re moving the discussion from – a discussion – to something with significant impact on someone’s personal life, and that seem to be a different level of the game.

Interestingly enough, Niewert’s claims about Paul and Wizbang aren’t about this call, but about a broader theory of defamation and libel.

They’ve continued in the same vein with the Hailey report — openly libeling their subject and accusing him of unethical and potentially criminal behavior, all without the benefit of getting a response from him as well as any consideration of the gravity of the charges. Even their most recent posts continue to assert the “academic fraud” charge.

and approvingly notes that

[Commenter] David needn’t worry, actually. Because the folks at Wizbang are about to discover that there are consequences for leveling these charges.

While it’s true that, as the Deseret News reported, Hailey himself is not considering legal action against the authors of the Wizbang posts that have openly libeled him, the same cannot be said of the officials at Utah State University.

Hailey, in fact, assured me that the university’s attorneys consider the Wizbang posts “fully actionable” and are in the process of preparing legal remedy for the defamation of character that the blog has leveled both against Hailey and the university. It’s difficult to say at this point whether they will act on it, but there’s at least some likelihood they will.

…and…

So here’s what is probably about to happen: USU’s attorneys will send legal letters to the Wizbang authors demanding a full retraction (and, if justice is served, a full apology to both Hailey and the university), upon pain of facing a civil action for libel. If the authors refuse, then they’ll be served with more papers detailing the civil lawsuit filed against them.

It’s ugly, but it’s a hard, cold fact of the real world of journalism.

In any event, the Wizbang authors may soon find themselves wishing they had applied a little old-fashioned journalistic prudence before rushing to print with their manifestly reckless accusations.

But in the process, they may provide a useful object lesson for us all.

I’ll call bullshit here.

Blogging isn’t a community anymore, so appealing to ‘community standards’ probably isn’t fruitful. But I’ll go to my post defending Atrios’ right to speak without a lawyer on staff:

And pundits who use slings ought to be able to take a stone or two, and the fact that Mr Luskin can’t – the fact assuming that the letter Atrios posted was genuine (and the lawyer’s name does check out on the firm website) – certainly drops him a few kilometers below credible in my view.

Free speech – even hurtful speech – is something the folks at NRO (and others) have championed for some time. It appears that they neglected to mention that it only matters when someone else’s ox is being gored.

Similarly, Niewert and his commenters seem to believe that it’s right to hide behind lawyer’s skirts when challenged in the marketplace of ideas. I’m positive that they wouldn’t feel the same way if the shoe was on the other foot; he says so in his essay on “The Personal and The Political” (it’s one I’ve bookmarked for my long-delayed ‘taking back the Democratic Party’ piece). He’s become a partisan warrior who believes that the challenge of the Newt Gingriches is best met with Democratic Newt Gingriches.

Great. Just great.

Apparently Concordia University can’t have Israeli speakers because “they can’t guarantee their security”. Go read the whole thing.

In case you’ve forgotten, Concordia was the site of the pro-Palestinian riot in 2002, when Benjamin Netanyahu was prevented from speaking by the actions of a mob.

Who was it who was talking about the horrible suppression of free speech post 9/11??

I’m not criticizing Kerry with this, but might I gently point out that responding to criticisms that you’re forcing U.S. foreign policy to pass a “global test” with this:

“If you do things that are illegitimate in the eyes of the other people, it’s very hard to get them to share the burden and risk with you.”

…might not exactly quench the flames of criticism?

There’s a damn serious issue here about our relationships with other countries – and their relationships with us. It would be nice if we could have it in ways that didn’t involve inarticulate grunts and unscripted casual conversation.

As I was walking out of Home Depot yesterday (yes, we do own a house…), I noticed a voter registration table. I’d been meaning to look something up, but it’s always easier to convince someone else to do it for you. “When do you have to turn 18 to vote?” I asked. He looked at a sheet and told me “By Election Day.”

Middle Guy will be 18 in October, and I’d looked forward to sitting down with him at the dining table, guiding him through the responsibility of his first election, carefully debating the issues, and generally acting like the pipe-smoking, cardigan wearing dad of fantasy.

So I called his cell from the parking lot.

“Hey, did you know you can register to vote? I got you one of the forms.”

“Dad, I registered this summer when I was in Sacramento. I already sent in my absentee ballot.”

Dreams die hard…