No, really. I just don't see the point in running the story about Prince Harry being in Afghanistan, and making him cut his tour short.

Yeah. Sign me on to the Drop Drudge movement. Not that I was reading him anyway, but now I won't.

Laughing Wolf of Blackfive doesn't resort to my beloved Anglo-Saxon language, but says the same thing:

A raised finger salute to the people who leaked it to Drudge, and to Matt Drudge for willfully endangering the Prince and those with him. May you and those who leaked it to you soon find yourself in an enclosed space with SAS and others who care to express their opinion in a very, very personal manner.

Oh, I'm sure there are some Americans who would gladly participate in taking these assholes down a notch or two. It's beyond belief that someone would put any servicemember's life in danger for the sake of a petty "scoop" like that.

UPDATE: In a weak moment, I realized this entry might end up being linked by a family-friendly site or two, so I removed the Anglo-Saxon attitude from the headline. I do, however, think my meaning is clear enough . . . and I can always use extra vulgarities next week to make up for it.

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or something like that.

Women's Voices/Women's Vote is taking nominations for female bloggers. Please nominate your favorite chick bloggers, and then vote for 'em later on.

As usual, I'd recommend the entire Cotillion, along with such other high-estrogen powerhouses as Michelle Malkin, Kate McMillan, RightGirl, and ZendoDeb.

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. . . from my gun-magazine days.

"Too bad you missed the SHOT Show," he remarks. "Again."

"It happened simultaneously with CPAC," I tell him. "There was no way. Next year we can hope that they'll be disjoint." [Note: they will be. The SHOT Show will be on January 15-18 in Orlando, FL; CPAC will be February 26-28.]

We catch up on what various gun writers are doing, and we talk about the Presidential horse race, along with the future of the various media we keep tabs on. He agrees to advise me on technical matters when I start my podcasting this spring.

"So." I take a bite of my gnocchi. "I'm starting to think I might be a bit of a bitch."

"You're starting to think that, huh?" He smiles. Concho Kid has long been aware that I have a . . . strong personality.

"Well, it just seems that sometimes I feel that I'm being a bit arch, but I don't mean any real harm. Yet I draw blood anyway."

"Continue," he tells me. "I don't want to get in the way of your self-discovery."

"My friend Joe has informed me that I often use a machete, in the apparent belief that I'm simply playing with a paring knife. He says I don't know my own rhetorical strength."

"That could be."

"Alternatively, it could be that I hang out with people who are brighter-than-average, and that such people tend to be hyper-sensitive."

CK gives me an odd smile. We had a hell of a falling out back when we were working together, and yet I stay in closer touch with him than I do any of my other colleagues from that time. And it's been over a decade. I call that a happy ending to any story.

I find myself thinking about what Martin G. used to say. (It's Martin's anniversary today. Yes: he got married on Leap Day. You know how mathematicians are.) Martin always maintained that one never really understands any given chapter in a college textbook (or, by extention, in life) until one was in the middle of the next chapter.

For years I thought that meant I was somehow behind schedule. Now I see that it's perfectly normal. It's also the reason I tell people my age: I have no desire to be confused with a 30-something—never mind that I look like one.

Everything I've ever figured out in life has cost me too much for me to turn my back on it now.

Including the fact that I can be a real bitch, without even meaning to. I keep thinking it would be worse if I weren't able to be a bitch at all.

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vs. Getting the Job Done, and the history of that "red pickup truck" fundraising gimmick at the Fred Thompson campaign website.

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. . . about the NAFTA thing. Good. Then he's a normal politician, rather than a dangerously naive loose cannon.

Via Insty, who points out, with respect to yesterday's speculation about "which bunch of rubes" was supposed to be fooled by Obama's campaign, we now know. Insty, yesterday:

When it comes to things like NAFTA, there seem to be only two possibilities. Either Obama's anti-NAFTA talk is a ruse to fool the rubes, or his coterie of distinguished economic experts is a ruse to fool a different batch of rubes.

Asked for comment, the Obama campaign remarked, "wow! Did you see that? A bobcat! You don't spot many of those around here any more."

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Joyner indulges in a little meditation on the subject of William F. Buckley's relationship with homosexuality. (And, by the way: my congratulations to anyone who can decipher what Vidal and Buckley were saying during that infamous heated exchange in '68—two clipped upper-class East Coast accents are more than I can handle at once, particularly when they're talking over each other.)

"Love the sinner; hate the sin." That is probably the best one can hope for from orthodox Christians of a certain stripe. It is the best one could have hoped for from Buckley, as he was a Roman Catholic.

I regard myself as a Christian, yet I agree with Joyner that morally conflating sex with burglary is a bit much. As for Andrew Sullivan's remark that

Liebman was indeed a brother in combat, one of the great gay foes of totalitarianism, up there with Whittaker Chambers and Alan Turing. But he was always reminded that his gayness would bar him from full inclusion as an equal in the conservative movement,

I would remind people that most Libertarians are regarded in the same light. Even the ones who don't smoke pot; that's just the way things go. Are we all so sensitive that our happiness hangs on the thread of others' approval? That would be sad.

For a more robust approach to "defending homosexuality" (whatever that means) from a Conservative perspective, see: "Goldwater, Barry." Now there was a man.

There remain these three: Reagan, Buckley, and Goldwater. But the greatest of these was . . . Goldwater.

Scout's honor.

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. . . that could.

UPDATE: Now new and improved, with a functional link!

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Over fourteen minutes' worth, in fact.

Via Robert Bluey's blog, I just found out what I would have realized three weeks ago, had I been paying attention: Townhall has video of the Blogger of the Year Award, along with other highlights from CPAC 2008.

You could tell when the BotY Award was about to begin: everyone unglued himself/herself from the monitor near Bloggers' Row, and physically went upstairs to the ballroom, which is normally too, um, brightly lit for our ilk. I sat next to Fausta, James Joyner, and David Foster of Photon Courier and Chicago Boyz for the speech, and watched the rest of my kin drift in as the time drew near. By the time Bluey began his introduction, the room was nearly packed with—as Dave Burge calls us—troubled loners.

"If I talk into that thing, does it make me ghey?

And Ace gave a great speech, though he did have sort of a love/hate relationship with the microphone; the right sound engineer might be able to get the mike to rock back and forth as he steps forward and backward, thereby keeping him at the same distance from it as he speaks. Would some, um, "moron" get right on that?

And we in the "new media" loved the pep talk on civic responsibility, and citizen involvement in governance. Mostly, though, we loved the idea that if we keep at this nonsense long enough, someone might hand each of us a check, just for ranting away on our laptops. (Okay—that perception is based on a sample of . . . one. that is to say, I might be projecting.)

EB: "There are conventions for bloggers?"
Joy: "Yes. They also had 'em in the 1980s for people who worked in computer graphics. Which wasn't a real industry 25 years ago; it was all subsized research and passion-fueled speculation. No one had yet figured out how to make a buck off of it."

"Oh, right . . . your husband works in that field. Doesn't he?"

Someone has to pioneer these things, you know. Trails don't just blaze themselves.

UPDATE 1: Photo added.

UPDATE 2: My other groundbreaking investigative reporting on how bloggers like to pat themselves and each other on the back is here. I managed, you'll note, to drop Joyner's name in both entries; you don't think that's going too far, do you?

I don't have any good pictures of James; most of the time when I point a camera in his direction he sports this look like, "must you? Every year? Have I really changed that much in the last 365 days?"

"Not this, again." James Joyner being a good sport under adverse conditions at CPAC 2007; pictured here with Mary Katherine Ham of Townhall and Sean Hackbarth of The American Mind.

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Isn't Mark Steyn still the obituarist for The Atlantic? Does that mean in the next issue of Atlantic (or, perhaps, the one after that) I will get to read a tribute to one right-wing stud/god penned by yet another right-wing stud/god?

Everyone tells me Buckley was tired, and felt that he'd accomplished everything he wanted to. He was in the process of releasing this life, and he died at his desk—which sounds like the place to do it, too.

UPDATE: I forgot that Steyn blogs at NRO! Here we go: Mark Steyn on Bill Buckley.

I know what Jonah means about a life well-lived, as Bill's certainly was, but it's still hard to believe there'll be no more Buckley columns on this week's news, and next week's and next month's, and hard not to feel cheated that we were denied a nonagenarian Buckley sailing on in vigorous health toward his next century.

On the other hand, we lost Michael Kelly when he was still terribly young, and hadn't delivered on all his delicious promise.

How many of us really do, by the way?

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It will sit on top of Alarms & Diversions, The Thurber Carnival, Fables for Our Time, and one of my copies of Lanterns and Lances. (I am getting rid of the paperback copy—the "backup." I am de-cluttering, so one copy of any given book is probably enough.)

By the way, if you want to see a picture of James Thurber, go here. He looks just like his cartoons, of course—with the heavy-framed glasses and that contrasting bit of hair at the top of his head. (Though he has more hair, perhaps, than a lot of his cartoon men possess.)

Thurber's Dogs, comes to me via the library of a pipe smoker. Mmmm. Vanilla pipe tobacco: that was one of the things I loved about my grandfather. He was a difficult soul, so there weren't too many of these characteristics: his skill as a carpenter, and his his penchant for the color red are the only others that jump to mind just now. But that vanilla smoke smell just ruled.

Oh, and—you websearch people will be wanting a link to The Thurber House. So there you go.

Furthermore, here's a Thurber fansite, though it should be noted that one of his quotations is mangled therein.

(Is it possible that I'm as geeky in my own way as those people who know far too much about the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises?)

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"It does seem odd that two candidates who claim they're going to 'repair America's world image' want to do so by ditching a treaty and starting trade wars."

Indeed.

And here's the Investor's Business Daily article he links, which discusses the Dems' stances with respect to NAFTA. Money quote:

America's capricious, chest-thumping protectionist ally, Mexico, a third-world nation that is trying hard to transform itself into a first, bears the brunt of this coded jingoism.

That's because trade pacts these days are about more than just trade — they represent long-term strategic partnerships. But after this talk, who'll want to sign a permanent trade deal knowing they'll be threatened by ambitious politicians every election season?

Far from being an enemy, Mexico is a partner with whom we did $350 billion in two-way trade last year. In the process, we've gained millions of high-paid jobs in the U.S. The relationship has boosted U.S. incomes an average $2,000 per family since 1994. Besides buying 35% of our global exports, Mexico and Canada are also two of our biggest oil suppliers, selling us energy we'd be in huge trouble without.

Casting NAFTA nations as villains sends a chilling message to the dozen other nations that have since signed NAFTA-like agreements — countries as friendly and diverse as Singapore, Jordan, El Salvador, Australia, Morocco and Chile.

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Though I know the video is trying to play the "Republicans Are Homophobes" card, and of course I wasn't crazy about the "New York Money guy" stereotype.

I mean, aren't most of us "totally gay for the U.S.A."? It's just that most of the boy-warbloggers out there . . . well, internationally speaking, gay or straight, they seem to be more interested in pitching vs. catching.

It makes a difference, you know.

h/t: Promenade Attorney.

("Excuse me while I strap this on . . .")

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We're having a small private screening tomorrow of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

It's going to be a bit on the early side--3:00 p.m. We had several cancellations, so any bloggers or other New Media types who want to get onto the guest list should let me know immediately.

Thanks.

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You were the John the Baptist of the modern Conservative Movement—a voice crying in the wilderness.

The world would be a much poorer place without you.

And I loved your Mr. Howell accent.

Holy shit; it's hard to say goodbye to someone with your force of personality and badass intellect.

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At Belmont Club.

Now as to why reputable academic institutions should employ the likes of Ayers and Dohrn the answer is equally simple: solidarity. It's a solidarity that exists not only in the present but goes back through history. To observe that Adolf Hitler is reviled while Josef Stalin is still held in high regard by [the] Left may be seen by Goldberg as a contradiction. It is no such thing. It's just a fact. The Left isn't stupid. It's just on the other side.

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Everyone I have ever loved I have hurt.

Awful knowledge. Unendurable. Knowledge to make one appreciate doubt and the easier way; the way of no cross.

Because if I love, and I make hurt, I am culpable. My fault, my own fault, my most grievous fault.

O save me.

Knowing all I canÂ’t undo, I can only ask for mercy, and can only be mercy in return.

Which is insufficient.

Whom we love, we hurt, because we know we can.

And understanding that brings the deepest hurt of all.

Yup. More of her Lenten meditation here.

Or: "The pain then is part of the happiness now. That's the deal." (Joy in Shadowlands.)

There is no real way out, except in isolation—and that's even more heartbreaking. The Anchoress is right: in the pain of loving, we become fully alive.

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Supposedly Viriginia Woolf's Orlando was "the longest and most charming love letter in history" (according to Nigel Nicholson, son of the woman who served as a model for the book's protagonist, Vita Sackville-West). It's still the longest, but I'm no longer sure it's the most charming, now that the Sarah Silverman/Jimmy Kimmel videos exist.

Sarah started out strong:

But I have to give this one to Jimmy:

And Ben himself deserves special mention; he must have balls of steel. Wow.

Via Ace, who watches TV so I don't have to.

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Diebold dropped the ball:

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

Via Joyner.

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Matt Lewis at the Townhall Blog:

Howard Dean is attempting to pull off a dirty trick that would result in McCain not having a fair chance to compete.

The fact that Dean, himself, did the same thing makes it all the more hypocritical. And the fact that Dean argues that it was okay for him -- because the FEC voted to allow him to opt out -- while knowing the FEC cannot meet to vote to allow McCain out, should they want to -- makes this look politically expedient, and too cute by half.

And Jennifer Rubin adds, over at Commentary:

Davis declared twice that the McCain camp would “be happy to debate all day” who has broken their word on public financing and whose record of commitment to reform is stronger. (He reviewed some highlights of McCain’s career, including the Abramoff and Boeing investigations and the passage of campaign finance reform laws–which he accomplished over objections from his party and to his political detriment.)

The bottom line: the McCain people recognize they are essentially entering the general election battle and want to prevent Obama (as he did with Hillary Clinton) from stealing the mantle of reformer/change agent. I would expect to hear far more of the McCain camp line that “there is only one candidate” who broke his promise regarding campaign funding.

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I had a fascinating interview yesterday with Mr. Paul Jacob, one of the "Oklahoma Three" who are under indictment for violating a law that requires petitioners on behalf of ballot initiatives to be residents of that state.

He is facing a ten-year prison sentence for violating a law that he insists he didn't violate in the first place, and which may well be unconstitutional. In any event, the prosecution is clearly a politically motivated one—an attempt to shut him up, and shut down the initiative process.

Mr. Jacob is a libertarian, and we had plenty to talk about—from his history of draft resistance to his work on behalf of term limits and his activism across the country to keep the ballot initiative process alive, and expand it into states where it isn't yet used.

"So term limits and ballot initiatives are complementary, equal parts of your approach to government reform?" I asked him.

"Complementary, yes. But not equal. Not equal at all," he replied. "Just because I think term limits are the best thing since sliced bread, doesn't mean I would give them priority over the initiative process. That's the safeguard: that's what gives citizens the ability to go over the heads of politicians."

"Since you're here in California, you know I'm going to ask you about >Proposition 13," I remarked—alluding to Howard Jarvis' ground-breaking "tax revolt" initiative from 1978. "That changed everything here; it allowed a lot of people to keep their houses."

"I know it was huge here," he told me. "But it was enormously beneficial outside California. It showed the possibilities of the initiative process."

Talking with Mr. Jacob was a surrealistic experience: the whole saga sounded like something my friend Jane would be covering on behalf of the Yemenis; not events that that could be occurring in this country.

And yet, here he was—a good husband, and a father of three, looking at 10 years behind bars.

"My older daughter is getting married," he told me. "So she's making sure to have her wedding before we go to trial [tentatively schduled for February 2009], so I can walk her down the aisle."

This is reality; it affects every area of this family's life.

Free the Oklahoma Three. Support the initiative process. Free Paul Jacob.

Ten years in prison—for attempting to petition the government?

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