TOM RICKS IS BEING USED. That’s my take on this story of his in The Washington Post today. The story explains how a “cautious approach — held by some top generals and admirals in the military establishment, including members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — is shaping the administration’s consideration of war plans for Iraq.”

The only question is who’s using him, and why. The way I see it, he’s either being used in a leakwar by top military officials who are more interested in fighting the White House than Saddam, or he’s being used as a channel for disinformation designed to put Saddam Hussein off his guard. But I don’t see any scenario in which he’s not being used by somebody.

EMERGENT STUPIDITY: Rand Simberg isn’t enthusiastic about the prospects for intelligent action from the proposed Department of Homeland Security.

And here, via Rand’s blog, is a FoxNews report that FBI headquarters knew for 20 years that agents in Boston were covering up for mobsters.

These guys aren’t up to the war on terrorism, and they’re never going to be. The war will be won abroad.

DELLWATCH: I won’t say that this story explains my service problems with Dell, but . . . .

BILL QUICK notes a new angle in the Princeton / Yale hacking story.

HONOR KILLINGS in Pakistan, Egypt, etc. come in for a sturdy condemnation in the Washington Post.

Perhaps “human rights” groups can be persuaded to give this phenomenon the amount of attention they gave to Guantanamo.

MUSLIMPUNDIT ADIL FAROOQ is back after a long absence, with a lengthy post on jihadism.

JOHN LEO WRITES THAT BLOGGERS ARE MAKING A DIFFERENCE:

When the New York Times ran a front-page report on civilian casualties in Afghanistan (“Flaws in U.S. Air War Left Hundreds of Civilians Dead”), bloggers descended on the article like ants on a picnic. . . .

Hundreds of civilians dead? Don’t that many civilians perish in nearly every war? Stuart Buck at www.stuartbuck.blogspot.com asked:

“Has there ever been another war in history where civilian casualties were so few that journalists could track down virtually all of them individually?”

On his site, the Politburo, blogger Michael Moynihan noted that the Times’s source for the toll of 812 dead was Marla Ruzicka, identified as a field worker in Afghanistan for Global Exchange, “an American organization.” What the Times didn’t say, Moynihan wrote, is that Global Exchange is a far-left group opposing globalization and the U.S. military. . . .

Keep an eye on bloggers. The main arena for media criticism is not going to be books, columns, or panel discussions, and it certainly won’t be journalism schools. It will be the Internet.

Yep. More and more, you see bloggers’ opinions explicitly mentioned in opeds — and beyond that, you see major media (as Leo points out) quietly backtracking in future coverage after bloggers expose their errors.

OLD MINDSETS AND NEW RULES: Tony Adragna says that despite the allegedly sweeping civil service changes in the bill, it’ll be business as usual at the Department of Homeland Security.

I hope that the whole idea craters amid partisan bickering. That won’t be a failure. It’ll be the system working.

MORE AND MORE “DJS” are really spinning MP3s. Richie Hawtin (“Plastikman”) is now using Final Scratch exclusively, I’ve heard.

A few audiophile-poseurs will complain about the sound quality, but really most club systems (which tend to emphasize volume, not quality) won’t let you hear the difference anyway. In most clubs in Europe (and in a smaller, but surprisingly large, number of clubs in the States), the sound systems aren’t even stereo.

SPEAKING “HISPANISH” — Juan Non-Volokh finds the Bushism of the week in a surprising place.

THE NEW BLOGOSPHERE ECOSYSTEM is up.

MORE ON CONGRESSMAN-FOR-HIRE Howard Berman’s entertainment-industry money, from Justin Bollinger.

STEFAN SHARKANSKY writes about group-related fetishes. And scroll down for Akbar and Jeff’s terrorism hut. Akbar and Jeff, however, have left the trade.

JOHN HILER AT MICROCONTENT NEWS has a nicely measured response to the Arab News assault on James Taranto.

I hope Salon’s Eric Boehlert reads it.

UPDATE: “John R. Bradley,” who wrote the Arab News piece, swears that he’s a real person. The response: “I liked you better when I thought you were fictional.” Other commenters compare Bradley to Lord Haw-Haw and Lillian Hellman.

HERE’S THE BLOGATHON PARTICIPANTS PAGE. It’s alphabetized and searchable.

I’VE BEEN NOTING THAT THE FINANCIAL-SCANDAL ANGLE won’t work for the Democrats because they’re just as corrupt as Republicans. Now Armed Liberal is disgusted to find an example of what I’m talking about: a $447,000 “debt-consolidation loan” on “highly favorable” terms to Rep. James Moran (D-VA) from MBNA, coincidental with his support for the dreadful bankruptcy bill that — hey, imagine that! — benefits MBNA more than just about anyone else.

I bet we don’t read about this in Doonesbury, though.

BLOGATHON! I don’t need to blog today, because blogathon participants like Meryl Yourish and Laurence Simon are posting every 30 minutes all day long.

Is there a post somewhere with links to all the blogathon participants? If someone will send it to me, I’ll link it.

Happy blogathoning.

ATHENA RUNNER is a mom. Well, actually she already was a mom, but now she’s, um, a mom again? A mom moreso? Anyway, a bouncing baby boy was born, and everyone is doing fine.

THE CONTINUING EMBARRASSMENT THAT IS “HOMELAND SECURITY” MAY COST BUSH HIS BASE, if this post by Kim du Toit is any indication. While du Toit himself is a statistical outlier in many ways, I think the sentiments in this post are growing more and more common among gun rights folks and cranky conservatives in general.

UPDATE: And then there’s what Homeland Security is doing for the women’s vote. . . .

KEN LAYNE REVEALS SOMETHING EMBARRASSING about Rep. Howard Berman, who wants Hollywood to hack your computer.

A SHAMEFACED RETRACTION CONCERNING TED RALL, from Bill Herbert.

JUST GOT HOME from the Knoxville Bloggers’ bash. Over a dozen showed up, which was a big increase from last time, when there were three of us.

NOW THAT HE’S BEEN CONVICTED AND EXPELLED, Jim Traficant has become an “independent.”

UPDATE: Reader Bill Herbert emails:

Traficant IS running for reelection as an independent.

Plus, he recently stated that he “fears for the nation” if the Dems retake the house.

Well, that’s news to me. The Washington Post is calling him a Democrat. And I think his reelection bid can probably be ignored.

WILLIAM SAFIRE WRITES on the etymology of the word “blog” and credits Bill Quick with coining the term “Blogosphere.”

ACCORDING TO THIS REPORT, Arab countries are shocked, shocked to find that Yasser Arafat has been embezzling aid money, and are cutting him off.

I’m not sure I believe this. It could be evidence of a successful U.S. diplomatic effort to isolate him, or it could just be posturing by the Arab governments.