THINGS SEEM TO BE GOING TO HELL IN NORTHERN IRELAND. Here’s a post that rounds up recent events, which haven’t gotten a lot of attention over here.

MEGAN MCARDLE on the Montana hairdresser commercial:

I have to agree; it reeks homophobic to me. . . . They couldn’t have made their message any clearer without, say, a shockwave of him prancing around in a maribou robe, singing excerpts from Judy Garland’s greatest hits while waving a sign that says “Queer as a $3 bill!”

Andrew Sullivan agrees. (And if you missed this yesterday, you can read much, much more here).

UPDATE: Adam Bonin, who is quoted in the earlier post as saying he didn’t see the gay angle, has watched the commercial again and emails:

I didn’t catch the little reach-down at the end of the ad the first time I saw it. Yeah, they’re insinuating. Please scrap what I said before.

Sorry — it’ll live forever in the Google Archive! Er, and mine. But the correction is noted. It sure looked that way to me.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Howard Kurtz thinks the ad just makes Taylor look “goofy.”

I DON’T THINK THESE TWO SCENES ARE EQUIVALENT. And I think it’s monstrous that some people do.

HYPOCRISY AT THE FCC: Jesse Walker is on the case.

READING THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE TEA LEAVES: William Sjostrom spots an agenda. Meanwhile ScrappleFace is hailing the Committee’s success.

Personally, I think it’s just another shameful year in which Arthur C. Clarke’s contribution was overlooked.

And if you’re looking for something a bit more recent, these guys did more for peace than Jimmy Carter has done. Here’s some perspective on Carter’s commitment to human rights. And here’s what another Peace Prize winner is doing.

UPDATE: Daniel Drezner has posted this defense of Carter, which you should read to get the best possible case for Carter getting the prize. Me, I’ve never liked the guy. I thought he was phony and inept when he was President, and whenever he’s opened his mouth on public issues afterward he’s reminded me why I thought that.

ARLEN SPECTER is calling for a probe into a possible Iraqi connection to the Oklahoma City bombing.

77-23: ANOTHER BIG WIN FOR BUSH in the Senate. Here’s the text of the resolution. Meanwhile, the Administration has a plan for the postwar occupation of Iraq. And Stephen Green has already redrawn the map.

Of course, we do have to win the war, first.

MICHAEL MOORE’S BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE may have been flacked on CNBC tonight, but it sure gets panned by John Powers in the L.A. Weekly:

ONE OF THE MOSQUITO-BITE IRRITAtions of being on the left is finding your ideals represented in public by Michael Moore, whose ball cap, burgeoning belly and self-promoting populism have made him an international brand name. When his documentary Bowling for Columbine played at Cannes this May, it was received with wild enthusiasm — predictably so, for it seems to have been made to delight European intellectuals and anyone else who believes that America is a land of bloodthirsty yet comical barbarians. . . .

Although he’d have made a crackerjack ad man, he’s a slipshod filmmaker, and the movie quickly collapses, burying its subject beneath bumper-sticker rehashes of received ideas: the demonizing of black men, fear-mongering TV news, Canada’s progressive health-care system and the Bush administration’s partisan use of scare tactics. At once punchy and incoherent — Moore contradicts himself vividly every few minutes — the film has the scattershot shapelessness of a concept album made by a singles band. . . .

Does Moore really think that Osama bin Laden ever gave a damn what happened to Salvadoran campesinos? Does he really think U.S. foreign policy caused those two high school kids to gun down their schoolmates? Moore never says, but he does emphasize, that on the same day as Columbine, U.S. bombers dropped an especially heavy payload on Kosovo. So what? Absent any serious historical analysis, his implication seems to be that this country is incorrigibly murderous. You don’t know whether to be outraged or yawn.

Oh, I know.

(Via Matt Welch).

INTERESTING COMMENTS ON FRENCH INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS, from Innocents Abroad. (Scroll up from this link for more). Excerpt:

I referred earlier to French intellectual arrogance and the perennial French view that Americans are dim-witted. This too may be changing. It’s long been the case that Americans have neglected more cerebral studies in favor of pragmatic pursuits. As a result, accusations of boorishness coming from the vast parade of French philosophic and revolutionary thinkers has often gone unanswered by the practical Americans. So it was a bit of a surprise when intelligent Americans, especially intelligent conservatives, hit back this time around. What may be even more surprising to Americans is that the French themselves were not entirely impressed by the knee-jerk anti-Americanism in their midst. . . .

That some of the best French intellectuals are now liberals in the classical sense and no longer slaves to the Marxist vulgate, suggests things may be changing. Just as the rise of an educated and philosophically conversant conservative movement had a lasting impact on the United States in recent decades, a similarly well-educated and thoughtful liberal tradition seems to be growing in France. It’s unfortunate that Germany seems unable to follow the French lead.

Yes, it is.

I PRETTY MUCH AGREE WITH TED BARLOW on what I hope will come next. War isn’t something to be entered into lightly, nor are we.

JUAN GATO DOESN’T MUCH LIKE Robert Byrd’s take on the war.

BLOCKED! A reader writes:

I try to keep up on the latest from the bloggers each day at work, but I’ve encountered a problem when trying to access Instapundit.com. Your site is the only one that is categorized by WebSense (our network filter software) as an ‘Advocacy Group’, preventing me from viewing it. Doesn’t make sense to me!@#$

Well, first I’d have to be a “group.”

LARRY MILLER ISSUES A VERY GRACEFUL CORRECTION in the Weekly Standard. Turns out the story was true, but the band was wrong — it wasn’t the Buzzcocks, it was Blink 182 that cursed Bush and was booed. Apparently, it’s even in Rolling Stone this month.

NICK DENTON is pooh-poohing claims that the D.C. sniper is a terrorist, which he attributes to gun-rights folks’ wishful thinking. He thinks it’s a typical nutjob, but argues that even if guns create more murders it’s worth it to have an armed citizenry:

[T]here is still an honest case to be made for the Second Amendment. It goes something like this. Guns do result in more fatal murders, but that is a small price to pay to guarantee freedom. The balance between the individual and government is ultimately determined by force. All the rights — to privacy, a fair trial, of free speech, to property — are underpinned by the power of individuals to organize against overmighty government, demonstrate, and ultimately take up arms. At a time when we are giving central government more powers, the counterweight of a people’s militia is more important than ever. Even as a madman runs amok in the DC suburbs.

Well, the criminological evidence on guns causing crime is, at best, mixed — even the opponents of widespread concealed-carry have been reduced to arguing that it doesn’t reduce crime, having largely abandoned claims that it will produce rivers of blood in the streets. But Nick makes an important point: rights can have costs, and still be worth it. That’s true of all rights, but many people seem less willing to admit this in the gun area. Antigun folks refuse to admit that the costs might be worth it, while many gun rights advocates deny that the costs exist. I tend to think that the costs, to the extent that they exist, are minor — but I don’t really care. Just as I’d support First Amendment protection for pornography even if someone could prove it led to more sex crime, I would support Second Amendment rights even if someone could prove they produced more gun crime. In both cases the alternative — an overpowerful government — is worse.

At the moment, Bush’s stance on the Second Amendment eases my mind somewhat over fears of tyranny. No tyrant, or would-be tyrant, champions an armed populace, the number-one antidote to tyranny — and the American public is growing better-armed all the time.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Andrew Stuttaford notes anti-gun-rights advocates trying to cash in, and calls them “vultures.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Rand Simberg emails:

I’d be a little more sanguine if the actions actually matched the words. I haven’t seen Ashcroft’s Justice Department actually do anything to support their stated interpretation. None of the Clinton-holdover Justice positions in ongoing court cases have been changed, as would be required if they really believed what they said.

Meanwhile, I’m watching a CNBC story by Pat Dawson which is, ahem, asking, whether the sniper will “reignite” the gun control debate. The story itself didn’t suck, but the presentation made clear that some folks at CNBC are doing more “hoping” than “asking” in this department.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Oh, hell, now they’re shilling for Michael Moore’s movie, and interviewing him. And as the interview progresses, the bias is pretty obvious. So I guess I knew where that was going. My wife, who knows a lot about Columbine, thinks Michael Moore is an idiot.

Later: Well, Brian Williams is still sucking up. Moore’s off on a riff about how “we armed Saddam Hussein” and it’s all our fault. This is pathetic.

JASON KOTTKE HAS DISCOVERED A CLUE in the D.C. sniper case.

WHAT THE DEMOCRATS SHOULD HAVE DONE: The House just voted overwhelmingly in favor of the war resolution. The Senate is expected to follow suit. The upshot of this is that the Democrats have angered their core NPR/Nation constituency by supporting the war, but done so slowly enough that (1) they look unpatriotic after shows like those put on by Reps. Bonior, McDermott and Thompson; and (2) they’ve let the campaign season turn on Iraq-related issues. This seems to be hurting them in a number of ways.

This problem probably could have been avoided had Daschle and Gephardt said in August that they didn’t think Congress needed to do anything. “We believe the President has authority under previous resolutions.” This would also facilitate weaselly second-guessing if the war goes badly. (That will happen anyway, of course, should circumstances allow, but it’ll be made more difficult for those who voted in favor of the war).

So why didn’t they do this? Beats me. There are several possibilities. One is that they favored a vote because they believed that Congress has a constitutional responsibility to address important issues like this. Another is that they were bluffing, and Bush called their bluff by going to Congress. Still another is that they lacked the party discipline to pursue the foreclosure strategy, since important Democrats (especially in the Senate) would make that impossible anyway. I’m guessing the reason is number two. But I think that Daschle and Gephardt will wish that they had made this go away in August.

UPDATE: This poll tends to explain why the vote is going this way.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader thinks I shouldn’t be lumping Daschle and Gephardt together, and he’s right:

Daschle has obviously been acting with a view to politics first and policy a very distant second. That, I think, has become obvious to voters (look at his lousy favs/unfavs in national polls). His great skill as Democratic Leader has been to keep his Caucus together. On this issue, on which his Caucus is divided down the middle, he has played caucus politics with little regard to the national

interest.

A pretty pathetic performance. The best way to handle things, when your caucus is divided, is to play it straight, as Gephardt has done. To try to bounce things around to achieve the best partisan result, as Daschle has done, is to lose all around.

Yes, I think that Gephardt has been motivated by what he sees as the national interest. Daschle, I agree, seems more opportunistic.

ALL THE HOSTESS COMIC BOOK ADS on one page — it doesn’t get cooler than this.

FEDERALISM, AND WHY THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS WRONG on medical marijuana. Good piece by Dave Kopel and Mike Krause from a while back, worth noting again in light of California’s lawsuit on the subject.

THE MYSTERY OF SPONGEBOB’S SEXUALITY HAS BEEN SOLVED! Rand Simberg emails a link explaining that he can’t help it:

Sponges reproduce by both asexual and sexual means. Most poriferans that reproduce by sexual means are hermaphroditic and produce eggs and sperm at different times.

Well, that settles it. I guess this won’t shed any light on the Montana election, though.

WE’VE DISCOVERED THE EQUIVALENT: An Act of Congress is roughly equal to three Mexicans with shovels. And I’ve got proof:

The Rio Grande is flowing all the way to the Gulf of Mexico again, thanks to three men from Mexico who skipped the red tape and put their backs into it.

Armed only with shovels, the trio dug a 400-foot ditch in two days to free up the Rio Grande at Boca Chica Beach and send the water on its way for the first time in almost a year. The ditch is designed to relieve residual flooding caused by the clogged river.

“It almost takes an act of Congress to do something like that,” Xavier Rios, supervisory Border Patrol agent in McAllen, said in the Brownsville Herald Wednesday. An official dredging project failed after four months because the flow wasn’t enough to prevent sediment from rebuilding.

Q.E.D.

MEDIA MINDED says Harry Belafonte is an honorable man.

FACT-CHECKING AND BIG MEDIA — READER BEN WHITEHOUSE EMAILS:

“Seventeen” has ranked the 100 “coolest” colleges. Apparently the first 50 were worthy enough to be investigated. I guess they didn’t look too closely at numbers 51-100. I’m proud to say that my alma mater – Wabash College – made the list at number 76. Unfortunately the editors forgot to check and see that Wabash is one of only three colleges exclusively for men still left out there. Has been since 1832. I guess this is further proof that rankings don’t mean too much. Although given their criteria and the enriching experiences that women have had while visiting Wabash – I’m not too surprised.

Well, to be fair, Seventeen says it was looking at the “coolest schools where girls can get the best college experience.” It didn’t say “as a student.”

VENEZUELA UPDATE: Jorge Schmidt emails:

Venezuelan media report that more than a million people are marching against the Chavez government. They call for his resignation and early elections. If the date for new elections is not announced in the next ten days, there will be a general strike beginning on October 21st. There has been sporadic violence, mainly outside Caracas, as Chavez supporters blocked roads leading to the city.

But the political opposition to Chavez remains fragmented. Unless they field but one candidate, it’s possible Chavez could win another election on the strength of his hard-core base.

The BBC has a report here. And here is a post from El Sur with links to many photos. Scroll up and down for more information.

READER RICK VOGEL EMAILS:

Apparently this slipped under the blogosphere’s radar. Since it’s not the linkable media, I partially understand. On her Oct 9 show Oprah made a strong case for the invasion of Iraq – sooner rather than later. She had the author of the Threatening Storm, Kenneth M. Pollack on to make his case and hawk his book – it climbed to number 3 from the mid 40’s on Amazon within hours. . . .

A lady in the audience made a comment to the effect that there were Iraq problems with Bush 1, then no problems with Clinton, and now Bush again and more problems. OPRAH SAID…”So you think it’s a Bush thing? Don’t you think that the problems were there with Clinton, he just looked the other way?”

This German woman really began tearing up when she spoke of the fact that Germans – and the world — looked the other way while Hitler built his empire and committed genocide. It took a world war to take him out.

She also had on a Hussein survivor, a guy who gave first hand experience with the brutal regime. He said Iraq is the only government in the world who has rapists on their payroll. Saddam pays to have dissident women raped.

This is news to me. There are reports of this on both Free Republic and Democratic Underground, and Oprah’s page indicates the topic, but doesn’t indicate what was said. Anybody out there see this?

UPDATE: Reader Tom Williams emails:

I saw a fair bit of the show yesterday. It seemed quite clear to me that Oprah supported military action against Hussein. In addition to the exchange your other reader mentioned, I was especially impressed by Oprah’s response to an audience member who said that we were just being fed Bush-administration propaganda about Saddam. The look on Oprah’s face was priceless. She paused a bit, and then said, in an almost brutally dismissive tone, “Well, you’re entitled to your opinion.” The addition “even though it’s idiotic” was as clear as if she had uttered it aloud.

And reader Eric Kolchinsky emails a transcript. I’ve skimmed it and it’s consistent with the above, right down to the dismissal. I may post an excerpt later.

HENRY COPELAND REPORTS that the New York Times is now more of a web publication than a DeadTree publication: “The jump in daily users puts the site’s daily readership solidly beyond the newspaper’s 1.2 million weekday circulation. An average of 1.3 million unique daily users is projected for October.”

Why if the New York Times can just make as much per Web reader as I do, they’ll be as profitable as InstaPundit! . . . Uh oh.

Actually, it’s not that bad:

Cannibalization is not an issue, says Calder. On the contrary, the site is “critical to newspaper’s growth in national markets and younger user groups,” he said.

“As a whole, the newspaper industry is challenged by fact that readers are getting older and aren’t reaching a whole generation brought up on AOL and CNN. We’ve been extremely successful in offsetting this,” Calder said.

That makes sense to me.