NOW ANN COULTER is calling for Trent Lott to step down, saying that his unseemly praise of a Senate relic is entirely unacceptable.

DICKENS WROTE ABOUT A SCROOGE’S REDEMPTION. James Lileks, on the other hand, subjects a scrooge to a savage and altogether merciless Fisking.

I never did like Dickens all that much.

UPDATE: Reader Roy Jacobsen emails with a point that several people made:

Actually, couldn’t you say that the three ghosts in Dicken’s story

delivered a Fisking to Scrooge? Didn’t they go back through his life

and show him point by point how he erred? Thus, you could say that it

was Fisking that led to Scrooge’s repentance and redemption.

Yes, the golden cloak of redemption often comes after the Iron Fisk of Truth.

THIMEROSAL UPDATE: Dr. Manhattan has a lengthy thimerosal-related roundup. Bottom line, supported by considerable evidence, is that the dangers of thimerosal are unsupported, and that there were dangers to removing it.

The whole Thimerosal flap seems overstated. The claims that it causes autism are, at best, dubious. And the claim that the lawsuit-blocking language was “mysteriously” added to the bill seems bogus given that, as I have pointed out already (where’s my reward money? I need a 350Z! I mean I really need one! Or maybe a Porsche. . . .) Dick Armey admitted on CNN two weeks ago that “I put it in.”

So what we have is a conspiracy theory about something allegedly secret that was actually admitted on CNN, being done to immunize a drugmaker from lawsuits based on its doing something for which there is no compelling evidence — or even much persuasive evidence — of danger or negligence. Isn’t that basically the story here? Or am I missing something?

DANIEL DREZNER WRITES ON bad economics. Oh, and Paul Krugman.

MICKEY KAUS (whose “Gearbox” automotive blog is now a regular feature at Slate) writes about our trip to test drive the 350Z. Don’t miss what he says about the GTO.

DON’T BE SHY ABOUT IT: The New Republic reports on Canadian ineptitude and hypocrisy regarding Hezbollah:

“It is important,” Graham lectured his critics, “not to label [elected officials], doctors, and teachers as terrorists.” The foreign minister and others in the Chretien government argued that the social wing of Hezbollah was independent of its “military” wing, and so a request that Canadian banks freeze the assets of Hezbollah’s “external security apparatus” was sufficient to suppress any terror threat posed by the group on Canadian soil.

Then, just as the debate over the distinction reached a fever pitch in the Canadian media and government–Revenue Minister Elinor Caplan argued for the ban–Nasrallah resolved it decisively. Last Wednesday, stories circulated that Hezbollah’s Al Manar television station had broadcast footage of Nasrallah encouraging the worldwide export of suicide bombings. “Don’t be shy about it,” he told followers. The terrifying quote appeared to eliminate any distinction between terrorist and non-terrorist activities, since Nasrallah sits atop the entire Hezbollah apparatus and not just the military wing. Which meant that suddenly Ottawa found itself insisting on a distinction that even Hezbollah itself was disavowing.

But, but, but they don’t like Americans and Jews! So how could they be terrorists?

To be fair, the non-idiotic part of the Canadian political structure (that is, the part residing largely outside the Chretien government) was horrified by this policy all along.

ANDREW SULLIVAN:

Finally I realized who Trent Lott reminds me of. Remember the knight in Mony Python’s “Holy Grail” who gets both arms and then both legs cut off by a fellow combatant, but still refuses to give in. “It’s only a flesh-wound!” he keeps bragging as blood gushes out from his arm and leg stumps. Only this time, we can’t cut to the next scene.

Yes. I was reminded of Lott’s BET appearance by some of Gollum’s pleading-and-groveling scenes in The Two Towers, too.

SO HOW DOES A GUY GO ABOUT COLLECTING this “Eli Lilly Bandit” reward, anyway?

A HATE CRIME HOAX AT OLE MISS: Michelle Malkin has the scoop.

JUST SAW THE TWO TOWERS. I don’t want to spoil it, so I won’t be too specific. Basic take: (1) Lots more liberties taken with the plot than in the first movie — and while I understand some of them, others mystify me as to their purpose. (2) Big themes, present in the book but much more present in the movie, are temptation and despair — and the temptation of despair. (3) Best actor: Gollum, in his dialogues with himself.

Worst part of the movie: the many commercials beforehand (people booed, and one guy shouted “I came here to see a movie!” to general applause) and the trailers for other movies, pretty much all of which looked absolutely dreadful. A couple of lame horror films, a Jim Carrey movie (the trailer for that one was good — but since all the good stuff from his movies is in the trailers, the movie probably isn’t) and I forget most of the rest.

Overall, where the first movie got a 9.0 -9.5, I’d give this one about an 8. To be fair, the second part of any trilogy is the hardest to carry off — both in movies and in the books themselves — but I felt that Jackson’s hand was too heavy on this one. Still a great job overall, but not as good as the first.

And yeah, Viggo Mortensen’s occasional off-camera antiwar blather notwithstanding, the inevitability of war, and the importance of having the will to resist evil despite the burdens and the horror is a repeated theme, twined in and around the despair and temptation points I mention above. Indeed, one speech in which Aragorn explains to Theoden that this isn’t just the usual raiding, but an effort to stamp out his civilization, seems especially on point.

ANGLOSPHERE, EUROSPHERE, TURKOSPHERE: Jim Bennett writes that the EU is getting itself in trouble. Personally, I like the idea of bringing Turkey into NAFTA. And maybe Eastern Europe, too. And Britain. . . .

NOEMIE EMERY WRITES THAT TRENT LOTT’S PROBLEMS ARE AN OPPORTUNITY FOR THE GOP:

ANY DAY NOW, the Democrats may come to regret deeply the moment the Trent Lott disturbance caught media fire. It is now a great mess for the Republican party, but one that has the potential to turn into a great opportunity, and one the party should eagerly seize. It is a chance for the GOP to clean up its act and its household, haul tons of old rubbish out of the attic, and banish some shopworn old ghosts. Having begun by delighting the Democrats by seeming to highlight the links they believed existed between racism and the conservative agenda, the furor may end by finally snapping those links, along with a number of sinister theories. And that will be all to the good.

Myth number one has always been that the Republican moderates were the much-put-upon noble soul of the party, while conservatives were the dark, ugly fringe. So who were the people who jumped on Lott first? Andrew Sullivan, David Frum, and George Will, among others. Social conservatives (such as the Family Research Council) roared for his ouster. In no time at all, the entire machinery of the vast right-wing media monster–the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, the New York Post, National Review, and the American Prowler (the online arm of the American Spectator); all the people on whom Al Gore and Tom Daschle blame the woes of the country–had locked Trent in the parlor with a pistol beside him, and urged him to do the right thing. Charles Krauthammer spoke for all of them when he wrote in the Washington Post on December 12: “Trent Lott must resign as majority leader . . . The point is not just what King and his followers did for African Americans, but what they did–by validating America’s original promise of freedom and legal equality–for the rest of America. How can Lott, speaking of ‘all these problems over all these years,’ not see this?” Indeed.

The mistake was not giving him the traditional bottle of whiskey with the pistol, I guess. He’s still in the parlor yelling to be let out.

MORE TERROR INDICTMENTS:

The leader of an Islamic militant group, his wife, and five employees of Texas computer firm were indicted on charges of trafficking with terrorist states Libya and Syria, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Wednesday.

“We will sue the financiers of terror as aggressively as we pursue the thugs who do their dirty work,” Ashcroft said at a news conference at the Justice Department.

Hey, does this mean they’ll be joining the 9/11 lawsuit against the Saudis? I’m not holding my breath on that one.

SEVERAL LEFTY BLOGGERS HAVE EMAILED and asked me to link to this TomPaine.Com reward offer regarding the Thimerosal/vaccine issue. I’m happy to oblige.

I don’t know a lot about this issue, and I’m all for legislative transparency (I even support Brannon Denning’s “Truth-in-Legislation Amendment” proposal). But on the merits — the Thimerosal issue itself — I think this is probably bogus.

Regarding the Thimerosal suits, MedPundit Sydney Smith writes: “The litigation of thimerosal truly is one of those abuses of the legal system that makes tort reform necessary. (Here’s the article from the Lancet on mercury levels in vaccinated children the editorial mentions.)”

And Derek Lowe has a series of posts on this (scroll down from this link) and he thinks it’s bogus, too. What I notice is that this is another case of something that I used to see on wacky right-wing websites now being picked up by the left. That doesn’t by itself guarantee that there’s nothing to it, but it adds to my doubts.

The merits of the Thimerosal / autism connection, of course, are in a sense independent of the question of whether stuff should wind up in legislation without leaving fingerprints. I don’t think that it should. But there have been all sorts of legislative shenanigans like that — Tom Foley’s clock-stopping to secure the passage of the assault-weapons ban, for example — and I think it’s fair to say that, while they’re bad, they’re not abuses that are engaged in exclusively, or even overwhelmingly, by a single party.

My guess, in fact, is that a Truth-in-Legislation regime would tend to disfavor all sorts of big-government initiatives, which liberals usually like. But I could be wrong about that.

UPDATE: Okay, where’s my reward?

CARVILLE: I understand. But did the White House put it in?

ARMEY: There were members of the White House that wanted it. Well, you know, you really have to say it was my bill, I wrote it, I put it in. . . .

CARLSON: I’m just curious, and I don’t want to spend the whole show on it. How did it get in there? Was it like the immaculate conception? Or you put it in or you dropped it in?

ARMEY: I put it in.

You guys can just PayPal me the money — the link’s on the left.

THE APPEARANCE OF MORALITY: Collin May writes about Canada’s peculiar version of moral superiority.

TRENT LOTT’S ENDORSEMENT OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION wasn’t an abandonment of his racist past, of course. It was just an endorsement of racism in a different guise. Shelby Steele points out the double standard:

No doubt the abuses of racism once made the democratic imagination a centerpiece of black American culture. The rhetoric of Martin Luther King was about nothing else. But the race-focused reforms that became entrenched after the 1960s have made the black imagination more self-referential. Now we imagine ourselves more than others, although depressingly seldom as conservatives. Universities across the country provide “ethnic theme dorms” to spare the young the stresses of developing a democratic imagination. And how many million blacks have a fellow-traveling affection for Louis Farrakhan, who is as ardently opposed to interracial dating as anyone at Bob Jones University?

Today America supports a racialist value system for minorities while demanding a democratic expansion of the white imagination. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus can embrace “blackness” and demand government preferences exclusively for their race. Remove the double standard and Trent Lott looks perfectly innocent by comparison.

But not so innocent that he should remain Majority Leader.

UPDATE: As Michelle Boardman writes: “Lott has insulted anyone who wants unbigoted political representation by implicitly arguing that an endorsement of affirmative action demonstrates his purity.”

This oped by Abigail Thernstrom, meanwhile, notes that:

After an era of liberal leadership, the typical black or Hispanic student graduates from high school today with junior high skills, according to the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress.

If Mr. Lott cedes civil rights issues to the Democrats, how can Republicans in Congress join the majority of black parents who want vouchers so that their children can escape public schools that have become graveyards for hope?

For years, Republicans have run in terror from most controversial race-related issues. But it was not always so. More than 80 percent of Republicans in Congress voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Congressional Republicans can recapture the moral high ground — but not if their Senate leaders are unable to stand up to groups that are often at odds with the interests and even the views of their own minority constituents.

Lott has sold out everyone — from his own party to black schoolchildren who are ill-served by pork-obsessed interest groups — to save his skin. And he hasn’t abandoned racism, but has endorsed it out of opportunism and cowardice. That’s why he has to go.

NOW IT’S JOHN KERRY who’s getting flak for racist remarks:

“There can never be an appearance of racism or bigotry in any high position of leadership,” he declared.

Funny, but that’s pretty much what prominent Italian-Americans were saying about Kerry the morning he tried to come off as droll on the Don Imus show, quipping, “The Iraqi army is in such bad shape, even the Italians could kick their butts.”

State auditor Joe DeNucci led the angry backlash, charging, “He wouldn’t have the guts to say that about Jews or blacks,” prompting a Kerry spokeswoman to suggest DeNucci cool his jets, that the senator was obviously being facetious.

Of course, that’s the same thing his office said following another appearance on the Imus show when, attempting to belittle Bill Weld’s work ethic, Kerry described the former GOP governor as “a guy who takes more vacations than people on welfare.”

Of course, if we got rid of every member of Congress who said stupid things, we wouldn’t have any left. Hmm. . . .

THE BLOVIATOR has lots of smallpox information (he didn’t especially care for my take on vaccination) and notes www.smallpox.gov, the federal government’s site for all things smallpox-related.

Never thought we’d see that, did you?

THE NEW DENTON / KOTTKE / SPIERS site Gawker.Com is up, and it’s already given me my restaurant pick for my next trip to NYC. Who can resist The Red Meat Club?

Plus, we learn that “drunk shopping” is both profitable and fun — though not for the same people at the same time.

What’s not to love?

UPDATE: Oops. Should have followed the link. Red Meat Club isn’t a restaurant, but an Internet meat-sales outfit. Even better — I don’t have to go to New York at all!

RACINE RAVE UPDATE: Peter Karas reports that prosecutors in Racine are growing ever-more-desperate to avoid a trial of all those they arrested in a mass raid earlier this fall. They’ve reduced the charge again, but almost no one is agreeing to a plea bargain.

After what happened in Houston, they should be nervous. The ACLU is suing, and this could be expensive for Racine. And it should be.

Speaking of Techno (well, really D&B), I just got a CD in the mail from DJ/producer/former blogger Pieter K — it’s called Everything All The Time. I met Pieter at the UCLA weblog panel last year, but I didn’t realize he was such a big deal. But the Amazon page for the CD lists impressive reviews from URB and Mixer, which makes him a big deal indeed. I’d hoped there would be streaming audio, but there’s not. Sorry.

POSTWATCH has loads of stuff about Bryant Gumbel, Martha Burk, and Burning Tree. You know, stuff that’s really important. Turns out Bob Schieffer belongs to Burning Tree. Another Burning Tree member: “evil Hollywood lobbyist Jack Valenti.”

RANGE OF INTERESTS: Well, changing the PayPal button to let people pick the amount clearly unlocked untapped demand. It used to just take donations in the amount of $2.50 — somehow I set it up that way and never got around to changing it. (This site, unlike, say, Andrew Sullivan’s or Bill Quick’s, isn’t set up to be revenue-maximizing). But I got several emails close together asking me to change it to let the user choose the amount, and lo-and-behold, people responded with donations ranging from $75.00 to one cent. Yes, one cent. As an economist would say, it’s a diverse mix of preferences.

JACK BALKIN HAS SOME SUGGESTED LESSONS from the Trent Lott affair. I’m not sure I agree with all of his legislative suggestions, but it’s an interesting perspective.

Meanwhile, here’s a suggested lesson of my own. It’s clear that people knew for a long time that Lott had, to put it charitably, issues: issues of racism, and issues of the tin-eared, foot-in-mouth sort. Put those together, and he was a disaster waiting to happen. Some people even said that before the elections. Yet somehow he would up as Majority Leader anyway.

Pick the wrong people for important jobs, and you have problems every time. That’s a lesson worth remembering.

WOULD I EVEN NOTICE BIOLOGICAL WARFARE? My sinus infection is clearing up as the antibiotics kick in. (My daughter’s sick and on ’em, too — my wife’s at the doctor’s even as I write). Meanwhile, having had two colds in the past month, I’ve got another one coming on. And I hear there’s a nasty stomach bug going around.

Ugh.

IS THERE A CONNECTION BETWEEN THESE ARRESTS IN LONDON (and Edinburgh) and the arrest of three Algerians in Paris yesterday on terrorism charges? So far, it’s not clear. But I’m guessing that there is. Some of the French papers were reporting a London connection for the Algerians (in French, which is why I didn’t link the stories).