SUSPECTED AL QAEDA LEADER Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was arrested in Pakistan.

That’s excellent news, and another nail in the coffin of the “Iraq is distracting from the war on Al Qaeda” theory.

UPDATE: Burbank reader Jerric Tam sends a link to this long article about Mohammed from the Los Angeles Times.

LOOKS LIKE AN INDEPENDENT KURDISH REPUBLIC just got a bit more likely:

ANKARA, Turkey — In a serious blow to U.S. plans for a possible war with Iraq, Turkey’s parliament speaker nullified the legisature’s vote Saturday to allow deployment of 62,000 U.S. combat troops to open a northern front against Iraq.

An independent Kurdish republic is okay with me. If the Turks don’t like it, well, then they’re playing a dangerous game.

DAMIAN PENNY REPORTS ON religious antisemitism among Anglican clergy.

This is absolutely pathetic, but no great surprise given the antisemitism we’ve already seen emanating from the Vatican lately. The “it’s not antisemitism, it’s antizionism” argument just won’t wash anymore.

WHEN CROSS-BRANDING BECOMES SURREAL: Okay, I’ve got nothing against Barbie. And I like SpongeBob. But, somehow, the “SpongeBob Squarepants Barbie” just seems, well, weird.

You can imagine the marketing meeting: “It’s synergy! Barbie’s a classic, and SpongeBob’s a hot new star!”

I don’t have anything against this at all. It doesn’t bother me. It just seems, well, weird enough to make me whip out the camera while on my regular weekend trip to the toy store.

And yet, it’s sort of fitting. “Rugrats Barbie” doesn’t work. “Jimmy Neutron Barbie” is almost inconceivable. “Rocket Power Barbie” is imaginable, though the main female character on Rocket Power, Reggie, doesn’t seem much like the Barbie type.

But SpongeBob’s wacky genre-busting appeal somehow does kind of work.

I’m not sure if this is a work of genius, or of transcendent weirdness. I’m not even sure that, in this case, there’s a difference. But it seems to be some sort of major cultural event, and I thought it shouldn’t go unnoted.

UPDATE: This, on the other hand, is just plain weird.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Mary O’Boyle emails:

I showed the picture of Spongebob Barbie to my 9 year old twin girls thinking they would laugh hysterically. NO! They started screaming: ” I want that! I want a Spongebob Barbie!” Then as they walked away, one mused: ” I wonder if there is a Spongebob Ken too?”

Obviously, it’s another stroke of marketing genius.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Looks like a winner! Er, but Amy Kropp doesn’t like it.

POLITICAL BLOG PIONEER FRANK CAGLE is making the leap to talk radio. His show starts Monday at 10 a.m. Eastern, and will be available over the Web.

Even better — WNOX in Knoxville is bumping Dr. Laura, whom I can’t stand, to make room for him. Win/win!

THIS ARTICLE BY EUGENE VOLOKH on the real-world implications of “slippery slope” reasoning is worth reading. And it’s a lot shorter than his Harvard Law Review article on the same topic!

GIZMODO had its millionth page view last night. Not bad!

I LIKE THE GUCCI AD: Wired Tales is offering a worldwide survey of prudery and prurience.

BLEGGING: IT’S PLEDGE WEEK over at Bill Quick’s.

HERE’S A LINK to Fred Thompson’s pro-war commercial in which he asks “What had the 9/11 hijackers done to us — before 9/11?”

SELF-PROMOTION ALERT: Eric Alterman emails: “C-SPan II will broadcast my talk at the LA Bookstore, Skylights on Saturday, March 1 at 4:30 pm and Monday, March 3 at 7:00 am.”

If you want to see Alterman in moving, talking pictures, here’s your chance.

THE ORACLE OF STARBUCKS is never wrong. It says so right on the page!

I’M A “RIGHT-WING NUT” — and pro-sodomy! Now you know. But I’ve always been this way.

IF YOU CAN’T SAY SOMETHING NICE, DO SOMETHING SURREALISTIC:

More than 100 Nashvillians turned out this afternoon to hit a French car with a sledgehammer in support of America’s troops and to protest French anti-American sentiments.

The ”Bash A Peugeot For Peace” event at the Beaman Automotive Group on Broadway was sponsored by WWTN radio talk-show host Steve Gill. All proceeds are going to charities that send supplies to troops overseas and their families, who have remained at home.

Futile gesture? But of course! But that’s the point:

”What does bashing a Peugeot have to do with peace?” said Steve Gill, rhetorically. ”Nothing. But most of the peace rallies have nothing to do with peace either. They’re just attacking America. By calling our rally this, we just wanted to underline that point.”

Tremble, O postmodern Frenchman. Steve Gill has your number.

(Via Timatollah).

BLOGS WORTH LOOKING AT: PeakTalk, Binza Blog, Zogby, and Internet Ronin. Check ’em out.

Also, the blog formerly known as AntiPundit has changed its name. Seems there was already an AntiPundit.

NAT HENTOFF UNPACKS PATRIOT II: And it looks pretty bad.

TalkLeft suggests that the plan is to wait until war is underway and then introduce it while everyone is distracted.

I’m going to let my Senators and Representative know that I’m against this now.

THERE WAS AN ANTIWAR PROTEST, OF SORTS, across the street from the law school as I left work this afternoon. As you can see, it wasn’t very big. You may not be able to tell from this photo, but if you look at this close-up or this full-size version you can see that these aren’t students. Many of them look to be Vietnam-era protest alumni. There were signs that said “honk if you want peace.” People were honking, but some of the honkers were yelling “war now!”

I don’t claim any special representative quality for this assemblage — though the absence of undergraduates was certainly noticeable — but I had the digital camera on me, so there you are.

UPDATE: Sharp-eyed reader Bart Hall emails:

I could not help but notice the *unused* placards on the ground at left in your photo of the A-Peace-ment demonstration there at UT. There seem to be at least half a dozen of them. My interpretation is that they didn’t get more than about half the people they expected. The demo at UT is barely bigger than the standard Sunday ‘Honk if you’re for Hemp’ demos in downtown Lawrence, Kansas.

Hmm. Good point (it’s clearer in the full-size picture). It wasn’t the weather — by recent standards, yesterday wasn’t bad.

OVER AT GLENNREYNOLDS.COM I’m announcing that I’m proudly pro-sodomy! As, apparently, are the readers of Redbook.

IS IT THE 1930s ALL OVER AGAIN?

Western Europe has almost gone the way of Weimar. Amoral, disarmed, and socialist, it seeks ephemeral peace at all costs, never long-term security, much less justice. Furious that history has not ended in perpetual peace and leisure, it has woken up angry that Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair disturbed its fanciful slumber with chatter about germs and genocide.

In recompense, cranky Western elites, terrified of trouble, indict on the cheap the democratically elected Mr. Sharon, while the masses in the millions go to the street to protest a war against a monster like Saddam Hussein and pay fealty to the terrorist Arafat. As in the past we see ideals in the militarily weak but spiritually strong leaders of Eastern Europe, as the Czechs and Poles once more reveal themselves to be far more moral men and women than any in Germany and France — the historic duet that so often either started or lost wars. . . .

The world, not America, has gone off the deep end — just as it did some 70 years ago when faced with similar choices between cheap rhetoric and real sacrifice. And so just as the tragedy of Pearl Harbor for Americans put an end to all the nonsense of the 1930s, let us hope that the memory of September 11 and the looming showdown with Iraq will do the same for the present farce as well.

As I mention below, for multilateralism to work, you need — well, you need nations more honest, more capable, and more responsible than France and Germany.

LEE HARRIS WRITES on the idea of evil — and those who are embarrassed by it.

HERE’S MORE FROM CHARLES MURTAUGH on biology and politics.

MICHAEL WALZER WRITES:

It would have been much better if the US threat had not been necessary —if the threat had come, say, from France and Russia, Iraq’s chief trading partners, whose unwillingness to confront Saddam and give some muscle to the UN project was an important cause of the collapse of inspections in the 1990s. This is what internationalism requires: that other states, besides the US, take responsibility for the global rule of law and that they be prepared to act, politically and militarily, with that end in view. American internationalists—there are a good number of us though not enough—need to criticize the Bush administration’s unilateralist impulses and its refusal to cooperate with other states on a whole range of issues from global warming to the International Criminal Court.

But multilateralism requires help from outside the US. It would be easier to make our case if it were clear that there were other agents in international society capable of acting independently and, if necessary, forcefully, and ready to answer for what they do, in places like Bosnia, or Rwanda, or Iraq. When we campaign against a second Gulf War, we should also be campaigning for that kind of multilateral responsibility. And this means that we have demands to make not only on Bush and Co. but also on the leaders of France and Germany, Russia and China, who, although they have recently been supporting continued and expanded inspections, have also been ready, at different times in the past, to appease Saddam. If this preventable war is fought, all of them will share responsibility with the US. When the war is over, they should all be held to account.

The trouble with multilateralism is that it requires other nations who are both morally responsible and militarily capable. There’s a shortage of both.

THE NINTH CIRCUIT has denied a rehearing en banc in the Pledge of Allegiance case, clearing the way for it to go to the Supreme Court. Howard Bashman has the scoop, naturally.

CATS AND DOGS LIVING TOGETHER: TalkLeft is siding with Ashcroft — on a gun-privacy issue.

BLOOD-BLOGGING: Gabriel Mendel writes that donating blood is a good way to help the war effort.

Meanwhile Maj. John Heslin emails: “Blogging’s emergence as the Rugby of Opinion Peddling is crystallizing.”