TERRY TEACHOUT IS THRILLED with the new Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD release. Sigh. I have nearly all of these on VHS, but I’ll probably buy the DVDs anyway. Then, in a few years, it’ll be rereleased on flash chips, or molecular-distortion memory, or something, and I’ll buy that, too.

I’VE HAD A VARIETY OF EMAIL PROBLEMS, but they seem to be fixed now. If you sent a tipjar contribution recently and didn’t get a thank-you note, one will be forthcoming soon. If you sent something else vitally important, and there’s no sign that I got it, well, I probably didn’t.

ONE ENEMY AT A TIME? Interesting.

ROGER SIMON SAYS: “Show me the money!” Or at least where it went.

OUTSOURCING GONE WILD. Jeez.

THIS IS INTERESTING:

CAMP LEMONIER, Djibouti (AP) – U.S. forces have disrupted several planned terrorist attacks against Western and other targets in the Horn of Africa and local authorities have killed or captured more than two dozen militants, the U.S. general in command of an anti-terrorism task force told The Associated Press.

Of the hundreds of foreign fighters detained by U.S. troops in Iraq, approximately 25 percent come from the seven countries that fall under the purview of the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, Marine Brig. Gen. Mastin Robeson told AP in his first in-depth interview since taking command in May 2003. . . .

“I think we have frustrated the terrorists,” Robeson said. “Mission success does not necessarily only resonate in how many people we either capture or kill, because when we put them on the move, they’re now out of their comfort zone and they are vulnerable.”

There are no prisoners being held at the tented camp in Djibouti, military officials said, and Robeson refused to say how many terrorists his men have captured in U.S. operations.

I think that there’s a lot more going on in Africa than meets the eye.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE has thoughts on Donald Rumsfeld’s management style.

JEFF JARVIS REPORTS from the World Trade Center PATH station, where train service has reopened. He’s got photos, too.

BUSH’S BUDGET: David Bernstein writes:

“Compassionate conservatism” seems to have turned out to be a replay of the Nixon strategy of buying off every conceivable interest group that is capable of being bought off by a Republican admnistration, while using social issues and conservative rhetoric to appease the Republican masses. Nixon, at least, had the excuse of governing in an era when liberalism was at its apex, and with the constraints imposed by the other two branches of government, dominated by liberal Democrats. What is George Bush’s excuse?

The excuse, I think, is that this worked for Nixon — who was reelected in a landslide and left office for, um, non-budgetary reasons. And the reason that it worked is that, in some sense, this is what voters want, however unfortunate that may be. Nonetheless, Bush is alienating a lot of supporters this way, as any denizen of the blogosphere will note. Will it affect the election outcome? He’d better hope not.

UPDATE: Daniel Drezner has a lengthy and link-filled post.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Steve Verdon has comments.

CATHY SEIPP’S UPI COLUMN is on the largely ignored New York Times plagiarism scandal involving Bernard Weinraub’s lifting from blogger Luke Ford. Mickey Kaus wonders why it’s getting so little attention, too.

I tend not to make as much of plagiarism scandals as most people do (here’s my earlier post on the subject). But it’s interesting when most people don’t, either. And regardless, you’ll find the background on Ford interesting, if you’re not already familiar with him.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT in America. MEChA is involved.

JIM DUNNIGAN HAS A FAIRLY POSITIVE ANALYSIS:

Do you see a pattern here? Al Qaeda is not following up on September 11, 2001 with more attacks on Western targets, but is killing Moslems. Al Qaeda does have a lot of Moslems on its hit list, particularly Moslems who al Qaeda does not consider Moslem enough. But since al Qaeda recruits from Moslem populations, angering Moslem populations is suicidal to the organization. This is what happened to the radical faction of the Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt during the 1990s. But al Qaeda is not the kind of organization that can control all of its members.

Read the whole thing. I hope that he’s right.

THIS MUST BE MAKING SOME PEOPLE NERVOUS:

In the end, after the secret investigations, the middle-of-the-night arrests, the obsequious genuflections to Saddam Hussein, a common passion drove these members of Iraq’s Baath Party to excel at their special occupation. It was all about the money. . . .

Kanan Makiya, a Brandeis University professor and author, said he stumbled upon the records last summer while trying to save a monument to the party’s founder, Michel Aflaq, that was scheduled for demolition. A few years ago, the United States gave Mr. Makiya custody of another large trove of Iraqi documents seized in Kuwait and northern Iraq after the Persian Gulf war in 1991, and so he won permission from the occupation authorities to take custody of the new papers as well.

Mr. Makiya intends to share them with the public by opening a museum and archive that he calls the Memory Foundation. The Americans plan to give him some of the financing for the project, and he is soliciting the rest.

I hope that there will be an archive of Western political and commercial (and journalistic) payoffs, too.

MICHAEL BARONE notes that Democrats are divided in ways that will make beating Bush hard.

That’s true — and I’m always hesitant to disagree with Barone — but I think that Bush is far more vulnerable than most commentators suggest. The real question, I guess, is whether he’ll be vulnerable to whoever the Democrats nominate.

IF YOU’VE ENJOYED GARY FARBER’S BLOG, but haven’t gotten around to hitting his tipjar, this might be a good time.

JONAH GOLDBERG WARNS PEOPLE not to get too carried away with the whole “South Park Republican” thing. Plus, he makes an offer that, er, can be refused:

If conservatives have such a lock on the culture these days, as Al Gore, Al Franken, and others keep insisting, why don’t we just switch sides? The Left can have Fox News, the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, the lavish offices of National Review and The Weekly Standard, as well as Sean Hannity’s and Rush Limbaugh’s airtime. The gangs at the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation will clear out their desks, give John Podesta the code to the Xerox machine, and tell Eric Alterman where to buy the best gyros.

In return, we’d like the keys to the executive bathrooms at ABC, CBS and NBC, please. We’d like the cast of Fox and Friends to take over The Today Show’s studios (“and tell Couric to take her Cabbage Patch dolls with her!”). We want Ramesh Ponnuru as the editor of the New York Times and Rich Lowry can have his choice between Time and Newsweek. Matt Labash will get Esquire and let’s set up Rick Brookhiser at Rolling Stone (that way they won’t have to change their drug coverage). Andrew Sullivan can have The New York Times Magazine. Robert Bork will be the dean of the Yale Law School and the faculty of Hillsdale and Harvard will simply switch places.

Can I have Maureen Dowd’s column?

UPDATE: Arnold Kling wants dibs on Krugman’s slot.

WINDS OF CHANGE has its regular war news roundup posted. This is probably the best single place to find out what’s going on beyond the obvious headlines. Don’t miss it.

DAVID HOROWITZ WRITES AGAINST amending the Constitution to bar gay marriage:

Personally, I believe the family is an institution under attack and needs to be defended, but I also believe that all citizens are deserving basic respect and individual rights and that society has a vested interest in recognizing and supporting stable relationships between consenting adults who do no harm. What I am going to argue is that the idea of amending the Constitution to resolve a political issue of the culture war is (no pun intended) to court disaster. This will not necessarily be a disaster for the political cause of the defenders of traditional marriage, but it will be to the durability of the Constitution and therefore the nation.

Indeed.

BILL KELLER ON GETTING IT RIGHT:

One striking thing about Keller’s style is that he doesn’t dismiss criticism of the paper out of hand. “I look at the blogs. . . . Sometimes I read something on a blog that makes me feel we screwed up. A lot of times I read things that strike me as ill-tempered and ill-informed.”

Hmm. Does he mean he reads those things in blogs, or in the Times? Probably both!

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE CAPITALISTS — a collection of business- and economics-related blog posts — is up. Check it out.