A QUESTION: The Rick Bragg story, conveniently enough, came out on Memorial Day Friday, one of the deadest news slots of the year. (As Kaus notes, it was even a vacation day for Romenesko!)

But was this really that smart? All it means is that the blogosphere — especially the Raines-unfriendly part occupied by Kaus and Sullivan — has had all weekend to chew on the story. I wonder if on Tuesday, when people come back to the office, they’ll scroll through those posts and it’ll set the tone, making things worse for Raines rather than better?

“RUMSFELD APOLOGIZES FOR HYPING SADDAM THREAT:” Wow, who would have expected this? I don’t think it’ll please the not-in-our-name crowd, though:

“I’m sorry Senators Biden, Rockefeller, Byrd, Roberts and others,” said a contrite Mr. Rumsfeld. “We overestimated the threat posed by a lunatic dictator, who hated the U.S. and Israel, and who paid rewards to families of Palestinian terrorists. In an age when two of the world’s tallest buildings can be brought down with tools used by the stockboy at K-Mart, we should have demanded more concrete evidence of exotic weapons of mass destruction. Saddam was helpless as a kitten up a tree.”

Read the whole thing. . . .

HAITI IS DEMANDING REPARATIONS FROM FRANCE:

In his May 1 speech, Aristide renewed his call for France to “restitute” the indemnity of 150 million gold francs which Haiti paid the former colonial power after winning its independence in 1804. The Haitian government calculates that France owes it about $21.7 billion. The French Foreign Minister has scoffed at the request, accusing the Haitian government of “poor administration.”

Heh.