MARK STEYN ECHOES a point made here earlier — though, being Mark Steyn, he’s much funnier about it:

In the last nine months, the New York Times has run 95 stories on Martha Burk and Augusta. So, aside from being outnumbered by police and reporters, Burk’s 40 supporters were outnumbered more than two to one by New York Times stories on Burk. Every time the Times mentioned this allegedly raging furor, it attracted approximately another 0.4 of a supporter to her cause. . . .

The Times’ carpet bombing of Augusta has proved a pathetic bunker-bust. This is supposed to be the most influential newspaper in America, the one whose front page all but dictates the agenda of the network news shows. And its most fiercely sustained campaign can’t fill a single school bus?

Nope.

KANAN MAKIYA REPORTS FAVORABLY on a meeting in Iraq regarding a post-Saddam government. He is, it should be noted, a participant, and not simply an observer.

JUST LEFT A LONG FACULTY COMMITTEE MEETING. Now I’m going to hear a visiting faculty member speak. Then class. Then another committee meeting.

In other words, blogging will be light this afternoon. Sorry.

But you can always read this sophisticated exegesis of the legal ramifications of “Fisking.” And don’t miss this stirring tale (and no, it really is) from Germany.

I DON’T ORDINARILY LINK TO PEOPLE who write bad things about me in the hopes of encouraging traffic — you don’t feed trolls. But sometimes you just have to notice when somebody’s spreading filthy lies about you. (And it is a lie — actually, I use one of these.)

But at least I’m not dead, as “reported” here. . . .

THIS IS COOL:

MOJAVE – A private manned spaceflight program was unveiled Friday at a desert airport where it has been in secret development by famed aircraft designer Burt Rutan for two years.

A rocket plane, dubbed SpaceShipOne, and the White Knight, an exotic jet designed to carry it aloft for a high-altitude air launch, were shown off in a hangar at Mojave Airport, where Rutan developed Voyager, the airplane that made the first nonstop, unrefueled flight around the world in 1986.

The stubby-winged SpaceShipOne, built by Rutan’s Scaled Composites LLC, is designed to carry three people on a suborbital flight to an altitude of 62.5 miles. Rutan set no date for the first attempt, which will come after captive-carry flights and drop tests.

“I want to go high because that’s where the view is,” Rutan said.

But there’s no picture!

UPDATE: Of course, many cool readers immediately sent this link! Many cool pix.

ANDREW SULLIVAN quotes Michael Oakeshott: “I’ve always thought that the need to know the news every day is a nervous disorder.”

Yeah, and I have to say, that goes right to the core of what’s hard about blogging: you have to pay attention to the news. I’ve always been a news-junkie, but before InstaPundit I tuned it out sometimes. I did that this weekend, too, and I have to say I enjoyed it. It’s not so much the thinking or the writing that’s the strain. I’d be doing those anyway. It’s the constant exposure to news with all its (real or hyped) stress and gloom.

ANOTHER INTERESTING PIECE from the Arab News:

To a large extent, the Arab media was characterized by selectivity, and it was decidedly on the side of the Iraqi regime. Our intellectuals took over the line and constantly repeated it. Our media then devoted special programs to disseminating and repeating the falsehoods of Sahaf. Their biased point of view was imposed on listeners. Our media attempted to increase the degree of hatred against the coalition by concentrating on the degree of the destruction and the number of civilian victims, without making clear that this was because the regime positioned its forces and tanks in civilian areas. The army of Saddam of which they were so proud because it was the only army which could protect civilians in fact used the civilians to protect itself.

It was the Arab media itself which claimed that the aims of the war were to destroy Iraq, put an end to its capabilities, and, in the end, to occupy it. It did not for a moment consider the role of Iraq’s ruler in the destruction and ruin of the country over a period of more than thirty years. It did not consider how he had destroyed the country’s environment, education, health and legal systems. He also set oil wells on fire and destroyed bridges, and he transformed the cities, especially in the south, into wretchedness, deprived even of clean drinking water.

The Arab media attacked the Iraqi opposition and imposed a collective boycott while satellite stations played host to everyone but the Iraqis who were, after all, the ones most concerned. The Kuwaiti media was the sole exception to this rule. Not one satellite channel had the courage to transmit scenes of welcome to the coalition troops in the liberated cities. . . .

The musings of a simple Iraqi from a liberated area caught my attention. He said: “The Arabs left us and did not liberate us. Why are they attacking the coalition which wants to liberate us?” Why is this simple fact not realized by our men of culture, our intellectuals, our men of the media and our religious leaders, the men who call for participation in “jihad?”

Reality continues to sink in. Read the whole thing to see just how far.

UPDATE: Shanti Mangala wonders when we’ll see the same kind of introspection from the BBC. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Roger Simon sees a sports connection.

DR. FRANK is best-known in the Blogosphere as, duh, a blogger. But in the wider world he’s better known as a pioneering punk rocker. Now he’s written a song called Democracy, Whisky, Sexy and put it up for free download here. I listened to it, and it’s very cool — kinda reminds me of Balboa, if you’ve heard those guys. Give it a listen and, if it floats your boat, drop a buck in his tipjar.

Here, FYI, is a link to the webpage for Dr. Frank’s band, The Mr. T. Experience.

UPDATE: The link above now goes to a new, industrial strength server, which seems to work. Just in case, here’s an alternate link for the song. It seems Dr. Frank’s server wasn’t up to the load.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ken Layne notes that everybody’s downloading this song, and suggests: “Also, if you’re a radio host, make sure to play this all the time.”

Yeah.

EVEN THE HUMAN RIGHTS COMMUNITY is angry at the United Nations Human Rights Commision for being a joke:

Human rights organisations are protesting at the inclusion of countries with some of the worst records of abuses on a list of candidates for election to the main United Nations watchdog.
North Korea, Iran and Nigeria are likely to win membership of the UN Commission on Human Rights in an election either at the end of this month or early next. Egypt is another candidate and, even though its abuses are not on the same scale as the others, it has been conducting a vigorous campaign against homosexuals.

The chair of the commission, which is holding its annual meeting in Geneva, is held at present by Libya, another member with a list of deplorable violations.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are among the organisations which are complaining that the inclusion of these countries makes a mockery of the organisation, and are urging reform of the process.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch described the list of candidate countries as “a Who’s Who of the worst human rights abusers.”

Seeking re-election are other countries with poor records: Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Russia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

I disagree, however, that including these countries makes a mockery of the organization. Rather, I think it makes its true nature plain.