SHEILA O’MALLEY offers no mercy to Naomi Wolf.

UPDATE: Nor does Anne Applebaum:

The larger implications are for the movement that used to be called “feminism.” Twenty years of fame, money, success, happy marriage and the children she has described in her books — and Naomi Wolf, one of my generation’s leading feminists, is still obsessed with her own exaggerated victimhood? It’s not an ideology I’d want younger women to follow.

By way of comparison, how would people react if a fortyish man complained that Catherine MacKinnon had put her hand on his thigh 20 years ago?

About the same way, actually: “Who cares? Get a life!” That’s progress, I think.

GEORGE WILL on the growing antisemitism of the Left:

It used to be said that anti-Catholicism was the anti-Semitism of the intellectuals. Today anti-Semitism is the anti-Semitism of the intellectuals.

Read the whole thing, which is an interesting follow-on to this Michael Totten post from yesterday.

And David Bernstein has a message for Adbusters!

CHRIS MUIR is ready to take his Day by Day cartoon public. If you’d like to help him out, go here to find out how.

LESS THAN MEETS THE EYE: That’s my first take on Bush’s constititutional amendment, over at GlennReynolds.com.

UPDATE: Rob Bernard wonders why, when Bush and Kerry seem to have the same position here, it’s Bush who’s being called the bigot? But not this guy!

Meanwhile, if you’re wondering what the religious-blogging community is saying, there’s a roundup here at Blogs4God.

AUSTIN BAY WRITES on viral terror and what to do about it.

JOHN KERRY PROMISES to engage in sex discrimination: “As president, I will put American government and our legal system back on the side of women.”

Is the legal system supposed to take sides based on gender?

UPDATE: Reader Nicole Griffin is unimpressed by this appeal:

Regarding the section of Kerry’s website you linked to, all I have to say is “huh?” Putting aside the issue of whether the government SHOULD take sides between the genders, the full quote from Kerry is:

“In case after case, President Bush’s actions have made American women less safe and less secure – on the job and on the streets. As president, I will put American government and our legal system back on the side of women. I will stand up for their security, ensure their safety, support their rights, and guarantee their dignity. This nation can do no less.”

Maybe I missed something, but what the hell does Kerry think that Bush has done to make women less safe and secure? I can’t name a single thing that he has done that has had an effect on women in particular that it has not had on all Americans. Furthermore, as an American woman, I personally feel much “safer and more secure” with Bush as president, knowing that he’s willing to go out and kill terrorists and evil dictators who hate America than I would with Kerry as president, whose solution would be to threaten them with a UN resolution.

Ouch.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Elizabeth King agrees:

Sign me up as another woman who feels much safer and more secure with President Bush in the White House than I would if John Kerry became Commander in Chief. My man Bush is taking it to the enemy. Kerry thinks that the enemy is us.

But not if we’re properly restrained by the UN!

JUST BECAUSE IT’S FOUR-WHEEL DRIVE doesn’t mean that it’ll go anywhere you can point it. I saw this hung-up Blazer, whose owner had apparently decided to take a shortcut over the kerb and down a bank without measuring ramp angles, yesterday.

They don’t go anywhere when the wheels are in the air. I saw ’em tow it off, but I didn’t stick around to see if it would drive, or if important bits had been scraped away in the process.

I don’t have the religious opposition to SUVs that some people have, but I have to say that people seem to expect more from them than they can really be expected to deliver. Just because all four wheels will deliver power doesn’t mean that they’re immune to the laws of physics.

UPDATE: Big SUV-winching image moved for the benefit of dialup users. Now you can see it here.

TOM MAGUIRE has a bunch of interesting posts up. Just keep scrolling.

ALPHECCA HAS AN EXCLUSIVE JOHN KERRY INTERVIEW:

Brice: You’ve gone on record as being opposed to gay marriages.

Kerry: That’s right. I’m for all the people but we didn’t have any same-sex marriages in Viet Nam.

Chortle. Read the whole thing.

OKAY, this AP story says that Bush is for “banning gay marriage.” But when I read his statement and the Scott McClellan press briefing it seems more like what he’s talking about would basically be the constitutionalization of the Defense of Marriage Act — which would do exactly nothing, since, even pre-DOMA, states didn’t have to recognize each others’ marriages. There is some stuff about marriage being between a man and a woman, but it also seems as if that wouldn’t be binding on the states (or, if it is, only to the extent that they can’t call it “marriage.”) At any rate, I’m now thoroughly confused. I’ll have more on this over at GlennReynolds.com as soon as they get it posted.

And note this confusion, too.

UPDATE: Okay, the GlennReynolds.com post may be a bit longer — I had a few legal thoughts that I need to think about some more. But in the meantime, here’s my bottom line on the amendment issue:

I’m still against this, just as I was against the Clinton-era Defense of Marriage Act. I know plenty of gay people who are, for all practical purposes, married. I don’t see what’s wrong with them getting married. I don’t understand how letting gay people get married threatens heterosexual marriage. And, in fact, I suspect that to the extent it makes any difference at all, gay marriage will prove to be a fundamentally conservative institution, with married gays taking the role of solid citizens that married people have traditionally taken.

I think that the country will figure that out, and sooner than many people think. I also think that the country ought to be given a chance to figure it out, and not be prevented from doing so by a constitutional amendment.

UPDATE: Interesting developments in California. It looks like Virginia Postrel’s prediction last fall that all hell would break out was true.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Stephen Green is rounding up negative blogosphere reactions to Bush’s announcement. There are a lot of them. More here. And this is interesting: “Bush’s decision today will advance the rights of gay Americans beyond anything anyone is predicting. In 15 years, most States will allow gay marriage — thanks, ironically, to George W. Bush.” That’s just perverse enough to be true!

But I think that Bush should have taken Jim Glassman’s advice.

ROGER SIMON looks at the two faces of George Bush. He doesn’t like the gay marriage one, but the democracy-for-Iran one is good!

The best line is from one of his commenters, though: “Hey, in America we’re having fights about whether gay people can get married whereas in other parts of the world (like the Middle East) they simply kill gay people with rocks.”

UPDATE: Bryan Preston takes a more positive view of Bush’s gay marriage stance.

THIS CAN’T BE GOOD FOR KERRY: Sydney Schanberg is in the Village Voice accusing Kerry of a P.O.W. / M.I.A. coverup:

The Massachusetts senator, now seeking the presidency, carried out this subterfuge a little over a decade ago— shredding documents, suppressing testimony, and sanitizing the committee’s final report—when he was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on P.O.W./ M.I.A. Affairs. . . .

The Kerry committee’s final report, issued in January 1993, delivered the ultimate insult to history. The 1,223-page document said there was “no compelling evidence that proves” there is anyone still in captivity. As for the primary investigative question —what happened to the men left behind in 1973—the report conceded only that there is “evidence . . . that indicates the possibility of survival, at least for a small number” of prisoners 31 years ago, after Hanoi released the 591 P.O.W.’s it had admitted to.

I have no idea if this is true, of course, and I’ve generally been skeptical of such coverup claims in general. But the Village Voice can hardly be dismissed as a Karl Rove outlet (nor can Schanberg be called a Bush booster), and this certainly puts a different cast on the whole “I served in Vietnam” business. Kerry may be wishing he hadn’t made quite such a big deal of that now.

UPDATE: Weirdly, Tom Maguire emails that Schanberg wrote a similar story about McCain in 2000. Does that make this more, or less, credible?

DOUG “INSTALAWYER” WEINSTEIN has some thoughts on Kerry and Edwards that are worth reading. (And he’s a Kennedy cousin, too!) He also wonders why Edwards hasn’t taken up Hugh Hewitt’s offer. So do I.

LT SMASH has an amusing post on the gay marriage issue. I’ll have more later, but I’m swamped this afternoon.

And this is just frightening.

MICHAEL TOTTEN looks at antisemitism on the Left. There’s more of it all the time.

GET YOUR NANO-PORK here. . . .

BACKLASH: The NYT reports that Bush will back a gay marriage ban.

I think that the SF marriages pushed him off the fence on this, and I think it’s probably a bad thing for all concerned. (Via Clareified).

UPDATE: More, including a question as to whether the Times is reporting accurately on the Musgrave amendment, here. Meanwhile, Roger Simon is unhappy.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Kerry and Edwards oppose gay marriage, but Nader supports it!

Machiavellian question — is this why Bush made his statement right after Nader entered the race?

MORE: Andrew Sullivan is, unsurprisingly, deeply unhappy.

RANDY BARNETT’S ROCK-STAR LIKE TOUR OF AMERICA, promoting his new book Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty, continues, with stops in Philadelphia and Southern California. No word on whether groupies have started following him from town to town, a la the Grateful Dead.

I’m not ready to review Randy’s new book yet, but you can read my review of his last book, The Structure of Liberty, (from the Northwestern Law Review) here.

THERE’S LOTS OF INTERESTING STUFF going on in Central Asia and the ‘Stans, and Winds of Change has a roundup.

ISLAM IN CLEVELAND: Some positive developments.

I LOOK AT JOHN KERRY’S TRADE POLICY strategy over at GlennReynolds.com.

UPDATE: Tim Blair, unsurprisingly, is pithier: “If consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, John F. Kerry’s mind must be freaking enormous.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES has issued a correction on the Meagher story, mentioned below:

An article on Sunday about people who supported George Bush in the 2000 election and are considering a vote for the Democratic candidate this year referred incorrectly to George Meagher, who voiced dissatisfaction with the administration. As noted on Feb. 3 in an earlier account of his comments in the same interview, for an article about veterans leaning toward Senator John Kerry, Mr. Meagher is an independent, not a Republican.

A bit devoid of, um, context, isn’t it? As Kaus says, “treats the symptom, ignores the underlying disease.”

UPDATE: Backstory here, at the CJR campaign blog. What bothers me isn’t so much the quote-recycling as the way the relabeling of Meagher from “independent” to “Republican” suited the general anti-Bush slant of the second story.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Oxblog, inspired by the above, notes a photo issue:

If you look at today’s coverage of the Haitian uprising in the WaPo and NYT, you’ll notice that both have photos of the same man-in-the-street, Jean-Bernard Prevalis. According to the photo credits, they were taken by different photographers.

Nothing dishonest there, exactly. But it reminds me of a storm in New Orleans a few years back, where all the networks showed a picture of the same downed tree — which a friend there told me was pretty much the only downed tree. Is it emblematic? Or just visually dramatic? It’s hard to tell, and yet it matters, even when there’s not an agenda. And doubly so when there is one.

RICH GALEN has another post up. Don’t miss it.

JAMES JOYNER of Outside the Beltway has lost his job. So if you’ve been thinking of hitting his tipjar, but haven’t gotten around to it, well, this might be a good time.

PUBLICOLA NOTES A REPORT on a possible effort to sneak an assault-weapons extension into law.

Eternal vigilance, you know. (See this very old post from August of 2001 for evidence that gun-rights folks were already disappointed in Bush. That’s probably bad for Bush now. His dad took ’em for granted, too.)

UPDATE: Clayton Cramer has more comments suggesting that there’s less here than meets the eye.