DON’T MISS THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN BLOGGER ROUNDUP. Also, Alphecca has posted its weekly roundup of gun bias in the media, and don’t miss this week’s Carnival of the Capitalists.

Yeah, I’ve been busy today, and I’m behind.

GIVE ME A BREAK: Just saw Linda Ellerbee running a pathetically slanted anti-Bush “kids’ news” item on the economy, on Nickelodeon. Sheesh.

UNSCAM UPDATE: H.D. Miller asks “who is Javier Robert?” I hope that lots of people will want to investigate this. (Via Friends of Saddam).

MICHAEL TOTTEN offers advice for John Kerry on the medals flap:

Here you go, senator. Say this on the TV: “Today’s more strident anti-war activists remind me of my own immature self back in 1971.” It will kill two proverbial birds with a single figurative stone. It will play well among people who matter. And you’ll feel a lot better.

Better advice than he’s been getting, it would seem.

UPDATE: Yes, definitely — Powerline has noticed airbrushing at the Kerry website and has the screenshots that show it.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Is it a meltdown?

SOME INTERESTING NUMBERS ON TROOP MORALE IN IRAQ: Generally quite positive, but I think that we do need to stress long-term efforts to ensure that the current good numbers on recruiting and retention persist.

SARS UPDATE: Reader Bill Rudersdorf sends this disturbing story:

The latest outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in China, with eight confirmed or suspected cases so far and hundreds quarantined, involves two researchers who were working with the virus in a Beijing research lab, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday.

Rudersdorf observes: “Our friends, the technologically advanced Chinese, seem to be a bit ham-fisted in their labs. Hope they don’t mess with bio-weapons.” Indeed.

KERRY TALKS TOUGH ON FOREIGN POLICY:

WASHINGTON — If elected president, John F. Kerry would move to increase the US military by 40,000 troops. He would send more soldiers to Iraq if commanders said they were needed. He would stay in Iraq as long as it took to get the job done.

Those are the policies that Kerry’s inner circle of foreign policy advisers must work with every Monday at lunchtime when they meet to discuss ways to take the Democratic candidate’s ideas to the American public.

Their main goal: ”To show that we can protect America better than George Bush,” said Rand Beers, Kerry’s chief national security adviser. . . .

Kerry’s success may hinge on whether voters are convinced that his ability to forge ties with allies can make America safer than President Bush’s more unilateral approach. Lately, the differences between the candidates have sometimes been hard to detect.

Sounds good to me. Though Kerry’s fixity of purpose is, as always, open to question. And, say, could these be Kerry’s mysteriously supportive “foreign leaders?”

Kerry has conferred frequently with foreign leaders over the years. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, for instance, he conducted a ”listening tour” of the Middle East, meeting with Sharon, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, even Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at his compound in the West Bank.

Interesting.

MP3.COM RETURNS, sort of, over at CNET.

HERE’S A TRANSCRIPT OF KERRY’S APPEARANCE ON GOOD MORNING AMERICA TODAY regarding the medal controversy, and it’s pretty devastating.

UPDATE: More here, from Roger Simon and an observant reader.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT: By dermatologists! Phil Bowermaster observes: “Academic freedom is only skin deep.”

MAXINE WATERS makes a compelling argument for abortion rights.

RICH GALEN is heading home, but he’s posted a final report from Iraq, with pictures.

UPDATE: Here’s an interesting report from a just-returned soldier on Iraq.

THE TINY TORAH: An interesting documentary.

MICKEY KAUS: “Which is creepier–the possibility that the Times prints only pro-Kerry letters, or the possibility that it receives only pro-Kerry letters?”

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey scents “a whiff of desperation at the Gray Lady.”

ABC NEWS:

Contradicting his statements as a candidate for president, Sen. John Kerry claimed in a 1971 television interview that he threw away as many as nine of his combat medals to protest the war in Vietnam. . . .

Throughout his presidential campaign, Kerry has denied that he threw away any of his 11 medals during an anti-war protest in April, 1971.

His campaign Web site calls it a “right wing fiction” and a smear. And in an interview with ABCNEWS’ Peter Jennings last December, he said it was a “myth.”

But Kerry told a much different story on Viewpoints. Asked about the anti-war veterans who threw their medals away, Kerry said “they decided to give them back to their country.”

Kerry was asked if he gave back the Bronze Star, Silver Star and three Purple Hearts he was awarded for combat duty as a Navy lieutenant in Vietnam. “Well, and above that, [I] gave back the others,” he said.

The statement directly contradicts Kerry’s most recent claims on the disputed subject to the Los Angeles Times last Friday. “I never ever implied that I did it, ” Kerry told the newspaper, responding to the question of whether he threw away his medals in protest.

Well, you don’t imply it if you just say it outright!

UPDATE: Kaus has more, and has an additional Patriot Act flip-flop!

STEPHEN GREEN is correcting Tom Friedman.

UNSCAM UPDATE:

SADDAM-supporting MP George Galloway blew his top yesterday after The Sun sent him a barrel of OIL.

Mr Galloway claims he has never seen one — so we arranged for him to have his own 200-litre drum.

It came as the Glasgow Kelvin MP fiercely denied pocketing £1million from Iraqi tyrant Saddam.

His name was on a list of people allegedly rewarded by the dictator with vouchers for millions of barrels of oil.

We delivered our drum, complete with Sun logos to the front door of his £500,000 home in South London.

It sat in his drive for three hours before he dragged it away and hid it from view in an 8ft privet hedge.

One word: Heh. (Via Friends of Saddam).

UPDATE: More here.

WHO’S BAD AT FIGHTING MALARIA? Exactly!

A PRO-CHOICE REPUBLICAN visits a Kerry abortion-rights speech/rally and returns with photographs and a report.

DR. MANHATTAN has thoughts on David Rieff’s piece on the Palestinians from today’s New York Times.

AN INTERVIEW, of sorts, with a Blackwater contractor fresh from Iraq.

HERE’S A REPORT that Iranian activists protested in front of the UN mission in Tehran.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT by a racist university administration. “I guess this case has shown me that just because I’m a different skin color, the merits of what I wrote have been marginalized and ostracized.” Oregon State should be ashamed.

UPDATE: Readers say that he was fired by the student paper, not by the administration, which wasn’t clear to me from the article. Sorry — my mistake. Nonetheless, there’s still a double standard here.

ERIC SCHEIE WONDERS why some news outlets seem to be ignoring the UNScam oil-for-food scandal.

JEFF JARVIS notes an amazing initiative by American blogger Kerry Dupont to help out Iraqi bloggers with equipment and support.