FOR SOME, THE BLOGGING NEVER STOPS: I feel really sorry for these people:

Blogging is a pastime for many, even a livelihood for a few. For some, it becomes an obsession. Such bloggers often feel compelled to write several times daily. . . .

Tony Pierce started his blog three years ago while in search of a distraction after breaking up with a girlfriend. “In three years, I don’t think I’ve missed a day,” he said. Now Mr. Pierce’s blog (www.tonypierce.com/blog/bloggy.htm), a chatty diary of Hollywood, writing and women in which truth sometimes mingles with fiction, averages 1,000 visitors a day.

Where some frequent bloggers might label themselves merely ardent, Mr. Pierce is more realistic. “I wouldn’t call it dedicated, I would call it a problem,” he said. “If this were beer, I’d be an alcoholic.”

Not me. I can quit any time.

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll has some thoughts on the Times story. They’re worth reading.

ANOTHER UPDATE: So are these observations by Ann Althouse.

MISSING MARINE: Jason van Steenwyck is looking for word of a Marine in Iraq.

SHIITE MUSLIM CONVENTION SUPPORTS COALITION, urges tougher action against Al Sadr:

American Shia Muslims claim two million adherents in the United States and Canada, mainly drawn from India, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq, with a sprinkling from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, East Africa, and the Balkans. Iraqi Shias are concentrated in Dearborn, Michigan, and Los Angeles and are expected to be well-represented at the gathering this weekend.

The first such convention, held in the nation’s capital last year with 3,000 delegates, featured a surprising banquet speaker: deputy Defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz. While this year’s banquet program had not been fixed by Thursday afternoon, UMAA media representative Agha Shawkat Jafri said the delegates have received hundreds of calls from Iraqi Shias expressing hope that the convention can draw the attention of the Pentagon to their concerns, which are centered on the need for forcible action against rebel Shia leader Moktada al-Sadr.

Read the whole thing, which is quite interesting.

JOHN KERRY has given up on the idea of delaying his acceptance of the Democratic nomination. Is this a flip, or a flop?

The delay idea was certainly a flop, anyway. And all it’s accomplished is to make him look both tricky and indecisive. Seems like a bad move to me.

Kerry’s striking a noble pose: “”The decision that I made today raises the bar.”

So by doing exactly what he’s supposed to do, what he planned to do, and what everyone expected him to, he’s somehow setting a high moral tone?

UPDATE: Delay on the one hand, getting ahead of himself on the other. It evens out, right?

QUITE A WHILE AGO, I noted a report of misconduct by U.S. troops from Iraqi blogger Zeyad. (Later posts here, here, and here, including links to reports in Slate and the Washington Post.).

Now Zeyad reports that the four soldiers involved have been reprimanded. Zeyad thinks it smells of a coverup. I agree. The action certainly makes no sense to me; if the story’s true, more than a reprimand seems warranted. If it’s not true, why punish anyone at all? Either way, a reprimand seems like it can’t possibly be the right response, except perhaps in terms of bureaucratic CYA.

UPDATE: Reader Tim Schmoyer emails:

I don’t think the Sydney Morning Herald story is accurate. As far as I can tell, Weller reported that Sassaman was reprimanded. Which is probably appropriate for Sassaman’s lying to investigators. However, I do not believe the military is done disciplining the soldiers involved in forcing them to jump in the river.

I do think we need to keep the pressure on.

Yes, and I hope they’re not done, but it’s not clear to me. A military reader with connections emails me that he’s looking into it. I’ll post again with whatever I hear from him.

I’M BACK. Regular blogging will resume later. In the meantime, Eugene Volokh is once again posting a devastating critique of Slate’s “Bushism of the Day” that’s a must-read. The Bushism feature, along with the new but equally lame Kerryism feature, seems to wind up making Slate look foolish far more often than its subjects. And Eugene is right to slam them for not providing links to the original statements they make fun of.

UPDATE: More on the Bushism here. “That anyone would look to mine this moment for the sake of making it seem other than it was is despicable.”

Or at least unforgivably tacky. And, also, not funny.

ON TRAVEL: Blogging will be light to nonexistent today and tomorrow.

CATHY SEIPP’S LATEST COLUMN is, as always, a must-read. And if you’re too lazy to read it, at least read this revealing excerpt.

And if you want to hear more, consider attending this Seipp-hosted event at the American Cinema Foundation in Los Angeles.

A NANOTECHNOLOGY TURNAROUND? Looks like it. It’s my TechCentralStation column for today.

HOMELAND SECURITY’S MISSING LINK: I think it’s missing more than one.

ANOTHER BAD DAY for the increasingly irrelevant Sadr. First this:

US troops captured a key lieutenant of Iraqi rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr during overnight clashes in Najaf that killed 24 people and wounded nearly 50.

Riyadh al-Nouri, al-Sadr’s brother-in-law, offered no resistance when American troops raided his home during a series of clashes in the Shiite holy city, according to Azhar al-Kinani, a staffer in al-Sadr’s office in Najaf.

The capture of al-Nouri would be a major blow to al-Sadr’s al-Mahdi Army, which has been battling coalition forces since early April.

Then there’s this:

It was unclear which side was responsible for causing the minor damage to the Imam Ali mosque, but a high-ranking cleric accused Sadr’s militia of deliberately attacking the revered shrine.

Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Mehri, the Kuwaiti representative of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, said the Sadr militia fired a mortar shell at the dome of the shrine but missed it and hit a wall instead.

Ayatollah Mehri called the attack “a cowardly act” and said Sadr loyalists should not use the shrine for storing their weapons and as a sanctuary.

“We want to tell the world, and America, that Muqtada al-Sadr is not one of us, and this is a conspiracy against Shiites so that we don’t get any [political] rights,” Ayatollah Mehri said, referring to Shiite demands for greater political representation in the new Iraq. . . .

Ayatollah Mehri said the Sadr militia was “trying to agitate world opinion against the coalition” by claiming that coalition forces attacked the shrine. He said the militia include Saddam loyalists.

While the pundits blather, the Army seems to be doing a pretty good job of isolating him and wearing him down.

UPDATE: Some interesting stuff on Iraqi sentiments from the BBC Arabic site translated and summarized by Omar here.

ANN ALTHOUSE OFFERS AN embarrassing history lesson for John Kerry.

UNSCAM UPDATE:

A leading British engineering company, which now boasts a BBC governor and the former Nato secretary general, Lord Robertson, on its board, has been identified by US investigators as one of hundreds of firms alleged to have agreed to pay illicit kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s regime.

The allegations about the Glasgow-based Weir Group appear in an internal Pentagon report seen by the Guardian. They have emerged as the United Nations faces a growing barrage of criticism over its $47bn (£26.2bn) humanitarian oil for food programme with half a dozen official investigations in train. Weir has presented detailed denials of the allegations.

Nobody bribed me. I’m beginning to feel a bit left out.

KERRY’S BRILLIANT PLAN: Mickey Kaus has the whole delayed-acceptance thing figured out.

OXBLOG NOTES some surprisingly positive poll numbers from Israelis and Palestinians.

BAGHDAD SARIN CONFIRMED: And Andrew Sullivan notes Dan Rather’s lame attempt to deflect the implications. (Scroll up to read Sullivan’s heavy-metal interview excerpt, too.)

HISTORY, PERSPECTIVE AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT: Eugene Volokh has an interesting post. I’m a big fan of separating church and state, but this seems de minimis to me.

FREDRIK NORMAN was on Norwegian TV defending the United States. You can read about it here. Fredrik emails:

The debate was notably civil, particularly in that it was (almost) completely without nasty remarks about President Bush as a person, and the tone was remarkably constructive. Let’s hope that’s an indication of a change in the public debate here in Europe, but that’s probably expecting too much…

Thanks, Fredrik!

HUGH HEWITT is on vacation, but he’s posted a list of recommended blogs.

TAKING A LEAF FROM MOBY: Roger Simon notes a bogus “Republicans for Kerry” site.

ADVICE TO KERRY from Arianna Huffington: Be bold.

MORE “WEDDING PARTY” ANALYSIS over at The Belmont Club.

DEAN PETERS is hosting an interesting discussion on what constitutes success in Iraq.

WELL, SOMEBODY HAD TO DO IT: Andrew Sullivan is Fisking Susan Sontag:

What Abu Ghraib does is remind Americans that their virtue is inherent not in their somehow being better than other people around the world, but in the ability of the democratic system to flush out and correct inevitable human error. So far, the response to Abu Ghraib has borne this out. Saddam had no public inquiries into his far more grotesque abuse, no Susan Sontag essays to highlight them. This does not in any way mitigate what happened at Abu Ghraib. But it is a distinction that we still have to keep in mind. . . .

Sontag asserts that the core of the U.S. and coalition mission in Iraq is imperial conquest. This is demonstrably untrue. The motives of the French and Belgians in nineteenth and twentieth century imperialism were utterly different than the Bush administration’s attempt to pre-empt Islamist terror in the wake of 9/11. The goal from the beginning of the Iraq war has been to set up a democratic and stable Iraq and to move toward U.S. withdrawal. No imperialist would be insisting upon a June 30 deadline for the transfer of sovereignty, as President Bush did last night. The conflation of these two distinct endeavors is absurd: mere rhetoric, not argument. Was American intervention in Bosnia, of which Sontag approved, “imperialist”? It saved Muslims from a totalitarian, genocidal monster as well. And we still have troops there. If Sontag wants to make a distinction between the two wars, it would be interesting to read. But none is there. She is venting, not arguing.

Indeed.

TOM MAGUIRE is offering campaign advice for Kerry that you won’t see anywhere else.