HMM — THIS IS INTERESTING:

A major American Muslim charity and seven of its officers were charged Tuesday with providing millions of dollars in support to Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist organization blamed for dozens of suicide bomber attacks in Israel. . . .

The indictment names the foundation along with its president, Shukri Abu Baker; chairman, Ghassan Elashi; executive director, Haitham Maghawri; and four others. The charges include conspiracy, providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, tax evasion and money laundering.

No real surprise, but I’m sure some people will question the timing. (Via Michelle Malkin, who has much more information).

UPDATE: Bill Hobbs notes that the Holy Land Foundation controls Iraq’s internet domain, which is quite odd. Evidence that all these guys work together?

ABORTION AND CLASS: Earlier, I noted how Ann Althouse critiqued Barbara Ehrenreich’s invocation of “grubby lower-class” lifestyles in her piece defending her abortion. Likewise, this widely-derided piece by Amy Richards about aborting two of her three triplets famously invoked similar concerns: “When I found out about the triplets, I felt like: It’s not the back of a pickup at 16, but now I’m going to have to move to Staten Island. I’ll never leave my house because I’ll have to care for these children. I’ll have to start shopping only at Costco and buying big jars of mayonnaise.”

I’m pro-choice, and I don’t think that superficial-seeming reasons for exercising one’s freedom are necessarily arguments against that freedom. (I think you should be able to have an assault weapon or an abortion, regardless of whether others think you need one.) But the snippy upper-middle-class tones of both Ehrenreich and Richards say something about the pro-choice movement, and the larger women’s movement. Something about a kind of economic aspiration, coupled with snobbery, that seems rather unattractive, and largely unexamined. Considering bien pensant attitudes toward snobbery and economic aspiration among, say, Republicans, that’s kind of interesting.

It turns out that there are other interesting factors — and perhaps even economic ones — regarding that Times piece.

UPDATE: A reader suggests reading this from Slate, too.

AN EX-GIRLFRIEND TURNED INSTAPUNDIT CORRESPONDENT (yeah, I’ll recruit ’em any way I can) emails this report:

I took these photos at today’s Kerry rally in Norfolk, and no, I haven’t turned into a Democrat. I was accompanying one of my young workers – he’s a Kerry fan. Just because you’re my former sweetie, I am sending you the first pic. Look closely at the foreground in the first photo – they inadvertently set the platform up in front of the French flag!!!

There’s a lot of that inadvertence stuff going around.

UPDATE: Or is it the French flag? Close examination shows that it’s flying from a flagpole on the left, but then the colors are wrong — it should be blue, white, red from left to right. Reader Wallace Winfrey, who’s been trying to find it on Google, emails: “It’s the mystery flag!” Go figure. Meanwhile my Norfolk correspondent sends this update:

The Norfolk rally was so poorly executed, it’s hard to believe it’s leading up to the convention. There was almost no advance work done – obviously stage placement was off, there was a cheesy-looking fake plant at the podium, the speeches leading up to Kerry were looooong and boring, the crowd was fairly sparse and wasn’t inspired to cheer much – they threw a few t-shirts from the stage to try to rev them up. That worked for a couple of minutes. The Bush supporters were loud for their size, and appeared to be more enthusiastic. It was really kind of a bust, considering that the convention is going on this week.

It’s shocking: Apparently, the Kerry advance team handled things so badly that they screwed up the French flag! That’s not going to do much to heal the transatlantic rift. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Several readers say that it’s the signal flag for the letter “T” or “Tango” — and it does look right. But why would they be flying that flag at a Kerry rally, even if it is on a Naval base? Is there a French connection somewhere?

The answer comes from No Caliban: “The easiest mnemonic for the flag was, of course, Last Tango in Paris.” Makes sense to me! Another mystery explained in record time, thanks to the miracle of the blogosphere!

MORE: The information keeps coming. A reader informs me that it wasn’t actually on a naval base:

The event wasn’t actually held on any of the military installations in the area – that’s actually prohibited by law (overt political campaigning -if an incumbent can wrangle a legitimate function at a military base, that’s a whole nother story). This rally was at a place called Nauticus (link), a maritime themed museum in downtown Norfolk (actually, not too far, but on the other side of some water, from the PETA main HQ building…).

From the Instagirlfriend picture, it looks like they set up the stage between the Nauticus facility building and the battleship, parked right next to it. The ship which, while still on the US Naval registry of ships, is not on active status. It’s pseudo-carefully mothballed – the public isn’t allowed to climb through it, just on the main deck and through a couple of carefully selected outer areas. From the looks of it, they were down in the little unused ‘no-man’s land’ – it’s actually a pretty cramped little space – the USSS guys probably loved it because it is hidden from view by just about everything. Not a lot of room though – it’s barely wider than a good sized alley, but it does have the advantage of offering camera angles that include the tips of 16 inch Naval Guns. The fact that the ship is still an official US Navy vessel (unlike, say, the USS Alabama in Mobile) is probably why the rally wasn’t on the ship itself, which offers a LOT more space on the fantail than the little alleyway where Kerry actually was.

From my recollection of the overall size of the area, I’d be surprised if the overall spectator head count for the event was over 2-300 people – there just isn’t any room for more than that. I’ve noticed looking through the Google/Yahoo news photos of the event that there aren’t any wide angle crowd shots – probably because there wasn’t much of a crowd. I also noticed that none of the shots give a clear indication, like the one you got hold of, about how dinky the venue they used really is (overall size wise). She mentions the ‘cheesy plant’ – and ‘cheesy plant’ appears in a lot of the ‘candidate on the stump’ pix. Another indication of how small the place is, if one frikkin plant is good enough for camouflage!

Yeah, if you look at pictures like this one you get a very different sense of the locale. Well, here’s another picture she sent, with a panoramic view. (Click it for a bigger version). I’d guess it’s more than 2-300 people, but not a lot more. And it’s Insta-ex-girlfriend, as we haven’t been an item since some time in the Reagan administration. But as I’ve mentioned before, I stay in touch. The old boys’ network has nothing on the old girlfriend network!

STILL MORE: Reader Will Roden — who clearly needs a hobby — emails:

I count 105 people in the picture, not including the sniper on the roof or the man walking by the news trucks. It looks like a good portion of the attendees are blocked from view by the tree. Based on the density of the crowd, I’ll guess that there are no more than 70 people behind it. I wonder how many in the crowd are media and other campaign staff.

10 minutes of studying this picture, and I still haven’t found Waldo.

I haven’t verified this count myself, and don’t plan to. . . .

UH-OH — looks like the Evil Empire might be back.

HERE’S A ROUNDUP ON STEM-CELL POLITICS — an issue on which the Democrats are clearly superior, in my opinion, to the Republicans. And they seem to think so, too: “In the runup to the US presidential election in November, the Democrats are positioning themselves as the party of stem cell research.”

MORE CONVENTION-BLOGGING:

Had a Boston taxi driver yesterday from Iraq. He’s going back home to visit his parents in a few weeks. He was none-too-pleased with the Democrats. He believes that Democrats hate his country and want Saddam to be back in power. He was adamant that things are much better in Iraq than the media is saying … and he’s at a loss as to why all of these media types won’t tell the truth.

I can’t imagine why that would be.

Meanwhile OxBlog’s Patrick Belton — as part of a long tick-tock account of yesterday — observes:

I discuss the hidden messages being conveyed by all of the veteran symbology with the delegate next to me. We decide the message transmitted by all of the invocation of veterans is:

Vietnam=Iraq
mendacious government at the time of Vietnam = Bush
speaking the truth to power = veterans, Kerry, and RFK

This, of course, puts the Democratic back on the solid and successful footing of the Chicago convention of 1968.

Ouch. He calls Clinton’s speech “brilliant,” though, and notes that many delegates wish Clinton could run again. And James Taranto calls Gore’s speech “probably the best speech he’s ever given.” Clinton/Gore in ’04!

MORE: Several readers think that I’m reading Taranto wrong, and they may be right. Here’s the quote:

Gore’s speech was almost as levelheaded–though nowhere near as memorable–as his Dec. 13, 2000, concession, probably the best speech he’s ever given.

On second reading, I think they’re right, and he’s saying that the concession speech was the best speech he’s ever given, which would make this the second best speech.

Hey, that’s not bad. In the words of Buzz Aldrin from The Simpsons: “Second comes right after first, you know!”

A KERRY IRAQ VIDEO? Where could they have gotten that idea?

CHRIS MUIR’S DAY BY DAY would make a nice counterpoint to Doonesbury on editorial pages. I hope he gets a syndication deal, though I suspect that they’re not going to want to give him a lot of exposure before the election.

NETWORK RATINGS ARE IN “FREE FALL” over convention coverage. Bloggers have been watching. I wonder if blog traffic is up?

MY PLEASURE-READING has been somewhat constrained lately, as I’m reading a lot more for work. But I enjoyed Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon — a sort of cyber-noir story — very much, so I ordered the sequel, Broken Angel, though so far (I’m only about 50 pages in) it’s not quite as good. It’s also dedicated to John Pilger, though the bad guys are the U.N. — depicted as an institution run by greedy moneyed interests who foment violence for their own nefarious purposes. Not entirely implausible, actually. . . .

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Running scared? Maybe.

ANOTHER REASON TO SUPPORT GAY MARRIAGE: “France annuls first gay wedding:”

The mayor, Noel Mamere of the Green Party, was suspended for a month after defying government warnings that he would be breaking the law when he wed the two men in the town of Begles.

Justice Minister Dominique Perben had already declared the wedding invalid.

The prosecutor in the case said that the marriage was not in compliance with French law.

I guess Karl Rove’s right-wing influence has been felt even across the Atlantic. . . .

SAY IT AIN’T SO, JON! Jonathan Adler suggests that state attorneys general are showboating peddlers of dubious legal arguments.

HEH. And without even Photoshopping.

SANDY BERGER UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal editorializes:

We’ve all had experience with the office Oscar Madison. Yet notwithstanding Bill Clinton’s transparently insincere effort last week to laugh off the docs-in-socks scandal as a testament to Sandy Berger’s sloppy ways–that Sandy!–the precision with which the former National Security Adviser zeroed in on one specific document in the National Archives suggests focus, not absentmindedness.

Which raises the obvious question: What was in that document that Mr. Berger so badly wanted to keep under his hat, er, trousers? The only way to answer that question is for the Justice Department to release it.

The document itself may, of course, be too sensitive to release in its entirety. But I’d sure like to know what Sandy was trying to remove. Or, perhaps, insert.

MICKEY KAUS: “Do you think that NPR and the rest of the organized press would have made such a huge fuss about the 9/11 Commission report if they’d known the result would be this: An improving economy and the handover of authority in Iraq are among the likely factors influencing these [more favorable voter assessments of Bush]. ”

HMM, THIS IS INTERESTING:

When the Bush administration took over the Pentagon’s beleaguered inspector general office in 2002, officials found something startling: The director’s office, at some point, had been electronically bugged. . . .

Mr. Schmitz finally came on board a year into the Bush administration. He set out to right a ship dogged by charges of corruption and cronyism. But he also had to deal with an electronic bug apparently left over from eight years of the Clinton administration.

I wonder whose bug it was? According to the story, at least, we never found out.

BILL CLINTON gets a good review — but not from everyone.

CATFIGHT!

MULTILATERALISM: Russian divisions to Iraq? “Russian support for US occupation forces would make scorched earth of Senator John Kerry’s attack on the Bush administration’s foreign policy, namely its failure to form effective alliances. For Russian President Vladimir Putin, the chance to make scorched earth of Fallujah is even more tempting.”

Color me skeptical.

MATT WELCH:

But these songs, no matter how interesting individually, say something quite different when placed together consciously by a political party itching to, in Jimmy Carter’s words tonight, “restore the judgment and maturity to our government.” You can imagine that Democrats want to identify themselves with the more thoughtful and edgy protest pop of the sixties generation that produces all their political stars. But, much like the Party’s incoherent foreign policy approach, these songs only know what they’re against, not what they’re for. . . .

Note what’s missing here, and the rest of Gore’s speech — any sense of what a Democratic president might do with Iraq, or Iran, or Saudi Arabia; any sense of just whatever happened to the Al Gore who tried to convince Americans in 1998 that putting the military squeeze on Saddam Hussein was one of the world’s most urgent priorities, and any position whatsoever on the Middle East democratization project.

They’re talking about what they care about. And what they care about is beating Bush.

REINVENTING THE CONVENTION: Jeff Jarvis has a manifesto.

THE CAMERA DOES NOT LOVE John Kerry — though this photo gave me a pang of geek-to-geek sympathy.

ANN ALTHOUSE is simul-blogging the Convention. Excerpt:

A little film about Carter. Carter in the flesh emerges. He served in the military, he informs us, and I slip back into my semi-coma, as it’s clear where this is going. He served under two Presidents, Truman and Eisenhower, who had themselves served in the military, and because of this they had the proper judgment about how to use the military, judgment that is sorely lacking now under Bush. And presumably under Clinton, but let’s not mention that. (And was Carter for Dole?) And let’s not even think about what we would say about this principle of military service if a woman candidate seeks the Presidency some time in the future.

Read the whole thing. For Carter, it’s just more of the same.

UPDATE: Here’s the text of Carter’s speech, which contains this self-contradictory bit:

[W]e cannot do our duty as citizens and patriots if we pursue an agenda that polarizes and divides our country.

Glad you’re not doing that, Jimmy.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More Carter-related thoughts here.

MORE: This hurts:

Jimmy Carter seemd unnatural in the role of doddering pit bull, the last guy in the room who should be yapping about North Korea’s “nuclear menace.”

Ouch.

STILL MORE: Jacob T. Levy: “Still, I’m curious to see whether the mainstream press actually buys the claim that last night wasn’t loaded with Bush-bashing. Even Clinton’s wasn’t hidden; it was just coated in his honeyed voice. Carter’s would have been astonishingly nasty, if I still had the capacity to be astonished by Carter.”

BILL CLINTON on how much gun control has cost the Democrats.