ANN ALTHOUSE CORRECTS BARBARA EHRENREICH: “Being lower middle class doesn’t make you dirty or despicable.”

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT! “Dems bar Nader from Convention.”

SLATE IS FOR SALE, but what I found most interesting was this bit: “Slate drew 4.6 million unique visitors last month.”

I’m not sure how they count it, but some blogs — including this one — aren’t too terribly far behind that number.

DO FREE DOWNLOADS HURT SALES? Well, the 9/11 Commission Report is number one on Amazon even though it’s available for free online.

Not dispositive, I suppose, but interesting.

COLBERT KING writes that Sandy Berger is a test case for governing-class accountability:

Keep the focus where it belongs. Did Sandy Berger violate the rules regarding the protection of classified information entrusted to him, and if he did, will he be held accountable for his actions? . . .

Well, I don’t know Berger or even love him except as my neighbor, in accordance with the Scriptures. But I do know that there are men and women in service to our nation who have paid a dear price for their mishandling of classified materials. They, too, were presumably known and loved by others. Nonetheless, their failure to properly safeguard sensitive information landed them in trouble with their government. Should Sandy Berger, because he is connected, be given a pass for taking classified materials out of the National Archives without permission? . . .

The question is, was Sandy Berger’s violation due to negligence — at best — or was it deliberate — at worst? And should he be held accountable for his actions? Or is he too important and well-connected to be treated like everyone else? What’s the answer, Washington?

What, indeed?

VALERIE PLAME BREACHES SECURITY? Tom Maguire notes a rather odd defense of Joe Wilson. (Read this post from Maguire, too.) They seem to be getting more and more strained.

Add that to Peter Beinart’s on-air crackup over Sandy Berger and this stuff isn’t a very auspicious sign for the Democrats.

Perhaps they need to take a hint from this poll.

The Kerry Campaign seems to have figured things out, though — the Joe Wilson “RestoreHonesty.com” website is gone from the Kerry page. And — as Nick Queen notes — searches for Wilson on the Kerry site now turn up nothing.

Wilson’s been airbrushed, which seems like an admission that those who have been defending him were wasting their time. (For those interested in history, here’s a preserved copy. Reportedly, they’ve even cleared the Google cache on this one! [LATER: Google cache found here.])

UPDATE: Rand Simberg observes: “Somehow, I suspect that, even after getting rid of Berger and Wilson, he’s still got a lot of ballast to dump if he wants to win this fall, and he won’t be able to do it without alienating the base. And his judgement (or lack thereof) in embracing them in the first place is one of the reasons that I’ll have to hold my nose and vote for Bush this fall.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Wow, there’s lots of airbrushing going on over at the Kerry site.

But Wilson’s still speaking at the Democratic convention!

And he’s still signed on for the Salon cruise!

You know, for the people who don’t care about credibility. But for those who do, you can always search the web for RestoreHonesty.com and find the truth right at the top.. . . .

I’M SUPPOSED TO BE ON CNN at 3:00 Eastern today, talking about weblogs and politics.

UPDATE: Short, but not bad. It’ll air again Sunday at 5, if you missed it.

ANOTHER UPDATE: This story from the CNN website contains some additional quotes from the interview.

IT’S BEEN A WEEK OF TERRORISTS, STOLEN DOCUMENTS, and other disturbing news — I think it’s time for some catblogging. This is our other cat, Precious, as photographed by the Insta-Daughter. Happy Friday night!

GIRLIE MEN T-SHIRTS? I prefer the Security Mom ones myself. . . .

JAY ROSEN has thoughts on national greatness journalism.

LINDA RONSTADT GETS WALKED OUT ON AGAIN:

LIVERMORE – Linda Ronstadt’s political message sent close to a hundred concert-goers home early Thursday evening.

What had been a mellow evening at Wente Vineyards, with the crowd even serenading her with “Happy Birthday” at one point, turned into a rush for the exits by some fans angry by her encore tribute to filmmaker Michael Moore.

“She just had to do it,” one fan steamed as he headed for the parking lot. “It was good until the end,” another yelled to TV crews waiting outside the concert.

Sheesh.

DAVE WINER HAS SET UP CONVENTIONBLOGGERS.COM, collecting blog posts from all the bloggers at the Democratic convention — including blogging delegates.

LANNY THE LEAKER? He’s not denying it.

UPDATE: Now he is.

WAS IT SOMETHING WE SAID? Gerard van der Leun notes that New York Times stock is at a one-year low. He wonders if that’s why the Times seems so gloomy about the economy.

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll has more thoughts.

NEW PRIVATE SPACEFLIGHT LEGISLATION is ready to move, and it doesn’t sound bad:

The bill — known as the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004, or H.R. 3752— lays out the definition of a suborbital space passenger vehicle, solidifies the process for licensing such vehicles, and allows paying passengers to fly into space at their own risk. . . .

The months-long holdup had to do primarily with language defining suborbital space vehicles, which fall under the oversight of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation. The definition is considered important because any vehicle that doesn’t fit the description might have to go through the far more stringent licensing process for commercial aircraft, which is managed by a different part of the FAA. . . .

In addition, the licensing process would become more streamlined, and for the first time, private companies would be allowed to fly paying passengers into outer space — as long as the would-be passengers signed forms acknowledging that they were flying at their own risk.

I think this is a significant step forward. And as I’ve written before, I think that space tourism is an essential driver for lowering costs in human spaceflight.

ON THE OFFENSIVE: Bush poses questions for black voters at the Urban League speech:

Does the Democrat party take African American voters for granted?

Is it a good thing for the African American community to be represented mainly by one political party?

How is it possible to gain political leverage if the party is never forced to compete?

Have the traditional solutions of the Democrat party truly served the African American community?

Does blocking the faith-based initiative help neighborhoods where the only social service provider could be a church?

Does the status quo in education really, really help the children of this country?

Does class warfare — has class warfare or higher taxes ever created decent jobs in the inner city?

Are you satisfied with the same answers on crime, excuses for drugs and blindness to the problem of the family?

I doubt this will pay off big in this election cycle, but it’s very interesting to see.

BERGER UPDATE: DRUDGE is flashing a New York Sun item on Sandy Berger. The bottom line:

“In his meeting with Tenet, Berger focused most, however, on the question of what was to be done with Bin Ladin if he were actually captured. He worried that the hard evidence against Bin Ladin was still skimpy and that there was a danger of snatching him and bringing him to the United States only to see him acquitted,” the report says, citing a May 1, 1998, Central Intelligence Agency memo summarizing the weekly meeting between Messrs. Berger and Tenet.

In June of 1999, another plan for action against Mr. bin Laden was on the table. The potential target was a Qaeda terrorist camp in Afghanistan known as Tarnak Farms. The commission report released yesterday cites Mr. Berger’s “handwritten notes on the meeting paper” referring to “the presence of 7 to 11 families in the Tarnak Farms facility, which could mean 60-65 casualties.”According to the Berger notes, “if he responds, we’re blamed.”

On December 4, 1999, the National Security Council’s counterterrorism coordinator, Richard Clarke, sent Mr. Berger a memo suggesting a strike in the last week of 1999 against Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Reports the commission: “In the margin next to Clarke’s suggestion to attack Al Qaeda facilities in the week before January 1, 2000, Berger wrote, ‘no.’ ”

In August of 2000, Mr. Berger was presented with another possible plan for attacking Mr. bin Laden.This time, the plan would be based on aerial surveillance from a “Predator” drone. Reports the commission: “In the memo’s margin,Berger wrote that before considering action, ‘I will want more than verified location: we will need, at least, data on pattern of movements to provide some assurance he will remain in place.’ ”

In other words, according to the commission report, Mr. Berger was presented with plans to take action against the threat of Al Qaeda four separate times — Spring 1998, June 1999, December 1999, and August 2000. Each time, Mr. Berger was an obstacle to action. Had he been a little less reluctant to act, a little more open to taking pre-emptive action, maybe the 2,973 killed in the September 11, 2001, attacks would be alive today.

It really doesn’t matter now what was in the documents from the National Archives that Mr. Berger says he inadvertently misplaced. The evidence in the commission’s report yesterday is more than enough to embarrass him thoroughly.

(Emphasis added.) Ouch. The Sun is right to stress that this doesn’t make Berger responsible for the 9/11 attacks, of course. But it does suggest that he was the wrong man to hold the job he held under Clinton, and that he was a poor choice as senior foreign policy adviser for the Kerry campaign. As Martin Peretz said, “He clearly still has McGovernite politics, which means, in my mind, at least, that he believes there is no international dispute that can’t be solved by the U.S. walking away from it.”

I hope John Kerry doesn’t share those instincts, which proved tragically wrong in this case. But then why did he choose Berger as an advisor?

UPDATE: Especially with this track record, which I had forgotten about until a reader sent me this BBC story from 1999, found via Newsfeed:

President Clinton has defended his National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, against demands for him to resign over the alleged theft by China of US nuclear secrets.

Eighty opposition Republicans earlier wrote to Mr Clinton saying they wanted Mr Berger to resign.

“Mr Berger has failed in his responsibility as this nation’s national security advisor by not properly informing you of the most serious espionage ever committed against the United States,” the lawmakers said in the letter.

They said he knew of concerns about Chinese espionage, but delayed taking action.

What is it with this guy and secrets? And delays in taking action, or telling his boss?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Kerry supporter Brendan Loy has thoughts: “I have to admit, at first blush, this (if true) gives even me pause about Kerry’s choice of advisers. After all, if you want to judge a man, one thing you need to do is look at the type of people he surrounds himself with.”

LEON KASS is big on the idea of disgust as a moral touchstone. Julian Sanchez interviews Martha Nussbaum, who isn’t.

I just got her new book, Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law, today, and so don’t have much to add about it beyond what’s in the interview.

Two books I have had a chance to look through, though are Hugh Hewitt’s and Maureen Dowd’s. The Insta-Wife read Hewitt’s book and liked it a lot; it looked pretty good to me, too, though it’s an interesting mixture of big-picture and grassroots rolled into one.

Dowd’s book is, basically, a bunch of her columns sorted by topic. If you like her columns, you’ll like the book. If you don’t, there’s not much value-added.

BLOWBACK IN BOSTON: A minor embarrassment for the DNC.

UPDATE: More here.

INTERESTING FIND in the 9/11 Commission report:

In this sense, 9/11 has taught us that terrorism against American interests “over there” should be regarded just as we regard terrorism against America “over here.” In this same sense, the American homeland is the planet. But the enemy is not just “terrorism,” some generic evil. This vagueness blurs the strategy. The catastrophic threat at this moment in history is more specific. It is the threat posed by Islamist terrorism —especially the al Qaeda network, its affiliates, and its ideology.

As we mentioned in chapter 2, Usama Bin Ladin and other Islamist terrorist leaders draw on a long tradition of extreme intolerance within one stream of Islam (a minority tradition), from at least Ibn Taimiyyah, through the founders of Wahhabism, through the Muslim Brotherhood, to Sayyid Qutb. That stream is motivated by religion and does not distinguish politics from religion, thus distorting both. It is further fed by grievances stressed by Bin Ladin and widely felt throughout the Muslim world—against the U.S. military presence in the Middle East, policies perceived as anti-Arab and anti-Muslim, and support of Israel. Bin Ladin and Islamist terrorists mean exactly what they say: to them America is the font of all evil, the “head of the snake,” and it must be converted or destroyed.

It is not a position with which Americans can bargain or negotiate. With it there is no common ground—not even respect for life—on which to begin a dialogue. It can only be destroyed or utterly isolated.

(Emphasis added). This language was found by Wizbang, which notes that the Washington Post seems to have missed the significance of this statement.

UPDATE: Related thoughts from Cathy Seipp — though the discussion in the comments soon degenerates into requests for Cathy to wear fewer clothes when appearing on television.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Interresting comments here: “After reading some of the reactions from around the sphere, it’s clear that the report really is a Mirror of Erised in pdf form – most people don’t see the truth, but what their hearts desire.”

And Reid Stott says it’s all about Congressional priorities:

They say their legislative agenda is so full of such important things, things apparently more important than protecting America from future attack, it’s highly unlikely any of the commission’s dramatic recommendations will even be considered by Congress before the election.

The election. You know, the one they claim will probably be preceded by an Al Qaeda attack. Can’t deal with this, until after that.

At which point we’ll have to create a new commission, call it the 11/1 Commission. In three years, we’ll get their recommendations. If there’s anybody in Congress left alive to give them to. . . .

Indeed.

THE FLIGHT 93 ENDGAME:

Once the hijackers were in control, they knew that passengers were using cell phones and seat-back phones to call the ground “but did not seem to care,” according to the report. Yet clearly what the passengers learned in those phone calls inspired their counterattack on the cockpit. . . .

“It might not have occurred to him that they were certain to learn what had happened in New York, thereby defeating his attempts at deception,” the report said. . . .

The report does not clarify whether the hijackers’ goal for Flight 93 was the White House or the Capitol, but indicates that the hijackers tuned a cockpit radio to the frequency of a navigation beacon at National Airport, just across the Potomac River from the capital, erasing any doubt about the region of their intended destination.

At three seconds after 10 a.m., Mr. Jarrah is heard on the cockpit voice recorder saying: “Is that it? Shall we finish it off?”

But another hijacker responds: “No. Not yet. When they all come, we finish it off.”

The voice recorder captured sounds of continued fighting, and Mr. Jarrah pitched the plane up and then down. A passenger is heard to say, “In the cockpit. If we don’t we’ll die!”

Then a passenger yelled “Roll it!” Some aviation experts have speculated that this was a reference to a food cart, being used as a battering ram.

Mr. Jarrah “stopped the violent maneuvers” at 10:01:00, according to the report, and said, “Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest!”

“He then asked another hijacker in the cockpit, `Is that it? I mean, shall we put it down?’ to which the other replied, `Yes, put it in it, and pull it down.’ ”

Eighty seconds later, a hijacker is heard to say, “Pull it down! Pull it down!”

“The hijackers remained at the controls but must have judged that the passengers were only seconds from overcoming them,” according to the report, which seems to indicate that the hijackers themselves crashed the plane. “With the sounds of the passenger counterattack continuing, the aircraft plowed into an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 580 miles per hour, about 20 minutes’ flying time from Washington, D.C,” according to the report.

Seems like this article by Brad Todd holds up pretty well, almost three years later.

SABOTEURS: Amir Taheri writes on the U.N. role in Iraq.

THE 9/11 COMMISSION AND “TERROR IN THE SKIES” — both discussed over at GlennReynolds.com.

A SURPRISING REAGAN / CLINTON CONNECTION: Or maybe it’s an essential quality for being re-elected. . . .

JAMES LILEKS:

A while ago I noted that I had ceased to rely on my paper for international and national news. The web’s competitive advantage is overwhelming. Now I turn straight to the Metro section, because the web can’t yet match the resources and reach of a newspaper. If I were king of the forest, I’d turn the A section into the Metro section. For most papers beside the big swingin’ Johnson dailies, the A section is a lost cause; its lunch has not only been eaten but digested and excreted, and most newspapers think it’s still on the plate with its garnish intact. Newspapers to me no longer look like great sober edifices inscribing the details of history as the parade clatters past. They just look like group blogs. Without the honest admission of bias.

Yep.