SCOTT KOENIG turns the tables again.

GREG DJEREJIAN remains savagely on Joe Wilson’s case — and Josh Marshall’s. (“Call it defining gotcha-journalism down.”) Read this related post by Kevin Drum, too.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Tom Maguire wonders when Nick Kristof will come in from the cold. And read this, too.

JOHN LEO is twisting the knife on the L.A. Times’ and Washington Post’s humiliating Paul Bremer speech mistake. Leo observes: “What’s new about the press is that so many people who follow it with a critical eye now have an outlet to howl about inaccuracy and partisanship. The big media used to be able to shrug off critics like this. Now they can’t.”

DARFUR UPDATE: This article from the Christian Science Monitor says racism is the problem:

The visits by US Secretary of State Colin Powell and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to Sudan last week gave hope that the genocide in Darfur can be arrested before an entire people is obliterated.

But anyone – including Mr. Powell and Mr. Annan – interested in averting more tragedy there must understand that Darfur is not an accidental apocalypse of mass slaughters, enslavement, pillage, and ethnic cleansing. The Darfur pogrom is part of a historic continuum in which successive Arab governments have sought to entirely destroy black Africans in this biracial nation.

Darfur is not a mere humanitarian disaster that access by international relief agencies can reverse. The raison d’être of the atrocities committed by government-supported Arab militias is the racist, fundamentalist, and undemocratic Sudanese state. What is required for peace in Sudan is either regime change, in which a democratic, inclusive state is born, or a partition, in which the black African south and west become an independent sovereign state free of Khartoum and the Arab north.

Read the whole thing. Regime change would seem better than partition, but I suppose I could be wrong.

OH, THAT LIBERAL MEDIA:

The media “wants Kerry to win” and so “they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic” and “there’s going to be this glow about” them, Evan Thomas, the Assistant Managing Editor of Newsweek, admitted on Inside Washington over the weekend.

Give him points for honesty — but it’s pretty funny to hear people dismiss complaints of media bias in the face of admissions like this. And like so many stories this spring, it makes a mockery of campaign finance reform, doesn’t it?

And Kerry is naming journalists as references. But they’re not chummy!

UPDATE: Read this, too: I voted for the war, but I’m against it!

Full Evan Thomas transcript is here. Money graf:

MR. THOMAS: There’s one other base here, the media. Let’s talk a little media bias here. The media, I think, wants Kerry to win and I think they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards I’m talking about the establishment media, not Fox. They’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and there’s going to be this glow about them, collective glow, the two of them, that’s going to be worth maybe 15 points.

Honest. But will Newsweek admit it in print?

PATRICK BELTON ON JOHN EDWARDS:

His economic populism aside, the senator’s foreign policy proclivities are much closer to this blog’s – and, if polling data be trusted, the nation as a whole – than his running mate’s.

Read the whole thing.

ERNEST MILLER suggests that presidential campaign ads shouldn’t be copyrightable:

Unbelievable sums of money have been and will be spent on television campaign commercials. They are the heart and sole of the modern campaign. They are the main reason campaign contributions play such an important role in our democracy. Until now, the ability to create campaign commercials has been the preserve of highly paid election consultants and strictly controlled by the candidates and parties themselves. However, the internet and computing revolutions are changing this. As the MoveOn contest proved, amateurs are perfectly capable of creating compelling campaign advertising. Why shouldn’t they have the chance? Why shouldn’t these materials be free to quote from? Isn’t this what democracy and free speech is about? Of course, it may be that the parties and candidates don’t really believe in free speech. . . .

For the works in the public domain there is clearly no problem. In fact, I’m not sure why any of these commercials are copyrighted anyway. After all, I seem to recall that tax dollars paid for at least a portion of many of those ads. And even if there is copyright, the holders of those copyrights should be asked why they won’t permit licensing under one of the Creative Commons licenses.

I agree on all counts. Perhaps we need legislation providing that any candidate who accepts public funds must agree to permit such licensing.

UPDATE: It said “Ernest Svenson” above before. My fault. Sorry — a brain-burp.

CATHY SEIPP WRITES that Maureen Dowd is being seriously upstaged by Barbara Ehrenreich:

I don’t agree with Barbara Ehrenreich, who’s a guest columnist on the New York Times op-ed pages through July, any more than I agree with Dowd. But Ehrenreich is an elegant writer who respects her readers’ intelligence enough to realize that cute alliteration, tossed-in pop culture references and a few phone calls to friends do not an op-ed make.

Ouch.

THIS SEEMS LIKE GOOD NEWS:

Al Qaeda operations in Iraq have encountered unexpected problems. Iraqis have become increasingly hostile to al Qaeda’s suicide bombing campaign. Religious leaders, which al Qaeda expects to get support from, have been openly denouncing these bombings. Iraqis, aware that they are more likely, than American soldiers, to be victims of these attacks, are providing more information on where the al Qaeda members are hiding out. Most of the al Qaeda in Iraq are foreigners, and easy for Iraqis to detect. As a result of this, many of the al Qaeda men have moved back to Fallujah, which has become a terrorist sanctuary. The interim government is trying to convince the tribal and religious leaders of Fallujah to back a military operation in the city to clear out the various al Qaeda, criminal and Baath Party gangs. But the gangs of Fallujah are quick to threaten any local leader that shows signs of supporting the government. While the Fallujah leadership is intimidated, many residents of Fallujah are not, and are providing information to the coalition, which has led to attacks, with smart bombs or coalition and Iraqi troops, on buildings used by al Qaeda, or other gangs, as headquarters.

Al Qaeda has found the atmosphere even more hostile elsewhere in Iraq, and many of the terrorists have returned home. This is especially true of those who came from Saudi Arabia (and other Gulf nations, particularly Yemen) and Syria. Few, if any, al Qaeda came from Iran, which is Shia Moslem. Al Qaeda is dominated by Sunni Moslems who are often violently anti-Shia. While the hundreds of returning al Qaeda veterans are still determined to achieve al Qaeda’s goals of world domination, they are also more realistic. Fanaticism was not sufficient to chase the foreigners from Iraq, and the Arab media’s sensational, and largely false, reporting of the impact of al Qaeda’s attacks contributed to the disillusionment.

Al Jazeera — CIA tool! (Via Scott Koenig, who notes that this is no accident, but part of the plan all along.)

UPDATE: This article from the Christian Science Monitor would seem to support the above account from StrategyPage:

But the city west of Baghdad is no longer a sympathetic rallying place for a unified Iraqi resistance. It is now seen as run by intolerant and exclusivist Sunni imams who are seeking to turn it into a haven for Al Qaeda ideologues. Fallujah is emerging as a symbol of the disparate nature of the overall insurgency inside Iraq. Many Shiites, like the Muthars, have stopped supporting it.

Since two of Muthar’s brothers and four of his cousins – all members in a family trucking cooperative – were tortured and murdered in the resistance stronghold three weeks ago, he’s changed his mind about how the US handled Fallujah.

“They should have done whatever it took to take that place over,” Muthar says. “It’s been left in the hands of people who call themselves Muslims but they’re not. They’re simply inhuman.”

As reader Phil Costopoulos suggests, this seems to be precisely what Zarqawi feared would happen based on the captured memo (which seems to have been authentic, based on subsequent events) that he allegedly authored.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Tucker Goodrich emails:

At first I was furious when I heard the news that the decision not to let the Marines have free reign in Fallujah was made by politicians in DC.

But now, after seeing what’s happening there, it may have been brilliant to leave it for the Iraqis. Public opinion over there seems to be swinging our way big time, as they realize what’s actually happening to their country.

I think this may be right. And as suggested earlier in relation to Amir Taheri’s article, the effect has been to immobilize and concentrate them, which is what insurgents usually want to do to the government forces.

And could this be practice?

MORE: Read this, too.

SOME DEPRESSING NEWS on an AIDS vaccine. I have to say that I expected a lot more progress than we’ve seen over the past couple of decades. I suspect that the whole approach needs rethinking.

AGING UPDATE: As my serious-reading book for this trip, I’ve brought The Fountain of Youth: Cultural, Scientific, and Ethical Perspectives on a Biomedical Goal, published by Oxford and edited by Stephen Post and Robert Binstock. It’s a collection of very interesting essays on the topic of longevity, from a wide variety of perspectives (both Aubrey de Grey and Leon Kass are represented, which says it all).

UPDATE: By the way, interesting interview with Ray Kurzweil on longer life.

JAMES PINKERTON: “Some spoilsports might assert that spending money on luxe living is the wrong way to fight AIDS.”

I TOLD YOU SO: As I’ve been saying, calling John Edwards a “trial lawyer” may fire up the base, but it’s not a recipe for swinging undecided voters:

Having been a trial lawyer does not appear to be a significant problem for Edwards. 35% say this makes them more favorable to Edwards compared to 28% who say less favorable. Even more striking, 55% say that his trial lawyer experience shows that Edwards fights for the average person against big companies, while only 26% say that his trial lawyering contributed to the frivolous lawsuit problem. Seventy-nine percent of Democrats, 54% of Independents, and 32% of Republicans say that Edwards litigator background shows that he is someone who fights for the average person.

It’s going to take more than repeated invocations of “John Edwards is a sleazy trial lawyer” if the Republicans want to turn people against him.

I’M DUBIOUS about the constitutionality of the federal sentencing guidelines, but this development is quite interesting: the Second Circuit has certified the question of their constitutionality to the Supreme Court. Like Eugene Volokh, I didn’t realize that was possible.

MICKEY KAUS:

Didn’t The Washington Monthly used to be a magazine that praised partisan machines and denounced activists who became lobbyists to serve the “parochial interests of their employer”? Oh, for the glory days of K Street! When influence-peddling was a cozy bipartisan enterprise! When civility reigned as Republican and Democratic sellouts cooperated to betray their parties’ ideals.

Kaus notes that lobbying would be more bipartisan if Democrats won more elections. Let’s see what the Washington Monthly has to say if Kerry wins in November. . . .

For some thoughts on why electoral turnover, and the lobbyist turnover it engenders, can be a good thing, you might want to read this piece I had in the Vanderbilt Law Review a few years back, entitled Is Democracy Like Sex?

Kaus also clarifies some points in response to Austin Bay’s email, and promises a longer post on that topic later.

BEYOND JOE WILSON: Much more on the Senate Intelligence Committee report, from Dan Darling.

DARFUR UPDATE: Gary Farber has a roundup.

THIS IS THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM ON THE GAY MARRIAGE AMENDMENT:

The U.S. Senate is scheduled to hold a bellwether vote on a proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage this week, an exercise fueled more by cultural symbolism than political reality, since members on both sides generally expect the measure won’t get the two-thirds majority needed for passage. . . .

While many lawmakers in both parties oppose gay nuptials, there is no clear consensus whether a constitutional amendment is needed or whether a crisis exists requiring such drastic action.

In other words, a pointless exercise driven by social conservatives to fire up their base. But I wonder if people are thinking this through. If the amendment fails, as expected, isn’t that going to be read as a defeat for the anti-gay-marriage folks, and as implicit permission for states to go ahead? It seems to me that it will be (which is fine with me, since I’m okay on gay marriage), but that makes me wonder why anti-gay-marriage folks are doing this. Am I missing something, or are they being played for suckers?

UPDATE: More thoughts here. And Eric Scheie has this observation: “I think that the proponents are more cynical than they might appear. I think they know they are going to lose, and therefore they’d rather lose in a big public way — before the election.”