TECHDIRT says that the Reuters story (linked below) saying that Joe Trippi blamed the Internet for Dean’s meltdown is an example of atrocious spin — and notes the discrepancy between contemporaneous blog accounts and the Reuters story.

UPDATE: This post by Matt Welch says the same thing: “I was at the talk from which these stories emanated, and the subject was actually Dean’s dot-com success, as opposed to his perceived dot-com failure. Dude was defensive somewhat, and blurted out little dollops of blame all over the place, but when you read the transcript you’ll see that “Trippi blames Internet” just ain’t so.”

Reuters spinning something inaccurately? Say it ain’t so!

HERE’S A POSITIVE REPORT FROM AFGHANISTAN: Given the limited media coverage, it’s hard to tell how things are going, but this certainly sounds like good news, and it seems like the adoption of the new Afghan constitution actually made a difference. (Via Capt. Ed).

Meanwhile, Donald Sensing looks at Al Qaeda’s strategy in Iraq.

DISAPPOINTED IN BUSH, this woman is taking gun-rights politics into her own hands. The gun-rights folks are not terribly happy with Bush.

I’M NOT SURE THAT THIS ELECTION is firing up America’s youth. Here’s a report that only 76 people voted at the University of Tennessee’s precinct in today’s Democratic primary. (A whopping 5 people voted in the GOP primary.)

THERE’S A HUGE CORRUPTION SCANDAL IN CANADA that doesn’t seem to be getting a lot of attention in the United States:

The quarter-billion-dollar federal sponsorship fiasco was so widespread that even Canada’s fabled national police force was used to funnel cash to friends of the federal government, Auditor General Sheila Fraser said today.

Fraser delivered a brutally methodical account of how the Public Works Department used Crown corporations and the RCMP to systematically shovel funds from a national-unity program to a select group of businesses.

This bit isn’t especially reassuring:

“We’re not interested in a witch hunt and we’re not interested in anything that could negatively affect the party brand,” said the official.

“But at the end of the day the public interest demands that the answers to these questions be provided.

“We’re the government. We’re not just a political party.”

“Negatively affect the party brand?”

UPDATE: Damian Penny is upset.

Colby Cosh, meanwhile, is unsurprised.

ALEX BEAM (best remembered in the blogosphere for not figuring out that Bjorn Staerk’s Stalinist April Fool page was an April Fool page) now says that the defeat of Howard Dean, the blogosphere’s “own presidential candidate,” means that the blogosphere is a bunch of hooey. Whatever, Alex.

He’s right, of course, that the Internet probably won’t decide this election. As I said back at Bloggercon, blogs are great for primaries because they can mobilize the committed and generate buzz. I don’t think they have the reach — especially to the barely-interested swing voters — to be decisive in a general election.

IS THE KERRY CAMPAIGN OUTSOURCING ITS PHONE BANKS TO CANADA? That’s what this guy reports based on his caller ID. Judging by the trackbacks, the story is getting purchase around the blogosphere. (Via Kalblog).

TENNESSEE AND VIRGINIA have been called for Kerry.

READER MICHAEL HALPERT EMAILS: “Resolved: There is no significant downside, and nearly limitless upside, in Pres Bush’s replacement of Mr. Cheney with the lovely Ms. Rice. Please discuss.”

I was suggesting that a year ago. Nothing has changed my mind.

UPDATE: Reader Christopher Jefferson emails:

Oh good gosh, there’s a ton of upside to replacing Cheney with Rice.

Takes all the wind out of Kerry’s sails for one thing (not much wind there, btw. He lost seven points in the last week as the AWOL story solidified a previously wavering Republican base vote). Second, it forces Kerry to do something he doesn’ t want to do: put Hillary on the ticket.

Besides, Rice could be President in her sleep, if she had to.

She’s been a university Provost. That means she can handle any amount of bureaucratic infighting. . . .

TRIPPI ON THE DEAN CAMPAIGN: You can listen to Ed Cone’s Q&A here.

POLITICALWIRE has the Tennessee and Virginia exit polls: Kerry, then Edwards, then Clark. Some people are already sad that they won’t have Wesley Clark to kick around much longer.

I FORGOT TO MENTION IT YESTERDAY, but the Carnival of the Capitalists is up, with loads of interesting posts on business and economic affairs.

SOME THOUGHTS on Kerry’s post-Vietnam behavior, over at GlennReynolds.com.

UPDATE: Reader Jeffrey Edelman emails:

Glenn, I’ve been thinking alot about the Bush National Guard thing today from a different perspective: Of course I don’t think it matters at all if one has never been active duty to be Prez – but Kerry now does, obviously and I think this paints him into a corner regarding his VP selection. You can hardly hammer and hammer Bush on this issue in the press and then name such an obvious non-warrior, non-military guy as John Edwards as your running mate. One heartbeat from the presidency stands the ultimate in ultragroomed civilian metrosexuality!!!

This will certainly be an issue for Kerry now, especially for a running mate of the Vietnam generation, as most of the likely names will be. Howard Dean, who skiied instead of going to Vietnam because he was physically unfit to serve, is an example of somebody who’s got problems under this test. I suspect that the pool of potential VP candidates has a lot of people like that.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Paul Maczyk emails:

I just read the entry below, and I think your reader is right. Kerry needs a southerner who is unimpeachable on the Kerry-created Vietnam issue. Which is why I think he’ll pick Max Cleland of Georgia.

I also think Kerry should and will lose, but that’s another story.

A couple of other people suggested Cleland, too. Can he deliver Georgia?

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Georgia reader William Barber doesn’t think he can:

How exactly is Cleland supposed to bring Georgia? We’re the ones that voted him out of office the last election. He’s a triple amputee from Vietnam. Very commendable, he served with honor. Yet he didn’t support Bush’s Homeland Security initiatives because they didn’t include unions. This pushed quite a few of the independent swing voters to his competition. Just like with Kerry, the issue isn’t Vietnam. The issue is how he’s voted in Congress. You can fight in as many wars as you like, but if you vote in a way that doesn’t defend the country against terrorism, and have a record of trying to gut the CIA and most modern weapon systems, winning the Congressional Medal of Honor won’t save your political hide.

I don’t see him carrying Georgia, either, but I’m no expert.

MORE: Edward Boyd has interesting thoughts here and here.

I’VE BEEN HARPING on the Algerian Al Qaeda connection for a long time. Now here’s a BBC report with more on the Algerian role. (Just search “Algeria” in the search window on the left for a lot more.)

MORE ON THOSE NORTH KOREAN CONCENTRATION CAMPS that seem to upset the “human rights” community less than Guantanamo Bay:

“I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber. The parents, a son, and a daughter.” The speaker is Kwon Hyuk, a former North Korean intelligence agent and a one-time administrator at Camp 22, the country’s largest concentration camp. His testimony was heard on a television documentary that aired last week on the BBC. “The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save the kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing.”

Meanwhile, at Guantanamo, the big issue is weight gain. The horror:

“For two or three days I was confused, but later the Americans were so nice with me, they were giving me good food with fruit and water for ablutions before prayer.”

Besides teaching him to read and write English, the military provided books in his native Pashto language and a Quran, Islam’s sacred book.

See, there’s no difference at all.

UPDATE: I’ve been remiss in not pointing people to the NKZone blog. It has more here, too.

APPALLING RACIAL STEREOTYPING:

“Would these students [College Republicans and EOA] be happy if there were no black students here at all?” said Lee. He added with sarcasm, “You’d never win a basketball or football game then.”

Is he saying that black students are (1) unable to compete academically; and (2) all about basketball and football? Sure sounds like it.

COLBY COSH has a review in the American Spectator of the just-released unpublished Robert Heinlein novel, For Us, The Living.

NOW JOE TRIPPI’S BLAMING AL GORE for the Dean campaign’s flameout: “He pinned the campaign’s downturn largely on former Vice President Al Gore’s endorsement, which, he said, sparked a torrent of media scrutiny and attacks from rival candidates.”

Hmm. I thought he said it was the Internet’s fault. We should change the old saying: Apparently, now it’s defeat that has a thousand fathers.

SOME INTERESTING THOUGHTS on Richard Feynman and nanotechnology.

MORE ON THOSE DRAKE UNIVERSITY SUBPOENAS:

Federal officials Monday said a grand jury inquiry involving four peace activists and Drake University is not part of an anti-terrorism investigation.

U.S. Attorney Stephen Patrick O’Meara said late Monday that the investigation focuses on unlawful entry onto military property at Camp Dodge on Nov. 16, and whether plans were laid for that at a conference the day before at Drake.

Suggestions that the investigation is related to the Patriot Act “are not accurate,” O’Meara said.

Read the whole thing. And note that “peace” protesters enjoy no legal immunities for unlawful entry onto military bases, though some of them seem to think otherwise.

THE GRAPES OF WRATH: Meryl Yourish writes The Battle Hymn of Al Gore.

In a related vein, Joanne Jacobs has some, er, vintage remarks.

ABC’S “THE NOTE” EXPLAINS THE WAY THE WORLD WORKS:

Like every other institution, the Washington and political press corps operate with a good number of biases and predilections.

They include, but are not limited to, a near-universal shared sense that liberal political positions on social issues like gun control, homosexuality, abortion, and religion are the default, while more conservative positions are “conservative positions.”

They include a belief that government is a mechanism to solve the nation’s problems; that more taxes on corporations and the wealthy are good ways to cut the deficit and raise money for social spending and don’t have a negative affect on economic growth; and that emotional examples of suffering (provided by unions or consumer groups) are good ways to illustrate economic statistic stories.

More systematically, the press believes that fluid narratives in coverage are better than static storylines; that new things are more interesting than old things; that close races are preferable to loose ones; and that incumbents are destined for dethroning, somehow.

The press, by and large, does not accept President Bush’s justifications for the Iraq war — in any of its WMD, imminent threat, or evil-doer formulations. It does not understand how educated, sensible people could possibly be wary of multilateral institutions or friendly, sophisticated European allies.

It does not accept the proposition that the Bush tax cuts helped the economy by stimulating summer spending.

There’s more, leading reader Todd Kiehn (who calls this “the most remarkable admission of liberal media bias I have ever read”) to observe:

No wonder the White House is trying to circumvent the filter, as it were.

Nope. No wonder at all. But let’s give The Note credit for the kind of unflinching honesty that’s rare in its profession.

HAWASH UPDATE:

A former software engineer who stunned friends and co-workers by admitting he tried to fight U.S. troops in Afghanistan drew a seven-year jail sentence in federal court on Monday after apologizing for his role.

“I regret my actions,” Maher “Mike” Hawash, a 39-year-old former Intel Corp. employee, told the courtroom. “I wish to ask forgiveness from my family for the pain I have caused them, and to my friends, my friends in the community and in the United States.” . . .

He attributed his crime to religious and emotional confusion in the highly charged times after the hijack attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, but added, “I do not blame anybody but myself.”

A sad story, though the ending is much less sad than it could have been.

JOE TRIPPI IS BLAMING THE INTERNET for Dean’s collapse. As Jeralyn Merritt observes: “Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. . . .”

I don’t think the Internet support failed Dean. I think that Dean failed his Internet supporters.

MORE KERRY WAFFLING on gay rights.