THE TROUBLE WITH THIS REPORT is that you have to ask yourself: Would you have relied on the French?

More importantly, the persistence of the whole issue demonstrates the colossal folly of the Bush Administration’s effort to take the United Nations seriously in 2002, something that — like Bush’s failure to fire a lot of people at the CIA following 9/11 — has led to considerable grief and no discernible benefit.

UPDATE: On the “would you have relied on the French?” point, reader Betsy Gorisch emails: “Well, that’s one trouble with the report. The other trouble with it is, why would you believe them about it now?”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader George Gooding emails:

If the French knew in 2001 and 2002 that the Niger reports were baseless, why was the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs Director for Nonproliferation telling the United States on November 22, 2002 (per the SSCI report) that they had intelligence showing that Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium from Niger?

For more on this, and some pertinent questions that need to be answered Link

There are a lot of questions.

OIL DEPOT EXPLODES IN BRITAIN: Here’s a big roundup, and Sean Hackbarth has more, including photos.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOT MUCH: Michael Crowley’s item in the New York Times Magazine about how conservative blogs are more effective is up and, well, it’s not much. Especially in light of all the brouhaha about it. It’s about 200-300 words, quoting only “liberal activist Matt Stoller” and (indirectly) other unnamed Democrats, about the message discipline of Republicans. OK. Whatever.

UPDATE: Yes, the bit about Drudge being quick to pass on the latest tidbit from the blogosphere is also dubious. Drudge is, in fact, pretty aloof where the blogosphere is concerned. In fact, the whole “superior message discipline” theory seems doubtful to me.

The Democrats’ real problems come from their positions, and their candidates, not from Republicans’ media operation. They’re still in denial about that, though, and Crowley’s story couldn’t be better for the Republicans if Karl Rove had written it himself.

RADLEY BALKO has much more on the Maye case in Mississippi. There’s more here, and you should probably just scroll around his blog as he’s got other posts as well. I hope that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour will look into this ASAP.

IT’S A BUSH LANDSLIDE! First one of those I’ve seen, actually . . . .

HERE’S A NARNIA ROUNDUP, and here’s an article from the (London) Times condemning over-literalism.

UPDATE: Reader Melissa Feagins emails with this review:

Leaving aside the Christian allegory and opinions as to the writing ability of C.S. Lewis, my husband and I took our three kids to see The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe today. The theater was full and not just of parents with kids. I saw teens and several older couples with no children along. My eight-year old dubbed it, “the best movie ever!” It’s a two and a half hour movie and my five-year old sat almost perfectly still through the whole thing and there was none of the usual chatter you hear from children in theaters. More unbelievably to myself, I sat through the whole thing. I have arthritis in one of my hips and I never sit down for more than an hour at a time anymore and that not very often. I left the movie stiff and limping, but more than entertained. It was well worth the $25.00 it cost us to see the show. If you haven’t taken the InstaFamily to this film, please do. It’s wonderful in every way: faithful to the book (the beginning scene does explain how the children come to be living with the Professor, but that’s the only real difference and a great addition, I think), marvelous acting, great cinematography and effects. I’m no expert on literature or film, but I LOVED this movie and highly recommend it to all.

The audience reviews seem to be quite positive.

THE CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES is up! More blog carnivals here.

STEPHEN HAYES:

FOR THE SECOND TIME IN recent weeks the Department of Defense has denied a request from The Weekly Standard to release unclassified documents recovered in postwar Iraq. These documents apparently reveal, in some detail, activities of Saddam Hussein’s regime in the years before the war. This second denial could also be the final one: According to two Pentagon sources, the program designed to review, translate, and analyze data from the old Iraqi regime may be shuttered at the end of December, not just placing the documents beyond the reach of journalists, but also making them inaccessible to policymakers.

As a consequence, the ongoing debate over the Iraq war and its origins is taking place without crucial information about the former Iraqi regime and its relationships with presumed U.S. allies and known U.S. enemies.

Read the whole thing.

SOUND FINANCIAL ADVICE from Megan McArdle. Especially the stuff about spending and debt.

One other piece of advice: Marry someone who has a level head about money. I’m always amazed at how often people’s financial problems are really marital problems.

MICHAEL TOTTEN is now blogging from Cairo.

Meanwhile, Bill Roggio is blogging from Ramadi.

RICHARD PRYOR has died. So has Eugene McCarthy.

SHADES OF TIANANMEN: Gateway Pundit has a big roundup and links to audio.

UPDATE: Big blog-reaction roundup here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A useful observation: “China’s development, though extraordinary, is one that is leaving behind several hundred million people. Though they are not necessarily in worse-off terms than before the economic rennaissance began, in relative terms the gulf is ever yawning. China’s development has become something like an egg – the smooth, hard outside shell gives the impression of stability and depth though it shrouds a fragile interior. . . .Secondly and most importantly, we must remember that Shanghai ain’t China, it’s the glistening, candy shell, and the windowpieces for the passing shoppers to see. The inside of the store, however impressive the window, is in fact quite different.”

A NASTY PLANE CRASH IN NIGERIA: Port Harcourt is the hometown of my Nigerian relatives, though most reside in Lagos now. I haven’t heard any news from them, though.

SO I’VE BEEN READING THE PAGE PROOFS for An Army of Davids, and that’s been fun: No matter how many times you read a manuscript in process — and it’s always a lot — when you see it set in type and formatted as a book it looks fresh and different.

One thing that has struck me is how much of a debt I owe to Virginia Postrel. The book’s topic is different from hers, but themes and ideas from The Substance of Style, and The Future and Its Enemies (and references to them both, along with some of her New York Times columns) just keep cropping up. Virginia’s books have gotten a lot of attention, of course, but I think that in twenty years we’ll still look back and see them as underrated. If you haven’t read them, you should.

Jeff Jarvis and Nick Denton crop up a lot, too. Visionaries all!

AN OPEN LETTER TO HALEY BARBOUR on the Corey Maye case.

SATELLITE RADIO UPDATE: People have asked about reception. It works fine in the car, with the car antenna simply sitting on the dash. (The manual says that may not work well, but driving around West Knoxville it seems to work fine). I haven’t used it like a Walkman yet, with the portable antenna.

NEW SHOPPING TREND: “[S]hoppers have embraced a shift away from traditional gifts, such as sweaters and watches, toward experience gifts such as spa treatments and trips that enhance the lifestyles of friends and relatives.”

Of course, I noted this in 2003.

FROM HOMOSEXUALITY AS MENTAL DISEASE to “extreme bias” against homosexuality as a mental disease, in just a few decades:

Mental health practitioners say they regularly confront extreme forms of racism, homophobia and other prejudice in the course of therapy, and that some patients are disabled by these beliefs. As doctors increasingly weigh the effects of race and culture on mental illness, some are asking whether pathological bias ought to be an official psychiatric diagnosis.

So when homosexuality was unpopular, it was a mental disorder. Now that it’s popular, not liking it is a mental disorder. Evidence for either position? Not much. My diagnosis: How about we recognize a disorder consisting of turning intellectual fashions into pseudoscience? Seems like this is a case of “mental health” consisting largely of agreeing with whatever political opinions psychiatrists hold at a particular moment in time. Psychiatry, heal thyself. (Via Either End).

UPDATE: Heh.

MORE: Related thoughts here:

I might take those who advocate a new diagnosis more seriously if they included hatred of conservatives as another example of pathological bias. But, even then, it’s the individual’s intense hatred that’s the real “disorder” — regardless of its object.

Indeed. Dr. Sanity has further thoughts, too.

Still more here.

MORE: Still more disapproval of this approach.

JIGSHA DESAI videoblogs a Christmas Tree cutting, and offers expert advice on which tree to pick, while Dipti Vaidya interviews people about their favorite Christmas ornament.

NEWSBEAT 1 on the Canadian elections: “The Conservatives are clearly targeting the long-suffering middle-class — too rich to be poor, too poor to be rich. Martin seems content to go after anyone anywhere who might be bribed to vote Liberal.”

WHETHER YOU’RE A FEMINIST or a Mobilist, your carnival is up. Other carnivals are here.

HERE’S MORE on the Mississippi no-knock case involving Cory Maye mentioned below.

MASSACRE IN CHINA:

Armed with guns and shields, hundreds of riot police sealed off a southern Chinese village after fatally shooting demonstrators and searched for the protest organizers, villagers said Friday. . . .

During the demonstration Tuesday in Dongzhou, a village in southern Guangdong province, thousands of people gathered to protest the amount of money offered by the government as compensation for land to be used to construct a wind power plant.

Police started firing into the crowd and killed several people, mostly men, villagers reached by telephone said Friday. The death toll ranged from two to 10, they said, and many remained missing.

State media have not mentioned the incident and both provincial and local governments have repeatedly refused to comment.

Gateway Pundit has more, and notes that some media outlets seem confused as to the location. [LATER: Or maybe not.]

UPDATE: More here.

MORE: Here’s a followup report:

Residents of a southern Chinese village near Hong Kong where police opened fire on demonstrators described a tense standoff in the area on Saturday with thousands of armed troops patrolling the perimeter and blocking anyone from leaving. Frightened villagers said they were either hunkering down at home or arguing with police who are refusing to return the dead to their families.

A Hong Kong newspaper quoted villagers accusing Chinese officials of trying to cover up the killings on Tuesday in Dongzhou, a village in Guangdong province.

Residents said police opened fire on a crowd of thousands protesting against inadequate compensation offered by the government for land to be used for a new wind power plant. Up to 20 were killed, villagers said, while some said dozens more were missing.

It was the deadliest known use of force by Chinese security against civilians since the killings around Tiananmen Square in 1989, which drew an international outcry.

So far, the outcry in this case seems rather muted.

READER ANDREW TICKLE sends this interesting article on lessons from Iraq.

CATHY SEIPP LOOKS AT problems with contemporary parenting.