SOME PEOPLE ARE GETTING DESPERATE, as this example from David Gingrich illustrates:

I cannot help but notice that you have failed to mention anything about Jeff Gannon on instapundit or your MSNBC blog. Whats up with that? I thought you were all for destroying political bias in our nations media, oh that only applies to Dan Rathers and those pesky so called liberal journalists. Mr male escort couldn’t have had any bias right. Yeah I know that there is no improtant information in that story. No big deal the white house allowed a gay escort into white house press briefings with faulty credentials, although you have to admit that sure is a lot of irony. You spend weeks attacking Dan Rathers for his sloppy journalism and because he trusted faulty documents. But it’s not the same thing when Mr. Bubble Boy allows a fake journalist (with fake documentation) into his press briefings, all the while he couldn’t gain access to capitol hill, to lob softball questions. Man that is sure some irony if I have ever seen it. Hypocrite.

Actually, I have blogged about Gannon/Guckert quite a few times, as a simple search would illustrate. But I agree with Rik Hertzberg that it’s a nothinggate. Or, as Marc Cooper says, a “big yawn.” I don’t think it’s in any way comparable to the use of forged documents in an attempt to swing a Presidential election — and I think that anyone who does think so is pretty much beyond rational discourse.

I also think that the people who are trying to inflate this into a big issue are making a dreadful mistake. I eagerly await the reaction when the White House responds to this criticism by requiring everyone who attends a press briefing to make a full financial and sexual disclosure, and starts rating news outlets as “real” or “fake” according to bias. (If I were Rove I’d make some rumblings about this to the press corps, and I’d explicitly cite the lefty bloggers by name, just to stir up trouble . . . .)

But don’t listen to me. Listen to David Corn:

But throughout this scandal, I have wondered if the Gannon affair may be smaller than it seems. I expressed several concerns in an earlier column. Still, in response to the emails, I decided to heed the call and look further. What I found leads me to ask–gasp!–if Gannon/Guckert, on a few but not all fronts, has received a quasi-bum rap. . . .

Bloggers should think hard when they complain about standards for passes for White House press briefings. Last year, political bloggers–many of whom have their own biases and sometimes function as activists–sought credentials to the Democratic and Republican conventions. That was a good thing. Why shouldn’t Josh Marshall, Glenn Reynolds, John Aravosis, or Markos Moulitsas (DailyKos) be allowed to question Scott McClellan or George W. Bush? Do we want only the MSMers to have this privilege?

If Gannon/Guckert did receive preferential treatment–because of his ideological bent or any other reason–that would be wrong and a matter for the White House to explain. But let’s move on to his personal (or other professional) life. Bloggers have made much of his apparent effort to earn a buck as a prostitute for men. This is not gay-baiting, they say, it’s hypocrisy. The question is, hypocrisy on whose part?

Read the whole thing. I think that the gay-baiting from some of the lefty bloggers — and my emailers — does them no credit. And it really is gay-baiting. And the focus on the gay angle, which nearly all this email features, also betrays a rather deep misapprehension of how I feel about stuff — do I look like a social conservative? As James Lileks wrote:

I just find it amusing that people think that because I support less aggressive taxation and the War I must therefore believe gays should be driven into a pit lined with sharp stakes, and therefore I’m a hypocrite. How does that work? It’s like saying “you oppose partial privatizing of Social Security? Well, then you obviously want abortion legal up the moment when the baby crowns.” Doesn’t follow.

Nope. Not to anyone with a clue, anyway. I think the Gannon-bashers are diminishing themselves by overplaying this issue. As Salon’s Wagner James Au (who also sent the Cooper link) emailed:

2004: “Bush lied, people died!”
2005: “Bush brought Guckert, people, uh, got suckered!”

Glenn, what a striking degradation of topics to get outraged over. But the amazing thing to me is, many people seem equally exercised by both topics. At least the question of WMD intelligence abuse is a topic of international importance. . . .

One year, you’re the indomitable warrior of dissent waving the fiery sword of truth in the halls of the powerful. Year later, you’re Verne Troyer on amyl nitrate biffing the shins of the powerful with a wooden dowel.

Or something like that.

UPDATE: It could be worse. And it is!

LT SMASH: “Come into my parlor . . . .”

IT’S PLEDGE WEEK at NanoBot.

DAVID CORN is accusing Howard Dean of self-defeatism.

DAVE WINER says that Google’s new toolbar is bad for the Web.

UPDATE: Anil Dash disagrees.

IS BLOGGING A MALE GAME? Ann Althouse has thoughts for Kevin Drum, over at GlennReynolds.com — where blogging, obviously enough, isn’t always a male game . . . .

UPDATE: Snarky advice for Kevin, here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Christine Hurt has an action plan.

TOM MAGUIRE RESPONDS TO A CRITIC, and offers advice: “Since I never get to say this to any other blogger, and I hear it all the time – sometimes less is more.”

Indeed.

READER SEAN FITZPATRICK notes an interesting passage from the BBC reporters’ blog on Bush’s Europe trip:

The president is wonderfully un-European – refreshingly so in the view of those of us who have worked in Brussels.

He is unsmooth. He stumbles over his sentences. He uses short, plain, sometimes almost babyish words, while the sophisticated multilingual Euro crowd prefer obfuscatory long ones.

And he gets a clear message across, like it or not. He has no need of spin.

It was interesting that on the White House bus back into town, the journalists did not need to compare notes or discuss the president’s words and what they meant.

On the other hand, for Chirac and Schroeder there was a discussion that would have made an old-style Kremlinologist blush. . . .

Some people think Schroeder said one thing about Nato and some think he actually meant another. Others claim that Chirac really believes Schroeder wanted to say… etc etc.

Welcome to Europe, Mr Bush.

Heh.

HOW TO BLOG: Some good advice from Atrios.

And some useful stuff on blogging, and videoblogging, from The New York Times.

BLOGGER DIPLOMACY: A meeting with the French consul.

HEH: Somebody does seem to like Condi. And it’s a hell of a picture.

ANOTHER ENDORSEMENT FOR JOHN SCALZI’S NEW NOVEL, from Eugene Volokh, who writes:

Just finished John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, which was very good. I bought it in hardcover; cheapskate that I am, I rarely do this except with authors whose work I know well, but I made an exception because of Instapundit’s and Professor Bainbridge’s recommendations. They steered me well; really good science fiction, fresh and well-crafted.

I liked it.

MAN BITES DOG! David Kaspar has photos of the pro-Bush demonstrations in Mainz yesterday.

And reader Jack Lillywhite emails from Belgium:

My wife and I are in Belgium for a family wedding (her side) and have been watching the mostly Eurocentric, left-leaning, anti-Bush coverage about the President’s visit (and that is just CNN International). But one of the more prominent Flemish networks brought a good report of the pro-American demonstration held in Brussels today in which hundreds if not thousands of Iraqi expatriates and pro-American Belgians as well as expat Americans attended. If you go to LVB.net weblog you can get more. Luc was one of the organizers.

I couldn’t make much of the LVB.net blog, as I don’t read Flemish. But I wonder if these will get any notice from American media?

UPDATE: D’oh! There’s an English version of LVB net. I didn’t see the tab before. Cool stuff.

TOM MAGUIRE has observations on the New Yorker’s “Nothinggate.”

WARD CHURCHILL MISQUOTED? This report from the Denver Post says so, and that he didn’t actually admit that he’s not Indian. As I noted below, I got an email from a journalist working on the story who raised that possibility last night.

UPDATE: Here’s the Honolulu Star-Bulletin’s correction. Churchill’s claims about the Keetoowah band’s policies and his relationship to them seem inconsistent with what I’ve read elsewhere, but no doubt those who are following this story more closely than I am will get to the bottom of that.

MORE ON SYRIA:

BAGHDAD — Iraqi state television aired a video yesterday showing what the U.S.-funded channel said was the confession of a captured Syrian officer, who said he trained Iraqi terrorists to behead people and build car bombs to attack American and Iraqi troops.

He also said the terrorists practiced beheading animals to train for decapitating hostages.

Later, Al Iraqiya aired another round of interviews with men it said were Sudanese and Egyptians who also trained in Syria to carry out attacks in Iraq.

This isn’t very difficult to believe. There’s lots more interesting Syria-related information at this Lebanon blog, too. [LATER: Bad link before; fixed now.]

UPDATE: More on Lebanon here:

Leaders of Lebanon’s banking, industrial and commercial sectors said they would shut down next Monday to demand the country’s pro-Syrian government resign and that a “neutral” one replace it.

The strike would coincide with an expected vote of confidence in parliament, two weeks after the murder of former premier Rafiq Hariri in a bomb blast for which the opposition has pinned blame on the government and its Syrian backers.

Things are getting interesting.

UPDATE: More background here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Syria says it will withdraw from Lebanon:

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) – Syria will withdraw troops from mountain and coastal areas in Lebanon in line with a 1989 agreement, Lebanon’s defense minister said Thursday amid international pressure following the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Lebanese Defense Minister Abdul-Rahim Murad said the troops will be withdrawn to the eastern Bekaa Valley on the Syrian border, but he gave no timeframe.

Hmm. No timetable, There are a lot of interesting reports about the Bekaa valley. (Via PajamaHadin).

INDEED: “But their secret is no secret. It’s money. Arab money. Saudi Arab money. . . . With that money they promote the Arabization of our Islam in Southeast Asia. Object and you face personal violence.”

And not just in Southeast Asia.

UPDATE: In fact, reaching to the United States, as this report makes clear:

Abu Ali is also a familiar figure to U.S. law-enforcement officials and terrorism experts. In mid-2003, federal authorities shut down a Northern Virginia a network of born Muslims and American converts to Islam, headed by convert Randall (Ismail) Royer.

Known as the “paintball jihad,” the defendants in the case were supporters of Lashkar-i-Taiba, a violent Wahhabi militia fighting against Indian authorities in Kashmir. They practiced for jihad by playing paintball in the woods, went to Kashmir to carry and use weapons, and then tried to explain away their weekend activities near Washington as harmless fun.

In April 2004 Royer was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Of his codefendants, six pled guilty, three were convicted and two were acquitted. One got a life sentence and another got 85 years.

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, described by federal prosecutors as a member of the group, escaped the initial crackdown and fled to Saudi Arabia, where he was arrested later in 2003.

I was among those harassed by this group; some of us were inclined to write them off as marginal cases, but Saudi dissident al-Ahmed warned me at the time of their arrest that the group was capable of killing people. Now we know how far their sinister ambitions extended: to the president of the United States himself.

The real issue remains official, Saudi-backed terrorist teaching, financing, recruitment and other support on American soil. Civic organizations examining the materials available in American mosques, as well as the textbooks used in Islamic schools, recognize that an amazingly-extensive network of such indoctrination centers exists right here, three and a half years after the horrors of 9/11.

Read the whole thing.

IN RESPONSE TO ANN ALTHOUSE, Donald Sensing is dietblogging.

“THIS BLOGPOST WILL SELF-DESTRUCT IN FIVE MINUTES” — It had better, because it’s just too explosive to last.

DER SPIEGEL: “Could George W. Bush be right?”

President Ronald Reagan’s visit to Berlin in 1987 was, in many respects, very similar to President George W. Bush’s visit to Mainz on Wednesday. Like Bush’s visit, Reagan’s trip was likewise accompanied by unprecedented security precautions. A handpicked crowd cheered Reagan in front of the Brandenburg Gate while large parts of the Berlin subway system were shut down. And the Germany Reagan was traveling in, much like today’s Germany, was very skeptical of the American president and his foreign policy. When Reagan stood before the Brandenburg Gate — and the Berlin Wall — and demanded that Gorbachev “tear down this Wall,” he was lampooned the next day on the editorial pages. He is a dreamer, wrote commentators. Realpolitik looks different.

But history has shown that it wasn’t Reagan who was the dreamer as he voiced his demand. Rather, it was German politicians who were lacking in imagination — a group who in 1987 couldn’t imagine that there might be an alternative to a divided Germany. Those who spoke of reunification were labelled as nationalists and the entire German left was completely uninterested in a unified Germany. . . .

When the voter turnout in Iraq recently exceeded that of many Western nations, the chorus of critique from Iraq alarmists was, at least for a couple of days, quieted. Just as quiet as the chorus of Germany experts on the night of Nov. 9, 1989 when the Wall fell.

As the article notes, German foreign policy is based on differentiating itself from the United States. Sounds a bit adolescent to me. (Via TKS).

And lots of people are making that Berlin Wall comparison today. Meanwhile, Arthur Chrenkoff has a roundup of Lebanon / Syria news that’s worth your time.

WARD CHURCHILL says he’s not an Indian. “Churchill did address the issue of his ethnicity, admitting that he is not Native American. . . . ‘Let’s cut to the chase; I am not,’ he said.”

Matt Duffy thinks he wants to be fired.

UPDATE: Heh:

Go here to find Ward Churchill — admitted Pale-Face WASP — whining that universities won’t give out more tenured positions to “indigenous peoples.”

“Indigenous peoples” — you know, like Dick Cavett, Stone Philips, Anderson Cooper, etc. People indigenous to the Hamptons and Aspen, I guess.

Did I say “heh?” Oh, right, I did.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A journalist writes that questions have been raised
about the accuracy of the quote; they’re trying to run them down.

DARFUR UPDATE: Nick Kristof presents photographic evidence.

RANDY BARNETT: “In hindsight, I think that the creation of the Libertarian Party has been very detrimental to the political influence of libertarians.”

VARIOUS BIG-MEDIA TYPES have been suggesting that it’s time to ask some tough questions of bloggers. Frank J. is leading the charge.

HERE’S A COOL PHOTO from SKBubba.