NEW YORK TIMES: “For Bush, No Boasts, But a Taste of Vindication.”

KYRGYZSTAN UPDATE: Over at The Argus. There’s a lot happening.

MY EARLIER POST ON BANKRUPTCY REFORM inspired these thoughts from Jim Bennett:

It has occured to me that the bankruptcy bill (which I detest for the same reasons that you have mentioned) would be an interesting test of blogospheric power. Here’s a situation where the Democrats are planning to make a major issue out of Bolton’s appointment to the UN — where his crime is merely speaking out loud what most Americans already feel about that place — while rolling over to the corporate lobby on something most Americans would want some opposition to. If the blogosphere could mount an effective campaign for people to write to their senators, it would mark its emergence as a genuinely independent force in US politics.

The bankruptcy bill is, indeed, a bad bill.

JEFF JARVIS:

The Boston Globe ombudsperson — and the critics who complained to her — get it exactly wrong when they go after Globe tech reporter Hiawatha Bray for expressing his political opinions in comments on blogs.

I say we should be celebrating his openness, his transparency, his honesty — for now his critics are free to disagree with what he says and thinks — not just what they think he thinks.

Oh, I know that’s a minority opinion — even sometimes a reviled one — in the halls of journalism. But I have come to believe that journalists’ refusal to acknowledge that they are human and are citizens and have opinions is a sort of lie by omission and we have to find better ways to deal with it than gagging them.

Transparency and responsibility. The Globe seems to want neither. I want both.

EUGENE VOLOKH: “[T]his is America and I’m not going to be nice to Nazis to try to get them to go away.” He then proceeds to administer a ruthless taunting.

KNOXVILLE IS AN Asthma Capital, and it’s also one of the most allergic cities in the U.S. Some of that is natural (we have lots of biodiversity, which —‘doh! — means more different kinds of pollen) but a lot of it isn’t. TVA coal-fired electrical generating plants are the biggest villain, I think. Interestingly, though, I’ve noticed that the air actually looks a lot clearer. Often, driving to Maryville, I can make out the observation tower on Look Rock from 20 miles away, which certainly didn’t used to happen. I guess the air can get clearer and dirtier at the same time (with ozone, for example) but it certainly seems as if that’s what’s happening. I wish TVA would replace those nasty, dirty coal plants with nice, clean nukes.

KIFAYA: Austin Bay says I told you so.

Grudgingly, Le Monde agrees.

NORM GERAS has a long post on the argument over Iraq.

Meanwhile, is Hizbollah desperate, and afraid of democracy? But they’re certainly trying to hold their own in the “hot protest babe” category. And as means of political competition in the Mideast go, this is one that I hope we see more of. It’s better than truck bombs.

UPDATE: Charles Austin emails: “If you look at the picture you posted closely, the woman in the foreground appears to be the only woman in the picture. Hmm, what does that say about the pro-Syria demonstrations? Could it be the Lysistrata effect taking hold? Like you wrote earlier, I know which crowd I’d rather be in.” Indeed. Several other readers noted the same thing.

And reader George Gooding emails: “Am I the only one wondering if these pro-Syrian protests were planned by… the Syrian or Lebanese government, or Hizbollah? The democracy demonstrations I think it is safe to say were spontaneous, yet I don’t believe the demonstration today was – and that makes a big difference.” Indeed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Crunching the numbers on the Hizbollah protests. Something doesn’t add up. Were refugees trucked in?

MORE: Sounds possible: “At least one opposition leader said the pro-Syrian government pressured people to turn out Tuesday and some reports said Syria bused in people from across the border.”

THIS MAY BE CARRYING THE “PROTEST BABE” MEME a bit too far.

UPDATE: Many readers want a photo that’s less . . . cropped. Okay, here’s one, but you may find it less exciting than you hoped.

HERE’S A ROUNDUP OF MILITARY BLOGS from The Army Times.

IN THE MAIL: Three very different books. First, Brig. Gen. Ezell Ware’s By Duty Bound: Survival and Redemption in a Time of War, about racism in the Vietnam war. Second, Back in Action: An American Soldier’s Story of Courage, Faith and Fortitude, about the first amputee to return to active command in Iraq. And finally, Craig Symonds’ Decision at Sea: Five Naval Battles that Shaped American History. I don’t know why the publishers decided to flood my inbox with military memoirs, but they all look pretty interesting.

ELECTIONS IN ZIMBABWE:

On March 31 there is an election scheduled in Zimbabwe. It will be buried beneath all of the headlines emanating from the Middle East, but this is a crucial moment for sub-Saharan Africa and for democracy. . . .

Mugabe was once a hero in southern Africa. Unfortunately, this status has lingered in some circles long after the justification for it evaporated. Whatever credit Mugabe deserves for having led the liberation struggle against Ian Smith and his white supremacists pales when placed next to his misdeeds of the last ten or fifteen years. The Mugabe of 1980 was a hero. The Mugabe of 2004 is a despot.

Yes. And though I’d like to be hopeful, I’ll be surprised if these elections make a difference, given the absence of any serious external pressure, even from neighboring South Africa.

HEALTHBLOG-A-RAMA: This week’s Grand Rounds is up!

HANS BETHE DIED, but the Boston Globe had, er, different priorities.

UPDATE: Reader Richard Andrews emails:

Glenn, I live in the Boston area.

You wouldn’t believe how much news coverage this electrocuted dog story has gotten. It’s not just the globe. The local TV stations have had it as one of their top stories several days now. No disrespect to the family that lost their dog but there ARE other thing going on in the world.

I don’t watch TV news very much anymore (only for the weather), but every time I do see it, I’m reminded of why I don’t watch anymore.

As to Hans Bethe, I think that it was Robert Klein who observed “What kind of world do we live in when KISS has 10 million groupies and Jonas Salk can’t get laid?”. A little dated perhaps, but still the same point.

I think Jonas Salk actually did okay.

SLASHDOT has an item on Indian software firms targeted by Wahhabist terrorists. Those guys can’t make much, but they sure are big on blowing things up.

UPDATE: Reader Kevin Fleming emails:

This is more evidence supporting the idea that any idiot can be a Shiva (destroyer); it’s much, much harder to be a Vishnu (creator).

But it’s always puzzled me why the Shivas themselves think otherwise (e.g. rapists, serial killers, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, …heck, even bad bosses fall into this trap). They all think it’s so darn hard to be evil. Pheh. Being good is hard; being an animal is simple …just turn off whatever self-control mechanism you have, and do whatever pops into your little head. I am certain the Instawife has a better grasp of this than I do, however.

I think this is a bit unfair to Shiva, but the point holds. As was famously observed, it is easier for civilized men to act like barbarians, than for barbarians to act like civilized men.

ANOTHER UPDATE: My combat-engineer secretary emails from Iraq, agreeing that this is unfair to Shiva:

Blowing things up is a service. I do not agree with wahhabism but I am down with blowing things up. The whole shiva/vishnu argument is pretty uninformed for a post-industrial economy.

It all depends on what, and why.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: My Hindu theology is weak — it’s mostly what I learned by osmosis as a kid hanging around the Religious Studies department, and Harvard Divinity School — but I was pretty sure that Kevin Fleming was giving Shiva a bum rap. Sure enough, reader Srikanth Bellalacheruvu emails:

Shiva is not simply a “destroyer”, and if he was, Indians wouldn’t worship him. They have several million Gods to choose from – it’s a free market out there.

Shiva is, to be accurate, the “Renewer”. Shiva destroys a world when it is beyond all hope of reform, in order to allow creative energies to build a better world. His anger is that of a righteousness, not that of hatred.

And Vishnu is not a “creator”. To be accurate, he “maintains order” in world that already exists.

If we were to use business terminology, Shiva’s rage would be “gales of creative destruction” and Vishnu would be a brilliant CEO adding to shareholder value.

I like that. Quite a few other readers made the same point, if not quite so pithily.

DECONSTRUCTING DEMONSTRATIONS: Ralph Kinney Bennett has thoughts on Hezbollah. Meanwhile, the Lebanese say that Syrian agents — not troops — are the real problem.

More on this, here.

FINISHED THIS CHARLES STROSS BOOK last night. It took me a while, as I’ve been busy (sent off a book review, and an edited law review manuscript yesterday) but it was quite good — if anything, better than the first volume in the series, which is unusual for such things.

PROTESTS IN UNLIKELY PLACES: A don’t-miss roundup from Publius. “Morocco? Egypt? Kuwait? Pakistan? Incredible stuff.”

KYRGYZSTAN UPDATE: Protests seem to be spreading across the country.

Meanwhile, protests are breaking out in Iran, too.

UPDATE: Much, much more on Kyrgyzstan, here.

LIKE ROBIN HOOD, ONLY WITH PARKING: I’m still not a Wal-Mart fan, but my objections are mostly aesthetic. I’d love to shop at Samuel’s, though!

UPDATE: Reader Chris Greer sends this more negative take.

DAVID ADESNIK NOTES ANOTHER Evan Thomas-like admission.

Meanwhile, here’s an interesting exchange.

RECIPEBLOGGING gets a writeup in The Tennessean. Including: “Cathy Seipp’s Best Easy Chocolate Birthday Cake Ever!”

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO PRESIDENT BETSY HOFFMAN HAS RESIGNED: A lot of readers think that the Ward Churchill angle has been downplayed, but I really don’t think it had much to do with her resignation — the football scandal is bigger, has been fermenting longer, and much more directly implicated the University Administration. Churchill certainly didn’t help, and it’s possible that he was the straw that broke the camel’s back, but I really think that the football scandal was the main mover here.

BOING-BOING VERSUS NORTH KOREA: My money’s on Boing-Boing.

HEH: Article here. Comments here.

UPDATE: Michael Totten observes:

Sorry, I don’t mean to gloat, and I shouldn’t. It’s still possible that the whole thing will blow up in our faces and I’ll be the one who has to eat crow. I don’t think it will turn out that way, but I don’t know that it won’t. Nobody does.

What I find interesting here is that this shows the foresight of historians like Victor Davis Hanson. He has long argued that we should stop worrying about anti-American and anti-war jackassery and just win the damn war. If things work out in Iraq and the Middle East, he’s been saying, opposition to the U.S. and the war will largely evaporate. I have had my doubts about that since the opposition is often so reactionary and toxic. But this definitely belongs in his evidence column.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Scott Burgess says that, despite the cover, the Independent is ducking the main question.