NORM GERAS has a Zimbabwe roundup.

I’VE BEEN FOLLOWING THE DEBATE between Jeff Jarvis and Hugh Hewitt on the role of “theocrats” in the Terri Schiavo matter.

Hugh’s right that it’s hard to ascribe the Congressional legislation to “theocrats” when it was supported by Tom Harkin (and Ralph Nader!). There’s much more going on than that; this is a matter on which all sorts of people, of all sorts of persuasions, can be found on both sides.

On the other hand, here’s some advice, very similar to advice I gave to the antiwar movement: If you don’t want to be confused with a movement led by theocrats, don’t let actual theocrats be seen as your spokesmen. It may be impossible to shut Randall Terry up — though if I were Karl Rove, I would have tried really hard — but he needs to be loudly and regularly denounced as a nut. Otherwise you’re in the same boat as lefties who don’t want to be identified with Ward Churchill, but happily use him when they want to draw a crowd.

(In fact, the Terry / Churchill axis is surprisingly close — they both view 9/11 as a necessary chastisement for a sinful America. If that’s not a distinguishing mark of full-bore idiotarianism, I don’t know what is).

Terry’s getting what he wants from this: Attention, and a measure of undeserved legitimacy. But Bush seems to have fallen into a no-win situation. The Terryesque nuts on the far-right are mad at him for not standing in the hospice door a la George Wallace, while lots of other people see Randall Terry speaking, and George W. Bush rushing to sign the Schiavo bill, and associate the two. That may be unfair, but it’s inevitable, and I think it may turn out to be costly.

As Rich Lowry wrote about Randall Terry: “I’m guessing that everytime he opens his mouth on TV support for keeping Terri Schiavo alive drops another couple of points.” I don’t think he’s doing much for Bush, either. As I said about the antiwar people, you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. Randall Terry’s a dog.

UPDATE: More comments on the fleas here, and here. Jarvis taken to task here. And reader Troy Hinrichs emails:

Interesting that Randall Terry is back. I thought that guy was dead or handling snakes out in your neck of the woods.

Last night I was driving home from work and left the radio on Michael Savage (a show I can barely stand) and Randall Terry was there. I forgot how much of an ass he truly is. I’m a Southern Baptist pro-life GW Bush voter (4x — twice as Gov. of the THE great state). If I think Randall Terry is a complete jackass, then how much moreso an agnostic who is unsure which way to think of the Schiavo situation?

Oh and btw — the liberal worry about theocracy is mostly a canard. There have been NO greater advocates of separation of church and state than Baptists (maybe individual exceptions, but not as a body of believers) — going back to Roger Williams. Somebody’s god is always in control, no matter if GW Bush, John Kerry, or Ward Churchill were President. Everybody worships at somebody’s altar.

I think that first crack is unfair to the snake-handlers.

MORE: The Anchoress, as always, makes this point better than I could.

STILL MORE: And here’s a sensible post from Jesse Walker on the excesses of the other side:

Reasonable people reading the evidence can differ as to what Schiavo would have preferred, but one thing they can’t do is declare there’s no question about what she wanted 16 years ago. In the last few weeks, alas, reasonable people have sometimes been scarce.

This is what makes it a hard case, of course.

MORE STILL: Terri Schiavo as Christ? Seems a bit sacrilegious to me.

HERE’S MORE ON ZIMBABWE:

Zimbabwe’s heating up again prior to the elections scheduled for March 31. Tensions in the capital of Harare have increased dramatically. The Mugabe dictatorship has decided to attack Christian church leaders it holds responsible for “encouraging” street protests. The government is specifically going after Catholic bishop Pius Ncube. This clergyman has been a major critic of dictator Robert Mugabe. Ncube issued a statement that said the March 31 election will be “rigged”– and of course, that will be the case. The Mugabe government is thoroughly corrupt. The Mugabe government recently imposed a law that makes “unauthorized demonstrations” a felony punishable by up to 20 years in jail. The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the main opposition group, reports that threats of physical violence against regime opponents have increased. As the elections approach, the Mugabe government is trying to isolate the country as much as possible from foreign reporters by denying entry visas. All of these are tactics the dictatorship has used in the past. The big question remains what the opposition will do if Mugabe steals another election.

And, as the article notes, whether pro-democracy protesters will get support from South Africa and the EU, both of which have been pretty unhelpful so far.

GOOD NEWS / BAD NEWS FOR THE AFGHAN ARMY:

The recruiting for the new Afghan army is going well, except for the fact that so many of the eager recruits have to be rejected for health reasons. Apparently no one realized how poor the health of the average Afghan is. Most recruits, and most young Afghans, are

– Slightly malnourished, often suffering from minor vitamin deficiencies

– Come from rural areas where they were not exposed to many communicable diseases, and have not had any immunizations.

– Have never had a physical, dental, or eye exam.

In other words, it’s like the U.S. Army in 1898.

NOWHERE TO HIDE: Ward Churchill faces tough questions in Berkeley.

IRAQI RESISTANCE BEGINS TO CRACK after the elections:

The Iraqi resistance has peaked and is ‘turning in on itself’, according to recent intelligence reports from Baghdad received by Middle Eastern intelligence agencies.

The reports are the most optimistic for several months and reflect analysts’ sense that recent elections in Iraq marked a ‘quantum shift’. They will boost the government in the run-up to the expected general election in May.

Heh.

THIS IS ZIMBABWE: A blog that may be worth watching over the next several days. (Thanks to reader Garth Godsman for the link).

NEW BLOG SITES: The American Liberty League is aimed at implementing Bill Quick’s proposal to move the Republicans in a more pro-liberty, small-government direction.

The Immigration Blog is a group blog about immigration.

UPDATE: And here’s the NeoLibertarian Network blog.

WELL, MAYBE HE HAS A FUTURE AT ABC OR CBS!

More here: “‘Crude fabrication’ is an understatement.”

MORONS? I prefer to think “brave.”

AUSTIN BAY has thoughts and history on Zimbabwe’s election. Publius notes calls for a peaceful uprising against Mugabe. And here’s a link to more information and resources on Zimbabwe’s elections.

GREYHAWK has a roundup on military recruitment and retention.

VACATIONING IN IRAQ: Reportedly, a good time was had by all.

BLOGNASHVILLE, a big blog conference that’s in, you guessed it, Nashville, is now open for registration. Here’s a link to the BlogNashville Blog and here’s the schedule. I’ll be there, and so will J.D. Lasica, Linda Seebach, Dan Gillmor, Bill Hobbs, Robin Burk, Ed Cone, Mark Glaser, LaShawn Barber, Rebecca McKinnon, and a host of others. Including you, perhaps?

I GUESS IT ALL DEPENDS on which files you want to share . . . . (Via TaxProf).

IN THE MAIL: American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of Robert Oppenheimer, by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin. Looks pretty interesting, though its Cold War history appears a bit conventional.

TIM WORSTALL’S BRITBLOG ROUNDUP is up.

IF YOU’RE NEAR A BEACH ON THE INDIAN OCEAN, you may want to move away for a while in light of this news:

8.2 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra Monday close to where a similar quake triggered a tsunami that left nearly 300,000 people dead or missing, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

A USGS spokeswoman told Reuters the quake struck 125 miles west northwest off Sibolga, Sumatra or 880 miles northwest of the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, close to where the 9.0 magnitude quake struck in December.

A spokesman for the U.S. Geological Survey told CNN that the earthquake could cause tsunamis.

Or not, but I wouldn’t stick around the beach.

UPDATE: Much more here. And here.

ANOTHER MADE-IN-THE-BLOGOSPHERE MARRIAGE is in the works. Congratulations! And details on the proposal are here, including a cool Simpsons reference.

MORE crushing of dissent. (Via LGF).

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE CAPITALISTS is up! And so is this week’s Carnival of the Cats!

HUGO NOMINATIONS ARE OUT: They include not just one, but two books that I liked a lot.

MIKE KREMPASKY, NOMINATED FOR A FIRST AMENDMENT AWARD for his defense of free blog-speech. It’s deserved.

HEH: Well, I warned you about those wacky credit card companies.

AMBER ALERT: Jason van Steenwyk notes a missing headline at The New York Times, and elsewhere in the news media. Meanwhile Lawrence Kaplan is noting the curious reluctance of the press to report good news from Iraq:

At what point does the press report a trend? The question comes to mind because, over the past month, the news from Iraq has been unusually good. Depending on which military official you ask, insurgent attacks have dropped by either a third or nearly half. The number of Americans killed in action has declined. Civilians have begun killing terrorists. Over the past week alone, U.S. forces have killed scores of insurgents in lopsided battles–in the latest, Iraqi forces spearheaded the offensive. Does this mean America has turned a corner? Can we see a light at the end of the tunnel? Does it mean anything at all?

At least to judge by the amount of press coverage devoted to the past weeks’ progress in Iraq, the answer would seem to be no. . . . The overall tenor of press coverage suggests that, if anything, the reverse is true: Even as I write these words, ABC News’s Peter Jennings briefly relays news that U.S. and Iraqi forces killed 80 insurgents today, before moving on to a much longer and gloomier feature on the ingenuity of the resistance.

Kaplan wonders if journalists are so habituated to negative spin that they can’t, or won’t, recognize good news. Meanwhile, Arthur Chrenkoff continues his effort to round up the good stuff that gets buried, though it’s telling that he leads with a story that was such good news “that even the New York Times had to sit up and take notice.” Though he notes that the Times still managed to insert an error that undermined its significance.