INSTAPUNDIT’S AFGHANISTAN PHOTO-CORRESPONDENT, Major John Tammes, sends this report:

After a visit with the governor of Parwan province, my group went by the single gym in Charikar. Our Force Protection Officer, Squadron Leader William “Jamie” Kendall of the RAF Regiment met an Afghan who had represented his country as wrestler at the Olympics. After a playful challenge (the Squadron Leader said the other fellow was quite strong) the two emerged to show us the true Olympic Spirit.

Nice image.

THE ELECTIONS IN IRAQ: A big victory for Bill Clinton? I discuss the question, over at GlennReynolds.com. My editor: “I wonder which side will send the most hate mail over this one.”

ECONOBLOGGING FOR THE MASSES! This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up.

YOU CAN ORDER AN iPod Shuffle now — but Chris Anderson, who calls it a “value-subtracted” product, thinks that you probably shouldn’t.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES IS UP: Enjoy!

ERIC MULLER REPORTS that the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History appears to be a neo-Confederate secessionist.

That’s a bit too politically-incorrect, don’t you think? I have to say that while I understand, to a degree at least, people’s fascination with the Civil War, I’ve never understood the romanticization of the Confederacy. It didn’t last very long, it was horribly run and governed, it accomplished nothing but disaster and defeat, and it existed in the service of a horrible cause. I once angered an alumnus of Washington & Lee by suggesting that Robert E. Lee, however personally admirable he might have been in some ways, bore huge responsibility — if he had honored his oath to the Union, the war probably would have been over in six months, leaving everyone (and especially the South) better off.

One suspects that for a certain sort of infantile mind, pro-Confederacy statements provide the same sort of thrilling sense of nonconformity that Marxism has provided. This, I guess, explains the weird strain of pro-Confederate sympathy that one finds among a certain segment of libertarians. Or, of course, there’s always racism as an explanation — an explanation you’d rather believe didn’t apply, but that clearly does sometimes. Muller makes a pretty persuasive case that it applies here, and author Thomas Woods seems to have connections to some of those fringe libertarians.

As a political force, neo-Confederate sentiment is pretty trivial at the moment, even compared to the decaying remnants of Marxism. But that’s no reason not to smack it down when it appears. That’s particularly true because — as Muller’s discussion of Wood’s belief that the War on Terror is the product of a Jewish conspiracy illustrates — the overlap between crazy-left and crazy-right is getting more significant. (Indeed, there are people on the Left talking about secession, in terms that Woods might find congenial). And there’s no place for either one, especially these days.

Way back when the term “idiotarian” was coined, it was quite explicitly aimed at the idiots of the Left and Right equally. The idiots of the Right have been somewhat quieter lately, but they’re no less idiots for that.

UPDATE: Power Line notes that the book is getting bad reviews on the right, too:

This is not really a conservative take (“arch” or otherwise) on American history, after all. At its core, The Politically Incorrect Guide (or PIG) is more wheezy propaganda from the Old Confederacy. . . . On the most important matters, it weaves together all the familiar fictions: the sovereign states reserved a Constitutional right to secede, the so-called Civil War was really the War of Northern Aggression, Lincoln was a smooth-talking lawyer bent on tyranny. Blah, blah, blah. Some people never learn.

No, apparently they don’t.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Justin Raimondo appears in Muller’s comments to defend the book. But of course!

MORE: A reader sends this:

This reminds me of the time in 1966, I (aged 6) sat on my grandmother’s porch in a small farming town in Missouri. As the “yahoos” drove by in their el caminos with Confederate flags painted on the hood and horns that played Dixie on the way to the “Dog Prairie Tavern”, my grandmother clucked disapprovingly. Asking her what was wrong, she (in her late 70’s) replied: “My father fought in that war. If I could catch one of them boys, I’d give ’em a piece of my mind. I’d tell ’em: THEY LOST.”

heh
Sally Haney
Cary, IL

Heh, indeed.

YESTERDAY, I noted the following paragraph in a New York Times story on the Iraqi elections:

But if the insurgents wanted to stop people in Baghdad from voting, they failed. If they wanted to cause chaos, they failed. The voters were completely defiant, and there was a feeling that the people of Baghdad, showing a new, positive attitude, had turned a corner.

Reader Chris Fountain also noticed that it was moving steadily downward in the story as the day went on. Today he emails:

Glenn: as predicted, the offending paragraph was missing from this
morning’s hard copy. New lede: “Bombs Kill 35.”

Sigh.

Indeed. And as Ann Althouse noted, the headline has changed on the web, too. Sigh. They just can’t help themselves.

UPDATE: On the other hand, they’re not pumping this story about a lot of missing money at the CPA. Does that mean that there’s not much to it, or that they don’t want to look too negative? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

DARFUR UPDATE: “A keenly awaited U.N. investigation into human rights abuse in Sudan’s Darfur region does not describe violence against villagers there as ‘genocide,’ said Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail.”

ALPHECCA’S WEEKLY REPORT on media bias regarding guns is up.

GORDON SMITH: “If I were George Bush, I would hold up an ink-stained finger in the State of the Union address this week.”

(Via Ann Althouse, who observes that the inked finger — seen as a risk factor a few days ago — is now a triumphant symbol of democracy. Quite a transformation.)

ARTHUR CHRENKOFF rounds up good news from Iraq — and there’s more of it than usual. Arthur does a great service by compiling these reports, and the Wall Street Journal’s OpinionJournal does a great service by publishing them. Read the whole thing, and you’ll be amazed how much gets left out of the usual media reports. Maybe that’ll change now.

UPDATE: Reader Gerald Boisvert emails:

In your Chrenkoff post this morning you end by saying “Read the whole thing, and you’ll be amazed how much gets left out of the usual media reports. Maybe that’ll change now.”

Well, 6:00am MSNBC news leads with …. Michael Jackson. For two years they’ve come out of the chute with Iraq and all that’s wrong with it and our administration, but today Iraq just doesn’t seem that important. Go figure.

Yeah, go figure.

VOLOKH CONSPIRATOR TODD ZYWICKI is running for Trustee of Dartmouth College. If you’re an alumnus, you may want to support him.

CAN’T SAY I’M SURPRISED: “Arab broadcasters report more positively on Iraq election than German broadcasters.”

JOHN J. MILLER looks at the NRA’s successful pro-gun-rights election work:

In the new Congress, the NRA has a realistic hope for the first time in a decade that it can enact pro-gun legislation. There are about 50 pro-gun Democrats in the House and about a dozen in the Senate. With this dynamic, the NRA believes President Bush may soon have an opportunity to protect gun manufacturers from frivolous lawsuits and repeal the District of Columbia’s gun ban.

But has the broader Democratic party learned a lesson from the Gore and Kerry experiences?

Good question.

MICKEY KAUS offers an explanation for the Democrats’ political tin ear this week: Internet fundraising is tilting their message toward the fringe. Sounds plausible.

UPDATE: Jim Geraghty offers an alternative explanation, though not really an inconsistent one.

IS THIS A GREAT COUNTRY, OR WHAT? Our drunks are more lethal than their insurgents.