BILL QUICK posts his weekend cooking thread, and it’s about pizza.

What I love most about pizza is the tomato sauce. My complaint about a lot of places nowadays is that they seem to think I want cheese toast — they put a pound of mozzarella on, but hardly any tomato sauce. The other way is healthier and, to my mind, tastier.

UPDATE: Michael Silence agrees.

MICKEY KAUS recommends this Lazy Muncie video. It’s pretty cool.

NAVAL ACADEMY GRADS CHOOSING MARINES:

When it came time for Jake Dove, a senior at the U.S. Naval Academy, to decide how he would fulfill his required military duty after graduation, there was no question about it: Marine Corps all the way.

“In my eyes it’s a perfect community,” said Dove, an Annapolis High School graduate. “The idea of being a platoon leader in charge of guys that have done two, three tours in Iraq already, when I haven’t been over there – that’s an awesome responsibility. I’m eager to take it on.”

Despite a war that has entered its fourth year with mounting casualties and waning public support, more and more midshipmen at the Annapolis military college are volunteering for the Marines when asked to choose how they will fulfill the five-year commitment required of all academy graduates.

When the assignments were made official last month for the 992 members of the class of 2006, 209 were placed as officers with the Corps – the most in the school’s 161-year history. . . . Having a surplus of mids who want to be Marines has been a change from the Vietnam era. In 1968, the Marine Corps failed to meet its quota for the first time in academy history.

That’s very interesting.

UPDATE: The “mounting” casualties language irritated a lot of readers, who sent emails like this one from Matthias Shapiro:

I know this is a small and stupid observation, but what the is point of articles like this refering to “mounting casualites”? Casualites are, in fact, decreasing steadily. And if they’re talking about the total casualty list… do they think that we are going to see “receding casualties” anytime soon? Just a thought.

Well, there’s the whole zombie soldier angle. But yes, although “casualties,” being additive, are always going to “mount” over time barring new improvements in resurrection technology, the casualty rates are falling, something the “mounting casualties” language obscures.

Of course, we see the same error in reverse elsewhere. When we reduce spending growth rates, it’s treated as a “spending cut,” so it seems only fair that when casualty rates go down it should be treated as “receding casualties,” just for consistency’s sake, but I’m not holding my breath for that . . . .

Meanwhile, John Barton emails: “It is interesting. So too is the lack of broad coverage. There was a month or two about a year after the war started when the military missed recruiting goals. It was front page news at the Times. Since then, months in which the military has exceeded quotas go unreported, as does your item.”

Yeah, go figure.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Er, maybe I wasn’t clear above, as Hiawatha Bray emails a “correction” that seems to restate my point:

Of course, casualties in Iraq are “mounting.” They mount every time one of our guys is killed or wounded. Those who died there last year are still dead, just like Francisco Franco. So with each new casualty, the number mounts. The speed with which they’re mounting is a different issue altogether.

Isn’t that what I said above, about “casualties” being additive, and casualty rates being different? I sure thought it was, and it was certainly what I was trying to say. I guess I wasn’t clear enough.

MORE: Reader Dana Honeycutt says it was an analogy too far:

Re: Hiawatha Bray’s “correction”: His correction may have been motivated by your confusing analogy with government spending,. While it is true that the MSM refers to a reduction in the growth of spending as a “cut”, it is also true that it is possible (in principle at least!) for government spending to actually decrease. This is completely different from the additive nature of casualties, so it’s really not “the same error in reverse”.

So, while I think your main point as stated was perfectly clear, the comparison to government spending muddled it.

(Yes, I know I’m nitpicking, beating a dead horse, and being pedantic here.)

Hey, if it weren’t for those three activities, would we even have a blogosphere? But I probably should have left that last analogy off. Less is usually more with blogging, in my experience.

FINALLY: Major Richard Cleveland has the last word on this:

It would also be correct, but not politically correct, for the MSM to say that Annapolis grads are choosing to become Marines because the number of Iraqi Veterans continues to mount, and their stories of what is really happening on the front lines in Iraq are spread among those just now entering the service.

Good point, especially as the services are making use of veterans in recruiting.

IN THE MAIL: Carved in Bone : A Body Farm Novel, coauthored by my University of Tennessee colleague Bill Bass of “Body Farm” fame. (Bass is also the author of the nonfiction book, Death’s Acre, and my younger brother worked as an assistant there, boiling down corpses in turpentine with his grad-student girlfriend. Now that’s an exciting weekend. . . .)

BRUSSELS JOURNAL looks at Europe’s economic problems:

The reality of Europe’s ailing economy contrasts sharply with its economic potential and with the massive resources employed to cure its ailing growth. The whole arsenal of Keynesian remedies has now been tried and has failed one by one. Massive deficit spending throughout the eighties and nineties has left Europe with a public debt unequalled in history. The size of Europe’s monumental public debt is only surpassed by the hidden liabilities accumulated in Europe’s shortsighted pay-as-you-go public pension schemes. . . .

Europe’s well-intentioned model is not working because it does not pay to work after the taxman has taken his share. Europe is not innovating because it does not pay to innovate after the huge costs of complying with all the prescriptions, limitations and restrictions in all Europe’s overabundant licences and autorisations. Demoralization is the real cause of Europe’s stagnation. Europe’s workforce is tired of being incessantly hindered in its task of producing wealth. Demoralization is the reasen why ever more engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs flee Europe’s tax misery. Paradoxically, the Old Europe of the West must now learn from the New Europe of the East, where after years of disastrous socialism, low and simple flat taxes are being introduced, luring investors from all over the world.

Read the whole thing, and also read this prophetic email from the early days of InstaPundit.

UPDATE: More on Europe’s problems in this article. (PDF). I very much hope that the Europeans manage to turn things around, as trouble in Europe has a way of becoming trouble worldwide.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here are more thoughts from Larry Kudlow. “All of this is reminiscent of the British disease of the 1960s and ’70s. Back then, striking labor unions closed down the English economy again and again, and it took until the early 1980s for Margaret Thatcher to put an end to it.”

BELARUS UPDATE:

MINSK, Belarus Mar 25, 2006 (AP)— Thousands of Belarusians defied a massive show of force by the hard-line government Saturday, protesting in streets swarming with riot police and gathering peacefully in a park to denounce President Alexander Lukashenko after a disputed election returned him to power.

(Via Newsbeat1).

DOMENECH ROUNDUP: Ben Domenech has apologized. Here’s a story from The New York Times, which quotes me accurately — but I should note that I added that the fact that people were out to get Domenech doesn’t get him off the hook. (Related thoughts here.)

Jeff Goldstein has further thoughts.

David M, meanwhile, takes the political temperature.

Also, Julian Sanchez makes the inevitable Army of Davids point: “The truth at the core of much often-tiresome blog triumphalism is precisely that the Post probably couldn’t have vetted anyone as effectively as a blogospheric swarm.”

And here’s a report on the ESPN plagiarism story, which seems to have been resolved.

UPDATE: A fairly depressing perspective from Ed Morrissey. And here’s another post about how it’s bad for the blogosphere: “Someone thinks they won here, but in the grand scheme, everyone will turn out the loser.”

And here’s a huge roundup from Joe Gandelman. On the other hand, not everyone thinks it’s a big story — it didn’t even get a mention on Slate’s “Today’s Blogs” feature.

ANOTHER CIVIL RIGHTS VICTORY:

After years of failed efforts, vetoes and political wrangling, Kansas will join most of the nation in allowing concealed weapons permits, starting this year.

The Kansas House voted Thursday to override Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ veto of a concealed weapons bill, following a similar vote in the Senate on Wednesday. The action makes law a plan to allow citizens who pass a background check and training course to carry concealed weapons. The first applications can be filed July 1.
The House vote was 91-33, seven more votes than necessary to reject Sebelius’ veto.

“The people of Kansas have waited a long time for this,” said Sen. Phil Journey, a Haysville Republican who has worked for the bill for more than a decade, first as a citizen and then as a lawmaker.
Estimates are that 20,000 to 48,000 Kansans will apply for permits in the first four years. It will be up to Attorney General Phill Kline to work out rules for implementing the law, including whether Kansas will honor permits issued by other states.

Gun rights groups were ecstatic about crossing another state off the list of those that do not allow concealed weapons. Now, only three states have no right-to-carry law.

I hope that those backward states will catch up with the modern trend.

UPDATE: Jeff Soyer notes progress in Delaware, while some readers dispute the “three states” figure above, which does depend on definitions in a few cases. The trend, however, is indisputable.

EUGENE VOLOKH: “Trying to prevent people from being killed for their religious beliefs is not an ‘assault against Islam.’ It’s defense against Islam, or to be precise against a certain strand of Islam that regrettably cannot be dismissed as just some unimportant lunatic fringe.”

RAND SIMBERG is liveblogging the SpaceX launch, which is in just a couple of minutes. There’s also a webcast, here.

UPDATE: It got off the ground, but didn’t make it.

YET ANOTHER PLAGIARISM STORY.

HEH: “President Chirac stormed out of the first session of a European Union summit dominated by a row over French nationalism because a fellow Frenchman insisted on speaking English.”

(Via Shannon Love, who observes: “Can You Imagine if Bush Did This?”)

UPDATE: Agnes Poirier defends Chirac: “the imperialism of the English language must be fought and will be fought to the bitter end.”

NEW PROBLEMS AT COLUMBIA, according to The American Thinker and a report in the New York Sun.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION blowback?

BELARUS UPDATE:

Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus’ authoritarian president, was on Friday night facing coordinated sanctions from the European Union and US, hours after riot police wielding batons arrested 200 people staging a peaceful protest over Sunday’s disputed elections in the capital, Minsk.

EU leaders, at a summit in Brussels, and the White House both indicated they would impose visa bans on a wide range of senior officials from the former Soviet republic, including Mr Lukashenko himself. They also planned financial sanctions, such as freezes on bank accounts abroad. The tough EU and US response set them sharply at odds with Russia.

I don’t think it’s over yet.

THE CARNIVAL OF BAUER is up! So is the Carnival of Cars! [What kind of car does Jack Bauer drive? –ed. If I told you, I’d have to kill you.]

AN INTERESTING QUESTION about the war.

MARY KATHERINE HAM has pictures and a report from the Abdul Rahman rally that I mentioned earlier.

UPDATE: More pics from Tom Bridge.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Still more pics here. Meanwhile, a request for liberals to pay more attention to the case.

A REPORT OF ATF ABUSES IN EAST TENNESSEE.

UPDATE: Here’s a roundup on the story from the Knoxville News-Sentinel’s Michael Silence.

ANOTHER UPDATE: See the update here: It may have started as a dubious MG case, but apparently the later felon-in-possession charge is solid.

A BEN DOMENECH PLAGIARISM SCANDAL?

I’ve had my differences with Domenech in the past, but I hope there’s nothing to this. Some earlier writings of mine on plagiarism can be found here and here.

UPDATE: Here’s more from Howard Kurtz.

ANOTHER UPDATE: And from Michelle Malkin.

MORE: Still more here.

STILL MORE: Ben Domenech has resigned. I think they should replace him with Bill Hobbs — experienced journalist and blogger! Or maybe Bill Quick, though he’s not exactly Red.

Analysis here.

EVEN MORE: Bill Quick is honored to be nominated but doubts it would work out:

Good heavens! If the Kossacks et al hated Domenech, can you imagine how they would feel about me? Not to mention the Bush-bots and the committed religious? And the field day they’d have rooting through my years and years of writing on the net, not just on blogs, but in newsgroups and my published work?

The only way they could run me as a blogger would be as “The Blogger Who Pisses Everybody Off.” I doubt they are interested in that kind of thing.

Upside for Bill — it might improve sales of his past work!

Meanwhile, NewsAlert observes that all is not lost: “Still available to blog for the Washington Post are Doris Kearns Goodwin,Laurence Tribe,and Mike Barnicle.”

And Jon Henke comments on the underlying debate:

Ideological equality at newspapers? I don’t recall the Left being worked up about this before….. …but I’m very interested to see them pursue it at the New York Times, too!

Indeed. And Dave Price emails: “If not Bill Quick, why not Jeff Goldstein? The Left has already been about as abusive to him as they can be.” Yep. And it rolls right off. Plus, who could read Goldstein’s stuff and even imagine that it had been previously published?

FINALLY: Don Surber emails: “WaPo took your advice and tried to replace experienced, trained editorial writers and columnists with a blogger named Ben Domenech. Charges of racism and plagiarism immediately ensued.”

Well, I don’t think that argument flies — at least, the “experienced, trained” Nick Confessore embarrassed the New York Times this week, too. And it’s not like we haven’t seen plagiarism from “experienced, trained” journalists. More on the confluence of these two stories here.

And the last word — in this already-too-long post, anyway — goes to Patrick Hynes, who says it’s a story about the superiority of the new media over the old:

Interestingly, it was Ben Domenech’s writing in the Old Media that got him in trouble, not his blogging. So I will vociferously defend bloggers as a race when the Oldies say “Blogger was a plagiarist” and “Blogs have no credibility,” which is inevitable. . . .

This is, if you think about it, a story about the corruptibility of the Old Media anyway. Like I said before, blogging is about sincerity and authenticity – two things foreign to the Old Media. And attempts by the Old Media to fake sincerity and authenticity will fall flat. Every time.

Yes, those experienced, trained editors and fact-checkers missed the plagiarism that blog-readers caught.

OKAY, NOW THIS IS THE LAST WORD: Ben Domenech has posted a response to his critics.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT: Evan Coyne Maloney was kicked off the Yale campus for asking Taliban-related questions. Lux et Veritas, indeed.

I HAVEN’T READ KEVIN PHILLIPS’ American Theocracy, which I saw piled up at my local bookstore the other day, but to paraphrase Tom Wolfe it seems that although theocracy is always descending on America, somehow it always lands in the Middle East. Even the Publisher’s Weekly review (follow the link to read it) says that Phillips overstates his case, but then adds something that is surely true: “Expect him to make some provocative appearances on chat shows.” And, to be fair, I’ve made a much milder version of this critique myself.

Rather than theocracy, however, I think that much of what’s often identified by pundits as religious sentiment in American politics has more to do with reaction against smug moralizing. As Mickey Kaus notes in response to a new poll on American attitudes toward gay marriage: “Americans may or may not like gay marriage, but they really hate having gay marriage crammed down their throat by self-righteous, unelected liberal judges! What the poll shows is that the gay marriage cause is only now finally recovering from the damage done to it by Anthony Lewis’ wife.”

There’s a book to be written on that phenomenon, I’m sure. Mickey?

IRANIAN NUKES: Don’t count on a Deus ex Tel Aviv.

AGGREGATING: Another Army of Davids review, this one at CBS Public Eye, and with this interesting passage:

While reading blogger Glenn Reynolds’s new book, “An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government and Other Goliaths,” I was disappointed that he made only the briefest mention of the CBS scandal known as “Rathergate.”

Oh, well.

FREEDOM OF RELIGION IN AFGHANISTAN: Cam Edwards emails: “Not that you’re the Craigslist of rallies or anything, but I wanted to let you know that there’ll be a rally in support of Abdul Rahman outside the Afghan Embassy in Washington [today] at noon. The address is 2341 Wyoming Ave NW if you’d care to mention it.”