THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS published the Mohammed cartoons that have mobs of ignorant thugs rampaging around the world. The reader reaction was favorable:

“Thank you,” was the consistent message.

“Thank you for taking a stand for freedom of the press when so many of our U.S. newspapers caved in,” an e-mail from Breckenridge told me. “My respect for you and the Rocky Mountain News is renewed.”

“Congratulations on being an equal opportunity offender,” another e-mail said. “Well done and well said. The Danish cartoon reveals media double standards, bias and political correctness run amok (all of which continue to be denied, save for you and a few others).”

“Thank you, Mr. Temple, for not bowing to the pressure from the Muslim world concerning the printing of the cartoons,” a third writer said.

“It is time for the Western nations to know that the mere existence of the Western world is an ‘insult to Islam.’ There is a double standard at work here. We must tiptoe around to avoid offending Muslim ‘sensibilities’ while they can clearly state a goal as the destruction of Israel and run cartoons with impunity depicting other religions in an ‘insulting’ manner.

“I believe that political correctness is the downfall of a free society. It stifles free speech and expression and leads to both self-censorship and imposed censorship.”

I received only a handful, literally, of complaints, and three of them were form letters late in the week.

Badly written form letters, at that. The conclusion: “This whole experience of publishing these cartoons has been enough for me to want to wear a Danish flag pin in solidarity with that country and to regret – at least during this test of journalism’s commitment to free speech – my membership in the American Society of Newspaper Editors.”

They keep forgetting that it’s their job to tell us stuff, not to decide what we shouldn’t be told.

PAUL CARON HAS MORE on the ABA and law school diversity.

He regards them as insufficiently committed to transparency where their discussion of affirmative action, etc., is concerned.

MAINSTREAM MUSLIM LEADER urges violence against gays. In Russia. To paraphrase Tom Wolfe, theocracy is forever descending on America, but somehow it always lands somewhere else.

UPDATE: Related thoughts from Sissy Willis.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ann Althouse:

Ah, so the cartoon violence is to work as general threat to suppress all sorts of behavior. Religious fanatics with no power to force others to adopt their religion use violence and threats of violence to force others to behave as if they were followers of that religion.

Indeed.

ANOTHER MICHAEL TOTTEN REPORT FROM IRAQ:

A Western journalist I met in Erbil, who has been in Iraq for some time, told me the place challenges almost every liberal idea he has ever had in his head. I don’t know what he was like, ideologically speaking, before he got there. But he certainly doesn’t have orthodox left-wing opinions today. (Some right-wingers, especially those who think of the entire Islamic religion as a totalitarian death cult, would likewise get a crash-course in reality if they ever bothered to hang out in Iraq and meet actual Muslims.)

I was only in Iraq for two days before I had to face the sort of thing my journalist friend was talking about.

By the way, his reporting is supported by reader donations, so if you like it you might hit his tipjar.

MEDICAL BENEFITS, VACATION, TORTURE: A look inside Al Qaeda’s Human Resources Department. No, really.

SPECIAL FORCES: here’s more on Rumsfeld’s new defense strategy:

Each of the four military services has special-operations forces, which are overseen by U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla. For the most part, they fall into two categories. “Black units,” such as the Army’s elite Delta force and the Navy’s SEALS, focus primarily on highly sensitive “direct action” missions such as hunting terrorists or rescuing hostages. “White units,” like the Army’s Green Berets, work closely training, advising and in some cases fighting alongside indigenous forces world-wide.

Under Mr. Rumsfeld’s plan, special-operations forces would work in small teams, fanning out to remote corners of the globe to live with, train and advise indigenous security forces battling terrorists. Troops also would gather intelligence and build relationships with locals over the course of months and years.

“To succeed…the U.S. must often take an indirect approach, building up and working with others,” Mr. Rumsfeld’s review states. It uses the term “indirect approach” no less than 11 times.

An oblique approach often works.

JOEL KOTKIN looks at the multiculturalism of the streets. (Via ChicagoBoyz).

AUSTIN BAY comments on a permanent African peacekeeping force.

PLAME UPDATE: Tom Maguire is unimpressed with Fitzgerald’s response to discovery requests.

OVER AT FARK.COM: Situation Comedies for Mohammed: Let the Fatwahs begin! Though you’d think they’d have learned better by now.

My favorite: Allah in the Family. (Via John Hawkins).

UPDATE: Blasphemous Mohammed emoticons, via Rand Simberg.

MICHELLE MALKIN has a big cartoon war roundup.

A DAMASCUS CHICKEN EMERGENCY?

AMAZON NOW LETS CUSTOMERS “TAG” ITEMS: Tags for An Army of Davids include “Heh,” <a href=”“Indeed,” and, of course, “Puppy Blender.”

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll thinks someone should send a copy to Donald Rumsfeld.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: It’s not too late to cast your vote for the PorkBusters Hall of Shame!

Right now, Ted Stevens (R-AK) is in the lead, but it’s not over until the fat lady sings.

Meanwhile, here’s a bit of good news on pork:

BUSHNELL – Sumter County will not be pursuing federal aid to build a sports complex in the southern end of the county. When the motion was made to approve a request for federal funding, it died for lack of a second.

The issue sparked a debate Tuesday between Commissioners Dick Hoffman and Randy Mask after the matter was brought up for the second time in two weeks.

Hoffman again described the park project as a “pork” request, as he did at the meeting two weeks ago when the board was asked about funding for the complex and a hurricane shelter for the southern end of the county.

According to Citizens Against Government Waste and the Congressional Porkbusters Coalition, “pork” projects must meet two of the following criteria: they are either requested by only one chamber of Congress; they are not specifically authorized; they are not competitively awarded; they are not requested by the president; they greatly exceed the president’s budget request or the previous year’s funding; they are not the subject of Congressional hearings; or serve only a local or special interest. . . .

Hoffman said asking for government help in order to pay for projects was “too easy,” and that he would support the complex “if the citizens of this county are willing to take money out of their own pocket to pay for it.”

“That’s when the rubber hits the road,” he said.

It’s all about changing the culture.

UPDATE: It’s neck-and-neck: Robert Byrd has pulled ahead by three votes. The suspense is killing me!

FEAR THE GOVERNMENT that fears your dildo.

MORE LAW PROFESSORS WEIGH IN on the question of affirmative action and intellectual diversity.

IN THE MAIL: Bruce Bawer’s new book, While Europe Slept : How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within. Here’s an interview with Bawer by Brad Miner.

AVIAN FLU UPDATE: Global Preparedness is taking shape:

As the spread of avian flu accelerated through Europe, scientists said the world’s ability to handle the disease is improving.

“If a catastrophic pandemic occurred tomorrow, everyone in the world would be unprepared,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, or NIAID. Still, he added: “We’re so much better off now than we were six months ago, a year ago.”

Read the whole thing, for good news and bad. And Sen. Bill Frist talked about these issues, too, in our last podcast (also available via iTunes).

MY COMPLAINT ABOUT BELLSOUTH last night has gotten this response from Rand Simberg.

Maybe I should switch to Knology. The thing is, they’ve been very responsive in the past, but this time it’s like everything goes into a black hole.

UPDATE: Well, there’s a guy out there now, though they were supposed to call me before he showed up and nobody did.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Fixed now. The guy was, as always, nice and competent. But the online repair form seems not to have worked at all; the whole thing was in response to my phoning the robots last night, not to my online repair request from the day before.

STRATEGYPAGE:

Syria’s attempt to leverage Moslem anger, over the Danish cartoons of Mohammed that have recently been published in some Western newspapers, seems to have backfired. By permitting the protest demonstrations against several Western embassies to turn into riots, the Syrian government appears to have been attempting to refurbish its connections with Islam. But some analysts in the region believe that the actual result has been to encourage anti-government Islamic extremists. This pattern is being seen in many Moslem nations, most of them run by dictators that normally do not allow free expression by the people.

Indeed.

ANN ALTHOUSE: “So the Senate Intelligence Committee is not going to investigate President Bush’s (supposedly) controversial surveillance program. There was also a 96 to 3 vote today in the Senate not to hold up the Patriot Act. Quite a fizzle, no?”

MICKEY KAUS: “The possibility that Cheney would resign–allowing Bush to appoint and anoint a successor–seemed plausible before Cheney’s hunting accident. It’s probably less likely now, because Bush wouldn’t want to be seen as having given in to the press mob.”

But Sean Hackbarth has some candidates.

DICK CHENEY has inspired a new video game!

GUN REGISTRATION: Such a bad idea that even the Canadians are scrapping it. “One former Mountie called the registry ‘totally useless’ because criminals don’t register their guns.” Too bad they didn’t figure that out a few billion dollars ago, but at least it’s an object lesson for the United States.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: The National Journal is subscription-only and expensive, but Daniel Glover has reproduced some pork-related articles on his blog, with permission.

Here’s Tempest in a Barrel:

For $495, an outfit called TheCapitol.Net will teach you how to feed at the trough. The firm, which does training seminars on how Washington works, is offering a one-day course on how to get an earmark. If you sign up, the folks at TheCapitol.Net will even teach you how to counter “public criticism of pork.” . . .

Suddenly, however, “public criticism of pork” is all the rage, and earmarks are the target. Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham, R-Calif., resigned from the House and is going to prison for taking bribes to use appropriations bills to steer defense contracts to his corporate friends. Lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty to operating a favor factory that depended on getting members of Congress to help his clients in a variety of ways. Reformers have vowed to send earmarks the way of such other once-familiar Washington institutions as Duke Ziebert’s restaurant and The Washington Star.

Also, Moving Target:

“Earmarks have become the currency of corruption,” Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., wrote to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., after the guilty pleas of ex-Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham, R-Calif., and lobbyist Jack Abramoff. “We can’t allow this to continue.”

But the road to earmark reform is potholed with definitional booby traps. Take these examples: $1.7 million to rehabilitate historic buildings at White Grass Dude Ranch in Grand Teton National Park, Wyo.; more than $1.5 billion to support “ultra-deepwater” drilling, largely directed to the Texas Energy Center in Sugar Land, Texas; a $44 million break from import duties for makers of ceiling fans, spearheaded by hardware mega-chain Home Depot.

All of the above could be considered earmarks, yet none qualify under the usual definition — that is, a project inserted into an appropriations bill by a member of Congress. The dude-ranch funding, for example, was not a request from the Wyoming congressional delegation but a line item in the White House’s 2006 National Park Service budget.

“What’s an earmark? If there’s a ship in there the administration wants, is that an earmark?” asked Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H. “The definition of how you get into this is going to be difficult.”

Read the whole thing.

And, finally, a look at Presidential vetoes of spending bills — not that we’ve seen many (by which I mean “any”) of those, lately.