I FREQUENTLY WARN MY STUDENTS about overreliance on spellcheckers. Here’s a good object lesson.

THE JOY OF PODCASTING: It was good for me, too.

DAVID GREGORY ON IMUS: Transcript here, video here.

I wonder if he’s related to this guy?

UPDATE: Here’s a link to the full audio.

MARC COOPER: “Oh, I can’t tell you how much I love this one. Bill Clinton advising the monarchs of Dubai on how to sell the ports deal. I’d expect no less from Slick Willie. Just happy to see one more confirmation of what absolute, rank opportunists he and the Missus are. It all reminds me of how the Whitewater development project specialized in ripping off working class rubes with bait and switch mortgage deals. Yum-yum!”

He also wonders how Bush is going to get out of trouble on the ports deal. Perhaps it depends on what else happens in the next 45 days.

BLAMING IRAN for the mosque attack. I don’t know, but it seems like the way to bet.

UPDATE: Greg Djerejian emails to disagree: “The chances of Iran being involved in the Samarra shrine bombing are somewhere between zero and less than zero. It’s almost as absurd as Ahmadi-Nejad blaming the Jews and Americans for it. . . . The trail is much simpler. It goes to al-Qaeda in Iraq, namely Zarqawi.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Gary Metz thinks that Djerejian is too quick to dismiss the Iranian connection:

First of all, Al Qaeda takes credit for its attacks. They have NOT taken credit for this.

But it is also important to remember that Zarqawi has been spending much of his time inside of Iran.

Lastly, Greg just dismisses the preliminary findings of those on the ground. Hmmmm.

Hard to know. I can certainly see why Iran would want a Sunni-Shia split.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jon Henke looks at some other Iran evidence. And TigerHawk has related thoughts.

DIVERSITY ISSUES at The New York Times.

THE ONION:

In a press conference on the steps of the Capitol Monday, Congressional Democrats announced that, despite the scandals plaguing the Republican Party and widespread calls for change in Washington, their party will remain true to its hopeless direction.

“We are entirely capable of bungling this opportunity to regain control of the House and Senate and the trust of the American people,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said to scattered applause. “It will take some doing, but we’re in this for the long and pointless haul.” . . . “Don’t lose faithlessness, Democrats,” Kennedy said. “The next election is ours to lose. To those who say we can’t, I say: Remember Michael Dukakis. Remember Al Gore. Remember John Kerry.”

Kennedy said that, even if the Democrats were to regain the upper hand in the midterm elections, they would still need to agree on a platform and chart a legislative agenda—an obstacle he called “insurmountable.”

“Universal health care, the war in Iraq, civil liberties, a living wage, gun control—we’re not even close to a consensus within our own ranks,” Kennedy said. “And even if we were, we wouldn’t know how to implement that consensus.”

Sounds like The Onion has been reading Megan McArdle.

Of course, the Republicans’ problem is that they’ve got ideas — they just don’t use them.

CRUNCHY CON WARS: Not being a “con,” though I suppose I have my crunchy side, I’m happy to be left out of this.

AS I NOTED A WHILE BACK, I liked Peter Hamilton’s book Pandora’s Star enough that I immediately ordered the sequel, Judas Unchained. It just showed up!

WE’RE BACK TO HEARING ABOUT KATRINA, which is a pretty good sign the media is trying to gin up another anti-Bush swarm (“While the information in the video has been public for months, and was the subject of hearings and reports by Congress and the White House, the footage is giving new life to charges that the administration was detached and unresponsive in the face of one of the nation’s worst natural disasters.” In other words, there’s no news here, but we hope it’ll have traction anyway.) Patterico says that the Los Angeles Times is dishonestly portraying the video’s contents, but if you get to the second page of the LAT story you find a bit of a dig at the AP for selective editing:

The AP video does not include footage of Chertoff asking Brown whether he needs any other help or of Chertoff asking whether Brown wants him to approach the Department of Defense. Transcripts show that to both questions, Brown indicated that no additional assistance was needed.

In the transcript of a briefing the following day, Aug. 29, Brown is quoted as saying that Bush “is very engaged, and he’s asking a lot of really good questions I would expect him to ask.”

That Aug. 29 transcript showed that hours after the hurricane hit, federal and state officials remained optimistic about handling the disaster and were unaware that the levees in New Orleans were failing.

Katrina taught the media that if they all swarmed Bush at once they could do harm even if — as turned out to be the case — much of what they reported was outright false. I’ve noticed a lot more of that since. The Bush Administration is quite capable of making its own trouble with PR — see the ports issue, for example — but it’s also quite clear that the media is doing this sort of thing for entirely partisan reasons.

UPDATE: For some history here, it’s worth revisiting this post. And this one. Also a reader sends this useful point:

I have to admit, it had me spun up for about a half an hour, too. What did Bush know? When did he know it? Then I stopped and remembered… wait a minute! Didn’t we already know that Bush knew about the potential of the hurricane in advance, because he made calls to Mayor Nagin asking him to make the evacuation call?

Where is the actual news, here?

The news is that the port-deal publicity is dying down, Iraq’s not in a civil war, and we need something to fill the headlines with anti-Bush stuff.

UPDATE: Wizbang notes a Rathergate connection.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Gateway Pundit has more on what people knew when.

BILL ROGGIO NOTES A BIG AL QAEDA ARREST and also observes: “CNN irresponsibly obscures Rahman’s ties to al-Qaeda.”

Austin Bay, however, does not.

MARK STEYN talks about America and the United Nations, which he describes as

a shamefully squalid organization whose corruption is almost impossible to exaggerate. If you think—as the media and the left do in this country—that Iraq is a God-awful mess (which it’s not), then try being the Balkans or Sudan or even Cyprus or anywhere where the problem’s been left to the United Nations. If you don’t want to bulk up your pension by skimming the Oil-for-Food program, no need to worry. Whatever your bag, the UN can find somewhere that suits—in West Africa, it’s Sex-for-Food, with aid workers demanding sexual services from locals as young as four; in Cambodia, it’s drug dealing; in Kenya, it’s the refugee extortion racket; in the Balkans, sex slaves. On a UN peace mission, everyone gets his piece.

Ouch.

PUBLIUS LOOKS at the politics of the Iraqi shrine attack, the questionable role of Al Sadr, and the Iranian influence. Publius seems to have joined the rather large group of people who think that it is time for Sadr to go.

Meanwhile Chester looks at the key strategic question of the war on terror.

UPDATE: Here’s more on the post-shrine attack fallout from StrategyPage. And Mickey Kaus pronounces the perennially doomsaying New York Times one of the major casualties of the attack. “I’m not saying Bill Keller’s headline and lede writers were amping up the Iraq hysteria in order to manufacture another Tet. Maybe they just have no judgment or perspective.”

The folks at the Times are lucky they’ve got Mickey to defend them!

A DOUBLE-BARRELLED APPROACH: “Bill Clinton, former US president, advised top officials from Dubai two weeks ago on how to address growing US concerns over the acquisition of five US container terminals by DP World. It came even as his wife, Senator Hillary Clinton, was leading efforts to derail the deal.”

MICKEY KAUS: “I notice my hits have been down a bit this week–must be the lack of Brokeback coverage.”

A LOOK AT Saddam’s death warrants.

PEOPLE OFTEN ASK where the moderate Muslims are, and why they don’t stand up. Well, Tim Blair has noticed something:

The forbidden cartoons of Mohammadness have been published more widely in Muslim countries than in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada combined. In Malaysia alone, three newspapers ran images – compared to just two newspapers in Australia.

Not a single major US daily went near them.

Though I’d call the Rocky Mountain News major.

UPDATE: And the Philadelphia Inquirer.

AMERICA’S NEWEST FRIEND: Jacques Chirac? “After five years of trying to build an anti-U.S. front with Germany—splitting Europe down the middle—the French president is reaching into his diplomatic toolbox and coming up with initiatives that are increasingly in tune with America’s global agenda.”

UPDATE: Jim Hoft emails that it’s not just Chirac. He says that Silvio Berlusconi is shamelessly using President Bush to get votes.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A couple of readers complain that the update equates Chirac with Berlusconi, who’s been a reliable friend all along. I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise; I thought that it was interesting that Berlusconi thought Bush was worth votes at home, despite what we hear about US unpopularity in Europe.

A LOOK AT the best blogging newspapers in the United States.

TOM MCMAHON writes on “What I have learned in fifteen years” of taking care of a brain-damaged son.

I’m happy to say that the medical woes that my family has experienced haven’t reached this caliber, but I’m sorry to say that I’ve learned many of the same things.

Speaking of which, if you’re an oncologist and know something about spindle-cell sarcoma, I’d appreciate you dropping me a line. No it’s not a problem in my immediate family, but it’s a problem in my family nonetheless, alas.

TOM FRIEDMAN ON LOU DOBBS: I couldn’t get the video to play, but apparently he’s not happy.

ZEYAD is still unhappy with the security situation in Iraq, and entirely unimpressed with Saddam’s trial.

THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE publishes an extensive review of events in Iraq over the past week, and pronounces the media coverage poor. But there’s this observation:

There was a step 4 to the plan, by the way. That would be the violent takfiri “response” to the desired Shiite response to the shrine bombing. While that Shiite response was less than anticipated, the response of the media met the planners expectations to the point they could move forward anyway, so we’re seeing elements of step 4 enacted now with continuing violence across Iraq. More people are dying, but no, you’re not seeing civil war.

And don’t offer undue credit to the American troops. You are seeing proof of what they all know to be true – violence is ongoing, but the Iraqis are increasingly capable of handling it themselves. A few more “civil wars” like this one and the troops will indeed be home.

He’s particularly hard on the Washington Post’s wildly inflated death toll.

JOHN STOSSEL defends freedom of excellence.

A DARK SIDE OF THE ARMY OF DAVIDS? Yankee Muse reads the book and foresees an Army of Mohammeds. Well, as I note in the book, terrorism is an early bad manifestation of technology empowering individuals and small groups. Fortunately, that’s not the whole story.

UPDATE: N.Z. Bear emails:

Quick reaction thought to the terrorism as Army of Davids-like –you’re exactly right that terrorism was an early manifestation of a similar phenomenon. The key difference, however, is that while we have already seen what happens when destructive technologies become widely available (explosives, etc.), we are now seeing what happens when *constructive* technologies become highly distributed. We’re already dealing with the bad side of the coin, now we’re at least starting to see some of the good…

Yes, that’s part of my take. And of Vernor Vinge’s.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Oh, what the hell: This guy’s endorsements do sell books.