POSITIVE NEWS FROM IRAQ, in the New York Times: Well, kind of.

JIM GERAGHTY has a roundup on the ongoing secularist vs. islamist struggle in Turkey.

LOU DOLINAR HAS BEEN LOOKING INTO THE MEDIA FAILURES DURING KATRINA:

Remember the dozens, maybe hundreds, of rapes, murders, stabbings and deaths resulting from official neglect at the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina? The ones that never happened, as even the national media later admitted?

Sure, we all remember the original reporting, if not the back-pedaling.

Here’s another one: Do you remember the dramatic TV footage of National Guard helicopters landing at the Superdome as soon as Katrina passed, dropping off tens of thousands saved from certain death? The corpsmen running with stretchers, in an echo of M*A*S*H, carrying the survivors to ambulances and the medical center? About how the operation, which also included the Coast Guard, regular military units, and local first responders, continued for more than a week?

Me neither. Except that it did happen, and got at best an occasional, parenthetical mention in the national media. The National Guard had its headquarters for Katrina, not just a few peacekeeping troops, in what the media portrayed as the pit of Hell. Hell was one of the safest places to be in New Orleans, smelly as it was. The situation was always under control, not surprisingly because the people in control were always there. . . .

I initially heard about the Dome headquarters from Maj. John T. Dressler, who serves with the National Guard Bureau in Washington D.C, an organization that coordinates efforts of State Guard units which serve under their respective governors. Dressler was present in the command tent there and pulled together after-action reports for the Guard as a whole from its fifty-plus individual state commands. His account was so far at variance with the picture the media portrayed that I suspected a hoax, as did my RCP editor. As it turns out, various Guard documents, personal memories, and sworn testimony support his story, which in Louisiana is no great secret. It’s just the rest of the country that’s been kept in the dark.

Read the whole thing. The Katrina reporting represented a massive media failure, one that they’ve never really admitted.

UPDATE: Reader Michael Parker emails:

It’s only a failure if their goal was to report the news.

It was a raging success if you believe their goal was to diminish Bush.

Given how proud of their Katrina coverage the press remains to this day, it seems like the latter is the most likely.

It’s certainly true that they have nothing to be proud of. Indeed, their mis-reporting hampered rescue efforts and may well have cost lives.

MARK TAPSCOTT: Cut their pay and send them home?

IT’S ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE’S BIRTHDAY: Everybody talks about Sherlock Holmes, but it’s worth remembering that Doyle thought other works of his superior. You might check out The White Company — worth it for the N.C. Wyeth illustrations alone, and predecessor to much modern military/fantasy fiction. You might also try the Professor Challenger stories.

UPDATE: Reader John Chalupa notes that Doyle is in the public domain, and links to a bunch of stuff available free online.

Public domain? We still have that?

MICHAEL YON INTERVIEWS Bill Roggio, who’s on his way to Afghanistan.

Ed Morrissey interviews Bernard Goldberg, who’s spent some time in enemy territory, too.

DOES HEZBOLLAH KNOW SOMETHING that we don’t?

THE ANIMATED MARK WARNER that appears on this site is kind of cool, but I imagine it would get pretty annoying after a while — though it’s smart enough to tell when you’ve been there more than once.

HOW TO HIDE YOUR MONEY IN WASHINGTON: A roundtable discussion by various members of Congress.

A GEORGE W. BUSH letter in response to Ahmadinejad. Heh.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Tim Chapman reports that Trent Lott’s “Railroad to Nowhere” seems to be going nowhere for the moment, as it won’t be in the conference report for the emergency Afghanistan / Iraq / Katrina bill.

That’s good news, but it could, of course, reappear in some other piece of legislation down the line. And probably will.

MICAH WRIGHT AGAIN? The Milbloggers say they’ve spotted another fake antiwar veteran.

MANAGING TO LOOK BUSY: My TCS Daily column today is about companies that are cracking down on employee websurfing, and why you should short their stock.

THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF RUSSIA:

If present trends continue, the population of Russia will decline from 143 million to 100 million by 2050. Not only that, but by 2050, most of the population may be Moslem. Currently, about 15 percent of Russians are Moslem, and the average Moslem family has three or more children, while the average non-Moslem family has one or two. While Christian (largely Slavic) Russians have seen their numbers tumble, the Moslem population of Russia has grown over 40 percent since 1989 (from births, migration and conversions). There has also been a religious revival, with the number of mosques growing from under a thousand when the Soviet Union collapsed, to over 8,000 today. That means Moslem men drink a lot less, and live healthier, and longer, lives. . . .

The 70 years of communist rule was very damaging and demoralizing to most Russians, as it was to other nations that endured less of it in Eastern Europe. Prosperity and democracy have arrived in a fitful and threadbare state. Things are getting better, but that usually means that women have fewer children. It’s been that way for thousands of years. The aristocrats were notorious for having small families, and the main reason was that the wealthy wives had better, and less arduous, things to do than pregnancy and child rearing. Because of that, Russia will probably have a larger Moslem minority by 2050, but not a majority, because even Moslem women have fewer children as they become educated and more affluent.

Stay tuned.

A PODCAST INTERVIEW WITH ELIZABETH EDWARDS, from the Personal Democracy Forum.

THE DNC IS CONSULTING ITS LAWYERS after a story on Howard Dean.

UPDATE: Drudge retracts, more or less.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Freeman Hunt: “I wonder how fast most MSM outlets would go bankrupt if the GOP sued them every time they presented false information about Republicans.”

THE MILBERG, WEISS CASE: Jonathan Adler has a roundup of reactions regarding the prosecution of class-action lawyers for illegal payments.

“PINCH” SULZBERGER apologizes for ruining the world.

Meanwhile, a standing ovation for Condi Rice at Boston College.

UPDATE: Background on Condi here: Obviously, we need to keep theology out of politics!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Condi video here.

JOHN THUNE, porkmeister?

SO I’M READING CHARLES STROSS’S NEW BOOK, The Clan Corporate, and it’s pretty good, though I’m finding the pace a bit slower than the two previous books in this sequence. Lots of internal politics on both sides, which slows the story. It’s still good — it’s Stross — but I think the pacing could have used some work. I’ll let you know if I still feel the same way at the finish.

VIRGINIA POSTREL WRITES ABOUT HER KIDNEY DONATION in the Texas Monthly. You can hear her talk about it here.

IT’S ERIC UMANSKY VS. JASON LEOPOLD: Leopold, according to an email from Umansky, threatened to sue, which strikes me as very unwise given his circumstances. The real question, in light of Umansky’s post, is how Leopold ever got a job, even at a place like Truthout. Would anyone listen to a blogger with that kind of track record?

UPDATE: More unwise threats.

REBECCA MACKINNON: “Skype ignores users concerned about China censorship.”

HOWARD KURTZ:

Robert Luskin, Karl Rove’s lawyer, says he spent most of the day on May 12 taking his cat to the veterinarian and having a technician fix his computer at home.

He was stunned, therefore, when journalists started calling to ask about an online report that he had spent half the day at his law office, negotiating with Patrick Fitzgerald — and that the special prosecutor had secretly obtained an indictment of Rove.

The cat’s medical tests, Luskin says, found that “the stools were free of harmful parasites, which is more than I can say for this case.”

Heh.