GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS ON FIRING U.S. ATTORNEYS.

MALCOLM RIFKIND: Europe has failed Britain in the Iran crisis.

No surprise. Failing its allies is what Europe does.

CHARLIE RANGEL EXPLAINS the Democrats’ troop-withdrawal pork: “Because they needed the votes.”

AN IRANIAN “STUDENT PROTEST” AT THE BRITISH EMBASSY: Gateway Pundit has a roundup.

Meanwhile, the Iranian Embassy in Britain remains safe, just as mobs did not threaten the Iranian Embassy in the United States in 1979.

Plus, Jews for Jesus in Iran?

GORDON SMITH LOOKS AT the dystopian potential of corporate law. I think he’s onto something. (Via Bainbridge.)

DISINTERESTED JOURNALISM: John McCain heckled by CNN reporter.

Ah, professionalism.

UPDATE: Hard to argue: “Michael Ware’s behavior here is flat out unprofessional. If CNN keeps him on staff after this incident, that says something, doesn’t it?”

ANOTHER UPDATE: John Tabin: “Heckling at a press conference is very rude, and wouldn’t be acceptable even from an opinion journalist (I wouldn’t dream of laughing in Nancy Pelosi’s face during a press conference). That said, isn’t it better when guys like Ware let their biases hang out, rather than embedding them in reports that are ostensibly objective?”

Wouldn’t it be better still if they just did an honest job of doing, you know, their jobs?

And if a blogger had done this, wouldn’t the usual CJR types be tugging their beards and talking about the dangers of admitting unwashed, unprofessional blogger-types to press conferences? ‘Cause bloggers can’t be trusted to behave properly around the grownups the way professional journalists can. . . .

MORE: Reader Patrick Carroll emails:

We’ve seen things like this a few times in recent years. Take, for example, “The Khmer Rouge Canon 1975-1979: The Standard Total Academic View on Cambodia” (http://jim.com/canon.htm).

Basically, a consensus forms about what should be the standard view on an issue, after which all reporting supports the view, and all dissidence is treated to screaming anathema. I call this current doctrine, this current dogma, the “Standard Total Journalistic View of Iraq”.

The STJVI is that we’ve lost. We’re screwups. We deserve the world’s hatred. Iraq cannot be saved. John McCain’s failure to toe the line got him the screaming anathema.

This is going to get worse, you know.

Hmm. There’s a developing standard view on journalists and the war, too.

MORE: Ware denies the heckling, and he’s got video. Looks like Drudge got burned, as, to a lesser degree, did those of us who relied on him.

A LOOK AT FRED THOMPSON and “the actor factor:”

Hodding Carter III, who advised Jimmy Carter in the 1976 campaign and is an expert on Southern politicians, said he believes Thompson is “blessed” with the kind of exposure that other candidates have to spend months, even years, building.

“The sucker is out there making movies and television, a constant presence who has a political background on several grounds,” Hodding Carter said. “He has about two full generations of name recognition among people who are in the (political) business, first as Watergate minority counsel and then as Republican activist. And then as movie and television star.

“I think if there is any kind of gridlock in the sense of these earlier months (in the GOP primary), a lot of people are going to be looking for the breakout fellow.

“And he is more likely the breakout fellow, a little more like the guy McCain was last time (in 2000).”

That seems right to me. And he’d certainly do better than a Kerry – McCain ticket! Call me crazy, but I don’t see that one flying.

“NO BALCONIES:” RICHARD MINITER reports on politics in Istanbul.

UPDATE: Claire Berlinski — InstaPundit’s Istanbul correspondent — emails:

Glenn, I see plenty of new buildings with balconies in Turkey. The big problem, obvious even to the casual observer, is that they’ve been built in great haste and on the cheap to meet skyrocketing demand for housing. Many of them have been built illegally or semi-legally. The Turkish Chamber of Commerce estimates that 65 percent of these new buildings have been constructed without a permit. Probably 40 percent don’t comply with earthquake safety regulations. When the earthquake comes, they’ll collapse, like they did in Izmir. The political fallout from the last quake was huge (17,000 people died, and the deaths were largely attributable to shoddy construction). If this happens in Istanbul, the army won’t have to step in to replace the AKP — they’ll be hanged by lynch mobs.

Ouch.

NOT PLAYING WITH A FULL DECK: Unsurprising, considering who’s involved.

IN THE MAIL: HALO: GHOSTS OF ONYX — also in an audiobook edition. I’ve never played the game, but it’s apparently spawned a whole host of side enterprises.

ANN ALTHOUSE – angling for a slot as guest-host on Three Sheets? I think she could pull it off!

UPDATE: Hey, this could almost be one of Ann’s blog videos! Give her a film crew and a budget!

Okay, probably paired with Nina Kamic. I think it would fly.

HOW’S THE SURGE GOING? John Wixted offers a quantitative analysis.

IT’S THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE LILLELID MURDERS, and the Knoxville News-Sentinel has a retrospective.

That’s the tragedy that the Insta-Wife made a documentary about. You can see the online trailer here.

OUCH.

GOOGLE’S APRIL FOOL: I actually like the idea, though. Except for the part about it being made from “96% post-consumer organic soybean sputum.”

ROGER SIMON writes on Omar, Mohammed, cognitive dissonance and the folks at the Daily Kos.

JULES CRITTENDEN on Iran.

I LOOK AT THE DARTMOUTH TRUSTEE RACE, in this New York Post column. “Recent decades have seen one insular and unaccountable institution after another broken open – from the Big Three auto companies to securities brokerages to IBM. Now this trend toward openness and accountability – fostered in part by technology, and in part by stakeholders’ unwillingness to be taken advantage of – is coming to higher education. The bumpy ride for university administrators may be just beginning.”

BOBBY JINDAL saves Louisiana?

SOCKS, SCISSORS, PAPER: More on the Sandy Berger story. “Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., is charging a cover-up by the Justice Department in connection with the 2003 theft and destruction of top secret documents by Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger.”

MICKEY KAUS: “Do Times reporters talk only to the interest group that hands them the study? [At least they weren’t having sex–ed Yes, then they might be biased!]”

IT’S CORN AND MINITER AGAIN — only this time without Miniter, who’s in Turkey, and is replaced by Eli Lake. Still, it’s better than Hardball!

FREE GRANNY DUNHAM? Or just leave her alone? I’d go with number two.

A U.S. / CHINA tariff war?

I LIKE BIG KNOBS: They’ve put my next column online early, and it’s about the superiority of traditional tactile user interfaces — like knobs and dials — over modern systems using nested menus and lots of tiny buttons. (Yes, I’ve ranted on this topic before, but the designers don’t seem to have caught on.)

This also produced an interesting discussion on Slashdot, with most discussants seeming to agree with my position. I especially liked this observation. It certainly rings true in my experience.

UPDATE: Gerard van der Leun thinks there’s something funny about the intro to this post, but I don’t see what’s funny about Mackie controllers.