AND THE IRONY IS KIND OF SWEET: “The campaign finance laws that the Times has so righteously championed have, by its own admission, trapped the paper in a violation.”

MORE ON THE SHAPE OF INTERNET POLITICS, over at the U. Chi. law faculty blog.

AXIS OF SOMETHING.

LIVEBLOGGING THE Halo 3 launch party.

L.A. TIMES: MOVEON’S THIN SKIN prompts threats against CafePress.

They told me that if George W. Bush were reelected simple Internet parodies would be ruthlessly suppressed by a political commissariat. And they were right!

NO GAYS IN IRAN? Daniel Blatt is unpersuaded by Ahmadinejad’s claims.

Heck, I don’t even believe him when he says they don’t have nukes.

UPDATE: I’m going with the stones thing: “Obvious follow-up question: Is this a scientific anomaly based on some sort of Persian resistance to chemical differences in the brain? Or were, like, stones involved?”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ouch: “Speaking of ridiculous, does Ahmadinejad think he’s fooling anybody with that combover? Mahmoud, baby, even Rudy gave his up back in the ’90s”

MORE: Reuters reports: Outrage turns to laughter at Ahmadinejad NY speech:

Vilified as a Holocaust denier, a supporter of terrorism and a backer of Iraqi insurgents, the president of Iran was actually able to make New Yorkers burst into laughter — but not at a joke.

“In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at Columbia University on Monday in response to a question about the recent execution of two gay men there.

“In Iran we do not have this phenomenon,” he continued. “I do not know who has told you we have it.”

Loud laughs and boos broke from the audience of about 700 people, mostly students at the Ivy League school whose garb included “Stop Ahmadinejad’s Evil” T-shirts.

Plus this:

As many as 25,000 people from around the metro area and the country flocked to the U.N. to protest Ahmadinejad’s visit.

Many are demanding an end to Iran’s nuclear threat.

I’d be happy to see that. And more here:

The president of Iran was booed yesterday when he told an audience at one of America’s leading universities that the Holocaust required “further research”, amid noisy protests against the decision to grant him a platform. . . .

He was at times taken aback and appeared distinctly uncomfortable at the hostile reaction to his views, no more so than when he said scientists should be able to re-examine the extermination of six million Jews by the Nazis.

I hope he has an unpleasant visit. This won’t help his mood: Schwarzenegger will sign Iran divestiture bill. “‘California has a long history of leadership and doing what’s right with our investment portfolio. Last year, I was proud to sign legislation to divest from the Sudan to take a powerful stand against genocide. I look forward to signing legislation to divest from Iran to take an equally powerful stand against terrorism.’ AB 221 by Assemblymember Joel Anderson (R- La Mesa) creates the California Public Divest from Iran Act which prohibits CalPERS and CalSTRS from investing public employee retirement funds in a company with business operations in Iran.”

Further thoughts here.

DATING ADVICE from Megan McArdle.

MEET THE FRAGGERS: Andrew Breitbart and David Ehrenstein on Hollywood’s antiwar films.

JOHN HICKMAN argues in favor of withdrawing from the Outer Space Treaty.

GUN OWNER STORY gets more attention than U.T. football.

VIDEO: An interview with Zack Snyder, director of the movie 300. The movie’s now out on DVD.

MORE ON Ahmadinejad at Columbia.

UPDATE: Nick Schweitzer wonders why people care about Ahmadinejad: “While I certainly question the motives of those at Columbia University who invited him to speak… my questions center on them, not him. Why would they want him to speak? What value does his insight into world politics bring? His hatred of Jews? His hatred of freedom? His encouragement of terrorism? Does Columbia find these things valuable because they agree with them, or because they want to provide him a forum to pronounce his views and hope that students will backlash against him?” I think, though, that those are the concerns of most people on the subject, especially given the free-speech double standards we’ve seen at universities recently.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A Lee Bollinger Rope-a-Dope?

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Investigate earmarks at EarmarkWatch.org.

A GIANT ROUNDUP of Simpsons film references, with screenshots from The Simpsons and the referenced movies.

UN-BRANDING at Columbia.

IS NEOCONSERVATISM A “Jewish movement?”

A PERFECT green world.

“AL QAEDA LOST:” Another report from Iraq, from Michael Totten.

THE END OF A “golden era” for law schools? I think the real lesson here is the danger of overborrowing via student loans.

THE U.A.W. is now officially on strike against GM.

UPDATE: Ouch.

MY DISCUSSION WITH CASS SUNSTEIN HAS KICKED OFF, over at the University of Chicago Law Faculty Blog.

IN THE MAIL: Bill Greene’s Common Genius, a book about “how ordinary people create prosperous societies and how intellectuals make them collapse.” Hmm. Doesn’t sound entirely different from Joseph Tainter’s thesis.

MAHMOUD’S MANHATTAN MOMENT: An ongoing roundup of news at Pajamas Media.

WELL, HE DOES HAVE A BOOK OUT CALLED WORLD WAR IV: Norman Podhoretz reportedly urged Bush to bomb Iran.

HOWARD KURTZ: “I’ve been scouring the Net, searching for anyone this side of Mary Mapes who says Dan Rather helped himself with his $70-million suit against CBS. No luck.”