IT WASN’T WARM AND SUNNY like when I visited them last Easter, but we attended the (much shorter, much colder, and much more bundled-up) neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt anyway. (Sorry, no picture of me with the Easter Bunny this time around, either). But here’s a picture of my lovely new niece Ojie as the Easter Bunny.

And below is a sketch of me by my 2-year-old nephew William. Not a bad likeness!

ANOTHER ZOGBY POLL CONTROVERSY.

MICKEY KAUS: “Why exactly was the resolution of the latest Iran hostage crisis a ‘success’ for Iran and a ‘humiliation’ for Britain, as the hawkish Charles Krauthammer argues (and Geoffrey Wheatcroft insinuates but doesn’t quite come out and say in his own voice, as opposed to John Bolton’s)? The hostages were released in a one-day propaganda stunt, maybe in exchange for the release of an Iranian we were holding and Iranian visitation rights for some others. But the Iranians were also looking at an awful lot of aircraft carriers steaming around their neighborhood. Didn’t they blink? If that’s humiliation, it’s not far from what a U.S.-U.K. victory in the crisis would look like.”

LADY VOLS FANS DEFEND RUTGERS from Don Imus’s slurs. I had missed Imus’s slurs, but then, I miss most of what Imus does.

UPDATE: More on Imus here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Much more on Imus, from RadioEqualizer. Conclusion: “Had this been an isolated incident for Imus, who turns 67 this year, he might have a chance at salvaging his career. With one recent flap after another, however, it’s time for this over- the- hill talker to hang up his headphones.”

BILL FRIST COMMENTS on Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and national security.

UPDATE: Rand Simberg on Pelosi’s trip and suggestions that it might have been illegal: “It seems to me that if the Bush administration was clever, the president would magnanimously issue a preemptive pardon to Madam Speaker . . . . But, of course, the Bush administration isn’t noted for cleverness.”

Nope.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More reactions to Pelosi here.

FRED THOMPSON IS POSTING AT REDSTATE.

I GUESS THIS WILL PUT A CAP ON THE OUTSOURCING-TO-BANGALORE TREND: India high-tech industry out of workers:

Nearly two decades into India’s phenomenal growth as an international center for high technology, the industry has a problem: It’s running out of workers.

There may be a lot of potential — Indian schools churn out 400,000 new engineers, the core of the high-tech industry, every year — but as few as 100,000 are actually ready to join the job world, experts say.

Instead, graduates are leaving universities that are mired in theory classes, and sometimes so poorly funded they don’t have computer labs. Even students from the best colleges can be dulled by cram schools and left without the most basic communication skills, according to industry leaders.

So the country’s voracious high-tech companies, desperate for ever-increasing numbers of staffers to fill their ranks, have to go hunting.

“The problem is not a shortage of people,” said Mohandas Pai, human resources chief for Infosys Technologies, the software giant that built and runs the Mysore campus for its new employees. “It’s a shortage of trained people.”

Lots of people in India. But not enough people with the right skills. Just like, well, everywhere.

MISERABLE COLD THROUGHOUT THE REGION, explained. I figured it was something like that . . . .

ORIN KERR: “I also have some doubts about the second unzipping.”

Follow the link for evidence that the context of a quotation really does matter. . . .

A LOOK AT taxation and virtual worlds.

MORE WORLD WAR II STORIES FOR KIDS, at the Books for Kids Blog.

SENDING THE SWAT TEAM after tomato plants.

COOKWARE UPDATE: I mentioned a while back that we had gotten the George Foreman grill with dishwasher-safe removable plates, and so far it’s turned out very well: Easy to clean, and easy to use. The Insta-Daughter has put in the flat plates to make pancakes a few times, but otherwise we mostly use it as a Panini press. That’s easy, quick, and makes you feel like you’re getting something special. Tell the family you’re serving sandwiches for dinner and it sounds lame, but tell ’em you’re making Paninis and it sounds fancy!

UPDATE: Dean Barnett emails: “Absolutely right! It also does a nice job on salmon steaks.”

ANOTHER BAD REVIEW FOR PELOSI, in Lebanon’s Daily Star:

We can thank the US speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, for having informed Syrian President Bashar Assad, from Beirut, that “the road to solving Lebanon’s problems passes through Damascus.” Now, of course, all we need to do is remind Pelosi that the spirit and letter of successive United Nations Security Council resolutions, as well as Saudi and Egyptian efforts in recent weeks, have been destined to ensure precisely the opposite: that Syria end its meddling in Lebanese affairs.

Pelosi embarked on a fool’s errand to Damascus this week, and among the issues she said she would raise with Assad – when she wasn’t on the Lady Hester Stanhope tour in the capital of imprisoned dissidents Aref Dalila, Michel Kilo, and Anwar Bunni – is “the role of Syria in supporting Hamas and Hizbullah.” What the speaker doesn’t seem to have realized is that if Syria is made an obligatory passage in American efforts to address the Lebanese crisis, then Hizbullah will only gain. Once Assad is re-anointed gatekeeper in Lebanon, he will have no incentive to concede anything, least of all to dilettantes like Pelosi, on an organization that would be Syria’s enforcer in Beirut if it could re-impose its hegemony over its smaller neighbor.

Read the whole thing. Meanwhile, Robert F. Turner thinks that Pelosi’s trip may have been illegal. Turner comments: “The administration isn’t going to want to touch this political hot potato, nor should it become a partisan issue. Maybe special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, whose aggressive prosecution of Lewis Libby establishes his independence from White House influence, should be called back.”

“UNTERMENSCHEN:” He’s right. That’s how they seem to think.

UPDATE: Reader Ted Clayton emails: “Perhaps you could specify who “they” refers to. ”

As you can see from reading the linked item, it refers to those allegedly-progressive Westerners who refuse to hold non-Westerners to the same moral standards applied to, say, America and Britain. That should be obvious to, well, anyone who’s paying attention.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Drew Kelley writes: ‘I am shocked, shocked, to find prejudice among our “best and brightest’.” The descent of the “progressives” into racist double-standards is an old story, but it’s still one that bears pointing out now and then.

GOOGLE LAUNCHES A FREE 411 SERVICE.

ABC NEWS WANTS TO HEAR your firearms self-defense story for an episode of 20/20 on guns and self-defense.

IN THE BLOGOSPHERE, it always seems to come down to the boobies.

HERE’S MORE on the Yale flag-burning case.

SOME PERSPECTIVE FROM MARKOS that I agree with: “No matter how much I care about progressive politics, at the end of the day, it’s my family and their well-being that’s going to come first.”

HAS AL GORE BEEN TO CINCINNATI LATELY? Because I’m visiting my brother here and drove the last hour or so through heavy snowfall. It’s freezing (literally) and it’s April. Ugh.

Greenhouse effect? Global warming? Faster, please.

GOOD NEWS on the jobs front. So is it time to worry about inflation? It’s always time to worry about something.

And, right on cue. . . .

A SCIENCE QUIZ at the Knoxville News-Sentinel. How do you think steel is melted?

IN THE U.T. LAW LIBRARY.

USA TODAY ON THE PELOSI TRIP: “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi crossed a line this week by visiting Syria, where she met with President Bashar Assad. She violated a long-held understanding that the United States should speak with one official voice abroad � even if the country is deeply divided on foreign policy back home. . . . It’s not up to the speaker to unfreeze relations with Assad.”

Interestingly, I think that the more Pelosi acts like a wannabe President, the worse it is for Hillary. And I think that Pelosi knows that.