Back At The Movies: A Just One Daughter (teenaged-edition) saw “Pan’s Labyrinth” last the weekend and delivered qualified raves. Apparently it is a post-Spanish civil war fairy tale about a young girl who, discontented with her tumultuous family life, discovers a magical world populated by mythical creatures in her backyard.

However! Despite that seemingly innocent description, she assures me that life in this mythical world can be nasty, brutish, and short. Fantasy is no escape from reality even in the movies.

My daughter thought this film to be a work of art with an original theme and would recommend it highly. BUT! She was also emphatic that the film was dark and upsetting – do respect that “R” rating.

Other reviews here.

But Would The Answer Change If We Waterboarded Him? Dan Drezner appraises Barack Obama:

If someone pointed a gun to my head today and demanded that I say who I think will be the president in 2009:

1) I’d be pretty annoyed, because I thought I had moved to a safe neighborhood;

2) I’d say Barack Obama

This hunch — and that’s all it is — makes me want to know how Obama thinks about foreign policy…

As do we all.

WORRIED ABOUT VOTER FRAUD? You should be worried about what that says about you: “In partisan Republican circles, the pursuit of voter fraud is code for suppressing the votes of minorities and poor people.”

OUR CONSTITUTION IS HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS OF YEARS OLD… Oh, that’s how old Matthew Yglesias thinks it is anyway. But it’s still old! What do you say we have a new constitutional convention, and write a new one that will suit us Americans of today? Who do you want to do the writing? Let’s see, there’s Matt Stone, Steve Jobs, Christopher Hitchens….

DEFENDING AGAINST REPUTATION DEFENDER. If you followed the AutoAdmit controversy — see this WaPo article — you should check out this response from Jarret Cohen of AutoAdmit. Where do I stand on AutoAdmit (a website where law students and prospective law students sometimes talk raunchily about particular individuals)? Well, my original response to the WaPo article was somewhat supportive in the face of what I thought were demands for too much repression, but then I Googled "althouse autoadmit" to find my old post for that link, and check out what came up first. Now, I’ve got to laugh and say yes, this is life here on the internet, but I’m old and I have tenure. I really do see how something like this can disturb a young woman who’s in the job market, though I still don’t think law firm partners are dumb enough to take obvious junk like this seriously in hiring decisions. (And given this attitude, I couldn’t get too steamed when feminist bloggers railed about my failure to exhibit proper deference to the fears and feelings of women.) If you want to talk about all this, come over to my blog, where I’ll set up a post with comments.

Gonzaga Out, Gonzales… : If you picked Gonzaga to outlast Gonzales, you lose!

TIMESSELECT FOR FREE — if you have an “edu” email address.

Time Travel At The LA Times: Patterico catches a reversal of causality.

THE IRAQ RESOLUTION, fails in the Senate — by a wide margin.

Only one Republican, Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon, voted in favor of the measure. Two Democrats, Senator Mark Pryor or Arkansas and Ben Nelson of Nebraska, voted against it, as did Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut. Senators Tim Johnson, a Democrat from South Dakota who is ill, and John McCain, an Arizona Republican who is in Iowa, did not vote.

Compare the way DailyKos reported the vote:

For those keeping score at home, those opposing were the 49 Republicans and Joe Lieberman.

Embarrassing.

UPDATE: I can’t believe Kos is still uncorrected 8 hours later. They must truly loathe Lieberman.

ANOTHER UPDATE: That wasn’t the most embarrassing thing on Kos today. There was this. (Via Kaus, who gives Kos credit for not taking the post down.)

We Let The Readers Speak! We are all about reader empowerment here at InstaPundit, so let me call your attention to the scientifically developed and carefully phrased TigerHawk poll titled “Captionology: Give feedback to Glenn Reynolds!”.

Let’s go.

Dinner Plans? It’s the Fitfh Annual Eat An Animal For PETA Day. Lunchtime reports are trickling in.

Why Can’t A Woman Write More Like A Man? Patricia Cohen of the NY Times tells us that women are woefully under-represented in the submission of op-eds to major newspapers. But there is good news!

The obvious solution, at least to Catherine Orenstein, an author, activist and occasional op-ed page contributor herself, was to get more women to submit essays. To that end Ms. Orenstein has been training women at universities, foundations and corporations to write essays and get them published.

Evidently the ladies were dozing while the guys took notes in the “How to write an op-ed” class at school. But beyond the lack of any formal training in how to write a clear, concise, and cogent argument, there is apparently another obstacle – women are too naive and idealistic to succeed in this cutthroat endeavor:

Next [Ms. Orenstein] asked the participants why they thought it important to write op-ed articles. Women shouted: “Change the world,” “shape public debate,” “offer a new perspective,” “influence public policy.”

“You are all such do-gooders,” Ms. Orenstein said laughing, “I love this.” She then proceeded to create another kind of list that included fame, money, offers of books, television series and jobs.

The Rev. Dr. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, an Episcopal priest and the executive director of Political Research Associates in Boston, frowned. “It’s not why I do it,” she said.

That, Ms. Orenstein declared, is a typically female response: “I never had a man say, ‘That’s not why I do it.’ ”

“What I want to suggest to you,” she continued, is that the personal and the public interests are not at odds, and “the belief that they are mutually exclusive has kept women out of power.” Don’t you want money, credibility, access to aid in your cause? she asked.

Cristina Page, a spokeswoman for Birth Control Watch in Washington, leaned forward. “I’ve never heard anyone say that before,” she said. “What you’ve just said is so important. It’s liberating.”

Liberating? I’m just about liberated from my… never mind.

To be sure, Ms. Cohen does not claim to be attempting a complete explanation of female under-representation on our nation’s op-ed pages. However, she might have done more than simply promote Ms. Orenstein’s consultancy – why not write about women in related media, such as, hmm, blogging?

It is the second anniversary of this Kevin Drum post but it is good place to start. His launching point was the same Estrich-Kinsley brawl that noted in the Times article.

IF YOU WANT TO SEE ME IN PERSON, I’ll be a panelist at the New York Salon on Tuesday. Please come hear me talk about whether we should fear more than just fear itself.

DON’T WORRY, EZRA. I graduated from business school with a $1,000 monthly student loan payment, and I still managed to end up in one of the lowest-paying professions available to college graduates without a major drug habit.

MY COLLEAGUE PATRICK LASSWELL is blogging from Northern Iraq.

AN UNUSUAL POSTCARD FROM IRAQ: Glenn asked me to help guest-blog for him while he’s away, but I haven’t really had time. I’m in Northern Iraq on a private sector consulting job and finding time to blog is a bit tough. I did, however, make it up to the mountains during the regional holiday yesterday when every office was closed.

Iraq is big and diverse. Not every place is a hot, dusty plain, and not every place is a war zone. The Kurdistan region is beautiful, prosperous, and — most importantly — safe.

WHAT WOULD GANDHI DO? Fred Thompson thinks Code Pink’s sanctimonious question is actually reprehensible.

During World War II, Gandhi penned an open letter to the British people, urging them to surrender to the Nazis. Later, when the extent of the holocaust was known, he criticized Jews who had tried to escape or fight for their lives as they did in Warsaw and Treblinka. “The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife,” he said. “They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.” “Collective suicide,” he told his biographer, “would have been heroism.”

Speaking of Jews and knives:

Suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed to the beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl and a central role in 30 other attacks and plots in the U.S. and worldwide that killed thousands of victims, said a revised transcript released Thursday by the U.S. military.

“I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan,” Mohammed is quoted as saying in a transcript of a military hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, released by the Pentagon.

“For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head,” he added.

NO RIGHT TO USE MEDICAL MARIJUANA. Not yet anyway, according to the 9th Circuit, ruling in the case of Angel Raich (who, two years ago, lost in the Supreme Court, which upheld Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause to ban home-grown, home-consumed marijuana).

TRY NOT TO HAVE YOUR HEART ATTACK on a weekend. It’s all about the “door-to-balloon time.”

Some Troops Left Behind: I guess it depends on the meaning of “withdraw” – Hillary Clinton has spoken on Iraq, but she has not been greeted as a liberator. Her controversial interview with the Times produced this lead:

If Elected …
Clinton Says Some G.I.’s in Iraq Would Remain
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and PATRICK HEALY

WASHINGTON, March 14 — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton foresees a “remaining military as well as political mission” in Iraq, and says that if elected president, she would keep a reduced military force there to fight Al Qaeda, deter Iranian aggression, protect the Kurds and possibly support the Iraqi military.

In a half-hour interview on Tuesday in her Senate office, Mrs. Clinton said the scaled-down American military force that she would maintain would stay off the streets in Baghdad and would no longer try to protect Iraqis from sectarian violence — even if it descended into ethnic cleansing.

In outlining how she would handle Iraq as commander in chief, Mrs. Clinton articulated a more nuanced position than the one she has provided at her campaign events, where she has backed the goal of “bringing the troops home.”

She said in the interview that there were “remaining vital national security interests in Iraq” that would require a continuing deployment of American troops.

Ahh! Let’s hear thunder from the left – Matt Stoller of MyDD says “Wow… This is a very dangerous roadmap for the Democrats.

The Agonist tells us that “Democrats will now have a clear choice between a pro-war candidate and candidates who are clearly for ending the war.

For lightning from the right, Captain Ed Morrissey describes Hillary’s willingness to have US troops stand back during a genocide as “abysmal, cynical, and completely self-serving”…

I have a different question – this part of the NY Times report seems to have garnered little attention:

Mrs. Clinton has said she would vote for a proposed Democratic resolution on Iraq now being debated on the floor of the Senate, which sets a goal of withdrawing combat forces by March 31, 2008. Asked if her plan was consistent with the resolution, Mrs. Clinton and her advisers said it was, noting that the resolution also called for “a limited number” of troops to stay in Iraq to protect the American Embassy and other personnel, train and equip Iraqi forces, and conduct “targeted counterterrorism operations.”

(Senator Barack Obama, a rival of Mrs. Clinton, has said that if elected president, he might keep a small number of troops in Iraq.)

OK, what is a “limited number” or a “small number”? This article takes a stab at Hillary’s plan and cites a figure of 75.000. Have Dem leaders put a number on “limited”, and is Sen. Clinton stretching it beyond recognition?

We Won’t Leave “No Child Left Behind” Behind: The Eduwonk covers the latest, which is a Republican bill meant to create an opt-out provision for states unhappy with the Federal bureaucracy and testing requirments. Kevin Drum admits that yesterday’s conspiracy theory took a hit in light of today’s news.

STAVING OFF DESPAIR. Andrew Sullivan on Iraq.

CHRISTINE HURT FAULTS the new Bluebook rule for citing blogs. It excludes the name of the blogger for a solo blog. Like Instapundit, I presume. Okay, now, you Bluebook nerds. Cite this post!

LAWPROF JOHN O. MCGINNIS READS two new books about the Supreme Court.

Two From The Times: I Boldly Predict these two stories will generate some blogospheric buzz today:

Iraqis’ Progress Lags Behind Pace Set by Bush Plan

WASHINGTON, March 14 — The Bush administration, which six months ago issued a series of political goals for the Iraqi government to meet by this month, is now tacitly acknowledging that the goals will take significantly longer to achieve.

In interviews this week, administration officials said that the military buildup intended to stabilize Baghdad and create the conditions for achieving the objectives would not be fully in place until June and that all of the objectives would not be fulfilled until the year’s end.

A “notional political timeline” that the administration provided to Congress in January in an attachment to a letter from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, had called for most of the objectives to be met by this month.

And this article on carbon sequestration will tie in to the global warming discussion:

In a Test of Capturing Carbon Dioxide, Perhaps a Way to Temper Global Warming

WASHINGTON, March 14 — American Electric Power, a major electric utility, is planning the largest demonstration yet of capturing carbon dioxide from a coal-fired power plant and pumping it deep underground.

Various experts consider that approach, known as sequestration, essential to reining in climate change by preventing the gas from being added to the atmospheric blanket that promotes global warming.

Just something to consider with your coffee.