MEGAN MCARDLE on education: “Every time I see some middle class parent prattling about vouchers ‘destroying’ the public schools by ‘cherry picking’ the best students, when they’ve made damn sure that their own precious little cherries have been plucked out of the failing school systems, I seethe with barely controllable inward rage. It is the vilest hypocrisy on display in American politics today.”

CODE CRAZY. In a similar setting, would anti-abortion protesters in “Operation Rescue” t-shirts be allowed up-close to wave bloody hands at Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Somehow, I doubt it.

MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT GOOGLE AND MOVEON.ORG, in an op-ed by Robert Cox.

CARNEGIE-MELLON RANKS THE MOST INFORMATIVE BLOGS, and their methodology is clearly sound.

FRANKLIN FOER, STILL IN THE BUNKER:

The soldier whose New Republic article about military cruelty in Iraq was labeled false by Army investigators refused to defend his accusations when questioned by the magazine, even after being told that the editors could no longer support him unless he cooperated. . . .

Despite the contentious conversation, Foer continued to defend the article days later. He did so again yesterday, reiterating that other soldiers whom the magazine would not identify had confirmed the allegations.

While Beauchamp “didn’t stand by his stories in that conversation, he didn’t recant his stories,” Foer said in an interview. “He obviously was under considerable duress during that conversation, with his commanding officer in the room with him.”

Read the whole thing. Is there some other reason — besides suicidal stubbornness — that Foer is afraid to admit they got gulled? They told Beauchamp they’d have to retract if he wouldn’t back up the story, he didn’t back up the story, and now they’re not retracting.

UPDATE: Here’s a Big Beauchamp roundup. And I wouldn’t be surprised to see further developments this week, despite TNR’s efforts to make the story go away.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails:

The person in the room with Beauchamp was his squad leader. He is a Staff Sergeant, not Beauchamp’s commanding officer. ANY familiarity with the military would prevent embarrassing little gaffes like this, and big ones like hiring Pvt. Beauchamp. And BTW, that SSG advised Beauchamp to talk to TNR and cancel with Newsweek & WaPo, as Foer was requesting.

A little familiarity with the military would have done The New Republic a lot of good in general.

A NEW STYLE OF CIVIL RIGHTS PROTEST: “College students across the country have been strapping empty holsters around their waists this week to protest laws that prohibit concealed weapons on campus, citing concerns over campus shootings. . . . Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, a group of college students, parents and citizens who organized after the deadly shootings at Virginia Tech University in April, launched the protest.”

PINCH SULZBERGER’S NEW YORK TIMES takes a brave stand against nepotism.

CONGRESS LOVES CHILDREN — it just loves them less than it loves pork.

I TOLD YOU SO. The sweetest words in the blogosphere!

HEY, BIG SPENDER: “The President’s defenders point to Congress’ voracious appetite as the cause of the spending increase, but Congress could not spend this much alone. President Bush enabled Congress’ fiscal excesses by refusing to veto ever-increasing spending bills — many of which were passed by a Republican Congress — while the administration simultaneously pushed for more federal spending on education, agriculture, and other items.”

DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? I suspect the soldier’s substitution of “Night Rider” for “Knight Ridder” was deliberate, a response to a pushy jerk.

UPDATE: Ouch — check out the comments on the reporter’s own blog.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails:

While reading the arrogant snotty Knight Ridder reporter blog, I couldn’t help think THINGS MUST BE BORING FOR REPORTERS in IRAQ if they are reduced to blogging about airport like travel snags going in and out of the green zone a couple a times a day and using it only as a short cut at the same time being blase’ about their paperwork?

Cemetery workers feeling the pinch, and taxi drivers who relied on morgue fares bummed out? Now reporters blogging about being so secure they aren’t carrying around their proper papers at all times?

Things are looking UP!

Good point.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The entire reporter’s blog is now returning a 404. Guess he took it down. Horse, barn door, and all that. The original post has been preserved for posterity elsewhere. But his bio is honest: “At last count, he also knows how to offend people in at least a dozen languages – the list is growing – although he can take part in civilized conversation in a mere handful.”

MARK STEYN: Beauchamp takes a powder: “The New Republic is currently owned by my old friends and compatriots, the Asper family. Back when I toiled for the company in Canada, David Asper publicly told one of his own newspapers to ‘put up or shut up’. He should have said the same months ago when The New Republic was bragging about its commitment to rigorous and open investigation of the matter. The magazine is unable to ‘put up’, so it has shut up, and hopes that its silence will help the story die in the shadows. Beauchamp’s 15 minutes are up. The issue now is the magazine’s conduct, and the Aspers should recognize that and act accordingly.”

UPDATE: Hiring Bat Boy.

REBECCA AGUILAR UPDATE: Stiffing other journalists, and getting this noble reaction: “Incidentally, my change of heart has nothing to do with the text message I received from Aguilar this morning telling me that she had been interviewed by Ed ‘Uncle Barky’ Bark for his blog. This message came after our two off-the-record conversations Tuesday and her promises that’d she’d call me — the first reporter she had spoken to at length, she said — if she decided to talk. Changing my opinion of Aguilar’s story because I was stiffed on an interview would be petty, mean and vengeful, and that’s just not me.”

The “Uncle Barky” interview is here. Related item here.

Meanwhile, Aguilar gets support from UNITY: Journalists of Color, who opine: “Upon reviewing the interview, it is apparent that while Aguilar used bold tactics to pursue the story, she did not violate any journalistic standards.”

Remember this when bloggers start ambushing TV reporters in parking lots and driveways. It’s not “stalking,” it’s just “bold tactics.”

STILL NOT NEW ORLEANS.

UPDATE: Of course, New Orleans wasn’t New Orleans, either. Thanks to reader Ted Nolan for reminding me of this piece.

THE SUPREME COURT will look at certiorari in the D.C. gun-ban case on November 9. We’ll probably hear something on November 13, though not necessarily.

BILL RICHARDSON, blowing it on the National Guard.

A ROUNDUP OF VAMPIRES, from Nosferatu to Count Chocula.

“THE PROBLEM IS NOT WITH THE PEOPLE THAT STARTED THIS. THE PROBLEM’S WITH US.” That’s a Robert Redford breakout line from the trailer to his new war-on-terror movie that just appeared on my TV. It certainly sums up a certain worldview.

MORE ON THE TNR/ BEAUCHAMP DEBACLE: Hemingway, under glass.

Just another case where the narrative was right, but the facts were wrong.

UPDATE: Franklin Foer is complaining about the leak, which is itself kind of funny, but most notably he doesn’t dispute the accuracy of the documents. (Bumped).

ANOTHER UPDATE: More from John Tabin, including links to the documents:

So where does this leave TNR? We have their Executive Editor saying “we just can’t, in good conscience, continue to defend” Beauchamp’s work, and that until they have the truth they can’t let it drop. We have Beauchamp saying that he doesn’t care one way or another whether they retract his pieces. So why didn’t they retract them? TNR’s behavior since September 7 has amounted to pretending that this conversation never happened, that the veracity of Beauchamp’s articles is still undetermined, and that they have no ethical obligation to retract. But it did, it isn’t, and they do.

Indeed. And here’s a big roundup on the subject from Slate.

MORE: Thoughts on Franklin Foer’s chutzpah in complaining about leaks. Plus, Foer’s unanswered questions.

PATRICK RUFFINI LOOKS AT INFORMATION GAPS ON THE RIGHT:

Conservatives can get their message across through dedicated channels, but it’s always going to be the “alternative” viewpoint. About 50% of Memeorandum is mainstream “news.” About 30% is partisan — split pretty evenly between left and right. The rest is the long tail. Holding our own in that 30% doesn’t matter much if the other 50% leans left and dominates the narrative.

Iraq is illustrative of this emergency. The fact that we have to scrounge for change between the pillows to send guys like Jeff Emanuel to do real reporting in Iraq is a disgrace. There should be a standing $10 million annual investment to fund 50 embeds in Iraq at a time, who can not only churn out readable 900-word pieces but can also do video from the front, including when the guns go off. All this original reporting should be aggregated on a dedicated channel like Politico, ThinkProgress, or OfftheBus. There should be a partnership with Fox News to provide video in places mainstream reporters won’t go.

The lack of such an infrastructure is not for lack of interest. Lots of bloggers have been over to Iraq, a commitment which makes the professional activists in the leftosphere look like dilettantes. Guys like Jeff, Bill Roggio, and Michael Yon have been the advance guard for this stuff. But nothing little has been done to institutionalize their work, to create counter-memes by controlling the upstream information flow through a system for nurturing these upstart war reporters. The failure to develop an effective counter-narrative out of Iraq is reflective of the “conservative message machine” and its reluctance to think outside the box.

Every movement or media phenomenon starts with amateurs improvising. But at some point it has to be professionalized if it’s going to be sustained and grow. The new progressive movement started with guys like Atrios, who then got picked up by Media Matters. Dozens of lefty bloggers are employed by the new lefty infrastructure. . . . If someone has $2 million to throw around on Rush Limbaugh’s letter, then someone has a few million to spend on a blogger-journalists to investigate Democratic corruption or on a sustained project to get out different storylines about Iraq or to set up an open-source research operation to more closely bracket the coverage. And it doesn’t have to be done through any existing institution, with all its offline encumbrances. The Politico, already at #4 on Memeorandum, shows the power of doing it as a startup.

Yes, the folks in the GOP apparat have been complacent, while the Democrats have been hungry. We know how that particular story usually ends . . . .

MORE UNSUCCESSFUL battlespace preparation. “Think Progress is perilously close to that point, and runs the distinct risk of becoming the next Truthout.org if they don’t clean their act up soon.”

SO I GUESS “DODDMANIA” has crested.

Dodd Campaign spin — we’ve got lots of upside left!

JIM HOFT IS liveblogging IFAW at Emory.

UPDATE: Andrew Marcus is liveblogging at Tufts. He covers Daniel Pipes’ speech here.

RUN, STEPHEN, RUN! Colbert polling in double digits.

LIFE UNDER FIRE: The view from San Diego.

Plus, an arson investigation. And a huge news aggregator from the folks at Kithbridge.

UPDATE: Tom Smith reports: “The fire is creeping toward my street. I’m trying to follow progress on San Diego News Eight. I’m basically sick with anxiety. It’s hard not to be.”