IN THE MAIL: To Set The Record Straight: How Swift Boat Veterans, POWs and the New Media Defeated John Kerry. With “swift-boating” now being used by the ignorant as a synonym for false charges, it’s worth remembering that it was John Kerry who had to retract his statement about his secret Christmas mission to Cambodia, despite it having allegedly been “seared, seared” into his memory.

EUROPE IN the House of War. Spengler’s pretty exercised, even for him.

EXPERIMENTAL DRUGS THAT STOP MUSCLE FATIGUE: Of course, there could be a downside: “Maybe fatigue is saying that you are getting ready to go into a danger zone. So it is cutting you off. If you could will yourself to run as fast and as long as you could, some people would run until they keeled over and died.” Yeah, remember poor Phidippides.

IT’S “CHESAPEAKE TUESDAY!” Lots of steadily-updated coverage from Bill Bradley.

A PREDICTION MARKET in future income tax rates.

HEY, THE GLENN & HELEN SHOW HAS BEEN NOMINATED for a Golden Dot Award as part of the Politics Online Conference. Please drop by and vote for us!

ANNE APPLEBAUM ON ROWAN WILLIAMS:

Many explanations for the archbishop’s statements have already been proffered: the weakness of the Church of England, the paganism of the British, the feebleness of Williams’s intellect, the decline of the West. At base, though, his beliefs are merely an elaborate, intellectualized version of a commonly held, and deeply offensive, Western prejudice: Alone among all of the world’s many religious groups, Muslims living in Western countries cannot be expected to conform to Western law — or perhaps do not deserve to be treated as legal equals of their non-Muslim neighbors.

Every time police shrug their shoulders when a Muslim woman complains that she has been forced to marry against her will, every time a Western doctor tries not to notice the female circumcisions being carried out in his hospital, they are acting in the spirit of the archbishop of Canterbury. So is the social worker who dismisses the plight of an illiterate, house-bound woman, removed from her village and sent across the world to marry a man she has never met, on the grounds that her religion prohibits interference. That’s why — if there is to be war between the British tabloids and the archbishop — I’m on the side of the Sun.

Yes. At least the tabloids have some standards. Plus, 17,000 “honor” crimes a year in Britain.

MORE NEWS ON induced pluripotent stem cells. I’m very happy to see such rapid progress.

MICHAEL TOTTEN POSTS another report from Fallujah, and as always it’s a must-read. “Post-Saddam Iraq is not a police state. Even so, while it’s orders of magnitude more moderate and humane than the genocidal and fascistic regime it replaced, many individuals in the government and police departments have rough authoritarian habits that are rooted in Arab culture itself as much as they are legacies from the previous era. . . . The regions of Iraq that suffered most from the insurgency are, perhaps not surprisingly, more strongly anti-terrorist than other parts of the country. Likewise, Iraqis from these regions who suffered the most tend to be more committed to responsible moderate politics. . . . According to planet-wide conventional wisdom, United States soldiers and Marines are on an abusive rampage in Iraq. Relentless media coverage of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib – which really did occur, but which the United States didn’t sanction or tolerate – seriously distorted what actually goes on in Iraq most of the time. The United States military is far from perfect and is hardly guilt-free, but it’s the most law-abiding and humane institution in Iraq at this time.”

Read the whole thing. And if you like his work, consider hitting the tipjar. (I have.) That’s how he gets paid.

DON’T BE SCARED OF LENT — it’s just the Christian Ramadan! Jeez.

A BIG ROUNDUP OF NEWS ON today’s Potomac primaries.

MEGHAN MCCAIN: The Un-Chelsea?

THE SCIENCE OF NASCAR.

REVIEWING THE REVIEWERS: A roundup of this weekend’s book reviews.

STUART TAYLOR: The University has no clothes:

When a mentally deluded stripper accused three Duke University lacrosse players of a brutal gang rape at a March 2006 off-campus team party during spring break, dozens of activist Duke professors were not content merely to give great credence to the rape charge, even as evidence of its probable fraudulence poured into the public record. They also treated the lacrosse players as pariahs for having hired strippers at all. So, too, did Duke President Richard Brodhead, Board Chairman Robert Steel, other campus administrators, many in the media, and others. . . .

So, some might be surprised to learn that on this year’s Super Bowl Sunday, Duke University played host to a group of strippers, prostitutes, phone-sex operators, and others in a “Sex Workers Art Show” to display their “creativity and genius.” The university spent $3,500 from student fees and various programs to pay the performers and cover expenses. . . .

“The performers did not just take their clothes off — and the actual nudity part of the show was rather tame. But mere nudity could hardly compare with a show that began with the Art Show’s founder and director, Annie Oakley, imploring the audience to stand up and shout ‘I take it up the butt!’…

I’ll just note that to Tennessee fans, there’s nothing in this story about Duke that is surprising . . . .

MORE THOUGHTS ON racial divisions in the Democratic Party, inspired by Susan Estrich.

MICKEY KAUS: How is Obama not an unreconstructed lefty?

ADVICE TO THE WORLD’S INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES: “Down a big cup of Duuuhhhh!”

FINDING FREEDOM IN AN UNFREE WORLD. Apparently, some people do it by posting lame comments on other peoples’ blogs . . . .

HESHAM ISLAM departing from Pentagon. A black eye for the Bush Administration, though Democrats probably won’t want to make much of this.

THAT’S WHY THEY’RE CALLED “ADVISORS,” NOT “DIRECTORS,” I GUESS: “Interestingly, at least two of Obama’s top economic advisors — Austan Goolsbee and Jeffrey Liebman — are highly regarded free-market economists. Goolsbee from Chicago, Liebman from Harvard. But somehow their candidate has a very punitive high-tax campaign plan for the economy.”

IN CASE MY COLUMN ON AGING AND LONGEVITY wasn’t enough for you, Aubrey de Grey will be on the Colbert Report tonight.

THOUGHTS ON MAXIMIZING THE BENEFITS, and minimizing the downsides of nanotechnology.

A CHE GUEVARA FLAG IN OBAMA HEADQUARTERS? Well, he’s been promising “change.”

Then again, the cult of Che is looking pretty tired by now.

UPDATE: Indeed: “Barack Obama may want to call his new Houston office and suggest some decorating ideas.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: “Commies aren’t cool.”

LIVEBLOGGING THE POWER LINE BOOK AWARDS.