CLIENT #9: The market responds! Heh. If I worked on Wall Street I’d wear one of these tomorrow . . . .

INTERESTING: Chiquita Sued By U.S. Families for Support of the FARC:

The relatives of five American missionaries who were abducted and murdered by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have filed suit against Chiquita Brands International Inc., accusing the banana company of secretly financing and arming the rebel (and terrorist) group.

Paying protection money may seem like the easy way out, but one way or another it often turns expensive. More on the case from the WSJ Law Blog.

ARE WOMEN always more empathetic?

FOOD FIGHT!

TURNING OVER THE RACE CARD: Sean Wilentz on Orlando Patterson’s claims of racism in Hillary’s 3:00 a.m. ad. (Posted on earlier here). Orlando Patterson responds. Plus, here’s Bob Somerby on Patterson. “Perhaps the dumbest op-ed piece ever committed to paper. And perhaps, the most pre-rational. . . . It’s a prescription for the center failing to hold—for a return to pre-Enlightenment ways.” Hey, the Enlightenment is a white-male construct.

FERRARO SPEAKS OUT AGAIN:

Today Ferraro told ABC she was “absolutely not” sorry for what she said.

On CBS, she called out Obama adviser David Axelrod, who Ferraro says has asked her in the past to support other minority candidates he’s worked for, including New York City mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer, and New York gubernatorial candidate Carl McCall.

“He did it with Bill Clinton, he was successful. He did it with Ed Rendell, he was less successful, and he’s certainly not going to be successful with me,” Ferraro said of Axelrod.

Video at the link.

UPDATE: Lots more from Tom Maguire, who is having altogether too much fun. “If Barack Obama were a smooth talking white guy with an uplifting personal biography and no discernible resume, he would be John Edwards. . . . Let’s flash back to 2004, as a younger and more race-conscious Josh Marshall anticipated Barack’s keynote address to the Dem convention.” Of course, if Hillary were a smooth-talking white woman who hadn’t been married to Bill she’d be . . . not even Geraldine Ferraro.

HMM: Harvard economists’ study: Media’s anti-war rhetoric emboldens Iraqi insurgents.

HEH. Barack Obama is black? Who knew?

MORE ON SPITZER’S FAILURES, from John Fund. “Companies almost always agreed to Mr. Spitzer’s demands that they pay stiff fines and change the way they operated — all without any trials or judicial determinations that they had done anything wrong. ‘It became a kind of blackmail,”‘Mr. Siegel says, ‘in which he said to companies, if you don’t put my friends in high positions in your company I’ll drag you through the mud.'” Mr. Clean, eh?

THE BUREAUCRATIZATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION: “Every other year, data released by the Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics provide a snapshot of the growth of part-time positions in the professoriate. This year — an off-year for that data — the federal statistics provide evidence for another shift, in which the majority of full-time professional employees in higher education are in administrative rather than [faculty] jobs. In the fall of 2004, 50.6 of professional full-time employees in higher education (excluding medical schools) were faculty members. In the fall of 2006, for which data were released Tuesday, 48.6 percent of professional, full-time jobs in higher education were held by faculty members.”

HEH: “Saying that Hillary has Executive Branch experience is like saying Yoko Ono was a Beatle.” From DailyKos.

MICHAEL YON evaluates American TV coverage of Iraq.

ABC NEWS THINKS THAT TIME IS on Hillary’s side. Is it?

UPDATE: Reader James Killmond likes this quote from the piece: “But Clinton’s campaign has proved more adept at seizing control of the race when no one is voting.” Heh.

LAURA MCKENNA: Why women support Hillary.

IN THE MAIL: By Herbert London, America’s Secular Challenge: The Rise of a New National Religion.

REUTERS MAKES A SHOCKING DISCOVERY: Gun Owners “Not Just Urban Criminals and Drug Dealers.” Do tell.

SPITZER IS GONE, and John Podhoretz has thoughts. “Eliot Spitzer wanted what he wanted when he wanted it. That is the consistent pattern of his public life.”

Rand Simberg, meanwhile, thinks Spitzer remains the future of the Democratic Party.

UPDATE: Flak failure: Damage mitigation efforts not doing so well.

“THE FURTHER BACKWARD YOU LOOK, the further forward you can see.” At least until the Singularity, anyway.

ANDREW STUTTAFORD on legalizing prostitution. I agree. That doesn’t get Spitzer off the hook, though, as one of the best ways to ensure that bad laws are changed is to enforce them vigorously against the powerful.

WONDERING what was really going on backstage.

AN ELECTION-SEASON ESSAY from David Mamet.

WELL, SHE’S HOTTER THAN HIM: Jonah Goldberg falls to #2 on the New York Times bestseller list, behind Valerie Bertinelli.

THE EXAMINER: Feds should probe Spitzer’s campaign funds as well.

NEWS FROM AFGHANISTAN: “A 19-year-old medic from Texas will become the first woman in Afghanistan and only the second female soldier since World War II to receive the Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest medal for valor.”

GREAT MOMENTS IN JOURNALISM: “Listen, we need to talk to every high-dollar hooker on the eastern seaboard, like yesterday. Get on it, people! Err, you know what I mean.”