DARING TO ASK THE TOUGH QUESTIONS: White House Challenges NBC News to Explain Whether Iraq Is in ‘Civil War’. I remember when it was journalists who did that . . . .

INDEED: “What a great way to spend your free time, pestering Islamofascist-abetting tyrants.”

MICHAEL YON on ” Verbal assaults directed at uniformed [military] personnel” in the Washington, D.C. area. Stay classy out there. . . .

UPDATE: Reader Joe Hughes writes:

Earlier this month I took my son to the Greensboro, NC airport and while we waited in the ticket counter area, a burst of spontaneous applause broke out nearby where passengers were arriving. My son couldn’t see over there and asked me what was happening, and I told him, “We’re welcoming home one of our guys.” One of our military in desert fatigues appeared through the applauding people, heading to baggage claim, with a big smile on his face.

That’s how we do it here – what’s wrong with those people in DC? As we say here, they weren’t raised right by their Mom and Dad.

But don’t question their patriotism!

ANOTHER UPDATE: A longtime reader emails:

Glenn — Please don’t use my name if you pass this along.

I’ve been riding Metro quite a bit for most of the War in Iraq, and have shared plenty of rides with service personnel. Not once have I seen anyone harass servicemen in uniform.

Let’s hope this is a rare phenomenon.

MORE: Nick Foresta emails:

Maybe these were your garden variety racists or maybe they were just a bunch of drunk kids or maybe a crazy homeless guy. The point is, we don’t know and can’t tell from this little tidbit. I don’t see much mistreatment of troops and I live and work in NYC, the heart of east coast liberalism. It’s fleet week here. Servicemen and women can’t pay for a drink in this town. I went to pick up a check for a few sailors having a lunch today and the bartender said it was already taken care of and I was the fourth of fifth person to ask him. That’s a hell of a lot more common than any abuse stories but I doubt the Dept. of Transportation sent out a bulletin.

I certainly hope so.

LATER: There doesn’t seem to be much more than bureaucratic CYA behind this story.

THE LAW IS FOR LITTLE PEOPLE (CONT’D): Here’s more on unregistered gun-owning Chicago alderman Dick Mell: “His son-in-law just happens to be Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. . . . The rest, as they say, is Rezko.”

Plus, “Like you and me, only better.”

LOOKING AT inflow and outflow in Britain.

VIDEO: HAROLD FORD, JR. on Barack Obama. “I think Senator Obama made a mistake tonight. He should have been in Kentucky.”

FOX CALLS OREGON FOR OBAMA. No surprise, I guess, but there’s no margin yet.

UPDATE: It’s 58-42, not as lopsided as Hillary in Kentucky but still a big win.

OBAMA OFFERS HILLARY THE VEEP SLOT? But what will he do if she says yes? And, worse yet, if they win? What would it be like being an inexperienced President with the entire Clinton operation just a heartbeat away?

UPDATE: Clinton raised $22 million last month.

NOW IF SCIENTOLOGY OR THE MPAA WERE INVOLVED, IT WOULD BE DIFFERENT: YouTube refuses to remove terrorist videos. Or maybe if we could convince the Google folks that these were Chinese dissidents . . . .

I MENTIONED THE WII FIT EARLIER, and here’s more on it in this article, and this one, from GameSpy. Thanks to reader Allen Rausch for the tip.

UPDATE: More here.

WHY HILLARY WON in West Virginia and Kentucky. “If the moonshine wears off and I can find my shoes, I might respond. Better yet, I extend an invitation to Mr. Warner to visit Knoxville and Appalachia.” Lail owns shoes?

RALPH PETERS: Success in Iraq: A Media Blackout. “Want a real ‘inconvenient truth?’ Progress in Iraq is powerful and accelerating.” It does get reported here and there, but not with the kind of intensity and emphasis that bad news gets, more like a CYA memo to the file . . .

AN EASY WIN FOR HILLARY IN KENTUCKY. But note how polarized the voting has become.

UPDATE: Liveblogging Hillary’s victory speech at TalkLeft.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Video here.

MORE: With 95% of the vote in it’s Hillary 66, Obama 30. Ouch.

STILL MORE: Marc Ambinder: 8 In 10 Clinton Voters in KY Dissatisfied With Obama As The Nominee. Oregon voters are mellower.

MORE STILL: The Los Angeles Times looks at the exit polls.

Plus, this from Eric Scheie: “While it wasn’t much of a surprise to see Hillary Clinton win Kentucky, the fact that she won by more than a 2-1 margin (65%-30%, with 91% of the vote in) ought to send a shiver down whatever spine the Democrats have. . . . For the time being, Republicans ought to be happy that this fighting is keeping McCain in a competitive position.”

Plus, will Obama lose women in the Fall? Most of ’em will get over it by then.

And Bill Schneider: Democratic division continues to run deep.

JAMES GRIMMELMAN on social networking and privacy: “Facebook is a privacy virus: an organism that reproduces itself within a social network by convincing infected hosts to use their own replication mechanisms to spread it to others. And the way it gets past our privacy defense mechanisms is to turn them against us: social network service interactions have almost all the indicia we look for in reassuring ourselves that we’re in a private setting, rather than out in public.”

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

LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE:

Ald. Richard Mell (33rd) is a former hunter with an arsenal of weapons that reportedly features shotguns, rifles and pistols, including a Walther PPK of James Bond fame.

But there’s a problem. Mell forgot to re-register the weapons as required every year by the ordinance that he helped to pass as one of the City Council’s most senior members.

So, what does an alderman do when he finds himself in violation of the law? He writes a new law. Mell has quietly introduced an ordinance that would reopen gun registration in Chicago and create a one-month amnesty for himself and other gun owners in the same predicament.

How about just repeal the entire ridiculous law?

REBRANDING THE G.O.P.: James Pethokoukis asks if Arnold Schwarzenegger can be the G.O.P.’s Cameron, while James Joyner looks at the whole question. My own feeling: Actions speak louder than words, and the G.O.P. Congressional delegation doesn’t have much time left if it’s to do its party any good.

WHEN THE POLITICAL BECOMES THE PERSONAL:

When Shannon de Rubens, a stay-at-home mom, wears her Hillary Rodham Clinton button, she expects to be harassed. A woman in Bellevue even pretended to spit on her once. That’s all part of the game, when you’re a Clinton backer in a land of Obama bumper stickers.

“I hate to say it, but that sort of acrimony between strangers has been standard in this campaign, especially locally,” said de Rubens, who lives in Issaquah and co-founded two grass-roots campaign groups, the Hillraisers, in the region with more than 100 members total.

“We feel undervalued, mistreated and bullied. It’s been an emotional journey,” she said.

Ouch. Apparently the 2004 climate of fear in America has spread. And another stroll down memory lane here.

OBAMA ISN’T SCARING Rachel Lucas or Charlotte Hays.

LISA SCHIFFREN: “You know, I am all for Fossella resigning. But I’m a little unclear why David Paterson, the serially adulterous Governor of NY, who recently replaced moral paragon Eliot Spitzer, gets a free pass.”

Fossella is a Republican. Paterson isn’t. And he’s black, and differently-abled to boot. Thus, a much higher threshold for him. That’s how media outcries work.

MICKEY KAUS: Blogs aren’t farm teams for Big Media.

BRET STEPHENS ON Obama and the Jews.

JAMES MILLER: Massachusetts Should Tax Harvard. “A tax on elite colleges would reduce inequality.”

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, people would be prosecuted for daring to question organized religion. And they were right! “A teenager is facing prosecution for using the word ‘cult’ to describe the Church of Scientology.”

UPDATE: More thoughts from Eugene Volokh.

MAKING KIDS HEALTHY with the Wii Fit. I like the idea that you’ll soon be able to spot the serious gamers by their chiseled physiques . . . .

UPDATE: Review here.