WHITE HOUSE: Gay rights marchers? Where? “He knows this march is happening, and he can’t even acknowledge it?” Hey, that’s the same way he treated the 9/12 Tea Party protesters . . . .

UPDATE: White House official calls gays part of “Internet left fringe.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Orin Kerr seems to think my linking of John Aravosis’ headline above is misleading. Well, follow the link and watch the video and make up your own mind. I think the White House is clearly trying to marginalize the gay-rights protesters which — as noted above — is their standard response to protest.

And hey, I was the one who was too quick to praise Obama for his gay-rights speech. So I could be wrong . . .

MORE: White House Retreats. Greenwald, Aravosis, not impressed.

MOE LANE TO JOHN ARAVOSIS AND OTHER UNHAPPY GAY RIGHTS ADVOCATES: “I mean, really: what are you going to do about it? Vote Republican?“

STEPHEN GREEN: “Did we just retreat in Afghanistan — after a couple extra combat brigade teams have arrived?”

ADVICE FOR OBAMA’S NOBEL ACCEPTANCE SPEECH — but with a problem: “I don’t think Obama thinks that way.”

COULD MONTY PYTHON BE MADE in today’s Britain?

IN FRANCE, illegal immigrants take an in-your-face approach.

FORGOTTEN SOLDIERS OF THE INTEGRATION FIGHT:

The first troops to reach Oxford found over 100 wounded federal marshals at the center of campus, 27 of them hit by civilian gunfire. Packs of hundreds of rioters swarmed the city, some holding war dances around burning vehicles. . . . Snipers opened fire on the Army convoys and bricks struck the heads of American soldiers. Black G.I.’s in one convoy were ambushed by white civilians who tried to decapitate them in their open Jeeps with metal pipes.

Maj. William Callicott of the Mississippi National Guard had served in World War II; he said he “never was as terrified as I was going onto the campus that night.”

“It was the fact that I knew there had to be some local people from my hometown probably over there in that mob,” Major Callicott said. “That’s what really worried me. If we killed anybody it could be my next-door neighbor.”

The Army troops restored order to the school and the city, block by block. A girl watched a team of infantrymen under attack on the Oxford town square and, according to a reporter at the scene, wondered aloud, “When are they going to shoot back?” Except for a few warning shots, they never did.

Yet when the soldiers left the city a few weeks later, they marched into oblivion. Most were under orders not to talk to the press. The Cuban missile crisis unfolded just weeks later, wiping Oxford from the front pages.

I sent this out to my National Security Law seminar earlier, but thought it was worth blogging, too.

UPDATE: Reader Deborah Durkee writes:

Thanks for posting the excerpt of the NY Times article, Prof. Reynolds.

My (caucasian) daughter has been working on her Ph.D. at Ole Miss in Oxford (she’s now interning in CO). One of her best friends is a lovely young black woman from the Chicago area. Her folks want her to move back home, but she loves the South. Loves Mississippi and Memphis just an hour north.

Mississippi (I’m sure) still has remnants of the old Mississippi, but my daughter never saw it, and this generation of young adults believe in everyone is a person…period. It’s great to honor those who helped in that “integration fight” that I watched (all scary) on television as a child. It’s even a greater honor to those who fought that fight that the old South has changed so much that blacks from Chicago want to come home to live.

Yes, there’s been quite the reverse-diaspora going on over the past decade or so. Meanwhile, this story is news to a lot of people. There’s great footage in Eyes On The Prize, where it looks like something out of Apocalypse Now.

MARKDOWNS ON musical instruments and recording equipment.

“I’M NOT AN EXPERT ON ANY OF THESE THINGS:” Barbra Streisand is suddenly reticent about politics.

PRAISE FOR MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: “At a time when many celebrities risk alienating their fan base by voicing political views, McConaughey is opting to speak out on behalf of our men and women in uniform.”

J. STORRS HALL: “What we need (i.e. don’t have now) is competence.”

OKAY, SO ACCORDING TO THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE GUIDELINES I’m entitled to nominate someone. And, in fact, I have — I nominated Arthur C. Clarke back in the 1990s, on the basis that his invention of the communications satellite had done more to promote world peace than any politician. Alas, they gave it to Yasser Arafat that year, which kinda chilled my interest in further nominations.

But hey, maybe I should try again. Any suggestions for nominees for next year?

FLASHBACK: Remembering the Radio Flyer.

IF YOU MISSED IT ON XM OR SIRIUS, you can hear the latest PJM Political online. But what’s this about “the recovering Vodkapundit”? Don’t tell me Green’s gone on the wagon? . . .

FROM BRIAN WANG, a flu update.

UH OH: Small Banks Failure Rate Grows, Straining F.D.I.C. “Regulators expect closures to ripple through hundreds of small banks over the next couple of years, especially in the Midwest and Southeast, where lenders have been hard hit by the recession.”

UPDATE: I talked to an uncle today, who’s on the board of a couple of small community banks. He says that the FDIC insurance premium increases are very hard on small banks, and will accelerate closure problems — and that the new idea of having banks prepay premiums for 3 years to help build up FDIC reserves is making people wonder about the FDIC’s strength. What would you think of an employee who asked for a 3-year salary advance? . . . .

“RENAISSANCE ITALY,” but, alas, without the Borgias.

MICHAEL S. MALONE: A real-estate technology race. “But the big tech battle in the real estate business these days, the Apple-Microsoft of the realty game, is being fought across multiple platforms and is for control over the biggest database in the industry: listings.”

IN THE MAIL: From John Ringo, The Tuloriad.

SIDING WITH THE TERRORISTS, SNL mocks Obama’s peace prize. “It looks like the CNN fact-checkers will be busy again this week.”

MY EARLIER POST ON USA TODAY’S DECLINING CIRCULATION produced this email from Harry Shearer:

You post: “Many of the newspaper’s sales come in hotels and airports.”

Every time I get USA Today in a hotel, it’s free. Some sale.

Yes, this is something addressed at InstaPundit many years ago, to the discomfiture of the USA Today circulation folks. Personally, I think that newspaper circulation figures probably have Enron-style accounting behind them, but what’s sad is that even that isn’t enough to keep the numbers up. As I said then I don’t have anything against USA Today, which is actually quite a good paper, but still, free copies aren’t the same as sales, and calling it a “sale” when the hotel buys the paper and buries the charge in the guest’s bill seems a stretch.

FIRST, want to win.

KINDLE GOES GLOBAL: “The current Kindle can wirelessly download content in the U.S. over Sprint Nextel Corp.’s network, but outside the country you must connect it to a computer with a USB cable to add content. The international version will be able to wirelessly download content over AT&T’s network around the world.”

As I’ve noted before, I’ve come to actually prefer reading Kindle books on the iPod Touch.

JOE TRIPPI WARNS: “HE GOT A NOBEL PRIZE. WHAT DID YOU GET? A PINK SLIP.”

Related: The GOP Should Give Obama A Prize.

SERIOUS POLITICIANS who know exactly what they’re doing! Looks like typical politician-behavior to me . . . .