TIM BLAIR IS STANDING UP against racism.

DEMONSTRATIONS and “sporadic clashes” at Tehran University.

TACITUS will be filing blog-reports from the mideast, and is requesting reader support.

THE SAMIZDATA FOLKS always seem to be celebrating something. And they seem to be pretty good at it, too.

FOLLOW THE MONEY:

BERN, Switzerland — The United States believes it has found at least $300 million Saddam Hussein hid in banks, yet doesn’t have enough evidence to get countries such as Syria and Switzerland to hand over the money, U.S. and European officials told The Associated Press.

The funds at stake could go to the Iraq insurgency or the country’s reconstruction — depending on who gets to them first. What troubles investigators more is that much of Saddam’s cash may already be gone.

Hmm. Where, I wonder?

EUGENE VOLOKH has an interesting commentary on what is — and isn’t — involved in “judicial independence.”

RICH GALEN has another report posted, this one from Fallujah. His reporting gets steadily better, as does his photography. I hope there’ll be a book one day.

MICHAEL TOTTEN says that supporters of the Administration’s war strategy should cheer up. He makes a good point.

MY EARLIER DIGITAL CAMERA POSTS (here and here) have led a lot of readers to suggest that I look at the Kodak Professional 14-megapixel SLR (very cool, but a bit pricey) or the Sony DSC-F828. Looks pretty cool (another 8 megapixel machine — review here), but I think I want my next digital camera to have interchangeable lenses. On the other hand, here’s a pretty cool gallery of pictures taken with the Nikon Coolpix 5700, predecessor to the Coolpix 8700 I mentioned earlier. [Link removed when he complained about bandwidth problems. Sorry!]

Then again, if I buy the Canon EOS Digital Rebel the lenses are interchangeable with the Canon video camera the InstaWife uses, with a special adapter. Anybody know how well that works?

And, yes, I’m waffling. But the longer I wait, the better and cheaper stuff gets. Ain’t technology grand?

WHILE THE NANOTECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY is busy alienating its allies, the BBC is busy making sure that it will need some.

I DIDN’T SEE BUSH’S MEET THE PRESS APPEARANCE — the Insta-Daughter and I were watching SpongeBob (the episode where he invents colored Crabby Patties) and making invisible ink from a recipe in a book of kitchen science experiments. (I’m pretty sure that white vinegar works better than the balsamic kind).

But Michael Graham was unhappy with Bush’s performance: “For the first time, I’ve felt a twinge of fear myself about the November election.”

I’ve been saying that Bush is vulnerable for quite a while. On the other hand, Jonathan at Wired Opinion liveblogged it and doesn’t seem to think it was so bad, though he’s not awarding any Emmies, either. Neither do some of the other commenters at The Corner. (Scroll up from the Graham link). I’m a poor judge of this sort of thing, so my opinion probably wouldn’t add much anyway.

UPDATE: More from Captain Ed, who gives Bush a C-. And Outside The Beltway has more comments.

Meanwhile, whether or not Bush turned in a good performance during the actual broadcast, you can expect him to do badly in the post-broadcast media spin of his remarks. And that’s already underway. Consider this Associated Press report:

Bush, who pledged after the Sept. 11 attacks to get suspected mastermind Osama bin Laden “dead or alive,” said Sunday: “I have no idea whether we will capture or bring him to justice.”

Now here’s what Bush actually said:

Russert: Senator Charles Grassley, a Republican

President Bush: Yes.

Russert: said he is absolutely convinced we will capture Osama bin Laden before the election.

President Bush: Well, I appreciate his optimism. I have no idea whether we will capture or bring him to justice, may be the best way to put it. I know we are on the hunt, and Osama bin Laden is a cold blooded killer, and he represents the nature of the enemy that we face.

These are these are people that will kill on a moment’s notice, and they will kill innocent women and children. And he’s hiding, and we’re trying to find him.

There’s a I know there is a lot of focus on Iraq, and there should be, but we’ve got thousands of troops, agents, allies on the hunt, and we are doing a pretty good job of dismantling al Qaeda better than a pretty good job, a very good job. I keep saying in my speeches, two thirds of known al Qaeda leaders have been captured or killed, and that’s the truth.

Bush is rather clearly reining in Grassley’s optimism, not making a hapless admission of defeat as the AP treatment makes it sound. The same AP report goes on to spin David Kay’s report this way:

Bush said former chief weapons inspector David Kay, who has said that U.S. intelligence was “almost all wrong” about Saddam’s arms, said Saddam found the “capacity to produce weapons.”

As Justin Katz comments, that’s not what Kay said at all:

Kay is clearly saying that everybody was wrong about the extent of Iraq’s existing WMD stockpiles, not that anybody in particular was wrong about everything. One could perhaps suggest that the AP just let a little bit of a grammatical error slip in — which would be unforgivable enough for an international news wire to do — except that reporter Deb Riechmann used “U.S. intelligence” to represent a group that included such varied parties as David Kay himself, the French, and the Germans (and perhaps even Saddam Hussein).

Call me cynical, but I think we’ll see more of this sort of spinning as the election nears. As Katz observes:

This is precisely the reason that I find myself instinctively searching for original transcripts. Now, that would be a worthwhile service: a wire that provided the actual words that people use, in context.

Indeed it would.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Joseph Hrutka emails: “I slept through it, but my girlfriend, a Lieberman democrat, thought he did really well. She said he answered the hard questions really well.” Interestingly, The Corner’s readers seem to like Bush’s performance better than The Corner’s pundits do, too.

MORE: Andrew Sullivan, who’s been fairly critical of Bush lately, thought he did well:

It’s his best self-defense yet. And I liked his modest way of putting it. In the campaign he can make the case more forcefully, but I’m relieved that on this central question, the White House has belatedly realized it has to make the case again, and explain, and defend itself. It has nothing to be ashamed of, and a huge amount to be proud of, in the battle against terror.

And we have yet to hear an actual plan from its critics, from whom we instead get lame cultural criticism.

MORE: David Adesnik wasn’t impressed with Bush’s performance in general, but makes this observation:

The change in the President’s body language was astonishing. It’s the kind of thing that doesn’t show up in transcripts, the kind of thing that made me glad I actually got up so damn early on a Sunday morning in order to watch the interview.

When Bush started talking about democracy promotion and the universal desire for freedom, his words began to flow in a way they hadn’t before. And you couldn’t help thinking that the words were coming straight from his heart. With Reagan, you could dismiss it as acting. But with Bush, it’s hard not to believe he’s sincere.

Now, that doesn’t mean that Bush truly understands what kind of effort serious democracy promotion entails. It doesn’t mean that he will notice when the US begins to compromise its principles in countries that don’t make the headlines. But it gives me a certain confidence that he understands why the reconstruction of Iraq is vital to our long-run victory over the forces of terror. That is why Bush put himself on the line for the $87 billion reconstruction bill. That is why we still have 120,000 troops on the ground. While I can’t shake my suspicions that Bush (or Cheney or Rumsfeld) is getting ready to cut and run, the fact is that the President has shown a surprising willingness to stay and fight for what innumerable critics have long dismissed as a lost cause.

Interesting. Perhaps this is what the people who liked his appearance are commenting on.

MICKEY KAUS says that if Kerry keeps winning at his current rate, the nomination won’t be sewed up for over a month. (I’m not sure that linear extrapolation is appropriate here — isn’t there likely to be a tipping point? — but read it and decide for yourself.) He also points to this WP analysis of Kerry’s contradictory positions on war and defense, and observes: “there is a simpler principle that completely–without contradiction or complication–explains both Kerry votes, namely he did what he thought was the politically safest thing to do.”

What was it the original JFK said about physical versus political courage?

Meanwhile, Dave Winer says that Howard Dean is being snuffed by Big Media: “To Blitzer, Sawyer and Russert, to Viacom, GE, Time-Warner and Disney, Kerry seems safe, but Dean is dangerous, he routes around them, he goes direct. To accept his candidacy would be to accept the end of television-dominated politics.”

UPDATE: Meanwhile the “Kerry Inevitability Index” has hit a new high! And it looks like part of the problem with the Dean campaign was the role of big TV commissions.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Roger Simon makes an interesting comparison.

TOM DASCHLE, on the war resolution, back in 2002:

Daschle, D-South Dakota, said the threat of Iraq’s weapons programs “may not be imminent. But it is real. It is growing. And it cannot be ignored.”

Dick Gephardt:

“I believe we have an obligation to protect the United States by preventing him from getting these weapons and either using them himself or passing them or their components on to terrorists who share his destructive intent,” said Gephardt, who helped draft the measure.

So they didn’t think that Saddam was an “imminent” threat, but thought it was worth going to war to keep him from becoming one, eh? That’s just what Bush said.

So where’s the beef in the “Bush lied” argument?

(Hat tip to reader Daniel Aronstein).

MORE BAD PRESS FOR KERRY: This kind of thing is going to hurt him in the general election, if he gets there.

UPDATE: But not as much as this picture will. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Alan Robertson says that this is still his favorite Kerry picture.

BIG MEDIA AT WORK: The latest in a series of priceless photos demonstrating just how manufactured much reporting is.

Here’s another example of the same phenomenon. (I mentioned it here at the time.)

NOT EVERYONE was shocked by the Janet Jackson Breast Incident: “New Yorker Tommy Vega had his nipples pierced several years ago but had them redone Friday so he could wear shields like Jackson’s. ‘I hate to admit I was influenced by her, but I love her and it looked really cute,’ said Vega, 23.”

UPDATE: Okay, add another one to the file of those inspired rather than moved to ire by Jackson’s exposure.

ANOTHER UPDATE: It just keeps getting better.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: And better.

I’M NOT FAMILIAR WITH THE BLOG, but here’s a blog report from the Washington State caucuses.

RUMSFELD TELLS IT LIKE IT IS:

Mr. Rumsfeld placed the blame for the war squarely on Saddam Hussein for his “deception and defiance,” and refusal to abandon his illegal weapons program, as Libya did recently.

“It was his choice,” Mr. Rumsfeld said in a speech here to an audience of 250 government ministers, lawmakers and national security experts from 30 countries, most of them in Europe. “If the Iraqi regime had taken the same steps Libya is now taking, there would have been no war.”

I think that’s a message for, er, some other interested parties. And so, in a different way, is this:

In this climate, many officials here expected a tempered, if not conciliatory speech on Saturday from Mr. Rumsfeld, who is still regarded by many Germans and French, in particular, as a villain for his dismissive remarks about “old Europe.” Instead, Mr. Rumsfeld, feisty and unyielding, appeared eager to put a potential adversary on the defensive as he laid out the administration’s rationale for the war in the absence of any illegal Iraqi weapons.

“Think about what was going on in Iraq a year ago with people being tortured, rape rooms, mass graves, gross corruption, a country that has used chemical weapons against its own people,” he said in response to a question, his voice rising, his hands chopping the air for emphasis.

He then turned the question back on the audience. “There were prominent people from representative countries in this room that opined that they really didn’t think it made a hell of a lot of difference who won,” he said, nearly shouting. “Shocking. Absolutely shocking.”

The European leaders that Rumsfeld was addressing are — quite literally in some cases — partners in mass murder. A few tart words from Rumsfeld is the least they deserve.

WELL, THIS SURE MAKES SOMEBODY LOOK BAD:

Some top Clinton administration officials wanted to end the Kosovo war abruptly in the summer of 1999, at almost any cost, because the presidential campaign of then-Vice President Al Gore was about to begin, former NATO commander Gen. Wesley K. Clark says in his official papers.

“There were those in the White House who said, ‘Hey, look, you gotta finish the bombing before the Fourth of July weekend. That’s the start of the next presidential campaign season, so stop it. It doesn’t matter what you do, just turn it off. You don’t have to win this thing, let it lie,’ ” Clark said in a January 2000 interview with NATO’s official historian, four months before leaving the post of supreme allied commander Europe.

Andrew Sullivan, defending Al Gore, doesn’t believe Clark. I’m not sure I do, either.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT: Perhaps the ACLU will get involved.

AL GORE’S ENDORSEMENT really does seem to be the kiss of death. I guess Andrew Sullivan was right.

Meanwhile, I wonder if this John Kerry AWOL scandal has legs? Probably not. . . .

BLOGADS seem to work. Despite its taking-in-each-others’-wash overtones, I bought blogads on TalkLeft and BillHobbs.com for my wife’s documentary, Six. The orders have poured in, and the ads, for a month and two weeks respectively, paid for themselves almost overnight. It’s not choking the local post office or anything, but it’s a pretty good response. Meanwhile, Political Wire reports that the Chandler for Congress blogad paid for itself in donations the first day. Maybe Henry’s onto something.

UPDATE: And here’s more evidence of the power of the blogosphere.

HERE’S A LONG REPORT ON THE TENNESSEE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY from SKBubba. He’s a Clark guy, and still thinks Clark can pull off a must-win in Tennessee, but he says Edwards is surging while Kerry is slipping. His judgment is that it’s closer than the polls indicate.

BLOGGAGE: John Hawkins has thoughts on how to make money from blogging. (Short answer — be Andrew Sullivan!) The Washington Post has an article on D.C. bloggers that mentions the success of the Ban the Ban smoking blog. And Philosoraptor has a response to Jack Balkin’s thoughts on blogs and civil discourse.

HERE’S THE Yahoo! directory of political weblogs: A lot of familiar names there, but quite a few that aren’t on my blogroll, too. So if you’re looking to branch out in your blog-reading, you might want to take a look.