IN RESPONSE TO LINDA FOLEY’S REFUSAL to either substantiate or retract her charges against U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, journalist Hiawatha Bray is running for the Newspaper Guild executive committee as a write-in candidate.

DARFUR UPDATE: Nicholas Kristof writes:

All countries have rapes, of course. But here in the refugee shantytowns of Darfur, the horrific stories that young women whisper are not of random criminality but of a systematic campaign of rape to terrorize civilians and drive them from “Arab lands” – a policy of rape.

One measure of the international community’s hypocrisy is that the world is barely bothering to protest. More than two years after the genocide in Darfur began, the women of Kalma Camp – a teeming squatter’s camp of 110,000 people driven from their burned villages – still face the risk of gang rape every single day as they go out looking for firewood.

Nemat, a 21-year-old, told me that she left the camp with three friends to get firewood to cook with. In the early afternoon a group of men in uniforms caught and gang-raped her.

“They said, ‘You are black people. We want to wipe you out,’ ” Nemat recalled.

I think we need to be doing more. A lot more.

UPDATE: More commentary here:

After reading Nicholas Kristof’s piece on the Sudanese government’s “systematic campaign of rape” in Darfur, I have a question for Europe:

Where the hell are you?

Are you waiting for the U.S. to take action? We’re rather busy in Iraq and Afghanistan at present. So why don’t you do something? France, Germany, Belgium: For years you’ve claimed moral superiority to us. Prove it now.

France, at least, seems more interested in oil and arms sales.

JAY ROSEN: “As everyone knows, there is a priesthood in journalism. Whether it has authority is another matter.”

BLOGGING IN COLOMBIA: “BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) – In another sign Colombia’s presidential election campaign is heating up, the country’s main newspaper offered Sunday to host Web sites for all the candidates in what is expected to be a spicy race.” (Via Grim).

MICKEY KAUS: “What’s specifically Democratic about patent reform? Not much.”

Nope. In fact — notwithstanding that many of its most prominent advocates are Democrats — I suspect that intellectual property reform generally is more likely to benefit Republicans.

CATHY SEIPP writes on elitist parents and their sappy class delusions.

I’M WRITING MY TECHCENTRALSTATION COLUMN for this week on Neil Gershenfeld’s new book, Fab: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop: From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication, which seems quite cool.

EUGENE VOLOKH: “Perhaps college students aren’t scared of the draft because they don’t really trust the people who are trying to scare them.”

BIDEN BLASTS DEAN on This Week: “He doesn’t speak for me with that kind of rhetoric and I don’t think he speaks for the majority of Democrats.”

Er, so what’s he doing as party Chair, then? (Via USS Neverdock).

UPDATE: John Edwards is singing from the same choirbook. Hmm. If I were Dean, I’d be worried.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Trey Jackson has the Biden video.

(Wrong link before — fixed now. Sorry!)

MORE: But Harry Reid doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: The fratricide spreads.

NEWS WITHOUT NEWSPAPERS: My WSJ piece from last week is now available for free over at OpinionJournal.com.

THIS WEEK’S BRITBLOG ROUNDUP is up!

GAIJIN BIKER posts a report on what’s being done in our name that some people should find sobering.

UPDATE: Some important perspective on what’s going on, from The Anchoress.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Harsh words.

PRO-DEMOCRACY RALLIES IN AZERBAIJAN: Via Alarming News, which found something interesting in the photos. And there’s more here, too.

UPDATE: James Oberg relays this report from an American in Baku:

US government reps in Baku support the democratic process and they aren’t backing any particular government or candidates. However, all agree that the opposition has no platform, has no agenda for reform or improvement for the country. In fact, maybe a year ago, when Ambassador Harnish was at a meeting with opposition figures, his parting words to them were something like, ‘Now I’ve heard all your complaints, I hope next time you will have ideas and plans for change’.

A year’s gone by. Have we heard anything like that from the opposition? Nope. It seems they just want their turn at the trough. It will be a bad day for Azerbaijan if the opposition does take over.

Not terribly encouraging.

LEBANESE ELECTIONS: Publius has a roundup. As expected, Hezbollah is doing very well in the south.

DAVID HOGBERG HAS MORE on the astroturf origins of campaign finance “reform.” (Via Dailypundit).

TONY BLAIR HAS GIVEN UP ON EUROPE:

Mr Blair, who will seek to shift the focus of his administration on to poverty in the Third World this week during talks with President Bush, has told his closest allies: “Africa is worth fighting for. Europe, in its present form, is not.”

I’m inclined to agree.

UPDATE: Plan B: The Telegraph offers an alternative — and a much shorter one — to the European Constitution.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Meanwhile, Jim Bennett sends this link and wonders if we should start taking bets as to the collapse of the Euro.

JOHN LEO NOTES SOME STORIES THAT AREN’T BEING COVERED, even though they’d seem to be pretty important.

ORIN KERR: “I can’t stress enough that I am not saying this story isn’t newsworthy. Every missing persons report is potentially newsworthy. Still, a person who followed the MSM uncritically might think that the only missing people in America are young attractive white women.”

ANOTHER BLOGGER BOOK: Adam Harris of A Single Southern Guy has published A Single Southerner Across America.