SHOULD THE U.S. overthrow Kim Jong Il?

NOAH POLLAK has thoughts on the Obama Peace Process. “Obama talks a lot about the imperitives of dialogue, diplomacy, and humility. His behavior, especially in this case, couldn’t be more at odds with his rhetoric.”

KEVIN SULLIVAN at RealClearWorld wonders if Egypt is really the best choice of venue for President Obama’s address to the Muslim world.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: A Conspiracy of Euphemism in the media. “Why not tell people what is actually happening in the world?”

IN COMMENTARY MAGAZINE: A Tall Order for Saudi Arabia? “The idea that Saudi Arabia can’t have diplomatic relations with Israel until the Palestinian question is resolved has become mainstream, even axiomatic, but it’s nonsense.”

THE BBC scores a rare interview with a Hezbollah fighter. “Hezbollah will become a purely political party only when Israel ceases to exist,” he says.

THE TALIBAN abduct up to hundreds of students in Pakistan.

PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY President Mahmoud Abbas: No, no, and no. Even the New York Times is losing patience with him.

JOSHUA MURAVCHIK: Islamists Lose Ground in the Middle East

YAACOV LOZOWICK: High-quality Political Cynicism Galore.

[N]o matter how childish the politicians-media-NGO activists are, the foreign reporters who eagerly take only part of the story and use it to damn Israel shouldn’t be exonerated. They could tell the same story I’ve just told you, but scrupulously won’t, ever.

BILL BRADLEY finds that the editor responsible for pushing the non-story about John McCain’s alleged “affair” in the New York Times also pushed a sensationalist and conveniently-timed story about Arnold Schwartznegger in the Los Angeles Times.

BILL ARDOLINO continues his series on Iraq’s legislative progress at the Long War Journal.

KOSOVO BALKANIZES Europe again.

NOAH POLLAK: Hamas hoped to send a human wave of Palestinians through the border fence into Israel today, but no one showed up. “Perhaps today the people of Gaza feel that they don’t owe so much to Hamas, after all.”

VDH: Victor Davis Hanson looks at how the Democratic Party ended up with Barack Obama.

SELF-DESTRUCTION: Yael Kaynan says Gazans are hurting themselves far more than they will ever hurt Israel.

NOT A GOOD SIGN: The European Union withdraws from Northern Kosovo.

MARXISM STILL DEAD: Cyprus elects a communist president who promises to preserve the market economy.

HEZBOLLAH IN IRAQ: The late Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh — who was assassinated by car bomb in Damascus — was reportedly the man who organized the training of Moqtada al Sadr’s radical Shia Mahdi Army militia in Iraq.

EYECATCHERS: A terrific selection of photographs at American Digest.

THE REGIME DOESN’T PROTEST TOO MUCH: Lebanon’s Minister of Communications wonders why the Syrian government doesn’t vow to avenge the assassination of Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed by a car bomb in Damascus. It was a “major insult to Syria’s national security,” he said, “unless Syria was involved in liquidating him.”

RFK REDUX: Roger L. Simon supported Robert F. Kennedy back in the day, but found his rallies a bit disturbing and compares them to Barack Obama’s.

NEW YORK TIMES READERS, not the most conservative bunch in the country, overwhelmingly disapproved of the paper’s story about John McCain’s alleged affair with a lobbyist. With McCain and Barack Obama as candidates, we actually might have a somewhat cleaner election this time.

UPDATE: It gets worse. (For the Times, that is.)

OUT OF BELGRADE: The United States is pulling non-essential staff out of Serbia.

LULA OVER HUGO? Let’s not get too optimistic just yet, but here is some evidence that Raul Castro might lean more toward Brazil’s Lula da Silva than Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. According to one report, he asked the Brazilian president to help with a political and economic transformation process in Cuba. We’ll see.