Edgewise

Selective demagoguery update

I see lots of kvetching over at Instapundit today about details of the looting, convoluted meta-arguments about WMD, and the strange idea that Tim Robbins and Michael Moore have claimed that they've been repressed "by the system" while straw-liberals the world around have ignored Castro's crimes. (Has anyone compared Hollywood union techs and baseball hagiography executives with the Cuban dictator? Probably the same people who said "Saddam is not such a bad guy" - where are they?).

But strangely Glenn has had no comments (yet) about the terribly surprising rise of Iraqi Shi'ite powerbrokers in the south. Whodathunkit?

I've noticed that democracy is often mistaken for majority rule. We need to be reading Fareed Zakaria.

Toward participatory online democracy

Paul Ford thinks the Senate should have an RSS feed, and the House, and the Supreme Court, and the White House. I think he's right, and I like his approach to raising the subject.

Did U.S. troops encourage the looting?

This site published an allegation that the occupying troops declared open season on looting. Was this a propaganda effort (look! freedom!) that got out of hand? When you couple it with reports that much of the museum looting was "professional" in nature, it looks pretty ugly. (Not as ugly as maimed human beings, but centuries from now it's the cultural patrimony that may have disappeared already into private collections that will be missed.)

Do you remember President Nixon?

The rhetoric gets a little overwrought, but this writer in the Hartford Advocate is starting to miss Richard Nixon.

Appointment in Samarra

I was thrilled to hear that seven of our U.S. prisoners of war were rescued near Tikrit. I had been dreading the worst for them.

(NY Times login: mediajunkie, password: mediajunkie)

Toad Pride

This just in from San Diego (North Baja or South California, depending):
A federal appeals court has rejected a developer's plans to build a large housing development in inland North County because it would likely jeopardize a small, endangered toad.

Well, kinda. More like there is already a "housing development" there but nobody sees it - except the toads. Who live in it. The toad community, famously, opts for rocky sandscape instead of lawns that must be watered and mowed, and prefers cool underground burrows to expensive air conditioning. They think they have some of the best toad schools in the country - more Harvard graduates than trendy La Jolla.

Rancho Viejo sued Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton three months later, saying the federal government's application of the Endangered Species Act was unconstitutional under an interstate commerce clause.

Neither a ranch nor old, the limited-liability corporation sued the government under the mistaken assumption that the toads were crossing state lines on illicit business (toadying, they claimed). Not true. The Arroyo Southwestern Toad, notoriously inbred, never leaves home. "We can't survive anywhere else," said a spokestoad.

An elder for the Arroyo community said, "the Long Toads cannot ignore us any longer. We are taking a stand for our tadpoles and our tadpoles' tadpoles."

Writer, killed in war, eulogized

Ken Layne has got Michael Kelly's back, with links to other remembrances.