Contrast the Los Angeles Times'  trial blog of the Phil Spector murder trial with Mark Steyn's work for Macleans at the Chicago trial of Lord Black.

The Times has a unique opportunity to gain a vast online audience with the interest in the Spector trial, but its live blog is antiseptic, wholly without humor, and so spare as to make it easy to skip.  Mark, by contrast, has gas. 

Memo to the Times: Send your best writer. A funny, irreverant one.  Yes it is a serious matter, but the coverage doesn't have to be dull as a result.

Sheryl Crow now says that the whole “one piece of toilet paper” thing was just a joke. I’m going to surprise you – having read the original piece where she proposed the idea, I believe her. Being funny in print is a difficult task best left to the pros like Steyn and Lileks. When amateurs attempt satire, they do so at their peril.

Alas, the damage to Crow and her image has been done. As I took my beloved house pet to the Vet’s this morning, I heard the drive-time DJ’s on three different stations making fun of her. She is now officially a national punch line. The problem with her purported joke was that it was all too believable that an entertainment community member would preach such rubbish. Even if the word gets out that Crow was just jesting, the damage to her brand is irrevocable.

There’s even the chance that the taint will spread to the entire universe of entertaining do-gooders. The next time a Tim Robbins and Sean Penn scream at a rally for Donald Rumsfeld to be prosecuted as a war criminal, their audience won’t know if the actors are playing some sort of gag and will ultimately burble, “Hah! Had you going there, didn’t we?” In short, the entertainment community will no longer enjoy the credibility it once had as a home for sophisticated and mature analysis of global affairs. (Personal not to Sheryl Crow – See? That’s satire.)

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I keep trying to self-analyze exactly why I'm not buying into the Fred Thompson hype.

Logically, I would argue that 1. His popularity has more to do with discontent over the current crop of GOP candidates than with him, and 2. His record, while fine, is not substantially more conservative than the other candidates.

So it appears to me that the main thing a lot of conservatives like about him is ... style.

Ironically, this is precisely the area where (I believe) Thompson is weak. Let me explain...

Back around 1999/2000, a co-worker of mine at the Leadership Institute (who has gone on to do some pretty cool stuff, by the way) kept telling me how "uber" cool "Rummy" was. (I didn't see it, but because this seemed to be the consensus, I didn't question it, either.)

To him, "Rummy" was appealing because he was a "take-charge" tough-as-nails guy. To me, he was an old "my-way-or-the-highway" kind of guy who would be a "turn-off" to average folks. Turns out: I was right (at least, I'm claiming credit, here...)  Lesson learned:  Go with your gut ...

I feel the same way about Thompson today as I did about Rummy in 2000; while everyone else is talking about what a stud he is, I just don't see it.

What I do see is a guy who carries himself as someone who has "been there and done that." And while that Gary Cooper demeanor may appeal to many conservatives, I think that after a few years in the White House, it would be a huge "turn off" to everyone else. In short, while that "tough guy" shtick may have worked in the past, I'm just not sure it will sell in today's world (maybe he needs John Edwards hair ... just kidding!)

... By the way, if you think I'm exaggerating about the level of adoration many conservatives are displaying toward him, here's an example of the first comment his post on Federalism got over at FRedState, yesterday:

Thank you, Fred, for explaining a vote that has been very easy for some to contrue anyway they wish (depending on what they are trying to get out of it). Hearing it straight from the source is quite helpful and encouraging!

Federalism is like truth... it hurts sometimes but it always works.

But while many conservative blog readers obviously love him, my question ultimately is:  Is Fred Thompson too Gary Cooper for a Leonardo DiCaprio world?

Of course, I realize it is odd for me to say that I don't think a movie star has the right "style" or temperament for today's world. That's okay. I'm open to debate on the subject.

So go ahead. Make my day!

British authorities arrest six suspected terrorists.

As discussed on yesterday's show with Melanie Phillips and Gerard Baker, and as will be discussed with Lawrence Wright today, the evidence of efforts by al Qaeda to strike in the west is growing, and the indifference of the public to the threat is astonishing.

Al Qaeda is regrouping in some strange places like Mali, and while its forces in Iraq are repeatedly defeated and its leadership there killed or captured, the network's propagandists continue to push out messages claiming success there and encouraging jihadists to come to Iraq to join in the war.

In the U.S., despite efforts by some serious journalists like Wright and Michael Barone to keep some focus on the threat from al Qaeda in Iraq and elsewhere across the globe, the public is repeatedly told by the Democrats and the MSM that the U.S. can withdraw from Iraq and fight terrorism effectively in Afghanistan.  This is delusional and dangerous, but so seductive that it will probably take another spectacularly lethal attack for the west to confront the menace with renewed resolve.

We cannot ignore the enemy in Iraq, and to walk away from them will be to turn first Iraq over to them, and then to await the export of their nihilism in ever greater volume. "They are ruthless killers who often seem to kill just for the pleasure of it," Michael O'Hanlon writes in today's Washington Times. "To put it somewhat more precisely, ex-Saddamists want to restore a Sunni autocracy, and al Qaeda wants to return the region to the seventh century and is willing to kill anybody along the way to do so. There is no merit in either vision according to any serious cultural or moral code in the world today."

We have not lost the war in Iraq as soldiers from Harry Reid's own state are stating. (HT: Instapundit.)  But we are far from winning it and the broader conflict of which it is a part, and we cannot simply withdraw from that theater and hope for the best.  The refusal to see the enemy and to believe the enemy's own declarations is wildly irresponsible, but that is the what the Pelosi-Reid Democrats are doing.  If they succeed in demoralizing the country and engineering its defeat, the blows that fall on us in the future will be their responsibility.

A post from Geoffrey Stone from the University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog "Our Faith Based Justices." One excerpt:

Among Congress’s clearly erroneous “findings” were its assertions that no medical schools provide instruction on intact D & E, that intact D & E is never necessary to safeguard the health of the woman, and that intact D & E is less safe than alternative procedures. Each of these “findings” was and is false. In fact, many laws schools, including Chicago, Northwestern, Yale, Columbia, teach intact D & E; there is a clear medical consensus that in particular circumstances intact D & E is necessary to protect the heath of the woman; and there is a clear medical consensus that in particular circumstances intact D & E is safer than the alternative procedures. (emphasis added.)

So Stone's obvious error tells us that he obviously wrote in haste --and I am the last person to hurl stones from my glass house when it comes to proofing. What is objectionable in Stone's post is not the obvious and amusing error. (Ed Whelan caught it three days ago and it is still uncorrected.) No, Stone's attack on the religious beliefs of the five justice majority is the reprehensible portion of his post.

To brand the five member majority in this case a "faith-based majority" is clearly just spleen, an invitation to the haters of faith, and an explosion of bigotry not seen in respectable circles for decades. It marks Geoffrey Stone as the Rosie O'Donnell of the law school world.  (HT: K-Lo.) Justice Kennedy kept to his views in Casey and his dissent in Stenberg v. Carhart, and the Chief Justice and Justice Alito agreed with him.  Justices Thomas and Scalia kept to their long-held views as well.  The result was actually quite predictable.  The shrill language and hyperbole employed by Stone undermines the "argument" he makes, just as Rosie advances every cause she opposes.

Stone is, in short, an inciter of religious bigotry.  And an intellectually dishonest one at that.

When Stone wrote "[h]ere is a painfully awkward observation: All five justices in the majority in Gonzales are Catholic. The four justices who are either Protestant or Jewish all voted in accord with settled precedent," he employed a religious stereotype every bit as repulsive as the racial animus that informed Dred Scott or Plessy.  He asserted that the five justices served their church and not their oaths.  It was a low moment for academia, and I hope other professors join me in saying so, though I doubt very much that many will.  In academia it is permissible to slander justices, but very risky to make the obvious observations about former deans.

At the University of Chicago Law School Faculty blog, Professor Rick Garnett has replied to Stone, and he deserves applause for doing so.  But it is far too gentle a rebuke to Stone's invitation to join him in slandering five justices.   

No serious scholar of the Constitution would agree with Stone's slash and burn attack on the justices.  Not one.  Look around the web in the days ahead and see who endorses his argument that a Catholic majority has seized the Supreme Court and is applying the Baltimore Catechism as opposed to the Constitution.

Geoffrey Stone is a bigot, and a vicious one at that.  Few if any will rally to his view.  But I fear that most if not all law professors will simply say nothing, which is an indictment of the legal academy.

Today's show features interviews with the Daily Mail's Melanie Philips, author of Londonistan and the Times of London's U.S. editor Gerard Baker on the story in yesterday's Sunday Times concerning al Qaeda's ambitions for a large attack on Britain or another western country..

Tomorrow's program will feature Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower, which won the Pulitzer for general non-fiction last week.

The transcript of the Philips and Baker interviews will be up later here, and the audio here.

Frank Gaffney will also join me for an update on the PBS suppression of the film he co-produced, Islam vs. Islamists, which could not be more timely and urgently necessary for the public to see.

These are extremely odd times:  NBC airs a video that will inspire future psychotics to film their manifestos and possibly their mayhem and send them off to be broadcast with hardly a half dozen hours delay between receipt and broadcast, but the public is not allowed to see a film about a growing threat to not only Great Britain but also to the United States and all of moderate Islam as well. 

UPDATE: Gaffney is asking the public to continue to call Patricia Harrison, president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to demand the film be aired uncensored or released for airing elsewhere.  Her number is 202-879-9600.

The film will also be screened for congressmen and senators tomorrow night, and Senators Lieberman and Inhofe and Congressman Walsh have signed a "dear colleague" invitation to every legislator that asks them to attend.  Please call you representatives in both chambers and urge them to attend.  The Hill switchboard is 202-225-3121.

Ever notice the resemblance between Harry Reid and Barney Fife?  Why is it the wimpy guys are often the most angry and defensive?

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid defended calling the war in Iraq "lost" in an interview with CNN's Dana Bash Monday.

"General Petreaus has said the war cannot be won militarily, he's said that," Reid said. "And President Bush is doing nothing economically, he's doing nothing diplomatically, he's not doing anything even the minimal requested by the Iraq Study Group, so I stick with General Petreaus. I have no doubt the war cannot be won militarily and that's what I said last Thursday and I stick with that."

Our 44th President?

So did John Edwards really damage himself with his foray into the Pink Sapphire and his other personal indulgences? No need to take my word for it. Take the analysis of uber-lefty blogger Ezra Klein:

What I don't understand is John Edwards. A presidential campaign demands so many sacrifices. It rips you from your family, forces a ceaseless travel schedule, demands constant kowtowing to parochial primary voters, demands endless humiliating fundraising calls, and imposes a thousand indignities and inconveniences, some major, some minor. So why, in all that he is giving up, did he not eschew the big house or the costly cut?

And Edwards could have avoided this. Why he didn't, honestly, baffles me.

In case you’re reading, Ezra, I’ll give you hint – it rhymes with shmarrogance.

Ezra’s a young guy and a gifted writer, but he hasn’t yet caught on to the fact that most ranking liberals think they’re morally pure and thus don’t actually need to reflect on their actions. So Sheryl Crow can tour the country bringing her watered down version of wizened rock to the masses with a caravan of 3 tractor trailers, 4 buses and 6 cars, and yet still lecture the rest of us about how we can only use one sheet of toilet paper per water-closet visit.

Now, you might expect Edwards to be a little shrewder than a pop-singer. So let’s ask non-rhetorically, how can he be so dumb? There are two possibilities.

The first is that he doesn’t see the disconnect of waging a campaign whose lodestar is the disparity of income in America – one that attempts to play on his countrymen’s basest instincts - all while living like a Tar Heel Sun King. Perhaps his moral vanity forbids introspection. Maybe he’s like Sheryl Crow and has thoroughly internalized the notion that his poo doesn’t stink.

Either that, or he knows the audience that he’s playing to. While the left has developed a fondness for lamenting George W. Bush’s Manichean worldview, liberals are usually the ones who break the world into good guys and bad guys. They refuse to believe that people with whom they have disagreements can be acting in good faith. The flip-side of that coin is everyone on the liberal’s “side” is by definition one of the good guys. The good guy’s motives never have to be questioned. His sincerity is beyond doubt. He is pure.

In competing for the Democratic nomination, Edwards probably sensed that even though he waves the class warfare bloody flag constantly, his own profligate lifestyle wouldn’t be an issue. Liberals don’t call other liberals hypocrites. They reserve that charge for conservatives.

I interpret Ezra Klein’s bafflement over Edwards’ lifestyle as further proof that Edwards will win the Democratic nomination. If a smart guy like Ezra can’t see through Edwards, what chance does the rest of the Democratic Party have?

(Thanks to Typhoon from Austin for the artistic rendering of what a John Edwards day of beauty might look like.)

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com

I asked him, among other things, about his thoughts on NBC's airing of the Cho video and his past support of an assault weapons ban in Massachusetts, and what his response will be if, as it looks like will happen, the Left starts using the Va. Tech tragedy to bring the Assault Weapons Ban back up:

He also talks about Harry Reid's "war is lost" comments and the merits of his hair vs. Sanjaya's and John Edwards'.

Romney was also the first candidate up to bat in YouTube's You Choose '08, which features YouTube videos from each of the presidential candidates and YouTubers' responses. He asked what folks think is the biggest challenge we face as a nation, and he's actively responding to the video responses posted.

David All compares Mitt's You Choose video to John Edwards', here.

I think it's a good sign for Romney's campaign that he seems pretty savvy in this area, and he's gonna need some savvy to close the gap in polling and name recognition when he's up against Rudy and McCain (which, by the way, he also addresses in the interview).

Melanie Philips, author of Londonistan, directs our attention to this House of Commons speech by Conservative MP Paul Goodman on the growth of Islamist extremism in Great Britain:

Earlier this year, I discovered from a Channel Four “Dispatches” programme, “Undercover Mosque”, that a DVD featuring a preacher called Abu Usamah was being distributed from my constituency. In the programme, Abu Usamah was quoted as saying:

“No one loves the kuffar”—

that is, the non-Muslim—

 

“not a single person here from the Muslims loves the kuffar, whether those kuffar are from the UK or the US. We love the people of Islam and we hate the people of kuffar, we hate the kuffar”.

Abu Usamah also said:

 

“God has created the woman, even if she gets a PhD, deficient. Her intellect is incomplete, deficient. She may be suffering from hormones that will make her emotional. It takes two witnesses of a woman to equal one witness of a man.”

He went on to say:

 

“Do you practise homosexuality with men? Take that homosexual man and throw him off the mountain.”

I shall not weary the House with any further quotations, but it is important to demonstrate what this ideology of separation is like. It favours an ultimate political settlement in Britain in which the barrier between the sacred and the secular is torn down and different people are governed by different laws. As Dame Pauline Neville-Jones wrote in her recent report “Uniting the Country”, even those ideologues

 

“who eschew violence advocate...a social order...not compatible with modern western ideas of individual freedom, the equality of men and women, fundamental human rights and democratic government under the rule of law”.

I stress, of course, that this ideology is rejected by the majority of British Muslims.

When I last had the chance to address the House on these issues, I said that it is important to diagnose the cause of an illness—in this case, the to-some-degree poisoned relations between Muslims and non-Muslims—before attempting to treat it. Today, I want to set out some ideas that might help to find a cure.

Several readers commended last week’s Peggy Noonan column to me. I emailed them back, telling them it wasn’t my cup of tea. While generally speaking I don’t think a particular column that doesn’t strike my fancy is worth a blog post, I think this one is.

Let me start by paying appropriate homage to Peggy Noonan. She’s a gifted wordsmith, and when she’s got her mojo working, she’s something to behold.

But Peggy also has a grating tendency to lapse into a nostalgist’s fondness for an idealized yesterday that never actually existed. Too often she dines out on an “ice cream cones were bigger then” shtick that is both inaccurate and irritating. Especially over the past five years, an inordinate number of her columns have reflected a “we’re going to hell in a hand basket” sentiment that I find tiresome and, more importantly, wrong.

Her column last week dealt with the Virginia Tech tragedy. Here are a few excerpts that reveal her “yesterday was better” mindset:

• When Columbine happened, it was weird and terrible, and now there have been some incidents since, and now it's not weird anymore. And that is what's so terrible. It's the difference between "That doesn't happen!" and "That happens."

• There seems to me a sort of broad national diminution of common sense in our country that we don't notice in the day-to-day but that become obvious after a story like this.

• With all the therapy in our great therapized nation, with all our devotion to emotions and feelings, one senses we are becoming a colder culture, and a colder country.

Please note, I’m not taking issue with the pathologies she identifies (although I’m not endorsing them either). What I am taking issue with is the notion that things in the past were better, and that things have been steadily going downhill since God-knows-when.

INTERESTINGLY, SPECIFICALLY REGARDING VIRGINIA TECH, in my Townhall column this week I sloppily referred to what happened there as the deadliest massacre in American history next to 9/11. A lot of readers set me straight on this mistake. To further prove that terrible things have always happened and that psychosis is nothing new, Tom Tancredo’s spokesman strangely called the national media’s attention to a lunatic who in 1927 blew up a schoolhouse in Bath, MI, a crime that killed around 40 people. While I don’t understand why this is an issue for the Tancredo campaign, the Bath massacre does point out that pure evil and undiluted lunacy are hardly new. Also falling in the “nothing new under the sun” department is that such events overwhelm our intellectual and spiritual faculties. They always have, and always will.

In “The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract,” author James had a running feature where he would quote baseball old-timers through the ages observing how the present day’s players lacked the skill and character of players from the old-timer’s era. He ran these quotes under the heading, “Old-timers Never Die” Under that banner, you had guys who played in the 1880’s saying that Ty Cobb couldn’t have cut it when they played, or guys from the 1920’s saying Willie Mays wouldn’t have been able to make a Major League roster back in the day. The feature provided a mordant commentary on how ridiculous people who are stuck in the past often look. Peggy Noonan’s column last week, because it tacitly assumed an idealized past that never actually existed, would have worked well under the “Old-timers Never Die” banner.

Besides, politically speaking, I consider being stuck in the past to be a characteristic of the modern left rather than the modern right. On the ludicrous side of the spectrum, you have aged hippies fondly recalling the purity of getting stoned at Woodstock. More perniciously, many liberals seek to relive the glory days when their spiritual predecessors righteously opposed and eventually undermined what they considered an unjust war.

Personally, I think we live in an age of wonders and I’m excited about the future. Peggy Noonan is depressed by the present, and only gets excited by the past. Our worldviews fundamentally differ – that’s why some of her stuff leaves me dry. It’s not so bad, though. If she’s ever heard of me, I’m sure the feeling is mutual.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com.

The British intelligence services believe al Qaeda is planning a mass casualty attack to rival the death toll of Hiroshama:

AL-QAIDA leaders in Iraq are planning the first 'large-scale' terrorist attacks on Britain and other western targets with the help of supporters in Iran, according to a leaked intelligence report.

Spy chiefs warn that one operative had said he was planning an attack on “a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki” in an attempt to “shake the Roman throne”, a reference to the West.

Another plot could be timed to coincide with Tony Blair stepping down as prime minister, an event described by Al-Qaida planners as a “change in the head of the company”.

The report, produced earlier this month and seen by The Sunday Times, appears to provide evidence that Al-Qaida is active in Iran and has ambitions far beyond the improvised attacks it has been waging against British and American soldiers in Iraq.

A separate report warns that Spain or France is the target of an Africa-based branch of al Qaeda.