First, we stopped hearing about the "brutal Afghan winter".

Christopher Hitchens notices the same thing happening with "the Arab Street".

I still like the movies...excuse me, the films, though. So perhaps it is just the ceremony itself.

I guess that I have reached the age where I can see past the hair, the gowns, the diamonds, and the camera flashes, and see a room full of incredibly wealthy, talented, and blessed people who, on the whole, are much less happy than the general population.

I won't comment on Chris Rock except to say that I am not the target audience for his style of "hosting"...and that I really do miss Johnny Carson. I will go ahead and admit it. Rock is behind my time. It happens.

Having said that, though, Robin Williams is most certainly not behind my time...he is squarely in it...and it is simply not possible for his schtick to get any more lame or tired. Last night was worse than usual. Perhaps Mr. Williams was driven to more than his customary excess by the presence of Mr. Rock...or at least by the idea of Mr. Rock and the demographic he represents and how the much older Mr. Williams now figures in to that equation.

Has Williams Jumped the Shark? As an actor, no. He still has fine talents there. But what we saw last night was essentially what could be found on his "Reality. What a concept." album that I purchased at the old Gibson's Discount Center on Cuthbert.

Twenty-five years ago.

Any parent with a child in a public school has likely discovered our education system is little more than a means by which liberals indoctrinate children with socialist ideology.

If this seems a radical assertion, I assure you it is not. In fact, examples abound indicating its accuracy. Take the "community box," for instance. How many elementary school kids across the country show up the first day of school, only to have their brand-new supplies pilfered by their teacher and thrown into one big box, to be distributed henceforth as said teacher sees fit? (Karl Marx also had very little regard for private property rights.)

The above excerpt only scratches the surface. Read more here. Especially frightening in the article are the sections on social promotion and communitive learning.

It seems that the pro-anti-smoking folks got the greater share of the letters to the editor acreage yesterday, turning the tide of ink on the anti-anti-smoking folks who had the upper hand the past two Sundays.

Sadly, the pro-anti-smoking proponents still showed up with less than a fully formed, logical thesis. Yes, smoke is bad for you. So are lots of other things if taken in great quantity. There has still been no understanding shown of the difference between being exposed to low concentrations of second-hand tobacco smoke for a brief period of time (as in visiting a restaurant) versus near constant exposure of living with a smoker. But this moves the argument away from where it belongs: on freedom, adult choice, courtesy and tolerance.

From Andrew Stuttaford again:

From the executive producer of the (rather good) new Battlestar Galactica , in response to the question as to why one of his characters (a doctor, no less) smokes:

“I'm also frankly tired of all the anti-smoking p.c. crap that we're bombarded with these days and I decided that this was a world without all that. Call it my one sop to the idea of an idealized society, the notion that adults can make informed choices and not be nagged to death or run out of public spaces for making choices that others may not like or agree with.”

Emphasis mine. It's sad to have to invent a world where this notion can exist isn't it? I thought we already lived in that world.

Parsing/fisking of the letters to the editor to come once the MR-T has posted them.

UPDATE: Yeah, I know the letters were "up" this afternoon. The day job intruded. Thanks to the MR-T for posting the letters here, though I don't know why it takes a day for them to be available online. Please keep reading below.

MyWestTexas.com has branched out into blogs and to show that they get the whole idea of the decentralization of views and opinions brought by "the new media" have offered up first....uh....former MR-T Writer and current MR-T contributor Jimmy Patterson.

To be fair, though, we did get a link.

Currently being discussed over at Blogging for Midland:

Midland, Texas...a town of 100,000 that can "boast a current President, a former President, a former Secretary of Commerce, it's own United States Congressman, and a current Speaker of the Texas House" finds that it is lacking in influence to the point that it needs to hire a Washington lobbying firm to further "sing Midland's praises."

The one-year, $110,000 contract with Thelen Reid & Priest, "a national law firm with more than 440 attorneys", will be split 50/50 by the City and The Midland Development Corporation.

As a commenter there points out, why a bill that is paid 100% by the taxpayers needs to be split between the two entities is not clear. Surely the Midland Development Corporation could pick up the whole tab for our very own Gucci-shod warrior in Washington. After all, the City actually has....you know...responsibilities and duties. Things like fire, police, and streets.

Whereas, throwing money in any and every direction in the name of "economic development" is well within the function and philosophy of the MDC. Don't believe me? Read the loosy-goosy language in the Mission Statement of the MDC. It is chock full of words like "foster", and "attract", and "promote". Making a highly-paid Washington lobbyist an even more highly-paid Washington lobbyist in order to pursue that thing now most dear to fiscal conservatives born and bred on the rugged, character-building plains of West Texas: additional federal funding...well, that makes perfect sense to them.

Kudos to the other four taxing entities (and MDC Board Member Jim Nelson) who saw through this nonsense and declined to participate.

Some more evidence for opposition to the proposed Midland smoking ban is found here, posted today by Andrew Stuttaford at NRO's The Corner.

...this story is a reminder that the costs of smoking bans can run beyond the small things like, oh I don’t know, freedom, personal responsibility and the right of a proprietor to run his establishment in the way he sees fit.

Yep. Well said, Andrew!

If you scroll down a bit, you can also read her defense of Dr. Condi Rice's Euro Tour attire that has the blogosphere in a bit of a buzz.

Whatever. Black is also the color of suits that travel well. And long boots keep legs warm in winter. Nothing "menacing" or "Dominatrix!" about it.

Hat tip to Blaster's Blog

And The Manolo, he like it too.

I'm not sure why any of us bothers with this blogging thing. So many others do it so well. Must reading and listening (!) follows. Go to Likeks here to read and then here to listen. Audioblogging. Wow. Via Vodkapundit (he says, hoisting his glass of Stoli on the rocks with 2 olives). Cheers.

Here is an interesting take down of Judge (or "Judge") Andrew Napolitano, frequent commentator on Fox News and Fox Radio, by Andrew McCarthy:

Napolitano was once a midlevel state-court judge in New Jersey. Assuming for argument's sake that this experience is a sure sign of actual legal expertise, it would be an exceedingly narrow one: to wit, he might be thought an authority on the constitution and laws of the Garden State. Fox, however, has opportunistically chosen to ignore the "New Jersey" modifier in his former title and focus myopically on the "Judge" part. The network has adopted a convention whereby all Fox News correspondents refer to Napolitano on the air not by name but as "Judge." He then proceeds to expound with glib certainty on all manner of legal issues, including matters of federal law, for which he appears to have little familiarity.

McCarthy continues on why Napolitano is so wrong in his opinions on the prosecution of Lynne Stewart, lawyer of Omar Abdel Rahman, said opinions recently published in the NY Times. One might assume that an expert (or "expert") hired by a network or newspaper might confine their comments to subject matter in which they were, in fact, experts. One would apparently be wrong to make that assumption.

The Times ought to be embarrassed. Fox News ought to be more embarrassed.

Yep. Read the whole thing. It is fascinating.

Ever wonder what the Times really thinks about blogs and bloggers?

Keller also sees “blogging,” or online writing that blurs news and commentary, as a mixed blessing. While he celebrated the blogger’s ability to uncover breaking news, he noted that a blog’s inherent bias might be detrimental to the reader. “A blog is still a view of the world through a pinhole,” he said, noting that it can sometimes fall as low as being a “one man circle jerk.”

We group blogs may have the circle part down, but I know who the jerks are. Keller is clearly one of them.

He was optimistic about the future of print journalism. The paper, Keller said, is always looking at ways to adapt to advances in technology and the changing consumer needs. “I trust there will always be an opportunity for serious journalism,” he added.

When will YOUR PAPER get into the business of serious journalism, Mr. Keller? The opportunity is being seized by other newspapers, the online/hard copy magazine world and, yes, the blogosphere.

via Drudge. Thanks, Matt.

UPDATE: Power Line is on the case:

The Times is noted for its monolithic, Democratic orientation, which reflects the views of its owners. Its Democratic orientation is so blatant that hardly anyone reads its editorials, and few people read its columnists. If Keller really believes that blogs are biased but his own newspaper is not--which I doubt--the Times is even farther gone than I realized.

And so is Jeff Jarvis. via Instapundit.

"Do you want your little kid to say, 'Hey, Daddy, President Bush tried marijuana; I think I will.' I wouldn't answer the marijuana question. You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried." -- George W. Bush

I agree with this completely. What's all the commotion about? The release of the so-calledBush tapes just shows that, love him or hate him, George W. Bush is a man of conviction who is the same guy behind the scenes that he is in public. Personally, I find the above quote to be admirable, not scandalous. We've all done things we regret.

I must say, however, that the release of these tapes seems to further confirm in my mind that I'm apparently the only person on planet earth who hasn't tried marijuana. Heck, a good friend of mine has recently gotten himself into a little trouble over the stuff, and I'd have never even imagined he was growing a few plants for personal use.

Geez, why is this stuff even illegal, anyway? Oh, I forgot. Sixty years of government propaganda aimed at scaring the American public out of their minds tends to do that.

A don't miss new blog: colbertkilledapanda.com

Some sentences are just plain fun to read:

"The inquiry found that one skull, which Mr. Protsch claimed came from a 27,400-year-old human fossil, was actually still attached to the living body of a departmental colleague."

Still in First Place in the Fun Sentences To Read Competition is this one from James Lileks: "Kill ‘em all,’ said Liam McSodden, an unemployed shipbuilder who was sacked while still in the womb, but regards himself as part of his city’s proud shipbuilding tradition."

Number Ten with A Bullet is iowahawk's: "For a lawyer and a banker, you two seem to know a lot about documents," I mused."

The Blogosphere: First we take on the mainstream press. Then we take on the really big media stuff. Like Jay Leno's Headlines!

More on Batesline v. Tulsa Whirled.

Batesline has taken on counsel which has sent a letter the the Tulsa World explaining fair use and the First Amendment.

Also interesting was a link that I followed out of that post to an earlier post on Batesline commenting on the typically monolithic views that tend to bind together city governments and local Chambers.

"Regarding Great Plains Airlines, Neal pooh-poohed the idea that the newspaper abused the readers' trust in order to help anyone get rich. Neal pointed out that the Lortons, owners of the paper, are already rich. (And we all know that all wealthy people are contented with the amount of wealth they have.) Neal said, "Everybody in town thought it [public subsidy of Great Plains] was a great idea. It was a Chamber deal." [Emphasis mine]

[Snip]

"If it's a 'Chamber deal,' it must be good, and of course, 'everybody in town' thinks it's a good idea. Anyone who disagrees is by definition a naysayer, an anti-progress crank, and therefore is beneath notice, no matter how well he can argue his position."

(Note: The owners of the Tulsa World were investors in Great Plains Airlines at the time they were singing the virtues of its getting public subsidies. THAT IS NOT MY POINT HERE. THE MR-T is not doing this. The point of the post is the "It's a Chamber deal" mentality, a real phenomenon that affects local policy decisions. A phenomenon that *Shock and Gasp! What have you done with Walsingham?* isn't even necessarily the fault of the Chambers involved.)

Walsingham's Good Mood continues: Kudos to the MR-T on the article (by Stephanie Miller) concerning the rising opposition to the smoking ban. In future articles it would be great if they could get into some of the statistics being used by the SmokeFreeMidland outfit, specifically Relative Risk and Confidence Intervals.

For instance, Dr. May's letter of last Sunday made a great issue of statistics on the exposure to second hand smoke that showed relative risk factors of less than 2. Still, the casual reader might think those numbers must mean something really bad if a whole letter is being written about it and all. And written by a PhD, to boot!

Yet:

"As a general rule of thumb, we are looking for a relative risk of 3 or more before accepting a paper for publication." - Marcia Angell, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine"

"My basic rule is if the relative risk isn't at least 3 or 4, forget it." - Robert Temple, director of drug evaluation at the Food and Drug Administration.

"Relative risks of less than 2 are considered small and are usually difficult to interpret. Such increases may be due to chance, statistical bias, or the effect of confounding factors that are sometimes not evident." - The National Cancer Institute

"An association is generally considered weak if the odds ratio [relative risk] is under 3.0 and particularly when it is under 2.0, as is the case in the relationship of ETS and lung cancer." - Dr. Kabat, IAQC epidemiologist.

The WHO Study and an EPA Report on the Effects on non-voluntary smoking are cited heavily in SmokeFreeMidland Literature. I suggest you supplement that information with information that can be found here (WHO Study) and here (EPA Study).

But, really, all of this is beside the point. We know smoking is bad for us. We can at least suspect that exposure to second hand smoke is not good.

This is wide-spread knowledge and is generally accepted by smoke banners and smokers alike.

Here is the crux of SmokeFreeMidlands argument:

"'Restaurants, businesses and bars do not have the right to endanger the health of Midlanders by exposing them to secondhand smoke,' Vogel said."

There are no situations that SmokeFreeMidland can list where people who choose not to be subjected to second hand smoke are forced to be subjected to it. None.

What we have is people who choose not to be subjected to second hand smoke wanting to be able to go anywhere and do anything and not be subjected to second hand smoke. Quite a different thing.

I am a life long non-smoker. I like going to The Bar. I would like going to The Bar even more if it were smoke free.

There is just one little problem. I don't own The Bar. And the fact that The Bar is open to the public does not provide me with any mechanism for determining policy on how it is run, save one: The choice to patronize The Bar or to not. Period.

Dr. Vogel is correct when he says that these establishments "don't have the right to endanger the health of Midlanders." But he is 100% wrong if he thinks that that is what is happening.

What is happening is that a public pretty well informed on the risks involved are make individual decisions and trade-offs that are deemed incorrect by the banners.

Couple this with a belief by many that people like Scott Gunn (the proprietor of The Bar) should be forced to give up his rights as the owner of a private business long before they *gasp and horror of horrors* should ever be denied having it all their way and you have a campaign.

And that campaign is SmokeFreeMidland.

Congratulations to Cedric Benson on the Doak Walker Award. And the old fogey statement of the month: Congratulations on the new haircut. It is worth an extra mil a year in endorsements.

With all due respect to my fellow contributor, I must respectfully -- and perhaps predictably -- disagree with the honorable Walsingham in his support of the proposed MC bond issue.

In my view, the answer to the so-called Midland College rennovation and expansion "problem" is a complete no-brainer, and the answer is not another tax increase. Wanna spend more money, campus officials? Fine. RAISE TUITION. It'll work-out to about $170 per student per year by my numbers. In the long run, this plan will be less costly, with the burden placed directly onto those who would reap the perceived benefit.

We tend to get mired in our own sense of nobility at times, specifically via the idea that this is the right thing to do because it benefits the community. This is passively evidenced not only in Walser's comments, but in this story as well. But it is the same justification that was used to pass the E.D. tax, sports complex tax, MISD bonds, etc., etc., etc.

"But Vaughn, how can you be against this? It'll be so good for the community."

There's one fatal flaw with that argument: Communities don't exist. Community is a concept, an ideology, but that's all. Only individuals exist. And the fundamental liberties of the individual must never be usurped or infringed for the sake of an imaginary invention called "community."

Raise tuition. Problem solved.

Another good day for blogging: Peggy Noonan thinks we're OK after all.

When you hear name-calling like what we've been hearing from the elite media this week, you know someone must be doing something right. The hysterical edge makes you wonder if writers for newspapers and magazines and professors in J-schools don't have a serious case of freedom envy.

The bloggers have that freedom. They have the still pent-up energy of a liberated citizenry, too. The MSM doesn't. It has lost its old monopoly on information. It is angry.

But MSM criticism of the blogosphere misses the point, or rather points.

Blogging changes how business is done in American journalism. The MSM isn't over. It just can no longer pose as if it is The Guardian of Established Truth. The MSM is just another player now. A big one, but a player.

Go read the whole thing.

This text of a speech given by Michael Crichton is long but well worth the effort. Get a cup of coffee and take in the whole thing. It concerns the perils of the subjugation of science, true science, to public policy.

It is breathtaking in its honesty and bluntness.

The speech itself details an emerging pattern of the claiming of "scientific consensus" in order to shut off debate on unsettled science in order to advance certain public policy decisions. While its main target is the religion/belief of "global warming" you will also find this little nugget that you can e-mail to local city council members:

"In 1993, the EPA announced that second-hand smoke was "responsible for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths each year in nonsmoking adults," and that it " impairs the respiratory health of hundreds of thousands of people." In a 1994 pamphlet the EPA said that the eleven studies it based its decision on were not by themselves conclusive, and that they collectively assigned second-hand smoke a risk factor of 1.19. (For reference, a risk factor below 3.0 is too small for action by the EPA. or for publication in the New England Journal of Medicine, for example.) Furthermore, since there was no statistical association at the 95% coinfidence limits, the EPA lowered the limit to 90%. They then classified second hand smoke as a Group A Carcinogen.

This was openly fraudulent science, but it formed the basis for bans on smoking in restaurants, offices, and airports. California banned public smoking in 1995. Soon, no claim was too extreme. By 1998, the Christian Science Monitor was saying that "Second-hand smoke is the nation's third-leading preventable cause of death." The American Cancer Society announced that 53,000 people died each year of second-hand smoke. The evidence for this claim is nonexistent.

In 1998, a Federal judge held that the EPA had acted improperly, had "committed to a conclusion before research had begun", and had "disregarded information and made findings on selective information." The reaction of Carol Browner, head of the EPA was: "We stand by our science….there's wide agreement. The American people certainly recognize that exposure to second hand smoke brings…a whole host of health problems." Again, note how the claim of consensus trumps science. In this case, it isn't even a consensus of scientists that Browner evokes! It's the consensus of the American people.

Meanwhile, ever-larger studies failed to confirm any association. A large, seven-country WHO study in 1998 found no association. Nor have well-controlled subsequent studies, to my knowledge. Yet we now read, for example, that second hand smoke is a cause of breast cancer. At this point you can say pretty much anything you want about second-hand smoke.

As with nuclear winter, bad science is used to promote what most people would consider good policy. I certainly think it is. I don't want people smoking around me. So who will speak out against banning second-hand smoke? Nobody, and if you do, you'll be branded a shill of RJ Reynolds. A big tobacco flunky. But the truth is that we now have a social policy supported by the grossest of superstitions."

The whole concept of personal liberty and responsibility is lost on some pushing the smoking ban. That much we know.

But those who are a little too willing to sacrifice the liberty of others need to consider that the science may not be on their side either.

I don't know what iowahawk's real job is but I hope he quits or gets fired or something so he can spend more time....uh.....iowahawking.

The Apple Product Cycle.

Hat Tip to Fire Ant Gazette.

Now comes a $42 million dollar bond proposal for Midland College. In the face of all of the other tax burdens placed upon the populace recently...the airport, the two stadiums, the corporate welfare maintenance slush fund economic development tax, and the most recent MISD referendum to update the secondary schools, there is only one position that I can reasonably take on the College's bond proposal: I am all for it.

Midland College truly is one of the competetive advantages we can bring to bear when trying to sell Midland. It is a fine junior college. Further, it has served (and continues to serve) many, many Midlanders throughout their lives whether they choose to stay in Midland (which we hope they do) or go on to other places.

Reading this blog, it would be easy to make the assumption that if it involves a tax or a tax increase then I/we are against it. That is not the case. Taxes are a necessary downside to operating government and the various public services that we have all come to expect. Services likes police departments, courts of law, road repair. Public education is one of those things. That is why we supported the last two MISD Bond proposals.

Truly, if I must pay the taxman, contrast what the college has done and will continue to do for Midland and the surrounding area with, say, "incenting" Cingular...a company that could afford to buy AT&T Wireless for almost $70 billion dollars in cash. Or incenting expanding local companies to take some tax money in exchange for the ability to claim jobs created. Incenting downtown office building owners to house their startups in downtown office buildings.

And don't get me started on the stadium complex. That particular project was not "economic development". It was a penile implant for overly powerful local sports boosters.

Midland College truly is one of the major assets that Midland has to offer. We need to not just maintain it, but expand it to meet whatever demand level it needs to meet.

I can die happy now. Well, happier, anyway.

Have scored links in the permanent blogrolls of both Protein Wisdom and iowahawk....and managed it with only a small loss of dignity.

And we even got a mention from Roger L. Simon.

It has been a good day to blog.

Steve Lovelady is the managing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review's website CJR Daily who labeled bloggers "salivating morons" (among other things) for their role in Eason Jordan's exit from CNN.

Roger Simon hits on what he thinks is an unwritten story of the whole Eason Jordan affair:

"I think there is an unwritten story in the present blog/MSM controversy regarding Eason Jordan. Journalists are jealous of bloggers. Some of them very jealous. And I am not saying this just because if you type "Jeff Jarvis" into Google you get 397,000 links and if you type "Steve Lovelady" (the Dorothy Parker wannabe who recently called us "salivating morons") you get 804."

Which is surprisingly 100 times more than the "Steve Lovelady" link count. Even more surprisingly is that it is almost half of the "Columbia Journalism Review's" count of 227,000. (02/15/2005 at 2pm CST)

So...just for fun use Google and use the comments here to tell us if you beat either Steve Lovelady or even the Columbia Review of Journalism itself in the Google link sweepstakes.

The Tulsa World has sent letters to blogger Michael Bates threatening legal action for alleged violations involving fair use of their articles (always a fine line tread by bloggers using material from these sources). Fair enough, if true.

But what really amazes is that The Tulsa World maintains that use of an "unauthorized link" back to any Tulsa World article on Bates' blog constitutes a copyright infringement.

Got that? The Tulsa World is actually trying to make the claim that an external hyperlink back to its website is a violation of copyright.

(And,yes, I meant to link back to the Tulsa World homepage.)

The letter was signed:

John Bair
Pathetic Asshat
Scorned Former Gatekeeper
Vice President
Tulsa World

Every now and again I find myself tuned in to the KWEL morning show...always wondering if the ratings there are as low as the demographics are horrible....anyway, I learn that in a town that has but a single elected Democratic official the show has as its "Citizen Watchdog"....wait for it....Republican County Chairman Sue Brannon.

Thinking about getting Napster-to-Go? Here is some information that you might find interesting.....along with a stunning opening sentence:

"You know, if you sign up for Napster-to-Go and don't realize that your music is going to disappear when you stop paying them money, you're not a victim of the bloodsucking media barons—you're a tard."

Yet another new Midland Blog: Ruminations (by Justin Tate).

A blogroll updater's work is never done.

Tim Blair's Fisking of a New York Times article on the Eason Jordan resignation may be the best standalone post out there that shows the difference between the new media and the old media.

For those out there who learned about the story only by reading the article on his resignation here are some links to follow out that will flesh out the main story but also illustrate the resources that the new media can bring to bear on a story that the old media can't.....or won't depending on the story's...uh..."newsworthiness" in the eyes of the eyes of the real, true, professional, high priests of information journalists:

• Easongate
• Michele Malkin I
• Michele Malkin II
• Jeff Jarvis
• Jim Geraghty

Right now, the old media take on this is that Eason Jordan just said something a bit...er...forward and was then set upon by a "lynch mob" of knuckle dragging bloggers who, unfairly and unjustly, got him fired. Even more ridiculous were the charges that Jordan had fallen victim to some new strain of....wait for it....no, really.....wait for it....it is worth it: McCarthyism.

I have no doubt that there is a certain level of triumphalism in the blogosphere that Mr. Jordan is now the ex-president of CNN News, but most of what I remember the blogosphere doing in this matter was 1) digging up previous statements from Mr. Jordan that matched up with what he allegedly said in front of the bigs at Davos, and 2) calling for the videotape of the event that would either refute the claim that Jordan slandered the U.S. military or allow us to remove the word "allegedly" from claims that he did.

What is interesting here (as the Powerline guys pointed out) was that the conventional wisdom once held that the blogosphere only had the power to keep a story bubbling up to the surface longer in the hopes that the mainstream press would then finally pick it up and run with it. That was the pattern with Trent Lott's resignation, and the Swift Vets, and even with Dan Rather's monumental climbdown.

But this was different. Whether the story was deemed not newsworthy or they were trying to protect one of their own, the mainstream press never picked it up. For most of the mainstream press, the initial contact with the story was the report of Jordan's resignation.

Some Gatekeepers. Heh^®. Some Gate.

Yes, Jessica's Well is undergoing the aforementioned (too lazy to link) site re-design and part of that design will be an updated blogroll. But in the meantime the current blogroll had gotten so out of date that I had to fix that problem immediately.

The most notable additions to the blogroll are the new(er) Midland based blogs:

Bert's Blog, written by, I am guessing, frequent Jessica's Well commenter "Bert";

Stark Trek, "Boldly going where few Starks have gone before";

Jimmy Patterson's Sticky Doorknobs; and

and John Boswell's Blogging For Midland.

Also on the topic of Midland based-blogs, congrats to Eric Siegmund of The Fire Ant Gazette on his "Person to Person" profile in today's Reporter-Telegram (Eric uses a Mac? Who knew?). And thanks to article writer Jimmy Patterson for listing all of the Midland Blogs.

Come to think of it, I kinda sorta remember doing an interview with the paper a while back....

Mr. Snow, one of our favorite correspondents, has announced on his radio show this morning that he has cancer. It sounds like it has been caught early and is treatable, but the treatment is never pleasant.

Send him a note at his website and remember him in your prayers. Tony Snow has been a consistent voice for freedom in the media and we appreciate, greatly, his contributions to The Dialogue.

BTW, kudos to the letter authors that were published in yesterday's MRT! The letters to the editor on the Smoke(r) Free Midland movement were excellent, well-written defenses of the "agin" position on the proposed smoking ban. The bottom line remains that a private business should be able to handle regulating smoking in its establishment without government intervention. At some point, if smoking is banned in "public places," someone will recognize that the smoking areas outside buildings where smoking is already banned are "public places" as well.

If they remain consistent, the MRT will not make the letters available online until tomorrow. We'll post an update with a link when that happens.

UPDATE: Here is the link to Sunday's MRT letters to the editor, a day early and in a separate "smoking ordinance opinions" section. Thanks.

And, yes, I had forgotten about the letter from the doctor (Phd, not M.D.) containing the scaremongering with information on kids and smoke, including this:

Those exposed to tobacco smoke at home every day for many hours are nearly four times as likely to contract lung cancer later in life as those whose parents were non-smokers.

We posted earlier: "How many of these cases of exposure can be attributed to living with a smoking parent rather than a kid spending all his or her time in a smoky bar or restaurant? Is it 99% or 100%?" The good doctor helps our case.

Some of our more careful readers may notice some slight similarities between today's editorial in the Midland Reporter Telegram by Gary Ott (see update), and a post we made last week which included a link to an article by Anthony Boadle of Reuters carried by the Washington Times. We originally found it via The Wall Street Journal's "Best of the Web Today," edited by James Taranto, and we attributed it as such.

UPDATE: A commenter, dignan, has pointed out that Mr. Ott does (may?)not write the editorials for the MRT, even though his byline adorned the online editorial this morning. And lo and behold, Mr. Ott's byline is no longer on the online version of the editorial. We have removed the attributions below.

At least the MRT doesn't conclude with "we oughta do it 'cause Cuba did it."

I am reminded of Major Major's dad in Catch-22

"Major Major's father was a sober God-fearing man...his specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any...On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at he crack of noon everyday just to make certain that the chores would not be done...he invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the country."(ch9, pg78-79)

Now that Iran and North Korea are back in the news, read this, by Maria Malenic, to start getting caught up.

In the wake of the Iraq war, Muammar Qaddafi decided -- for various reasons, depending upon who is asking him and when -- that giving up his illicit weapons programs was a prudent idea. The various components of those programs, now stored at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, are fairly substantial trophies in the war on terrorism that have gone largely unnoticed.

Read the rest. The Axis of Evil is real.

From the Washington Post (registration required) through Tim Blair:

"Female interrogators repeatedly used sexually suggestive tactics to try to humiliate and pry information from devout Muslim men held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a military investigation not yet public and newly declassified accounts from detainees.

The prisoners have told their lawyers, who compiled the accounts, that female interrogators regularly violated Muslim taboos about sex and contact with women. The women rubbed their bodies against the men, wore skimpy clothes in front of them, made sexually explicit remarks and touched them provocatively, at least eight detainees said in documents or through their attorneys."

Well, this is new:

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You step in the stream,
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Original return when trying to surf here.

Yo! a&mgrad! I know you are out there. This one is for you! Really. You can just read it and smile to yourself knowingly and not post a comment. I won't mind.

Cuba has banned smoking in public places. The communists beat us to it. Hattip to James Taranto, last item.

UPDATE: New Contest: What do Havana and Odessa (and Midland?) have in common?

Here are a few lines from several letters to the editor from this past Sunday (apparently all that the MRT will bother to post to their own website):

An estimated 17 percent of lung cancers in non-smokers can be attributed to high levels of second-hand smoke exposure during childhood and adolescence.

How many of these cases of exposure can be attributed to living with a smoking parent rather than a kid spending all his or her time in a smoky bar or restaurant? Is it 99% or 100%? Oh, and "an estimated 17%" is a dodge. it is equivalent to "We guess it is around 20%, but 17% sounds more precise."

The next quote is more in line with the commentary heard in the "Smoke(r) Free Midland" radio ads:

Perhaps I was a bit too strident with Mr. Moyers.

This from Powerline:

"Earlier this afternoon, Bill Moyers called James Watt and "apologized profusely" for misquoting him and misrepresenting his views on the environment. Moyers says he will produce a written apology and think about ways to make the apology as public as the smear was. Congratulations, Mr. Watt."

This just in:

"We're there to kill terrorists, not journalists," said an unnamed Pentagon official. "The new rules are designed to make it easier for our personnel to distinguish between the two, since they're often found together and have similar objectives."

Maureen Dowd starts a blog.

At least I think she has. See #22.

"...he knew of 12 journalists who had not only been killed by US troops in Iraq, but they had in fact been targeted."

Now, watch the reporting of this story in the "Legacy Media".

And also watch the reporting of this story in the Blogosphere.

Why I Love the Blogosphere Part MMLXXVII.

Bill Moyers, darling of the media and communications elite slanders a former cabinet secretary and all too reflexively sits back to rely on the power and prestige of Bill Moyers to distract his audience from the fact that he making false statements and probably doing it knowingly.

Now cometh Hindraker:

"It would be possible, I suppose, for Bill Moyers to distort the truth and mischaracterize the words of others more baldly than he did in his Star Tribune op-ed, but it wouldn't be easy. One can only wonder what made Moyers think he could get away with such blatant misrepresentations. No, wait. It isn't hard to figure out after all. Moyers is just a year or two behind the times; he doesn't know about the blogosphere. Throughout Moyers' career, he was free to slander conservatives with impunity, knowing that there was no forum in thich their responses would ever be heard."

[snip]

"Before the advent of the blogosphere, Bill Moyers--arrogant, rich, powerful and well-connected--would merely have thrown Mr. Watt's letter into the trash. Today, he may still do so. But he and his friends in the liberal media no longer have a monopoly on information, and those who have been defamed by them, like James Watt, now have the means to make their voices heard."

Read the whole thing to find out what those sneaky Christians are up to. It seems Mr. Moyers has found them all out. They want to destroy the planet in order to hasten the Second Coming/Apocalypse/Rapture and they intend to do it with Republican environmental policies!

"There cannot be an absence of moral content in American foreign policy," she says. "Europeans giggle at this, but we are not European, we are American, and we have different principles." ------- Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice

A post by Andrew Stuttaford at The Corner on the New York City (or it just Manhattan?) smoking ban:

The New York Times, always reliable cheerleaders for big government meddling, have come up with a puff piece (sorry) marking the second anniversary of Nurse Bloomberg’s smoking ban. Equally predictably, the Washington Monthly’s Kevin Drum applauds this “triumph of pragmatism over libertarianism” with a judicious selection of quotations culled from the article.

But there are others that are worth considering too:

“There are still those cursing the ban as an affront to their civil liberties, and some bar and restaurant owners say that it has undoubtedly caused a decline in business.

Perhaps the best Victor Davis Hanson column yet. Nobody does it better. Didja know he has a website, too?

Go read Mark Steyn. Here. Now! I was going to excerpt the best line or two, but that, as is normal with Mr. Steyn, is futile. Every line is great. Read the whole thing.

Hattip to Lucianne.com. Another hattip to a friend, a discussion with whom last night has caused me to return to reading Lucianne regularly, starting today.

UPDATE: More here: "U.N. Follies; You Couldn't Make This Stuff Up" by Clifford May.

Easily the best review of a movie I have read in a year:

"This is an awful, awful movie. If you spend a single dime gaining admission to this 90-minute affront to morality, creativity, and reality that could otherwise be spent on some worthwhile cause, surely God will record it among the most egregious sins of your life, and you will be called on to justify it come Judgment Day."

While that is the review the reviewer wishes she could write, she expands on the above opening theme. Read the whole thing. Thanks to Megan Basham! You get the Smile of the Weekend Award.

This story line is worthy of Kafka. The federal government is suing tobacco companies for fraud because they lied to consumers about the dangers of smoking. But during the ongoing “fraud” this same government subsidized the farming of tobacco, which they knew would then be sold to the very tobacco companies who were defrauding the public. Doesn’t that make the federal government party to the fraud?

I guess it’s no more hypocritical than the states, like Texas, that were heavily invested in tobacco company stocks until they smelled an opportunity to cash in by joining the big lawsuit against the tobacco industry.

Wandering the internet this morning I have found five things that I didn't know about Glenn Reynolds.

Here's a little story that exemplifies everything that is wrong with our country:

Jacksonville, Super Bowl XXXIX: Here we come.

Or maybe not.

You see, you've maxed out your credit cards -- you needed a different jersey for every home game, obviously -- and all the home equity is tapped.

What do you do?

Well, if you're Kevin P. O'Donoghue (we'll call him Eagle Fan to ease pronunciation problems), you do what any true Eagles fan would do: borrow against your home for the needed cash.

Duh.

Calling it the "chance of a lifetime," Eagle Fan paid $4,000 on a Super Bowl bundle to the Feb. 6 game, according to The Associated Press.

To "afford" the package, which includes round-trip airfare, a four-night stay in a hotel and one game ticket, Eagle Fan was approved for a new line of credit, which means, essentially, that he will be using his home as collateral to watch a game.

That's anywhere from 10 to 20 years of debt..."

I first saw this story on Headline News. But the above excerpt isn't the worst of it. You see, O'Donoghue has several small children and a wife, and the house he mortgaged looks barely big enough for all of them to live in.

Not only should this guy be ashamed, he should be placed into a burlap bag and beaten with reeds for his irresponsible actions. The whole thing sickens me.

In other news, Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb purchased a diamond-encrusted pinky ring today valued at approximately $4,000. When asked to comment on his purchase, McNabb remarked, "Hey, you know, once in a while you got to blow a little pocket change on some bling."

Cable news may have created the 24-hour news cycle, but blogs have destroyed the news cycle altogether. No news cycle exists, only one contiguous conversation being conducted through millions of PC's at every moment of every day.

Read the whole thing here. And visit the author's blog here.

Lots of articles out there on the President's address to Congress last night. Here is the best State Of The Union And The Response As Summary Of America's Politics Right Now article I have found:

The tacit message of Democrats to grieving military families is: your children died in vain. But the mother of the fallen Marine whom George Bush remembered in his State of the Union address rebutted the Democrats' critique of the war with her presence. Her embrace of a liberated Iraqi was the most significant moment of the evening. She was crying not out of bitterness but pride for a son who served in an honorable cause that did not end in vain. He died protecting his country against an avowed enemy of it, a barbarian who never stopped fighting the first Gulf War. The Marine helped overthrow a regime that indisputably had ties to Al Qaeda. And he performed the most basic act of civilization, protecting the weak against the wicked. Under Saddam Hussein, Iraqis lost their fingers. Now they raise their fingers after voting against his dwindling followers.

Read the rest here. By George Neumayr.

If Aaron McGruder was white he'd be unpublished and unknown.

But still bitter and wrong.