I'm on the verge of tears after reading this story. You've probably read it before (I got it from Oxblog) but if you haven't:

Most Masai had learned of the (September 11th) attacks from the radio soon after they occurred. But the horrible television images passed by many Masai, who got electricity in their village only shortly before the attacks. In the oral tradition they rely on, Mr. Naiyomah sat them down and told them stories that stunned them.

Through his tales, Sept. 11 became real. The Masai felt sadness. They felt relief that Mr. Naiyomah was unscathed. They wanted to do something.

Today, in a solemn ceremony in a grassy clearing, they did, blessing 14 cows being given to the people of the United States. Elders chanted in Maa as they walked around the cows, animals held sacred by the Masai (often spelled Maasai). After the blessing, the cows were handed over to William Brancick, the deputy chief of mission of the United States Embassy in Nairobi.

I'm honored beyond words to share the earth with people such as these. My God.

Rob Kent has started this site as a tribute. Please go to this page and try to come up with an appropriate thank you. And please consider going to this page to make a donation.

Reality bites. Slow to non-existent blogging in the near future.

Nick Kristoff had a column today about going to a gun show that Instapundit and Jeff Goldstein are ripping on. It inspired me to finish my description of the gun show I saw.

For your enjoyment: one person’s impression of one gun show. Your mileage may vary.

I went to a gun and knife show recently with my long-suffering fiancée and a gay couple who are friends of ours. Instapundit had talked about them a lot, and I wanted to see one for myself.

One of the guys is an NRA member and a gun enthusiast. He grew up in rural Texas, was an Eagle scout, and did ROTC for a while. He has four guns- a hunting rifle, an automatic pistol, a shotgun and a sniper rifle. He wanted to buy a clip for his pistol and invited us along because he knew I was curious. We went to the George R. Brown convention center in Houston, parked on a side road. I wanted to look at bumper stickers in the parking lot, but didn’t feel that my company would indulge me. Out of about eight cars along the way, I saw three cars with bumper stickers- a truck that said “Rush is Right!” and “USMC”, a truck with a sticker of the Confederate flag that said, “I’d Rather Be Historically Accurate Than Politically Correct”, and a car with an American flag.

We paid our five bucks and went in. To get in, you have to walk past a huge sign that says that all guns must be unloaded, even for people who have a concealed gun license. Then you walk past an NRA recruitment booth at the end of the table.

I hesitate to guess how many dealers were there, but it was probably in the neighborhood of 50. The attendees were probably about 80% male, and most appeared to be in their 30s, 40s or 50s. The ethnic mix was unremarkable for Texas. It’s very unlikely that any of the dealers was doing anything illegal. I say that because there were a lot of cops in attendance, shopping around. There must have been even more in street clothes, because my friend overheard one of them buying a gun that couldn’t be sold to civilians. The dealer warned him that he couldn’t re-sell it to just anyone, and he said that he wasn’t going to resell it. Policemen were the most visible group. There were a smattering of people that struck me as militia types, but they could have just been hunters or camouflage enthusiasts.

The most common guns for sale were hunting rifles, followed by handguns. There were a smattering of semi-automatic assault rifles, and surprisingly few shotguns. The few shotguns were labeled “shotguns/ riot guns.” (I’m surprised because I had the impression that shotguns were ideal for home defense, because they make a scary pumping noise that scares intruders, don’t pass through walls like bullets, and don’t need to be aimed as carefully.) More dealers sold knifes and swords than shotguns. A few large tables sold ammo. I hadn’t realized that it’s legal to sell a gun after the government bans it; it’s just illegal to manufacture it. One dealer seemed to specialize in pre-ban assault rifles. They were very expensive.

In addition to gun dealers, there were tables selling accessories like gun safes, clips and scopes, books, beef jerky, first aid kits, and blowguns. Two booths sold devices that were supposed to turn your semi-automatic rifle into a full automatic. Most of the books were about military history or the history of a specific gun. Both of the books stands had small sections with books about bomb-making and whatnot like “The Poor Man’s James Bond” and “The Anarchist Cookbook.” There were a few books explicitly for revolutionaries, including (I’m paraphrasing from memory) “101 Things to Do Before the Revolution.” One of the little chapters was called, “Don’t be a terrorist.” Good advice, I’d think. It explained that terrorists target civilians, while guerillas target government employees and property. It suggests that you be a guerilla, not a terrorist.

I didn’t see any Confederate flags of any sort for sale, but there was one booth of Nazi memorabilia. Some of it was clearly reproduction, and some of it might have been authentic. There were flags, a plate, a lot of helmets and badges, daggers, and a gun.

The most fearsome thing I saw there wasn’t a gun (after a while, all the semi-automatics began to look alike), but a bullet. It was about the size of a Sharpie marker. I asked what it was for, and the dealer said that it was for use in mounted machine guns. I asked what you use them for, and he said the military uses them in nests and bolted to vehicles like armored personnel carriers. Civilians just use them for fun. I didn’t see any mounted machine guns for sale.

I didn’t talk to anyone but dealers. They were all friendly while they showed me their wares. One dealer had to show me how to look through the sight on a rifle, because I clearly had no idea. He laughed and said, “You don’t do much shooting, do you?” I said no, and he said, “It’s all right.”

I brought home some souvenirs. Various booths were selling gag money with the face of Bush, Clinton, Hillary or Gore, and I bought some. I wish I had a scanner, but I’ll try to describe them.

- the $2001 bill featuring “Commander Bush”. At the top, it says, “Revenge Promissory Note”, and says “Legal tender for the wretched hides of all terrorist cowards. ‘Lets Roll!’”. Some of the text: “Long Live Freedom,” “Dick Cheney, Vice President,” “Colin Powell, Secretary of State.” On the back, it has pictures of the WTC and the Pentagon, and says “Dedicated to the memory of those lost on this day of infamy- September 11, 2001”. The serial number is “I4NI91101”.
- the $13 “Asian States of America” bill with a drawing of Clinton with a skullcap and pigtails. Under his picture, it says “Ah So Bill”. Some of the text: “Fire J. Reno,” “We Love Rush,” “Fundraising by Chung Hung Low,” (following some Chinese characters) “Huang Hung Low- Treasurer of Amerika,” “E Pluribus Coitus- Union Made.” The serial number is all mock Chinese characters.
- the “sex” dollar bill that says “Madison Guaranty Note” and features a picture of “Slick Willie” surrounded by pot leaves. Some of the text: “Monika Blowinski, Affairs Secretary,” “Vermin Gordon, Golfer and Gofer”, “This note is legal tender for all affairs but mostly pubic and private”. The serial number is “001CU8692”
- the $3 “Hillary Rodham” bill that, again, said “Madison Guaranty Note” across the top. Hillary is dressed as the Statue of Liberty. Some of the text: “This note is legal tender for Hillary’s plane trips and campaign debts,” “E. Pluribus Coverupus,” “Webb Hubbell, Campaign Manager, “Susan McDougal, Jailhouse Confidant,” “Liarus Congenitum.” The serial number is “COW10000F”
- the $4 “Liberal Reserve Note” with Al Gore, for the “Socialist States of America.” Some of the text: “This note is legal liberal tender backed by Beijing National Bank, China,” “No controlling legal authority,” “Union funds bribe money,” “E. Pluribus Smokempot,” “Bill Clinton, Morals and Policy Advisor,” “Buddhist Temple, Hacienda Heights, CA, Chief Fund Raiser.” There’s a seal that says “The Right to Bear Arms” that’s been crossed out. The serial number is “I(heart)1970SPOT.”

I’ve now been to one gun show. Big deal. They’re not for me, but there’s nothing wrong with them. But it seems silly at best, dangerous at worst, to have a special kind of room called a “gun show” where certain gun laws don’t count. I'd like to see the gun-show loophole closed on a federal level. That’s all anyone is asking for.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds, who is a smart law professor, assures me that there's no such thing as the gun show loophole.

Every law that applies anywhere applies at a gun show. But federal law allows people who aren't in the business of selling firearms to do so without complying with the background check provisions, etc. If you're a licensed gun dealer, you have to comply with those laws whether or not you're at a gun show. If you're not a licensed gun dealer, you don't have to comply with those laws, whether or not you're at a gun show.

Eric Vetter, who is... not a smart law professor, assures me of the same thing in my comments:

Enough already! Are you a liar [you know there is no loophole but say it anyway] or stupid [gee, I hear tell of the loophole so I will just parrot the talking points like the Mind Numbed Robot I am], because those are really the only 2 options regarding your "gun show loophole" comment. Show us this "loophole" please. If it exists you should be able to link to a document or at least site one...But it DOES NOT EXIST and never has. But you are a liberal, so I suppose reality is too trite or annoying when you seek to advance an agenda, but PLEASE! Bloggers are essentially too smart for the typical lib bullshit, so either amend your blog or suffer the consequences of being Ralled!

Glenn, I'm sure that you're telling the truth. Eric, you're making me weary, man.

President Bush dismissed on Tuesday a report put out by his administration warning that human activities are behind climate change that is having significant effects on the environment...

"I read the report put out by the bureaucracy," Bush said dismissively Tuesday when asked about the EPA report, adding that he still opposes the Kyoto treaty.

Oh, come on! He isn't exactly the biggest consumer of contrary views the Oval Office has ever seen. The guy doesn't even read FBI memos that are lighting up the press- he gets briefed about them! Does anybody believe that he actually read this?

Breast fondling is not tolerated:

Courtesy of Laughing Boy, this is some delightful comedy.

The Poor Man has an excellent post on global warming. I can only post a large excerpt and cheer from the sidelines:

First of all, let's see who lines up on each side of this issue:

GLOBAL WARMING IS NONSENSE:
Glenn Reynolds
Steven den Beste
John McLaughlin
assorted John McLaughlins manques

GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL:
George W. Bush
Bjørn Lomborg: "But in my book I clearly use the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as key documentation, and all the uncertainties notwithstanding, I accept that science points to anthropogenic global warming." link
The National Academy of Science

Clearly a group of lefty pinko cry-babies if ever I saw one.

Let's look at what Steven den Beste thinks: "...the science on which this treaty [Kyoto] is based is not even remotely complete or sufficiently detailed to actually justify the kind of investment and political commitment that the Kyoto accord involves." I don't mean to pick on Mr. den Beste, because he is not the only person to hold or express these opinions. I'd just like to ask, rhetorically, what scientific evidence he, Instapundit, and the National Review have that the NAS and NASA have not considered. What steps, specifically, would make the science complete and/or sufficiently detailed? Well, quite.

Why do people persist in thinking that global warming is fantasy when there is such strong agreement in the scientific community that it is real? The problem is, I think, a problem that crops up pretty much anytime a scientific problem, particularly one as brutally complex as global climate change, is released into the political environment - that is, people feel free to treat scientific results like political opinions, and argue them as if they were. (emphasis added in both cases)

There exists as much of a consensus about global warming in the scientific establishment as you could hope to expect. The empirically measured increase in CO2 in the atmosphere and the empirically measured temperature change over the past few decades, combined with computer predictions, have led to the pretty inescapable conclusion that the Earth's climate is changing significantly due to human industrial influence. How much? On this, there is quite a bit of debate - some people say a lot, some people say not much, but the NAS thinks ~3K is most consistant with the available data. Do people disagree? Sure. Bjørn Lomborg, darling of the right wing and non-scientist, thinks they are off by a factor of 2. Actual scientists have doubts as well, both general and specific. That is the nature of science. And is it possible that the data is being interpretted wrong? Always, absolutely. But not terribly likely, and if you are looking for a skeptical scientific view, the WSJ opinion page is not the place the go.

Of course, Instapundit et. al. never argue with the scientists, because that is not merely an argument they would lose, but one they probably couldn't even follow. Neither could I, and neither could 99.999% of the world's population. That's the reason people get PhDs - so they can contribute to a highly technical discussion. So, as a stand-in for actual climatologists, we get straw man arguments against apocryphal 23-year-old stoned bearded Greenpeace canvassers, uninformed, unintelligent, unsober, and of no possible threat to press one for actual data. Which is the only currency acceptable in a scientific debate - not editorials, not popular science books, not articles from the Atlantic, but data. It's unrealistic to expect laymen to set up their own climate labs, or even to stay up-to-date on the peer-reviewed literature - no one has that kind of time. So we need to rely on the opinions of people who do run labs, and who do read the literature, and attend the conferences, and know what carbon dioxide is. If we choose not to listen to those opinions when they are uncomfortable, we probably shouldn't be congratulating ourselves on how modern and clear-headed we are in our thinking. If we don't want to listen to experts, we shouldn't have them. We should let Fred Barnes run NAS.

This takes me to a thought that I've half-written a dozen times. Here goes:

There are some issues where good folks on the left just don't understand good people on the right, and vice versa. For example, many on the left are motivated by the wish for full racial equality. This is well and good; the civil rights movement is one of the most beautiful stories of the 20th century, and racial minorities still need vocal advocates at least as much as, say, Microsoft. But too many people on the left assume that their political opponents must, by definition, feel the opposite way about racial equality. Too many assume that "right-wing" means "racist". It's not true. It's an insulting argument that does a huge disservice to racial issues. Furthermore, it's one of the most effective ways to make conservatives stop listening to liberal arguments. If I was being called a racist, I would stop listening, too.

Similarly, I keep coming across the assumption from bloggers on the right that "environmentalism" is just anti-capitalism by other means. People who want cars to be more fuel-efficient, or want clean air or water, or don't want the tops of mountains dumped into rivers- i.e., the large majority of Americans- aren't motivated by the wish to live longer lives with fewer environmental toxins, or by a love of nature, or by the wish to forestall disaster by delaying the exhaustion of irreplaceable natural resources. Rather, they must be motivated by a loathing of capitalism, progress, and success. What else could it be?

Den Beste is usually a wonderful, thoughtful writer and a national treasure, but I think his post here shows that he doesn't understand environmentalists at all.

There are people out there who hate everything that the industrial revolution has brought us. They think we're too rich; they think we're too comfortable. There are too many of us. They want to turn back the clock, make the human race smaller again, or if that can't be done at least make it so that the human race uses less. It takes different guises....

These people want to force us to make do with less "for our own good". We're too greedy, and they don't believe in self-determination or, ultimately, in freedom. They know better than us how we should live, and since we won't do what they ask us to, they'll try to figure out how to force us to do it, via law or treaty or suit.

For someone who believes that environmentalists, or scientists whose data supports environmentalists, are just plotting against growth, progress, freedom, etc., nothing can change your mind. I can't tell you how frustrating this is for someone who hasn't converted to the One True Church that believes that everyone except Bjørn Lomborg are making it up.

I read something like this, and all I can do is stare with incredulity and mutter, "You don't really believe that, do you?"

UPDATE: Jeff at Protein Wisdom had a different take on Poor Man's piece, and his point of view is certainly defensible. But I think he's dead wrong here:

Cleaner-burning energy sources are coming -- but they'll arrive far faster if we don't burden our economy (the very thing that drives such advancement in technologies) with a tangle of ill-conceived regulation engendered by questionable science.

I don't see how that's going to happen. It is plum crazy to think that we're going to libertarian ourselves into a cleaner environment. Absent regulations, it will almost always be economically rational to pollute! Why would you ship your waste to a safe facility, or spend money scrubbing your smokestacks, if you didn't have to? (There are some exceptions; if your garbage contains valuable metals, Economic Man should try to capture them if the benefits outweigh the costs. If there's a river nearby, Economic Man might dam it instead of shipping in coal to burn. A hybrid car might pay off its sticker price in gasoline. But these exceptions are rare, unfortunately.)

Polluters have every economic incentive to make the rest of us absorb the costs of their externalities. Regulations have two useful roles in the environment- they can outlaw certain practices outright (like banning the use of CFCs, and outlawing leaded gas), and they can make it cheaper to be clean than to pollute. Our factories and power plants have become much cleaner as a response to regulations and lawsuits. Not in pursuit of shareholder value, and not out of the kindness of their hearts.

I just realized that I have an Instapundit permalink. I'm duchy of the world!

Mark Poyser writes:

There is much that can be said about the Bush administration's belated admission of global warming, but I'd like to focus on one item:
From the NYTimes story:

[The report prepared by the EPA] recommends adapting to inevitable changes. [It] strongly concludes that no matter what is done to cut emissions in the future, nothing can be done ...
... adapting to a changing climate is inevitable," the report says.

This is a reprise of an attitude from the Reagan administration. Remember Donald Hodel, Interior Secretary? This item from 1989:

In 1989 Greenpeace launched a campaign to cut chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by 100 percent - at a time when no industrial government supported elimination.

US Department of Interior Secretary Donald Hodel suggested that rather than force industry to abandon CFCs, "Americans should be encouraged to wear sunglasses, hats and sunscreen lotion".

And folks say that Bush isn't Reaganesque!

Dr. Frank is one of several bloggers talking about the necessity of action about Iraq. I may be overly cynical, but I have no doubt that there will be an assault on Iraq. However, I think that it will be timed for maximum political benefit, either in the 2002 congressional cycle, or for the 2004 Presidential campaign.

If we're at war, or have recently concluded a war, in the fall of 2004, Bush will be unbeatable. During the elections, he'll be wrapped in the flag, and he'll do most of his campaigning in front of battleships and rows of cadets. Republicans will break all laws of logic, time and space to frame all criticism of Bush as treason. Any insinuation that the war had been scheduled to help re-elect Bush will be cast 24/7 in the conservative press as the disgusting ravings of partisans who hate America. The mainstream press will pick up this story line and run with it; the fear of accusations of "liberal bias" will kill a hundred Wag the Dog stories in their cribs.

The Democrats will fold; they'll run a spiritless campaign in which every criticism of Bush is wrapped in endless, fluffy statements about how much they support Bush and the war. They'll let Bush define continuity as a matter of National Security. They won't look like leaders.

History will judge him harshly, but he'll win by a landslide. I hope I'm wrong on every particular here, but it seems all too likely to me.

Eve Tushnet writes:

David Broder writes, "In 1962, when the first Spider-Man comic appeared, the notion of making his alter ego a New York City kid was unobjectionable. We were an innocent country then, not yet familiar with assassinations, urban riots and terrorist attacks." I HATE this cliche. I hate how America didn't lose its innocence with slavery--or the removal of the Cherokee--or the Civil War--or the World Wars--or Hiroshima and Nagasaki--but a pretty president pulls a Lincoln and suddenly America's lost her virginity? What kind of blinkered, privileged, everything-everyone-hates-about-the-Boomers perspective is this? C'mon.

Right on.

William Safire is at his best with a persuasive, crystal clear column. Go, Safire!

Under the police powers it operated under last year, and with the lawful cooperation of a better-managed C.I.A., an efficiently run F.B.I. might well have prevented the catastrophe of Sept. 11. That is the dismaying probability that Congressional oversight (it should be called undersight) will begin to show this week.

To fabricate an alibi for his nonfeasance, and to cover up his department's embarrassing cut of the counterterrorism budget last year, Attorney General John Ashcroft — working with his hand-picked aide, F.B.I. Director "J. Edgar" Mueller III — has gutted guidelines put in place a generation ago to prevent the abuse of police power by the federal government.

They have done this deed by executive fiat: no public discussion, no Congressional action, no judicial guidance. If we had only had these new powers last year, goes their posterior-covering pretense, we could have stopped terrorism cold.

Not so. They had the power to collect the intelligence, but lacked the intellect to analyze the data the agencies collected. The F.B.I.'s failure to absorb the Phoenix and Minneapolis memos was compounded by the C.I.A.'s failure to share information it had about two of the Arab terrorists in the U.S. who would become hijackers (as revealed by Newsweek today).

Thus we see the seizure of new powers of surveillance is a smokescreen to hide failure to use the old power.

Unsigned editorials rarely have the kick of a columnist, and I often skip them. But this Washington Post piece is a delight, and makes a dang good point about the accounting industry. It details a few of the ways that Adelphia's managing family used the company as a piggy bank without interference from their auditors. Then :

When Adelphia's board belatedly demanded an explanation from its auditor, it got a revealing answer. Deloitte said, yes, it would explain -- but only on condition that its statements not be used against it. How could Deloitte have forgotten that reporting to the board (and therefore to the shareholders) is not some special favor for which reciprocal concessions may be demanded, but rather the sole reason that auditors exist? The answer is familiar. Deloitte forgot because of conflicts of interest: While auditing Adelphia, Deloitte simultaneously served as the firm's internal accountant and as auditor to other companies controlled by the Rigas family. Its real allegiance was not to the shareholders but to the family that robbed them.

As a lobbyist for the big accounting firms, Harvey Pitt fought mightily to lift regulations on accounting practices and conflicts of interest. It seems blazingly obvious now that conflicts of interest are at the heart of crisis after crisis in the accounting and auditing industry, but Pitt has proposed nothing but "voluntary" reforms. He is the wrong guy to deal with this crisis in American capitalism. But the Administration sure isn't going to take him to task.

Conservative have recently been lamenting the lack of conservative principle in the Bush Administration, and I can see why. The funny thing is that his flip-flops often haven't made liberals happy either. The global warming reportis a prime example; absolutely nobody liked it. He's got Rush Limbaugh denouncing him for admitting that it's real, while liberals are pissed that massive climate change isn't going to spur any policy changes.

Why can't Bush cave on something, like accounting reform, that would actually help people?

Wow, Patrick Nielsen Hayden is outdoing himself recently. Of particular interest to me are two stories that slipped my radar entirely:

-The New York school board is editing famous works of literature, taking out "virtually any reference to race, religion, ethnicity, sex, nudity, alcohol, even the mildest profanity and just about anything that might offend someone for some reason."

Patrick responds with the genuine fury of a man of words:

This is beyond outrageous. This is no subtle matter of teaching from old-fashioned biases, or of presenting a worldview with which some adults might disagree. This is, rather, a large department of the state government deliberately contriving and presenting lies about serious literary work. It is in its own way a kind of child abuse, not as spectacular as battering or molestation but every bit as flagrant a violation of trust. The people who do it and who defend it should be removed immediately from any position of power over children, and never allowed to work in such positions again.

- The Weekly Standard should be commended for this story, which I hadn't seen elsewhere, detailing how ungrateful we've been towards Canada's contibution to the war on terror. They're now pulling out of Afganistan by the end of the summer, and no one seems to give a damn.

UPDATE: WOW! Jeff "Creatical" Goldstein has another furious response to the censorship in New York:

I'm far too inflamed to comment intelligently on this. But suffice it to say, should some bowdlerizing pinhead ever try this with any of my fiction, I'll show up in his or her classroom wearing nothing but a smile and a wink and perch myself atop a desk, where I'll river dance and shout vile limericks at the top of my soon-to-be-incarcerated lungs (let things flop where they may).

The link doesn't work, but Gagpipe had a hilarious headline from the Daily Probe:

Bush Officials Eat Babies; Approval Ratings Steady at 75%

And speaking of humor sites whose links don't work, what is the deal with Modern Humorist? It looks like it went to the Big Server in the Sky while I wasn't paying attention. I'm going to be pouring malt liquor on the ground for my dead homiez this evening. Modern Humorist, TimmyBigHands, Suck... I will mourn you till I join you.

Man, Charles Murtagh is cooking here.

In the first few months after Sept. 11, I took the Bush administration at its word that it would try its best to eradicate Islamic terrorism (although I should have been more disturbed, then, that it never put it so bluntly), that it would "end regimes" that harbored and supported such terrorism, and I counted myself among those Democrats who was not-so-secretly relieved that we had a tough-talking Republican in the White House. Post-Afghanistan, though, my confidence in the Bushies has been at an ever-lower ebb, as they have bent over backwards to placate our European and Arab "allies," and backed further and further away from any sort of military actions against the "axis of evil."

Now they're trying to convince us that all we can do is wait: wait for the next Sept. 11, which is "inevitable," "unavoidable," and a matter of "not if but when." Meanwhile Bush and his advisors are sticking their heads under their desks and hoping to wait out the terrorists themselves, at least until after November, 2004.

Fuck this.

Here's what we should be waiting for, and working for: the day when American voters are pissed-off enough at the paucity of options on offer that their anger shows up in the polls. The day that some new options appear on the Sunday morning talk shows. Here's a couple of suggestions.

Check it out.

This is a little tardy, but I genuinely do not understand the pride and pleasure that Instapundit and a few conservative bloggers took in this exchange.

At another point, Mr. Bush showed little tolerance when NBC reporter David Gregory asked him a question in English and then added in French that the question was also directed to Mr. Chirac.

"Very good. The guy memorizes four words, and he plays like he's intercontinental," Bush snapped.

When the reporter volunteered he could go on in French, Mr. Bush lashed out saying, "I'm impressed. Que bueno. Now, I'm literate in two languages."

Okay. A reporter, who apparently speaks French, asks a question in French to a French person while in France. Bush, a graduate of Andover, Yale and Harvard, lashes out at him for his fancy-pants book learnin'. Would someone explain why the reporter is a dick and Bush is a straight-talking hero? What is wrong with knowing how to speak French, or having the courtesy to address a French person in his native language? Would Mr. Bush insist that foreign reporters ask him questions in their native langauges?

Orrin Judd said it well: "Part of restoring dignity to the White House, besides keeping your pants on, is not using your considerable power to humiliate people. Mr. Gregory came across like Eddie Haskill, but Mr. Bush came across like a schoolyard bully. This moment was beneath him and the dignity of the office."

Instapundit reports, via Henry Hanks, that the reporter's question was poor French. Maybe they're right, but I don't see why this means that Bush was right that David Gregory just memorized a few words. Isn't it more likely that he just doesn't speak French with native fluency? After all, he was prepared to go on when the President of the United States sneered at him, and he was prepared to accept a response in French from Chirac.

Wow. I'll be the first to admit that this is unfair, but... wow.

There are some people who wouldn't concede an inch on the environment if I had an electric Convinceatron turned up to Conviceforce 11. But maybe George W. Bush can make them think again. The next time you read a conservative assuring you that global warming is some kind of anti-business conspiracy, because environmentalists are really just communists in disguise, tell them to argue with the President.

According to the NY Times:

In a stark shift for the Bush administration, the United States has sent a climate report to the United Nations detailing specific and far-reaching effects that it says global warming will inflict on the American environment.

In the report, the administration for the first time mostly blames human actions for recent global warming. It says the main culprit is the burning of fossil fuels that send heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

But while the report says the United States will be substantially changed in the next few decades — "very likely" seeing the disruption of snow-fed water supplies, more stifling heat waves and the permanent disappearance of Rocky Mountain meadows and coastal marshes, for example — it does not propose any major shift in the administration's policy on greenhouse gases.

It recommends adapting to inevitable changes.

I guess that they didn't want to go down in history as the last administration to claim that global warming was a myth. They've conceded that man-made releases of greenhouse gases are radically changing the ecosystems of the much of the Earth. Buth they're still insisting that there's nothing we can do but "adapt to inevitable changes". Well, don't I feel inspired. Tell it to Bangladesh.