From on the job! RIYADH, 17 February

Writing in The Weekly Standard, Stephen Hayes

An older link, but one worth revisiting on a casual Sunday. The pleasures of fisting, as taught to Massachusetts school kids by Massachusetts Department of Education employees and originally reported on in The Massachusetts News: Fisting [forcing one’s entire hand into another person’s rectum or vagina] often gets a bad rap….[It’s] an experience of letting somebody into your body that you want to be that close and intimate with…[and] to

Our DSL line is down (again), making posting really difficult, so new entries will be sparse for a spell (in order to post this, for instance, I had to pitch handfuls of ball bearing into the aluminum cradle of my satellite dish while simultaneously rubbing two sticks together; my wife, meanwhile, stood off to the side and fanned the phone jack with a palm frond). Balloon Juice: the more I

Channeling Victor Davis Hanson (or at least, finely imitating him) Cal State Fresno Classics Professor Bruce Thornton writes on “Europe: Axis of Arrogance” for Frontpage Mag: Once more European politicians and pundits are carping at the U.S., this time over President Bush’s identification of Iraq, North Korea, and Iran as an ‘axis of evil.’ The protest has nothing to do with the statement’s obvious accuracy, but rather with the wounded

Interesting Weekly Standard essay by Ethan Guttman on

Think Norah Vincent has a bone to pick with certain liberal advocacy flunkies? Well, check out the first few paragraphs of her Los Angeles Times piece, “Liberal Media Ignore What They Don’t Want to Hear”: Few creatures are more detestable, more verminous, than the Bruce Rolston’s (among others) shredding of his egregious civilian death “research” within hours of its release? None of which overstates the importance of bloggers, I don’t

“What began as a noise disturbance complaint at a Utah County motel earlier this month may land three U.S. Secret Service agents in criminal court on allegations of misconduct involving a party with underage girls and alcohol,” Wintersports reports. “Provo police and the Secret Service confirmed Thursday night that three out-of-state agents have been placed on administrative leave pending a criminal investigation.” According to Mike Mower, assistant to the Provo

An amusing battle story, courtesy of The Age and Gulf News: “Tom Johnson, an intrepid 42-year-old distance runner from the United States, achieved the rare feat of winning a ‘man versus horse’ endurance race over 80 gruelling kilometres in the United Arab Emirates, a newspaper reported today. “Johnson won by just 10 seconds over the purebred Arabian Al Barraq, ridden by Jennifer Nice, staged yesterday at the predominantly hilly Al

From U.S. News & World Report’s “Washington Whispers” pages: Will somebody give President Bush’s speechwriter, Mike Gerson, a raise? What, you haven’t noticed that his boss, once belittled as ‘Dumya’ for all his embarrassing verbal flubs, is now winning kudos for his speeches, even from Clinton speechwriters? Fact is, those who study these things say Bush’s speeches are better and more image-filled than those of the original plain speaker, Harry