To Rick, for the Amazon gift certificate, which I just used to pick up Batman Begins on DVD.  Didn’t see the flick in the theaters, so I’m really looking forward to it.

From the Telegraph UK: The Irish rock star, Bono, has been angered by Senator Hillary Clinton’s use of a U2 concert this week to raise funds for her political campaign coffers—even though he is a good friend of her husband, Bill. “U2 concerts are categorically not fund-raisers for any politician. They are rock concerts for U2 fans,” said his close associate, Jamie Drummond, who runs Data, the Third World advocacy

Oxblog’s David Adesnik expands on my post yesterday by comparing in more detail coverage on the Iraq vote by the New York Times and the Washington Post (here, here, here, and here) Quips Adesnik, “I guess the answer to my confusion is obvious: only read one newspaper, and then the world will seem like a much more orderly and rational place.”

Thomas McCann argues that, “whether the Iraqis choose to ratify their Constitution or not, the experience of their referendum will be a monumental success in the gestation of the Iraqi democracy.” He goes on to make the more forceful claim that a defeat could prove even more useful:  “No lesson could be more powerful than the voice of the people saying ‘No’ to governmental leaders and seeing what happens when