Visit Hot Air for running updates—including some hilarious video. Evidently, Zarqawi is about as proficient with an automatic weapon as Michael Moore is about sticking to the South Beach Diet.  But here’s the part I find most interesting, via Belmont Club, who quotes war skeptic Barry McCaffrey, just back from Iraq: The foreign jihadist fighters have been defeated as a strategic and operational threat to the creation of an Iraqi

From Terry Hastings, via email: Florida courts rule against vouchers on the grounds that the vouchers violate uniformity standards for our school system. the Florida Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that the voucher program violated the “uniformity clause” of the state constitution guaranteeing a high-quality system of public schools. Because the performance of the voucher kids was superior to those in public schools, the court ruled that education was not uniform—or

Via Allah, this bit of self-congratulatory puffery we’ve come to expect out of Howard Dean: “I was recently asked about the difference between the Democratic and Republican parties,” Dean said. “When it comes right down to it, the essential difference is that the Democrats fundamentally believe it is important to make sure that American Jews feel comfortable being American Jews.” Ironically, Dean is correct—though not for the reasons he fancies: 

More news from the war on terror front, this time from the AP: The French government is offering Zacarias Moussaoui the consular protection he deserves as a French national, but so far the al-Qaida conspirator has not asked for it, the French Embassy said Wednesday. In a press communique, the embassy said it had dispatched the consul general from Washington and an embassy official to every session of the trial

“The death penalty has a meaning, and it isn’t vengeance.” From Peggy Noonan, WSJ: Excuse me, I’m sorry, and I beg your pardon, but the jury’s decision on Moussaoui gives me a very bad feeling. What we witnessed here was not the higher compassion but a dizzy failure of nerve. From the moment the decision was announced yesterday, everyone, all the parties involved–the cable jockeys, the legal analysts, the politicians,