Ha, Beldar! Mark Steyn‘s got my back (in a Viking way)! (h/t Insty)

The description of Mrs. Merdle from Little Dorrit: The lady was not young and fresh from the hand of Nature, but was young and fresh from the hand of her maid. She had large unfeeling handsome eyes, and dark unfeeling handsome hair, and a broad unfeeling handsome bosom. As you can see, Dickens finds a way repeatedly, palpably, to interject his feeling hands into the description.

In the revolving click-through ads, you can date Iraqi women, take a quiz to find out whether you’re gay, take a poll on gay marriage, find out about gay surrogacy options, and peruse gay and lesbian diamond rings (who’d have known that they have sexual preferences?!) among other things. Because of teh homophobia and xenophobia.

I don’t suppose Michael Ledeen will mind my quoting his short post in its entirety: I’ve been saying for some time that Syria is an Iranian colony, and that the defense pact the two signed several months ago was a serious matter. Now the Reform Party of Syria, which I trust, has just sent out the following: New IRGC base near Homs RPS News — The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

David Thompson has further thoughts on Andrew Anthony’s (apparently compelling) new book on his journey away from “guilty leftism”, spurred this time by John Lloyd’s review in the Observer.

 In “The Big Picture(s),” I noted that the establishment media in Iraq tended to rely on dubious reports from various sources, including within the Iraqi police. This weekend, the establishment media brings bad news from Iraqi governmental sources — shocka! — but how reliable is it? The L.A. Times reports: Bombings, sectarian slayings and other violence related to the war killed at least 1,773 Iraqi civilians in August, the second month

Dr. Ric is up to it again, making outrageous statements about how Jeff and I are trying to coolify the deep homophobia and racism that lurks in our dark, dark souls. He’s on especially about our opposition to legislating gay marriage en banc. Well, Jeff, I felt, was rather at pains to point out that if the issue of marriage between people of the same sex were agreed to in

And so it goes.

Halloween comes early to the Corn belt. And sure, given this week’s Polk County court ruling, there’s likely a really fine gay marriage joke in here somewhere, but were I to go there — however tongue in cheek — I fear Andrew Sullivan would show up at my door in his Levi’s E series, his face screwed up in high dudgeon, with the express intent to harangue me. Mercilessly. Which,