Please send ideas/artwork for Protein Wisdom items for the hols.Thanks, Dan 

Andrew Sullivan exclusively reports that security in Iraq has improved because the US has set up security walls around neighborhoods and along highways, based on e-mail from a reader whose son is in the Army and stationed in Iraq. Apparently, Sullivan failed to notice or follow this story when it was reported by Reuters, the New York Times (and sister pub the International Herald-Tribune), the Christian Science Monitor, Stars & Stripes, the AP

UPDATE: Karl’s piece, below, is much better than this (which is like shooting fish in a barrel with dynamite).  Meet William Neal, juror at a trial regarding Hamas-funding “charities”: The defendants were accused of illegally routing more than $12 million in support to the terrorist group Hamas through a series of charities, known as zakat committees. Prosecutors said those committees are controlled by Hamas. Defense attorneys argued HLF simply helped

That guy was always under foot.  Y’dig?

In “The Big Picture(s),” I noted the case of Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi stringer working for the Associated Press with a history of taking staged photographs of Islamic terrorists, who was detained by the US military as a security threat in April 2006. An Iraqi investigating magistrate convened the first criminal hearing in the case on Sunday.  The AP coverage is thisclose to a press release from the lawyer the AP

Cynthia McKinney running for President.  Green Party, says Rob.

Congratulations!   Reality Bites Here’s one thing that bloggers can do every bit as well as the mainstream media: embarrass themselves spectacularly. Jim Henley of the blog Unqualified Offerings had a post last week attacking Mark Steyn, author of “America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It”: The excerpt . . . that ran in Maclean’s last year is far more blatantly racist than I figured it would be when I

KILLER WHO FED PROSTITUTES TO PIGS GETS LIFE SENTENCE Illustrated (warning: video)  “You’ve got to change your evil ways, baby,/Before I feed you to my pigs.” 

“Rather, hate me because I’m an egoistical twat.  But never mind, because later I got fat.  But I lost some of the weight.  So, if you’d mildly despise me that would be nice.” It’s not easy, you know.  (Warning: video) And your beliefs don’t trump my first-hand experience. McGehee understands.

Before or after the Liberace Museum?  Las Vegas is building a museum about some of its founding fathers and most influential figures—guys with names like Bugsy, Lefty and Lansky. The mob museum will stand as frank acknowledgment of the major role mobsters played in developing Las Vegas into the gambling capital of America and giving the city its rakish glamour during the 1940s and ’50s. “Let’s be brutally honest, warts and all. This