In a chaotic eulogy, [Mugniyah’s] boss Hezbollah’s chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, practically promised war on Israel -the presumed doer-, America, and the West. Following nearly 24 hours of silence, the Syrian official media acknowledged the bomb in its bosom; decrying it as a ”flagrant violation of international law” the first time such concern for civility has been demonstrated by a regime steeped in murder. Tsk, tsk.  What a world. More:

Via e-mail, a reader (known to PW readers, but I was unsure whether to use the name) identifies a potential bit of über-spin from Bill Clinton: “The political press has avowedly played a role in this election. I’ve never seen this before,” the former president said. “They’ve been active participants in this election. . . . But I don’t want to talk about the press. I want to talk about the people.

The New York Times starts a series “examining the lives of youth across the Muslim world at a time of religious revival” in Egypt: Here in Egypt and across the Middle East, many young people are being forced to put off marriage, the gateway to independence, sexual activity and societal respect. Stymied by the government’s failure to provide adequate schooling and thwarted by an economy without jobs to match their

Via email, this mildly humorous story found at not the wolverine: Yesterday, TheNinja and I rode to Princeton for what has become a pretty regular weekend ride: ride – coffee – ride. Typically, we stop at Small World Coffee, so I can increase my bougy academic cred by drinking way too expensive organic fair trade coffee and listening to world music (and the baristas are way cute). As we were

His Arch-Puppetude holds forth on the purported psychological exhaustion caused by the continual attention paid to the Islamist menace by those who do pay attention to it, stating that in fact those who continually focus on the threat–a canard uptrumped in order to facilitate Executive power-grabbing and the shredding of the Constitution in general–actually enjoy this posture, because it lends an element of romance to their otherwise pointless lives to believe

David Thompson: To avoid printing the cartoons – or to avoid any public suggestion that Islam is anything other than a Religion of Peaceâ„¢ – would not only show that death threats and violent thuggery work it would also imply that such thuggery is a morally legitimate response. It is not. Burning down schools and destroying libraries is simply not a sane reaction to the publication of a cartoon. Likewise, threatening to “take to the streets”

Sen. Hillary Clinton is scaling back her Wisconsin campaign schedule by a full day.  It looks like Sen. Barack Obama also may be leaving early.  Jeff Greenfield thought it could have been fertile ground for Clinton.  Chris Bowers thought (and may still think) it is a “must-win” for Obama. My speculation would be that neither side was moving the numbers there enough to affect their projected delegate take and are moving onto

Bob “The Prince of Darkness” Novak reports: Strategists for Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign believe it is imperative to identify her high-flying opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, with the “McGovern wing” of the Democratic Party — but they want to keep their candidate’s fingerprints off the attack. Presumably, leaking it to Novak would be considered counter-productive to that sort of secrecy. Now that her cover is blown, perhaps Clinton ought to

Everybody’s noticed the swelling on the left side of McCain’s face.  So, my question is . . . do the political cartoonists start drawing him with a lopsided head, or is it just too un-PC, even to do to a Rethug?

round-up at Jawa. Fairness Doctrine equal time.