Will Jail Make Paris Even More Popular? Japanese tourists are hopeful. What do you do with a drunken pirate, posted on the MySpace?

Now that she’s been widowed, is Ombudswoman at the Washington Post.  She has some thoughts about rude internet comments. Honestly: does the polloi have to be so hoi?

And everybody’s on the story, but the most instructive place to go, so far, is probably the comments to this Times of London story.

Suppressed by patriarchal strictures in their conservative society, young Saudi women express their desire for liberation from the shackles of puritanical Wahhabist morality by reaching out for appreciation and approval on the web. From MEMRI:

The Witness Protection people told us that they’d set us up with a cool new life, but the “friends” they’ve provided just suck. Have any of you guys got any advice? Related: Sean Pennitentiary

(The following is cross-posted to The McGehee Zone—but I want people to actually see it, so…) Seeing the link for this New York Times story on Drudge just crystallized something for me. From the article: Every morning, representatives from a cluster of antiwar groups gather for a conference call with Democratic leadership staff members in the House and the Senate. Shortly after, in a cramped meeting room here, they convene

From time to time to time, I have looked at the issue of whether criticism of Islamic fundamentalism, and the Afghan and Iraq campaigns, are counter-productive in the sense that they breed more terrorists.  So far the answer seems to have been that the increases in terrorist incidents have been almost entirely in Iraq, and that critics of Operation Iraqi Freedom (and the subset in the media) like to have

to petition Jeff to keep us in the know regarding Paris Hilton’s jail diaries. Now . . . Karl, or Darleen, or Cranky, or McGehee, or ANYBODY . . . please take over before I post again! UPDATE: There’s something about Paris that puts me in mind of these Nick Lowe lyrics . . .

WTF?  Vote for me or they’ll hurt you? France risks violence and brutality if conservative candidate Nicolas Sarkozy wins tomorrow’s presidential election, his Socialist opponent, Ségolène Royal, said yesterday. On the last day of official campaigning, opinion polls indicated that Sarkozy was enjoying a commanding lead over Royal, who accused the former interior minister of lying and polarizing France. “Choosing Nicolas Sarkozy would be a dangerous choice,” Royal told RTL

*****Cross-posted from Bloody Scott***** You may have heard of the incident in which a tanker truck burst into flames on an underpass in California, creating heat so intense that it melted the steel girders of the overpass above, causing it to collapse, despite Rosie O’Donnell’s observation that “you can’t melt steel.” There obviously thus arise questions over how this may have occurred, using what means, and for what purpose. Yesterday,