The CEO of American Airlines “has publicly backed the captain who removed an Arab-American Secret service agent from a flight from Baltimore-Washington International Airport to Waco, Texas on Christmas day,” The National Review reports today. “The airline is currently being sued by the agent for racial profiling. American Airlines has released the incident report from the captain and another airport official present.” The National Review column reprints the full text

“A 72-year-old woman is one of three members of a Green Cove Springs family now in jail, accused of selling marijuana,” according to this story from WJXT News4 Jacksonville. The Clay County Sheriff’s Office arrested Elnora “Granny” Layfield, along with Michael and Linda Layfield, last Friday in their Stauffer Street home. Officer seized approximately 30 bags of marijuana valued at $1,200 from the house. Police said that undercover officers bought

TV Guide’s J. Max Robins reports that “MTV and Showtime are in ‘serious discussions’ about launching a gay channel, according to several sources familiar with the project.” “The would-be developers,” Robins notes, “are part of the Viacom media empire that includes CBS, UPN, Nickelodeon and VH1. However, they’re not the only big-time players considering a gay network:” According to industry sources, there have been such discussions at HBO, USA Networks,

“An al-Qaida fighter killed himself with a grenade Tuesday rather than be captured during a failed escape from the hospital where he and several comrades had been holed up for more than a month,” the AP reports (link: Tampa Bay Online). Mohammad Rasool, jumped from the second-story window at Mir Wais Hospital shortly before dawn but was quickly surrounded by soldiers, said Mohammed Shafiq, a local commander. ‘He stopped, looked

Something funny’s going on with Blogger this morning, but we’ll be back up and running later on. Those of you still lookin’ for Doc Anne’s beatdown of Cartoon Boy (you know who you are), click here and read “Let’s Rall!” — eds.

Writing in Reason, Sam MacDonald points to a clear sign of the coming apocalypse: the pundits at a recent Hudson Institute forum refused to prognosticate! Instead of predicting the future with a nod toward their own particular agendas — a traditional pundit pastime — all three [Mark Mellman, Bill Kristol, and Michael Barone] admitted that the political sands were shifting too rapidly for an accurate take.

Brent Bozell takes on the leftist media, in particular columnist Norman Solomon, who recently announced his “P.U.-litzer Prizes” for 2001 —

Victor Davis Hanson, speaking on Western virtues, in The National Review: Western society at its worst has also suffered from the same age-old sins of human nature prevalent everywhere and at every age

Collin Levey’s WSJ Opinion Journal article, “Anticircus Freaks,” contains wonderful words of social defiance from Ringling Bros. producer Kenneth Feld. Feld has begun taking on such bullying special interest groups as PETA by fighting their nuissance suits in court, usually successfully: ‘A small group of extremists does not have the right to impose their radical views on the people […] to prevent the majority, who want to see animals in

“The Miss America Organization might be saying adios to Atlantic City after this year’s pageant,” Debra Saunders points out in her latest column. “Its board of directors has been looking at other cities. I nominate Berkeley.” […] Of course, limiting the pageant to young ladies is likely to violate Berkeley’s refined sense of diversity. The City Council, of course, could pass a resolution inviting the organization to broaden its standards