Don’t forget to watch Bush tomorrow evening (Sunday 5:30 PST). Let’s see him explain the u-turn on the UN while trying to pretend it’s not a u-turn. Also for your viewing pleasure: Seymour Hersh on the media and the Iraq War, C-SPAN 2 5:45 am Sunday PST, and goober candidate Thong Girl on Fox News Monday 2:30 pm.

Gwen Ifel on Washington Week in Review makes the not very large mental leap I said yesterday no one was making, between Miguel Estrada’s withdrawal and the Democratic Hispanic-oriented debate.

Yet another story and another poll showing that Americans think Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11.

Palestinian PM Two Name’s resignation today is widely seen as a power play, by which he will get outside powers (the US, the EU) to pressure Arafat to give him more power. Which shows that Abbas’s power lies outside the Palestinian people, Arafat’s within it. If one has any belief in democracy at all (quite aside from the fact that Arafat was directly elected and Abbas was not), this is a good reason Abbas should not win, whatever one might think of Arafat. Also, I despise politicians who continually threaten resignation to get their way.

Israel tried to assassinate the Hamas leader in a wheelchair today.

The Bushies insist that no one could have any possible objection to anti-missile systems because they are purely defensive. So why is the US objecting to Israeli plans to sell anti-missile missiles to India?

I once (7/31/02) compared the US’s attitude towards WMDs in the hands of Iraq to the laws in the South making it illegal for slaves to learn to read. The analogy seems even more accurate given the new claims that what mattered was not Saddam’s possession of WMDs, but his possession of physicists.