HEY, LILEKS! A MARVELOUS SITE WITH Warner and Disney World War II propaganda cartoons that never get shown on television, either because of the Japanese racial stereotypes, or the disturbing image of Donald Duck wearing a swastika and heiling Hitler, or because we are friends with Germany and we have always been friends with Germany.

I HAVE TO SAY THAT the recent Montgomery County shootings have really highlighted the worst aspects of blogs -- lots of uninformed speculation and unfounded conclusion-jumping. I read all sorts of scenarios drawn from the supposed fact that the victims were killed with one shot each (not so: one shooting didn't kill anyone; the Sarah Ramos shooting left a bullet-hole in a window); that the killings used a super-bullet that left no blood (contradicted by witnesses who saw blood); that the newspapers were hiding the race of the victims (not so); that the newspapers were hiding the race of the gunmen when there's no sign that anyone has seen the gunman or gunmen. The Bryan Preston post that C-Boy linked to was interesting in its discussion of al Qaeda terror tactics -- but Preston completely overstates the claim that the scenarios described in the terror-training tape had any similarity to the shooting spree. They didn't. Is the urge to get an Instalink so great that people feel compelled to rush to be the first add to the noise surrounding the signal? What I read in blogs today subtracted from the discourse rather than added to it.

YOU KNOW, I AM A FIRM believer against discrimination on the basis of skin color, but, upon further reflection, I need to make an exception when the skin color (in this case, blue), is the result of self-induced stupidity.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES, EXAMPLE No. 736. The federal Equal Access Act for Secondary Schools, designed in reaction to urban legends of Christian clubs not being allowed to meet in school, also requires acceptance of the Satanist Thought Society, and local Christians are shocked that such a club is in the high school.

SOMALI WOMEN'S RIGHTS ACTIVIST faces death threats in the Netherlands for criticizing Muslim attitudes towards women. According to another piece,

[One publication interviewed] Ali Eddaoudi, a writer and prison chaplain here in The Netherlands. According to him, "Hirsi Ali has created this problem herself". He accuses her of flirting with the Dutch and telling them what they want to hear. "She wants to be popular without weighing-up the consequences. You can't just say whatever you want, she's hurting people badly" he claims as justification for the threats.

NEAL POLLACK has stopped channelling Andrew Sullivan and is now channelling Tom Tomorrow, with hilarious consequences.

LITERATE SPEED METAL.

BIG POTHOLE.

DISTURBING LIST OF ANTI-SEMITIC incidents at the University of Chicago.

I AM SURPRISED TO learn that it is suddenly a controversial proposition that Supreme Court clerks are screened on ideology. The issue arose in the Estrada hearings.

My appellate clerkship was for a prominent Reagan appointee. I was made to understand that, as a result, I had no hope for a clerkship with the three most liberal justices on the bench in the early 1990s. It was well known that the clerks for these justices blocked resumes from those without sufficient left credentials from getting considered. (I was similarly disqualified from Justice Thomas's consideration because I had not been a member of the Federalist Society.) The only reason to apply was an anecdote that Justice O'Connor had been offended by a candidate that had failed to apply to every single justice for a clerkship. (She didn't select me, either.)

The Senate has the power to advise and consent to judicial nominations, and if they want to screen nominees on ideology, they're certainly entitled: there's no question Estrada was picked on ideological grounds. It's an ugly thing, however, if he's retroactively disqualified for something he did that was considered of no moment in the 1990's. If he was screening candidates for Kennedy, it was because Kennedy wanted him to, and there's no indication that Estrada was acting outside the scope of his agency.