Catblogging, recipe-blogging, drunk-blogging…now we’re truly reached our lowest end. (Via Lost Remote.)

Your views on police powers after 9/11 might have been shaped not by your news consumption habits per se, but which medium you prefer.

Up to 3 years in prison for smoking pot in front of your kid? I’m not terribly averse to 3 strikes laws or similar limitations on too much judicial discretion, but once you start meting out jail time for essentially self-destructive behavior that may set a bad example for your kids, I’d say it does more to hurt than help the child’s emotional development to have a missing parent. It’s not family values in any sense of the word.

Do you ever get sick of people who proclaim how tolerant they are by telling you what they hate? It’s even worse when it’s a business describing its social conscience – in this case a hotel on the beautiful Oregon Coast, not far from where I grew up.

Why do liberals (and some old-guard conservatives) hate Paul Wolfowitz so much? David Brooks gives the intellectual hawk his due and Jeff Jarvis seconds the congratulations to a man who has been “an ardent champion of freedom” going back 25 years, often when the realists in Republican administrations were rhetorically slapping friendly dictators on the back. Jarvis says appreciate the message if not the man: I don’t even care if you don’t want to give credit to Wolfowitz...

Have antismoking ads gotten any less lame since The Truth made us hate tobacco companies more than lung cancer? I’m skeptical of the new material.

The latest stirrings of political upheaval in the Middle East are happening…where?

Steve Barnett is mildly amused at a bill proposed by an Illinois legislator to criminalize implanting a piece of jewelry in someone’s eye, a procedure offered only by a Dutch clinic at the moment: Just remember, folks, it’s okay for a woman to choose to suck a fetus out of her own body, but nobody, and they mean nobody, can choose to put something in their own eye. I tend to be a bodily-integrity absolutist, whether it’s the piercing-laden body of a goth punk or the body of a...

Egyptian blogger Big Pharaoh is excited by what he says is the first use of the word “terrorist” by Egypt’s leading newspaper to describe an attack on Iraqi civilians by the insurgents. Still he thinks it’s a typo, not a change of heart. (Via Iraq the Model.) I would add the possibility that Egypt is trying to regain some goodwill with America by changing their words if not their actions. Look at how Vladimir Putin has managed to keep a mostly cordial relationship with...

Reason’s Michael Young, also opinion editor of Lebanon’s Daily Star newspaper, point-by-point corrects a deeply confused former NSC member and Kerry advisor writing in NYT on exactly what is happening between Lebanon and Syria now. In response to the writer’s claim that Hezbollah is the largest party in Lebanon’s parliament: It is the largest single party bloc, but overall it is much smaller than several other blocs that are just as cohesive, and its overall influence is...

I wish DC’s mayor was this tactlessly fun. It would give me something to respect about him.

A shocking new development in the Jacko trial!

My former alt-paper colleague Steve Barnett, now a first-year law student, has a detailed but accessible examination of Roper v. Simmons, the case the Supreme Court just used to overturn the juvenile death penalty. He disagrees with the decision, but finds most of the reasons for disagreeing with the majority opinion wanting. For the record I’m part of that weird subset of righties who are very uncomfortable with the death penalty itself, but because it’s used relatively little (“relatively”...

A student journalist at Rutgers has set off a firestorm that might shut down the university’s investigative journalism class…find out the details here.

The Cato Institute released its annual fiscal report card of the nation’s governors – guess which one topped their list. My former governor, a moderate Democrat who (to my delight) infuriated a lot of liberal state lobbies, is high on the list.

Everyone’s favorite moderate Muslim country has a decidedly intolerant strain.

The results of the “Name Ann Coulter’s Next Book” contest are in, and the winner is “Roosevelt: Wheelchair-Riding, America-Hating Terrorist.” Plausible. I happen to like “Help: I’m Out of Liberal People, Places and Organizations to Hate” better. But the virulent vixen, as always, had a comeback: “Well, at least now they’re trying to be funny, a welcome change from all the vomiting and fainting after the election season,” she told...

Adorable little blogging superstar Matt Yglesias (heretofore known as “Yggy”) has an interesting essay on the split between “anti-state” and “anti-Left” righties since the Bush administration started Greating its own Society. As he notes, the state and the Left used to be the same until about 10 years ago: The National Review hasn’t gone in for Weekly Standard-style ideological revisionism and “big government conservatism.” They still offer...

Hi again; it’s Greg Piper from The Smoking Room, doing my part to steal Joe’s audience help a blogger out (or “blogga,” if you’re down with that). Less than a month after Iraq’s election, Iraqi kids are talking about concepts like “freedom, democracy, [and] respecting others’ opinion” as part of a “children’s parliament” project started last August. They made a few requirements for the project, and this is my favorite: “4-helping...

Can we take the lessons from Iraq and apply them to Egypt? Maybe at a slower pace…

For some reason the AP is playing up the new American citizenship of some obscure Canadian with weird hair (that narrows it down!). She’s vaguely familiar from high school…

I don’t know how long it’s been up, but I noticed today that the Justice Department website is advertising a site to explain the Patriot Act, with a very subtle Web address. Personally I would have favored KickingBadGuyAss.gov, which besides perking up the ears of the kids, doesn’t try to hammer you over the head with its righteousness. Hyperbole in PR almost always backfires, for good reason.

Syndicated columnist Bruce Bartlett notes that his colleague on the right, Armstrong Williams, is hardly the first journalist to take money from those he covers. Remember Sidney Blumenthal’s “fawning praises of Bill Clinton disguised as news reports” that led in short order to his White House job? But then there are the objective journalists… …who routinely speak before corporations, trade associations and interest groups hoping to influence news coverage practice...

This is Greg Piper, Joe’s late-arriving guest blogger, and I do my thing at GregPiper.com. You might remember me from a few weeks ago, when I filled in for Joe. As he mentioned below, I’m a journalist working in Washington, DC, but what he fails to mention (for my feelings, I’m sure) is that this is my first professional gig. I haven’t reported since college and it’s taken a while to get back into the habit. Unfortunately the new full-day schedule has hit my blogging...