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...