The Genius and the Group Blog

I feel that I must call your attention to two items. One is from mainstream media and one is an examplar of new media. The first is the Chicago Sun-Times, which routinely features the finest columnist on the planet, Mark Steyn.

In his most recent column, Steyn brutalizes the ridiculous Joe Wilson, using everything but a baseball bat and a cattle prod.

This controversy began, you'll recall, because Wilson objected to a line in the president's State of the Union speech that British intelligence had discovered that Iraq had been trying to acquire ''yellowcake'' -- i.e., weaponized uranium -- from Africa. This assertion made Bush, in Wilson's incisive analysis, a ''liar'' and Cheney a ''lying sonofabitch.'' In fact, the only lying sonafabitch turned out to be Yellowcake Joe. Just about everybody on the face of the earth except Wilson, the White House press corps and the moveon.org crowd accepts that Saddam was indeed trying to acquire uranium from Africa. Don't take my word for it; it's the conclusion of the Senate intelligence report, Lord Butler's report in the United Kingdom, MI6, French intelligence, other European services -- and, come to that, the original CIA report based on Joe Wilson's own briefing to them... Here's the thing: They're still pulling body parts from London's Tube tunnels. Too far away for you? No local angle? OK, how about this? Magdy el-Nashar. He's a 33-year old Egyptian arrested Friday morning in Cairo, and thought to be what they call a ''little emir'' -- i.e., the head honcho in the local terrorist cell, the one who fires up the suicide bombers. Until his timely disappearance, he was a biochemist studying at Leeds University and it's in his apartment the London bombs were made. Previously he was at North Carolina State University. So this time round he blew up London rather than Washington. Next time, who knows? Who cares? Here's another fellow you don't read much about in America: Kamel Bourgass. He had a plan to unleash ricin in London. Fortunately, the cops got wind of that one and three months ago he was convicted and jailed. Just suppose, instead of the British police raiding Bourgass' apartment but missing el-Nashar's, it had been the other way around, and ricin had been released in aerosol form on the Tube. Kamel Bourgass and Magdy el-Nashar are real people, not phantoms conjured by those lyin' sonsofbitches Bush and Cheney. And to those who say, "but that's why Iraq is a distraction from the war on terror," sorry, it doesn't work like that. It's not either/or; it's a string of connections: unlimited Saudi money, Westernized Islamist fanatics, supportive terrorist states, proliferating nuclear technology. One day it all comes together and there goes the neighborhood. Here's another story you may have missed this week: ''Iran will resume uranium enrichment if the European Union does not recognize its right to do so, two Iranian nuclear negotiators said in an interview published Tuesday.'' Got that? If you don't let us go nuclear, we'll go nuclear. Negotiate that, John Kerry. As with Bourgass and el-Nashar, Hossein Moussavian and Cyrus Nasseri are real Iranian negotiators, not merely the deranged war fantasies of Bush and Cheney...

Breathe deeply the fragrant perfume of wisdom and read the whole thing.

And, as a political group blog, PoliPundit reigns supreme. If you haven't visited recently, here are some snippets of what you've missed.

I caught Dennis Miller at the MGM Grand... hilarious... [but some] serious moments, too. The one that stood out was his pitch about the global war against Islamo-fascist terrorism. The harsh reality is that there is no [such place as] “al-Qaeda-istan" ... ...don’t underestimate the extent to which mainstream GOP political candidates can exploit mainstream voters’ inherent distrust of Democrats on issues such as: crime & punishment, hunting rights, and gun rights... Just ask Max Cleland. Or Jeanne Shaheen. Or Kathleen Kennedy Townshend. Or Tom Daschle... And given the fact the Democrat Party recently has turned over to the GOP 65 net U.S. House seats and 13 net U.S. Senate seats – despite the Democrat corpse, felon, drone, and family pet blocs... it’s only a matter of time before what’s left of the “Party of the People” finds itself in an irrevocable political {ahem} stranglehold ...It is 36 years today since Ted Kennedy thought his car was a submarine... John Tierney in the New York Times writes an amusing and perceptive piece about the [Plame affair]. The money line reads, “For now, though, it looks as if this scandal is about a spy who was not endangered, a whistle-blower who did not blow the whistle and was not smeared, and a White House official who has not been fired for a felony that he did not commit. And so far the only victim is a reporter who did not write a story about it.” Whom will the President select [as a Supreme Court nominee]? When will he announce the nomination? [And how] soon after that will Ted Kennedy start talking about segregated lunch counters?

PoliPundit: just go there.