It’s old news that those alleged mobile weapons labs were actually balloon-filling machines, but I found this graphic priceless.

(From American Politics Journal.)

One of the more fashionable myths circulating nowadays is that the CCP is relinquishing its iron-fisted grip on the media. Would that it were so. Should you still harbor doubts, check out this short but revealing update, proving that in China, the more things change the more they truly do stay the same. (Needless to say, you won’t be able to access this article in China.)

There is no change. There is no press freedom. The extraordinary hope that some felt during the sudden openness during the SARS crisis was built on sand. All such hopes have been predictably quashed, and I wouldn’t be surprised if things actually get worse, at least for a while, as the CCP strives to make sure this is well understood: China’s media exist to make its leaders look good and preserve the lie of national harmony. Period. Full-stop. If a reporter makes the Party look not-so-good, he can expect swift retribution. The fossilized leadership is as hysterically paranoid of press coverage today as it was under Mao.

Don’t miss Kristoff’s remarkably honest column on his encounter with a young man maimed and disfigured by Saddam’s thugs.

Nearly choking with euphoria, Sullivan lauds yesterday’s monumental Supreme Court decision:

It would be hard to find a more emphatic statement that gay men and women are a) human beings whose private lives deserve privacy and b) citizens who deserve the same treatment as everyone else under the law….each day now, I can feel freedom dawning in this land again. The struggle of so many for so long is beginning to come true. What a privilege, what a joy, to be alive to witness it.

Before he gets too excited, someone should remind him that Ashcroft is still attorney general, and our president has consistently appointed morality maniacs to to head his commissions. It is a great day, but are we out of the woods yet? It will be interesting to see how the far-righters, to whom Bush is beholden, react to the ruling and what Bush will do when put under pressure to comment.

Sisyphus Shrugged has written the most insightful, intelligent review of Sid Blumenthal’s much maligned Clinton Wars. Brilliant.

I will be working at a conference for the next two days with no access to a PC, so it’ll be pretty quiet here. But wait until this coming weekend; I have a post that’s bubbling up that, if I can get my hands around it, will be the post ot end all posts.

I find it amusing that the Spell Checker for Blogger.pro doesn’t recognize the words blog, blogger or blogging. It reminds me of how Microsoft Word’s spell checker didn’t recognize the word “Internet” until 1998 or so.

Well, yes, but this one really jumped out at me.

Also, great SARS art here.

(Again, from Boing Boing)

UPDATE: One more, SARS SUNTAN:

From Reuters’ Oddly Enough column:

Boy Breeds Eggs in His Body, Produces Beetles?
Tue June 17, 2003 08:39 AM ET
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – A 13-year-old Indian boy has begun producing winged beetles in his urine after hatching the eggs in his body, a senior medical official said Monday.
Doctor Chittaranjan Maity, Medical Education Director of West Bengal state where the boy is from, said doctors found the beetles while examining him for pain in the groin area.

An expert in urology, Doctor N. Subramanian, said that in theory it was possible for insects to hatch in the body and come out in urine but said he had not heard of such a case.

(Courtesy Boing Boing)

Thinking of sending the kids to summer camp? Want to make sure it’s a camp that will instill good, all-American values and teach the kids to love the things that really count in life — like guns? Then Camp America is for you. It really defies belief. (Courtesy of Orcinus, the Web’s best chronicler of the freeper-patriot movement, which in the Age of Ashcroft is becoming ever more mainstream.)