It seems like anyone these days can throw around the term "racism" to try to suppress any campus speech that they don't like. How, exactly, can pointing out in an ad that Palestinians in Lebanon celebrated the 9/11 attacks possibly be construed as racism? Bravo to the editor-in-chief of the Stanford Daily, who refused to kowtow to such nonsense.

“Hey now, I grew up in Topeka, KS, where those abhorrent protesters have their base. Don't stereotype us all, please.”

“I also must take offense with the generalization of Kansans. I happen to live in that state…”

“It really sucks when y'all talk about disenfranchising ((STATE X)) 'cause they're not sufficiently urban/Northern...” This one seemed to be aware that Atrios was being sarcastic, but couldn’t resist complaining anyway. Go figure.

College students caring enough about abstract principles to get hot under the collar and argue them in public is a good thing. Atrios is funny. Irony is wasted on Americans.

For 15 years, high school history teacher Abtsam Jassom has dutifully taught 20th-century history according to the Baath Party. In it, America was the greedy invader, every Iraqi war was justified and victorious, and Zionists were the cause of world suffering.

Now, however, with the ouster of former President Saddam Hussein, US officials say teachers will finally be free to teach a more factual account of historical events. But the question is: Whose account will that be?

The first indicator of what a Saddam-free education will look like is arriving this month, as millions of newly revised textbooks roll off the printing presses to be distributed to Iraq's 5.5 million schoolchildren in 16,000 schools. All 563 texts were heavily edited and revised over the summer by a team of US-appointed Iraqi educators. Every image of Saddam and the Baath Party has been removed.

But so has much more - including most of modern history. Pressured for time, and hoping to avoid political controversy, the Ministry of Education under the US-led coalition government removed any content considered "controversial," including the 1991 Gulf War; the Iran-Iraq war; and all references to Israelis, Americans, or Kurds.

"Entire swaths of 20th-century history have been deleted," says Bill Evers, a US Defense Department employee, and one of three American advisers to the Ministry of Education.

In months ahead, Hussein [head of the text revision committee] will begin organizing a curriculum committee that represents different religious, political, and ethnic groups from around the country. US officials say most curriculum decisions will be made after the civilian government leaves Iraq, and that they will play a limited role - unless things go in a direction they don't approve.

"We will strongly recommend concepts of tolerance, and be against anything that is anti-Semitic or anti-West - content that would only sow the seeds for future intolerance," says Gregg Sullivan, spokesman for the Near Eastern Affairs Bureau of the State Department. "We'd hope it's only an advisory role, but if something develops that's disadvantageous to the Iraqi people, we'd weigh in on a stronger level."

Have they thought this through? In the first place, Bush was hardly alone in believing Iraq possessed WMDs. All of the Democratic candidates thought so, too. As did the U.N., the British, the French (yes, the French should know, they built Saddam's first reactor back in 1981), the Russians and even Scott Ritter. He certainly possessed them in the past, and used them on the Kurds and the Iranians. And why would Bush lie about something that would so rapidly be revealed?

Gregory Jones of Southern Oregon University and his colleagues analyzed data from 27 of the top wine-producing regions worldwide from the last 50 years …. Overall, they found an average temperature increase of two degrees Celsius for the wine regions and higher vintage ratings for their products. "There were no negative impacts," Jones notes.

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is shifting policy so cities and towns can skip a required treatment procedure for sewage they pump into rivers, lakes and coastal waters during high rains.

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In my correspondence with Luskin he asked that I take down the post because of the comments, and said I had an obligation to do so. I asked if he meant a legal or ethical obligation, and he didn't respond. I then informed him that if he would tell me which comments he specifically was unhappy with I would be happy to delete them. He declined this offer, and said I should just take them all down.

That's the spirit, George. If nothing else works, then a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.

-- General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett
(Blackadder Goes Forth)

Because of its dominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence. There has never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush ... said his message that "the world is more peaceful and more free under my leadership" will be a prominent theme of his bid for a second White House term.

Aides found him face down on the floor in prayer in the Oval Office. It became known that he refused to eat sweets while American troops were in Iraq, a partial fast seldom reported of an American president.

Bush was in an expansive mood on the flight from Indonesia to Australia, wearing an Air Force One flight jacket, snacking noisily on a butterscotch sweets and chopping the air for emphasis.

Some of Republican gubernatorial candidate Haley Barbour's campaign material features the state flag and its Confederate battle emblem, a symbol many black voters find offensive…

Mississippi Republican Party Chairman Jim Herring said the party conducted a poll recently in which voters were asked their position on the state flag. He said the question was used to find potential supporters.

"We think the people voted on that issue, spoke on that issue, and we have no plans to make it an issue," he said. However, he said, "it's legitimate to find out how people voted on the flag issue. It helps you determine who your voters are and how you identified them."

My relationship to power and authority is that I'm all for it. People need somebody to watch over them and tell them what to do. Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave.

I think we can't live without authority. There's a certain amount of people meant to be leaders, and to control, and another large amount, 95 percent, are followers. We have to tell (them) what to do and how to keep in order, you know?

Mr. Schwarzenegger's credo was laid out quite specifically in his autobiography, Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder: "A certain amount of people are meant to be in control. Ninety-five percent of the people have to be told what to do, have to be given orders."

This philosophy, which he has repeated elsewhere and never retracted, sums up his politics far more than conventional conservative-vs.-liberal, Republican-vs.-Democrat paradigms.