Via Glenn Greenwald, Powerline writes:

Meet Dave Gaubatz The current issue of the (UK) Spectator has some extremely interesting articles[,] . . . but none surpasses Melanie Phillips's "I found Saddam's WMD bunkers" in interest. Phillips's article tells the story of Dave Gaubatz, an agent in the US Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations who searched Iraqi WMD sites after the fall of Saddam.

Gaubatz "found the WMDs" and says that the Bush Administration has covered up the fact that WMDs were discovered. This is crackpot of course. But as Johnson says, let's meet Dave Gaubatz. Glenn spotted this:

It is our task to conduct an extensive mapping of all the Islamic day schools, mosques, and other identifiable organizations in the US and to determine which ones teach or preach Islamic law, Shari’a. Further, the mapping will scale the Shari’a threat by identifying to which school of jurisprudence it belongs, its historical and contemporary call for Jihad, and whether the Jihad includes violent Jihad against non-believers. . . . Finally, we will examine and map any potential targets situated near these organizations, such as city, county, and federal government buildings, schools and universities, US military installations, major utility or infrastructure sites (i.e., nuclear installations, pipelines, water supply, etc.), and transportation hubs.

His organization is ironically called SANE, for Society of Americans for the National Existence. Hoo boy.

I've got lots to do today. What's on your mind? Here's an open thread to talk about it.

Journalist, author and TalkLeft pal Dave Cullen, who is writing the definitive book on Columbine, A Lasting Impression: The Definitive Account of Columbine and Its Aftermath (to be published this year) has posted a diary on TalkLeft, The Myth of the School Schooter.

The loner myth has been going on all day. CNN was talking about it all morning--how these shooters all turn out to be outcasts and loners. No, what actually happens is that the media got the loner/outcast narrative down years ago, and always jumps to that conclusion, so the repetition convinces them that it's true. In the Virginia case it's looking like it was true--however, in Columbine, and two-thirds of the other cases, it was a wild misconception.

The larger point is that the media does the public a major disservice by trying to convince us that there is such a thing a particular profile that these shooters fit. They try to fit all these ghastly events into a single personality type that we can be afraid of, but it's just not so.

Go read the whole thing, and I hope you'll click the "recommend diary" button so more people will read it.

Via AdamB, the SCOTUS upheld a federal ban on late term abortions. SCOTUSBlog reports:

Dividing 5-4, the Supreme Court on Wednesday gave a sweeping -- and only barely qualified -- victory to the federal government and to other opponents of abortion, upholding the 2003 law that banned what are often called "partial-birth abortions." Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority in the first-ever decision by the Court to uphold a total ban on a specific abortion procedure -- prompting the dissenters to argue that the Court was walking away from the defense of abortion rights that it had made since the original Roe v. Wade.

. . . Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, speaking out in the courtroom for the dissenters, called the ruling "an alarming decision" that refuses "to take seriously" the Court's 1992 decisions reaffirming most of Roe v. Wade and its 2000 decision in Stenberg v. Carhart striking down a state partial-birth abortion law.

Ginsburg, in a lengthy statement, said "the Court's opinion tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. For the first time since Roe, the Court blesses a prohibition with no exception protecting a woman's health." She said the federal ban "and the Court's defense of it cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this Court -- and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women's lives. A decision of the character the Court makes today should not have staying power."

Kennedy's vote with the majority; Roberts and ScAlito joined Scalia and Thomas, makes clear that those of us who fought against both the Roberts and Alito nominations were right to expect this from those nominees. Roe and Casey will not survive if this Court gets to decide the issue.

In a Matt Yglesias post discussing John Edwards strong "netroots support", Dave Weigel provides a comment that intrigues me:

I'm intrigued by the fact that Edwards is so much stronger among the netroots than among Democrats at large.

The netroots like to be stroked, and he strokes them. Examples: The netroots don't think the elected Democrats are doing enough to end the war, and Edwards says as much.

. . . A favorite theme on the right-wing blogs (and among some pundits, like Barone) is that the netroots are issuing commands to Edwards et al. That's mostly bulls**t. The netroots are VERY VERY CLEAR about what they want, and the candidates that notice this and feed them red meat reap immediate rewards.

Posted by: David Weigel on April 17, 2007 02:46 PM

My first question, is there anyone or any group that does NOT like to be stroked? What does that mean exactly? Does Labor NOT support candidates who "Stroke" them by supporting policies they prefer? Does NOW and NARAL not support candidates that support the policies they prefer? Why is the Netroots unique in wanting to be "stroked?"

My second question, if "doing something on Iraq" is the Netroots' signature issue, why did Chris Dodd not skyrocket in suppport when he came out for Reid-Feingold? It's my number one issue and Dodd's sponsorship of Reid-Feingold is THE REASON I am supporting him. There is not one other person on the blogs that I know of that has made the choice I have on this. So is Iraq really the Netroots' signature issue? I've argued it should be but it clearly is not. So then why is the Netroots for Edwards? My theory on the flip.

Happy 5th Blogiversary to Eschaton/Atrios. Many congrats to Duncan. And yes, as far as I know, I coined that phrase.

Atrios has good posts up today on the Virginia Tech shootings.

The silicon chip inside her head
Gets switched to overload.
And nobody's gonna go to school today,
She's going to make them stay at home.
And daddy doesn't understand it,
He always said she was as good as gold.
And he can see no reason
'Cause there are no reasons
What reason do you need to be shown?

Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays.
Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays.
Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays.
I want to shoot
The whole day down.

Talk about what is on your mind.

And don't forget the diaries. They are located just below the Recent Comments Table to the right.

Right now the recommended diaries include some great ones, including this one from scribe, Rove is toast.

And a reminder, Gwen Ifill on Meet the Press is must see TV.

One of the best excerpts on the flip.

I'm headed to the airport now to visit a client in jail in Nebraska tomorrow and Monday. In case it gets quiet around here, please use this as an open thread.

I'll be back late Monday night, but will be checking in from time to time.

What Matt said.

See also my vitriolic attack on SYFPism, quoting pach:

It's amazing to me to see how many commenters are personality/candidate partisans rather than progressive value partisans, independent of candidate affiliation. . . . The purpose of writing about this stuff is to make a public argument about the role of the US in foriegn policy, a discussion that is not really happening today. I happen to agree with Matt on all these fronts. This is what a progressive movement does: put pressure on the party and its high profile candidates to transform the conversation from one dominated by the Georgetown foreign policy elites.

E.J. Graff makes a simple but important point about the fact that women face hateful speech at higher rates than men; it is NOT a web based phenomenon:

here's what has been missed in the discussion of Kathy Sierra's horrific experience, as far as I can tell: this happens in the world, not just on the web. What's happened to Sierra is a virtual extension of the sexual harassment that hits women in any predominantly male field, what I've come to think of as "barrier" sexual harassment: making it clear to women that they don't belong and will be violated if they stay.

From Hillary Clinton to women academics, particularly in the sciences, to sports coverage to news anchors (yes, I think Katie Couric is awful, but no more so than Brian Williams, and it seems clear to me that Couric is heaped with much more abuse than Williams), to women bloggers, they face much more abuse than men generally (I am the exception that proves the rule, but then I heaped more abuse on folks than anyone in the history of blogging as well so it was to be expected.)

What I'm reading today so far:

• Terry Kindlon's op-ed at Common Dreams criticizing Kathleen Parker's column in which she opined that the British shouldn't have sent a female sailor to war.

• Larissa at Raw Story reporting on the alleged human trafficking of Indian guest workers at a Mississippi shipyard.

• Scribe's diary on Karl Rove and the missing e-mails.

• Avedon Carol on Kurt Vonnegut and all her posts linking to what others are writing. Sideshow is where I go to catch up with the daily blogosphere.