So an article in The Washington Monthly comes out and suggests a draft. It gets a lot of attention. I should be on this, as the draft is one of my issues - I'm agin' it. But I just can't get worked up over this one. It's just filler. There won't be a draft. Next.

So in today's Bleat, Lileks says he is plotting revenge against a "certain radio host," meaning Hugh Hewitt. Later, he writes:

If someone registered, oh, HoundtheHewitt.com to correct the things he says in the Friday afternoon movie segment, it would be fun for a while, but six years from now Hugh will still merrily insist that there’s no discernible difference between the second and third “Alien” movies.

Wow. Good ol' moderate, Gnat and Jasper loving Lileks, dropping the hammer on Hugh Hewitt like that. Ouch.

Hope he's never mad at me.

This is the difference a blog makes in news reporting. It's about the murder of the of the mother and husband of a judge - what a horrible thing to come home to. But the news says noone is sure what happened. No backstory like what we get here, that the judge herself had been targeted by Neo-Nazis, and that Nazi is in jail for it. Unfounded speculation and rumor? Speculation, surely, but not unfounded.

And it again shows the power of Instapundit as a "linker." Now a lot of people will see this, and know something more than they did.

I saw this story yesterday. This is good news, actually. Because it isn't like Usama bin Laden just came up with the idea to attack the US. Zarqawi took Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's box on the org chart in Al Qaeda - KSM was the guy who really masterminded 9/11. Zarqawi has kept his focus on Iraq, and despite the fact he is killing Iraqis and American soldiers, he's failing - failed - at his mission. Being focused on Iraq, he i not focused here. And that's the upshot of bin Laden's message - you are in a quagmire in Iraq, you must withdraw. You are distracted from the "real war on terror."

Here's how the article puts it:

U.S. officials say Zarqawi has "his hands full" trying to stay out of U.S. or Iraqi custody in Iraq and they question whether Zarqawi's group would have the ability to pull off an attack inside America. Also, officials are wondering aloud what this means about Al Qaeda and whether if the group is reaching out to its central leader because they are under significant pressure.

I heard a bit on XM's ABC news radio broadcast the other day that was a "Newsweek Minute" or something like that, where they were talking to a Newsweek reporter. The topic was Syria, and the reporter was going on about how Syria wasn't really a bad guy country, that they were more likely to go like Libya than Iran. He cited some help we had gotten from Syrian intelligence to catch terrorists. The upshot of all this was that the Bush administration was wrong for pressuring Syria, because they were going to turn off this erstwhile friend.

Now, I have been arguing that we have been trying to get Syria to pull a Libya since last July (and also arguing that Iran is trying to distract us from Syria in that same post), but it obviously has not yet happened. The Hariri assassination is an indicator. The Newsweek guy cited Assad's replacement of his intelligence chief as a sign of good will, that perhaps he didn't have control of his intelligence and that he placed his brother-in-law in charge to get control of his rogue agency that was doing stuff he didn't approve of. I don't think it was good will, it was an attempt to save his ass. And then I see this over at Captain Ed's: "Syria Coughed Up Saddam's Brother."

Seems they turned over Saddam's brother and about 30 insurgent leaders who have been - surprise surprise - hiding out in Syria! And, this after we've ratched up the pressure on them! Could it be that our pressuring them is what is making them do (some of) the right things, not a tyrant's good will? Maybe the pressure will make them pull a Libya.

Let's hope so.

Sighted over at Protein Wisdom:

Academics and members of the appointed consultative council in the United Arab Emirates came out in favor of elections in the Persian Gulf state, arguing that it could not stay out of the regional trend toward elected bodies.

When millions of Arabs in Palestine, Iraq and Saudi Arabia have gone to the polls, the UAE cannot continue to lag behind, Professor Abdul Khaleq Abdullah of the UAE University told the English-language daily Khaleej Times.

Meanwhile, sighted at Instapundit:

In a surprise announcement Saturday, Egypt's long-ruling president, Hosni Mubarak, ordered constitutional changes that would open the door for the first-ever multiparty presidential elections in the world's most populous Arab country. The move is the latest indication of a cautious democratic shift under way in the Arab world.

Fear factor must be up for Chris Matthews.