A few days ago the New York Post ran a large front page photograph of Lance Corporal James Miller, a marine now fighting in Fallujah. It’s a terrific picture. You can see it here. Observant types will note that this particular marine has a cigarette in his mouth. The photo’s caption? “Marlboro men kick butt in Falliujah.” Well, it was the New York Post.

Here’s how some readers responded:

“How many kids trying to emulate heroic U.S. soldiers in Iraq will choose to slowly commit suicide as a direct result of your ill-conceived Marlboro pandering? Be a responsible part of the community instead of simply leeching off it 25 cents at a time.”

“How much did Phillip Morris pay for the front cover advertisement? Thank you for continuing to encourage the development of cancer.”

“I was shocked to see the front page of your newspaper. Showing a GI smoking and portraying it as being cool is disgusting, to say the least. First of all, you are promoting smoking, even though it is a health hazard. Secondly, our brave men and women are fighting a tough war in Iraq, and to show them as you did does not do them justice. Maybe showing a Marine in a tank, helping another GI or drinking water would have had a more positive impact on your readers. Smoking should be outlawed, not endorsed.”

Oh, for heaven’s sake.

As for the Marine, a laconic, low-key type seemingly rare in today’s America. "If you want to write something,'' he told a reporter later "tell Marlboro I'm down to four packs, and I'm here in Fallujah till who knows when. Maybe they can send some. And they can bring down the price a bit.''

And when his time in the Marines is over: "When I get out, I just want to chill out a little bit…Go back to my house, farm a little bit, do some mechanical stuff around the house and call it a day. Oh, and, as a LA Times reporter notes, there’s just one more thing: "I'll just sit on my roof and smoke a cigarette.''

Come home safely, Lance Corporal.

The generally mutton-headed Prince Charles can usually be relied upon to be on the wrong side of almost every issue, but on this topic he has a point. Whatever happened to, well, mutton? Once a great treat, it now seems to have vanished from British dinner tables. Now there's a campaign to bring it back. The British Academy of Culinary Arts (oh, stop laughing, Lopez) seems to be heavily involved in this effort. Its website has more details:

"Mutton is defined by the National Sheep Association as an animal over two years of age (in its third spring) and with four broad teeth. Careful rearing, post-slaughter handling and particularly traditional hanging (for at least two weeks) helps mutton achieve its unique mix of flavours. Once a great British favourite, mutton is characterised by its intense taste and complex meat texture. Long slow cooking allows flavours to develop further but it can also be cooked rapidly where the capabilities of the chef allow."

Mouthwatering.

The last time, I enjoyed this meat of kings (or, it seems, princes) was nearly twenty years ago on a hill in Scotland – gray meat, between two slabs of gray bread, eaten amid the gray glories of a gray winter landscape as the rain lashed down.

It doesn’t get better than that.

Good recipes can be found here.

With shortness of breath. This is all that's on FoxNews.com right now:

Vice President Dick Cheney (search) was taken to a hospital on Saturday after he complained of shortness of breath.

"On the recommendation of his doctors, the vice president is going to George Washington University Hospital (search) for some tests," spokesman Ken Lisaius said. "He experienced some shortness of breath Saturday morning and has had a bad cold, which could be the cause for the shortness of breath."

The vice president, 63, has had four heart attacks (search) and several surgeries for cardiac ailments.

President Bush was notified, Lisaius said.

Cheney's cardiologist, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, was to oversee the tests.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

With more than a dozen arson attacks on mosques and churches now reported the news from Holland continues to be bleak, and so, if people pay attention to what some on the multiculturalist side of the fence are saying, may be the prospects for free speech. Here is Ismael Taspina, the director of eight Islamic schools in Holland. The Guardian notes that Taspina accepts that “freedom of speech may be very well,” but then quotes him thus:

"When we have all these different backgrounds, maybe we should have limits on what you can say.”

Now, Taspina is the director of an Islamic school that had, disgracefully, just been burnt down, and, perhaps he was, understandably enough, just caught up in the emotions of that horrible moment, but he is, I suspect, far from alone in his opinions.

“Anglosphere” author Jim Bennett once wrote, “that the deliberate abandonment of assimilation reinforces the lesson that of democracy, immigration and multiculturalism, we must pick from any two.”

Are the Dutch in the process of finding this out?