Here's the AP version of events.

Derb blew his chance at brownie points when he passed up Kathryn Jean as the title for a anitdotal conservative women's magazine, no? The editor's column could be "Shut Up and Type", or "Would You Look At the Time?"

Have you seen Marie Claire lately? I can't get to the fluff fast enough, speeding past the leftist propaganda -- wait that's also fluff -- that many other women undoubtedly read and accept during their weekly manicures. I wish that there was a way to get women to be better informed about issues, but how could we possibly send NR to everyone? Perhaps it's time to adopt the "Legally Blonde 2" approach and send an NR gift subscription to my old sorority chapter and my nail salon. It couldn't hurt.

Just wanted to let you know that after seeing the note in the Corner about Specter siding against DC school choice, I immediately when and signed up as a volunteer on Pat Toomey's Website. www.pattoomey.org. This is just the last straw. If I'm going to have two Republican Senators representing my state, then I want two Republican Senators (not 1 and 1/4).

Ms. Lopez,

Senator Specter's actions are not unnoticed in the Keystone State. Toomey is running ads on talk radio, hammering the message that we need less RINOs and more conservatives in the Senate. It's a great way to reach the target audience. I think Specter will face a far tougher challenge than anticipated. Toomey will receive my vote and the vote of several family members.

Prescription drugs, increased spending, letting Kennedy write the education bill, etc. are troubling signs. If I wanted Joe Lieberman in office (hawk with liberal domestic agenda), I would have cast a write-in vote. Perhaps if we unseat Specter and put Toomey in the race, the White House will receive the message. The Dems are taking hits in this state over Rendell's tax fest, so they will have to battle the voter's overall perception of Dems in order to win.

I realize Bush wants $200 million to tailor serious coat-tails and lock the Senate for a decade or so. At what cost? What good is a Republican Senator when he refuses to support central principles of the party and/or conservatism?

I'm done venting. Please let the people at NRO that I greatly appreciate their work.

In a decision that outraged state officials and prosecutors, a federal judge has ruled that a lawsuit by a convicted murderer who wants the state to pay for an operation to make him a woman can go forward…

In his decision, [the judge] stressed that other court decisions have concluded that transsexualism can be classified as a "serious medical need," that a treatment plan must be decided by a medical professional and that blanket denial of such a medical evaluation contradicts previous legal precedents.

Kathryn, that’s an interesting letter. There are some in Britain who say that Blair’s performance over here is just another example of the PM telling an audience whatever it wants to hear. That, I think, is far too simplistic. More than that, it’s just wrong. Blair has paid a high political price domestically (at least within his own party) for his stance on Iraq – a crude opportunist would not have done that. He has done what he has done because he thinks it is right.

To understand Blair it is essential to realize that he is not a conventional socialist. Rather he is a reforming ‘liberal’ on the early Twentieth Century model (it’s easy to imagine him as a leftist member of Asquith’s cabinet). Such liberal ‘modernizers’ often lack any sense of history (we see that in many of the constitutional changes that Blair champions in the UK) and are typically unsympathetic to notions of the sovereignty of the nation-state (that can be seen both in Blair’s approach to the EU and, ironically, Iraq). Because such folk regard themselves as acting for the most high-minded of reasons (For example, in Blair’s case he is, unusually for a British politician, explicit in the importance he attaches to his religious faith), they are quite prepared to use the most ruthless means necessary to secure their agenda (thus all the spinning and deception that Brits have come to associate with the man).

Finally, they tend to be economic illiterates – that is the only possible explanation for Blair’s mishandling of the British economy and his rush to sign up for that suicide note better known as the Euro.

So far history has shown that a totalitarian empire collapses 9 years after holding Olympic Games in its capital. Interestingly, it appears that since Germany overdosed (having hosted BOTH Winter and Summer Games in 1936), its collapse was much more violent and abrupt than that of the USSR. Just some mathematical analysis... Actually it all started as I was thinking about Red China being 32 years younger than Soviet Russia and trying to compare modern China with the USSR 32 years ago. The Olympiad emerged as a really striking parallel.

I think this line explains completely to those who have scratched their heads at times (like me) and said, "Is this the same Tony Blair?" why he's behaved the way he has over the last almost 2 years....

"I know out there, there's a guy getting on with his life, perfectly happily, minding his own business, saying to you, the political leaders of this country, "Why me, and why us, and why America?" And the only answer is because destiny put you in this place in history in this moment in time, and the task is yours to do."

And so he's put aside ideology, and, at great personal cost, bucked his peers & allies to be a part of something greater. Truly, I am no fan of many of Blair's policies, but for the man to have the vision to not only recognize this singluar moment in history, but to ACT, makes him a great & moral man.

This is all something far, far beyond politics. If I ever had any doubt about the goodness of the man, that doubt is now gone.

Why can't we have moral & honest liberals like this in OUR country? If the Democrats had just ONE of him, they'd have a hell of a shot.

It's an odd feeling (for me anyway) reading all the praise for a fine speech (and it was a fine speech) by a certain visiting Prime Minister and then realizing that we're talking about, well, Tony Blair, EU stooge, taxer and spender, evil incarnate etc.

Blogger Iain Murray seems to feel the same way about the two Tony Blairs.

As ever, the Iraq venture sounds a lot more sensible when Prime Minister Blair talks about it than when President Bush does...

I have to go to CNN. So I won't be around for a while. But here's a nugget from my syndicated column:

The second explanation has to do with the changing nature of conservative dogma. Or, to be more accurate, the faltering adherence to conservative dogma. For fifty years, it was an article of faith that growth of government was synonymous with loss of liberty. Many conservatives believed that government meddling in the free market put us all on what Friedrich Hayek famously called "The Road to Serfdom," his literary way of saying the slippery slope to communism or fascism. But welfare reform, the collapse of communism and the relative popularity of middle-class entitlements like Social Security and home mortgage interest deductions have caused that dogma to lose much of its oomph. A movement that believes writing checks to old folks is a step toward tyranny is more likely to fight government spending than one that thinks it's merely bad bookkeeping. When you look at it from this perspective, it's fair to say this administration is conservative. But it's also fair to say it favors big government. What will make politics very interesting in the years to come is that "big government conservative" used to be an oxymoron. now it means "compassionate conservative."

We are bound together as never before.

This coming together provides us with unprecedented opportunity but also makes us uniquely vulnerable.

The threat comes because, in another part of the globe, there is shadow and darkness where not all the world is free, where many millions suffer under brutal dictatorship; where a third of our planet lives in a poverty beyond anything even the poorest in our societies can imagine; and where a fanatical strain of religious extremism has arisen, that is a mutation of the true and peaceful faith of Islam and because in the combination of these afflictions, a new and deadly virus has emerged.

The virus is terrorism, whose intent to inflict destruction is unconstrained by human feeling; and whose capacity to inflict it is enlarged by technology.

This is a battle that can't be fought or won only by armies. We are so much more powerful in all conventional ways than the terrorist. Yet even in all our might, we are taught humility. In the end, it is not our power alone that will defeat this evil. Our ultimate weapon is not our guns but our beliefs.

There is a myth. That though we love freedom, others don't, that our attachment to freedom is a product of our culture. That freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law are American values or Western values. That Afghan women were content under the lash of the Taliban. That Saddam was beloved by his people. That Milosevic was Serbia's saviour.

Ours are not Western values. They are the universal values of the human spirit and anywhere, any time, ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same. Freedom not tyranny. Democracy not dictatorship. The rule of law not the rule of the secret police.

The spread of freedom is the best security for the free. It is our last line of defence and our first line of attack.

Just as the terrorist seeks to divide humanity in hate, so we have to unify it around an idea and that that idea is liberty.

City commissioners in Miami plan to pass a resolution during their meeting today on behalf of the people of Miami who are in mourning, said City Commissioner Tomas Regalado.

Regalado, a local radio personality, recalled going to the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay in 1990 when Cruz performed there.

"The first thing she wanted to do was go to the fence," Regalado said. "She stuck her hand under the fence and said, `This is the only way I'm touching Cuban soil because I'm never coming back until [Fidel] Castro is gone.' She was our queen -- the only queen we had."

My view on the first half of Blair's speech. Now that he's getting into Kyoto etc, it's a bit of a disappointment. But I guess he needs to do some of this to keep his job.

I wrote a gazillion pieces urging war with Iraq, and never found the time to let the word Niger pass my lips. And, if it had passed, my lips would have said ‘Ny-juh’ and not ‘Nee-zhaire’. But here’s what the President had to say, when he ‘LIED OVER NIGER URANIUM CLAIMS!!!!!!!!!!!’ back in the State of the Union address in January: ‘The British government has learnt that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.’

That’s it: 16 words. Where’s the lie? Though the CIA director George Tenet now says his boys shouldn’t have approved that sentence, Tony Blair is standing by it. The unusual attribution to Her Majesty’s Government might have been because Bush was only mired in all this multilateral justification-shopping as a favour to Blair and his wobbly Cabinet. Or it might have been because of the source: under the rules governing intelligence-sharing, the British were unable to pass the direct evidence on to the Americans because they got it from the French, and the French wouldn’t let them give it to Washington. Niger’s uranium operations are under the supervision of the French Atomic Energy Commission.

But, whether or not that’s true, I repeat: where’s the lie? Why isn’t it merely a good-faith mistake? The anti-war crowd have been wrong on everything, from hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths to environmental catastrophe, from the horrors of the ‘brutal Afghan winter’ — now 22 months behind schedule — to those of the brutal Iraqi summer, which George Galloway was still trying to flog in the Guardian this week: ‘The US and British armies have entered the gates of hell. Soon it will be 100 degrees at midnight in Baghdad, but there will be no respite from the need for full body armour.’ Really? The average overnight low in July (Baghdad’s hottest month) is 77. On Monday night, after an unusually hot day, by 10.30 p.m. it was already down to a pleasant 83. But I would be reluctant to send out email alerts shrieking GALLOWAY LYING OVER IRAQI WEATHER CLAIMS!!!! Could be just an honest mistake.

Always interesting, not alway right.

Smart, smart stuff from the folks at MetaFilter:

Goldberg, like most of his conservative buddies, has a deep contempt for Americans. Conservatives usually hide their contempt, but Jonah is so filled with his ill feelings for the majority of Americans that it leaked out on TV, and now he feels exposed....
Unlike Goldberg and his conservative brethren, I have faith in the intelligence of the American people, who will turn out to vote for Jerry Springer and deliver Ohio to the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004.

I got one vote from this guy. Alas, I'd only be eligible in DC (we still have shadow Senators right?) or NYC and I don't think it'd work out.

Unions won't let old folks plant flowers either.

David Letterman's Top Ten List:

Top Ten Jerry Springer Campaign Promises

10. "Fifty-dollar tax rebate if you have sex with your wife's sister"

9. "All staff dinners will be at D.C.-area Hooters"

8. "Sausages will attack baseball players with bats!"

7. "Repeal restrictive laws against first-cousin marriages"

6. "Amend constitution to include words 'hoochie mama'"

5. "In the summer months, all press conferences are topless"

4. "I'll tell the truth about which legislators have too much junk in the trunk"

3. "Solar powered prostitutes"

2. "C-Span will feature more young people calling each other 'bitch'"

1. "Enough cheap sex to make the Clinton years look like a church social

In other words, the recession ended right around the moment the Florida recount was settled in Bush's favor. Eeenteresting.

UPDATE I'm an idiot and shouldn't post to the Corner while on the phone. Disregard the above. Florida recount was, of course, in 2000. Not 2001.

Cleaning-up the environment is againt union regulations.

If you haven't read Ramesh's article today you should. It appears that the pharmaceutical industry might be trying to bribe pro-life conservative groups into opposing a bill on bogus grounds. And the Traditional Values Coalition may have taken the money. This has all the makings of a very big story and a scandal.

Jonah mentioned Sen. Hatch's bill to liberalize the district's gun laws, which are the strictest in the nation. I was inclined to applaud Hatch, especially since I have had so many occasions to criticize him in the past. But then I talked to Bob Levy, who has been challenging D.C.'s gun laws in court. (I wrote about his efforts in May.) Levy sees Hatch's bill as the NRA's latest attempt to derail his lawsuit. The NRA seems to fear the prospect of a Supreme Court ruling on the Second Amendment. If the bill becomes law, Levy's lawsuit becomes moot--and the Supreme Court loses the opportunity to weigh in.

Hatch's bill comes after previous NRA attempts to stop Levy had failed. Levy finds the timing suspicious. "Why not wait for a court decision?" Levy asks. "The legislative option is always open."

Today's "Jerry Springer Show" topic: "Bad Girls Confess"
Highlights from the 7/14 "Springer" -- "Leavin You Ain't Easy"
Here's how Jerry puts it: "Please meet Michelle, she says her mother's bad habits are not going to rub off on her any longer."
In "Michelle"'s own words: "Jerry I'm here to tell you my mom's a prostitute, she runs an escort service. I've been working with her for the last six months basically because I didn't have the money to raise my two children and I'm here to tell her it's disgraceful."
Guest "Candy" fully nude after being rejected by bouncer Steve: "Jerry, do you want to go home with me?"
Springer: "No, I can't. I got to fly out of town, but otherwise of course."
Guest "Candy": "I'll fly with you."
Springer: "I'll bet you would."
Guest "Gino": "I stopped loving her about 5 years ago Jerry, when I found out she was psycho."
Number of seconds from Jerry's intro to first use of the word prostitute: 16
Number of chairs knocked over: 2.

Assuming the President reads the Washington Post with his morning coffee, he can't be pleased. This has to be the single worst front page of his presidency. Out of seven stories, here are the five non-local articles on page one (my comments are in italics):

'Guerrilla' War Acknowledged
New Commander Cites Problems

Rumsfeld gets taken out at the knees, Bush gets a invigorated "another Vietnam" storyline

Repeal Of D.C. Gun Ban Urged
Hatch Proposes Loosening Limits In Place Since '76

Not what Karl Rove wants the debate to be about.

Tenet Says He Didn't Know About Claim
With sidebars on strained US-British relations and on Bush's political vulnerability.

Iraq's Highway of Constant Hazard
Attackers Leave Trail of Casualties on Baghdad Airport Road

GOP Attorneys General Asked For Corporate Contributions

There is something especially reprehensible, no, evil,about a politician,a Catholic who only months ago had been staunchly pro-life, casually joking about upholding an extra constitutional decision that has effectively transformed millions of unborn babies into the practical equivalent of used tissue paper. And the joke gets laughs.

He absolutely would appoint a homosexual judge to the Supreme Court, Rep. Dennis Kucinich said yesterday during a candidate forum hosted by the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group. He also would appoint "any lesbian, bisexual or transgender person" to the court, Kucinich says.

"Just as long as they'd be willing to uphold Roe v. Wade."

At which point the long-shot presidential candidate ducks his chin and smiles in wily recognition. It is one of those political meta-moments where the pitchman -- in this case the presidential candidate -- gives subtle voice to the obvious: that he is an agent of multiple pitches, catering to multiple constituencies. He's sneaking a nod to abortion rights activists even though he is pitching primarily to gays. His audience -- a lunchtime crowd in the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center -- laughs in acknowledgement of Kucinich's deft pander twofer.