Whitney Houston is available.

I got just the guy for you, Whitney. He’s well-to-do, famous, fiercely independent, runs a large organization, and spends a lot of time traveling. I also understand he’s got quite a thing for you.

OK, sure, I guess he also finances terror operations and is America’s #1 Enemy. Hey, you gotta take the bad with the good, honey. You’re not getting any younger.

UPDATE: Allah has a Photoshop.

Read this one all the way to the end.

All you people who claimed that Clinton didn’t blow it on fighting terror need to read this: a story about U.S. forces being prevented from taking out top Taliban terror leaders because the rules of engagement prevented strikes at cemetaries. (Via Michelle Malkin.) From a New York Post article dated September 13, 1996:

Taliban terror leaders who had gathered for a funeral – and were secretly being watched by an eye-in-the-sky American drone – dodged assassination because U.S. rules of engagement bar attacks in cemeteries, according to a shocking report.

Sounds like it’s straight of out “The Path to 9/11,” huh? Take that, Clinton defenders!

Wait, this just in — that wasn’t Clinton. It’s G.W. Bush. And the article is dated today, not ten years ago.

Thank God we’ve learned our lesson!

P.S. Well, at least we’re working on passing legislation that will allow us to monitor terror groups before they commit a major act of terrorism.

Wait, this just in — make that after they commit a major act of terrorism.

The issue of journalists using Internet sock puppets has rekindled lately with the suspension of Lee Siegel, a senior editor with the New Republic. Siegel used a sock puppet identity named “sprezzatura” to say things like this about himself:

Siegel is brave, brilliant, and wittier than Stewart will ever be. Take that, you bunch of immature, abusive sheep.

Heh.

In addition to being suspended, Siegel lost his blog — but wasn’t fired. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the same punishment that the L.A. Times meted out to Michael Hiltzik after I caught him using sock puppets on this blog, his L.A. Times blog, and other places around the Internet.

To my knowledge, the New York Times editorial board never commented on Hiltzik’s sock puppetry. But today the editors call Siegel’s punishment “the right call,” saying:

Sock puppetry may be rampant online, but journalists writing for their employer’s Web site have a greater responsibility to be honest than run-of-the-mill posters. Mr. Siegel should not have posted about himself in a way that implied he and the poster were different people, and he should not have denied it. Intentionally deceiving readers is wrong no matter what technology is used to convey the misinformation.

This is a somewhat sterner message than the one sent by the paper’s news article on the suspension. (Oddly, Siegel’s story doesn’t seem to have been covered by the L.A. Times. I wonder why that is?) In its news story, the New York Times minimizes and then minimizes again. It fails to give any of the sock puppet’s silly quotes about Siegel, like:

You’re a fraud, and a liar. And a wincingly pretentious writer. You couldn’t tie Siegel’s shoelaces.

But while there is no room for quotes from the sock puppet, the article has paragraphs to tell us about Sir Walter Scott and Walt Whitman, who apparently both reviewed their own work!

But here’s the thing: when they did, did they sound as silly as Siegel? After all, when Walt Whitman wrote “Song of Myself” (ironic title, eh?) he penned lines like:

Whoever degrades another degrades me,
And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.

And the Times quotes one of his self-penned reviews of his own work as saying things like: “An American bard at last!”

Whereas Whitman-as-Siegel would sound more like this:

I’m a huge fan of Walt Whitman, who is, I assure you, not me — but who totally rocks. He writes like a poet is supposed to write. Not like that vapid, pretentious Longfellow. That guy couldn’t even tie Whitman’s shoelaces!

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Check out this video at Hot Air. It’s Michelle Malkin and Kirsten Powers discussing the “Girls Gone Wild” case with O’Reilly — which is, of course, just a chance for O’Reilly to pump up ratings by showing censored versions of naked girls dancing.

But just how censored are they? Early on in the video there is a woman in a red shirt and a cowboy hat dancing. To the left of her, in the background, is a woman dancing. You see her apparently bare back as she dances, and then she turns in profile. Right about the same time you hear Malkin sigh in frustration at having to discuss such silliness, you seem to see . . . a breast! And possibly even . . . a nipple!!!

Janet Jackson’s nipple cost CBS $550,000. I think someone needs to file an indecency complaint against O’Reilly — not so much for the bare nipple, which is fine . . . but for making Malkin and Powers discuss such a stupid topic.

The other day I told you about those doctors who are shocked, stunned, and amazed every time a “vegetative” patient turns out not to be — and are similarly gobsmacked whenever the physiology of the brain reveals a new and previously unknown wonder.

Now See Dubya brings word of another such story: Ambien waking up “vegetative” patients:

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I saw somewhere that Tim Rutten had said some good stuff about Democratic thuggery on free speech with respect to “Path to 9/11.” I’ve been meaning to look up his column, and finally did last night. Now that I have read it, I’m both impressed and underwhelmed, all at the same time.

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