I hope to write a longish post about the "Likudnik" theme that Mickey Kaus is beating into the ground. Until I have the time to do so, I instead refer you to this chilling David Brooks piece:

I occasionally get reports about conversations at sophisticated Washington dinner parties that turn into gripe sessions about the Israeli agents who have grabbed control of President Bush's brain. Accusing Jews of twisting U.S. policy to suit Israel is the same as accusing Catholics of taking orders from the Pope. It's also logically absurd, since Israelis are far more concerned about Iran and Syria than Iraq. But it's become commonplace nonetheless.
Not long ago I was chatting with a prominent Washington figure in a green room. "You people have infested everywhere," he said in what I thought was a clumsy but good-hearted manner. He listed a few of "us": "Wolfowitz, Feith, Frum, Perle." I've never met Doug Feith in my life and Wolfowitz and Perle I've barely met. Yet he assumed we were tight as thieves. After a few minutes of jibing I finally pointed out that there were many non-Jews who support the president's policy against Iraq. I mentioned Bob Kerry. "He's a shabbas goy. He's got a lot of Jewish money supporting that school" he shot back. Shabbas goys are Christians who perform tasks for observant Jews on Saturdays.
I am the last person who used to suspect people of anti-Semitism. I was never really conscious of it affecting my life until the last few weeks. But now I wonder. I watched a town meeting in northern Virginia a few weeks ago. A Vietnam vet got up to rail against U.S. policy on Iraq, which he said was engineered by "Paul Wolfowitz and Daniel Pearl." He got the wrong Pearl. He accidentally mentioned somebody who was beheaded for being American and Jewish. But the crowd didn't seem to notice. They roared with approval and slapped him on the back as he made his way from microphone. Why didn't he say Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Powell were organizing the Bush administration policy? They're higher ranking officials than Wolfowitz and actually members of the administration, unlike Perle. Would the crowd have roared as wildly if he'd mentioned Rice and Powell, I wondered, or did the words Wolfowitz and Perle somehow get their juices flowing?

Read the whole thing.

Bloggers generally refer to "Fiskings" in the context of articles about the war or politics. But the best example I've seen in a long time of the genre has been from college student Aaron Gleeman. In this piece, Gleeman patiently demolishes an unbelievably fatuous article from an alleged professional baseball writer at ESPN.com. Gleeman's piece is an excellent illustration of some of my arguments about the compatibility of baseball and blogging - in fact, it's a better illustration than my post was.
I highly recommend Gleeman's blog.

Dick Gephardt announced his candidacy for President today.
The sidebar picture accompanying the Times article (by Kenneth Dickerman) must be one of the most unflattering pictures of a Presidential candidate ever published.
It is reminiscent of Henrik Hertzberg's classic 1988 comment in The New Republic that Gephardt, in his initial candidacy, resembled "someone whose body has been taken over by space aliens...from the planet Bryan."
See for yourselves:

UPDATE: The article on the Times' website now shows a somewhat more flattering picture. (I didn't get a chance to see which picture made the print version.) Perhaps the Gephardt people complained. I certainly would have.

The estimable Kevin Drum, aka CalPundit, opines (echoing Matthew Yglesias):

Liberals have mostly been too busy protesting the war itself to spend any time pressuring the administration about post-war Iraq, and while this is understandable it also leaves a clear field for the neocon hawks in the administration to set any post-war policy they like.
But if there's a post-war agenda for liberals, promotion of democracy and human rights ought to be it. George Bush has repeatedly shown himself unwilling to take electoral risks — this is the big difference between him and Tony Blair — so it's up to the Democrats to make this issue their own. It's the right thing to do both morally and practically, and we should be willing to fight for it.

I agree - both liberals and conservatives should be willing to fight for it, and hopefully that is indeed one thing our troops are about to fight for.
But Mr. Drum falls into the same trap that has ensnared other smart liberals: instinctively assuming that this goal is not held by the "neocon hawks." But - to recap what I've posted on before - it is precisely those "neocon hawks," or "Likudniks," or "velociraptors," or "pencil necks who had their lunch money stolen by the cool kids," or ______ (insert your favorite slur here) who are most in favor of democratizing Iraq. The Powellites, usually given much more respect by hawkish liberals, are the administration faction that would be willing to install some allegedly-friendly general, beat a hasty retreat from Iraq and declare victory:

This is a notion regarded with deep skepticism at the State Department, where Powell and others tend to see the aftermath of an invasion as a long, world-class headache administered by an American general.
...Iraqi democracy, it should be said, is not the president's declared purpose of ''regime change'' in Iraq, which is to get rid of a very bad man with a fondness for terrorists and a hunger for weapons of hideous power. But it is, to many in the administration, including Wolfowitz, a large part of the enticement.

So Drum and other liberals rightly concerned about the possibility that the Bush administration may fail to follow through on democratization should swallow their qualms and make common cause with those "neocon hawks." Besides, many of them were former liberals.

If you have a high-speed connection and a few minutes, click on >this.
(Post title lifted from Big Arm Woman.)