Amusing and bemusing:

Some links that may be of interest

Norm Finkelstein denied entry to Israel: Engage Solomonia

Marty Peretz: Academic Freedom, the Hebrew University and Masochism

French Court's ruling on the controversy involving the Al-Dura fraud

Obama's body man: "He knows that “the boss,” as he calls Mr. Obama, likes MET-Rx chocolate roasted-peanut protein bars and bottles of a hard-to-find organic brew — Black Forest Berry Honest Tea. He keeps a supply of both on hand. " (H/T: Josh)

Obama's Uncle Served in Soviet Army? (More, here)

Carter's commitments: Normblog: "If military action is ruled out 'unless our security is directly threatened', then so much for the UN Genocide Convention, and indeed so much for human rights as a foundation of US foreign policy when their mass violation doesn't impinge on 'our security'. "

The wonderful Fouad Ajami: "Mr. Bush, after all, may have smashed their structural entitlements. But he has, Mr. Ajami maintains, created in its place one that all can tolerate: the Arab world's first inclusive, democratic government. Not democratic in the Canadian mold, but a kind of pluralist government that rests on all the three big communities of Iraq: the Sunnis, the Shia and the Kurds" Mr. Ajami says. Significantly, it is unbeholden to Muslim clerics. And if it can hold, and Mr. Ajami believes it will, it may finally deliver the Middle East its best shot yet at the modernism of which he and so many other Arab intellectuals of his generation have long been dreaming."

Oliver Kamm on McCain-Liebermann op-ed:

"Sen. John McCain broke today with President Bush's new policy on North Korea, co-authoring an opinion article with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) in which he called for a return to Bush's original demand of a complete, verifiable, irreversible disarmament of North Korea's nuclear programs".

This has to be right.. I share the views of Christopher Hitchens, in a recent open letter to the President:

It would be pardonable, perhaps, Mr. President, if a slightly dishonorable concession on the human-rights front did in fact lead to a verifiable gain in disarmament and regional security. But by the very same token, it would be unforgivable if a further cynical stalling and postponement of non-proliferation were to be accompanied by an extension of the hellish regime of Kim Jong Il, and of the wretchedness and misery of North Korean life, not a day of which any of us could hope to endure. Your administration can still hope to be remembered for insisting that North Korea cannot be just a little bit nuclear, or partially or incompletely disarmed, as well as for stating boldly that Korea cannot long continue half slave and half free.

And this stranger than fiction phenomenon:

MEMRI: Kabbalah Fashion and Saudi Youth