Comment Trail:

@ Bob: Gnome Chomsky embroiled in a cat fight (of sorts)

@ Solomonia: Octavia Nasr mourns the passing of Hezbollah Mentor and pays a price

BTW, intrigued by her name I checked to see who her namesake was. Here is what I found:

"Octavia the Younger (69 - 11 BC), also known as Octavia Minor or simply Octavia, was the sister of the first Roman Emperor, Augustus (known also as Octavian), half-sister of Octavia the Elder, and fourth wife of Mark Antony. She was also the mother-in-law of the Emperor Tiberius, great-grandmother of the Emperor Caligula and Empress Agrippina the Younger, maternal grandmother of the Emperor Claudius, and paternal great-grandmother and maternal great-great grandmother of the Emperor Nero.

One of the most prominent women in Roman history, Octavia was respected and admired by contemporaries for her loyalty, nobility and humanity, and for maintaining traditional Roman feminine virtues."

I'm not too worried about Octavia's future prospects. No doubt Al-Jazeera will snap her up, or, more likely after a certain cooling-off period she will get her CNN job back. I saw a few segments where she appeared and she seemed to enjoy a very robust affection and admiration from some of her co-presents (like Rick Sanchez). I imagine a small Octavian lobby is getting organized on her behalf even as I write these words.

The whole thing reminded me of a 2004 story in which a BBC journalist, Barbara Plett, reported how, watching "the helicopter carrying the frail old man [Yasser Arafat] rose from his ruined compound, I started to cry" . Of course to anyone familiar with Plett's reportage, her steep pro-Palestinian bias was hardly a surprise. But she could always defend herself by pointing to including "balancing" factors in her reports. In this particular instant she was either feeling particularly emotional or felt secure enough to allow her true sentiments to peep through. Is this what happened to Octavia?

There is a joke in Hebrew about a life guard in a swimming pool chasing away one of the swimmers for urinating in the pool. “So what? Everyone urinates in the pool”, protests the culprit. “Yes, indeed”, agrees the life guard, "But not from the top of the diving board”.

IraqPundit opines more extensively, here.

@ Terry Glavin's: We are treated to a few beautiful photos from Afghanistan, a country and a people with which Glavin seems to have fallen in love. His is a rare voice in Canada of robust support for the Afghanis, especially women and children.