Stefan reports that he recently punished himself celebrated his birthday watching Bowling for Columbine. He learned some important lessons from the film, but not necessarily the same lessons that Michael Moore intended.

I guess that somebody has to watch your show, or even MSNBC will cancel it.

Then again, if all else fails, you can always blame them for your failure.

The L.A. Times, which usually competes head-to-head with the N.Y. Times over who can be the better, more ideologicalfearless liberalmainstream advocate, delivers a surprisingly strong editorial on the need for decisive action in Iraq.

Sammy “the Bull” Gravano, whose immunized testimony helped bring down John Gotti, has been rotting in jail on unrelated drug charges for some time. Now, he’s been charged with murder for soliciting a “hit” on a police officer in 1980. Who’d a thunk it?

The 2/19 Los Angeles Daily Journal (requires paid registration) reports that the Orange County Department of Child Support Services has begun posting “wanted” posters identifying “deadbeat dads” (OK, one “deadbeat mom,” who I’ll call “Token”) for willful failure to pay child support. I don’t have a big problem with this practice in theory, but I do question why this particular offense should be singled out. Given the time, I’m sure I could compile a rather long list of offenses more serious than that which do not lead to such public shaming rituals.

Of course, I’d have an even bigger problem with the practice if it turned out that the DCSS was pulling a Garcetti and going after innocent “fathers” who are not fathers at all. I’m pretty confident that Token is really the mom, but what about the deadbeat “dads?” Are these individuals who have undergone DNA tests, or simply individuals who had the misfortune of being named by the mother, who could not be reached by the courts, and who now have default judgments against them? That was Garcetti’s M.O., but the article doesn’t say anything about whether O.C. is pulling the same trick. I’d like to think that the absence of such discussion means that there is no legitimate question that the named “deadbeats” are the actual, biological parents, but I’ve already learned the hard way not to trust the Daily Journal to deliver the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Apparently, no lies are so outrageous that someone won’t publish them. And no, I’m not talking about Gbloogle, which will automatically publish anything you type into it. I’m talking about Soft HeadSkull Press, a self-proclaimed publisher of the “fearless, progressive, independently minded literature” no respectable publisher will touch. And no, I’m not talking about stuff that the mainstream press won’t touch because it’s too “progressive.” I’m talking about the stuff they won’t touch – or, in these cases, did touch but ultimately dropped – because it lacks credibility.

Case in point: Reason’s “Hit and Run” blog reports reports that Soft HeadSkull doesn’t feel it got enough bad publicity for republishing convicted felon J. H. Hatfield’s infamous Fortunate Son, the book that led to all the unfounded rumors that President Bush is/was a coke fiend. Now, these same dunderheads are at it again, and have announced their decision to republish Michael Bellesiles’s Arming America, a work of academic fraud that cost Bellesiles his job at Emory, got his Bancroft Prize revoked, and ultimately convinced Knopf to cease publishing the book, leaving poor Mr. Bellesiles with nothing but a teaching job in the U.K. and this fawning review on Amazon.

It’s comforting to know that Soft HeadSkull is too “progressive” and “fearless” to let a few facts get in the way of its book sales.

A reliable source reports that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has urged supporters of the recall effort to give Gray Davis more time. Meanwhile, on the international front, the same source reports that Hans Blix has ordered Iraq to destroy its human shields, some of which have been found to contain controlled substances.

FoxNews reports that Hemet Unified School District is considering banning Valedictorian awards to protect the feelings of students who don’t earn the award. In the words of Principal Bill Black, “If they are not number one, it could get their feelings hurt if they are self-motivating and high-achieving students.”

I’m not sure what should piss me off more, the fact that HUSD is entertaining such a silly proposal, or the fact that none of the local media seem to be interested in reporting it. This despite the fact that today’s Daily MonopolyL.A. Times did see fit to run a puff piece about Hemet, a city that does not appear in the headlines every day.

Much to the chagrin of the Blogosphere, but much to the delight of George Clooney, Michael Moore and assorted asshat celebrities everywhere, the often imitated, never duplicated Rachel Lucas is calling it quits indefinitely. She promises to return eventually, and will be sorely missed until then. Here’s hoping that she ends up mssing us enough to return sooner rather than later. Hell, maybe she should bring it back in the form of a pay site. I’ll pay.

Until Rachel returns, enjoy her archives and do check out her blogroll – the full one, not just the short list that appears at the home page. [Full disclosure: I'm honored to note that this blog is among the many she has chosen to include on the full blog roll. Even fuller disclosure: that's not why I'm recommending the list. If you're reading my endorsement, then the smart money says you've already found my blog. Duh.]

Mrs. Xrlq and I had the pleasure of meeting fellow blogger Stefan Sharkansky for lunch today. Nice guy, really bright, but then again, I already knew that, as do you if you’ve ever read his blog. And if you haven’t read it, do.

One thing I didn’t know before, however, is that German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder appears to have ignored his own country’s intelligence on Iraq’s production of weapons of mass destruction and movement of rockets to areas threatening Kuwait. Up until now, I’d pretty much written off Schröder as just another idiotarian. Now, I’m afraid he may be something worse than that: an idiot Aryan. You read it here first.

UPDATE: At the time I posted this, I had never heard the phrase “idiot Aryan” used in any context. The next day, however, I ran a Google search of the phrase, which yielded three hits. None of these uses were quite the same as mine, however, as they did not refer to idiotarians per se, let alone to idiots or idiotarians who are also Aryans (nor, alternatively, to race-baiting anti-Semites like Jürgen Mölleman, a more obvious candidate for the label “idiot Aryan” than Schröder). The three hits were the following:

• Some luser on a message board called another poster an idiot and signed the message “Aryan.” That one obviously doesn’t count.
• “Awfulgood” delivered an awfully bad pun on the blogname of Misha, the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, and called him Antie Idiot’s Aryan Rot-Piler.” Get it? Rott-Piler! Get it? Rot-Piler! Tee-hee, yuk yuk. This was a cheap shot at Misha, not a serious allegation that he is an idiotarian, let alone an idiot Aryan. So I don’t think this one should count, either, although admittedly, I’m not exactly an unbiased observer.
• The Flophouse comes much closer to my definition, noting the homynymy between “anti-idiotarian” and “Anti-Idiot Aryan.” However, this focuses on anti-idiotarians who happen to be Aryans; it says nothing about the Aryans who are pro-idiotarians, or, for that matter, plain idiots. The existence of one does not imply the existence of the other, i.e., the existence of a “root beer float” does not suggest that there must be such a thing as a “beer float” (except maybe at a few frat parties).

Thus, I think I can reasonably claim credit for being the first to use the phrase “idiot Aryan” as a name for idiotarians who are also Aryans. However, the Flophouse definition of “anti-Idiot-Aryan” does create a three-way ambiguity that will need to be resolved somehow. As it stands, the phrase “anti-idiot-Aryan” can now refer (1) an Aryan who opposes idiots, (2) an Aryan who opposes idiotarianism, or (3) a person of any ethnicity who opposes idiot Aryans. I’ll leave it to you, the reader, to come up with some creative way to resolve this ambiguity.