Salam Pax has been chillingly silent for several days now. I hope this just means he has taken Instapundit’s advice to keep a low profile, and not that something has happened to him.

An unsigned editorial in today’s Daily Monopoly Los Angeles Times argues that the currently-unknowable costs of the war in Iraq make this A Bad Time For Tax Cuts (TM). The argument might be a bit more persuasive if anyone could remember the last time that paper came out and said “hey, now is a great time for a tax cut!”

Denise Howell observes an interesting irony: the U.S. Military allows its soldiers to blog but the news media (CNN and Joshua Kucera’s editors, at least) do not. This from the same industry that once gushed about glasnost. I don’t know if this silliness warrants a “heh” or “bah.”

Outside the Beltway asks readers to submit captions for this photo:

My vote: “Sheen and not Heard.” Got a better one? Submit it!

Link via Joanne Jacobs.

Justene Adamec reports that Secretary of State Kevin Shelley has finally put his shenanigans on hold and finally approved the petition to recall Governor Davis. Now comes the hard part that was supposed to be the hard part: collecting the damned signatures in time to qualify for the ballot. If you support the effort, be sure to print out a copy, sign it, and send it in today. Time is short.

For days we read of coalition POWs being murdered and paraded on television. “Human rights” activists at Amnesty International said nothing. Soon thereafter, we read of false surrenders, Iraqi soldiers fighting in civilian clothes, and an overall battle plan designed to use our concern for the safety of Iraqi citizens as a weapon against us. Again, Amnesty International says nothing. Then we bomb their state-run “civilian” war propaganda machine, and AI chimes in with a statement that both countries may be guilty of war crimes.

FoxNews links to this story about a man accused of murdering his father and kidnapping two nuns with a short heading “Nuns on the Run.” This is not cool. Few people like catchy names more than I do, but there is a time and place for everything, and this is neither.

UPDATE: The story has been updated to reflect that one of the victims has been found murdered. For what it’s worth, the flippant headline that prompted this rant is no longer on the web site.

Yahoo! has another story on Salam Pax. I’m beginning to think Instapundit may be right that Salam’s profile of late has been a bit too high for his own good. But that is Salam’s call, not ours.

As usual, Michael Ramirez hits the nail on the head:

I guess even the Daily Monopoly Los Angeles Times can’t be wrong all the time.