The New York Times prints this correction:

An article on Jan. 16 about the way presidents fare in their second terms misstated the reason Bill Clinton was impeached. He was accused of perjury and obstruction of justice, not of having an affair with an intern.

Thanks to alert reader Hank K., who observes: “Any chance that blunder happens if you or I are fact-checking this story? Not bloody likely.”

Amen.

Fadhil, Fadel, potayto, potahto? I’m sure Juan Cole, Sarah Boxer and the Moron Twins will soon inform us that both are just CIA plants.

I’m taking this story by Clare Chapman of the Daily Independent (h/t: Captain Ed, see also Michael Williams, Todd Zywicki, Donovan, Professor Bainbridge, John Weidner, Kip, Pejmanesque, Low Earth Orbit, Lawrence Auster, Ann Althouse and the Daily Pundit) with a very large grain of salt, as my sources on the ground have informed me that the lawyer involved, Mechthild Garweg (whose first name Chapman misspells “Merchthild”), is Germany’s answer to Gloria Allred. Here is a somewhat more informative article, albeit in German. I’ll translate the key provisions later if I get some spare time.

UPDATE: Done.

FINAL PENULTIMATE UPDATE: Snopes is reserving judgment, but I’m not. This story is officially bunk, with pieces of it cribbed from another story about an unemployed woman in Berlin who was inadvertently referred to a “bartending” job at a facility which, unbeknownst to the agency, was in fact a bordello. Unlike Clare Chapman and her rag of a newsper, the unemployment agency has already apologized for their error. Kudos to Amptoons for swatting this down early as well.

All further blogger speculation on this subject should end immediately, and if the Daily Telegraph wants to retain a shred of credibility, s should Clare Chapman’s career and that of her editor. Such “fake but inaccurate” sensationalism has no more of a legitimate place in the British media than Dan Rather and Mary Mapes have in ours. I’ve refiled this entry under Media Lameness, Morons and Urban Legends.

FINAL FINAL UPDATE: Snopes has upgraded/downgraded the status of this story from “undetermined” to “false.”

It’s about three months late, but it seems Michael Williams can finally claim total vindication. Today, on Meet the [de]Press[ed], John Kerry advised Tim Russert that he didn’t really do that badly in an election in which he really should have gotten trounced. When asked if his last-minute endorsement from Osama bin Laden had played a role in the election, Kerry replied:

I believe that 9/11 was the central deciding issue in this race. And the tape — we were rising in the polls up until the last day when the tape appeared. We flat-lined the day the tape appeared and went down on Monday. I think it had an impact. But 9/11, you know, it’s a very difficult hurdle when a country is at war. I applauded the president’s leadership in the days immediately afterwards. I thought he did a good job in that, and he obviously connected to the American people in those immediate days. When a country is at war and in the wake of 9/11, it’s very difficult to shift horses in midstream. I think it’s remarkable we came as close as we did as a campaign. Many Republicans say we beat their models by four or five points as to what they thought we could achieve.

Kerry further elaborated about how although he lost both the electoral vote and the “popular vote,” he did win the popular vote among battleground states, and therefore would have won the electoral vote if only those votes had been distributed differently. He then explained that if only has aunt had had balls, she’d be his uncle.

To those of you who are regular readers of Xrlq’s musings, you know that he and I support Underdog Rescue, a non profit group which pulls dogs and cats from high-kill Southern California animal shelters, rehabilitates them, and places them into loving forever homes. Please take a look at some of our latest handiwork in the before and after photos below.

Thanks to a team of volunteers and a particularly loving foster mom, Josie, the 8 year old chow/lab mix once at death’s door is now playful as a pup and has been placed in a home where two little girls argue over whose bed she gets to sleep in. If you have ever experienced the blessing of a bond with one of these angels in fur coats, you will know the heartbreak involved with seeing an unselfish creature in need. I really want to get the word out on how a handful of people can make such a difference. For more information on Underdog Rescue, please visit www.underdogrescue.net. Don’t forget, the PayPal button on the sidebar is for tax deductible contributions to Underdog to benefit animals like Josie. Donations from the heart are always welcome.

I’m switching servers to a U.S.-based site. If you can read this, the new domain has resolved in your area.

Michael Demmons catches Boifromtroy red-handed in a lie. Either that, or Boifromtroy catches Michael Demmons red-handed being a wee bit thick. I report, you decide.

UPDATE: Another commenter, Dale Launer, falls into the sarchasm.

UPDATE x2: Demmons has acknowledged his error and apologized to Boi. He’s learned his lesson and was man enough to own up to it, so good for him. Launer, by contrast, has yet to admit to anything, so it’s still open season on him.

Tiger asks how Bill Waterson’s “Calvin” character ended up being the guy who pees on everything despite never once having “calvinated” in any of the strips that ran in the papers all those years. I think I know the answer. In mid-1994, Mrs. Xrlq (then Miss Non-Xrlq) and I acquired two kittens, which she named Calvin and Hobbes, respectively. A few months later, Bill Waterson ended the strip, and our Calvin started peeing on everything. Since Watterson was too vain to license his product, which he mistook for “art,” pirated Calvins sprung up everywhere. The question was what to have them do. The original Calvin was no longer out there to give them any new ideas, so the pirates did the next best thing, drawing a character who looks like the original Calvin but behaves like the only one that’s still around to give them new material.

UPDATE: Via Drudge, if there is such a thing as a “Calvin Award,” this guy certainly earned it.

Look, I’m as big a supporter of topless women on beaches as the next guy, but this is just nuts. Like Michael Newdow, the ACLU, Liberty Counsel, and many other crusaders, Johnsson’s biggest flaw appears to be her own perception that if she feels strongly about something, it must mean she is right:

“I’m not a troublemaker. It’s just sometimes I know I’m right,” said Johnsson, 42, who won’t say whether she wants to bare her breasts but believes she should have the right to do so.

“I have a desire to be equal to men,” she said. “The Constitution tells me that everybody is created equal. Unfortunately, I read that part.”

In fact, nothing in the Constitution says anything close to that, so if she really “read that part” it must have been in the context of a dream or a bad acid trip. She may thinking of that other holy document, the Declaration of Indepedence, which the legally cluless often confuse with the Constitution. The Declaration of Independence does say that all men are created equal, but it says nothing about women, who were not even guaranteed the right to vote until almost a century and a half later. More importantly, perhaps, no one can sue under the Declaration of Independence, which provides only one remedy for an alleged violation of its self-evident truths: armed revolution.

Given her confusion over the basic legal documents of this country, you’re probably thinking “where on earth does a ditz like this get her law degree? Sears, Roebuck?!” Not quite:

“I don’t like being told that I can’t do something,” said Johnsson, who earned her law degree in 1990 from UC Berkeley. “

That giant sucking sound you just heard was the value of my J.D. from that same institution.

Johnsson said she would prefer to live her life outside the spotlight. She also offered The Times a really good deal on a famous bridge in Brooklyn if we believed that.

OK, OK. The first sentence was in the article, though, and the second should have been. Every cloud does, however, have a silver lining. Like most defense lawyers, Johnsson has a soft spot in her heart for vicious murderers, especially those who commit their murders under special circumstances qualifying for the death penalty. Yet, unlike most of her brethren and sistren in the hardened criminal lobby, she cares just a teeny bit less about the death penalty than she does about boobies:

But absent someone else stepping up, she said she was willing to push as hard as necessary to ensure women were equal to men on paper and in practice.

“I would gladly yield the lead to somebody else, somebody who wants the publicity or their five minutes of fame,” Johnsson said. “Then I can make my father’s dream come true and get rid of the death penalty.”

Nice to see her priorities are in order.