[ed. note: this is a reprint of the famous 1897 column from the national review online. we think it is as relevant to today's issues as it was back then]

we take great pleasure in answering at once the communication below, expressing at the same time great gratification that its author is numbered among the friends of nro:

"i am 8 years old. some of my liberal friends say there is no war on christmas. they say it's just another code-word-filled wedge distraction to keep us from discussing real issues like iraq, the deficit, the patriot act, katrina and the administrations abysmal record on human rights. papa says, 'if you see it on the internets, it's so.' please tell me the truth, is there a war on christmas?"

virginia o'scamlon

virginia, your liberal friends are wrong. they have been affected by the secularism of a secular age. they do not believe except what michael moore tells them. they think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their godless minds.

here's joel stein, november 2:

just how easy is it for coulter to offend someone? would any words from her mouth do the trick? to test this theory, i developed the ann coulter mad libs.^TM

it's a good thing he used that ^TM mark. he wouldn't want anyone to steal his concept.

"it's militant leftist bloggers," writes malkin, "who wouldn't know a good-faith argument if it bit them in the lip." let's have a good faith argument. i will debate michelle malkin anytime, anywhere, in any forum (save hotair tv, which she controls), on the particulars of s-chip. we can set the debate at a think tank, on bloggingheads, over im. hell, we can set up the podiums in the shrubbery outside my house, since that seems to be the sort of venue she naturally seeks out. and then if malkin wants an argument, she can have one. we'll talk s-chip and nothing but -- nothing of the frosts, or congress, or her blog...

we know that it's an earnest attempt to diffuse the idea that rush is a pundit...after all, if you call someone a comedian, who would take him seriously?

if we can divorce limbaugh from the label of pundit or analyst, the conventional wisdom seems to say, then he won't have the power, or at least, the punch that his influence seems to indicate. so, call him a comedian, and insult him and dilute him at the same time.

that's all well and good. unless you're a comedian!

cross-posted at skippy and a veritable cornucopia of other community blogs.

star simpson, who sounds like the cartoon character host of the view, was the mit student who was arrested at logan airport last week for wearing a "hoax device," which airport police thought was a bomb, but was really just geek computer art.

mit waffled its way into a non-committal condemnation of star's choice of wardrobe. the school's official reaction on the day of her arrest, en toto:

mit is cooperating fully with the state police in the investigation of an incident at logal airport this morning involving star simpson, a sophomore at mit. as reported to us by authorities, ms. simipson's actions were reckless and understandably created alarm at the airport.

star's fellow students rallied behind her, condemning the university's condemnation of her, beginning with a demonstration on campus earlier this week:

via jon swift guesting at c&l, we find pam's house blend having a quite astute realization that none, that would be zero, zip, zilch, nada, goose egg, null set, absence of anything, of the big box blogs have had anything to say about the jena 6:

chris kromm of the institute for southern studies and its blog facing south, is appalled, rightfully so, at the sparse coverage of the historic march for justice in jena, lousiana.

it's not to say that it isn't being covered in the blogosphere at all -- black bloggers have largely been responsible for the high profile of this case, picking up the ball where the melanin-challenged blogs of influence have dropped it. you'd think that the events today, which are being covered by the msm, would mean that the story is now mainstream blogworthy, but you would be wrong. chris:

dailykos features a handful of posts about injustice in iraq today -- but not a single entry on its main page, or even its user-generated "diaries," about this important case.

an mit student with a fake bomb strapped to her chest was arrested at gunpoint friday at logan international airport, officials said.

more from michael bersin and skippy cartoonist brett penrose on the tom harkin steak fry last weekend (previous installments about this adventure can be found here and here)...

to start, michael talks about the speechifyin over at show me progress:

mediabloodhound is following the story of how abc news is continuously giving the shaft to dennis "the menace" kucinich, and how other media outlets are enabling them to do so:

following last sunday's democratic presidential debate on abc news' this week with george stephanopoulos, dennis kucinich's campaign asked abc news to address issues it had with treatment rep. kucinich (d-ohio) received both during the debate and afterward in abc's online coverage. in an email sent out to supporters on wednesday, the campaign said it "submitted objections and inquiries to abc news representatives on monday and tuesday. abc news representatives have failed to respond - or even acknowledge - those objections and inquiries." i confirmed with the kucinich campaign yesterday that it has subsequently been forwarded the same response abc news executive director andrea jones sent to the washington post and time magazine.

abc news representatives felt it necessary to answer the kucinich campaign's objections when time magazine's national political correspondent karen tumulty queried them. writing on the time blog swampland, tumulty initially says of the kucinich team's issues with abc's treatment (which included kucinich not having a chance to speak until 28 minutes into the debate), "these all seemed like fair complaints to me, so i asked abc news to respond." then tumulty says, "in an e-mail, executive director andrea jones answered him [kucinich] point by point."

remember that huge scandal when chemical weapons from iraq were found in a united nations office?  well, it turns out that the culprit was less saddam hussein and more scrubbing bubbles.  asspress:

a substance found at a un weapons inspectors' office last month and suspected of being a chemical warfare agent appears to be a non-toxic solvent, a un official said thursday.

the material was found aug. 24 at a un office in midtown manhattan. the material, from a bombed-out iraqi research facility, was in inventory files with a label that indicated it could be phosgene, a chemical substance used in the first world war.

for those who thought runs on banks were a thing out of 30's movies, think again.  the current sub-prime mortgage crisis didn't do countrywide's banking subsidiary any good last week.  reuters:

withdrawal slips in hand, customers lined up at countrywide bank branches on friday to take back their money, as parent countrywide financial corp. tried to assure investors and depositors that it and its bank were stable.

it was a balmy summer's nite here in los angeles (incredibly...usually in august it's a stifling hot infernal by now) and skippy went to an upscale (read:  minimalist to the point of austere) west hollywood restaurant called republic to hear john edwards speak.

billed as "small change for big change," this gathering boasted that you didn't have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to meet a presidential candidate.  

that turned out to be right and wrong.  skippy didn't pay tens of thousands of dollars (it was only $15...a pretty good pricetag); but, alas, he didn't actually meet john edwards.  it was far too crowded.

did reid not even think of trying to prevent cloture, or otherwise using senate procedural hurdles as roadblocks? and, as blogger corpus juris has said, where's reid's you tube moment on this?

senate and house democratic leadership had to know bush was going to pull out all the rhetorical stops on this, and that rove was likely to try to spin this for political gain. so why didn't they have an advance counter-marketing plan? here's some possible talking points:

"democrats want to totally protect americans, including protecting their privacy."

"democrats have a better bill." (and why they didn't actually have one lined up a week ago, i don't know)

"we know that americans don't want to surrender their privacy and other rights."

instead, democratic congressional leaders demonstrate that all too often, they are still being reactive rather than proactive. i think it's about time for skippy to repost his "no money for democrats" post.

via a comment at swampland concerning the repubbb's fear of cats on pianos and other youtube videos, we took a look at some of the actual questions that have been submitted to youtube for the upcoming postposed repubbblican debate.

granted, we viewed but a handful of the questions submitted. and it's possible that we randomly picked the only logical, thoughtful and adult questions out of a batch of otherwise looney-toon videos.

sure, there was the odd ball that made the dem's snowman look like william f. buckley, jr. (we love this guy).