Despite the constant attempts to play down the looting of the Iraqi National Museum, the full story is coming out. It is fairly clear, at this point, that a whole bunch of items were missing. It’s also pretty clear that many of them were simply hidden for safekeeping. The lesson? We owe the Iraqis a debt of thanks for preserving the heritage of Iraq, since we were too busy to do so.

Daily Kos, who is among the top five liberal bloggers, got a gig working for Howard Dean as a political consultant. From his disclosure post, his focus is going to be on providing services for the Internet campaign. Now, “rah rah bloggers affecting politics rah.” Take that as said. And, yeah, it’s interesting that Dean chose a blogger to manage his online community. But I think it’s more interesting contemplating the fact that Dean cares about his online community at all. Blogs are part of that. So are the Dean Meetups, which have touched far more people than the Dean weblog. (Note that the Meetups translate into real world action in the form of charity work.) ...

This post is pretty old, but Dave Winer just linked back to it today and I picked up on something new; also, it ties in nicely to the recent discussion from the Dead Parrots, and if you aren’t reading the Parrots you ought to be. So, discussion ensues. Here’s the money quote from Dave: OK, let’s deconstruct a myth. Someone says that weblogs aren’t journalism. OK, suppose a journalist has a weblog. When that journalist writes something on the weblog, therefore, it must not be journalism. Suppose the journalist writes exactly the same words on her weblog that she writes in a column in the newspaper she writes for. In one place it’s journalism and in the other it’s not? Hmmm. ...

Various and sundry Iraq news continues to flow. This is gonna be long. On WMD: we still haven’t found anything, although Bush said we did. Alas, two trailers that might or might not be WMD factories are not in any way WMD. Sort of in the same way that styrofoam and gas aren’t napalm. On the other hand, various sources are reporting that intelligence analysts felt pressured to find evidence of WMD before the war. Similar reports are coming out of the UK. ...

The Dixie Chicks are still #1 on the country charts, but Home took a dive on the Amazon rankings lately. Wide Open Spaces and Fly both dropped back down from the dizzying sales heights generated by the controversy, but then trended back up again just as Home was diving. Meanwhile, Rolling Stone pointed out that there really wasn’t all that much boycotting, and Rosanne Cash is appalled. By the media, not by the Chicks. However, what everyone really wants to know: are they any good? Um… OK. Wide Open Spaces really was not anywhere near anything I want to hear, and while I’m not a country fan I did try and give it a fair shake. Lots of preprocessed strings, gloss, and so on. Nice close harmonies but man, if I want good close harmonies I can find ‘em someplace with some genuine feeling. ...

I think it’s about time to stop complaining that the media isn’t doing a good job of asking questions. In the end, the American public may or may not care about the WMD issue — although I hope they do — but it’s definitely out there. You can tell the media is covering the story when John Dean asks if lying about the reason for a war is an impeachable offense. He thinks it is, unsurprisingly. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports doubts about those two trailers.

Those prone to suddenly gifting me with an all-expenses paid vacation in New York City should be aware of the Library Hotel (original). Their application of the Dewey Decimal System is slightly flawed, but only slightly. Map the thousandths digit in the room numbers to the tens digit in the DDS, and pretend that any floor number above 1000 subtracts 1000, and you’re close enough. Besides. Books. I can forgive much, for books.

3leaf is hiring (original). I have no idea what they do, but their job listing is enough to make me wish I was a deep Windows geek. 13. Stealth plane are nice. You give one orders, and it disappears. When it reappears, it always says “Mission accomplished. I hit the target”, but sometimes it really hit Lichtenstein’s embassy. You are NOT a stealth plane, you are a big, noisy, C130, that we can hear, see, and talk to for the whole project. ...

Speaking of privacy violations, Caltrans is expanding the use of Fastrak, their automatic toll collection system. They’re adding antennae along the highways, to collect realtime traffic info. This makes tracking individual drivers that much easier — another step down the slippery slope.

Britain is now calling for the US to allow UN weapons inspectors back into Iraq. The poignant quote from Britain’s UN ambassador: “Even the closest ally cannot answer for the United States.” They’re joined by the rest of the UN, of course. How much longer can we bear this undue influence in our affairs? Hasn’t Britain learned their lesson? Our friendship is not unconditional.