Microsoft censors Chinese dissident's blog hosted in the USA, Ruskie choppers for Hugo, and today's reads
MicroSoft MSN Spaces Removes Chinese Dissident's Blog HOSTED IN THE USA!

At the request of the Government of Communist China, MicroSoft MSN Spaces has taken down the US HOSTED BLOG of Zhao Jing, a Chinese dissident reporting on freedom of speech in China.

Note that this is not a case of MSN Spaces blocking Chinese surfers from accessing a USA-Hosted blog, MSN Spaces actually removed a blog hosted in the USA at the request of the Communists

I wonder what TIME's Man of the Year is thinking.

Ruskie choppers for Hugo
First three Russian choppers delivered to Venezuela, all part of Hugo's shopping spree. Hat tip to Babalu, who also tells us that

And Jeff over at Kinshasa on the Potomac points out that the castroite press is now touting fancy new visits from Russki generals, back to their old stomping ground, fidel castro's island carcel. It's a scary, and perfectly logical connection to make, particularly when you read his analysis.

In Cuba, 9,240 victims - and counting:
Jeff Jacoby explains:

Castro's mocking challenge - "try to find a single case" - is not going unanswered. The Cuba Archive project is working to document the cost, in human life, of more than five decades of Cuban dictatorship. The New Jersey-based archive's tiny staff has set itself the monumental task of identifying every man, woman and child killed by Cuba's rulers since March 10, 1952, the day Batista ousted the island's last democratically elected president. Meticulously, impartially, the archive's researchers are assembling the evidence that Castro claims doesn't exist - victim by victim, one death at a time.

It is heartbreaking work. The revolution's victims have died in front of firing squads and been beaten to death by government goons; they have been sunk while at sea and shot down while flying; they have been killed for resisting Communism at home and killed when sent to fight for Communism abroad. In the hands of Castro's jailers, some have been driven to suicide; many more have disappeared.

It is also slow and painstaking work. Each death entered into the archive must be confirmed by at least two independent sources and documented, to the extent possible, with photographs, eyewitness testimony and the recollections of survivors. "We don't want to just record names and numbers," says Maria Werlau, the president of the Cuba Archive. "We want to tell each story. We want the world to know the magnitude of the Cuban tragedy."

So far the archive has catalogued the deaths of 9,240 victims of the Castro regime.

I'll be posting more on the Cuba Archive later this year.

Bad news for children in the worst school districts:
Fla. school voucher program struck down by state's highest court

A coalition of groups, including the Florida Education Association and the NAACP, challenged the voucher program shortly after Bush signed it into law, but it took seven years for the case to finally reach the state's highest court.

Iraqi elections:Iraq's Political 'Census': The good--and not so good--lessons of its sectarian election turnout

Opponents of Iraq's liberation are spinning the vote as evidence of Iraq's looming breakup or incipient Shiite theocracy. But both fears have been asserted for years and haven't been realized yet. Religious and ethnic parties were always going to play a prominent role in the politics of a Free Iraq, and the realities of wielding power may well promote compromise.

Read it all.

On a lighter vein,
The question is not "can this marriage be saved"; the question is
why bother?

and Howard Stern's Daughter Quits Naked Madonna Sex Romp. Spamalot it wasn't.