Try him, and if guilty, jail him and throw away the key, and other items of the day
G.O.P. Lobbyist Pleads Guilty in Deal With Prosecutors: Jack "Sleazy" Abramoff has it coming. Here's How Abramoff Spread the Wealth (via Maria). Or, as Ankle Biting Pundits put it, Time to Throw Bad Republicans under the Bus.

The miners' tragedy
is all the more heartbreaking in that last night people thought they were alive. Mine families' anger at 'lies', and justly so.

Israeli athlete Rachel Neuwirth’s article
Spielberg's Munich and me, is a must. Read it all. Also visit her website, Middle East Solutions.
Victor Davis Hanson has an article on Hollywood's Misunderstood Terrorists (via Maria).

Peretz on Gaza
Mayhem in Gaza and the future of Palestine

The withdrawal from Gaza by Israel was supposed to be a test. OK, not of everything but of something. Take your pick. That the hudna (ceasefire) would hold. It didn't. Islamic Jihad hadn't even signed on to the contract. It carried out several successful terrorist attacks and day in, day out launched rockets from Gaza deeper and deeper into pre-1967 Israel. But, in a way, even more serious is the fact that the most protracted war by Qassam projectiles was waged by armed elements of Fatah, the P.A. president's own political party. What about security undertakings with regard to Gaza's border with Egypt? Again a failure. Weapons and terrorists have surged, not seeped, through the frontier that is also "guaranteed" by various European well-wishers. Is there elemental public order on the streets? Not at all. What about the assumption that there would be sufficient pressure from the Palestinian public for the P.A. to feel obliged to take control of the streets? Not enough pressure or not enough will to take control. The P.A. is still the most heavily armed force in Gaza. No matter: Militias battle police, police battle other police, gangs brawl with other gangs; there are revenge killings, aimless killings, kidnappings, bombings, clubbings, mutilations, some pointless, some unmistakably pointed. Chaos rules in Gaza, utter mayhem. "It appears as if Gaza has degenerated into anarchy," explains CNN. There has been a steady outflow of pro-Palestinian NGO personnel from the Strip, some out of panic, some from a realization that the Palestinian revolution, so called, is animated by bloodlust. According to The Times of London, one British aid worker who was recently held hostage by gunmen for three days told her kidnappers, "I came to work with these people and I feel like I've been stabbed in the back." Is this the future of Palestine?

"Fausta, dear, you are extremely dim. And extremely dangerous."
Indeed.
Update at The Meatriarchy
Update 2: Mary follows up.
Further clarification: On my original post I refer to a review that was written by NYT journalist Nicholas Kristoff on the book on Mao.

Maria's other articles
Amir Taheri: What the world won in 2005:

I also regard the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the new president of the Islamic Republic as good news. The reason is simple: Ahmadinejad has the courage, some might say recklessness, to cast aside the hypocritical mask worn by his two predecessors (both businessmen-mullahs) in a strategy of deception. He has eschewed taqiyah (dissimulation) and that, believe me, is welcome news. His presidency will force the people of Iran and the rest of the world either to come to terms with the Khomeinist revolution or to challenge it in a meaningful way.

The Guardian: Secret services say Iran is trying to assemble a nuclear missile. Document seen by Guardian details web of front companies and middlemen (via Atlas Shrugs).

Mr. Sevan, I Presume: Congressional investigators find an Oil for Food figure hiding in plain sight. Benon visits his aunt.

Shamed South Korea scientist coerced women for eggs: TV

The weirdest war of them all

On a lighter mode, Joe Kovacs looks at 2005.