Your choice. Via Howie Klein. (To spare my inbox, yeah, a couple of these people might be ringers, or messing with the interviewer, or whatever. But most of them are clearly not.)

Joan Walsh looks back:

A week later, after the statue of Saddam fell, I got a call from the New York Times’ David Carr, one of my favorite writers there, who seemed to be asking me, politely, gently, even compassionately, what it felt like to be so, well, wrong — and to be so alone in being so wrong. Carr wrote a fair piece; he corralled me, Dan Perkins (our Tom Tomorrow), Katrina vanden Heuvel and Eric Alterman of the Nation, and Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker; he didn’t lump us with any far-left Saddam-boosters or anyone hoping for “a million Mogadishus.” He did let Christopher Hitchens say this about us: “Their prediction and deepest hope was that the black shirts of the fedayeen were going to win and force a stalemate. Just like they predicted, the Arab street did explode, but with the joy of freedom, which is not the one that they meant, so they are furious and depressed.” But that’s a nice quote to have four years later. Just look at all that joy of freedom out on the Arab street!

Sure, Operation Iraqi Freedom is a catastrophe, but Operation Rewrite History is a resounding success!

Four years ago today:

THE PRESIDENT: My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.

Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly — yet, our purpose is sure. The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder. We will meet that threat now, with our Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and Marines, so that we do not have to meet it later with armies of fire fighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities…

May God bless our country and all who defend her.

Today:

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. Four years ago today, coalition forces launched Operation Iraqi Freedom to remove Saddam Hussein from power. They did so to eliminate the threat his regime posed to the Middle East and to the world. Coalition forces carried out that mission with great courage and skill…

WASHINGTON, March 18 — The Democratic senator leading the inquiry into the dismissal of federal prosecutors insisted today that Karl Rove and other top aides to President Bush must testify publicly and under oath, setting up a confrontation between Congress and the White House, which has said it is unlikely to agree to such a demand.

Some Republicans have suggested that Mr. Rove, as well as Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, and William Kelley, the deputy White House counsel, testify privately, if only to tamp down the political uproar.

But Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, seemed to rule out such a move today, saying that his committee would vote Thursday to issue subpoenas in the inquiry, which centers on whether the White House allowed politics to interfere with law enforcement.

“I do not believe in this, ‘we’ll have a private briefing for you where we’ll tell you everything,’ and they don’t,” Mr. Leahy said on the ABC News program “This Week.” adding: “I want testimony under oath. I am sick and tired of getting half-truths on this.”

Lawmakers of both parties agree that the fate of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales may rest on what happens this week, as the White House and Congress either come to blows — or finds a compromise — over the testimony lawmakers are demanding. With Mr. Bush out of town at Camp David, the White House counsel, Fred F. Fielding, spent the weekend in Washington weighing whether to allow Mr. Rove and the others to talk and, if so, under what conditions.

Story.

There is some expected but very sad news today: Arthur Silber’s sister died yesterday morning at 63, just weeks after being diagnosed with cancer. Arthur has written about her here.

Arthur is one of the most unusual and insightful voices online, and I hope everyone who admires his writing can stop by today to leave their condolences.

Check out what Jeff of Ecophotos found in his back yard. Jeff asks:

Of all the persons in the news lately, who would you like to be the gator, and who should have the role of pond chicken?

It’s a tough choice, but I say Tom DeLay and Newt Gingrich.

The Best Guitar Ever Made, originally uploaded by JoelJohnson.

This is a side of the music blogosphere I don’t see very often…* In response to my earlier post about guns and self-defense, William J. Beck III has a novel argument for keeping a handgun at home, to protect his guitar.

Evidently, he’s very upset at me because he thinks I want to take away his gun, which he needs to keep the burglars away from his heirloom instrument:

Beyerstein: “It might make sense be armed if you were someone
who couldn’t call the cops (e.g., a drug dealer), or if you kept your
entire lifesavings in uninsured jewels in a candy dish on the kitchen
table. But does anyone really want to risk physical violence to protect
their consumer electronics? That’s what insurance is for.”

[William J. Beck replies:] This sort of smug disdain for other peoples’ honestly-gained values is simply outrageous. “Consumer electronics”, huh? Nevermind that the money that people spend on things that they want from life represents the very time of their life devoted to acquiring these things. In any case, it’s all disposable to Beyerstein.

Beck thinks I reject all values because I question whether it’s wise for untrained amateurs to use deadly force to protect material possessions. Actually, his reaction fits remarkably well with Amanda’s theory about guns and property rights.

I think Beck is saying that if  I question the practical value of guns as a home security system, I’m thereby rejecting private property and therefore morality itself. I told you it was an unusual argument.

He continues:

Take a good look at this photograph.
That guitar has been in my family since 1966: my father played it all
the time I was growing up, to include the years that he spent teaching
me how to play. He used to tell me that it would be mine someday "after
you see that pine box dropping into the ground with my body in it".
I’ve owned a lot of guitars in my own adult years, but my father died
in 2003 and this one is mine, now, just like he said.

I can’t tell you what that thing is worth to me in terms of family
history: it’s priceless. Nonetheless, the vintage market at large is
telling me that its value is running at about fifteen thousand dollars,
today. (It’s a 1962 Gibson ES-355 in Cherry Red, with real PAF pickups
and manufactured without stereo output or Varitone.)

[…]

It’s pretty bloody easy for someone like Beyerstein to sit around and
crack snide about other peoples’ treasures and "insurance". When the
context includes the matter of intruders doing manifest harm to
innocent people, it’s an unconscionable outrage.

My position is obvious:

If it ever came to the choice between that guitar and an intruderintent on taking it, I’ve got 147-grain Hydra-Shoks that say he’s right-now dead on the right-now spot.

No choice.

As I’ve said before, I don’t want to take anyone’s gun rights away. The fact that there are grown men out there who brag about their willingness to kill for running shoes, or vintage guitars does give me a vague sense of unease about the whole system. But rights are rights. As far as I know, Beck III is a stable law-abiding citizen. If he wants to stand guard over his guitar every night for the rest of his life, that’s his Constitutional Right. Even the NRA says that he shouldn’t leave a loaded gun lying around his bed where a child (or a burglar) might get at it. But if he wants to stand there all night with his weapon cocked, I’m not one to judge what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms.

Maybe Beck doesn’t really mean that he’d kill a burglar just to protect his guitar. I hope not, because if he ever did exactly what he says he’d do, he’d really be pushing the boundaries of self-defense. He’ll probably never fire his gun in anger anway. Let’s hope not, for the sake of that beautiful guitar. In his enthusiasm to splatter a burglar’s brains all over his living room, Beck might miss and hit that gorgeous instrument.

*Unless I totally misunderstood why they called it “Pitchfork Media“ 

… everyone knew Joe Wilson had a wife!

Waxman, just now:

I have been advised by the CIA, that even now after all that has happened, I cannot disclose the full nature, scope and character of Ms. Wilson’s service to our nation without causing serious damage to our national security interests. But General Hayden and the CIA have cleared these following comments for these hearings. During her employment at the CIA, Ms. Wilson was undercover. Her employment status at the CIA was classified information, prohibited from disclosure under Executive Order 12958. At the time of the publication of Robert Novak’s column on July 14, 2003, Ms. Wilson’s CIA employment status was covert. This was classified information.

This of course, makes no sense, as Sean Hannity and the right wing bloggers have spent the past year assuring us that Valerie Plame was not a covert operative. In fact, Conservative Jones grappled with this very mystery last year, in this cartoon.

According to the transcript (pdf) of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s recent military hearing, he confessed to dozens of terrorist plots. But amid all the tumult, he never forgot what’s really important:

George M. Cohan: “I don’t care what you say about me, as long as you say something about me, and as long as you spell my name right.”

My friend and sometimes co-writer Mike Gerber is continuing his daily newsjokes from his secret underground TV studio. Here’s the latest edition:

More here.

Eric Boehlert’s great piece at Media Matters asks the following hypothetical questions:

All of which begs the questions, why do Fox News execs spin so furiously whenever they’re the ones accused of having a bias? Why do they consider it “sad” and “pathetic” to be tagged as Republican? Why do Fox News employees find the label “conservative’” so insulting? Why does Fox News indignantly demand news outlets print corrections if they simply report that Fox News has a Republican tilt?

The answer here is that Fox News can’t fight back against charges of bias the way other news organizations do. When Howard Kurtz, for example, was criticized in an online chat at the Washington Post, he trotted out the old line “I get criticized from both sides, which tells me I must be doing something right”. For the traditional media, that’s their (lazy, logically-flawed, foolish…) go-to excuse to get out of any charges of political bias, but that would never, ever work for Fox News. Even their most ardent defenders would crack a rib laughing at the notion that anyone would ever accuse Fox of having a liberal bias. They can’t play the “both sides hate us” card, so they have to resort to Plan B : throw a temper tantrum like the overgrown children that they are.