The Dish

I’m all for a revived liberalism but this is a sign that it comes with costs:

…the news, like other things in life, should not be seen as a straight commodity. It is not there to turn a profit. It is there to keep our democracy healthy and our public informed. If that means it can’t be appropriately subsidized through advertising, and needs public subsidies in a blind trust, or some sort of philanthropic revenue scheme, then so be it. Other countries do this, and do it well. But either the way, the bottom line should be that if it turns out that responsible news reporting isn’t profitable, then we should sacrifice the profitability, not the responsible news reporting.

We?

You can see them here. There are now some questions about their authenticity. Le Monde has a story. From the website:

Mr. Capp was assigned to the occupation forces outside Hiroshima after World War II. According to to Mr. Capp’s oral history (available along with the photographs in the Robert L. Capp collection), he found these photos among rolls of undeveloped film in a cave outside of Hiroshima. Since making these photographs publicly available, I have received reliable proof that at least two of these photos are actually of the 1923 Kanto earthquake. While I cannot speak for the entire collection, this evidence raises doubts about all of the photos and raises the strong possibility that the identification provided by the Hoover Archives is incorrect. I take full responsibility for my own failure to take additional steps to verify that the original archival designation was correct. I have removed the photographs until and unless their source can be verified by further research.

A reader writes:

My ten year old son has shown clear and undeniable signs of transgenderism since before he was four. His favorite musicians are all girls (Hannah Montana, Hillary Duff, etc.), all his friends are girls, he enjoys dressing in girls’ clothing–often sneaking into his mother’s closet, and he is presently obsessed with the "fairy" kid-lit of Daisy Meadows. I cannot tell you how much conflict lies within me as to how to "deal" with my son. At church and in society, we get the very clear message that anything akin to transgenderism or homosexuality is a moral choice and is deeply wrong.

And yet, I bristle against this.

I view any attempts to "reprogram" my son as only begetting future years of repression, sorrow, therapy, and in-the-closet-angst.  And yet, I cannot also allow my son to go to school dressed as a girl (which would truly thrill him, I’m sure).  I worry that he would be subject to ridicule and physical violence from his peers.  I worry that his teachers might treat him unfairly.  I worry about the shower of hell that would rain down upon us from my mostly-conservative family.  I worry about things that I cannot even imagine right now.

So for now, we just "let it be."  We don’t try to force him to play with certain "boy" toys.  We don’t try to censor his music choices, nor control his friendships.  We let him be.

And for now, he seems healthy, happy, and thriving.  I believe, as he gets older, he will have the maturity to become whomever he wishes.  For now, our job must be to guide him in truly moral matters (like stealing, lying, cheating, doing the right thing, etc.), and shower him with love, acceptance and affection.

And I pray that we’re doing the right thing.

A life-long procrastinator passes his knowledge on to the next generation of slackers.

Falls Church, Virginia, 5.45 pm.

A reader forwards:

Grandma warned me yesterday not to tell anyone I was voting for Obama, but I am heading out the door in about an hour to do just that. Mom.

I’m struck by this clip. When a Clinton supporter is directly confronted with the fact that Obama is not a Muslim, she simply refuses to believe it. When people simply refuse to deal with fact, something else is going on.

First, McAuliffe assumes Tim Russert’s dad is dead. Then this classic from Britain.

National Review on McCain’s climate change speech. Oy. There are indeed good arguments about cap-and-trade, but NR would be more persuasive if they offered an alternative path to ameliorating global warming.

Anne Applebaum considers intervention in Burma:

Unfortunately, the phrase "coalition of the willing" is tainted forever—once again proving that the damage done by the Iraq war goes far beyond the Iraqi borders—but a coalition of the willing is exactly what we need. The French—whose foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, was himself a co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières—are already talking about finding alternative ways of delivering aid. Others in Europe and Asia might join in, along with some aid organizations. The Chinese should be embarrassed into contributing, asked again and again to help. This is their satrapy, after all, not ours.

Think of it as the true test of the Western humanitarian impulse: The international effort that went into coordinating the tsunami relief effort in late 2004 has to be repeated, but in much harsher, trickier, uglier political circumstances. Yes, we should help the Burmese, even against the will of their irrational leaders. Yes, we should think hard about the right way to do it. And, yes, there isn’t much time to ruminate about any of this.

James Joyner differs. Can we not simply run air-drops of food and clean water? It’s not invading as such if we do not provide ground-troops.
 

Mike Gravel celebrates his birthday: