Police have apparently considered, but ruled out, a dozen men as suspects in the Baton Rouge serial killer case, according to local T.V. reports there.

"there are individuals that have been investigated since the beginning of this investigation. if you didn't have their d-n-a they would look like they were responsible for these homicides."
d-n-a tests cleared the men as suspects.

Five slain women have been linked, by DNA, to the same person. More than 70 other unsolved homicides of women remain open cases in that region of Louisiana, and more than 3,100 rape kits have yet to be processed from that region, as well. The victims weren't well-to-do, they weren't Georgetown residents or from Tribeca. They weren't from Modesto and Mark Geragos isn't circling in the clouds, waiting to jump in and represent anyone in the case. And this is one of the most underreported serial killing cases in recent memory.

Remember Opie and Anthony? The New York radio team that was fired after a "controversy" at St. Patrick's Cathedral last year? Well, they're still out of work and sounding really bummed out.

The FCC hasn't yet ruled on complaints made about their controversial show last August, but their home radio station, WNEW-FM, has been on life-support for a few months, changing formats and waiting to officially re-birth itself.

Fox won't produce a reality T.V. show to elect the next president. You would think it's because it was a lousy idea. Nope. Evidently, they didn't have enough money to produce the show.

The Blog of the Century of the Week makes a good point about a fellow blogger. This guy obviously isn't from Long Island, where traffic on the Long Island Expressway and alternate routes was crawling - if not stopped - because a sign was falling down. (Yes, a sign was falling down.)

``The sooner we finish it, the better.''

Via The Command Post, we ran into the story of the latest Saddam Hussein video. Reportedly, he appeared, dazed, confused and like he hadn't had a restful sleep in a few nights.

Good.

More outcry over the Bush Administration's policies toward an endangered species.

The federal courts have knocked down big parts of the McCain-Feingold law regulating so-called "soft money" in political campaigns - money that corporations, political action committees, unions, etc., spend on behalf of candidates they want to win.

I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know whether McCain-Feingold was really constitutional. However I do remember, covering the '92 presidential campaign, that Jerry Brown ran for the Democratic nomination taking no soft money and contributions of no more than $100 from individuals. He didn't have to have that policy. That was his policy because he thought it was right. And he finished second out of a field of about ten Democratic candidates that year, won several primaries and hundreds of thousands of votes. No fancy media buys. No flash-polling. Just a nuts-and-bolts, tell 'em what I think campaign. He didn't wait for a law or judicial ruling.

Brown tried to lead by example. There's a Democratic presidential candidate debate tomorrow. It'll be interesting to see if anyone on the stage will, like Brown, try to lead by example and foreswear obscene amounts of campaign cash.

Jeff Jarvis says he didn't vote for President Bush, and probably won't the next time around. But he says this about the President's speech on board the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln:

It was the speech of a leader. He did not gloat but he did show a firm and clear direction.
There will be controversy over some things he said, of course. Yes, he all but linked Iraq to 9.11 but, you know, it's not a far stretch in the minds of most Americans and for a reason: Looney fanatics from over there who hate us are birds of a feather. And there was a time in my life when I would have found the idea of smarter bombs to be distasteful, but now that I see the necessity of a war like this, even as I mourn the lives that are lost, I'm thankful for those that are not.
I'm still a liberal. I'm still not a Bushy. But give the man his due: He won the war against Iraq; right won the war against wrong. Well done.

The President could have given the speech from the Oval Office, but chose to declare major combat finished before the men and women who risked their lives for their country. And while some may knock him for flying a Navy fighter jet onto the deck of the carrier, it seemed, well, a lot more natural than when other political leaders have attempted assorted campaign stunts.

The Boycott Hollywood Web site is shutting down after lawyers for the William Morris Agency threatened the site's hosting provider with legal action. Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, has a good take on it.

Makes one wonder if Tim Robbins has a copy of that "chill wind" speech still tucked in his jacket pocket, that he can use on these entertainment execs and lawyers. Can you imagine if The American Enterprise Institute threatened legal action against BarbaraStreisand.com, or any of the Bush-protest Web sites? Can you imagine if the government threatened legal action to shut down a Web site under The Patriot Act? It makes one wonder how many entertainers will fire William Morris over this business.

There's a word to describe this stuff, but why pile on?

By more than 2-to-1, most Americans approve of the job President Bush is doing, according to this week's Gallup numbers.

The survey organization, though, spells out a potential pitfall:

More than half the public, 54%, says the president is not paying enough attention to the economy, while just 43% says he is.

Another way to look at it, though, is that most Americans acknowledge we're winning the war on terrorism and that's light years ahead of the economy in terms of importance at this moment in history. It'll probably take a lot more than bumper-sticker arguments this time around to eat into the 43rd president's popularity.

So much for the war in Iraq "distracting us" from the war on terror.

Said Secretary of State Colin Powell, in releasing his department's annual report on global terrorism:

...thousands of terrorists have been captured and detained. For those still at large, life has definitely become more difficult. It is harder for terrorists to hide and find safe haven. It is harder for them to organize and sustain operations. Terrorist cells have been broken up, networks disrupted, and plots foiled.

American lives - and lives of others around the world - have actually been saved because of what the goverment has done over the past nineteen months. Last year, terrorists had their worst performance since 1969.Good.

Tony Blair says those who doubt whether there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq will be left "eating some of their words."

Since Blair and President Bush have a track record of being right, that may end the discussion (at least in England) for the time being.

Kofi Annan is asking the U.N. Security Council to finally come together and show some unity on Iraq. In other news, a farmer missing a cow closed his barn door, according to reports.

One more bad guy is out of circulation, according to CNN:

"When al Qaeda came and killed Americans, there was only one way to deal with them: That was to hunt them down, find them and bring them to justice," Bush said. "The war goes on."

You get the feeling that for every victory like this against these blood-thirsty terrorists, that gets publicized, there are dozens that are kept quiet and get no publiclity at all. The war goes on.

Jeff Jarvis points to an interview with comic/activist Janeane Garafolo just as the Iraq war was beginning and, noting her breathless arguments against military action, totally nails it:

...it's all about Janeane: Janeane the transcender of nonsense, Janeane the pilloried spokesperson for peace, Janeane who just doesn't care about dumb things, Janeane the queen of ennui.
You can never, never underestimate the ego of a star, even a small one.
Janeane: Democracy is far from dead. Disagreement is what democracy is all about. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the spotlight!

When Son of Sam was on his killing spree in the late '70s, it took some parking tickets to finally lead cops to his door. Now, with the Baton Rouge Serial Killer hunt, police hope that backtracking on evidence from hundreds of rape kits may help them find their man. This may not lead to the serial killer, but it will undoubtedly help them close some rape cases they wouldn't have otherwise closed. Which raises the questions: Why weren't the rape kits being processed anyway? According to the story:

There are 3,100 unprocessed kits throughout the state, including 550 in the State Police Crime Lab in Baton Rouge and 200 in the lab in New Iberia.

There may be another story unfolding that has nothing to do with the serial killer.

Another example of how the U.N.-administered oil-for-food program was a smashing success.

Meryl Yourish explains:

Growing up, I lived on a block next to three sisters who survived the concentration camps. They never spoke about it. In the summertime, my brothers and I would play with their children, and the sisters would be outside on their front porches in their sleeveless housecoats, the faded blue numbers clearly visible on their arms. I asked one of their sons, once, about his mother and aunts and the camps. "She won't talk about it," he told me. "None of them will."
Never again. That's why we observe Yom HaShoah every year.
Never again.

And...

Via Sgt. Stryker, we find this note to columnist Jay Nordlinger:

"Jay, the obsession of some people with trying to understand why radical Muslims hate America has just become too much for me to take. Tom Friedman just did an hour-long documentary on the 'Discovery Times' channel about this subject.

"Here's my beef with this pointless exercise: Those who wring their hands over 'root causes' never seem to grasp the obvious — that the rage of the radical Islamist (and those who follow him) is an irrational hatred fed by perpetual ignorance. It is like racism; and no intelligent person wastes time trying to understand racists, or to absorb the 'root causes' of bigotry. We rightly dismiss racists as small-minded fools, and we should do the same with the current zealots."

Norman Mailer writes:
With their dominance in sport, at work and at home eroded, Bush thought white American men needed to know they were still good at something. That's where Iraq came in...

And Mailer must remember that when his friend and white American man Jack Henry Abbott wanted to feel like he was still good at something, he stabbed a guy to death behind a restaurant dumpster.

The government keeps on capturing guys like this to prevent evil like this. All the while, people like this make arguments that make this much sense.

Margaret Wente, a columnist for the Toronto Globe and Mail, said this in a recent column:
Last week, I learned there was a children's prison in Baghdad where they locked up the kids of parents deemed disloyal to the regime.
I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. As more and more information emerges about Saddam Hussein's Iraq, we're learning how awful it really was. Still, I was stunned. What kind of regime locks up and tortures children?

The war-supporting Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut now leads a crowded, nine-candidate field for the Democratic presidential nomination, according to the latest Gallup numbers.(At least he leads among those "not following" the campaign "closely." Among those following closely, Sen. John Kerry leads.)

Lieberman, who supported the Iraq war stronger than perhaps any other Democratic presidential candidate, does even better among younger voters. Which raises the question: Is there an age gap when it comes to support or opposition to the war? This time around, are younger people more likely to support war than older? Perhaps in the next Gallup poll we'll find out.

(Howard Dean, the most vocal, anti-war candidate on the radar screen, trails the field badly - scoring only nine percent support among those following the race closely and five percent among those not following closely.)

Ashleigh Banfield is in Trouble.

Score Another One For The Good Guys

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AMIR RASHID MUHAMMAD AL-UBAYDI IN COALITION CUSTODY
CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar -- Amir Rashid Muhammad al-Ubaydi surrendered Monday and is currently in Coalition custody.
He was a Presidential Advisor and Oil Minister and is No. 47 on the U.S. Central Command ‘Iraqi Top 55’ list.

Now we can get an inventory of exactly how much illegal oil Syria got.