A third-rate burglary? Let the speculation begin.

 
No child left behind: Boston-area schools cancel classes because of a BC04 fundraiser.

 
What about Bob? Here's your Save Bob Edwards online petition. Here's your Save Bob Edwards WaPo column. If you donate to your local NPR affiliate, please contact them (find your station here, or here) and tell them you want to Save Bob Edwards.

It's a boneheaded move by NPR. I've my differences with the network; I remember in particular a Morning Edition story on funding crunches at a tuition-free Native American college that never even asked whether an Indian-only college was a desirable use of taxpayer funds, or if better ways to approach policy and treaty requirements could be found.

Nonetheless, NPR represents the best news available on any broadcast medium, and Bob Edwards is unquestionably one of the best anchors they have.

 
Crazy like a fox: ETLNR's Gregg Easterbook claims that "people protested when Bill Clinton tried to stop bin Laden early, and ... many of the same people today defending the invasion of Iraq roundly criticized prior action against the same country." But the record suggests otherwise.

On the 1998 Afghanistan strikes, GOP support was strong enough that the WaPo did an article discussing it. Some pull quotes:

"I think the president did exactly the right thing. By doing this we're sending the signal there are no sanctuaries for terrorists. ... Anyone who watched the film of the bombings, anyone who saw the coffins come home [from the embassy bombings] knows better than to question this timing. It was done as early as possible to send a message to terrorists across the globe that killing Americans has a cost. It has no relationship with any other activity of any kind." -Newt Gingrich

"[T]he American people stand united in the face of terrorism." -Dick Armey

"[The attacks are] appropriate and just." -Trent Lott

"In the past I was worried that this administration didn't take this threat seriously enough, and didn't take Osama bin Laden seriously enough; I'm going to support him, wish him well and back him up." -Orrin Hatch

"If anything, this was somewhat overdue, and I'm not talking days, but months and years. This needs to be the first punch we land. We need to land more." - Porter J Goss (R-FL)

In retrospect, it's amazing the President withstood such withering criticism.

Regarding Iraq, Clinton did take some hits from GOPers such as Tillie Fowler (R-FL), who said, "I think the President is shameless in what he will do to stay in office," and from the Ron Paul bonds-not-bombs libertarians. But the criticism usually came from people who wanted more, not less, action against Iraq:

"I’m not sure the President deliberately bombed Iraq to stave off the impeachment vote. ... I take my cue from William Safire in today’s New York Times. I find it painful to believe that any President would risk American lives just to pull his butt out of the fire. ... The bombing was the right thing to do. That fact is the key." - Jonah Goldberg

"The real problem today is not that President Clinton has so far refused to take military action. It is that the Clinton administration is unlikely to embrace the kind of military option that is needed. ... The only solution to the problem of Iraq today [in 1998] is to use air power and ground power, and not stop until we ... remove Saddam and his regime from power and open the way for a new post-Saddam Iraq whose intentions can be safely assumed to be benign." - Robert Kagan

"I am convinced that Saddam Hussein has left the United States with no choice but to strike Iraq. ... These strikes, however, must be the beginning of a new Iraq policy: Saddam must go." - Jesse Helms

Let's stop this meme before it gets started. Clinton did some things right, some things wrong, understood the threat bin Ladin represented, but underestimated the imminence of that threat -- a lot like the current Administration, actually. But don't pretend he was hamstrung by anything other than political problems of his own making.

 
You may remember A&M football coach RC Slocum, a man who took the scandal-ridden Aggie program and cleaned it up while winning more games than any other A&M coach, never having a losing season, and going to nine bowl games in the process. For his unbending morality, he was fired by a university obsessed?with beating its cross-state rivals in Austin.

Dennis Franchione isn't a bad guy, but here's what A&M has wrought: nine players arrested since September, two of whom were just picked up shouting racist taunts while drunk at a fast-food drive-through.

A&M likes to cultivate a pseudo-military culture, centered around football and its "Corps of Cadets." But, of course, it isn't a military academy, few of its alumni will end up in the Army or Marines, and the military retains one thing A&M has never had: accountability. Any enlisted soldier or officer who was drunk, disorderly, and bringing discredit upon the military would be confined for six months on one-third pay. Let's hope Franchione isn't so corrupted by A&M's big-time conceit as to let this one slide when next season rolls around.

 
Israel made good on its threat to kill Shaykh Ahmed Yassin, the "spiritual leader" of radical Palestinian group Hamas, killing him today in a missile strike on the Gaza Strip.

This is a game in which Sharon is holding his cards close to his chest. Last week, King Abdullah of Jordan -- whose father brokered a deal with Israel in 1997 to exchange Shaykh Yassin for two Mossad agents held in Jordanian prisons -- met with Sharon in unscheduled talks at the Israeli leader's ranch. Binyamin Netanyahu gave his conditional support for the unilateral disengagement of Israeli troops from the West Bank on Sunday, and Monday Israeli officials will talk with the American government on the matter. Tomorrow also brings a no-confidence vote in the Knesset, which is not expected to gain the supermajority needed to reorganize the government.

All the signs point to (A) general approval, or at least magisterial indifference, to the proposed unilateral pullout; and (B) Jordan's willingness not to foreclose Jordanian-Israeli relations over a final push against Hamas prior to disengagement. Jordan's history with the Palestinians has been troubled; Palestinian extremists, including the PLO, attempted a takeover of Jordan in the late 1960s, and only the Hashemite monarchy's Bedouin fighters and loyal army averted total chaos. Lately, Jordan has offered sanctuary to Hamas members if they give up political activity, but is concerned about radical Islamist influences from Hamas within the country, especially within the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliate the Islamic Action Front.

This is a remarkable piece of brinkmanship by Sharon, who is absolutely gambling everything on this roll of the dice. Events should move quickly indeed over the next few days.

 
The High Court in Taiwan has ordered the ballot boxes from Saturday's controversial Presidential election sealed in advance of a possible recount as opposition candidate Lien Chan charged possible voter fraud and tacitly suggested that Friday's attempted assassination of President Chen Shui-bian and running mate Annette Lu may have been an inside job ... In Afghanistan, Aviation Minister Mirwais Sadiq was killed in an ambush set by what appears to be tribal rivals ... The continuing and likely-to-expand A.Q. Khan scandal in Pakistan leaves Musharraf in a bind between the Scylla of Islamism and the Charybdis of American leverage ... A Kashmiri columnist says Musharraf has alienated too many of his countrymen by accepting American power in the South Asian theatre ... In addition to their humanitarian work in Iraq, the Japanese may advise the INC on how to try Saddam Hussein and other Baathist figures ...

Rahul Gandhi has entered Indian politics as the fifth generation of Gandhis to do so ... Hindu nationalists believe that if Vajpayee is elected PM again, they will be able to proceed with the controversial Ram Temple construction in Ayodhya (and here)
... In Nepal, 500 Maoist rebels were reportedly killed and 200 injured during an attempted strike against Myagdi province (and here) ... Chaos rules in Jammu-Kashmir, where Pakistani-funded terrorists are torturing and mutilating civilians in a bid to gain more power in the troubled province through terror ...

Two Russian military operatives jailed in Qatar since February have reportedly confessed to assassinating former Chechen President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev on the orders of Moscow ... Algeria is said to be close to a $1.5 billion deal with MiG Corporation for 50 advanced MiG-29 fighters ... Renewed Albanian-on-Serb violence in Kosovo leads the Duma to ask whether Russia should grant asylum to Kosovo Serbs, while B92 says the rumors of Serb attacks on Albanian children that started the violence are false (photos here) ... A Pravda columnist attacks German influence in the Czech Republic, calling the EU an incarnation of the Third Reich's "Final Solution" ... LUKoil has signed a deal with Refinery Associates of Texas to supply POL to northern Iraq, with quarterly supplies of 180,000 tons of gas and 130,000 tons of diesel fuel to be delivered by the Russian company ...

A Saudi columnist has called terrorists the "public enemy of humanity", while still reserving blame for Shia clerics ... Arial Sharon is working to secure American and Binyamin Netanyahu's support for the unilateral disengagement from the West Bank by Israeli forces ... Independent Iranian news agencies have gone largely silent in recent weeks ...

In Venezuela, the government of Hugo Chavez has fired government workers who signed a demand for a presidential recall, prompting NGOs and intellectuals to savage Chavez's increasingly autocratic rule ... political tensions between the branches of government grew as the Electoral Chamber of the country's Supreme Tribunal of Justice issued a ruling that effectively placed the number of accepted recall signatures at 2.7 million, more than needed to initiate the recall process; the Constitutional Chamber of the TSJ then took over the case, creating more uncertainty as to the future of Hugo Chavez.