As you might expect, the conservative noise machine barely paused to catch its breath before beginning its effort to spin the horrible events at Virginia Tech into political gold. Instapundit was among the first out of the gate, as this DKos diary noted. The New York Sun, to nobody's surprise, takes up the same talking points, couching them on a fluffy layer of righteous talk about how America caught "a glimpse of evil" yesterday. There's a certain kind of conservative who loves nothing more than an opportunity to crow about Evil.* It allows him to trumpet his own Moral Clarity, the primary purpose of which is to aid in the process of simplifying and personalizing some difficult issue, and demonizing all those who point out that, by simplifying and personalizing it, the conservative has guaranteed that he will never do anything effectively to resolve it. Talking about "Evil," for this kind of conservative, is a ticket to a cartoon universe whose bright colors and vivid characters might just be enough to distract folks from noticing that such conservatives tend to be disastrously incompetent at dealing with problems in the real world. As for that Moral Clarity, count on it to be discarded the first time it becomes the least bit inconvenient.

But I digress. The Sun shines its dim light on the shootings in hopes of illuminating its argument about the actions of New York's own Mayor Bloomberg, who has continued Rudy Giuliani's strategy of cracking down on illegal guns. It's a strategy that has helped make New York the safest big city in America, but the balls-to-the-wall gun crowd, of course, don't care about that. The NRA has been demonizing Bloomberg for a while now, and the Sun's editors eagerly use the Va. Tech shootings as an opportunity to pile on:

The shooting erupted as a little noticed legal war was gathering between Virginia and New York over our city's legal maneuvering to stem the sale of what Mayor Bloomberg calls illegal guns. The smell of cordite hadn't cleared from the Virginia Tech campus when the declared candidates for president began addressing the shooting, ending, as Mr. Hope put it, "what had been seen as an unwillingness to fully address gun issues so far in the campaign."

More after the break.

Isn't it odd how otherwise entirely futile journalistic enterprises sometimes get the juiciest scoops? That's what I'm thinking this morning, considering that the explosive draft report of the Iraq commission chaired by Howard Baker was leaked to the New York Sun.

And yes, it is explosive, ruling out victory and democracy both:

WASHINGTON — A commission formed to assess the Iraq war and recommend a new course has ruled out the prospect of victory for America, according to draft policy options shared with The New York Sun by commission officials.

Currently, the 10-member commission — headed by a secretary of state for President George H.W. Bush, James Baker — is considering two option papers, "Stability First" and "Redeploy and Contain," both of which rule out any prospect of making Iraq a stable democracy in the near term.

Sounds an awful lot like cut and run to me, but what would I know? After all, I'm a lefto America-hating hippie who only said from late 2002 that this was going to be a disaster.

More telling, however, is the ruling out of two options last month. One advocated minor fixes to the current war plan but kept intact the long-term vision of democracy in Iraq with regular elections. The second proposed that coalition forces focus their attacks only on Al Qaeda and not the wider insurgency.

Instead, the commission is headed toward presenting [..] Bush with two clear policy choices that contradict his rhetoric of establishing democracy in Iraq. The more palatable of the two choices for the White House, "Stability First," argues that the military should focus on stabilizing Baghdad while the American Embassy should work toward political accommodation with insurgents. The goal of nurturing a democracy in Iraq is dropped.

I refuse to give The New York Times the hard earned Google juice and page rank I have earned with my blogs. When I checked out their new design I noticed their "Most blogged" box linking to .... no blogs. Excuse me? How can you know it is most blogged if you don't show who is blogging to you in the first place?

Well, I'm glad I am not the only one who noticed.

[via New York Times faux "most blogged" list -- what a bunch of leeches. - The Jason Calacanis Weblog]:

Just when you think the NYT is starting to get it they create a "Most Blogged" list *without* the back up data of who's blogging the stories!!!

Come on NYT... would it kill you to link to a blog!??!?!?!

Let me get this straight: you'll mine the data from the blogosphere to make your list, but you won't reward the blogosphere by linking back?!?!?!

That makes you a bunch of leeches--you take but you give nothing.

You see, the more we link to them, the not only the more traffic the get, but the higher in Google ranking they will be. And that is worth money. A. LOT. OF. MONEY. Jason Calacanis knows this. That's why he calls them leeches.

So boo to them.

Washington Post, on the other hand ... Thanks to Technorati, they get my heart-felt, "Yeah!"

Sure, they fucked up royally with Ben Domenech, but at least they acknowledge the existence of blogs ... more importantly my blogs.

Other blog friendly publications?