National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru, unimpressed by several rightist arguments opposing the most recent congressional bid to spare Old Glory from pyrotechnics or other destructive theater staged by Americans in public protest, has declared himself "anti-anti-amendment." One particularly weak defense of denying the flag exclusive status was adopted this weekend by Mark Steyn who, dually wise and acerbic, nevertheless seems not to have considered the historical preoccupation with a third-paragraph throwaway line. He writes, "maybe some would think that criminalizing disrespect for national symbols is unworthy of a free society." Perhaps others would believe that material and transcendental worth, however intrinsic, is dependent on appraisal. If modern relativism was intended to make all things equally prized through the arbitrary exchange of sacred and profane, it only succeeded in multiplying what is inconsequential. Without scale, virtue recedes:

The value of the flag as a symbol cannot be measured. Even so, I have no doubt that the interest in preserving that value for the future is both significant and legitimate. Conceivably that value will be enhanced by the Court's conclusion that our national commitment to free expression is so strong that even the United States as ultimate guarantor of that freedom is without power to prohibit the desecration of its unique symbol. But I am unpersuaded. The creation of a federal right to post bulletin boards and graffiti on the Washington Monument might enlarge the market for free expression, but at a cost I would not pay. Similarly, in my considered judgment, sanctioning the public desecration of the flag will tarnish its value — both for those who cherish the ideas for which it waves and for those who desire to don the robes of martyrdom by burning it. That tarnish is not justified by the trivial burden on free expression occasioned by requiring that an available, alternative mode of expression — including uttering words critical of the flag — be employed.

Those are words from Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens' moving dissent against the court's decision in 1989 Texas v. Johnson. Steyn and Stevens agree, across one-and-a-half decades, that damaging an American flag to impress or outrage is an unproductive and contradictory provocation — from under that flag is a malcontent granted the opportunity for petition, debate and reform as both a private citizen and a public official. Or is the flag just a cloth rectangle to fix on a dowel, incidental to the guarantee of rights? Association can bind an object to meaning just as easily as it can render it quaint; without transmission meaning is lost. When a martial uniform, the pride and obligation of every kingdom or nation long before elected governments, becomes just another set of clothes, we will meet those who suggest that distinctions between the civilized and the barbaric — their respective privileges and prerogatives — are meaningless, too. Subtler but more pertinently, one could examine how youth citizenship has borne forty years of the flag as Duchampian readymade, legal incineration or not. Might Steyn concede that ineffectual speech can still be determined a deleterious — and unacceptable — act?

Here is news rejected as unfit for gentry media publication or telecast:

With more than $270M worth of projects open for local contractor bids, 130 Iraqi women attended a Women's Business Day at the Convention Center here to learn more.

"This day was designed and organized to benefit the Iraqi business woman and the Reconstruction Program," said Senior Executive Service, Karen Durham-Aguilera, director of programs at PCO. "Our goal is to create diplomatic and long-lasting relationships based on our mutual desire for peace." With every one-in-five in the Iraqi workforce being a woman, Durham-Aguilera told the group she is encouraged by their progress and pleased to be part of the workshop designed to further promote the involvement of women in the reconstruction process.

As a woman with Middle-Eastern roots, she noted that it's rare in the Arab world for women to enjoy as much power as they do in Iraq.

Equality in democracy as provisioned and protected by an American alliance? Would that the left see fit to put it in print.

Elsewhere, Bill Roggio examines after-action details of another cascading terrorist failure to best Iraqi troops in man-to-man combat; while Greyhawk continues his series on the Iraq that liberty's detractors prefer you not see.

'THE FUTURE IS OURS': Mohammed Fadhil, who reminds us that it is the Iraqi people who suffer from dishonest and incompetent reporting, publishes an impressive tally of strikes against the enemy.

BAGHDAD VIA TEXAS: The bravery, enterprise, expression and exercise of Iraqi women, stories collected by Fayrouz Hancock. (Correction: the women cycling off pounds are Afghan, which is notable as an indication of culture rather than public safety.)

Pan, a ball of rock twelve miles thick, can with its gravitational wake push aside Saturn's rings; traveling through a lane known as Encke's Gap. The Cassini spacecraft sends us photographs of that and other places in the Saturnine system.

Millions of miles away, NASA's Martian rovers have earned their place in this month's issue of National Geographic, whose online, condensed story includes a link to Jet Propulsion Laboratory's rover traverse maps.

All play and no good works makes Jackie a delinquent girl — so says Rhoulette, Community Manager for French video game developer Ubisoft and captain of the company's Frag Dolls corporate gaming team, who wishes to repay her good fortunes:

I am now happily employed in the game industry. On the surface this situation is ideal for me. I work with cool people, get to do fun things, and don't have to arrive at the office until 10am. I love it and I'm contributing to the world of entertainment which arguably has some inherent value for people (relaxation, less stress, activating the imagination, etc). But I encountered some internal turbulence when I started to listen to that nagging question: how are you helping those in need? In terms of really serving humanity, it would seem to some that I have been led astray. Gamers (and the industry that spawns them) are never classified as being particularly charitable. In fact, most modern media portray gamers and games as a detriment to the greater good. How could I, as a gamer, possibly make the world a better place?

She decided to apply for "Team in Training," a seventeen-year-old program run by the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society that matches athletes with a coach and a program for participating in their amateur competition of choice while delivering sponsorship monies to medical scientists who work to cure cancers of the blood. Rhoulette rightly disputes the caricature of video gamers as pallid, stunted, apathetic eremites devoted to strange button-pushing rituals for picture-tube idols: nerd emissaries Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik of comic-strip-turned-institution Penny Arcade should be holding their third consecutive Christmas toy drive this December. As I wrote elsewhere, no man will prosper more than by charity; for those with a penchant for sharp gals who game and stand up for volunteerism, your only deliberation might be how over much to give.

Occasionally I consider changes to this weblog's format and for some time one of them has been the font size for entries. I would prefer to keep it sans serif but notice that none of the weblogs to which I link use print as small as mine.

So I'd like to ask readers their opinion — same size, or a little larger? Let me know.

A foreign landscape beneath a familiar sight: commanded to remain operational during sunset, Martian rover Spirit photographed the sun as it sank beneath the "jibsheet," a sheet of rock that was the rover's object of attention for the better part of a month.

Spirit and its twin Opportunity have surpassed whatever height of scientific optimism might have predicted, eighteen months ago, that each Martian explorer would arrive at the Red Planet safely and not only endure the rugged environment but succeed in a penetrating exploration that has yet to be threatened by entropy or curtailment.

NASA, whose Jet Propulsion Laboratories is responsible for the rovers' achievements and discoveries, is just as beholden to tradition as any bureaucracy; and in the decade of entrepreneurs riding the free market to space, stubbornness is not only foolhardy — it is dangerous. Still, Congressmen trust that Washington still has an investment in satellites, probes and astronauts because their constituents tell them not to do otherwise; the stars will be of the public good for at least a little longer. If the space administration can be encouraged to jettison pride it will reach fruitions like the plucky Opportunity and Spirit.

"Unleash Japan," says National Review. William F. Buckley's rightist standard-bearers may be the best to say it but they would not be the first.

Five months ago, one fortnight before Iraq's triumphant National Assembly elections, I used the phrase "extreme divergence" to describe the inconsistencies between Iraq news and commentary from gentry press agencies and the nature of events in the country. Mainstream fabrications became egregious by vote's eve, and when Iraqis defied philistines and terrorists alike, Americans were invited to recognize the leftist media's narratives as gossamer propaganda and select information from more authentic sources. Elite journalists reorganized and began proclaiming new crises, first the negotiation of Baghdad's government and then the nation's constitutional committee — each political transaction concluded successfully and distinctively. At the American Enterprise Institute, Karl Zinsmeister, a frequent visitor of liberated Iraq, believes the opposition's storytelling has reached its terminus:

What the establishment media covering Iraq have utterly failed to make clear today is this central reality: With the exception of periodic flare-ups in isolated corners, our struggle in Iraq as warfare is over. Egregious acts of terror will continue — in Iraq as in many other parts of the world. But there is now no chance whatever of the U.S. losing this critical guerilla war.

Last night Ramesh Ponnuru published his brief exchange with a Republican strategist who, confronted with a war succeeding unbeknownst to a great number of Americans, rightly fears Washington more than the citizenry. Congressmen who favored appeasement of Saddam Hussein and Near East fascism in the first and have spent the war without resolve now call to abandon an impending victory of which they have not been informed.

If leftists will not relent in speaking better of the enemy unfounded, President Bush must throw the weight of his dossier against theirs. Fittingly, my last word on Mr. Zinsmeister ended with a cautionary: while Iraqis are responsible for their democratic ascendence, Americans must safeguard that skyward passage.

Is it helpful criticism or is it bad-faith caterwauling? Norman Geras draws from an Atlantic Monthly interview with Paul Wolfowitz and poses that question to the anti-democratist left. Wolfowitz notes that many detractors simply promote their own strategic, tactical or political druthers; dozens of these adding up to such contradiction that an observer is left with the absurd and dangerous idea that the good wars of democracies have been and can be run free of human error. Geras in part refutes the redundant "accountability" charge — one which Bill Bennett unfortunately conceded to a Democrat caller on his radio show this morning. I have attempted to expose specious arguments when they arise, arguing that the unprecedented nature of this war and enemy and the Bush administration's ability to learn from certain mistakes undercut impatience and impertinence that is discordant with history, always grittier than remembered.

The events leading to my discovery of a CNN report on French and Indian War reenactments are less readily explained than the importance of proofreading and the implicative consequences of error:

Fort Ontario: A French force led by the Marquis de Montcalm captured the fort in 1756. Montcalm's Indian allies slaughtered scores of prisoners, a precursor to a more infamous massacre at Lake George's Fort William Henry in 1957.

"Jailhouse Rock," Have Gun — Will Travel, the space race, raccoon caps, Chevrolet's golden year, and an Indian massacre. May we never forget.