Castro Will Live to 140 Bill Quick reacts to a AFP report that Fidel Castro’s doctor predicts he will live to 140. “It’s probably that incredible system of socialized medicine available to all Cubans that Fidel uses exclusively.”

Suicide Attempts, Riots at Gitmo The Center for Media and Democracy thinks it must be hard for US military authorities to tout the wholesomeness of Gitmo after recent riots and an attempted suicide at the facility. In From the Cold says “these events occurred … when a number of Saudi prisoners were remanded to their home country … to the harsh confines of a ‘real’ Middle East prison.”

Senate Makes English "National Language" The Senate voted 63 to 34 yesterday to make English the new national language. Reaction ranges from indifferent to indignant while meeting non sequitur along the way.

• Patterico doesn’t think that Harry Reid’s anti-racist credentials are all that bona fide.
• Curiously, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales comments on subject, saying that President Bush is opposed to the decision.
• Roger Simon wonders whether Senator Harry Reid understands the life to which he condemns immigrants when he suggest that they need not learn English.
• Harry Reid: “‘This amendment is racist. I think it’s directed basically to people who speak Spanish, the Democrat said during the already tense debate over immigration reform.”
• The Carpetbagger: “The whole spat just seems so … unneccessary. The United States has thrived for over two centuries without a ‘national’ language, but now we need one?”
• Confederate Yankee is not amused with Senator Reid. “So, asking people to speak English in a nation that speaks predominately English, is not only wrong, but racist?… If anything, encouraging people to keep to their native tongues after they immigrate to another culture is to invite isolationism and advocate resisting assimilation.”
• “This is obviously an attack on Hispanics. There are parts of the country where languages such as French, German, Mandarin, Polish, or Navajo are co-equal with English and have been for centuries, and there are parts of this country where Spanish has been used longer than English”, says Bark Bark Woof Woof.
• Hinderaker@ Power Line: “The issue is not a trivial one, nor is this just a temporary bowing to ‘nativist’ sentiment, as it will no doubt be portrayed in the MSM. It is absolutely vital that America remain an English-speaking country.”

Bell South Demands USA Today Retraction Power Line notes Bell South denies supplying customers’ phone records to the NSA and demands USA Today retract its story to that effect. Leslie Cauley, the reporter who broke the NSA story, is said to be a Democratic Party donor who co-authored one of her books with Leo Hindery, a former candidate for Chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
CBS Public Eye: ‘Carefully worded, laboriously parsed’
American Mind: Reporter affiliation doesn’t mean story’s false

Mo Momentum Markos Moulitsas (Kos) peers through a window in a political ad for Democratic candidate Ned Lamont. The National Review calls it “perhaps the most surreal campaign ad I’ve ever seen.” Apparently “created by renowned producer and innovator Bill Hillsman”, it aims to build “mo”.

Surveillance by Proxy TPM Muckracker thinks that AT&T and BellSouth can deny acting for the NSA because they hired outsiders like NeuStar to do the dirty work. “Now, NeuStar’s CEO has repeatedly denied that his company had anything to do with the NSA program. That may be so … it seems that there are plenty of other suspects.”

Church and State Andrew Sullivan opposes calls to remove Ruth Kelly from the Blair cabinet because she is a member of Opus Dei, a conservative Catholic layman’s organization. “She has also publicly insisted that as a public servant, her first loyalty is to uphold the laws as they stand.”

Iran Not Quite That Far Gone? (Hat Tip: Huffington Post) Reports of an Iranian badge law resembling that of Nazi Germany (or the other way around) are greatly exaggerated—as in: false, according to an Israeli middle east expert.

Sturm und Blank

Wizbang

It’s been a stormy week for Karl Rove in the blogosphere. Stories of his indictment have been circulating since Monday. The buzz has been spearheaded by Jason Leopold of Truthout, who has been down this road before. For a comprehensive look at the facts, check here.

Midday Line, May 19

• Tigerhawk: The entire NSA “Surveillance” hysteria is silly, stupid, and much less invasive than what happens when you get on a plane or use your credit card. With an example from recent history.
• Hayden Hearings: Has the Congressional cure of the excesses of the intelligence community lead to the Ineffectiveness Disease? Yes, says Rick Moran at American Thinker.
• Against the backdrop of 4 Guantanamo Bay detainees’ unsuccessful attempts at suicide, the UN calls on the US to shut down its detention camps.
• Clintonistas Rising? Tom Hayden @ The Nation claims “Democrats are slowly but surely uniting around a plan for military withdrawal” designed by John Podesta’s Center for American Progress.
• ‘Little by little her struggling ceased. My strength had outlasted hers.’ Panero @ Armavirumque looks at museum dioramas then vs. academic BS now.
• “Incoming!” Gabriel Schoenfeld @ Commentary responds to a horde of critics of his important article, “Has The New York Times Violated the Espionage Act?” (PDF)
• Davids Medienkritik finds not one, but two quite balanced articles -on NSA and immigration- in the German press. By the same author, but still.
• 9-11: What did the New York Times know, and when did it know it? Attytood looks at Judith Miller’s revelations @ Alternet.
• And now the parting on the Right / Was once the parting on the Left: “A specter is haunting U.S. intellectual life,” a flier announced, “the specter of Left Conservatism.” Boomer nostalgia @ Bookforum.
• Bush’s “Dukakis moment”?
• Gay Patriot got an interesting email from a reader.
• Remember Mao’s “Cultural Revolution?” Good, because China doesn’t.
• Clive Davis on ableism, the latest PC trend.
• Meet the new bomb, ‘better’ than the old bomb: “The latest iteration of ‘kill people - don’t destroy things’ … weapon under development is the ‘focused-lethality munition.’ ”

Voting With Their Feet Amir Taheri @ Commentary says 1.2 million pre-Saddam refugees have returned to Iraq; that pilgrims to Shia shrines are up from near nothin to 12 million annually, making Iraq one of “the most visited spots in the entire Muslim world, ahead of both Mecca and Medina”. What, he asks, does it mean?

Why Time? From Jeff Jarvis @ BuzzMachine: “Now that Time has a new editor — the word was that they’d get someone from the outside, but they got a veteran of the magazine — maybe he can explain to me why the magazine exists … When I see a cover billing that interests me and buy the thing, it’s inevitably a mistake, because I’m reading a stone-skipping summary of something I know about. So why do we need Time?”

Torched? Marathon Pundit points to an article in the Financial Times that brings another name into the Oil-For-Food controversy: Robert “the Torch” Torricelli.

Unusual Praise Jonathan Chait @ TNR’s The Plank, while not agreeing with his social views, thinks that Ramesh Ponnuru did a great job under the “unusually hostile questioning” from Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.

Blog Week in Review, May 19, 2006 Glenn Reynolds, Tammy Bruce, and Eric Umansky weigh in on Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Net Neutrality and General Hayden’s CIA nomination. Austin Bay moderates. Ed Driscoll produces - the Blog Week in Review!

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Play above or download here. Subscription available at iTunes.

Seeing is Understanding EconLog comments on a survey showing that pro-immigration favorable opinion is perceptibly higher in states with lots of immigrants.

The Other Side of the Green Line

"I stepped out into a surprisingly pleasant urban environment"

Michael Totten writes about his trip to Ramallah (West Bank), where he sat in on a session of the Palestine Legislative Council. Totten provides lots of pictures.

Iran: Badges For Non-Muslims Ken McKracken @ Say Anything comments on a new Iranian law that would require the country’s Jews and Christians to wear colored badges to identify them as non-Muslims. Sounds Nazi-inspired? No, it’s the other way round, he writes.

"Dear Senator Roberts" The Anonymous Liberal writes a letter to Sen. Pat Roberts after reading his op-ed in the USA Today.

Les immigrés The Immigration issue is heating up in Europe, too. EURSOC dissects the new restrictive bill just passed in France, which “introduces a version of selective immigration into the Republican system for the first time.”

The Pen Is Mightier Than The Scimitar Pope Benedict XVI needs to set aside some time for rant reading. President Bush got his “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad” letter last week. Now it’s the Pope’s turn. The guys at Hot Air are having fun with it.

A Farewell Note Peaktalk has Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s entire speech announcing her resignation from the Dutch parliament. Meanwhile, Immigration minister Rita Verdonk is reconsidering her intention to revoke Ali’s citizenship following the reaction against it by several groups on both the right and the left.

The CIA's Hear No Evil Policy Harper’s investigative reporter Ken Silverstein recounts the sad stories of CIA bearers of bad news.

Borders Carries Mohammed Cartoons Because it’s carrying Harper’s which is publishing the cartoons. The Volokh Conspiracy says, “it’s hard to seriously discuss the issue without showing the cartoons and talking about them one by one.”

But Ed Driscoll asks why Borders is comfortable with Harper’s but was not with Free Inquiry: “Now that these cartoons are in Borders’ stores, will the riots that Borders claimed they feared back in March promptly ensue?”

Late Night Line, May 18 - 19

• “Blog is a really weird word:” No doubt about it, kids are having way too much fun with YouTube.
• John Stuart Mill: The original utilitarian-liberal political composite.
• Spengler asks how we should celebrate Sigmund Freud’s 150th birthday and answers: “My modest proposal for the event is to exhume his body and put a stake through his heart. ”
• SoCal business woman tells LA times she can’t find Americans to shovel dirt. Offers $34 an hour. Entire bachelor population of South Dakota decamps for the coast.
• The Cheney Myth: GayPatriot observes that, except for Log Cabin, most gay groups ignore the Vice President’s record of tolerance and his outspoken opposition to a constitutional amendment defining gay marriage.
• HollywoodTuna on Maxim’s “Hot 100” Party: “It’s the second year in a row in which all the losers are actually hotter than the winner.”
• Silencing His Own Dissent: Paul Krugman of the New York Times says something about the “state of the economy,” but the blogosphere decides its not worth paying a penny for.
• Author David Brin argues for openess: “That our CIVILIZATION prospers - and its opponents tend to shrivel - the more open the world and its varied competitive battlefields become.”
• Nutroots video: “Geraghty calls it ‘perhaps the most surreal campaign ad I’ve ever seen.’ ”
• Congressional Catfight #1,248: “You are no more a protector of the Constitution than am I,” Arlen Specter, R-Pa., shouted. “I’ve enjoyed your lecture, too, Mr. Chairman,” replied Feingold, D-Wis. [Alas, neither one is likely to ever be “The Decider.”]
• Henninger @ WSJ has decoded Dan Brown: “Dan Brown was sitting one night at the monthly meeting of his local secret society, listening to a lecture on the 65th gospel, and he got to thinking: ‘I wonder if there’s any limit to what people are willing to believe these days about a conspiracy theory.’ ” And the answer is?
• The Greenhouses of Gush Katif: Combs on how the Palestinians trashed the gift in Gaza of a $100 million a year operation in just a few months.
• Freeze Frame from the Leftist Dream that will not die. [Photo by Aylward @ Wizbang. HT: Lawhawk ]
• Paul: “Heather Didn’t Marry Me for Money.” Of course not, you ninny. That’s what divorces are for.