Lots of links about the swine flu outbreak on The Drudge Report. My bottom line? I'll wait and see before I panic (I don't think I'll panic, even then, since there isn't much to be done except stay inside and work on my computer, which I do every day, anyway). Here is some perspective on the Swine Flu.

Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania has, according to this report, decided to become a Democrat which, if Al Franken is finally seated as the new Democratic Senator from Minnesota, would give the Democrats a filibuster-proof majority. He was always too liberal for the GOP, anyway, but the timing is terrible. Still, I have always been a fan of our partisan system. The system only works well when the people within it hew to a recognizable set of principles as embodied in their party platforms. You don't have to agree with everything, of course, but you should fall somewhere within it's parameters. Arlen Specter fits better among the Democrats, so they are welcome to him.

Nancy Pelosi's amnesia. "Torture? I'm shocked, shocked to see torture going on here".

Palestinian President Abbas refuses to call Israel a "Jewish State". Of course he does. He, like almost all Palestinians, believes that Palestine was illegally seized from it's Arab inhabitants by European Jews and that the only way to see justice done is to allow all Palestinians to return to the homes they were forced to abandon during the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948. At that time, if Israel remains a democracy, the Palestinians can vote out the Jewish men and women who govern the country, because the Palestinians will be in the majority. Since Abbas represents the "moderate" Palestinians, and their position is moderate only because the Hamas position explicitly, rather than implicitly, calls for the destruction of Israel, this is just another little bit of information that proves, once again, that there will be no peace in Palestine/Israel until one side or the other is utterly and completely defeated.

Meanwhile, the other Arabs in Egypt and elsewhere are getting nervous about the words and actions of one of their other historic enemies, the Persians. It always pays to remember history when thinking about the Middle East.