The Daily Digest

Tulips in Washington Circle

The caveats regarding the blowback theory of U.S. foreign policy, recently popularized by Ron Paul, cannot be overemphasized. Radley adds some I missed: (1) This isn't some fringe idea common only to crazy September 11 conspiracy theorists; (2) It doesn't suggest that we deserve or deserved to be attacked; and (3) It doesn't suggest we shouldn't retaliate or have retaliated against those who attack us.

Another online boat I missed: a wiki for summarizing the meaning, arguments for and against, and the status of federal bills. The Politico reports: "So far, WashingtonWatch has thousands of entries on each piece of legislation moving through Congress. They're written, edited and frequently rewritten, as is the wont with wiki-ers."

Speaking of ingenious ideas, NZ Bear, who previously brought us the magnificent Porkbusters project, is again proving why CPAC named him the 2007 blogger of the year. Soon after the electronic version of the immigration-reform bill was passed, the text made its way to NRO. But the file was a big and clunky PDF, so NZ "parsed it into a format that allows for easy browsing online." Features include an interactive table of contents, a highlights section, and the ability for anyone to comment on, and for anybody to link directly to, any section of the bill. As if that weren't enough, further proving that he cares more about getting things done than about who gets credit, NZ then teamed up with Heritage to make the text searchable.

Semantic insidiousness watch, courtesy of John Stossel: apparently, if you oppose school choice, you're "pro-education." Fred Hiatt, the editorial page editor of the Post, documents why the exact opposite is true: "If it were up to the children and their parents, there'd be no question that the District's five-year experiment with school vouchers would be renewed for an additional five years or more. That's the most emphatic finding of an independent evaluation of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program published last week."