Go and listen. Part two of last week’s interview.

My piece is on the difference between Democrats today (specifically, Senator Harry Reid) and the Democrats of yesterday (specifically, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.)

It’s 94 in Richmond right now.

It’s going to be in the sixties tomorrow.

WTF?

The U.S. Army has shut down all possible battle zone milblogging.

The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer, Wired News has learned. The directive, issued April 19, is the sharpest restriction on troops’ online activities since the start of the Iraq war. And it could mean the end of military blogs, observers say.

Military officials have been wrestling for years with how to handle troops who publish blogs. Officers have weighed the need for wartime discretion against the opportunities for the public to personally connect with some of the most effective advocates for the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq — the troops themselves. The secret-keepers have generally won the argument, and the once-permissive atmosphere has slowly grown more tightly regulated. Soldier-bloggers have dropped offline as a result.

The new rules, obtained by Wired News, require a commander be consulted before every blog update.

“This is the final nail in the coffin for combat blogging,” said retired paratrooper Matthew Burden, editor of The Blog of War anthology. “No more military bloggers writing about their experiences in the combat zone. This is the best PR the military has — it’s most honest voice out of the war zone. And it’s being silenced.”

There’s much more at The Danger Room, including a note to Reuters for stealing Noah’s story, and of course, not crediting him for it–let alone paying.

Let me add my voice to Noah’s opinion that this is a blisteringly stupid idea. Way to make sure that the good news doesn’t get out, guys.

The gag order has been lifted on Azmi Bishara, the Arab Member of Knesset who fled Israel a few weeks ago under suspicion.

He gave Hizballah information that helped them in the war. I do believe that Fifth Column in Israel really seems to exist.

The gag order on the allegations made against former Knesset Member Azmi Bishara was lifted on Wednesday, three weeks after rumors began circulating regarding the investigation against him.

According to suspicions, Balad’s chairman contacted a Hizbullah official during last summer’s war in Lebanon and handed him information on strategic locations in Israel in order to enable the Shiite organization to fire rockets at these destinations. Bishara allegedly received hundreds of thousands of shekels in exchange for this information.

Even the AP seems to be taking the charges seriously.

Shai said Bishara offered Hezbollah suggestions on “how to deepen the harm to Israel” during last summer’s fighting, when the guerrilla group fired nearly 4,000 rockets into Israel. The assistance included advice on how Israel might respond to long-range rocket attacks.

Bishara passed on “certain military information, the publication of which was forbidden by the censor,” Shai said. He declined to elaborate, but during the war, the military censor banned any publication of where rocket fire landed — raising the possibility that Bishara helped the group improve its aim.

“Azmi Bishara was seen by the enemy as a reliable figure in helping them understand the Israeli reality and advance the interest of the enemy,” Shai said.

Another Arab MK says Bishara should come back to Israel and face the music.

Barakeh, himself an Arab MK, responded that Arab MKs know they must “recognize the right of the law to hold them to account,” even if they disagree with a law and therefore deliberately choose to violate it. As an example, he cited the law that forbade Israelis from having contact with the Palestine Liberation Organization - a law that was repeatedly violated by MKs prior to the Oslo peace process. “We broke the law and we knew we’d pay a price,” he said.

All the same, Barakeh said that Israeli Arabs have become targets of incitement.

“There is currently a wave of incitement against the Arab population,” he said. “Bishara has been judged before being put on trial. Every frustrated politician is trying to jump all over us.”

Yeah, because it’s so not normal for people to judge someone based on news reports of what they’ve done. “Jenin massacre,” anyone?

Yeah, because it’s not like

So the Winograd Commission, which has spent months and months analyzing the second Lebanon War and what went wrong, is just some bogus little investigation that isn’t nearly as smart as Amir Peretz, the Defense Minister who was one of the architects of that war. Because he says he wasn’t wrong.

“The decision to go to war was the right one,” Defense Minister Amir Peretz insisted Wednesday, in a first response to the conclusions of the Winograd Commission, which found that he was one of those personally responsible for the war’s failures.

During a special cabinet meeting dedicated to the report, Peretz admitted that he has not decided yet whether to resign his post or not.

Peretz said that the government should examine itself and work to strengthen the army following the war.

“The public expects its leaders to act reasonably and responsibly,” he added, and said that he was certain that the government acted with a sense of national responsibility during the war.

Yeah. Talk about missing the point. Here’s what the Winograd preliminary report says about Peretz:

13. The Minister of Defense is the minister responsible for overseeing the IDF, and he is a senior member in the group of leaders in charge of political-military affairs.

a. The Minister of Defense did not have knowledge or experience in military, political or governmental matters. He also did not have good knowledge of the basic principles of using military force to achieve political goals.

b. Despite these serious gaps, he made his decisions during this period without systemic consultations with experienced political and professional experts, including outside the security establishment. In addition, he did not give adequate weight to reservations expressed in the meetings he attended.

c. The Minister of Defense did not act within a strategic conception of the systems he oversaw. He did not ask for the IDF’s operational plans and did not examine them; he did not check the preparedness and fitness of IDF; and did not examine the fit between the goals set and the modes of action presented and authorized for achieving them. His influence on the decisions made was mainly pointillist and operational. He did not put on the table – and did not demand presentation – of serious strategic options for discussion with the Prime Minister and the IDF.

There’s more. I don’t want to make this post too long. But way to go, Peretz. Way to take responsibility for your actions. That’s the mark of a statesman.

By all accounts, the Olmert presidency is in its last days. More on that later.