While I would prefer not to speak ill of the dead, it is hard to find the good in someone who claimed to influence opinion and culture while holding the views that follow below.

'An early and passionate opponent of the Vietnam War, Sontag was both admired and reviled for her political convictions. In a 1967 Partisan Review symposium, she wrote that "America was founded on a genocide, on the unquestioned assumption of the right of white Europeans to exterminate a resident, technologically backward, colored population in order to take over the continent."

In her rage and gloom and growing despair, she concluded that "the truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, Balanchine ballets, et al., don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history; it is the white race and it alone — its ideologies and inventions — which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself."

Considering herself neither a journalist nor an activist, Sontag felt an obligation as "a citizen of the American empire" to accept an invitation to visit Hanoi at the height of the American bombing campaign in May 1968. A two-week visit resulted in a fervent essay seeking to understand Vietnamese resistance to American power.

Critics excoriated her for what they regarded as a naive sentimentalization of Vietnamese communism. Author Paul Hollander, for one, called Sontag a "political pilgrim," bent on denigrating Western liberal pluralism in favor of venerating foreign revolutions.

That same year, Sontag also visited Cuba, after which she wrote an essay for Ramparts magazine calling for a sympathetic understanding of the Cuban Revolution. Two years later, however, she joined Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa and other writers in publicly protesting the regime's harsh treatment of Heberto Padilla, one of the country's leading poets. She also denounced dictator Fidel Castro's punitive policies toward homosexuals.

Ever the iconoclast, Sontag had a knack for annoying both the right and the left. In 1982, in a meeting in Town Hall in New York to protest the suppression of Solidarity in Poland, she declared that communism was fascism with a human face. She was unsparing in her criticism of much of the left's refusal to take seriously the exiles and dissidents and murdered victims of Stalin's terror and the tyranny communism imposed wherever it had triumphed.

Ten years later, almost alone among American intellectuals, she would called for vigorous Western — and American — intervention in the Balkans to halt the siege of Sarajevo and to stop Serbian aggression in Bosnia and Kosovo. Her solidarity with the citizens of Sarajevo prompted her to make more than a dozen trips to the besieged city.

Then in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Sontag offered a bold and singular perspective in the New Yorker. "Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a 'cowardly' attack on 'civilization' or 'liberty' or 'humanity' or 'the free world' but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?" She added, "In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): Whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards."

She was pilloried by bloggers and pundits, who accused her of anti-Americanism.

Sontag had never been so public as she became over the next three years, publishing steadily, speaking constantly and receiving numerous international awards, including Israel's Jerusalem Prize, Spain's Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts, and Germany's Friedenspreis (Peace Prize). Upon accepting the prize from Jerusalem's mayor, Ehud Olmert, Sontag said of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians: "I believe the doctrine of collective responsibility as a rationale for collective punishments [is] never justified, militarily or ethically. And I mean of course the disproportionate use of firepower against civilians."'

Newsday.com: Author Susan Sontag Dies

Thanks to Instapundit, here's a link to an excellent piece on the new face of Marxism: a movement that depends on uneducated masses to become "useful idiots" and the symbols for liberal mythology like the nobility of the "indigenous peoples" of the earth.The Diplomad: Not Your Father's Marxism . . .

Someone should ask the Principal of this pathetic excuse for an educational instituition the name of the "Holiday" that the party was celebrating. And the Democrats wonder why they are rejected again and again by traditional values voters. Hampton Union Local News: Boy in a Santa suit asked to quit dance

If Kyoto was about idealistic goals and overblown predictions of doom--like the Y2K scare--then the aftermath of the Buenos Aires Climate Change Conference may be marked by a return to more reasonable approaches that don't require global agreement on apocalyptic industrial retrenchment for minimal gain. In short, a rejection of EU-backed policies in favor of technology-based solutions enforced by bilateral agreements--led by the U.S., Italy, China and other pro-growth Asian countries. Tech Central Station: The Kyoto Protocol is Dead

Oh, sure. NOW they tell us!! Times Online UK: Laptops used on the lap may be bad for more than a man's eyesight.

The "Dem" in question is that scurrilous, uncouth cad, Terry McAuliffe. What he said isn't shocking so much--given his past performances--as it is amazing that he can still find reporters willing to listen and print what he says. He's the most spectacularly ineffective head of the DNC ever. UPI: Dem uses Pearl Harbor to slam GOP

With all his ability and his superb resume, you'd think he would aspire to something far beyond Roger Ebert's job. Film critic Powell pans formulaic James Bond plots

Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Opinion / Op-ed / An election day secret

An interesting twist on why the President won, and the daunting problem facing the Democratic Party. Boston.com / News / Boston Globe: An election day secret

All the pundits were wrong. Washington is the Florida of 2004. Sound Politics: Full state hand job here we come!

If hand counts are more accurate than machine counts, then why aren't hand counts used in the first place? Why have machine readable ballots at all? The answer, of course, is that hand recounts aren't more accurate. They introduce errors, and opportunities for fraud.

This fiasco now comes down to litigation--the Democrats will try to get rejected ballots reinstated--and who has the most and best qualified observers during the recount process.

Update: Here's a story from the Seattle Times that has a little more detail.

I don't know, but I'm willing to bet, that many of the election officials that the Democrats are calling incompetent in their lawsuit are themselves Democrats, as was the case in Florida in 2000. What a mess.

This is so, so wrong. Wizbang shows an ass getting his lit.

Stop the presses. Barry Bonds is busted for 'roids. BONDS' TESTIMONY / Giants star told grand jury he used clear substance, cream provided by trainer Greg Anderson, but believed they were flaxseed oil and arthritis balm

Apparently, my old home town TV station--WMAZ in Macon, GA--broadcast the penultimate Ken Jennings episode on "Jeopardy!" last week. A station engineer accidentally played one of the show's tapes out of order. He'll take game show records for $2.5 million

By the way, the call letters "WMAZ" originally stood for "Watch Macon Achieve Zenith".

A story that won't make the front page of any newspaper in America. Mount St. Helens is [Washington] State's Top Polluter