Thor Halvorssen had a devastating piece in the new Examiner yesterday about the connections between Jack Kemp and Hugo Chavez:

Kemp made high-profile “courtesy” visits and wined and dined with Hugo Chavez and his ministers in 2002. Weeks later, a contract dated Jan. 17, 2003, was circulated between Free Market Petroleum, where Kemp is chairman, and the Chavez government. That Kemp, the GOP’s 1996 vice presidential nominee, even would consider doing business with the Chavez government raises troubling ethical and political questions. . . .

Kemp has used his political capital to open doors for Chavez. In May of 2003, he tried to charm the staff of The Wall Street Journal editorial page into abandoning its opposition to Chavez’s undemocratic behavior. Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez accompanied Kemp on his visit to Journal headquarters.

Alvarez was once the No. 2 man in Venezuela’s Energy Ministry -the very agency that discussed business with Kemp – and yet the former Buffalo, congressman conveniently failed to disclose to the Journal his personal stake in the proposed contract between himself and the Chavez government.

Want to become an anti-abortion fanatic? Read this.

You got to hand it to Greg Kampe, coach of the Oakland Golden Grizzlies (13-18), who last night beat Alabama A&M in the NCAA’s play-in game, 79-69. When asked of his team’s future prospects (which includes a first-round game against North Carolina), Kampe quipped: “If we win the national championship, we’ll finally get to 19-18.”

My good friend and Weekly Standard colleague Matt Labash has written a terrific piece entitled “Welcome to Canada: The Great White Waste of Time.” Matt journeys to British Columbia in search of Americans who really have left this country because of George W. Bush. But in the midst of some very funny Canadian jokes, he had this to say: “…polls show [Canadians] pride themselves on being much funnier than Americans (don’t ask me why, when they’re responsible for Dan Aykroyd, John Candy, and Alan Thicke).”

Did he just say John Candy? We’ve argued about this for days now and there is no use convincing him that John Candy was a great comedian. Matt refers me to his IMDB resume and points out he’s had vastly more flops than successes. I don’t disagree with this. But at least for me, all it takes is one Planes, Trains, and Automobiles or one Splash to deem him funny. (Others have also mentioned his work on SCTV.)

As Tom Hanks’s brother Freddy in Splash, Candy was fantastic. Remember how proud he was to get his letter published in Penthouse under the heading, “A Lesbian No More”?

This is interesting. Jason Apuzzo had previously accused me of saying a bunch of things about Star Wars in the course of his tantrum about conservative movie writing.

As it turns out, Apuzzo had his facts wrong–he misattributed a number of statements to me. I posted an item about Apuzzo’s mistakes. Apuzzo has now fixed some of his errors. But there is no acknowledgment that he has appended a correction, that he made a series of mistakes, or that he put words in my mouth which didn’t belong to me.

If that’s the standard over at the blog libertas, then it doesn’t say much for them.

Also, it doesn’t help Apuzzo’s case as to why people should listen to him. It’s one thing to be simply untrustworthy on facts, but it’s another to be untrustworthy and dishonest.

Someone named Jason Apuzzo has written an attack on me (and Jonah Goldberg and Richard Brookhiser) for what we have written about the various Star Wars movies. Apuzzo quotes me as saying:

From Jonathan Last: “As for the prequels (’The Phantom Menace’ and ‘Attack of the Clones’)–well, I saw them in the theater–and what I saw was crap. Twenty years ago, when it came to liking ‘Star Wars,’ I wasn’t old enough to know better. And … when it comes to George Lucas’s latest films, I do know better. Sorry, George. You had me right until the end.”

The only problem is, I don’t think I’ve ever said, or written, that. It’s not in Nexis. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about Star Wars on TV. I guess it’s possible that this is from an email conversation with someone, but I doubt it, since the sentiments Apuzzo is attributing to me don’t actually match what I think.

Moving on, Apuzzo says that I wrote that the re-released Episodes IV-VI “are a worthless waste of time.” Again, I didn’t say that and I don’t think it.

Moving still onward, Apuzzo links to a piece he attributes to me, but is actually written by Matthew Continetti.

Apuzzo says that conservative film criticism is flawed because conservatives “have been too lazy or disinterested” to look at film in a serious way. One might say the same about Apuzzo.

Read. Howl. Discuss.

I will merely say that Wonderfalls deserves space in the top 10 (with Andy Partidge’s weird, goofy nerd-rock tune). Also, The Jetsons should be there, too.

Fortunately Ross Douthat has already exposed Gregg Easterbrook’s latest bit of counterintuitive cleverness. In the coming weeks, expect lots of other very clever people with close associations to Michael Kinsley to carefully push counterintuitive anti-Pope arguments. Like Easterbrook, they’ll be careful because they don’t want to go the full New York Press–they just want you know how very smart they are.

Hey Gregg! You’re very, very smart!

And this online writing thing has been great for you career. Keep it up!