And since it is just me here posting, let me add that I haven’t said one word about the Georgetown Hoyas, who will be making a postseason appearance in the tournament we all know and love, the NIT. Their opponent this Wednesday is Boston University. (Whew!)

As if this is open mike at St. Elizabeth’s, let me also add that I recently tried Harry & David’s “Moose Munch,” a delightful mix of caramel corn, chocolate-covered popcorn, and caramel-and-chocolate-covered almonds. Does it get any better than that? I dare say, Moose Munch is the final step in the evolution of Caramel Corn: In the beginning there was Cracker Jack. (Didn’t you just savor those few precious peanuts? And did you ever really get a good prize?) Then came Poppy Cock. (It was a silly name and a guilty pleasure all around. I don’t know anyone who ever bought it, but if you saw it at a party, you could forget about the crudités.) And now Moose Munch. The world has become a better place.

I just realized that with my colleages Jonathan V. Last and David Skinner out of the office today, it had fallen upon me to post items for our loyal readers. Sadly I too was away–at the National Rifle Association’s headquarters in Virginia, where Ashley, Kelly, and Graham were kind enough to host us at the range. Weekly Standard coworker Michael Goldfarb was a pro (and is a regular at local ranges). I’ve gone shooting before but I would have been better off saying it was my first time. I was a terrible shot with the Glock and not much better with the Sig. But be forewarned, if you come after me, I’m going for the legs.

Georgia Tech, despite a close call with Jarrett Jack’s ankle, is expected to make it to the Final Four and maybe further. Everyone else is in love with North Carolina. But Duke seems to have made a go with it with J.J. Redick. How many points will that kid rack up this week? And isn’t Wake Forest really in the mood to show the NCAA committee that they were wrong not to seed them as Number One? Finally, let’s not forget the Wolfpack and Julius Hodge, who Jonathan V. Last swears has been playing since Jim Valvano was coaching.

If you are from the Washington, D.C., metro area, you will notice coverage of the NCAA tournament is heavily saturated by the ACC. Call it ACC-bias. (To wit, Tony Kornheiser thinks Maryland should have been seeded 11th! If so, why not throw in Clemson?) Perhaps we need a sports equivalent of Brent Bozell? For the rest of our readers not taking part in the Atlantic Coast orgy, I ask you who not from the ACC do you think will make it to the Final Four and beyond?

Here is a hilarious item from Thursday’s “Reliable Source” in the Washington Post regarding an incident reminiscent of The Naked Gun:

Flush we must: Several hundred attendees at the Kaiser Family Foundation’s conference yesterday on kids and the media with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton got a surprise earful before she spoke. Drew Altman, the foundation’s president and CEO, was making introductory remarks when, suddenly, the unmistakable sound of a toilet flushing could be heard over the loudspeaker system. The culprit: moderator Jeff Greenfield of CNN, who used the facilities while wearing his remote microphone. He e-mailed us yesterday: “After 25 years in the business, you’d think I’d know when to turn a microphone off!”

Today’s New York Post reports an incredible story of a cop who played a mobster on film but, in reality, was a detective really working for the mob. Louis Eppolito, whose cameo appearance Goodfellas fanatics will remember as “Fat Andy” in the Bamboo Lounge scene, was a hitman for hire for the Lucheses (the family actually represented in Goodfellas). Along with fellow detective Stephen Caracappa, the two are accused of committing some grisly murders and also delivering one Gambino associate to Luchese underboss Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso. (The worst alleged incident is the detectives’ fingering the wrong guy for a hit. The intended target was Gambino crewmember Nick Guido. The unfortunate victim was another Nick Guido who was mildly retarded.)

He might have played a mobster on film, but, as it turns out, Eppolito was living the role of Vin Makazian, the detective who did the dirty work for Tony Soprano.

The Kos himself has discovered a brand new way to describe Republicans–“Taliban”:

Once upon a time, it was easy for the American Right to smear its opponents on the left–they could simply equate them with the nation’s communist enemies. It didn’t matter that the American “left” (Democrats) had more in common with the Right than international communism, the smear was useful.

Now, however, our international enemy–Islamic radicalism–is actually the polar opposite of what liberals stand for–their actions on women rights are deplorable, they insist on theocracy, they loooveee torture and the death penalty, they demand to control the culture (TV, movies, music), they rail against rampant sexuality, they seek to spread their ideology via force, and they have a well-defined black-and-white sense of truth.

Remind you of a certain American party?

That’s why hysterical assertions by the wingers that liberals hate America and want the terrorists to win are so absurd. As absurd as it would’ve been to claim that Reagan wanted the Communists to win the Cold War. The Taliban/Al Qaida/Hezbollah/Jihadists of the world are the exact embodiment of evil in the liberal mind. They are everything we are against, and against everything we are for.

In fact, they are exactly what we see in the Republican Party as the GOP continues to consolidate power–creeping theocracy, moralizing, us versus them, embrace of torture, the need to constantly declare jihad on someone, hysterics over football-game nipples, control over “decency” on the airwaves, lyrics censorship, hostility to women freedoms, curtaling of civil liberties, and so on.

So it’s pretty obvious–we don’t love terrorists. We don’t want them to win. For them to win would be to realize our greatest fears. The muslim terrorist is truly the anti-liberal. Like matter and anti-matter.

Republicans, on the other hand, hate the terrorists because they’re Muslim. But aside from that, they’ve got far more in common than they’ll ever admit to themselves.

And it’s high time we started to make that connection more forcefully.

Two things to note here: First, Kos claims that the connection between liberals and Communists was a “smear.” But he now wants liberals to tar Republicans with a similar charge. He doesn’t explicitly say so, but one gets the impression that he thinks the Republican = Taliban line is also a smear. And one gets the impression that he’s okay with that.

The other point of interest is that the phrase “Taliban-Republicans” has been floating around since at least December 1998, when it was first trotted out by Democrats attempting to smear Republicans during the Clinton impeachment.

The phrase was then picked up by Tony Snow in 1999; he used it to describe the far-right Bob Smith fringe of the party.

After 9/11 the left picked back up on the phrase–perhaps ironically, you never know–and it came back with a vengeance. This prompted Jay Nordlinger to write in the November 11, 2002 National Review:

Been called “Talibanic” lately? If so, you must be a conservative Republican. That’s the new trick: We are “Talibanic,” or members of the “Taliban wing” of the Republican party. It’s kind of an old trick, too. Back in the early 1980s, when Sam Donaldson discovered Hezbollah (as it was hijacking, kidnapping, murdering, and committing other mayhem), he delighted in referring to “the Hezbollah wing of the Republican party”–that meant all those GOP-ers who supported Reagan. Now the Taliban’s “in.” When Democrats say “Taliban wing,” they smile like they’re the first to have thought of it. But we have to ask: Who was it who fought, ruined, and banished the Taliban? Bunch of “Taliban Republicans,” really, starting with the President of the United States.

The smear didn’t work that time, either.

I realize that out here in the blogosphere 2002 might as well be three years ago, but I thought Kos was savvy enough to remember the immediate past.

But none of this need deter him, of course. Perhaps the third time will be the charm for Kos’s “new” smear.

Downfall, the German-made film about the last days of Hitler, comes to District theaters today. My review of it can also be found in today’s Daily Standard.

Kinsleyism strikes again at Slate, where a Yale Law School professor argues–with little irony–for an end to gender-specific bathrooms.

Wow, that’s so . . . counterintuitive!

And clever!