A Big Challenge Iraq the Model thinks the new cabinet will have its work cut out for them. “It is widely agreed that the greatest challenge the new government will face is security and it was clear from Talabani’s and Maliki’s latest statements that they realize that time is due for firm action against terror groups and armed militias.”

The War on the World Damian Penny puts the content found in Saudi textbooks in perspective: “that various Muslim sects not only see themselves as at war with the West, but at war with each other.”

Finland Rocks Blabbermouth describes how Finnish Goth band Lordi defeated the cowboy-hatted German band Texas Lightning in the Eurovision contest. The BBC notes Lordi’s triumph is big news in Finland. “Years of humiliation, frustration, and ‘zero points’ were wiped away”.

Racial Profiling or Dry Run? American Future, Debbie Schussel and Jihad Watch comment on the strange case of two Saudis who, without identification, boarded a school bus in trenchcoats to a Florida High School. The two are being investigated. CAIR calls it a simple mistake amplified by profiling.

New Orleans Re-elects Nagin RantingProfs professes astonishment at Ray Nagin’s reelection. “I don’t understand New Orleans politics.” A commenter at Huffington Post says “Democrats who are so very sure they are going to take back the House might want to take notes. If they run on the theme that ‘the other guy is worse’ they will lose.”

"Monster Bribery Case" Against Jefferson TPM Muckraker says the FBI is preparing the mother of all charges against Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA), including “bribery, wire fraud, bribery of a foreign official and conspiracy to bribe foreign officials”. It may be serious. Captain Ed has more details.

To the Back of Beyond Bill Roggio lets readers know where he will go to find the story. “I will be headed to Kandahar, Afghanistan, and will embed with the Canadian Army, and will spend about three weeks in country.” It won’t be a walk in the woods and it won’t be cheap. He asks readers to help out if they can.

Did Al Qaeda Try to Kill PA Chairman? The Jerusalem Post says “A group calling itself al-Qaida in Palestine threatened on Sunday to assassinate Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and other leaders of his Fatah party.” It’s getting hard to choose the right Freedom Fighting side.

Not Because He's Stupid Slate interviews eminent mathematician and physicist Freeman Dyson as part of its “Meaning of Life” series and asks him why he is religious. It’s a video interview.

Sunday Afternoon In Pajamas

• Must See TV: Graduates (and you too Mrs. Robinson), if you can only see one commencement address, make it Michelle Malkin’s.
• Jason Leopold and His Fluffy Sockpuppet Exposed!: We guess that the ongoing meme out of Leopold and Rollicking Sidekick, Ash, @ truthout is going to be, “That’s our BS and we’re sticking to it.” On the other hand we could go with John Podhoretz’s Leopold meme, “A serial pathological liar who makes up news.”
• Our slick pols / obsessed with walls / perform their labors / with “Good fences make good neighbors.” / David Corn cuts them dead / Checkin’ out what Robert Frost said. / Word.
• Ordinary Heroes: Pajamas affiliate Virginia Postrel explains how she became an organ donor.
• Knock-Knock: “Hello, I’m a non-union, left-wing, progressive doorbellng for the AFL-CIO, which I don’t belong to. ”
• All This and Sashimi Too: Underwater wind farms for hydropower without dams. Futurismic points the way.
• Morrocans, er, Make That Saudis on Florida School Bus: Michelle Malkin’s is your go-to page for news, back-story, comments, updates and mug shots about this troubling incident.
• Bush as Moses: And the Anchoress hears “the base” saying : “You suck, Moses - we can’t see the sense in what you’re doing and we don’t like it. You’re slow of tongue, you’re stupid, you’re letting us down, you’re breaking faith and you should put someone else in charge. Yeah, the Red Sea parting was nice, but what have you done for us lately? And you’ve been too long on that freaking mountain, too. Let’s melt some gold!”
• Saudis Have Some ‘Splaining to Do: Drezner has some questions about the questions in Saudi textbooks.
• At the Watershed: The Government of Iraq (Belmont Club)”On one side of a watershed the water flows one way and on the other it flows the other way. From this point on, barring a convulsion in the landscape, America’s role in Iraq will diminish and those of Iraqis increase, perhaps slowly like a rivulet beginning its long journey to the river basin, then with inexorably gathering strength until it is finally ignorant of its beginnings.”
• “Immobilize” Bush: Bill Quick’s got his reasons: “Born-again religious Christian George W. Bush seems singularly ill-equipped to wage war on a fellow religion.”
• The Fun DaVinci Code: Timmer @ The Daily Brief saw something the critics didn’t. “I don’t know what move those critics went to see, but the one we just came back from was a lot of fun.”
• Two Sentences. One True. You Decide: USA Today on Bellsouth’s demand for a retraction on the NSA story: “On the night before the story was published, the newspaper described the story in detail to BellSouth, and the company did not challenge the newspaper’s account. The company’s official response at that time: ‘BellSouth does not provide any confidential customer information to the NSA or any governmental agency without proper legal authority.’ “

Guevara's Nemesis The Babalu Blog meets the man who helped hunt down Che Guevara nearly forty years ago, Felix Rodriguez. “Well Mr. Rodriguez stopped by CubaNostalgia today and I couldn’t miss the opportunity to get my picture taken with him and thank him for his service to our country.” Follow the link for the picture.

Decrypting Christians Andrew Sullivan thinks the Da Vinci Code’s box office success is a sign of some deeper trend, perhaps one in which Christians have assimilated “unorthodox” ideas.

I Double Dare You The Big Pharaoh says Egytian President Hosni Mubarak now feels freer to criticize Washington confirmed in the belief of his indispensibility. “The US knows very well that the removal or even weakening of the Mubarak regime means chaos and uncertainty in the Arab world’s most strategic country. And we have enough ‘democracy induced’ chaos in Iraq and Palestine.”

Sunday Dawn Patrol Global Reach
On Cosmic War I (One Cosmos) “At the moment, our enemies are limited to killing only as many as they can. But what if they were only limited by how many they wanted to kill?”
Replace Turkey as a Strategic Partner? (Middle East Quarterly) “Washington should pay greater attention to threats emanating from the North Caucasus, … and prepare for a possible worst-case scenario— the loss of Ankara as a strategic partner and an implosion of Russian control over the North Caucasus.
Balad Air Base/Camp Anaconda, Iraq (Foreign Policy) “Balad’s facilities and location make it more than just an ideal base from which to fight insurgents in Iraq. It is also perfectly positioned to project U.S. power throughout the Middle East, and it will likely do so for many years to come.”
Politics
All-American Incompetence Rewarded (New York Times) “Voters Re-elect Nagin as Mayor in New Orleans”
Anti-Anti-Americanism, Dealing with the crazy world after Iraq (Victor Hanson) “We should also accept that the United States, as the world’s policeman, always suffers the easy hatred of the cops, who are as ankle-bitten when things are calm as they are desperately sought when danger looms.”
Society
A Makeover for the Sun-Maid (Chicago Tribune) “…she’s still praisin’ raisins.”
Hit Making @ YouTube “And by Wednesday, when the number hit two million, “Groundhog Day” was firmly established as one of the most-viewed videos in YouTube’s brief history.”
Tech Notes
Six Years to Go (Singularity Countdown) “Just as it was necessary for life to evolve only once on Earth, so artificial intelligence (AI) needs to escape into the Web wilds only once….”
O’Reilly’s World Conquest Hacks (Plasticbag) “Is there a robot overlord in your future?”
The Sphere
“Sturm und Blank” Karl Rove does not go to jail. Passes go. Reporter’s mental state not passable.
Mondo Bizarro
Wingsuit Base Jumping “has just replaced kite surfing as the coolest sport in the world that I’ll never attempt.”
The Cube Farm of the Future: “Life’s too short for the wrong job.”

Little White Apples Scott Wickstein at Samizdata has put his finger on why he dislikes Apple Computers after reading Ann Althouse. “It all seems so mindlessly conformist, these endless plastic rounded boxes all in antiseptic white. It looks totalitarian.”

The Vanishing American Donald Sensing looks at the role of economics, ethnicity and culture in molding the declining American family size. “America’s overall average is 2.08, but some demographic sectors of our society are carrying the freight for the rest - Hispanic women, for example, have a much higher average birth rate than white women.”

Live Another Day An Englishman in New York still can’t get used to the guns. “All of the victims are under the age of 25, and most of them were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Petty crime in the UK is undoubtedly a big problem but at least you live to see another day.”

I'll Be Watching You TalkLeft examines the threats to America’s privacy from surveillance. She quotes Bruce Schneier who warns “This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from us. This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.”

Brits are From Mars, Americans From Venus Patrick Porter @ Oxblog reviews Lawrence Friedman’s retrospective on the Falklands War. “It qualifies the popular image of a warlike USA being constrained by a more diplomatic Britain, reminding us that since world war two, it has often been America playing conciliator and moderator to British belligerence.”