For those who may have missed it in the comments on my original, InstaPundit-linked anti-Kos post, here is the link to Michael Friedman’s effort to hit Kos where it hurts: his advertising revenue.

Kos, meanwhile, is backpedaling… sort of. (Again, I’m not linking directly to him, as a matter of principle.) He writes:

There’s been much ado about my indifference to the Mercenary deaths in Falluja a couple days ago. I wrote in some diary comments somewhere that ‘I felt nothing’ and ’screw them’.

[N]ot only was I wrong to say I felt nothing over their deaths, I was lying. I felt way too much. Nobody deserves to die. But in the greater scheme of things, there are a lot of greater tragedies going on in Iraq (51 last month, plus countless civilians and Iraqi police). That those tragedies are essentially ignored these days is, ultimately, the greatest tragedy of all.

Hmm, I see a lot of rationalization coupled with a twinge — maybe — of regret. I don’t see “I’m sorry.” I also see some additional errors, like “I was angry that these mercenaries would leave their wives and children behind.” How is that Kos’s business? Isn’t that between the “mercenaries” and their families?

Well anyway, does this updated statement make up for the original “screw ‘em” post? We report, you decide.

I got my first-ever French link this morning, and it has produced 8 hits so far. This comes on the heels of my first-ever Spanish link one month ago today. (Translations — well, sort of — can be found here and here, respectively. Readers who speak the languages in question are welcome to contribute corrections, and ridicule.)

BrendanLoy.com: A multilateral, international coalition! :)

Okay, lunch break over, back to work now…

What am I listening to on iTunes right now? You know you’re curious!

The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, which crushed Lord of the Rings in the Final Four earlier this week (I can’t find the numbers right now, but it was at least 70% to 30%), edged Jessica Simpson, 51.0% to 48.9% (AGAIN WITH THE FAULTY ROUNDING!!!) to win the ESPN “Wacky Bracket” championship.

It was probably inevitable that a vote on ESPN.com would become a battle of the babes, but I still think it’s impressive that we nerds managed to do well enough in the midst of all the horny sports fans (not that I don’t qualify in both categories…but anyway) to get LOTR into the Final Four. It’s a moral victory, my friends. :)

“Thanks for voting,” ESPN says, “and remember to sing ‘One Shining Moment’ next time you’re flipping through SI.” Heh.

Gov’t Warns of Summer Bomb Plots in U.S.:

“Terrorists might try to bomb buses and rail lines in major U.S. cities this summer, according to a government bulletin issued to law enforcement officials nationwide.

The FBI and Homeland Security Department sent a bulletin Thursday night saying terrorists could attempt to conceal explosives in luggage and carry-on bags, such as duffel bags and backpacks.

The bulletin cites uncorroborated intelligence as indicating that such bombs could be made of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and diesel fuel, similar to what was used to blow up the Oklahoma City federal building in April 1995.

A senior federal law enforcement official, speaking Friday on condition of anonymity, said recent intelligence, coupled with the deadly March 11 commuter train bombings in Madrid, has increased the level of concern about a potential attack in the United States.

The bulletin did not specify a particular city that might be targeted.”

Calhoun Misses Cut For Hall Of Fame:

UConn coach Jim Calhoun can still look forward to the possibility of winning a national championship Monday night, but induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame will have to wait until another year.

Sources told The Hartford Courant Friday that Hall of Fame officials have informed Calhoun he did not receive enough votes for election into the basketball shrine in Springfield. Calhoun was one of 16 finalists announced Feb. 15. The Class of 2004 will be announced Monday morning in San Antonio, in conjunction with the Final Four. The Hall of Fame does not release the final vote count.

Even as I continue to enjoy the flood of traffic resulting from my website’s sixth-ever InstaPundit link (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), the ongoing, everyday trickle of random search-engine hits continues. Moments ago, somebody found my site by Googling “stuffed manatee.” Heh. (By the way, in case you were wondering, ArchaeoPundit never did correct his post referring to Hugh Manatee as an “ancient carved rock.”)

On an utterly unrelated note, Andrew and Bea are coming to town tonight. They’ve been vacationing up in Colorado, and are going to stop by Phoenix and crash at Becky’s and my place after a drive from Dillon, CO, by way of Moab Canyon, Arches National Park, and the Four Corners. That’s the plan, anyway. Methinks they are going to have a loooooong day of driving. Fun, but long.

It’s time for my lunch break, and time to pay tribute to the blogaversary — er, the Report-aversary — of someone who’s even more narcissistic than me: Matt Drudge!

Nine years, eh? Wow. Man, if you think the Drudge Report is irritating now, wait until it becomes a teenager!

Hmm… Wonkette hasn’t wished Drudge a happy birthday yet. Odd! Must be an oversight. :)

Wonkette does have this post, though, with a round-up of political April Fool’s jokes in Washington. (Quip of the day: “Abortion rights=comedy gold.”)

Oh, and if you were wondering about that InstaPundit link… I’ve gotten 619 hits from it so far, contributing to a total of 1,108 hits (and counting!) today. Thanks, Glenn!

I’m also getting a fair amount of traffic from thauvin.net, whose editor, Erik Thauvin (a.k.a. Mr. Screenshot), thinks I need to “chill, man” regarding the Google kerfuffle. (Oh, how I do love that word. Kerfuffle. Heh.) Erik, consider me officially “chill.” 112 extra hits will chill me out anytime!

Okay, I gotta go pick up my sandwich now. (Ordered it online.) Yeah, I actually do eat during my lunch break, in addition to blogging…

As long as I’m waiting for the database here at work (again, refreshing a bunch of docs), I might as well mention today’s particularly outrageous blog post…

Instapundit reveals that lefty blogger Kos “feels nothing” for the four dead “mercenaries” who were murdered and mutilated in Fallujah.

“They are there to wage war for profit,” Kos asserts, revealing his remarkable, omniscient, almost God-like knowledge of everyone’s beliefs and motives.

“Screw them,” he concludes.

Well, at least we know exactly where he stands: if you differ politically from Kos, your life is worthless. When you sign up for a cause that Kos doesn’t believe in, you sacrifice your very humanity. You are no longer worthy of sympathy or compassion, because you’re on the other side.

If I were a friend or family member of one of those “dead mercenaries,” and I ever met Kos in person, I would literally spit in his face. At the very least.

(I’m not linking directly to his post because he doesn’t deserve any additional traffic.)

UPDATE: Welcome, InstaPundit readers! While you’re here, be sure to check out my homepage. And check back in a few days; I’ll be relaunching this site with a brand new design (and a new blog moniker: “The Irish Trojan“). Here is a preview of my new design.

I’m withholding judgment on this story, because it seems almost unbelievable that this would just be emerging now. But if it’s true, then our pre-9/11 intelligence was much more specific than previously revealed:

WASHINGTON, April 2 (UPI) — The U.S. administration knew of al-Qaida plans to target buildings with planes months before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a former FBI translator claims.

Sibel Edmonds, a former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she spent three hours giving testimony to the panel investigating the attacks, and told Britain’s Independent Friday information was circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001 an attack using aircraft was months away and the terrorists were in place. [Here is the Independent’s story.]

She rejected national security adviser Condoleezza Rice’s claim there was no such knowledge as “an outrageous lie.”

The newspaper said the Bush administration has sought to silence her and has obtained a gag order from a court by citing the rarely used “state secrets privilege.”

The 33-year-old a Turkish-American woman who speaks Azerbaijani, Farsi, Turkish and English said she gave her evidence in Washington Feb. 11.

“I gave (the commission) details of specific investigation files, the specific dates, specific target information, specific managers in charge of the investigation. I gave them everything so that they could go back and follow up. This is not hearsay. These are things that are documented. These things can be established very easily.”

UPDATE: Here is a list of blogs linking to the Independent story. Suburban Guerrilla, for one, thinks this is a smoking gun.

Right Wing News, however, says, “Despite The Splashy Headline, This Isn’t New. We Knew Al-Qaeda, Among Other Things, Might Try To Hijack Airplanes.”

Hmm. Well Condi Rice, for one, apparently didn’t know:

“I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile — a hijacked airplane as a missile.” –National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, May 17, 2002 (source)

It’s 5:45 AM on April 2, and I can find no news articles or other online postings suggesting that Google’s Gmail was an April Fools joke. Looks like it was real, after all!

UPDATE: Kevin Fox says he works for Google, and that Gmail is real. His account his entertaining and eminently believable:

“Gmail is real.

Real real real. Not ‘I have a friend who reads this guy’s blog who claims to know for a fact’ real. Not even ‘I read this guy’s blog and he says it’s not an April Fool’s joke’ real. Well, maybe for you, gentle reader, it’s exactly that real, but for me it’s ‘I came to work for Google and got handed a dream assignment to design the UI for a product that’s going to change the world’ real, and now I’m thrilled that my best kept secret was kept so well that even my close friends took the ‘it’s gotta be a joke’ path yesterday.

Nearly two months ago my Mom sent me an email, saying she read a piece in the newspaper speculating that Google was working on an email product.

‘Really, Mom? That’s interesting. It’s funny how they press makes all kinds of speculations. First we’re going IPO, then we’re not, then we are, then we’re waiting. We never said anything but the press likes to make stuff up.’

Then I sent her email around to the team. Today several of them asked me if I’d come clean to my own Mom yet. I did. This morning. :-)

Where was I? Oh yeah. Free email, a gig of it. If you’ve been reading the paper or the blogs today, you’ve read about it, spun either as an April fools joke (though if it were only that it would be a pretty short-sighted jest: ‘Here’s this great product! Ha-ha, fooled you!’), or a piece of ill-timed PR. In truth, as guessed by a few of the more circumspect bloggers, it was both and neither. A double-April-fools joke. Metapranking, if you will. Google-style fun with a big pot of gold at the end.”

Well, I think that settles it.

I was right about one thing, though: Erik Thauvin’s screenshot is “totally fake,” according to Adams.

Hat tip: Jan Philipp Lenssen, of “ Categories: Technology & Nerdy News

It looks like my Sunday deadline for launching BrendanLoy.com’s new design is probably going to fall by the wayside, just like the last deadline did. :(

This is a major bummer, since I really liked the idea of using the relaunch to mark my second blogaversary… but I really don’t think I’m going to have time to finish everything. Between the NCAA tournaments & pools, spring cleaning at the Brendan & Becky house, weekend plans with the ‘rents, and now, Andrew and Bea coming into town tomorrow, the prospects just don’t look good.

The frustrating thing is, I don’t have that much more to do on the redesign, but it’s really a case of “so close and yet so far.” Maybe I’ll aim for Tuesday, the anniversary of my first “real” post.

On the bright side, I registered IrishTrojan.com. (It points to this very homepage.)