I believe I’ll just fire up some popcorn and enjoy watching this unfold….

So this is the project I teased yesterday–and the reason I was in Mississippi last December.

It’s the latest Drew Carey video, and it’s on Cory Maye. I think it’s really well-done. Warm congratulations to Paul Feine, Roger Richards, and the gang at reason.tv for putting it all together. I know it was a lot of work. It’s the longest Carey video to date, and the one in which the reason.tv staff has invested the most time producing. I think it paid off. It gets quite emotional in places. The scenes with Cory’s mother, and where Melissa Longino reads from Cory’s Thanksgiving card to his daughter still choke me up. It’s beautifully shot, too. I’d recommend watching in full-screen mode.

There’s also a video interview with your humble Agitator about the issues involved in Cory’s story.

Finally, if you want more information on the case, the reason.tv site has a rundown of related articles and links. Or, if you’re really motivated, here’s my archive of posts on Cory’s case.

People frequently ask me how they can help Cory out. Here’s an easy way: Spread this video far and wide. Vote it up on sites like Digg and Reddit (though I’d recommend voting up the reason.tv link, not this one). Email it to people who might be interested in the case. Embed it on your own blog. I think this is the most compelling presentation of Cory’s story yet. It can only help if lots of people see it.

UPDATE: Here’s the Digg entry. Here’s the entry for Reddit.

Be sure to check this page tomorrow morning.

Something very cool on the way.

Jason Castro apparently told Entertainment Weekly last week that he’s “ready to go home.” That seemed pretty apparent last night. I kinda’ respect him for that. He’s probably got a record deal at this point if he wants it. Or some endorsements. Maybe a small role in a couple of movies. In any case, he was pretty awful last night, half-singing his way through both performances, and forgetting the words to “Mr. Tambourine Man.” He should go home. He wants to go home. Whether he does go home, I guess we’ll find out tonight.

I thought Syesha Mercado won the night for the second week in a row, though browsing other reviews of the show it looks like I’m the only one who thinks so. Her “Proud Mary” wasn’t Tina Turner, but then, Mercado didn’t try to be. Her voice is higher than Turner’s. It was lively, sultry, and soulful. I thought her “A Change Is Gonna Come” was phenomenal, though I’ll confess, it’s one of my all-time favorite songs. I think Mercado had the first and third best performances of the night.

David Cook did well, too. Again, I’m not a huge fan of his style of music, but he’s very good at what he does. I actually thought his “Hungry Like the Wolf” was pretty good. His version of Baba O’Riley was also very good, but was hindered by the need to compress the song down to 90 seconds. That’s just too difficult to do when you have a song with a couple of different parts. Still, Cook was very good.

Unfortunately, the judges’ and critics’ darling last night was David Archuleta. Yes, he can hit all the right notes. And he has that innocent Mormon charm. I’m sure he’ll sell lots of records. But he’s incredibly boring. His “Stand By Me” had no soul at all. He oversang “Love Me Tender,” filling it with needless runs and changes in the melody.

My ordering would be Mercado, Cook, Archuleta, and Castro. What’ll actually happen tonight? Cook and Archuleta are shoe-ins. Castro should absolutely go after the last couple of weeks he’s had. And Mercado should absolutely stay, after the couple of weeks she’s had. But given the way the votes have come down thus far, I’d say it’s a toss-up.

More fawning over Hillary Clinton from the Weekly Standard.

Last fall I wrote about Arizona anti-war activist Dan Frazier’s tacky "Bush Lied/They Died" t-shirts, and about even tacker attempts by Congress and several state legislatures to ban them. The front of the shirts say "Bush Lied." The backs of the shirts say, "They Died," feature the names of some 3,000 U.S. troops killed in Iraq.

Now comes a lawsuit (pdf) from the family of one of the late soldiers whose name appears on the shirt. The family’s attorneys are seeking to make the suit a class action on behalf of the families of every solider listed on the shirt. One can sympathize with the family and still believe that (a) their suit is ridiculous, and (b) it looks as if they’ve hired a third-grader to represent them. For example, after arguing that Frazier’s enterprise isn’t protected by the First Amendment, and that even it is, Frazier should be forced to share his profits with the soldiers’ families, the suit then states:

Most respectfully, this is a concept that even a mentally-challenged monkey could grasp, but, apparently, defendants cannot—or, more likely, refuse–to do so, for as defendant, Fraser [sic], stated recently to the Associated Press, he is “not worried” about the outcome of this litigation.

"Most respectfully?" Also, the attorney is asking for $40 billion in damages.

(Hat tip: Howard Wasserman)

…today is a qualified defense of Barack Obama’s relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Sharpen your knives, and have it in the comments section.

According to USA Today governments at all levels in the U.S. added 78,600 jobs in the first three months of 2008. The private sector lost 286,000 jobs over the same period.

Make of that what you will.

There’s some weird technical stuff going on with the site.

Sorry. I’m looking into it.

UPDATE: Looks like we’re back.

Cato’s Juan Carlos-Hidalgo explains a possible nefarious motive behind Raoul Castro’s recent reforms in Cuba.

I don’t agree with everything in this Frank Rich column, but given all the Obama-Wright hysteria, he’s right in that it is about time someone asked McCain why he won’t renounce Hagee.

For all the talk from President Bush about how Congress shouldn’t second guess the military, the truth is, his administration has not only been second guessing the military, they’ve been actively working to increase political micromanagement of the military. In Charlie Savage’s must-read book Takeover, Savage documents how Dick Cheney’s office worked tirelessly to undermine military JAG lawyers on matters like torture, detainment of “enemy combatants,” and military tribunals. The JAGs opposed administration policy on all of these issues, for a variety of reasons. Cheney and the Office of Legal Counsel did everything they could to dispense with objections from military lawyers on these issues, from going around them, to putting more civilian buffers between them and the top brass at the Pentagon, to ultimately concluding that their opinions don’t matter, and keeping them in the dark about what policies the administration would actually end up adopting.

We also now know that when military officers do get it right, are overruled by political appointees, and then are later proven correct, the Bush administration will do everything they can to toss said military leaders under the bus (see Gen. Eric Shinseki for one example).

The latest example comes from Former three-star general and Iraq War leader Ricardo Sanchez, who has a new book. The book doesn’t take kindly to the Bush administration–or to Donald Rumsfeld in particular.

Here’s Sanchez on the administration’s lack of a plan for post-war Iraq, and subsequent efforts to cover up the fact that said plan didn’t exist

That decision set up the United States for a failed first year in Iraq. There is no question about it. And I was supposed to believe that neither the Secretary of Defense nor anybody above him knew anything about it? Impossible! Rumsfeld knew about it. Everybody on the NSC knew about it, including Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet, and Colin Powell. Vice President Cheney knew about it. And President Bush knew about it.

There’s not a doubt in my mind that they all embraced this decision to some degree. And if it had not been for the moral courage of Gen. John Abizaid to stand up to them all and reverse Franks’s troop drawdown order, there’s no telling how much more damage would have been done.

In the meantime, hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars were unnecessarily spent, and worse yet, too many of our most precious military resource, our American soldiers, were unnecessarily wounded, maimed, and killed as a result. In my mind, this action by the Bush administration amounts to gross incompetence and dereliction of duty.

Let’s also clear up one other thing about this administration. They aren’t pro-military or pro-”the troops.” They’re pro-war. There’s a big difference.

Via Reddit, the 50 most popular pages on “Conservapedia,” the reference wiki for right-wingers.

The New York Times stumbles onto the tragedy of the commons. Sort of. .

Distributed Republic has posted their annual May Day remembrance of the brutality and horrors of communism.

So as part of my research for an upcoming article, I needed find out the strip club regulations in various cities. I figured the best way do this would be contact the strip clubs themselves–who, after all, have to abide by the regs. That has led to several conversations like the one below, which I had with the general manager of a club in Baltimore this afternoon.

Me: So what’s the law on nudity in Baltimore?

Her: We’re all-nude in the city. Baltimore County is pasties and a g-string. But the dancers have to be on a platform that’s at least 18 inches off the ground.

Me: And can you serve alcohol?

Her: Yep.

Me: What about lap dances?

Her: Well, we call them “table dances.” There’s no touching.

Me: By customers or by dancers?

Her: Dancers can’t touch each other. They can touch customers, but the customers can’t touch back.

Me: But they’re nude?

Her: Oh, no. Dancers have to be in uniform when they give table dances. Of course, there’s also the Champagne Room. But we consider that private, so the rules are a little looser there.

Me: I see. Any other laws you think are worth noting?

Her: Hmm. Well, there’s no toy play. And a dancer isn’t allowed to touch herself on stage.

Me: At all?

Her: Well, no, not at all. But, you know. She can’t, like, pleasure herself.

Me: Ah. So she can’t touch her genitals.

Her: She can touch them, but she can’t masturbate. Or pretend to. No penetration.

Me: Gotcha. Can she touch other parts of her body?

Her: She can, but it can’t be stimulating. So she can cup or squeeze her breasts, but she isn’t allowed to tweak her nipples, for example.

Me: So the difference between cupping and tweaking is the difference between following the law or breaking it?

Her: Yep . . . You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?

Me: I do love my job.

Neil Diamond night, and no one sang “Cracklin’ Rosie,” “Shiloh,” or my personal favorite, “Song Sung Blue.” Here’s how I’d order the contestants tonight:

David Archuleta. No joke. I thought both of his performances tonight were pretty awful. He sang two Diamond standards, and his just-pubescent voice wasn’t nearly man enough to pull either of them off. He’s got no gruff, no rasp. He absolutely butchered “Sweet Caroline,” turning a driving, up-tempo song into a mushy, sing-songy shell of what it ought to be. As for “America,” I guess Archuleta’s taking up the Kristy Lee Cooke God n’ Country banner. Again, the song was just too big for him. Sad thing is, he’ll still probably get the most votes this week. But I thought this was easily his weakest night of the season, including the week where he booted the lyrics to Eleanor Rigby “We Can Work It Out.”

Jason Castro. I like Castro a lot, and think with the right songwriter, he could sell a few CDs. The problem is, he doesn’t have much range as a performer. There are certain styles he does very well, others where he just sounds like a lame guy on the beach strumming his guitar in front of a bonfire. I’ve always thought that one of Idol’s weaknesses is that because they push so many different styles on the contestants, they weed out the truly interesting voices, and end up selecting for a kind of generic, all-purpose session background singer. Castro’s “Forever in Blue Jeans” was actually very good. But Castro’s voice is in many ways more fragile than Archuleta’s. So “September Morn” again shrank next to Diamond’s growl, and Castro drowned in the expanse of the song. Also, how awesome was it when Paula Abdul started judging Castro’s second performance before he had even given it? I don’t know what she’s on, but I’d hate to see her when she’s off it.

Brooke White. Her “I’m a Believer” was cartoonishly awful. She almost spoke the lyrics. And I half expected her to start swinging her elbows and kicking up her heels. But she bounced back, and delivered on her second song with what she does best–a soulful ballad at the piano. She did the homesick weeper, “I Am, I Said,” and probably saved her butt in the process. Very nice. Related: Every time I hear this song, I can’t get over that “not even the chair” lyric that Dave Barry’s always making fun of.

David Cook. I don’t really care for his style of music (he sounds like half the playlist on your typical “alternative rock” station, but this guy is good. He finds arrangements that suit his style and he’s got a lot of showman in him. His voice is by no means the best in the competition, but he’s great at boosting it with well-placed background vocals, guitar, and stage theatrics. Two very strong performances tonight. Alas, I fear a David vs. David final.

Syesha Mercado. Okay, so maybe it’s because I’m just a sucker for soul. Or because she’s hot. But I thought she won the night. She sang two very different songs and brought ‘em both home. Her “Hello Again” swelled and swooned and gave her a chance to show some vulnerability. Then she brought back the sass from last week with a souled-up take on “Thank God for the Night Time.” She showed more range than anyone else tonight, and probably sang better than anyone but Archuleta (yes, the kid’s got a voice–but there’s more to performing than hitting the right notes). Maybe, just maybe she hangs on another week. But she’ll have to beat out Brooke White or Jason Castro to do it. Judging from past shows, that seems unlikely. Too bad. But I hope she finds some strong management, and they push her toward that late 60s, early 70s neo-soul sound for her first CD. She could open for Ryan Shaw. Or do Broadway.

Memphis was a lot of fun. I took a few of your suggestions. We had dry-rub ribs at Rendezvous, watched the ducks and ate a glorious brunch buffet at the Peabody, visited the Civil Rights Museum and Lorraine Motel, hit the Stax Soul Museum, ate lunch (including a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich) at the Arcade Diner, and walked around a bit in the trendy Cooper-Young area. And of course, we had a few drinks and took in some live music on Beale Street.

I’ll have photos later this week. Thanks for all of your ideas. I liked Memphis quite a lot, even though it’s nowhere near the city it once was.