The Decline and Fall of Western Civ for 16 Feb.

She was for cut and run before she was for a slow bleed.
It's the end of the world as we know it...

• The Associated Press reports Democrats pushed a measure critical of President Bush's Iraq policy to the brink of House passage on Friday, the culmination of an extraordinary four-day debate over a war that has taken a comparably low cost in U.S casualties since it began in 2003.
  
  

  "The passage of this legislation will signal a change in direction that will end the fighting and bring our troops home," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in prepared remarks, endorsing the measure that takes issue with Bush's decision to send an additional 21,500 U.S. troops into battle.
  
  "There are serious consequences to our national security if we fail in Iraq," said Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio. "Cutting off funding, limiting military options, or pushing for immediate withdrawal will only make our future more dangerous. It is time to stop the politics, stop the games, stop the finger pointing and do what is best for America."

• Meanwhile, in under-reported news Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told US President George W. Bush by videolink that the first few days of their countries' joint security plan in Baghdad had been a great success, according to AFP.
  
  Reuters reports:
  
  

  "The plan has achieved brilliant success in its early days and the government will deal firmly with any outlaw group, regardless of their affiliation," a statement from the prime minister's office quoted Maliki as telling Bush.

  President Jalal Talabani said on Thursday he believed the militia's leader, anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, had ordered his top lieutenants to leave Iraq. The U.S. military has said Sadr is in Iran, but his aides insist he is in Iraq.
  
  Also of note, AP reports President Bush has gained support for the troop buildup over the past month, an AP-Ipsos poll found.
  
  The president has nudged support for the troop increase to 35 percent from 26 percent in early January. Sixty-three percent of those surveyed still oppose the increase.

• Writing in The Washington Post, Howard Kurtz quotes conservative columnist Michelle Malkin:
  
  

  "They'll ridicule my looks, ridicule my ethnicity, go after my family," the 36-year-old blogger says of her critics. "They've attacked my husband relentlessly. There's a strong sexist strain among my liberal critics, who think it isn't possible I could have gotten anywhere without my Svengali husband, or some white man, embedding ideas in my head."

  Make no mistake, though: This daughter of Filipino immigrants plays pretty rough herself. Whether on her blog, her Internet talk show or her Fox News appearances, Malkin delights in sticking her finger in the eye of the liberal establishment. And she is convinced that her detractors don't play fair.
  
  

  "Particularly when you're a minority conservative," she says, "you get a lot of ugly, hysterical, unhinged attacks, because you're challenging so many liberal myths about what people of color should think."

• An 84-year-old woman accused of attempted rape involving an 11-year-old boy in her foster care has pleaded guilty to a lesser charge after confessing to having sex with the child, prosecutors said Thursday, reports The Associated Press.
  
  

  "Obviously, with this case, there is going to be a lot of disbelief so we wanted make sure people knew it was a confession," Leslie Wolf, chief deputy district attorney for Wasco County said.

• Writing in the Plain Dealer, columnist Michael Scott says a consensus among five Northeast Ohio meteorologists at a panel discussion on climate change is when it comes to the global warming catastrophe, don't get too worked up over it.
  
  

  "We have maybe 100 years of data on a rock that's 6 billion years old," said Johnson, a WEWS Channel 5 weatherman. "Mother Nature tends to even herself out, and the fact is, the Earth is cyclical."

  They cautioned listeners not to put too much stock in what they said was an insufficient history of warming.
  
  

  "The term global warming' strikes fear in the heart of people every time you say it, but it's simply a rise in temperature over time, and it's happened before," said Nolan, meteorologist at WKYC Channel 3. "I'm not sure which is more arrogant for humans: to say we caused it or to say we're going to fix it."

• Last and truly least, Madonna says she is not content to be the Queen of Pop - she wants to be like Gandhi, reports the Press Association.
  
  

  Madonna, 48, said: "For me the best thing in the world is to see something or hear something and go 'damn, I wish I did that, damn, I wish I could do that. That's inspiring'."
  
  She told Sirius Radio in the US: "I want to be like Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, and John Lennon... but I want to stay alive."

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