Today is leap day. And since there weren’t very many blogs four years ago, it’s essentially the first ever “free” day of blogging.
Remember, though, you get what you pay for.

If you’ve gotten to this page, you probably know all this stuff. But for any blog reading novices out there, Marcia at The Indiana Law Blog has written up a nice explainer on blogs.
[Note: I don’t have a calendar or use the category feature here.]

Thomas points out continuing commercialization of the Temple, 2000 years later.

Iranian radio reports that Osama bin Laden was captured “a long time ago.” The Pentagon, Pakistan, and even one of the sources for the story are denying that bin Laden is actually in custody, and I doubt people would keep something like that secret for very long. But it is conceivable, as some stories have reported, that we have located bin Laden, are containing him within a small area, and will move to haul him in at a more “convenient” time. Thus I don’t think we can easily dismiss the motives attributed here:

The report said bin Laden had been in custody for a period of time, but that President Bush was withholding any announcement until closer to November elections.
“Osama bin Laden has been arrested a long time ago, but Bush is intending to use it for propaganda maneuvering in the presidential election,” the radio report said.

Call me cynical.

Former United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix thinks he was bugged too, though he doesn’t have conclusive proof of it:

The United Nations spying row widened yesterday when its former weapons inspector, Hans Blix, told the Guardian he suspected both his UN office and his home in New York were bugged in the run-up to the Iraq war.
In an exclusive interview, Mr Blix said he expected to be bugged by the Iraqis, but to be spied upon by the US was a different matter. He described such behaviour as “disgusting”, adding: “It feels like an intrusion into your integrity in a situation when you are actually on the same side.”

If our intelligence had been keeping as close a tabs on what was going on in Iraq as we apparently kept on the U.N. people, things might be significantly better over there now.