Steven Den Beste reads the entrails. The cloudburst is coming.

Meanwhile, the peace marchers are putting on their warpaint, (er, peacepaint?) Where did they get the idea that free speech requires acting like a drunken football fan, with facepaint, weird costumes and removing clothes? These practices attract media attention, but they don't really persuade thoughtful people.

What I also find puzzling is the belief among these people have that elected leaders are bound to follow their demands, merely because they spoke out. I've seen this in letters to the editor and now from Natalie Maines, of the Blixy Chicks. It also seems prevalent in the shallow gene pool of the mainstream media. So many journalists seem to think that the indispensibiltity of the U.N. is self-evident. They never recall that the U.N. has only authorized military force two times during its existence, in Korea and in driving Saddam out of Kuwait. We see today how well its approach in both cases has served the cause of peace.

Every weekday I watch Brit Hume's "all stars" discuss the point. Mara Liasson is a very bright and well-educated person, but she seems constitutionally incapable of understanding that diplomacy sometimes fails or that some diplomats are not motivated by humanitarian ideals. Thus, when they see a leader like President Bush, they can only interpret his actions as ignorant or base.