Around the World Wide Web

1. Byron York writes about the left’s push to use the Imus case to restore the Fairness Doctrine against conservative talk radio.

“It is our hope that [the Imus matter] will begin a broader conversation about the responsibility that news corporations, journalists, and media figures have to the American public,” Brock wrote Thursday. “This is an opportunity for the media to truly raise the bar to a higher standard and return to the fundamentals of journalism.”

For Brock and others, that “opportunity” could involve new government regulation. After the Imus affair, former Democratic presidential candidate Al Sharpton said on CNN, “The question becomes whether or not we are going to have a regulatory policy that goes based on how contrite someone behaves or whether or not they step over the line. Are we going to have policy, or are we going to say, ‘If you say you’re sorry or even convince us you are sorry, policy’s out the window?’”

Without changes in the government regulatory structure, Sharpton argued, “The next guy can do the same thing and use the precedent of Don Imus to say, ‘I can’t be punished.’”

2. Since there are only something like 550 days until the election, Big Lizards is looking at electoral votes if the Republicans run a Thompson-Romney ticket. He says they would get all of the South and a few Great Lakes states that Kerry won in 2004, which would make it impossible for the Democrat to win.

My guess is that whoever the Republicans field, he will demolish the Democrat. I also guess that a Thompson presidency would be pretty much more of the same blend of pragmatism and religion we’ve seen in Bush.

3. Christopher Hitchens writes about France’s move to the right.

4. Noodlefood links to a piece about North Korea’s problems as their citizen-slaves find out how much better the rest of the world is.

5. Joseph Kellard has posted his prize-winning journalism. It is a gripping story of justice.