By some counts, 99 versions of 17 different products are affected by vulnerabilities disclosed this past week by Microsoft in 12 different vulnerability reports. The updates are all available through the usual channels: Windows Update, Microsoft Update, Software Update Services, and direct downloads through the advisory pages linked to above. As you all know by now, you can't get the updates until Microsoft verifies that you have a genuine copy of Microsoft Windows.  What you don't know is how Microsoft verifies it.

You probably have seen the ads about the "net neutrality" bills before Congress, concerning who gets to manage and set fees for access to the Internet. The House of Representatives has just done the right thing by defeating the so-called net neutrality proposals, and the issue is now before the Senate. The "net neutrality" advocates are a strange coalition of leftist political groups hostile to property rights, self-appointed consumer groups totally ignorant of good economics, and a few large business users of the Internet (such as Google) who want the telecom companies to provide them a free ride for their demands for a more robust network. To understand the fight, you need to be aware of the economic interests of the various players.

Dan Rather's 44-year relationship with CBS News came to an unceremonious end this week.  This should remind us that of the many differences between the Vietnam war and the war in Iraq, the three most important are talk radio, Fox News, and the Internet. Mr. Rather must think his fate unfair. He was in effect fired when the documents on which he based an expose of President Bush's National Guard service were shown to be clumsy forgeries.  But Walter Cronkite, who told a much bigger lie, is still an esteemed figure at CBS. The one great similarity between Vietnam and Iraq is that our enemies, despairing of victory on the battlefield, sought to win with a propaganda campaign.  In Vietnam, this strategy succeeded.  If it fails in Iraq, it will be chiefly because of the emergence of the new media.

There are 435 Congresscritters, and choosing who is the biggest jerk among them is not easy, for there is a multitude of choices. Many would opt for John Murtha (D-PA), but he's just the most senile.  That's not a joke - he's age 74 and actually going senile.  In a recent interview with Tim Russert, he thought Okinawa was close to Iraq, so our troops could be "redeployed" there.  Okinawa is 6,000 miles from Iraq. He's reached that stage of senility called second-childhood, where the patient acts increasingly juvenile - like saying the most outrageous things possible in order to get attention, even if they are treasonous and spits on his own military record. Some, of course, would choose anti-American racist screwballs like Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), or Maxine Waters (D-CA).  But they're just bit-player kooks. If you took a vote among the Congress members themselves for the biggest jerk among them, the most likely winner would be James Sensenbrenner (R-WI).

 The mullahs have had a lot of bad news in recent days - news with a particularly sinister aura, in fact. So sinister that they are asking themselves what they have done to incur the Wrath of Allah.

I kid you not. First is the loss of one of their terrorist stars, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the deus ex machina of the terror war against us in Iraq. Not only does that deprive the mullahs of a prime instrument for generating Sunni/Shia civil war, but it is a serious blow to recruitment throughout the terror network.