Air America, the two-year-old liberal talk radio network, is seeking bankruptcy protection.

When I returned home Thursday evening, my glasses fogged up as I walked in the door.

That hasn't happened in a while, like, since last winter.

Whatever could it mean?

Still, I suppose it could always be worse.

A coroner has found that the U.S. Marine who shot ITN reporter Terry Lloyd in southern Iraq in 2003 did so unlawfully. Lloyd was an unembedded journalist.

From the BBC:

Italian film-maker Gillo Pontecorvo, who directed The Battle Of Algiers, has died at the age of 86.

Pontecorvo's film depicted the brutality of both sides during the guerrilla uprising against French colonial rule in 1950s Algeria.

Shot like a documentary, the highly influential film was banned in France for some time, while its scenes of torture were cut in the US and Britain.

Twice an Oscar nominee, Pontecorvo also directed Marlon Brando in Queimada.

Later in life, he was director of the Venice Film Festival.

Pontecorvo was a Jew, a communist and an Italian partisan against the fascists in the Second World War, so he had some experience of his own with guerrilla wars.

That may be one reason why The Battle of Algiers is an absolute masterpiece. It's one of the few DVDs I own (the Criterion Collection, no less! :) ).

Here's an earlier blog posting on the film. If you're a serious film fan, you really must see this movie once in your life.

Finally, a snippet from the NYT piece (the whole thing is worth a read):

Mr. Pontecorvo was to lie in wake at City Hall in Rome until Saturday morning. The Italian news agency ANSA said that the government of Algeria had sent a crown in his honor to be placed near the bier.

Check out this post on reporting the number of deaths in Iraq and this one on whether the Beeb is paying too much attention to the North Korean crisis.

Lots of interesting comments on the North Korean thread.

Sir Richard Dannatt, Chief of the General Staff for the British Army, has told a British newspaper that the presence of British soldiers in Iraq is making the security situation worse.

Update: Gen. Dannatt soon clarified in an interview with the BBC.

Update 2: Brit PM Tony Blair tried to spin it that he agreed with Gen. Dannatt.

The LA Times is calling it the Manhattan Project: They have sent three reporters and six editors on a two-month mission to investigate new ways to engage readers both in print and online.

Jon Stewart put author David Mark on the Seat of Heat and asked him to go negative on Bob Woodward.

"Bob Woodward would have you believe that he's a good journalist, but in reality ... your turn," The Daily Show host said in a deep, low negative-ad-voiceover voice.

"In reality he can be seen as a weather vane," said Mark, author of Going Dirty: The Art of Negative Campaigning.

"When Bush is riding high in the polls, he writes nice, laudatory books. When Bush isn't doing so well, he writes really mean, tough attack books. So he just kind of does whatever will sell."

Mark is also former editor-in-chief of Campaigns and Elections, a magazine for political pros.