Best profile of an Olympic athlete: You will be spilling tears when you read this great story about Michigan decathalon competitor Paul Terek and his family’s struggles. (Donations are being accepted by the Patriot Club/Olympic Fund, 31000 Joy Road, Livonia, MI 48150.)

Best take on the 9/11 report: Thomas Barnett calls it a “National Security Self-Help Guide.” Excerpt:

This is America as self-help obsessed: in the end, we decide it was really all our fault, or “a failure of imagination.”

Geez! That’s a line going all the way back (at least) to the investigations over the Apollo 1 launch-pad fire. Couldn’t the Commission at least come up with a new line? Or was that�in itself�a failure of imagination (or more prosaically, a failure of composition).

For now, this whole Commission process reads like a bad Allen Drury novel…

(Hat tip: Alan at The Command Post)

Best good news of the week: Cox & Forkum editorial cartoons get word that the Detroit News and Investor’s Business Daily will both be publishing their work. Congrats!

Best pre-convention gossip: John Tabin has some inside information on two celebrity correspondents assigned to cover the party conventions.

Best commentary on the perils of appeasement: Belmont Club’s trenchant analysis on what Philippine (and now Indonesian) capitulation has wrought. Excerpt:

“The weakness of the Philippine state has created the regional equivalent of Taliban-era Afghanistan, providing an area of chaos in which terrorists can muster unhindered…The main question facing coalition partners USA and Australia is whether to keep working with the Indonesian and the Philippine governments which seem unwilling or unable to face the forces that are slowly tearing them apart; or prepare for a scenario that accepts the failure of these two states.

Best listmania: John Hawkins and his readers compile their top blogs lists at Right Wing News. (Thanks to all who nominated this humble blog!)

Best Berger serving: Scrappleface spoofs: “Berger Returns U.S. Constitution to Archives.”

Best local media takedown: Powerline tackles the Minnesota Star-Tribune editorial board. Excerpt:

The Star Tribune editorial board specializes in contrary-to-fact editorials asserting blatant falsehoods as articles of faith. They recite their daily credo and issue related anathemas. Almost unbelievably, on Thursday the Star Tribune published an editorial criticizing Minnesota’s popular Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty for going to Kosovo this weekend to visit the Minnesota National Guard unit serving there…

Best round-ups of blog commentary on New York Times ombudsman Daniel Okrent’s piece, “Is the New York Times a liberal paper?”: Outside the Beltway and Memeorandum