Eagle—eyed Noel Sheppard, our contributor and also a blogger at the estimable Newsbusters, watched Bill Maher's latest edition of Real Time on HBO. (Noel has a stronger stomach than I do.) Evidently, Bill and his guest Ben Affleck had their heads handed to them by the lone conservative guest Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute, in a discussion of Middle East policy.

I never watch the smirking Maher, but may well catch one of the innumerable re—runs ont he various HBO channels this week.

Hat tip: Larwyn

Thomas Lifson   10 15 06

Update: Reader John Zimmerman writes:

You might want to take a look at http://iraqbodycount.org/, the only comprehensive attempt to track civilain deaths in Iraq. It comes to a "maximum" total of 48,783. For a rebuttal of IBC critics see here.