Here's a piece from the Wall Street Journal by Mary Anastasia O'Grady on why Hugo Chavez and that crazy Iranian president whose name I can't spell are dangerous dirtbags.

This is Victor Davis Hanson in National Review on why Iran and North Korea are scary.

Oxford-Harvard superstar historian Niall Ferguson has this future-virtual-history piece on, guess what, Iran, in the Daily Telegraph.

Ex-radical leftist Christopher Hitchens says Al Qaeda is finished in Iraq in Slate.

Back to Iran. Here's Mark Steyn in the Daily Telegraph.

Aaron Mannes in the Daily Standard says Chavez is an anti-Semitic thug.

On the lighter side, this is Thomas Brown in the Telegraph on etiquette classes in China.

Urban Legends Reference Pages has this report on a humorous list of "New Rules for 2006." They're not by George Carlin, they're by Bill Maher.