Still no word from Philip Shropshire on whether he plans to (a) go to Iraq as a human shield at our expense, (b) apologize for ever calling anyone who supports war on Iraq a 'chickenhawk', or (c) try to come up with a sound argument to prove that neither (a) nor (b) is necessary. If he tries the last, he's going to have to do better than Mark Konrad, who thinks I can just go join the Army at 49. The fact that I'm perfectly capable of driving a truck is irrelevant: they have an age-limit for new recruits of 35 or thereabouts. (Of course, if Mark were at all intelligent, he probably wouldn't be a Nazi. That's not an ad hominem, by the way. It's perfectly fair to conclude that someone who volunteers for the bomb squad is not a coward, that those who choose to work in emergency rooms and slaughterhouses are not squeamish, and that those who choose to work in libraries do not crave constant thrills. Choice of profession is significant, and choosing to be a professional Nazi agitator today is a sure sign of stupidity and what the theologians call crass ignorance.)

Apparently Shropshire is still pretending not to have heard of The Shropshire Challenge. Since he's a regular participant on WarbloggerWatch, which lists thirteen sites as 'The Watched', and since six of those thirteen (myself, The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, Tim Blair, Instapundit, PejmanPundit, and VodkaPundit) have already mentioned the challenge, some of them more than once, it's a little hard to believe that he hasn't gotten the word. (The word is of course "Go!".) So how about pledging some money, InstaPundit? (Just kidding. Getting two Instalanches in one day helped bring me a record number of visitors on Friday and Saturday: 3,111 and 1,855, up from the usual high 600s on weekdays and low 400s on weekends. And thanks to the many others who linked to the challenge. The nicest thing I can think of to say is that you all deserve to be counted among 'the watched', too.)