Two pieces from the Reason website are well worth pondering at length. Jacob Sullum has a nice word to say about Arnold Shwarzenegger's bid to be Californian governor, which is perfectly understandable inasmuch as the "Austrian Oak" took time off to attend, of all things, a Reason Foundation banquet.

Chuck Freund has a worthy piece on why Joseph Stalin wanted to kill John Wayne. One of Chuck's operating theories is that he wanted to do so to save the career of Johnny Weissmuller, who, after his years as the one-and-only Tarzan, was by then falling off the vines.

A footnote: My grandmother was once riding with Weissmuller in a London taxi, when for no reason at all he let out that Tarzan yell. Her reaction, decades later: "He wasn't a very bright man, you know." Maybe not, but making Cheetah look smarter was good for box office.

And since we're on the subject of Chuck, he wrote this fine commentary for the Daily Star on the premature burial of Arab culture.