That's Rich:
National Review's editor suggests nuking Mecca. We're not kidding.

Brief history lesson: Ann Coulter, the notorious bomb-throwing lawyer/pundit, wrote a post-September 11 column for National Review Online in which she cautioned restraint in the coming months.

No, wait a second, that's not right. Coulter took a somewhat stronger line on what she desired of America's collective response. We had been "invaded by a fanatical murderous cult" -- Muslims -- and should therefore "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity" (though she later explained that such conversion should be voluntary).

The scuttlebutt from that and future columns got Coulter canned by the National Review. Online Editor Jonah Goldberg explained that Coulter wasn't fired for her over-the-top warmongering. Rather, "We ended the relationship because she behaved with a total lack of professionalism, friendship, and loyalty," Goldberg said. Most people, however, assumed that the brass had made a decision to tone down the excessive saber rattling.

If so, then editor and television talking head Rich Lowry missed that memo. Recently on National Review's new Web log, "The Corner," Lowry addressed the question of what sort of retaliatory measures should be taken in the case of a nuclear detonation -- probably of a "dirty bomb" -- on U.S. soil. Judging from the e-mail he's received, there's "lots of sentiment for nuking Mecca." Nor, in Lowry's eyes, was such an idea nuts. He allowed that "Mecca seems extreme, of course" -- of course -- "but then again few people would die and it would send a signal."