Strange Love

Ann Coulter's notorious post-Sept. 11 column for National Review Online -- in which she suggested that the proper U.S. response to Muslim terrorists was to "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity" -- is still making waves six months later. But now the controversy features a jaw-dropping twist involving Coulter's love life.

After her Sept. 13 column, the tall, blond right-wing pundit was sacked by NRO when she refused to delete a reference to "swarthy males" in a subsequent column and went on television to accuse National Review of censorship and denounce its editor, Rich Lowry, as a "girly-boy."

But the other day on the NRO Web site, Lowry wrote about various e-mails he had recently received about the war on terrorism: "Lots of sentiment for nuking Mecca. . . . Mecca seems extreme, of course, but then again few people would die and it would send a signal. Religions have suffered catastrophic setbacks before. As for the Saudis, my only thought is that if we're going to hold them responsible for terrorism, we had better start doing it now, not after an even more catastrophic attack."