A couple friends were visiting on Christmas day, and asked me what I thought of the French riots, now that they were over and we had a little perspective. I replied that I wasn't at all sure that they were over, just that they weren't being reported much any more. Turns out I was right, if this report is correct.

It's simply become part of the media background now, and is no longer news, any more than gang murders in the inner cities. In fact, if there weren't such a need to continue to make Iraq look like an irremediable, unmitigated ongoing disaster for a hated Republican administration, the occasional terrorist bombings there wouldn't (and shouldn't) any longer be news either.

Your sentence: "the occasional terrorist bombings there wouldn't (and shouldn't) any longer be news either" makes you sound, perhaps unintentionally, blase' about terrorist bombings.

If terrorist bombings aren't a big deal or aren't newsworthy, what justification have we to curtail civil liberties at home and wage war in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places?

I didn't say that terrorist bombings aren't a big deal, per se. If there were terrorist bombings in Omaha, that would be a big deal, from both a news and a policy standpoint. That there are terrorist bombings in Iraq is, at this point, just the status quo for the region.

A couple of other bloggers have remarked on the oft missed point that even with the riots, the number of car burnings for those parts of Paris was about average.

There are some seriously unpleasant parts of Paris.