The White House is making yet another effort at historical revisionism -- by blotting out the stuff it used to be proud of.

Earlier we posted about how the White House disposed of its Mission Accomplished banner from its video archives.

Now we're seeing that the White House is disappearing old speeches. The truly paranoid folks would say that the next step is airbrushing out those politically unsavory characters from photos, like Josef Stalin did. But, these folks already did do something like that, by getting rid of the Mission Accomplished banner.

This is appalling. Does the truth mean nothing? How is it the White House can ask our soldiers to risk their lives for their ideas, and then pretend it never backed those ideas when things go south? Do our soldiers' lives mean so little?

For those who want a thorough look at what went wrong in Iraq, this is a good place to start.

New revenue model for newspapers

America's newspapers are struggling: Many are trying to offer 25-percent profits to shareholders while maintaining readership against the tide of the Internet. Pretty much everyone says this is impossible.

Fortunately, new revenue streams have been identified by newspapers in Communist China, of all places, The Associated Press reports. A reporter there was killed while trying to establish a protection racket:

SHANGHAI -- The savage beating death of a reporter has shone a rare light on the corrupt, money-driven underbelly of Chinese journalism, where many reporters take bribes to write good news and extort companies to suppress their dirty laundry.

President Hu Jintao has ordered a probe into the killing of China Trade News reporter Lan Chengzhang, who Chinese media say may have been trying to collect money from the owner of an illegal coal mine in return for not writing about the business.

Yeah, well, it didn't work out well for the media business in this instance, but the potential revenue is there. The story indicates Chinese reporters could be facing even more severe constraints than the American media.

Protection schemes were of course the realm of the American mafia in its earlier years, before it began moving into other industries. Were the American media to follow in the Mafia's footsteps, perhaps next it could improve capitalism in Cuba, found a money-making city in the desert, and even help rebuild decaying American cities through acquisitions in the sanitation and construction industries. To all this, they would owe entrepreneurial Chinese Communists. Just think of the future that could be built!