A cautionary tale for those on the world stage who still believe that they can enable the Bush Administration’s militarism, and then waltz off that stage to gentle applause: Tony Blair’s Yale commencement speech was laced with catcalls and anti-war protests from the audience, the second of two major speeches since his retirement to be so marred. Students smuggled banners under their robes, apparently.

A woman in a headscarf stood throughout, not ten feet from the former Prime Minister and poodle, holding a sign reading “Peace Now.” The Daily Mail sums up the incident by saying that Blair was “barracked” at the event. VDB has no idea what that means, frankly.

But it sounds like it smarted some, and that’s the important thing, in this particular case.