It had been a while, so I trekked over to Andrew Sullivan's weblog today.

Big mistake.

In addition to the usual junk about how Europeans are anti-American, Europeans are anti-Semitic, liberals are Stalinists, liberals are anti-American, liberals are anti-Semitic, liberals are anti-gay, etc., I saw that Sullivan linked to Rush Limbaugh, of all people, specifically, his posting of an "extremely cool photo" taken from the ill-fated Space Shuttle Columbia.

What the hell, I'll bite. (But I won't link. Principles, you know.)

And yes, it is a remarkable photograph. Here's how Limbaugh describes it:

This is the most incredible photo. It was taken from the shuttle Columbia on its last mission and relayed by satellite, which is why we have it. What you see is the sunset in western Europe. There are no clouds in this picture. You can see much of Africa, all of western Europe, half of it at nighttime because the sun has set, the other half in broad daylight. You can clearly see Great Britain, Scotland, the British Isles, Spain, the Sahara desert. It's an amazing photo, folks.

"Great Britain, Scotland, the British Isles."

Rush, that smaller island to the left there? You see it? The green one?

We call it Ireland.

(Thanks for the genes, Mom.)

[Post-publication addendum: Turns out there's a good reason why this "photograph" is so remarkable. It's a fake.]