This is what's inside the link that's supposed to go to the WashPost:

href=""http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30071-2004Aug24.html

Pretty obvious when you see it: Somebody was pasting the URL from a Web browser and missed the target. I do it all the time. Here's Bowser's link:

[a href="" ]By Jonathan Weisman[/a]

The href is empty ("") in both, and when that happens browsers default either to the current page, or to the folder the page is in.

It's a very common mistake, so the coincidence of several reports at once isn't all that remarkable.

I understand, though. First thing I thought of was a recent report of a kind of spyware that takes over links in pages your browser's showing, and overlays ads. The NRO page looks like it's generated by blog software, and any software that allows posting might let a little JavaScript slip through that can take over the page (and do things like what the recent posts and posted-by features on the TOC here do). That's why my software has a pretty obsessive filter to scrub out script from posts.