March 31, 2007

BOBBY JINDAL saves Louisiana?

SOCKS, SCISSORS, PAPER: More on the Sandy Berger story. "Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., is charging a cover-up by the Justice Department in connection with the 2003 theft and destruction of top secret documents by Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger."

MICKEY KAUS: "Do Times reporters talk only to the interest group that hands them the study? [At least they weren't having sex--ed Yes, then they might be biased!]"

IT'S CORN AND MINITER AGAIN -- only this time without Miniter, who's in Turkey, and is replaced by Eli Lake. Still, it's better than Hardball!

FREE GRANNY DUNHAM? Or just leave her alone? I'd go with number two.

A U.S. / CHINA tariff war?

I LIKE BIG KNOBS: They've put my next column online early, and it's about the superiority of traditional tactile user interfaces -- like knobs and dials -- over modern systems using nested menus and lots of tiny buttons. (Yes, I've ranted on this topic before, but the designers don't seem to have caught on.)

This also produced an interesting discussion on Slashdot, with most discussants seeming to agree with my position. I especially liked this observation. It certainly rings true in my experience.

UPDATE: Gerard van der Leun thinks there's something funny about the intro to this post, but I don't see what's funny about Mackie controllers.

SCOTT ADAMS: What's your "permanent age"? I think I'm 32.

Of course, from some people it's always fifth grade.

POLITICAL PROFILING AT THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT? Or statistical illiteracy on the part of those making the claim?

1000 WORDS: Part of it's the pixelation, but it looks a bit like a romantic painting.

COOKWARE UPDATE: Yesterday's nonstick post led to numerous reader emails recommending seasoned cast iron as durable nonstick cookware. Typical was this one from reader Craig Forrest, who's a big fan of Lodge Logic cookware -- hey, it's made in Tennessee, so I can't complain -- and writes:

If you want good, long-lasting nonstick cookware, you can’t beat traditional cast-iron cookware. Cheaper than modern non-stick stuff, and you can’t make anything stick to it once it is fully seasoned.

Lodge is what I buy: http://www.lodgemfg.com

You can usually get it cheap at Wal-Mart or on Amazon; I recently purchased my wife this 7-quart enamel Dutch Oven that is beautiful as well as easy to clean.

That's good stuff, and I had a nice Lodge Logic skillet for a while. It was cheap, and nonstick. However, a few trips through the dishwasher -- and as I've mentioned before, in my house everything winds up in the dishwasher eventually, despite my best efforts -- and it wasn't seasoned anymore. Others who have more control over their kitchens may want to give the cast-iron stuff a try. It's cheap, and good.

MORE CELEBRITY GLOBAL WARMING HYPOCRISY:

His serious aviation habit means he is hardly the best person to lecture others on the environment. But John Travolta went ahead and did it anyway.

The 53-year-old actor, a passionate pilot, encouraged his fans to "do their bit" to tackle global warming. . . .

Clocking up at least 30,000 flying miles in the past 12 months means he has produced an estimated 800 tons of carbon emissions – nearly 100 times the average Briton's tally.

Travolta made his comments this week at the British premiere of his movie, Wild Hogs.

He spoke of the importance of helping the environment by using "alternative methods of fuel" – after driving down the red carpet on a Harley Davidson. . . . Travolta's five private planes – a customised £2million Boeing 707, three Gulfstream jets and a Lear jet – are kept at the bottom of his garden in the US next to a private runway.

Don't miss the accompanying photo.

A WHIFF OF GUNPOWDER: Roll Call has an article on gun lobbying. It's subscription only, but here's a key bit:

Any lingering doubt about the gun lobby’s continued juice under Democratic rule was laid to rest Thursday. House Republicans, maneuvering to derail a bill to grant Congressional voting rights to the District of Columbia, inserted a provision in their alternative measure that would dramatically scale back the city’s gun restrictions.

But nervous that conservative members of their Caucus who favor gun rights could switch sides and hand the Republicans a victory, House Democratic leaders pulled the bill from consideration — and Republicans gloated. “Fearing that many in their party would support Second Amendment rights for District residents, the Democratic Leadership shamefully exploited a rule to kill debate and postpone the vote indefinitely,” House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a statement.

Though the NRA has pushed in the past to roll back the district’s gun restrictions, Cox said his group had no hand in the effort on the voting rights bill. Nevertheless, he said its fate testifies to the potency of the issue. “What you’ve seen is the political reality that the Second Amendment is a major political force, not only on Election Day, but throughout the legislative process,” he said.

It certainly seems that way. I wonder how Jim Webb would have voted? Would he vote differently today than last week?

UPDATE: Michael Geisler, who doesn't understand the conditional, writes: "Have you figured out yet that Senators can't vote on House measures you dumbass, you?"

Would have. Not did. Got it?

ANOTHER UPDATE: XRLQ emails: "Has Michael Geisler figured out yet that Senators *can* vote on bills that originate in the House, and in fact must do so before said bills can reach the President’s desk for signature, he dumbass, he?"

Apparently not. Par for the course from my critics, alas.

IN BAGHDAD, OMAR FADHIL'S HOUSE IS SEARCHED. The soldiers see the laptops and digital cameras and one observes:

These are bloggers, dude; cover your face if you don’t want to be seen nude on the internet tomorrow!

Heh. He did get a photo.

THE CARNIVAL OF CARS IS UP: And yes, I've been irretrievably lame on carnivals lately. But there's always BlogCarnival.com, and the list of highlights over in my right sidebar. Click here and look right.

IS A RECESSION ON THE WAY? James Pethokoukis says not if consumers can help it:

And indeed, real consumer spending rose 0.2 percent in foul February. Even a so-so March, JPMorgan added, "would imply a 3.6 percent pace for the quarter. There now appears significant upside risk to our 3 percent consumer spending forecast for the quarter." As it is, real consumer spending has increased at a 3.7 percent annual clip the past three months.

So there you go. Americans are working, getting paid good dough, and spending it. (The big surge in government tax revenues is another sign that there is plenty of juice out there.) That points to an economy that will continue to expand–2006 fourth-quarter gross domestic product was just revised up to 2.5 percent from 2.2 percent–going forward.

Oh, and this just in: The Chicago Purchasing Managers Index posted its largest one-month movement ever in March, rising to 61.7 from 47.9, thanks to big jumps in new orders, production, and backlogs.

That means that it's time for economists and pundits to go back to worrying about inflation!

IF FRED THOMPSON RUNS, will that knock his episodes of Law and Order off TV? Jonathan Adler looks at the question.

THE DIANNE FEINSTEIN SCANDAL: The San Francisco Chronicle is reportedly investigating.

March 30, 2007

SELECTIVE REPORTING ON PORK?

ALAS, YES:

African leaders often point fingers at the West for "not doing enough." But last week's meeting of the Southern African Development Community shows why sensible wealthy nations are reluctant to give aid.

For at that meeting, some of Africa's so-called leaders disgraced themselves by endorsing the brutal, murderous regime of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe.

Mugabe's 27 years of misrule have taken a country that was once prosperous — the breadbasket of Africa, it was called — and turned it into a poverty-stricken hellhole rife with famine, genocide and terror, and lacking rule of law.

Indeed.

THE .XXX TOP LEVEL DOMAIN gets rejected again.

AT POPULAR MECHANICS, a response to Rosie O'Donnell.

UPDATE: More on Rosie O'Donnell, here.

FIGHT THE POWER! By subverting American Idol?

I mean, sure, Ann Althouse will be pissed, but . . . .

RAND SIMBERG WRITES ON DIY ROCKET SCIENCE, for Popular Mechanics. (Via, er, Rand Simberg.)

LIGHTBULB-BLOGGING, from Eric Scheie. He likes his compact fluorescents.

MORE BUZZ on a Fred Thompson candidacy.

DOCTOR WHO MEETS THE BEATLES (Via BoingBoing).

EUGENE VOLOKH LOOKS AT overheated judicial rhetoric. It doesn't produce great confidence in the judiciary.

THIS SOUNDS LIKE GOOD NEWS: Taliban flee Afghan-led NATO offensive:

Complete success is being claimed for the largest Afghan-led operation yet against the Taliban.

Afghan army forces and police have now purged the Nad Ali district of Helmand of 400 Taliban fighters, following a series of chaotic battles.

Allied commanders estimated 70 Taliban fighters were killed in the fighting, while many others fled or gave up their weapons.

Locals said that the dead included at least one senior commander, Mullah Abdul Bary.

"Of course there are some Taliban left in here, but they have dropped their weapons and they are hiding," said Colonel Rasoul, the commander of the 3rd Kandak, the best regular army unit in the fledgling Afghan security forces.

I hope the news stays good.

DER SPIEGEL:

The Germans have believed in many things in the course of their recent history. They've believed in colonies in Africa and in the Kaiser. They even believed in the Kaiser when he told them that there would be no more political parties, only soldiers on the front.

Not too long afterwards, they believed that Jews should be placed into ghettos and concentration camps because they were the enemies of the people. Then they believed in the autobahn and that the Third Reich would ultimately be victorious. A few years later, they believed in the Deutsche mark. They believed that the Berlin Wall would be there forever and that their pensions were safe. They believed in recycling as well as in cheap jet travel. They even believed in a German victory at the soccer World Cup.

Now they believe that the United States is a greater threat to world peace than Iran. This was the by-no-means-surprising result of a Forsa opinion poll commissioned by Stern magazine. Young Germans in particular -- 57 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds, to be precise -- said they considered the United States more dangerous than the religious regime in Iran.

The German political establishment, which will no doubt loudly lament the result of the poll, is largely responsible for this wave of anti-Americanism. For years the country's foreign ministers fed the Germans the fairy tale of what they called a "critical dialogue" between Europe and Iran. It went something like this: If we are nice to the ayatollahs, cuddle up to them a bit and occasionally wag our fingers at them when they've been naughty, they'll stop condemning their women to death for "unchaste behavior" and they'll stop building the atom bomb.

That plan failed at some point -- an outcome, incidentally, that Washington had long anticipated. Iran continues to work away unhindered on its nuclear program, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reacts to UN demands with an ostentatious show of ignorance. The UN gets upset and drafts a resolution.

Read the whole thing, which also has some interesting thoughts on German anti-Americanism and its dangers.

DIVINE: My not so subtle begging did the trick, as a big box of chocolate-covered cherries showed up in the mail today. They're beautiful -- and delicious!

MARINES UNFAZED BY CHLORINE GAS. Bill Ardolino reports.

UPDATE: John Weidner has some perspective.

A BLOGGING FIRST: Captain Ed is liveblogging his wife's kidney transplant. Send your prayers and best wishes.

WE HAVEN'T HEARD MUCH OF THIS, but finally someone is complaining that the Iranians are violating international law by parading prisoners on TV.

International law is rapidly becoming a joke because of double standards. And, as noted, because of its enforcement problem. At a guess, we're likely heading toward a regime of strict reciprocity, as that's all that can work in such a degraded environment.

UPDATE: A few emailers are suggesting that there's some sort of contradiction here in my pointing this out, as if I'd never discussed the Geneva Conventions before. But, of course, the point is the double standard: the Geneva Conventions never seem to do our guys any good. Our enemies don't obey them, and our critics use them -- even when they don't apply -- as a way to call American troops and their friends torturers and war criminals. That's what I meant by "degraded environment," which aptly describes the political and intellectual environment in which such critics operate. As I've observed in the past, we don't operate in an environment of reciprocity now. As Professor Kenneth Anderson has noted, the Geneva Conventions tend to serve more as a source of urban legends for anti-American and anti-Bush writers who often don't even know, or care, what the Conventions say.

A LOOK AT YOUR IMMINENT ROBOTIC FUTURE, from Daniel Wilson. Upside: Less dog poo!

ANDY BOWERS, ET AL., review Rudy Giuliani's first campaign ad.

COOKWARE UPDATE: I mentioned this nonstick pan that's cheap and allegedly metal-utensil safe a while back. Months later, it remains unscratched despite the Insta-Wife's regular use. That's pretty much a miracle, so I thought I'd note it.

HEH: A look at the RIAA's lawsuit decision matrix.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE:

The federal agency that tracked pork-barrel spending during the 12 years of the Republican congressional majority has discontinued the practice since Democrats took power, riling lawmakers suspicious of the timing and concerned about the pace of fat being added to bills.

"To me, something doesn't smell right," said Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican. "I just hope no one is pressuring" the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

While not blaming the Democratic leadership, Mr. DeMint added: "I guess if you're looking for a motive, you'd have to look in that direction."

CRS, a nonpartisan agency of the Library of Congress created to conduct research for members of Congress on legislative issues, changed its policy in February -- a month after Democrats took control of the Congress and vowed to curb the number of special-interest projects inserted into spending bills or even reports that don't require a vote.

Seems pretty fishy to me, and I wonder why it's not getting more attention.

MORE GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS, from Jules Crittenden.

A ROSIE O'DONNELL MELTDOWN: "I’m not exaggerating when I say that this is the video against which all future Rosie clips will be compared."

CRITICISM OF KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON'S BILL to repeal the D.C. gun ban.

THE LYNCHBURG, VIRGINIA NEWSPAPER ASKS: "Tell us, Sen. Webb, do you pack heat on the floor?"

Would a "yes" really hurt him with voters? I doubt it . . . .

JOHN TAMMES ROUNDS UP more news from Afghanistan that you may have missed.

"PRISSY AND PURITANICAL." Best line in the comments: "If they were only drunks, at least a few of them would become more pleasant."

IF THIS IS TRUE, IS THE BLOGOSPHERE DOOMED? "Nobody wants to read a fisk of a fisk, I assume."

MICHAEL TOTTEN MEETS UP with Iran's revolutionary liberals.

JAMES JOYNER: "Glen Bolger of Public Opinion Strategies* has announced the results of a telephone survey conducted for the Republican National Committee of 800 registered voters from March 25-27, 2007. They found a majority opposed to the provisions of the Iraq War Supplemental Spending bill that just passed both Houses of Congress but faces an almost certain veto by President Bush."

AUSTIN BAY ON IRAN'S KEYSTONE KOPS MOMENT: "Iran initially gave coordinates (the correct coordinates) that placed the action in Iraqi waters. Iran later provided new coordinates, conveniently inside Iranian territory."

IN IT FOR THE LONG HAUL . . . er, until the long haul actually, you know, happens. Here's what Chuck Hagel and Joe Biden said in 2002:

Although no one doubts our forces will prevail over Saddam Hussein's, key regional leaders confirm what the Foreign Relations Committee emphasized in its Iraq hearings last summer: The most challenging phase will likely be the day after -- or, more accurately, the decade after -- Saddam Hussein.

Once he is gone, expectations are high that coalition forces will remain in large numbers to stabilize Iraq and support a civilian administration. That presence will be necessary for several years, given the vacuum there, which a divided Iraqi opposition will have trouble filling and which some new Iraqi military strongman must not fill.

So, it was a project for a decade then. But now it's cut-and-run. (Via The Corner).

FRENCH LITERATURE ON liberty and the right to arms.

RICHARD MINITER IS IN TURKEY, and reporting on the Turks, Iraq, and the PKK.

MICKEY KAUS ON GERRYMANDER REFORM: "Two-thirds of California "likely voters" support a plan to turn over redistricting to "an independent commission of citizens." That seems to be slightly higher than previous polls. [Via Bill Bradley's New West Notes]. We'll see if Bill Clinton moneybuddy Stephen Bing and Nancy Pelosi can find a way to block reform this time."

THOUGHTS ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT, from Jonah Goldberg:

Of course, there has always been a minority of liberals who’ve shown a willingness to admit, often reluctantly, that the Constitution can approve of something they disapprove of. Liberal journalist Michael Kinsley famously quoted a colleague as saying, “If liberals interpreted the Second Amendment the way they interpret the rest of the Bill of Rights, there would be law professors arguing that gun ownership is mandatory.” And in 1989, Sanford Levinson penned a Yale Law Review article tellingly titled “The Embarrassing Second Amendment.”

Such honesty has proved contagious. As Brookings Institution scholar Benjamin Wittes chronicles in the current edition of The New Republic, various liberal legal scholars have come to grudgingly accept that the Second Amendment’s meaning and intent include the individual right to own a gun. “(T)he amendment achieves its central purpose by assuring that the federal government may not disarm individual citizens without some unusually strong justification,” writes no less than the dean of liberal legal scholars, Laurence Tribe. Tribe had to update his textbook on the Constitution to account for the growing consensus that — horror! — Americans do have a constitutional right to own a gun. It’s not an absolute right, of course. But no right is.

Read the whole thing. And law professors arguing for mandatory gun ownership? Don't be ridiculous!

SATURN'S HEXAGON:

The best theory I’ve come up with so far, after brushing up on von Daniken’s “Chariots of the Gods,” is that it’s the Hex Nut of the Giants, affixed to the end of a massive bolt that’s holding the planet together. I haven’t worked out yet how a race of titanic engineers managed to insert the bolt at Saturn’s south pole. Nor have I identified the location of their hardware store, but we need to start looking for it right away, because NASA’s video shows that it’s swirling counterclockwise dangerously near what looks to me like the end of the bolt. If this thing keeps unscrewing . . . .

I think it's the walls of an alien base.

CHARLIE ROSE ON the science of longevity.

MAKING YOUR HOME RELATIONSHIP-READY: Though the barber chair sounds kind of cool.

HARVESTING ALGAE ENERGY for pond-powered biofuels:

The science is simple: Algae need water, sunlight and carbon dioxide to grow. The oil they produce can then be harvested and converted into biodiesel; the algae’s carbohydrate content can be fermented into ethanol. Both are much cleaner-burning fuels than petroleum-based diesel or gas.

The reality is more complex. Trying to grow concentrations of the finicky organism is a bit like trying to balance the water in a fish tank. It’s also expensive. The water needs to be just the right temperature for algae to proliferate, and even then open ponds can become choked with invasive species. Atmospheric levels of CO2 also aren’t high enough to spur exponential growth.

Solix addresses these problems by containing the algae in closed “photobioreactors”—triangular chambers made from sheets of polyethylene plastic (similar to a painter’s dropcloth)—and bubbling supplemental carbon dioxide through the system. Eventually, the source of the CO2 will be exhaust from power plants and other industrial processes, providing the added benefit of capturing a potent greenhouse gas before it reaches the atmosphere.

Read the whole thing.

March 29, 2007

OXBLOG: Our conference call with McCain. Who knew that "hot lesbians" would come up?

A MORMON CONSPIRACY SO VAST -- revealed!

JOURNALISTS ON THE JOB: "Questionable claim unquestioned."

"WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED to 'name, rank, and serial number?'"

"International law" is only a tool to bash the United States and its allies. It's not meant to actually protect people. Except the enemies of civilization. Just ask the folks in Darfur.

OKAY, I'VE NEVER ACTUALLY SEEN BEDTIME FOR BONZO, but David Boaz says it's better than advertised: "I wonder how many liberal journalists have ever watched Bedtime for Bonzo. It’s actually quite funny to see Reagan as a young liberal college professor trying to prove the 'nurture' side of the nature-vs.-nurture and saying that there are no bad kids, just bad environments."

Maybe I should order it! (Via Jesse Walker).

A.C. KLEINHEIDER: "I grew up in New Jersey and I will tell you right now, there is nothing, and I mean nothing worse than toll roads. There are reasons that people migrate down South from the Yankee north. I am sure no one has ever moved out the North explicitly because of toll roads but they are a symptom of a greater disease."

When I lived in Connecticut, an anti-toll group noted that the toll revenue barely sufficed to pay for the toll collections. The response: "It produces jobs!" It's like Bastiat's "negative railway" without the humor.

BIPARTISAN RECOGNITION OF D.C. GUN-LAW STUPIDITY: Democrat Taylor Marsh writes; "The incident surrounding Senator James Webb not only became a one-liner in Bush's stand up last night, but it has been illuminating. The D.C. gun laws, one of which was recently overturned by the Court of Appeals after 30 years on the books, sound like the most ridiculous set of laws ever to be enacted. I mean really, you can bring an unloaded gun into the Capitol but you can't travel through the D.C. streets with that same gun on the way to the Capitol?"

UPDATE: Guns and Poses.

SMEARS AGAINST IRAQ THE MODEL: And this response.

Is there any enemy of America that the left won't side with? Or any friend that the left won't oppose? No.

OVER AT OPINIO JURIS, an interesting online symposium on challenges to public international law.

One challenge, it seems to me, is the prevalence of double standards.

UPDATE: Ouch: "If the standards are not consistent, it is simply not a regime of law, is it? It is a fig leaf for something completely different and, inevitably, something far less benign."

ANOTHER MODEST STEP FORWARD FOR CIVIL RIGHTS: Texas' governor Rick Perry has signed the "no retreat" law.

PROTECTING THE READERS FROM FACTS THEY DON'T NEED: At the L.A. Times, where readers can always count on that kind of protection!

AL GORE as Clarence Darrow? It's not an analogy that I would have thought of.

I DON'T THINK THIS PHENOMENON IS CENTERED IN WASHINGTON, THOUGH: Human evolution is accelerating.

PORK WINS, troops lose.

THE GENEVA CONVENIENCE: Seldom has the double standard been so clearly illustrated.

GOOD: "Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) introduced the District of Columbia Personal Protection Act of 2007, a bill to restore Second Amendment rights in Washington, D.C."

I wonder if Jim Webb will cosponsor.

DIANNE FEINSTEIN blazes a trail for women.

WHEN ANTIBIOTICS DON'T WORK: This sounds promising. Let's hope it pans out.

UPDATE: Link was bad before. Works now. Sorry!

"LIKE WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT:" An appropriate motto for the National Sarcasm Society.

I actually hear it in the voice of SpongeBob's "Squidward," but that's probably just me.

THE JIM WEBB / PHILLIP THOMPSON GUN ARREST STORY has had the salutary effect of bringing more attention to the District of Columbia's silly gun laws. The Washington Post headlines its story this way: You Can Bring Gun to Capitol, But Not Through D.C. and observes:

The arrest this week of Phillip Thompson, an aide to Sen. James Webb (D-Va.) who carried a loaded pistol into a Senate office building, brought to light a contradiction between the regulations governing the Capitol grounds and the laws covering District streets.

The Capitol grounds are federal property and not subject to the District's strict gun laws, which generally prohibit firearms.

Although some people are allowed to bring guns into the Capitol, they cannot legally get them there, said Lt. Jon Shelton, the longtime head of the D.C. police department's gun unit.

"They can't helicopter them in," Shelton said.

Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Terrance W. Gainer said he would advise lawmakers to "abide by D.C. laws" when not on Capitol grounds. He said members of Congress who want guns at the Capitol should ask police to transport the weapons for them.

Jeez. Though it seems to me that this may violate the right-to-travel provisions of the Firearms Owners' Protection Act of 1986. I'm not an expert here, but I doubt that the D.C. police are, either.

Meanwhile, Timothy Noah, in Slate, parses Webb's statements and observes:

To one of the reporters present, this sounded as though Webb were saying not only that he carried a gun with him when he was in Virginia, where it's legal, but also that he carried a gun with him when he was in D.C., where it's not. (D.C.'s handgun ban was recently struck down by the D.C. Court of Appeals, but it remains in force while the city government seeks a review by the full D.C. Circuit.) The reporter therefore asked, "Do you, senator, feel that you are above Washington, D.C.'s gun law?" Webb replied: "I'm not going to comment in any level in terms of how I provide for my own security." Webb then reaffirmed his belief in the Second Amendment; said he couldn't comment on any aspect of Thompson's case; denied, bafflingly, that he ever gave the weapon to Thompson (Did that mean he gave it to another aide who in turn gave it to Thompson?); and stated, most bafflingly of all, "I have never carried a gun in the Capitol complex." Was Webb saying he's carried a gun elsewhere in the District of Columbia? His office won't answer that question.

Webb's silence increases the suspicion that he either has broken or continues to break the D.C. law, more or less daring the local authorities to do anything about it. That could be posturing; as Dana Milbank points out in the March 28 Washington Post, nobody ever lost a vote in the state of Virginia by thumbing his nose at gun control. Legally, though, Webb's evasiveness constitutes probable cause, entitling the next D.C. cop Webb encounters within city limits (but outside the Capitol) to frisk him. That's probably the last thing D.C.'s new mayor, Adrian Fenty, and his new chief of police, Cathy Lanier, would like to see happen. I therefore recommend that Fenty or Lanier phone Webb and ask the senator straight out whether he intends in the future to obey D.C.'s gun laws. (Figuring out whether Webb has broken these laws in the past is the job of Thompson's prosecutors.) If Webb answers anything other than "yes," then Lanier should dispatch a police officer to frisk Webb at the senator's next public appearance outside the Capitol. If Webb is carrying a handgun, that police officer should arrest him. Sounds absurd, I know. But how can the D.C. government do otherwise while on a daily basis it arrests less-well-dressed young black men for the very same offense?

There's a solution to these absurdities -- adopt a sensible gun law in Washington, D.C. The laws of neighboring Virginia -- or, heck, Tennessee -- would provide a good model. That would make it easy and legal for law-abiding citizens to carry guns, without having to rely on the political clout of being a U.S. Senator to avoid police harassment. After all, reliance on that sort of clout isn't very populist.

Webb has said he's for liberal laws on gun carriage, and, I believe, for national reciprocity laws that would make states recognize one another's carry permits. So let's see less talk about legislation on the subject and more action. Then we won't have to worry about this sort of thing happening again.

On a humorous note, elsewhere in Slate Webb's comments are parsed differently: "Coincidentally, in the new film Shooter, Ned Beatty plays a U.S. senator who says, 'I don't carry a gun,' and then pulls out a Beretta 92."

UPDATE: The gunnies weigh in! First, a humorous comment from reader George Lukes:

Ned Beatty's character spoke the truth. He wasn't carrying a gun, only a poorly designed gun wannabe, the Beretta 92.

Ouch! There are people who like 'em, but I'd prefer a Sig, a Glock, or a model 1911 .45. Still, it's a gun, sort of. And reader Michael Seifert writes:

Some observations I have not seen elsewhere.

1. Isn’t part of this story irresponsibility? As a former Boy Scout Marksman, I was drilled on not only the proper shooting of a firearm, but it’s handling, transportation and storage. A loaded handgun has only two places to be. On your person under immediate control, or in a locked case. Some would argue the locked case should never contain a loaded weapon. Carrying a loaded weapon in a shopping bag, backpack or briefcase is, to me, the height of irresponsibility on the part of the owner. Once Jim Webb surrendered his personal control of the weapon, it should have been secured AND unloaded. I would like to hear him explain that!

2. Congress members are free from arrest going to and from legislative business. Combine that with the 2nd amendment and I think the DC police would not be well advised to try to enforce what looks like a shaky law.

But the part that bugs me the most is the lack of gun owner’s responsibility.

That may be a little strong, but this was not good practice. If Webb's too busy and distracted to take care of his gun -- not implausible for a Senator -- then he shouldn't carry one. This is why busy, distracted people who can afford them hire bodyguards. Even if you possess all the skills to defend yourself, if you can't properly implement them in your daily life you're better off recognizing that fact. On the other hand anyone -- even professional bodyguards, like the one working for Edward Kennedy who got caught with an illegal submachine gun in the Capitol -- can suffer a lapse of attention.

As for the immunity claim, I don't think it works, as the privilege against arrest extends to all cases except treason, felony, and breach of the peace. Illegal guns are a felony in the District; I'm not sure, but I think that illegally carrying a gun may qualify as a breach of the peace. I wouldn't advise Webb to rely on that, anyway . . . .

And it's not necessarily bad news for Webb on the political front. As Dave Hardy observes: "I thought Webb showed great potential for becoming the Right Sort of Democrat, and this tends to confirm it."

ANOTHER UPDATE: Shakey Pete wonders who the gun belongs to.

SLUMS RULED BY MILITIAS: It's a quagmire! Pull out!

Oh, wait, it's in Rio de Janeiro. As someone with family in Nigeria, it's been clear to me that some -- not all -- of Iraq's problems are unfortunately typical of third world countries with weak social contracts, and will likely persist regardless of how the war goes. That's not to say that Baghdad is no worse than, say, Lagos -- but in Lagos, armed criminal gangs, kidnappings, murder, etc. are shockingly common and uncontrolled. And in Nigeria's Delta region there's basically guerrilla war over oil already. Sadly, Iraq probably already has a better government and military than Nigeria, so that if the insurgency ended tomorrow Baghdad would probably be better than Lagos. Heck, it might be as good as Rio. But it wouldn't be as good as even a badly-governed, gang-infested, crime-ridden American city like, say, Washington, DC.

Via The Belmont Club, which observes: "One way to recognize a failing state is to examine the extent to which its cities are subdividing into gated communities. "

HOUSE REPUBLICANS FINALLY UNITE AGAINST SPENDING: Well, the Democratic congress has already accomplished something that the Republican Congress couldn't manage . . . .

JENNIFER RUBIN LOOKS AT PARKER V. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, the case in which the D.C. Circuit struck D.C.'s gun ban. She puts it in the context of a bigger picture:

Peter Ferrara of the ACRU takes a more philosophical and historical view of the potential long-range implications of the case. He remarks that if Parker is upheld by the Supreme Court, it will “be a big shot in the arm for conservatives” and will demonstrate that “we have had an impact on the courts and on changing the judiciary.” He notes that the effort to achieve recognition of an individual right of gun ownership has been an undertaking of more than fifty years of research, scholarship, and support for conservative judges. He explains that what was once considered a “radical” position — recognition of an individual right to gun ownership — has now attracted support even from liberal scholars like Laurence Tribe and has been accepted by a prominent federal appeals court. Ferrara says that conservatives should remember that these jurisprudential efforts are “not short term fights.” As for the impact on 2008, he reminds conservatives that “this is no time to be discouraged” with at least two justices who could be potentially replaced by the next president.

These battles are long-term affairs. When I teach Brown v. Board of Education, I always stress to my students the lengthy run-up to that case, in which Charles Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and other NAACP attorneys laid the ground for the ultimate win. As the gay-rights lawyers learned in Bowers v. Hardwick, trying to rush this process tends not to work.

I'VE WONDERED ABOUT THIS KIND OF THING MYSELF: "Does Iran have a network of sleeper cells inside the United States that could strike us if we bomb their nuclear facilities?"

INDEED: "Why have so many journalists been saying that Faye (Topsy) Turney 'admitted' the British sailors trespassed into Iranian waters? That implies that it's true, but she's obviously under duress. She said it. That's all."

REDSTATE IS SENDING TWO BLOGGERS TO IRAQ, and wants your help in funding the trip.

MORE ON BUDGET POLITICS, from the D.C. Examiner:

Something else Democrats should be more upfront about is the 30 “reserve funds” in the draft 2008 budget. A reserve fund is a sort of legislative hidden-ball trick that authorizes Congress to spend additional billions on favored programs so long as either spending elsewhere in the government is reduced or taxes are increased by an equivalent amount. For example, Section 306 of the draft 2008 budget includes a reserve fund worth an additional $15 billion in farm aid. But does anybody seriously think Congress will reduce spending somewhere else by $15 billion? Whoops, here comes another tax hike!

As we’ve asked before and will no doubt ask again, why can’t Washington politicians just tell us the truth?

Er, because if people knew what they were really doing, they'd be tarred and feathered? Just a guess . . . .

HOWARD KURTZ:

For months, Barack Obama got the kind of glowing media coverage that most candidates could only fantasize about.

But now that he's a full-fledged presidential candidate, he's starting to get nicked a bit. This was utterly predictable, and is part of the process. You don't get to be a party's nominee without an intensive media audit, especially if you haven't been a national figure who has been vetted in the past.

As he notes, however, some lefty bloggers are squealing, though rather unpersuasively. I like Obama (and I remember a delightful email exchange with his campaign manager back when he was running against Alan Keyes) but his record is pretty thin, and you can expect people to look at him as closely as they can -- in part because of all the hype. And that's good. If he has any big problems, they're sure to come out before the election. Better for the Democrats if they come out now, rather than in October of 2008.

AUSTIN BAY ON IRAN'S LATEST HOSTAGE GAMBLE: If Jimmy Carter had responded firmly to the first one, we would be facing a lot less misbehavior from Iran today.

Still, Bay observes: "But this latest hostage-taking incident smacks of desperation, not revolutionary fervor."

MISSING IN ACTION: The "human rights community."

Their outrage seems to be reserved for situations that benefit the enemies of civilization.

"MCCAIN STANDS IN THE GAP:" I've noticed a lot of people who haven't been huge McCain fans taking a shine to him because of his strong stand on Iraq.

APPARENTLY, BLOGGER STILL SUCKS: The Insta-Wife is in the next room cursing, as Blogger just ate a post she'd put a couple of hours' work into. Why doesn't it have the auto-save feature that Gmail has?

March 28, 2007

ANOTHER REASON TO LIKE FRED THOMPSON: James Dobson doesn't like him.

UPDATE: "I'm willing to overlook that."

TAKING ON "AMERICAPHOBIA:" It's about time someone did. . . .

DIANNE FEINSTEIN RESIGNS from the Military Construction Appropriations Subcommittee.

UPDATE: Moe Lane: "I question the timing."

ANOTHER UPDATE: "As big as Duke Cunningham."

Then why isn't it getting more attention?

DANA MILBANK SAYS THAT JIM WEBB IS EXECUTING A CUT AND RUN -- not over Iraq, but over the fate of his aide Phillip Thompson:

If Webb seemed to be enjoying the moment a bit too much, that's probably because a Virginia politician has never lost an election for loving guns too much. But Phillip Thompson, who carried the weapon, derived rather less pleasure from the incident.

Thompson -- a.k.a. "Lockup No. 1" -- spent 28 hours in the slammer after walking into the Russell building Monday morning with a gun and two loaded magazines in his briefcase. Two hours after Webb's performance in front of the cameras, Thompson -- sandwiched between drug cases and domestic disputes -- made his appearance in the foul-smelling arraignment room at D.C. Superior Court. He had a 5 o'clock shadow and a new pair of leg irons to accessorize his rumpled business suit. Ordered to stand in a box marked off with frayed duct tape, he must have been too stunned to answer when the judge asked if he understood the charges. . . .

Webb even hinted that he ignores the District law requiring handguns to be registered. Asked if he considered himself above D.C. law, he said: "I'm not going to comment in any level in terms of how I provide for my own security," he said.

The senator was less forthcoming in his defense of Thompson. "He is going to be arraigned today," Webb said. "I do not in any way want to prejudice his case and the situation that he's involved in."

Prejudice the case? But wasn't it Webb's gun that his aide was carrying for him?

Webb wouldn't even acknowledge it was his gun. "I have never carried a gun in the Capitol complex, and I did not give the weapon to Phillip Thompson," he stipulated.

Webb had kind words for his aide -- "a longtime friend" and "a fine individual" -- but he seemed to be trying to cut Thompson loose as he spoke of the incident.

That doesn't seem right. If the gun was Webb's, and it was all an accident, -- and I can't think of any other likely explanation -- why doesn't Webb make things clear? Am I missing something here?

DIVESTMENT: Will California take on the mullahs? "Today California will become the first state to decide whether or not it will continue to do business with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The State Assembly will hear proposed legislation (AB-221) by Republican Joel Anderson of El Cajon, and Democrat Jose Solorio of Anaheim that will require state pension funds to divest from companies that do business with the Islamic Republic of Iran."

THE UNITED NATIONS HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL makes itself even more of a joke by excluding Iran and Uzbekistan from consideration.

UPDATE: Read this post, too.

MORE ON SPACE JUNK, from the Smithsonian's Air and Space magazine.

UPDATE: Link was wrong before. Fixed now. Sorry!

YET ANOTHER DUMB INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAWSUIT: "The company that licensed the US rights to Orwell's 1984 don't really understand copyright, so they're threatening the people who made the now-infamous Hillary Clinton/Apple 1984-ad mashup."

PAJAMAS MEDIA BLOGGERS Omar and Mohammed Fadhil quoted by President Bush.

ALSO, THERE'S NO CONNECTION BETWEEN TOBACCO AND LUNG CANCER:

Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack gave Sen. Hillary Clinton his endorsement for her presidential campaign.

The Clinton campaign has promised Vilsack to help pay off a $400,000 campaign debt he built up during his run for the White House. . . .

The campaign said there is no connection between Vilsack's endorsement and their commitment to help pay off his campaign debt.

Oh, well. (Via Best of the Web).

BLAMING AL GORE AND ME: It's a fair cop.

THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT HAS BEEN REINTRODUCED, and here are some thoughts on what it might mean.

Personally, given the tendencies of the people who run universities and government agencies, I'd like to see ironclad nondiscrimination rules on race, sex, and sexual preference. But without the usual loopholes for politically correct discrmination.

UPDATE: Eric Scheie: "NOW is endorsing Hillary Clinton for president. I'm sure it's just a coincidence."

RICH HAILEY:

Can you think of anything good coming from establishing a troop withdrawal deadline? Anything at all?

Except of course, for getting a Democrat into the White House. And that's really the whole point, isn't it?

That's alway the point nowadays.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON:

Why the liberal furor over 300? . . . there seems to be an almost elemental anger that such a 'simplistic' take on good and evil—West good, East bad—reduced to comic book simplicity has hoodwinked the Neanderthal class in the way they were led by the nose to Iraq by the Bush/Cheney nexus.

But what they fail to grasp is why 300 took off, and, say for example, Oliver Stone's Alexander bombed, a take that had all the hot-button Hollywood issue from easy homosexuality to the inner crisis over 'what it all means.' But critics forget that there were 4 key differences between those two films.

Read the whole thing. Part of it is that the movie industry -- or at least the critic section thereof -- is stuck in the 1970s, when moral ambiguity and angst used to be groundbreaking and novel. Now they're overdone, predictable and boring.

HOW BLOGS opened up Microsoft.

POT, KETTLE: A look at what goes on in the comments sections at The Washington Post.

Some related thoughts here.

GENERATING HYDROGEN FUEL ON DEMAND from magnesium and water? Sounds too good to be true. Though I'd be happy to be wrong about that.

UPDATE: But it looks like I'm not. Various readers emailed, but this from chemist Derek Lowe is clearest:

As I'm sure several heaps of people have already emailed you about, magnesium gives off hydrogen as a matter of course when it's submerged in water. You're left with magnesium hydroxide, an insoluble white powder. The problem with this (and similar ideas using boron, aluminum, etc.) is that you need energy to get the free metal to start with, and plenty of energy to recycle the oxides back to the metal (when that's practical at all - it often isn't).

All the press-release talk about how this process doesn't release carbon dioxide ignored the production of the metals, as far as I can see. . .

Sounds like the process is of limited utility overall.

CLOSE CALL: "Pieces of space junk from a Russian satellite coming out of orbit narrowly missed hitting a jetliner over the Pacific Ocean overnight."

More on space debris here.

GIULIANI ON ECONOMICS: David Weigel and Stephen Moore are impressed. "So is Rudy carving out a niche as the fiscal conservative candidate who'll govern like Reagan without the speeches to the March for Life?"

UPDATE: Steve Forbes to endorse Giuliani.

SCUM.

UPDATE: More scum.

IN THE MAIL: Brink Lindsey's new book, The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America's Politics and Culture. Best quote from the blurbs: "Republicans want to go home to the United States of the 1950s while Democrats want to work there."

Guess that's why I'm not either. I'd rather live in the 21st Century. And the 22d!

A REPORT ON MCCAIN'S conference call with bloggers. One quote: ”I strongly recommend to the White House that the president read the list of pork to the American people when he vetoes this bill.”

THOUGHTS ON THE IMPACT OF T.V. VERSUS PRINT, from Ann Althouse: "Why does TV make me so much more hostile to her? Is the important message in the words or in the whole picture as experienced via television? Is this just about me and Hillary, or is this something more general about TV and print?"

"YOUTHS" RIOT in Paris.

BILL ROGGIO: "Al Qaeda in Iraq is conducting a full fledged chemical war in Anbar province."

Al Qaeda used to posture as heroic resistance against the West. Now they're gassing Muslims.

JIM WEBB'S AIDE, PROSECUTORIAL DISCRETION, AND GUN LAWS: Eugene Volokh has some thoughts.

NATIONAL REVIEW: Gonzales should go.

AS INSTAPUNDIT READERS KNOW, I'm a big fan of compact fluorescent light bulbs. But there's a difference between thinking that something's worth encouraging people to do, and thinking that people should be forced to do it. Or at least there should be. Katherine Mangu-Ward looks at Big Brother's light bulb forays.

A BOB BARR FLIP-FLOP: "Bob Barr, who as a Georgia congressman authored a successful amendment that blocked D.C. from implementing a medical marijuana initiative, has switched sides and become a lobbyist for the Marijuana Policy Project."

I'm glad to see the change, but I wish it had come while he was, you know, in a position to actually legislate on it.

LAW PROFESSORS ON American Idol? Well, they need something to spice the show up after Gwen Stefani's lame performance.

SCOTT BURGESS interviews Michael Crichton.

YOUR CONGRESS AT WORK: "Spring Break may delay war funds."

OUCH: "Despite years of attempts from every major phone-maker and service provider, music phones are still little more than spring-loaded bear traps for foolish early adopters." That seems a bit harsh.

MICKEY KAUS: "Has National Review gone wobbly on immigration?"

THIS NOT-RUNNING SEEMS TO BE WORKING PRETTY WELL FOR FRED THOMPSON:

He's not even a candidate yet, but Fred Thompson already has risen to third among possible Republican presidential candidates, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll released Tuesday.

He seems to be doing well with InstaPundit readers, though interestingly Rudy Giuliani is doing better against Thompson with InstaPundit readers than he is overall.

March 27, 2007

AT THE NEW EDITOR, A POLL: Who's your favorite chickenhawk? I'm going with FDR.

AN INTERVIEW WITH AN IRANIAN OPPOSITION GROUP that the left can get behind, from Michael Totten. Excerpt:

“Do you see signs of a collapse similar to the Shah’s government happening now to the mullahs?” Patrick said.

“Yes, I think so,” Hassan said. “In Iran things are going in that direction.”

I hope he's right.

A NEW METRIC: "We have wall-to-wall Anna Nicole Smith on the news. The war must be going well."

Somebody tell the guys at Brookings!

NEW YORK TIMES: "Webb defends gun-toting posse."

I expect these charges to be dropped, as it appears they probably should be. But Webb should really get behind the kind of sensible gun law reforms that will protect all Americans' enjoyment of the Second Amendment freedoms he so values.

UPDATE: At RedState, a suggestion that Webb should be doing more defending.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Quite a few readers are unhappy with me for saying the charges should probably be droppped. Jeffrey Hexel is typical:

I'm curious as to the legal reasoning behind your opinion that the charges against Senator Webb's assistant "probably should be" dropped. The facts seem pretty clear cut, and they seem to the point to the fact that he broke the law. Regardless of the gun's registration in Virginia, he was still committing a crime by bringing it to DC and committing an additional crime by carrying it in a concealed manner.

I agree that the DC handgun ban is a bad law, and I'm hoping that when it reaches the Supreme Court it will be overturned, but unless I'm missing something this is an open and shut case. Jim Webb's advocacy of 2nd Amendment rights does not change the fact that his aide committed a crime. Or at least it shouldn't.

I agree that he seems to have broken the law. But it's within a prosecutor's discretion not to prosecute, and cases of inadvertence like this are often dropped -- and should be. (It's not clear that Thompson even knew the gun was in the bag.) Reader Larry Boykin thinks I'm an elitist ("So, it's alright to have one set of laws for the common man and another set of laws for the 'elite'? That's what you are advocating if you believe that charges should be dropped. ") but I think that charges should be dropped for anyone in these circumstances. Would they be? Well, I don't know. I know of some similar cases where ordinary people weren't charged -- but it's true that they weren't at the U.S. Capitol. If charges are dropped here under public scrutiny, of course, that'll be an argument for treating ordinary people in similar circumstances similarly in the future.

"YOU'LL NEED A SHOVEL:" I'm not sure that's such a good campaign slogan -- but it's one that's sure to fit practically any candidate!

"I WAS WRONG:" Radley Balko renounces his support for torture. Glad to have him join me in the anti-torture camp, which needs some sensible and non-hysterical members.

UPDATE: Say, I guess this means that now I can link to Balko without Andrew Sullivan attacking me for "linking to pro-torture blogs!"

TIM BLAIR fact-checks a climate expert. He claims to have found some errors.

THEY'RE RUNNING AWAY WITH THEIR LITTLE CURLY TAILS BETWEEN THEIR LEGS: The Senate has just passed an Iraq withdrawal bill, which like the House bill was laden with pork to buy votes.

It's a disgrace, but par for the course for this bunch.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, read this from Jules Crittenden.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ed Driscoll comments: "Not at all a surprise, of course. But very far removed from how they were actually elected in the first place."

And Don Surber itemizes some of the pork and observes: "Disgusting is too nice a word for people who voted to send troops to Iraq in 2002, and less than 5 years later play political chicken with funding for those very troops."

You don't need a weathervane to know which way the wind's blowing. Just a copy of the Senate voting record.

MORE: Bob Krumm looks at the bright side: "Perhaps President Bush will finally veto a pork-laden spending package."

Heh. If he'd started doing that sooner, he probably wouldn't be facing this problem now.

THE VALUE OF "world sympathy."

AND WE HAVE A WINNER. What's more, it's neither Hillary nor George Allen.

BRANNON DENNING AND ED ZELINSKY debate the future of the Dormant Commerce Clause at the University of Pennsylvania Law Review's PENNumbra site.

TERRIBLE NEWS FOR TONY SNOW: Cancer survivor G.M. Roper has thoughts.

UPDATE: Thoughts from the compassionate left at the Huffington Post. And not just in the comments.

MORE: Jim Treacher apologizes for his brutal honesty.

TONY BLAIR CALLS FOR A NO-FLY ZONE over Darfur.

JIM WEBB ON guns in D.C. "I'm not going to comment in any level in terms of how I provide for my own security."

Lots of Americans feel the same way, but don't get the same privileges. Webb could, and should, play a constructive role in addressing that disparity.

UPDATE: Much more here. Excerpt:

Webb said he has been in New Orleans since Friday and returned Monday night. He denied that he gave the weapon to Thompson. . . . Asked what support the senator was giving to his aide, Webb told FOX News, "We're doing all we can."

"I want to emphasize, first of all, that Phillip Thompson is a long-time friend. He's a fine individual. ... I have a tremendous amount of respect for him," Webb told reporters. "I think this is one of those very unfortunate situations where, completely inadvertently, he took the weapon into the Senate yesterday."

Handguns are illegal in Washington, D.C., but nearby Virginia allows residents to carry concealed handguns. Capitol Police rules allow members and their employees to bring a weapon onto Capitol grounds if it is unloaded and securely wrapped. In this case, it was allegedly neither.

Webb said he is a big supporter of the constitutional right to bear arms and thinks Virginia's concealed handgun law is a "fair law."

"Everyone here knows that I am a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, that I have had a permit to carry a weapon in Virginia for a long time," he said.

So apparently the gun wasn't Webb's. Go figure. But, again, I think that Webb should take the lead in protecting those Second Amendment rights in Washington, D.C., over which Congress has authority. There's also this from Webb:

"I believe that it's important — it's important for me, personally, and for a lot of people in the situation that I'm in, to be able to defend myself and my family," Webb said. "Since 9/11 for people who are in government I think in general there has been an agreement that it's a more dangerous time. Again, I'm not going to comment, again, with great specificity about how I defend myself, but I do feel that I have that right."

Reader Christopher Fox emails: "Well, Senator, that might be your perception, but as far as I can tell, domestically speaking, we've lost around 3,000 civilians and 0 Senators to the post-9/11 dangers of which you speak. It's a more dangerous time for all of us, and civilians seem to be shouldering the majority of that risk. So maybe we can, I don't know, all get to carry unregistered firearms around wherever we like? No? Why not?"

Why not, indeed? Certainly Webb should take the lead in making it possible for ordinary Americans -- not just "people who are in government" -- to protect themselves as he does.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More thoughts at SayUncle. SayUncle notes that Webb didn't actually deny that it was his gun, only that he gave it to Thompson.

U.S. VS IRAN IN IRAQ: A timeline.

MARY KATHARINE HAM saves the planet.

ERIC MULLER: "Monica Goodling has a valid basis for asserting the Fifth Amendment privilege."

Not really my area of expertise, but he's certainly no apologist for the Bush DoJ. As I've done before, I'll just recommend my former colleague Peter W. Morgan's The Undefined Crime of Lying to Congress: Ethics Reform and the Rule of Law, 86 Nw. U. L. Rev. 177 (1992), which explains the way in which the False Statements Act (18 U.S.C. 1001, which applies to statements made to any federal official, not just Congress) has been used and abused. Sadly, Morgan's piece is not available on the web anywhere, as far as I can tell.

UPDATE: A contrary take from Orin Kerr.

"SENATE WAR BILL FEATURES $20B IN PORK."

Pehaps they'll add a double-secret withdrawal date.

IN THE MAIL: Christopher Buckley's new novel, Boomsday. Judging by the blurb, it's a sort of Atlas Shrugged for the post-Boomer generation:

With Boomsday looming as 77 million baby boomers get ready to retire and crash Social Security, Cassandra Devine, a sarcastic spin doctor by day and a ferocious blogger by night, calls for a revolution. Why should the under-35 crowd pay higher taxes to support the "Ungreatest Generation?" What have boomers done for anyone? Look at Cassandra's heinous father. He absconded with her Yale tuition and convinced her to enlist, leading to her encounter with a land mine while escorting Massachusetts senator Randolph Jepperson. After going to jail for instigating anti-oldster riots at golf courses, Cass takes a cue from Jonathan Swift and offers her own outrageous "modest proposal." With one eye on the White House and the other on tough and lovely Cass, blue-blood Jepperson decides to back her provocation. As Cass's mensch of a boss observes, "The line dividing reality from absurdity in this country has finally disappeared."

Well, that's certainly true. . . .

JULES CRITTENDEN WANTS TO SELL MORON OFFSETS: I think demand may outstrip supply. Why Sean Penn alone could . . . . Oh, just read the whole thing.

SOME EXPENSIVE VOTES in the Senate.

JOHN MCCAIN DEFENDS MCCAIN-FEINGOLD, in this blogger video from his tourbus.

Loads more video here.

HOWARD KURTZ ON CABLE TV:

Anna Nicole was back in the news yesterday with the official finding that she died from an accidental overdose, and you could almost hear the groaning from television producers that there wasn't a more controversial outcome.

The press conference by the thick-accented medical examiner -- who almost seemed from central casting -- could not be covered by the cable networks, of course, without a cascade of split-screen pictures of the onetime stripper shaking her booty for the cameras. If you banned that footage, I believe the coverage would drop by 80 percent.

At least.

NOT-SO-GREAT MOMENTS in education.

EMBRACE THE MACHINE: In the D.C. Examiner, I look at some technological breakthroughs I'd like to see.

MICKEY KAUS: "For now, please read through Rutten's piece and ask yourself if he shows any sign of awareness that he and his distinguished LAT colleagues only have their jobs because they produce a product that people are willing to pay money for? Rutten writes as if there's a constitutional provision that credentialed journalists have lifetime professional tenure no matter how much money his paper loses or makes."

This attitude is just part of the harm done by the press's "Fourth Estate" self-image. Actual parts of the government don't have to turn a profit. People who merely regard themselves as being part of the government apparatus, however, still do.

FRANK WARNER ON THE SURGE: "One little-publicized finding of the new Pew poll is that, compared to last month, Americans now are slightly more optimistic about the Iraq war. The portion of Americans who believe the war is going 'very well' or 'fairly well' for the United States increased from the all-time low of 30 percent in February to 40 percent this month. . . . In the last month, the percent of Americans saying the war is going 'not too well' or 'not well at all' dropped from 67 to 56."

That isn't huge, but it's significant. And this reversal as the surge gets underway suggests that much of the decline in support over the past year comes from people who've felt we weren't prosecuting the war vigorously enough, as opposed to people who were simply against the whole enterprise.

UPDATE: Various readers argue that a ten-percent shift in one month is huge. Well, maybe. It would certainly be portrayed as huge if it had gone the other way. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: More on the "it's huge" theme.

"MCCAIN-FEINGOLD: FIVE YEARS OF FAILURE." Pretty much. And it's looking to be an expensive failure for John McCain. And, I guess, Russ Feingold, who otherwise might be running for President.

March 26, 2007

AUSTRALIAN TALIBAN DAVID HICKS pleads guilty.

DEATH THREATS AGAINST BLOGGERS? Robert Scoble weighs in. So does Roger van Oech.

REPRESSION IN EGYPT: Sandmonkey reports: I was going to excerpt him, but it defies excerpting. Read the whole thing. And ask, as I've asked in the past, why the U.S. is sending the Mubarak regime so much aid.

DAVID CORN AND RICHARD MINITER DISCUSS POLITICS AND THE ELECTIONS over martinis and oysters, in this new video from Pajamas Media.

It's a lot better than Hannity & Colmes!

TOM MAGUIRE on Washington: "Why do the rest of us fear aging when clearly memory improves with time?"

GALLUP'S FRANK NEWPORT REPORTS that Fred Thompson is becoming a factor in the GOP race. Most of his support appears to be coming at Giuliani's expense.

REPORTEDLY, TENNESSEE GOV. PHIL BREDESEN wants to be able to confiscate guns in emergencies. This seems like a dreadful idea on practical grounds, and would also violate federal law.

UPDATE: Yes, it would probably violate the Tennessee Constitution, too. And I don't see where the Governor would possess such power in an emergency anyway, in the absence of specific legislative authorization that, as far as I know, he doesn't have. Article I sec. 25 of the Tennessee Constitution provides: "That martial law, in the sense of the unrestricted power of military officers, or others, to dispose of the persons, liberties or property of the citizen, is inconsistent with the principles of free government, and is not confided to any department of the government of this state." Between that, and the rather strong Tennessee right to arms, it's hard to see how there could be any argument on behalf of an inherent power here. That said, a state anti-confiscation law is probably still a good idea, as plain statutory language tends to get more attention than constitutional argumentation in times of emergency.

UPDATE: Bob Krumm reports that Bredesen has reversed his position. And apparently there was such statutory authorization, sort of, though not for much longer if this anti-confiscation bill passes as expected.

BALANCING ENVIRONMENT AND PROFIT, in the Cayman Islands. Some thoughts at Popular Mechanics.

LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE, in New Orleans:

Sixty-four-year-old Vivian Westerman rode out Hurricane Katrina in her 19th-century house. So terrible was the experience that she wanted two things before the 2006 season arrived: a backup power source and a gun. "I got a 6,000-watt generator and the cutest little Smith & Wesson, snub-nose .38 you ever saw," she boasted. "I've never been more confident." People across New Orleans are arming themselves - not only against the possibility of another storm bringing anarchy, but against the violence that has engulfed the metropolitan area in the 19 months since Katrina, making New Orleans the nation's murder capital.

The number of permits issued to carry concealed weapons is running twice as high as it was before Katrina - this, in a city with only about half its pre-storm population of around 450,000. Attendance at firearms classes and hours logged at shooting ranges also are up, according to the gun industry. . . . In New Orleans, police have accused the district attorney of failing to prosecute many suspects. Prosecutors have accused the police of not bringing them solid cases.

Some people are losing faith in the system to protect them.

I think some people in other locations learned from New Orleans' experience, too. But so far, this bill hasn't moved. (Via Dave Hardy).

PELOSI, REID AND MURTHA'S plan for victory in Iraq.

Victory for whom, is the question . . . .

JIM WEBB HAS ALWAYS BEEN GOOD ON GUNS, and maybe the incident that Drudge is currently reporting will encourage him to get behind the D.C. gun ban repeal:

SENATE STAFFER BUSTED FOR CARRYING WEBB'S LOADED GUN: Phillip Thompson, executive assistant to Senator James Webb (D-VA ), has been arrested by Capitol Hill Police on Monday for 'inadvertently' holding the senator's loaded gun, according to a person close to the investigation. A Senate staffer reports that Thompson was arrested for carrying the gun in a bag through security at the Russell Senate Office building while the Senator was parking his car. Thompson was booked for carrying a pistol without a license (CPWL) and for possessing unregistered ammunition. According to congressional rules, congressmen and senators, not staff, are allowed to have a gun on federal property.

Sounds like a minor incident, but it underscores the silliness of D.C. laws. "Unregistered ammunition?"

UPDATE: More here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: News story here.

DMCA AUTHOR says it was a failure.

NEWSPAPER AD REVENUE CONTINUES TO PLUMMET:

Revenue from advertising was in striking decline last month, compared with February a year ago, and were generally weaker than analysts had expected.

And while there was one piece of good news for the industry — ad spending on newspaper Web sites rose — many industry watchers were wondering whether the February declines were part of a short-term slump or whether they signal a deepening systemic problem.

Revealingly, lots of readers have emailed this story to me with various gleeful comments. I don't share their glee. I want newspapers to get better, not go broke. However, it says something bad about the politicization of news reporting that so many potential readers are canceling subscriptions and even taking glee in bad financial news for newspapers.

FROM HAVANA with hypocrisy.

Plus, cold-calling Iraqi communists! "Instead of talking to people who were unprepared to speak to American journalists due to a communications failure, we had accidentally cold called a group of revolutionary communist Kurds who had then treated us as honored guests and freely shared their best. In the place in all of Suliamaniya governate where we could expect the worst treatment, their hospitality was more gracious than we could expect among friends in America. Here endeth the Comedy of Manners."

DUKE WINS the game that wasn't played.

JOHN MCCAIN ON the Iraq vote and Congressional pork. He calls the vote a "new recipe for defeat." Video at the link.

WILL WEB VIDEO KILL AUDIO PODCASTS? No, says Mark Glaser, and I think he's right. They're different formats, with different applications. I like doing both, but I don't see one as a substitute for the other -- just as I don't see either as a replacement for "traditional" text blogging.

NEAL BOORTZ: Why people think conservatives are idiots.

JONATHAN ADLER HAS FURTHER THOUGHTS on the politicization of the Congressional Research Service.

INFORMATION WAR: "Islamic terrorists are encouraging their supporters, who can write in English, to get on American web sites and pretend to be friends or family members of American soldiers or marines. The 'media jehadis' are instructed to tell stories in line with the anti-war tone of American and European media. Things like soldiers committing suicide because they were forced to take part in atrocities in Iraq. Or wounded soldiers suffering, or killing themselves, because of the poor care and abuse they have received from the army. The media jihadis are told to make it sound like they are simply passing on what a soldier said, not to pretend to be a soldier or marine."

Read the whole thing. Though, heck, if they play their cards right they can probably get interviewed by The New York Times.

"RUMMYGATE" at the Los Angeles Times? Instead of going from tragedy to farce, this scandal has been farce all along . . . .

BILL ROGGIO TALKS ABOUT IRAQ at this week's blog week in review.

SET YOUR CLOCKS: It's Israeli Double Standard Time.

FROM BUSH AS HITLER TO BUSH AS DRACULA? The President's Vampire: Strange-but-True Tales of the United States of America.

Okay, that's not really what it's about.

THE CAYMAN DIVE VIDEO has been viewed over 350,000 times, and the Saturn Aura video has already been viewed over 100,000 times. So that poses a question:

Should InstaPundit feature more videoblogging?
	Sure - make it the next TV network!
	A little video now and then is nice.
	Forget the video -- stick with the pithy links.
	InstaPundit has had video?
pollcode.com free polls

BEST THOMPSON TITLE YET: "Fred Thompson and the Hunt for a Red November."

WHAT YOU YOU CAN'T SAY.

KATIE COURIC'S CONCEPTUAL ART: At Kausfiles.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: John Fund reports on politicizing the Congressional Research Service to cover up earmarks:

Nothing highlighted Congress's spending problem in last year's election more than earmarks, the special projects like Alaska's "Bridge to Nowhere" that members drop into last-minute conference reports leaving no opportunity to debate or amend them. Voters opted for change in Congress, but on earmarks it looks as if they'll only be getting more smoke and mirrors.

Democrats promised reform and instituted "a moratorium" on all earmarks until the system was cleaned up. Now the appropriations committees are privately accepting pork-barrel requests again. But curiously, the scorekeeper on earmarks, the Library of Congress's Congressional Research Service (CRS)--a publicly funded, nonpartisan federal agency--has suddenly announced it will no longer respond to requests from members of Congress on the size, number or background of earmarks. "They claim it'll be transparent, but they're taking away the very data that lets us know what's really happening," says Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn. "I'm convinced the appropriations committees are flexing their muscles with CRS."

Indeed, the shift in CRS policy represents a dramatic break with its 12-year practice of supplying members with earmark data. "CRS will no longer identify earmarks for individual programs, activities, entities, or individuals," stated a private Feb. 22 directive from CRS Director Daniel Mulhollan. . . .

Despite claims they would bring reform, Congress's new bosses are acting like the old bosses. Last Friday, Arizona Rep. Jeff Flake sought clarification from House Appropriations Chairman David Obey about an incorrect listing of a NASA earmark in the Iraq supplemental bill. Rep. Obey responded: "The fact is, that an earmark is something that is requested by an individual member. This item was not requested by any individual member. It was put in the bill by me!" In other words, Mr. Obey believes his own earmarks are nothing of the kind.

Sen. Coburn plans to fight back. He says he will attach an amendment to every appropriations bill demanding CRS prepare a full report on the earmarks in it. "Let senators vote for secrecy and prove they don't want a transparent process or let them deliver what they promised," he says. "The choice will be theirs and the American people will be watching."

We need to keep their feet to the fire, and force them to live up to their pre-election promises about earmarks.

UPDATE: House porkers on video.

March 25, 2007

EXPLAINING THE LAW at The Belmont Club:

As currently interpreted the Geneva Conventions only apply to individuals bent on destroying America. Individuals who blow up elementary schools, kidnap children, attack churches and mosques, kill invalids in wheelchairs, plan attacks on skyscrapers in New York, behead journalists, detonate car bombs with children to camouflage their crime, or board jetliners with explosive shoes -- all while wearing mufti or even women's clothing -- these are all considered "freedom fighters" of the most principled kind. They and they alone enjoy the protections of the Geneva Convention. As to Americans like Tucker and Menchaca or Israeli Gilad Shalit -- or these fifteen British sailors for that matter, it is a case of "what Geneva Convention?"

This does seem to be the reaction of the "international community" -- and, of course, of the press. You might almost think they preferred the one side over another.

Read this, too.

AN IMPORTANT BICENTENNIAL: "On March 25, 1807, two hundred years ago today, Parliament passed An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade."

ANOTHER REASON WHY REPUBLICANS should cheer the music industry's troubles, and perhaps help them along by repealing the DMCA or something. As I've suggested in the past, though, I think their reflexive tendency to side with big business has gotten in the way of smart politics.

A LOOK AT IRAN'S ambitions.

COMBAT FATIGUE from women soldiers who were never in combat. Only at The New York Times! More here.

IS THE BLOGOSPHERE JUST one big bitch fest?

GLOBAL WARMING: A QUESTION OF MORALITY, or a question of science? I'm going with "science."

WHY I DON'T HAVE COMMENTS ON MY BLOG: In part, because if I did, dishonest reporters would attribute to me things said by the commenters. In this case, comments on an entirely different blog . . . .

Jeez.

UPDATE: As if. What's to discuss?

IN RESPONSE TO MY EARLIER DARFUR POST, a reader emails: "How is it that the war we aren't involved in ended up fulfilling all the quagmire predictions of the one we did get into? Makes Iraq look like a rather professional, and practically downright humanitarian, gesture."

WHERE THE MEN ARE AVERAGE, and the women are shy: "I only wish she had broken that down with a bit more detail - is it Matt Yglesias who speaks for the blue-collar worker with a high school degree? Does Ezra Klein speak for the young black males of the Dem party? Or are they all just average guys speaking for the average guy? Gosh, I feel like buying them all a beer or something while we talk college hoops."

SOME MCCAIN-FEINGOLD BLOWBACK for John McCain's campaign?

ASSESSING FRED THOMPSON'S CHANCES: "My prediction: The first reliable national polls after Thompson announces his candidacy will have Thompson roughly tied with Giuliani, and both of them at least 10 points ahead of McCain and Romney."

DEAN BARNETT: "I’ve reached some conclusions about comment boards and the effect they’re having on our politics at large."

THERE WAS ENOUGH INTEREST in my post on the Saturn Aura that I went back and shot a short video of the interior, and an exterior walkaround. Plus a bit of commentary. Really, though, the video doesn't fully capture the surprising sense of quality that I felt, something that's been sadly missing from a lot of GM vehicles in recent years., This was first rate.

And it turns out that Robert Scoble has an Aura, and likes it: "I even choose to drive it over Maryam’s new BMW quite a bit, which is a testament to how good a car it is (it’s a better freeway car than the BMW and the back seat has a LOT more room)."

THANKS TO THE MIRACLE OF "SCHEDULED POSTING" ON MOVABLE TYPE, it probably hasn't been obvious, but I've been travelling with the Insta-Wife and Insta-Daughter this weekend. Among other things, that gave me the opportunity to test out this Netgear Travel Router that I got as free swag when I was at the Consumer Electronics Show. It's the size of a pack of playing cards, and it worked perfectly as soon as I plugged it in.

That's more than I can say for the "iBahn internet service" at the J.W. Marriott, though. It's bad enough that they charge you $12.95 when much cheaper hotels like the Hampton Inn give away wireless Internet access. But even though we'd registered and paid the fee, when I hooked up the Netgear router the sign-on screens reappeared. I assume it's some kind of scheme to block people from doing what I was doing, which seems rather lame, especially as they offer a 2-foot ethernet cable that ties you to the desk otherwise. My suspicion is that hotels, like the J.W. Marriott, that cater to a mostly business crowd charge for Internet access because they know it will just get passed on to the company, while hotels that don't, like the Hampton Inn, give it away because they know that people who are paying out of their own pockets will resist paying half as much for a day of Internet access as they pay for a month at home. Well, okay -- the kine that tread the grain, and so forth. But if you're going to charge, shouldn't you make the exorbitantly priced product at least as convenient as the free version?

UPDATE: Reader Chuck Cilek emails:

When you sign up for this service, they register the MAC address of the card connecting to their service, not the room number. From your description, it sounds like you

1) connected the laptop and signed up
2) disconnected the laptop
3) connected the router, then connected the laptop to the router.

From the IBahn's DHCP server's point of view, it sees the router MAC which is not registered. It does not see your laptop's MAC, because the router sends its own MAC and never sends your MAC.

I believe that if you had hooked up the router first, then connected your laptop and signed in/registered, the router would have been registered and your intended setup would have worked.

Several other readers said the same thing, and yes, that's how I signed up. That makes sense, I guess, so I shouldn't blame Marriott too much. On the other hand, another reader emails:

I don't do much traveling but have ended up on the road in a fancy hotel on occasion. Once, reluctant to charge my employer for the exorbitant Internet connx charges, I decided to try the phone dataport and use my old (since discontinued) dialup AOL account. No go. It would not let you access the AOL modem pool - as soon as the modem tones were detected, the line went dead. So do these expensive hotels have you by the short hairs in all ways? Why yes. Yes, they do.

I echo your sentiments re: Interstate highway motels, which offer free (often wireless) access in their guest rooms. One summer, we even used IM between our rooms, instead of calling, to coordinate schedules during a large family reunion - thanks to the free WiFi.

Only when you are paying at least three times as much for the room, do you have to pay additional for access, I have found. Oh, unless of course you want to get dressed and go to the lobby, where the WiFi doesn't cost. Although, on a trip not too long ago, I discovered even the lobby location is becoming a for-pay T-mobile spot. I wonder how these hotels' decisions to make access pretty darned expensive (with no value added) will influence cities' decisions to make downtowns into WiFi hotspots. Won't the Hiltons and the Radissons fight tooth and nail to keep their for-pay islands, even if the heart of the city is free WiFi?

This seems like overreaching to me. And a couple of readers asked why I care, when I have EVDO. The reason is that my wife and daughter want Internet access too, and don't want to share computers. Yes, we're that geeky.

VOTERS VOTE YES, county says no anyway:

On the Web site Grupthink.com, an online symposium founded by John Masterson, who is also chairman of the oversight committee, a post exclaims “I have lost all faith in Missoula County government.”

“Is there even a point to voting any more if the will of the people can so easily be subverted by two people?” the post inquires.

Much of the criticism, online and off, has alluded to County Attorney Fred Van Valkenburg's position that a “gut feeling” led him to conclude Missoula's electorate misinterpreted the ballot language. The tone of Wednesday's public hearing, which was teeming with 20-something adults, went from inquisitive to indignant when Van Valkenburg used the phrase “gut feeling,” which many called insulting.

“Your ‘gut feeling' does not supersede the democratic process,” according to one post.

This is sadly familiar to me. (Via Slashdot).

A ROMNEY SCANDAL, reported by the L.A. Times: Abortion rights and gay rights activists are unhappy that Romney pretended to be more liberal on those issues than he really was. Or something like that.

LOTS OF STUFF ON THE L.A. TIMES SCANDALS, over at Patterico's. Just keep scrolling.

Meanwhile, Kaus says it's Civil War, and pours it on.

HMM: "American forces in Iraq now hold some 300 prisoners tied to Iran’s intelligence agencies, Pajamas Media learned from both diplomatic and military sources."

KIM DU TOIT endorses Fred Thompson.

IN COOKING, cheap wine works fine -- in fact, just as well as expensive wine:

Over all, wines that I would have poured down the drain rather than sip from a glass were improved by the cooking process, revealing qualities that were neutral at worst and delightful at best. On the other hand, wines of complexity and finesse were flattened by cooking — or, worse, concentrated by it, taking on big, cartoonish qualities that made them less than appetizing.

It wasn’t that the finished dishes were identical — in fact, they did have surprisingly distinct flavors — but the wonderful wines and the awful ones produced equally tasty food, especially if the wine was cooked for more than a few minutes.

So save the expensive stuff for drinking!