August 04, 2007

YOU'D THINK: "When a member of the journalism community is murdered, wouldn't you expect most news agencies to report it?"

UPDATE: More here.

APOLLO MOON FILMS are being made available online for free.

SUNLIGHT -- NOT ACTUALLY EVIL:

Women who stay out of the sun are increasing their risk of developing breast cancer, a new study suggests.

The safe-tanning messages that are drummed into women each year may help to reduce their risk of skin cancer – but at the cost of increasing their risk of breast cancer.

It's looking more and more like the anti-sun message has been overblown. Have dermatologists been in the pocket of Big Sunscreen?

MY EARLIER POST ON PROSECUTORIAL ABUSE led Prof. Kenneth Anderson to email a recommendation for Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor, which came out this spring. I've ordered a copy myself.

UPDATE: No, not that Angela Davis.

OF PORK AND BRIDGES: Rob Port offers a radical suggestion: "What if some of the money spent for “earmarks” (pork designated by members of Congress for their own districts), was available to actually, I don’t know, fix things?"

A LOOK AT THE FAUX-CIALIST REVOLUTION. But just because they are ridiculous doesn't mean that they do no harm.

SOME THOUGHTS ON armed robots and the laws of war.

A POSTMORTEM on the House vote SNAFU.

UPDATE: It's already generating campaign ads.

HEADING HOME: Did my conference presentation yesterday. Had a nice dinner Thursday night with a bunch of my colleagues plus honorary colleagues (and bloggers) Brannon Denning and Ann Bartow (who blogs at Feminist Law Professors). Saw a lot of people, had a good time, even though it rained the last two days.

HOW TO throw a boomerang.

O'REILLY WILL LOVE THIS: Soldier censored at YearlyKos.

UPDATE: More here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Still more here.

And more thoughts on mixing uniforms and politics here.

FIRED FOR A BLOG POST?

THE POLITICO: Democrats are converging on YearlyKos, "And yet the influence of the liberal blogs on the Democratic presidential primary is a shadow of what it was in 2004. "

AL GORE GOES GEOTHERMAL.

MORE ON FLYING CARS: Sam Dinkin does an interview.

SO I FINISHED MARK HELPRIN'S A Soldier of the Great War, and I liked it very much. He's like Neal Stephenson's more poetical cousin. Or maybe Neal Stephenson is like Helprin's geekier cousin.

LIKE THE BELTWAY BOYS, ONLY BETTER LOOKING: The latest Corn & Miniter Show is up!

DIGITAL CAMERA SALES CONTINUE TO BOOM: "According to data from CIPA (Camera & Imaging Products Association) camera shipments by CIPA members (the majority of digital camera manufacturers) are up 27% overall in the first half of this year compared to the same period last year. The largest growth coming from DSLRs, a total of 3.5 million units, up some 75% compared to the first half of last year."

SOME FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS in the shooting of that Oakland journalist:

Firearms linked to the slaying of an Oakland journalist were seized during early morning raids Friday targeting members of a Black Muslim group that operates a chain of bakeries, police said.

Colleagues said Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey, 57, had been working on a story about Your Black Muslim Bakery before he was ambushed and killed Thursday morning in downtown Oakland.

Before dawn, officers raided the Muslim group's headquarters at the bakery and three houses in Oakland. They arrested seven people on charges including homicide, robbery and assault, but it was unclear whether any of those charges were tied to Bailey's slaying.

"The search warrant yielded several weapons and other evidence of value including evidence linking the murder of Chauncey Bailey to members of the Your Black Muslim Bakery," Assistant Police Chief Howard Jordan said, adding the raids were part of a yearlong investigation into a variety of violent crimes.

I think that shooting Bailey will turn out to be a serious mistake.

TAKING ON deceptive copyright warnings.

CLINTON IN IOWA: But it's Bill Richardson who's surging!

A SUBVERSIVE THOUGHT: "What if Americans would rather win?"

THE D.C. CIRCUIT calls the raid on William Jefferson's office unconstitutional.

ANOTHER IDIOTIC AND ABUSIVE PROSECUTION: I'm beginning to think that we need a lot more oversight over prosecutorial discretion, and more consequences for its abuse.

August 03, 2007

MORE PROBLEMS WITH electronic voting.

UPDATE: Voting machines decertified.

OUCH: "Minnesota Twins postpone groundbreaking for new $1.1 billion stadium due to I35 bridge collapse. Apparently up until this week they didn't have any more pressing construction projects on which to spend that money." Found by Radley Balko, who also notes: "Two-thirds of the stadium is publicly funded. The land was acquired through eminent domain."

It's all about priorities.

THE TROUBLE WITH NEWSPAPERS. It's not technological.

BRIDGE BLOGGING IN TENNESSEE: (Via Michael Silence.)

A NEW NAME for John Edwards.

ARMED ROBOTS ON PATROL in Iraq.

BUSH 24, CONGRESS 3.

CNBC OFFERS A REPORT CARD on the new Congress so far.

A LOOK AT NEXT-GENERATION consumer class actions.

A LOOK AT men, women, and wages.

EGG ON THE NEW REPUBLIC'S FACE: Roundup here.

UPDATE: Another roundup here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Still more here and here.

A FLYING CAR! Well, kind of.

$150 MILLION IN earmarks for John Murtha.

JAMES LILEKS: "This is the point in the story where we start to debate what’s news, and what’s just disaster-pr0n."

UPDATE: I blame Kevin Bacon.

SONY IS RECALLING the Cybershot DSC-T5. I have the DSC-T10, which is apparently unaffected. I think it does a good job.

MICKEY KAUS: "Keeping recipients on the dole while they 'train' for jobs they never get is a time-tested way of ... well, keeping recipients on the dole."

CHAOS IN THE HOUSE: A "complete breakdown of parliamentary procedure."

UPDATE: More: "They just replayed the whole mess from the House last night on C-Span. I spoke to Novak and he doesn't remember anything quite like this happening before. Pretty outrageous, really. It is about as blatant an abuse of power as you can have in a legislative body, to cheat on a vote total." They may look back on that 14% approval rating as a high of sorts, at this rate.

THOUGHTS ON NEWSPAPER ENDORSEMENTS, from Michael Silence.

JONAH GOLDBERG: "It’s a small paradox of the war in Iraq. As support for the war inches up (according to a New York Times poll that so shocked the editors they demanded it be retaken), as the surge proves ever more encouraging and as Gen. David Petraeus’s confidence grows, enthusiasm for the democracy project in Iraq wanes."

UPDATE: Reader Stan Brown says everyone is missing the point. Click "read more" for his argument.

Read More ?

EUGENE VOLOKH HAS MORE THOUGHTS on religion and parental rights.

MARKOS: "We are the center!"

UPDATE: Remembering 2002, somewhat strangely.

August 02, 2007

MEGAN MCARDLE: "Current progressive support for aborting babies with congenital birth defects has very little in common with the philosophic basis for eugenics; the progressives aren't trying to clean up the gene pool."

THE NEW YORK TIMES: "Caps on Prices Only Deepen Zimbabweans’ Misery."

Well, that's what price controls usually do.

GUY HERBERT LOOKS AT "governmentalism" in Britain.

POLLING: SURGE SUCCESS splits Dems.

PHIL CARTER SAYS don't believe the good news from Iraq.

But is Baqubah really a place with "the highest sectarian tensions, worst fighting, and least progress"? That's not what Michael Yon has been reporting from . . . Baqubah.

UPDATE: More thoughts here.

TAHOE HOMEOWNERS FACE BEAR INVASIONS: Once again, David Baron proves prophetic. Some related thoughts here.

MITT ROMNEY: The Victory Caucus interview.

CONTINUING UPDATES on the Minnesota bridge collapse at Buzz.mn, plus more news here.

AT REGISTAN, they're very critical of The Economist's coverage of Kazakhstan.

MICHAEL SILENCE LOOKS AT THE FAD FOR "automated traffic enforcement."

WE'VE HAD TROOPS THERE FOR 150 YEARS, AND THE VIOLENCE CONTINUES: Masked gunman kills Oakland reporter.

UPDATE: A reader emails: "That's the reason this reporter packs a Ruger P95 next to the laptop... but then again, I'm just a Tennessee redneck hiding out in Northern Virginia." Just don't accidentally take it into the U.S. Capitol.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT.

CONFERENCEBLOGGING: Just finished a panel on the detainee cases before the Supreme Court, and it was quite good. Substantive, balanced, moderate (well, there was one somewhat gratuitous dig at Clarence Thomas, but only one) and very useful. Often when I attend these things I wish that people outside the academic world could see them, as I suspect the image is something more politicized and less substantive.

AMERICAN AIRLINES MOVES TOWARD inflight wi-fi.

It's about time.

MORE TROUBLE FOR TED STEVENS: Seems like it would be a good time for him to retire. But what Republican will deliver that message?

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ON Obama's Pakistan Invasion: "Apart from the notion that it would be as hard to distinguish civilians in a Waziristan from terrorists as it is in Iraq, which the senator has written off, other questions arise. As a US Senator why not now introduce an October 11, 2002-type resolution, authorizing such an invasion? Or why hasn't he in the past? Obama has criticized Sen. Clinton for her approval of that Iraqi authorization, but the sort of action he is envisioning involves crossing into a nuclear Islamic country, one bullet away from an Islamic republic, and surely should be a question for Congressional approval."

COBURN CALLS FOR INVESTIGATION into earmark-funded company:

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has requested a Pentagon investigation of a defense contractor that he has targeted in recent weeks due to its earmarked funds.

In a letter last week to Defense Department Inspector General Claude Kicklighter, Coburn asked for his office to investigate 21st Century Systems Inc. (21CSI) to determine whether the defense contractor failed “to file legally required paper work” or used “federal funds for prohibited lobbying activities.” . . .

As the earmark’s sponsor for 21CSI, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) has defended his appropriations request aggressively despite the increasing attention from Coburn and from the media. Nelson has argued that the company’s funding serves vital national security needs.

Then there's no reason to fear an investigation, right?

WILL PUTIN GROW A BUSHY MUSTACHE NEXT? New Russian history lessons glorify Stalin.

MORE ON THE MINNESOTA BRIDGE COLLAPSE, from Popular Mechanics.

BEACH READING: Okay, actually I've barely even made it to the beach so far. But on this trip I'm reading Mark Helprin's A Soldier of the Great War, which was highly recommended to me. I'm about halfway through so far, and it's quite good.

31 COMPETITORS FOR THE 100 MPG CHALLENGE: The Automotive X-Prize looks to be doing pretty well. Excerpt: "The Automotive X-Prize is designed to get engineers thinking outside the box in terms of fuel economy. The goal is to develop a "commercially viable" vehicle that will get at least 100 mpg. How it's done is up to the individual teams, but they have to keep production in mind to be eligible. They even have to show a business plan proving that they can sell at least 10,000 units a year."

JAMES LILEKS HAS A BIG ROUNDUP on the Minnesota bridge disaster, and comments: "I’ve driven across this bridge every few days for thirty years. There are bridges, and there are bridges; this one had the most magnificent view of downtown available, and it’s a miracle I never rear-ended anyone while gawking at the skyline, the old Stone Bridge, the Mississippi. You always felt proud to be here when you crossed that bridge, pleased to live in such a beautiful place. Didn’t matter if it was summer twilight or hard cold winter noon - Minneapolis always seemed to be standing at attention, posing for a formal portrait . We’ll have that view again – but it’ll take a generation before it’s no longer tinged with regret and remembrance."

UPDATE: More from John Hinderaker.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: The Examiner busts Congress for pretend earmark reform:

Young children with active imaginations often invent playtime scenarios in which they pretend to be somebody else, like an astronaut or a firefighter. Everybody, including the adults in the household, knows it is make-believe. Most members of Congress seem to have forgotten that adults know pretending when they see it. And for months, they’ve been seeing way too much pretending on the issue of earmarks and ethics reform.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., epitomized the pretenders when she declared it “historic” that the House, on a 411-8 vote, approved the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 (which, by the way, she negotiated with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid behind closed doors). The Senate is expected to approve the bill today or Friday. There are a few positive provisions in the bill, but the bottom line is that it is stuffed with cosmetic changes that fail to address the core issues of congressional corruption spawned by earmarks. . . .

Reid and Pelosi are not alone in pretending to advance genuine reforms. As Roll Call predicted last month, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is now undercutting Coburn and Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and signaling the desire of many GOP establishmentarians to move on from earmarks and ethics issues. Next, McConnell will credit a “bipartisan consensus” as key to victory for reform in the Senate, thereby enabling Democrats to claim they’ve kept their 2006 campaign promise. Then members on both sides of the aisle in Congress can go on pretending they are serious about honest leadership and open government in Washington.

Can't we vote for "none of the above"? Plus, will Republicans' appetite for pork keep the Democrats in the majority? "House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio talks a good case for more openness and transparency in government, but what’s he been doing to corral more support for Flake, Campbell and Hensarling among the GOP ranks he is supposedly leading?"

UPDATE: Indeed: "I understand why the Democrats, now in the majority, want to preserve their opportunities for paying off special interests. That's largely why they want to be in the majority in the first place. But why on earth should Republicans join with them?"

WHO NEEDS A HYBRID?

Here’s the kicker: The Polo gets 60 to 70-plus mpg. And it’s really fun to drive. . . . What about the VW Lupo? Not yet. Too small, too compromised. I can’t gush about the Lupo, because it’s really, really small. Sure, it adds about 20 mpg to the Polo’s already impressive numbers, but it feels like a compromise. If I were single? Maybe. But with a wife and two kids? No way. At least not until gas is a whole lot more expensive than it already is. As it sits, a clean-diesel Lupo would be a great choice for the committed environmentalist who’s willing to forgo just about everything for the ultimate in efficiency.

I’m glad VW is going to have a clean-diesel Jetta in 2008. But I won’t buy one. For me, the numbers just don’t work: It’s a $25,000 car that gets 45 mpg. I can buy a Toyota Corolla for $10,000 less and still get 38 mpg—a price difference that would take the Jetta 66 years to overcome, assuming $3 gas/diesel. That’s not to say the Jetta isn’t a great car, and I would much rather drive it than a Corolla. But it just doesn’t make economic sense, and as a writer pulling down a modest income, it’s all about economics.

So to Volkswagen, I offer this plea: Bring the Polo to the U.S. Price it at $18,000. Run an ad campaign that brags about its hybrid-crushing performance at the pumps. And then, sit back and laugh all the way to the bank as hundreds of thousands of Americans, eager for just the right balance between frugal, fun and fantastically practical, mob your showrooms.

Obviously, there's a lot of room for improvement in the automotive world.

August 01, 2007

THE FAIRNESS DOCTRINE: Why the Empire is striking back.

THE KNOXVILLE REAL ESTATE COMMUNITY: Opening its wallets for Fred Thompson.

BUILD A BETTER WORLD by destroying wealth. It often pays well.

FRED THOMPSON on judges.

POPEYE THE SAILOR, 1933-1938, now on DVD. I love the way all this old stuff is becoming obtainable. (Via BoingBoing).

No anime characters in this Popeye.

HOW TO STOP HACKERS FROM watching you through your webcam.

WHAT THE CIA AND ATF THINK ABOUT Blogs as news media.

SURVEILLANCE UPDATE: Democrats Propose Compromise to Expand Government Surveillance.

AS EUROPE MOVES TO THE RIGHT, some American politicians are moving to the left. Is this a good idea? "We should not race to the place that Europe is trying to get away from."

SEX AND U.N. PEACEKEEPERS:

Now that the fact that peacekeeper troops have sex with local women has been publicized, there's more pressure on the UN to end, or at least regulate, the practice. The latest complaints come from Ivory Coast, where Moroccan peacekeepers are accused of having sex with local teenage girls. . . .

The UN would like the entire matter to go away. There is already a shortage of peacekeepers, and broadcasting the fact that sexual activity will be monitored by civilian aid workers does little to encourage troops to volunteer.

Alas, the troops can't emulate this solution: "The foreigner aid workers often have sex with local women, but more frequently they do so with each other. That's safer, given all the AIDS, and other sexually transmitted diseases going around. But the peacekeeper units tend to be all-male, and generally from countries where homosexuality is not tolerated."

OBAMA: Invade Pakistan! "Obama said that as commander in chief he would remove troops from Iraq and put them 'on the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan.'"

UPDATE: Nick Schweitzer says "I told you so."

ANOTHER UPDATE: Some related thoughts on Obama.

ROBERT BLUEY: Ethics bill puts Mitch McConnell on the spot.

ROLLING STONE says that ethanol is a scam. "The great danger of confronting peak oil and global warming isn't that we will sit on our collective asses and do nothing while civilization collapses, but that we will plunge after "solutions" that will make our problems even worse. Like believing we can replace gasoline with ethanol, the much-hyped biofuel that we make from corn."

Yes. There may be some value to ethanol made from cellulose and other waste biomass, but corn-based ethanol is just liquid pork. Nice to see there's agreement on this across a wide ideological spectrum. (Via Kudlow).

Bob Zubrin tells me that we can make methanol, as opposed to ethanol, more easily from waste biomass. Even kudzu. That sounds promising.

WALL STREET JOURNAL PUBLISHER GORDON CROVITZ on the Murdoch takeover.

Our podcast interview with Crovitz from earlier this year can be heard here.

FLAT TAX COMPETITION in Eastern Europe.

FROM POPULAR MECHANICS: A look at the ten worst disasters of the 20th Century.

Plus, advice on disaster preparedness and survival.

IN THE MAIL: Zoltan Barany's Democratic Breakdown and the Decline of the Russian Military. It looks rather troubling.

LEVELING THE PLAYING FIELD: A look at the declining status of TV anchors.

IT'S NATIONAL RASPBERRY CREAM PIE DAY: "You can probably thank the National Raspberry Council for that one. It certainly goes over better than National Raspberry Colonic Month, last practiced in 1924."

1,028 ECONOMISTS AGAINST PROTECTIONISM.

CONFERENCEBLOGGING: The panels here are good -- most people think that this conference gets better discussions than AALS -- but to me the highlight of any conference is the schmoozing. Had fun hanging out with a bunch of interesting folks last night including yet another blogger, Gail Heriot of The Right Coast, who spoke on affirmative action yesterday. And Brannon Denning, who counts as a blogger since he sometimes guestblogs here and at Concurring Opinions.

MCCAIN'S ONLY HOPE: Turning against the media?

CHILDREN'S AUDIOBOOKS for long car rides.

The Glenn and Helen Show: Austin and Annabelle Bay on War, History, and Life.

Austin Bay is a novelist and nonfiction author (author of The Wrong Side of Brightness and A Quick and Dirty Guide to War), blogger and host of Pajamas Media's Blog Week in Review. He and his daughter spent part of this summer following the route of Austin's great-great-grandfather in the Civil War, shooting video and working on a book project tentatively entitled Eli's War.

They passed through Knoxville, and we managed to have dinner with them. Join us for a talk about war, history, and family. You can listen directly -- no downloading needed -- by going here and clicking on the gray Flash player. You can also download the file and listen at your leisure by clicking right here, and you can get a lo-fi version suitable for dialup by going here and selecting "lo-fi." And, of course, you can get a free subscription via iTunes -- never miss another episode!

This podcast was brought to you by Volvo USA. Music is by Doug Weinstein's band, XTemp.

July 31, 2007

GUILTY PLEA: "A Somali immigrant the government says plotted to blow up an Ohio shopping mall pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiring to provide material support to terrorists."

MOOSE LAWYERS: A moose represented my sister once. Mind you, moose lawsuits can be pretty nasty.

DAVID LAT LOOKS AT Big Law and Big Politics.

NERD-ON-NERD VIOLENCE: With lightsabers. There's video.

FRED BROWN points out some heroes.

A TAX REVOLT in Indiana.

FREE SPEECH AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

FARMING THE GOVERNMENT:

Crop prices are high, driven in part by a huge demand for corn to make ethanol, which squeezes the land available for other crops and raises their prices as well. Democrats took over Congress last year, vowing to show they're the financially responsible stewards their Republican predecessors were not. And President Bush asked Congress to direct the subsidies to the smaller, family farmers that politicians love to claim they support.

So, given this confluence of events, what did House Democrats do? Not much. Last week, under heavy pressure from farm organizations and fearing for the survival of Democratic freshmen from rural districts, they pushed through a business-as-usual farm bill that largely extends the current subsidy system for five more years. . . .

Most of the big money goes to just five crops: corn, wheat, cotton, soybeans and rice. The usual justification for the largesse is that farmers would go out of business without it. If that's so, how do you explain that many other crops do quite well with little or none of the government help that goes to the favored five?

In addition to boosting just a few crops, the subsidies also favor a tiny sliver of the largest farms and agribusinesses: The top 10% of recipients get nearly three-fourths of subsidy payments, while the bottom 80% of recipients divide up a scant 12%.

Like the song says: "Welfare for white folks." Make that rich white folks, mostly.

HEH.

CONSUMER CONFIDENCE HITS six-year high. I guess that's good news.

IN EXPERIMENTATION, A NEGATIVE RESULT IS NOT A FAILURE:

We must report a sad failure; the egg did not fry on the sidewalk, which means that the video evidence of this deadly heatwave will not be posted tonight.

But it doesn't make for good video.

ARE DEMOCRATS BEING SHORT-SIGHTED ON JUDGES? Jonathan Adler and Stuart Taylor weigh in.

TREATING CHE GUEVARA LIKE DAVID DUKE. Though that comparison is probably unfair to David Duke.

QUITE SOME TIME AGO, I WROTE about signing up for "Amazon Prime" and how the free shipping changed my online shopping habits. (More here). Now this piece from USA Today suggests that I'm not the only one:

Investors saw the launch of Amazon Prime as the latest manifestation of Bezos' fixation on free shipping, a profit drainer. They hammered Amazon (AMZN) shares down to $30 two years ago after the Seattle company began offering the unlimited free two-day shipping service for a $79 yearly fee.

"Wall Street hates it when we lower prices, give away free shipping, and offer Amazon Prime," Bezos said in an e-mail interview. "But we know in our bones that siding with the customer pays off for everyone in the end."

Now, Prime is starting to look like a linchpin to Amazon's remarkable run of increases in quarterly sales — and investors no longer appear kerfuffled. After the online retailing giant last week reported a singularly sharp rise in sales for its second quarter, its shares shot up 25%, topping $86 — a seven-year high.

Plus, encouraging people to shop online is environmentally friendly!

MORE PROBLEMS WITH SPACE DEBRIS:

Traffic in space is getting so congested that flight controllers in the past few weeks have had to nudge three spacecraft out of harm’s way, in one case to prevent the craft from colliding with its own trash. . . .

Officials and private space experts say episodes like these illustrate the danger of a drastic rise in satellites and space debris in Earth’s orbit. Early this year, after decades of growth, the federal catalog of detectable objects (four inches wide or larger) orbiting Earth reached 10,000, including dead satellites, old rocket engines and junkyards of whirling debris left over from chance explosions and weapon tests.

Now, that number has jumped to 12,000. China’s test of an antisatellite weapon in January and four spacecraft breakups in February, one of them mysterious, have contributed to the buildup of debris. Space officials worry that a speeding bit of space junk could shatter an object into dozens or hundreds of fragments, starting a chain reaction of destruction.

Experts said that moving spacecraft out of the way to avoid collisions, once a rare way of dealing with potential threats, is becoming increasingly common.

Read the whole thing.

SO I'M AT THE SOUTHEASTERN ASSOCIATION OF LAW SCHOOLS CONFERENCE, and there seem to be a lot more bloggers than in the past: I had barely arrived when I got into the elevator with Paul Secunda of the Workplace Law Prof blog. But then, there are a lot more law professor bloggers in general than there used to be.

DUCT-TAPE METHODS TO SAVE THE EARTH:

Re-salting arctic waters with massive salty ice cubes? Stopping glaciers from thawing by wrapping them in insulating blankets? While these methods of preventing further environmental destruction may seem like schemes straight from the Wile E. Coyote handbook, many serious scientists are pursuing last-ditch contingency plans such as these for dealing with the effects of adverse climate change.

I'm glad people are looking at this stuff, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

WOULDN'T A PURSE-SHAPED MACHINEGUN be more useful?

REBECCA MACKINNON HAS MORE on the Yahoo! / China affair. "More documents have surfaced showing that Yahoo! employees knew that they were handling political cases when they received information requests from Chinese authorities on at least two people now doing serious jailtime. This is contrary to previous claims by Yahoo!"

YEAH, THIS IS GOING TO HURT FRED THOMPSON: Richard Cohen complaining that he's too pro-gun.

UPDATE: Reader Jorge del Rio notes a contradiction in Cohen's piece: "Basically, Cohen says that it's ridiculous to think that if students were allowed to carry firearms on campus that any of them could have done something to prevent the Virginia Tech massacre. However, just two paragraphs later he says how he wished he had had a gun when his house was burglarized 'merely to protect his life.' I guess he knows better, since he's not one of those young drunks filled to the brim with hormonal urges like most gun owners."

This is a time-honored bit of hypocrisy at the Post, going back at least to Carl Rowan.

SPINNING THE SURGE.

UPDATE: Joe Lieberman criticizes war critics. “There is a very strong group within the party that I think doesn’t take the threat of Islamist terrorism seriously enough.”

IN THE MAIL: John Brenkman's The Cultural Contradictions of Democracy: Political Thought since September 11. This could be interesting to read along with Richard Posner's Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency.

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE REELECTED WE'D SEE A resurgence of anti-blasphemy laws. And they were right!

JOHN TIERNEY EXAMINES REASONS FOR HAVING SEX.

WHAT WOMEN WANT: And more, at the latest Ask Dr. Helen column!

MICKEY KAUS IS AMUSED by Rudy Giuliani's attacks on nanny-state politicians.

TED STEVENS' HOUSE searched by the FBI. And IRS.

UPDATE: Don Surber: "Alaska’s three Republicans in Congress are an embarrassment. They should be impeached, er, expelled."

ANOTHER UPDATE: More on Stevens:

Top White House political advisor Karl Rove told a bunch of us over lunch last week that corruption was the single biggest issue in last fall’s election that overturned the GOP congressional majority. I have always agreed with this assessment, based on exit polls that showed corruption and runaway budget spending were actually more important to voters than Iraq.

So this Stevens business has to be swept away. The GOP should not defend him if he is guilty. Just clean house.

They should. They won't. And it'll cost them.

"TOO CAUTIOUS" in showing optimism on Iraq? More here.

UPDATE: Worried the surge might work.

BREAD AND A CIRCUS: Michael Yon posts another report from Baqubah, full of photos and firsthand observations.

July 30, 2007

VIRGINIA POSTREL:

Personal interests aside, the more fundamental issue is the way we treat the term disease. If something is a "disease," it is worth treating. If it isn't a "disease," you should just live with it. But why? Why not treat a biological condition you just don't like? (I'm assuming that you are directly or indirectly paying for the treatment.) We don't have to call Restless Leg Syndrome a disease to acknowledge that it disturbs some people's sleep and that those people would like relief. Contrary to what you may have heard, the only sort of character suffering builds is the ability to suffer--a useful ability in a world where suffering is the routine nature of life but not a virtue that makes the world a better place.

Besides, if suffering is a virtue in itself we've always got Middle School. And the DMV.

WISHING FOR JOHN ROBERTS' DEATH.

UPDATE: More.

JAMES LILEKS REPORTS FROM A CRUISE: "Walking around and eating is hard work, apparently. I don’t know how the Navy managed to win WW2. . . . Everything here costs something. I was under the impression that everything was included, but no - if it’s the slightest bit fun, it costs extra. . . . The sight of the fellow passengers was quite remarkable; if you could sum it up, you’d have to say this is a boat full of small whales looking to catch sight of a larger one. Everyone waddles to and fro, slowly, panting with the effort of transporting the stored energy of previous meals to the location of the next one."

WHEN BEING A BOY hurts.

A VITAL ANNIVERSARY: "Yesterday was the birthday of John S. Pillsbury, the spiritual father of the lovable Doughboy whose cheerful smile and delightful giggle blind us to the fact that his entire life is one desperate attempt to keep from being shoved in the oven. Here! Eat this! Not me! I’m self-aware!"

IMPORTANT THOUGHTS ON NERDS AND WHITENESS from Tom Maguire.

UPDATE: Related post here. Excerpt: "The article does not mention the true common characteristic of nerds: they are numerate, i.e. conversant in the language of mathematics - an odd omission for a linguist. This omission can be explained by the fact that Berkeley-style multi-culturalism is threatened by numeracy, the development of which is the hallmark of Western Civilization and the historical wellspring of western economic and military success. Consequently, it is incumbent on multi-culturalists to discredit whenever and wherever possible those who are numerate." Ouch.

MORE: Invoking Weird Al.

SO TODAY AMAZON IS RECOMMENDING Unconventional Warfare Devices and Techniques References Tm 31-200-1, and the Improvised Munitions Handbook. Plus, a helpful volume on boobytraps.

I wonder what led to those recommendations? This is maybe taking the whole Dangerous Book for Boys thing a bit too far. . . .

MORE THOUGHTS ON ELECTION FRAUD FROM JOHN FUND. Our podcast interview with him on this topic can be found here.

GLOBAL OPTIMISM, American pessimism.

PHILADELPHIA: The details change, the narrative remains.

THOUGHTS ON FEAR.

MOLLOHAN CAST VOTES DESPITE RECUSAL:

Despite having recused himself from matters relating to the FBI — which is reportedly investigating his finances — Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.) on Wednesday voted against an amendment that would have increased the bureau’s budget by $6 million.

Republicans say Mollohan’s vote proves his recusal is a sham — and claim the amendment was intended to draw him out. Democrats defended Mollohan, saying he had not participated in discussions about the agencies that are reportedly investigating him, though no one from his office or the Appropriations Committee would go on the record for this article. . . .

It has been widely reported that Mollohan sent a letter to the Appropriations Committee recusing himself from matters involving the Justice Department, a decision that was hailed by watchdog groups such as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

But according to the committee, Mollohan’s recusal applies only to four accounts within Justice: the Office of the Attorney General, the U.S. attorneys, the FBI and the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. Neither Mollohan’s office nor the Appropriations Committee would provide a copy of the recusal letter, and Republicans claimed they have never seen it.

A bit more transparency, please.

THE SPEECH POLICE, on parade.

IN THE MAIL: Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy's The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House.

Plus, Billy Graham and Woody Allen.

MORE PROBLEMS WITH electronic voting.

LARRY SOLUM EXPLAINS the counter-majoritarian difficulty.

And I've had some thoughts on the subject, here.

MEGAN MCARDLE: "But though I disapprove of the way that both sides have turned this into a battle in some larger culture war over whether soldiers/Republicans or journalists/Democrats are the bigger jerks, it still matters a great deal whether the story was right. Just as it mattered whether Jayson Blair's stories were right, or Stephen Glass's, not because their stories would resolve momentous questions of public policy, but because it matters a great deal whether the information that media conveys is correct. Editors should live in fear that something they have published is wrong; that's healthy. Whatever the motives of the critics--and I hate to point this out, but almost certainly anyone who gets caught writing a fake story, will be caught by someone who doesn't like them very much, and has ulterior motives for desiring to disprove what they wrote--the mechanism is sound. It is the journalistic equivalent of peer review."

"MORE BABIES PLEASE" IN EUROPE: Plus, are children a public good? Not when they scream on airplanes.

MAKE BIODIESEL YOURSELF with a home processing plant.

MICHAEL TOTTEN POSTS ANOTHER REPORT FROM BAGHDAD:

“We want to use you as bait,” Sergeant Eduardo Ojeda from Los Angeles, California, told me before I embedded with his unit on what was shaping up to be a night raid.

“Excellent,” I said. “That’s why I’m here.”

Remember, he's supported by reader donations, so if you like the reporting, you might want to hit the tipjar.

[Link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry!]

A WAR WE JUST MIGHT WIN: "Viewed from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal.. . . Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily 'victory' but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with."

It's in the New York Times, so it must be true.

FREEZING VS. MIND UPLOADING: Ron Bailey reports on the debate. Plus, proof that Bailey actually has a heart.

MICKEY KAUS: "How about this--the DLC can stop talking about the teachers' unions when the Democratic candidates stop talking about No Child Left Behind. Deal?"

DON SURBER: "The New York Times is a troubled franchise. I do not mean financially; I mean in its soul."

FROM TRANSATLANTIC POLITICS, Back to Stalinism.

Plus, why Russians are getting worse government than they deserve.

NOBODY TELL MCCAIN AND FEINGOLD: "New Zealand's Parliament has voted itself far-reaching powers to control satire and ridicule of MPs in Parliament, attracting a storm of media and academic criticism."

July 29, 2007

GOOD NEWS: "Iraq completed one of sport's great fairytales by beating Saudi Arabia 1-0 in the Asian Cup final on Sunday to provide a rare moment for celebration in their war-torn homeland. The Saudis had been bidding to become the first four-times winners of the tournament but Iraq, riding a wave of global sentiment, upset the hot-favourites for a rare slice of sporting glory."

And Omar writes: "I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said that today has been as exciting as one of those election days in Baghdad. Our national soccer team is playing for the Asian cup for the first time in its history. By comparison this is as if the American team is playing for the cup of Copa America against the team of Brazil or Argentina! But of course here in Iraq we care way more about soccer than Americans do. No offense meant of course!"

None taken. Everyone cares about soccer more than Americans do. But follow the link for his liveblogging of the match. He concludes: "Our players, tonight our heroes, learned that only with team work they had a chance to win. May our politicians learn from the players . . . The fear is gone, the curfew is ignored, tonight Iraq knows only joy." May there be more days like this, and with more occasions than soccer.

PORKQUEST: Mary Katharine Ham goes looking for John Murtha's missing million-dollar earmark. Watch her visit various Johnstown, PA landmarks, and get the runaround from various PR flacks. (Bumped, because -- well, just watch it.)

LOTT V. LEVITT: An update.

MORE ON RECESS APPOINTMENTS TO THE SUPREME COURT: "According to C-Span, there have been 15 recess appointments to the Supreme Court. The first was John Rutledge, who was given a recess appointment to be Chief Justice by President George Washington in 1795. As noted in this report, President Eisenhower made three recess appointments to the Court — Earl Warren, William Brennan, and Potter Stewart. Brennan, in particular, was placed on the Court in the midst of the 1956 Presidential campaign, arguably for political reasons."

I'm ready for my closeup! Er, but not holding my breath.

STEVEN DEN BESTE, quoted in the New York Times.

The guy hung up his blog ages ago and he's still unstoppable. So unstoppable, some readers note, that the NYT is even attributing a Mickey Kaus statement to den Beste along with his own. But in the context of the quote, I think that's okay, since den Beste was quoting Kaus himself, and not really an error on the part of the Times.

UPDATE: Kaus comments: "Print editors do have to save space. But web editors don't. That's a major, unremarked virtue of blogs over newspapers when it comes to the newspaper's alleged unique selling proposition: accuracy. In fact, the need to fit copy to a limited space is a powerful error-creating machine in both dailies and magazines. Harried print editors compress, and get it wrong. Or they fool around trying to simplify attribution and get it wrong. Or they guiltlessly edit quotes within quotation marks and (by definition) get them wrong. ... In cyberspace,, if it takes one more line to get it right, you can take one more line. I haven't killed a widow in so long I've forgotten what it feels like."

ACCORDING TO THIS ARTICLE FROM THE GUARDIAN, the Bush Administration was already supporting torturing suspects back in 1998. "The report criticises the Bush administration's approval of practices which would be illegal if carried out by British agents. It shows that in 1998, the year Bin Laden was indicted in the US, Britain insisted that the policy of treating prisoners humanely should include him. But the CIA never gave the assurances."

I blame John Ashcroft. Er, and Stephen Hawking or Frank Tipler, I guess . . . .

UPDATE: Bill Quick asks the inevitable question: "Did Hillary Clinton support torturing Osama bin Laden?"

MORE COOL UNDERSEA PHOTOGRAPHY.

I MENTIONED A WHILE BACK that I was reading Michael Belfiore's new book, Rocketeers: How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers, and Pilots Is Boldly Privatizing Space, and I had a review in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. Now there's a free link available, thanks to OpinionJournal.com. The Belfiore book is very much worth reading for anyone interested in space, capitalism, or technology. And thanks to Scott Johnson for the undeserved praise.

SAVING ENERGY BY SWITCHING from Google to Blackle.

Color me, er, skeptical.

SUNSHINE: NOT SO BAD AFTER ALL:

Ever since scientists convicted sunlight of causing skin cancer, many seemingly sensible people have been running around slathered in sunscreen, using hats and long sleeves to hide our skin from the sun as if we were vampires. Now it looks like we may have gone too far: We may be missing out on the benefits of sunshine.

A study (press release) released today in the journal Neurology indicates that children who spend more time in the sun may have a decreased risk of multiple sclerosis. In pairs of twins where one twin had multiple sclerosis, the MS-free sibling had spent more time outside, playing team sports and sun tanning. Scientists theorize that ultraviolet rays in sunlight trigger a protective response that protects the body from this chronic nervous system disorder, either by altering the immune system or by producing vitamin D. . . .

Getting more vitamin D-drenched sunlight might be a good idea, regardless of your genetic risk for multiple sclerosis: Scientists say most people aren’t getting enough. Researchers at Boston University published a paper last week in the New England Journal of Medicine said that more than 1 billion people worldwide don’t get enough Vitamin D. Too little vitamin D for too long can result in dramatic results like rickets—a softening of the skeleton. But other dangers include Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a range of cancers, Crohn’s disease, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension.

Well, I'm en route to the beach now. For my health!

UPDATE: More thoughts here. I wouldn't throw away the sunscreen. But I wouldn't avoid the sun completely, either.

THOUGHTS ON PLASTER SAINTS and war stories.

THE CARNIVAL OF CARS IS UP! Also the Carnival of Cinema, the Carnival of Homeschooling, and the Carnival of Recipes. And don't miss the Carnival of the Capitalists and the Carnival of Archaelology.

I'm pretty lame about carnival-blogging these days, but there are lots of carnivals listed at BlogCarnival.com, with highlights in my right sidebar.

THIS SOUNDS COOL:

Researchers have developed a remarkably simple way to convert ordinary graphite particles into very thin but superstrong sheets that are tougher than steel and as flexible as carbon fiber but can be made much more cheaply. The discovery could spawn entirely new types of materials for applications as diverse as protective coatings, electronic components, batteries, and fuel cells.

I can see a lot of applications.

ROBIN HENIG LOOKS AT ROBOTS:

Sociable robots come equipped with the very abilities that humans have evolved to ease our interactions with one another: eye contact, gaze direction, turn-taking, shared attention. They are programmed to learn the way humans learn, by starting with a core of basic drives and abilities and adding to them as their physical and social experiences accrue. People respond to the robots’ social cues almost without thinking, and as a result the robots give the impression of being somehow, improbably, alive.

Read the whole thing.

BROWN UNIVERSITY WELCOMES Duke rape case victim.

MICHAEL SILENCE IS grillblogging. Looks yummy!

POLITICAL CAPITAL is John Harwood's new blog over at CNBC.

DEMANDING A PAPER TRAIL FOR VOTING: About time.

"FIND OUT WHAT HE'S DRINKING, and give some to my other astronauts."

HILLARY, OBAMA, and a return to normalcy.

MORE THOUGHTS ON GUANTANAMO, from Prof. Kenneth Anderson.

INCONSISTENCIES regarding Yahoo! and China.