October 27, 2007

INDEED: "As Dan Rather --obviously TNR editors' role model-- would say: 'Courage.'"

MONSTERS EVERYWHERE? I don't care! I wonder if there will be a Dutch translation?

JAMES LILEKS: "If you could tell your previous 1997 incarnation one thing, what might it be?"

I'm pretty sure it would be "Buy Google."

A DIFFERENT SLANT ON ILLEGAL ALIENS: "If he wins his bid for the White House, Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson may be just the man to get to the bottom of the 60-year-old Roswell UFO mystery."

I GUESS THEY FIGURED THAT AFTER AHMADINEJAD AT COLUMBIA, IT WAS OKAY: "In the boneheaded move of the year, conservative student group Young Americans for Freedom invited British National Party (BNP) leader Nick Griffin, a flat-out racist and Holocaust denier, to speak about the dangers of Islam at Michigan State University."

UPDATE: Ron Paul supporters?

EXTREME MORTMAN: Congress can get something done!

SEARED, SEARED in his memory.

MICKEY KAUS: "Will three surges late in his term salavage Bush's presidency? 1) Petraeus' 'surge' in Iraq; 2) Bernanke's rate-cutting liquidity surge to prevent the economy from sliding into recession; 3) The new border enforcement surge, which might tighten the unskilled labor market so the economy looks good from the bottom as well as the top (and save Bush from whiffing completely on a signature issue)?"

Kaus, however, underestimates the resourcefulness of the American media in extracting lemons from lemonade.

SOLVING THE MEDIA'S diversity problem.

OUCH: "Europe was not as outraged by Auschwitz as by Guantanamo Bay.”

LIVE-BLOGGING FROM THE X-PRIZE CUP, at Rand Simberg's place.

POL POT'S STRETCH LIMO for sale on eBay.

Ever notice how the champions of the proletariat always have stretch limos?

CAR LUST: The unforgettable AMC Matador X.

WITH ALL THE CAREERS BEING BUILT ON FAKE NEWS, I don't see why a fake press conference comes as any surprise, really . . . .

In the Colbert Administration, all press conferences will be done this way!

SOME POST-CALVAN advice for reporters in Iraq.

AT THE NEW REPUBLIC: Mistaking Vietnam movies for real life. "To read the Thomas pieces was, simply, to doubt them. And to wonder if its editors had ever actually met a soldier on his way to or from Iraq, or talked to any human being involved in the modern military."

UPDATE: What goes around, comes around.

JEFF EMANUEL: Does independent journalism from Iraq really make a difference?

TOM MAGUIRE: "Does the John Edwards campaign have a death wish? To the litany which includes the 28,000 square foot home, his job with a hedge fund (to learn about poverty!) and the $400 haircuts we can now add a story about the decision by the Edwards campaign to locate their campaign headquarters in the poshest part of posh Chapel Hill, North Carolina. And the death wish? Well, the location of his campaign headquarters was a non-story until the Edwards people got a bit heavy-handed with a UNC professor."

GATEWAY PUNDIT ROUNDS UP more news from Iraq.

IN KNOXVILLE, A RED-LIGHT CAMERA TRAVESTY IS FINALLY FIXED:

For months, citizens accused of running camera-monitored red lights in Knoxville were told they'd have to pay $67.50 just to have a hearing to contest the charge.

"The city acknowledges that was a mistake, having that incorrect language in the notice," attorney Michael S. Kelley told U.S. District Judge Thomas Phillips at a hearing Thursday.

Neither Deputy City Law Director Ron Mills nor Municipal Court Administrator Rick Wingate could say how long it took city officials to discover that error.

The whole thing has pretty much been outsourced: "Redflex Traffic Systems Inc., a private company tapped to administrate the camera-based enforcement program, was responsible for fashioning those citation forms."

And the city officials could have discovered the error by reading InstaPundit back in 2006.

BLOGLIGHT: The best disinfectant.

IN THE MAIL: A novel by Harold Coyle and Barrett Tillman, Prometheus's Child.

SO MUCH FOR THAT WHOLE "LEGAL TENDER" THING: Apple refusing to accept cash for iPhones.

LEARNING ABOUT THE BBC from Facebook.

HOUSE OF PAIN: John Baden on the housing market and why pain is important.

HERE'S A ROUNDUP ON THE NEW APPLE LEOPARD RELEASE, but there are some problems being reported.

UPDATE: Reader Scott Kelly sends this link on Leopard installation problems.

D'OH! House Judiciary Committee reveals whistleblowers' email addresses.

Although the panel said it would not accept anonymous tips, it assured those who came forward that their identity would be held in the "strictest confidence."

But in an email sent out today, the committee inadvertently sent the email addresses of all the would-be whistleblowers to everyone who had written in to the tipline. The committee email was sent to tipsters who had used the website form, including presumably whistleblowers themselves, and all of the recipients of the email were accidentally included in the "to:" field -- instead of concealing those addresses with a so-called blind carbon copy or "bcc: . . .

Compounding the mistake, the committee later sent out a second email attempting to recall the original email; it, too, included all recipients in the "to:" field, according to a recipient of the emails.

That's gonna make people want to come forward. Meanwhile, how about some remedial education in "how to use email" for the Judiciary staff?

IN THE VALLEY OF ENNUI. That's pretty much my reaction.

IF THE FU HSITS: "I confess. I've been just waiting for the opportunity to write that."

October 26, 2007

TNR digs in deeper.

UPDATE: Heading for the Earth's core.

NOBODY TELL LOU DOBBS: MECHA CLAIMS CREDIT FOR CALIFORNIA FIRES: But in fact, the story is a fake.

Meanwhile, on Air America, a claim that Blackwater started the fires.

Plus, is "climate change" a new synonym for arsonists?

WORRIED ABOUT DRUG-RESISTANT BACTERIA? Wash your hands.

I notice that my local mall now features hand-sanitizer dispensers everywhere. This is a public-health trend that I wrote about a while ago.

STUPID HUMANS: Ralph Kinney Bennett observes that people insist on doing what they want, not what planners think they should.

THOUGHTS ON swinging the war-fatigued, at RedState.

RON ROSENBAUM on Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Putin.

THE JOYS OF spiked coffee.

A LOOK AT SPACE TETHERS: Promising cheap, efficient Earth-space transit, if they just unspool right.

VOTE: The ten worst automobiles of 2007.

IT'S A QUAGMIRE: America can't win the war on fire.

IN THE MAIL: Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman's Ethical Realism: A Vision for America's Role in the World.

JAMES FALLOWS: Life really is unfair. Plus, the upside to global warming!

JOHN FUND looks at Mike Huckabee.

AAUGH! It's nearly Halloween, so it's time for Christmas decorations to go up.

THANKS TO THE FOLKS WHO TESTED yesterday's SSRN download. It seems like a user-friendliness issue -- people didn't know to click on the "download from SSRN" button at the bottom of the page instead of the confusing download button at the top of the page that just takes you to the bottom. But you do have to have cookies enabled.

IDEOLOGY doesn't pay the rent at the NYT.

MELANIE SCARBOROUGH thinks D.C. cops are getting full of themselves: "Which statute requires law-abiding citizens to produce ID to walk down a sidewalk? What law says that citizens must explain to police where they are going and why?"

ETHICAL PARSING OF A LAWYER'S THREE-WAY: My prediction is that this will end up boosting law school applications.

MORE ON The New Republic, Beauchamp, and the Army, from Bob Owens. Including this observation: "As far as this story is concerned, it seems that only bloggers are doing the job that most journalists won't do, such as sending emails, asking questions, and making phone calls to those involved in the still-developing story."

HSUTZPAH.

BOMBS OVER BAGHDAD HOLLYWOOD: "t doesn't matter how many Oscar winners are in front of or behind the camera — audiences are proving to be conscientious objectors when it comes to this fall's surge of antiwar and anti-Bush films."

J.D. JOHANNES REPORTS on the state of independent war reporting in 2007.

ERIC SCHEIE: " I was thinking maybe the enema of your enemy, but whatever."

MICKEY KAUS: "In a desperate bid for respectability, the struggling New York Times has begun an association with the prestigious bloggingheads.tv start-up."

RUDY VS. HILLARY: A choice, not an echo! Or maybe not.

October 25, 2007

MORE ON THE MCCLATCHY - BAGHDAD STORY, at USA Today.

Plus, a defense of reporter Bobby Calvan, from a coworker.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY -- and blogiversary -- to Alphecca's Jeff Soyer!

GOOD WAR NEWS FROM ATLANTA: I witnessed this very phenomenon myself, a few months ago.

"AN INSIDE JOB? HOW DARE YOU?" Bill Clinton takes on 9/11 conspiracists. Bravo.

THOUGHTS ON CHARITY and the Abrahamic religions.

WHY HAMPTON INN IS MUCH, MUCH BETTER THAN COMFORT INN.

THEY WAY THINGS HAVE BEEN WITH BUSH AND THE SAUDIS LATELY, we're lucky it was just Laura and not George. . .

UPDATE: Charles Johnson is missing Orianna Fallaci.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ysabel Howard for First Lady!

STEPHEN GREEN explains the obvious. But note that no longer being a member of the Libertarian Party is hardly the same thing as not being a libertarian. If it were, there would be precious few libertarians left.

Meanwhile, I'm charged with destroying the conservative blogosphere via my seductive radical libertarian ways:

Rob Neppell (aka N.Z. Bear) made an astute point that the concerns of the largest blog on the Right—Instapundit—tends to drive our conversation. He pointed out for the audience that Reynolds was not a conservative but a self-professed libertarian who was once quoted as saying he'd be delighted to live in a country where happily married gay couples had closets full of assault weapons."

The panelists chuckled; the audience didn’t seem as amused. The reaction speaks volumes. The fact that many center-right bloggers care more about getting linked by a radical libertarian than they do in discussing the concerns of their fellow conservatives is one of the primary reasons the Right blogosphere is a failing to have the same impact as the Left.

I can't help being seductive -- it's just how I was made. But I don't see my failure to lead a conservative blogging revolution as a failure at all, since I'm, you know, not a conservative. People who don't like gay marriage can do their own blogging thing, and I'll link to 'em sometimes -- I do, after all -- but not with approval. I'm not on board the anti-gay-marriage, anti-abortion train, and never have been.

UPDATE: Reader Tucker Goodrich emails:

It'd be nice one day if the Republicans could figure out what theLibertarians never will: libertarianism is far and away the predominant political philosophy in the US. Neither the Democrats, the Republicans, or, especially, the Libertarians can figure this out, but your success, as well as Reagan's, are indicative of this fact.

Where Americans differ from the Libertarian party and the Democrats, is that they believe that they have a right to defend themselves. And this is such a critical issue, that the other differences really don't matter. The Republicans agree with Americans on the right to defense, but fall short on moralizing bossiness, and, well, corruption.

Three items would make the Republicans the majority party forever: A strong defense of defense, a libertarian take on social issues, and a conservative approach to finance.

Hmm... Sounds like Guiliani.

I'm no Ronald Reagan. And Giuliani is no libertarian. But Goodrich is right about what would make the Republicans a majority party.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Thoughts from Don Surber.

U.S. OUT OF MONGOLIA -- NOW!

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, our society would be riddled with anonymous informers who would rat out politically unacceptable thoughts to the authorities. And they were right!

IN SEARCH OF THE MYSTERIOUS skunk ape.

HOURS OF FUN, from James Lileks.

PERRY DE HAVILLAND: "I have argued in the past that violent repression, gulags and mass murder are not in fact the defining characteristics for a state to be 'totalitarian'. The defining characteristic is, as the word itself suggests, that control over people be pervasive and total... mass murderousness, goose-stepping troops, waving red (or whatever) flags are merely an incidental consequence."

MICHAEL S. MALONE HAS THOUGHTS on free speech and net neutrality.

I SAW SOMEBODY IN A BLOG COMMENT-THREAD bragging that he'd bought a used Ferrari for less than I paid for my RX-8. That's possible, I guess, but let's see -- I've had the RX-8 for 4 years now, and I've spent on maintenance . . . hmm . . . oh, yeah, absolutely nothing. For the used Ferraris, on the other hand, Autoblog observes: "Do bear in mind that a Ferrari is the gift that keeps on giving – to the dealership service department, from your wallet. The entry price might be reasonable enough (note the joke), but the maintenance costs are horrendous."

MORE ON THE NEW REPUBLIC / BEAUCHAMP AFFAIR, in this column from Bob Owens.

A NEW SONY POCKETCAM that shoots at ISO 3200. That just might be my next purchase. Plus reports on all sorts of new photo gear, here and here.

DON SURBER WEIGHS IN on the McClatchy / Baghdad story.

WALTER OLSON, on Terry Collingsworth, Chevron, Ecuador, and the press.

A LOOK AT THE FUTURE OF FOOD: "Dewis and his colleagues work to analyze hundreds of thousands of substances and develop compounds that will please the buying public in four ways—through smell, taste, sensation and emotion. To do so, flavor scientists are homing in on molecules, receptors, brain structures and genetic code that will enable them to create flavors tailored to consumers' palates, health condition, demographics, even genotype." I'm guessing that Nina Planck wouldn't approve.

DEXTER VAN ZILE: Hate at the Altar.

FRED THOMPSON: "This is not a pie-eating contest."

I SUSPECT THAT PEOPLE WILL GET MORE EXCITED ABOUT this FBI raid than is really warranted. But I could be wrong.

ED DRISCOLL ON "Hollywood nihilism," with some related thoughts by Roger Simon.

FREE SPEECH? NOT SO MUCH. Whistling for the media cops.

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, academics would be silenced for offering unwelcome opinions. And they were right.

MICHAEL YON ON Beauchamp and the rules of second chances.

Plus, further thoughts on Beauchamp and Foer from Bruce Rolston: "As for Beauchamp, it's really hard to destroy two careers at one stroke, but he seems to have done it. More shame on TNR, which was the only agency that could have prevented the young man's self-immolation here. One last thing: anyone who thinks Beauchamp has been intimidated by the army really should read the transcript, which shows pretty graphically that Foer wasn't above doing a fair bit of intimidating himself."

Also this: "What was really striking to me about the transcript was the complete self-interest Foer and Scoblic show in talking with a Private in an austere combat zone. Can he fax his signature to his lawyer right away? Can he call his U.S. based lawyer within the hour? Look, I have trouble doing those sorts of things on demand from my office HERE IN TORONTO. To blithely assume that a private at a combat outpost in a warzone can easily do those things for them (instead of, you know, his job with the fighting and the shooting and the glavin) and that the infrastructure that would be needed to support that, assuming it exists, exists purely for their benefit, just typifies the whole TNR mindset during this whole episode to me."

MORE: Major John Tammes emails: "It does appear that some good may come of this whole mess, at least for PVT Beauchamp and his squadmates. PVT Beauchamp's command has been quite forgiving (a 'local' reprimand letter in file is quite merciful). However, I would hope that this second chance would include some sort of public clearing of his buddies' names. While continuing to serve out his assignment is to Beauchamp's credit, to leave the matter hanging (as it stands back in the US media) seems to make this an incomplete attempt to regain his comrades' trust. I would advise PVT Beauchamp to publicly clear the men he served, and continues to serve, alongside."

BASED ON A RECOMMENDATION OVER AT SAMIZDATA, I ordered Lee Child's Killing Floor and I thought it was quite good. I liked all the blues references, too.

MY EARLIER BORK POST raised some questions on what I think we ought to do about the confirmation mess. Actually, I've had some thoughts on that very subject, and you can read them here. I made them a while ago, but since they were never adopted, and since the problem has gotten worse, they're actually even more timely than when I first made them! Er, or something like that, anyway.

UPDATE: Reader Bill McConnell emails: "I don't know why you bother with those links to SSRN. I have never been able to read any of your work on that site. Apparently it is subscription only." I don't think there should be a problem -- I tested one at the Apple Store, and I'm pretty sure they're not an SSRN member. Can most folks out there download these? Give it a try and let me know.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Eric Wilner emails:

The layout of the page is confusing at first; my first couple of visits (however long ago that was), I didn't pick up on the "scroll down to the bottom to find the download-the-PDF link" aspect, and got the idea it was a subscription site. Perhaps your reader is having the same difficulty?

Hmm. I dunno. When I click on the "download" button at the top, it bounces me to the bottom of the page where the download buttons are. And reader Tom Paine (real name? who knows?) emails: "I just downloaded (for the first time) one of your papers (Bork confirmation) from ssrn with no difficulties. I was leery of downloading them before, but maybe now I'll download more articles in the future. Thanks for all your work."

Thanks, Tom. It seems to be working for most people who are trying it. Let me know if you experience difficulties. It may matter if you have cookies enabled; I'm not sure.

MORE: This seems to mostly be a user-friendliness issue, with people not realizing that the download buttons are at the bottom of the page. (Where it says "Download the Document from: Social Science Research Network.") Apparently, however, you do have to have cookies enabled.

FOR THE COMMON GOOD.

AND THAT'S WHAT'S UNFORGIVABLE: "He has said things about Cuba that you will never hear from the major university faculties, or the major newspapers, or the major movie studios."

U.S.-MADE CENSORWARE sold to dictators in Burma and elsewhere. This is a disgrace.

I PREFER THE MOPTOPS, but now it's British Invasion II! Plus this observation, which is really rather damning:

The White House, amazingly, does not have a staffer dedicated to the international press. That was unforgivable with the international press being so important for winning hearts and minds in the war on terror. Now that the British media is set to become a big player within the US population it's poor domestic politics, too.

The White House's press operation has never been very good.

UPDATE: Link was bad before. Fixed now.

CONFESSIONS OF A former card-carrying Libertarian. I'm one of those, myself. Takeaway line: "From here, it looks as if the Republicans have become wrong and corrupt, the Democrats are stupid and corrupt, and the Libertarians have gone plain crazy."

UPDATE: Bill Quick: "Do I ever understand where Steve is coming from, because I live in the same damned place."

ED MORRISSEY: "I find it hilariously ironic that Foer refuses to defend himself and TNR in his own magazine, but instead goes whining to Howard Kurtz -- at the newspaper that he demanded Beauchamp refuse to engage. I wonder why Kurtz didn't ask him about that, and ask Foer why he was talking to the Post when he didn't want Beauchamp to do so."

UPDATE: John Tabin notes something interesting in the Kurtz interview: "Wait -- back up there. Foer had another conversation with Beauchamp? Is there a recording? Are there notes? What exactly was said? What parts of the story did Beauchamp defend? Did he answer specific questions about the articles? Why hasn't TNR felt the need to tell their readers of this conversation? And why did Kurtz stick this bit of news at the end of paragraph seven, without any further explanation?"

Maybe Kurtz missed the significance. I did, until Tabin and several readers pointed it out.

VIDEO: Michael Moynihan interviews Putin opponent Garry Kasparov.

MEGAN MCARDLE on education: "Every time I see some middle class parent prattling about vouchers 'destroying' the public schools by 'cherry picking' the best students, when they've made damn sure that their own precious little cherries have been plucked out of the failing school systems, I seethe with barely controllable inward rage. It is the vilest hypocrisy on display in American politics today."

CODE CRAZY. In a similar setting, would anti-abortion protesters in "Operation Rescue" t-shirts be allowed up-close to wave bloody hands at Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Somehow, I doubt it.

MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT GOOGLE AND MOVEON.ORG, in an op-ed by Robert Cox.

CARNEGIE-MELLON RANKS THE MOST INFORMATIVE BLOGS, and their methodology is clearly sound.

FRANKLIN FOER, STILL IN THE BUNKER:

The soldier whose New Republic article about military cruelty in Iraq was labeled false by Army investigators refused to defend his accusations when questioned by the magazine, even after being told that the editors could no longer support him unless he cooperated. . . .

Despite the contentious conversation, Foer continued to defend the article days later. He did so again yesterday, reiterating that other soldiers whom the magazine would not identify had confirmed the allegations.

While Beauchamp "didn't stand by his stories in that conversation, he didn't recant his stories," Foer said in an interview. "He obviously was under considerable duress during that conversation, with his commanding officer in the room with him."

Read the whole thing. Is there some other reason -- besides suicidal stubbornness -- that Foer is afraid to admit they got gulled? They told Beauchamp they'd have to retract if he wouldn't back up the story, he didn't back up the story, and now they're not retracting.

UPDATE: Here's a Big Beauchamp roundup. And I wouldn't be surprised to see further developments this week, despite TNR's efforts to make the story go away.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails:

The person in the room with Beauchamp was his squad leader. He is a Staff Sergeant, not Beauchamp's commanding officer. ANY familiarity with the military would prevent embarrassing little gaffes like this, and big ones like hiring Pvt. Beauchamp. And BTW, that SSG advised Beauchamp to talk to TNR and cancel with Newsweek & WaPo, as Foer was requesting.

A little familiarity with the military would have done The New Republic a lot of good in general.

A NEW STYLE OF CIVIL RIGHTS PROTEST: "College students across the country have been strapping empty holsters around their waists this week to protest laws that prohibit concealed weapons on campus, citing concerns over campus shootings. . . . Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, a group of college students, parents and citizens who organized after the deadly shootings at Virginia Tech University in April, launched the protest."

PINCH SULZBERGER'S NEW YORK TIMES takes a brave stand against nepotism.

CONGRESS LOVES CHILDREN -- it just loves them less than it loves pork.

I TOLD YOU SO. The sweetest words in the blogosphere!

October 24, 2007

HEY, BIG SPENDER: "The President's defenders point to Congress' voracious appetite as the cause of the spending increase, but Congress could not spend this much alone. President Bush enabled Congress' fiscal excesses by refusing to veto ever-increasing spending bills — many of which were passed by a Republican Congress — while the administration simultaneously pushed for more federal spending on education, agriculture, and other items."

DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? I suspect the soldier's substitution of "Night Rider" for "Knight Ridder" was deliberate, a response to a pushy jerk.

UPDATE: Ouch -- check out the comments on the reporter's own blog.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails:

While reading the arrogant snotty Knight Ridder reporter blog, I couldn't help think THINGS MUST BE BORING FOR REPORTERS in IRAQ if they are reduced to blogging about airport like travel snags going in and out of the green zone a couple a times a day and using it only as a short cut at the same time being blase' about their paperwork?

Cemetery workers feeling the pinch, and taxi drivers who relied on morgue fares bummed out? Now reporters blogging about being so secure they aren't carrying around their proper papers at all times?

Things are looking UP!

Good point.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The entire reporter's blog is now returning a 404. Guess he took it down. Horse, barn door, and all that. The original post has been preserved for posterity elsewhere. But his bio is honest: "At last count, he also knows how to offend people in at least a dozen languages – the list is growing – although he can take part in civilized conversation in a mere handful."

MARK STEYN: Beauchamp takes a powder: "The New Republic is currently owned by my old friends and compatriots, the Asper family. Back when I toiled for the company in Canada, David Asper publicly told one of his own newspapers to 'put up or shut up'. He should have said the same months ago when The New Republic was bragging about its commitment to rigorous and open investigation of the matter. The magazine is unable to 'put up', so it has shut up, and hopes that its silence will help the story die in the shadows. Beauchamp's 15 minutes are up. The issue now is the magazine's conduct, and the Aspers should recognize that and act accordingly."

UPDATE: Hiring Bat Boy.

REBECCA AGUILAR UPDATE: Stiffing other journalists, and getting this noble reaction: "Incidentally, my change of heart has nothing to do with the text message I received from Aguilar this morning telling me that she had been interviewed by Ed 'Uncle Barky' Bark for his blog. This message came after our two off-the-record conversations Tuesday and her promises that'd she'd call me -- the first reporter she had spoken to at length, she said -- if she decided to talk. Changing my opinion of Aguilar's story because I was stiffed on an interview would be petty, mean and vengeful, and that's just not me."

The "Uncle Barky" interview is here. Related item here.

Meanwhile, Aguilar gets support from UNITY: Journalists of Color, who opine: "Upon reviewing the interview, it is apparent that while Aguilar used bold tactics to pursue the story, she did not violate any journalistic standards."

Remember this when bloggers start ambushing TV reporters in parking lots and driveways. It's not "stalking," it's just "bold tactics."

STILL NOT NEW ORLEANS.

UPDATE: Of course, New Orleans wasn't New Orleans, either. Thanks to reader Ted Nolan for reminding me of this piece.

THE SUPREME COURT will look at certiorari in the D.C. gun-ban case on November 9. We'll probably hear something on November 13, though not necessarily.

BILL RICHARDSON, blowing it on the National Guard.

A ROUNDUP OF VAMPIRES, from Nosferatu to Count Chocula.

"THE PROBLEM IS NOT WITH THE PEOPLE THAT STARTED THIS. THE PROBLEM'S WITH US." That's a Robert Redford breakout line from the trailer to his new war-on-terror movie that just appeared on my TV. It certainly sums up a certain worldview.

MORE ON THE TNR/ BEAUCHAMP DEBACLE: Hemingway, under glass.

Just another case where the narrative was right, but the facts were wrong.

UPDATE: Franklin Foer is complaining about the leak, which is itself kind of funny, but most notably he doesn't dispute the accuracy of the documents. (Bumped).

ANOTHER UPDATE: More from John Tabin, including links to the documents:

So where does this leave TNR? We have their Executive Editor saying "we just can't, in good conscience, continue to defend" Beauchamp's work, and that until they have the truth they can't let it drop. We have Beauchamp saying that he doesn't care one way or another whether they retract his pieces. So why didn't they retract them? TNR's behavior since September 7 has amounted to pretending that this conversation never happened, that the veracity of Beauchamp's articles is still undetermined, and that they have no ethical obligation to retract. But it did, it isn't, and they do.

Indeed. And here's a big roundup on the subject from Slate.

MORE: Thoughts on Franklin Foer's chutzpah in complaining about leaks. Plus, Foer's unanswered questions.

PATRICK RUFFINI LOOKS AT INFORMATION GAPS ON THE RIGHT:

Conservatives can get their message across through dedicated channels, but it’s always going to be the “alternative” viewpoint. About 50% of Memeorandum is mainstream “news.” About 30% is partisan — split pretty evenly between left and right. The rest is the long tail. Holding our own in that 30% doesn’t matter much if the other 50% leans left and dominates the narrative.

Iraq is illustrative of this emergency. The fact that we have to scrounge for change between the pillows to send guys like Jeff Emanuel to do real reporting in Iraq is a disgrace. There should be a standing $10 million annual investment to fund 50 embeds in Iraq at a time, who can not only churn out readable 900-word pieces but can also do video from the front, including when the guns go off. All this original reporting should be aggregated on a dedicated channel like Politico, ThinkProgress, or OfftheBus. There should be a partnership with Fox News to provide video in places mainstream reporters won’t go.

The lack of such an infrastructure is not for lack of interest. Lots of bloggers have been over to Iraq, a commitment which makes the professional activists in the leftosphere look like dilettantes. Guys like Jeff, Bill Roggio, and Michael Yon have been the advance guard for this stuff. But nothing little has been done to institutionalize their work, to create counter-memes by controlling the upstream information flow through a system for nurturing these upstart war reporters. The failure to develop an effective counter-narrative out of Iraq is reflective of the “conservative message machine” and its reluctance to think outside the box.

Every movement or media phenomenon starts with amateurs improvising. But at some point it has to be professionalized if it’s going to be sustained and grow. The new progressive movement started with guys like Atrios, who then got picked up by Media Matters. Dozens of lefty bloggers are employed by the new lefty infrastructure. . . . If someone has $2 million to throw around on Rush Limbaugh’s letter, then someone has a few million to spend on a blogger-journalists to investigate Democratic corruption or on a sustained project to get out different storylines about Iraq or to set up an open-source research operation to more closely bracket the coverage. And it doesn’t have to be done through any existing institution, with all its offline encumbrances. The Politico, already at #4 on Memeorandum, shows the power of doing it as a startup.

Yes, the folks in the GOP apparat have been complacent, while the Democrats have been hungry. We know how that particular story usually ends . . . .

MORE UNSUCCESSFUL battlespace preparation. "Think Progress is perilously close to that point, and runs the distinct risk of becoming the next Truthout.org if they don't clean their act up soon."

SO I GUESS "DODDMANIA" has crested.

Dodd Campaign spin -- we've got lots of upside left!

JIM HOFT IS liveblogging IFAW at Emory.

UPDATE: Andrew Marcus is liveblogging at Tufts. He covers Daniel Pipes' speech here.

RUN, STEPHEN, RUN! Colbert polling in double digits.

LIFE UNDER FIRE: The view from San Diego.

Plus, an arson investigation. And a huge news aggregator from the folks at Kithbridge.

UPDATE: Tom Smith reports: "The fire is creeping toward my street. I'm trying to follow progress on San Diego News Eight. I'm basically sick with anxiety. It's hard not to be."

A CELLPHONE THAT CAN ALSO replace your car's GPS?

CHE NEVER MET GOD.

EMILY LITELLA MEETS THE CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: "Never mind."

MICKEY KAUS: "The DREAM will never die but it has failed to achieve cloture. . . . Netroots fave Sen.Tester voted against."

THE OVERTHROW OPTION in Iran.

MORE ON Hillary's dubious donors.

DON SURBER: "The politicians didn’t drain the swamp. Voters will."

MISTRIAL AND RETRIAL for the Holy Land Foundation.

"WELCOME TO NON-NEW ORLEANS:" Bill Bradley reports from the SoCal fires. Hmm. Hurricane Charley in Florida went okay. Katrina response in Mississippi was a lot better than in New Orleans. Now California seems to be dealing with this disaster competently. What could explain these differences?

THE VENDING MACHINE DIET: Or maybe the diet vending machine.

MEGAN MCARDLE: "The anti-war libertarian flirtation with the Democratic party may be even shorter than I expected."

Plus, offering the wisdom of experience to excitable youth.

THE MEDIA INSURGENCY: Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Actually, I think it's being defeated by An Army of Beauchamps.

MORE TROUBLE FOR FRANKLIN FOER AND THE NEW REPUBLIC: Beauchamp Story Collapses. Documents at the link.

At the very least, they should be embarrassed about their snarky response to those who doubted the story.

UPDATE: Reader Kyle Kveton emails:

Let us hope that TNR and its defenders will salute the "leaker" of this information as ardently as they saluted the leakers of classified national security information which appeared on the front pages of our "papers of record".

As I recall, TNR isn't very supportive of those who leak secrets that make TNR look bad. And I notice that Peter Scoblic of TNR seems awfully anxious to make sure that the record reflects his non-involvement with the decision to publish the Beauchamp piece.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More at Hot Air.

I'm not seeing anything at TNR's website yet, though.

MORE: Reader Bob Kramer looked at the TNR website: "A search for 'Beauchamp' now matches no documents. I tried this a couple of weeks ago and could still find matches."

He's right.

Still more here. "Now, here is a truly disgusting moment. Beauchamp lets TNR know he wants to talk to other news outlets to tell them he is NOT being censored. And what does TNR do? It attempts to censor him. Franklin Foer, and I quote, leans on Beauchamp to 'let us control the way this story proceeds.'”

MORE STILL: "Is the investigation over now?"

Plus, "Who will star in the sequel to Shattered Glass?"

STILL MORE: Another reader points out that no searches are working at the TNR site right now. Possibly it's just a technical glitch.

EVEN MORE: Now the Drudge links aren't working. But you can find the documents he links to here. Go figure. But note that TNR isn't disputing the documents' accuracy, just Drudge's take. And here's an email from TNR:

My name is Ben Wasserstein and I'm the editor of The New Republic's website, TNR.com. As readers of Instapundit have noticed, and as we wrote about yesterday http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=3c2accec-63b5-449d-9c96-6c5e6e6867cb our relaunched website is unfortunately very much a work in progress, and has many bugs. At the moment, no searches are working, and some of our archives have not yet made the transition to the new site, including all comments on pre-relaunch articles and blog posts. In the meantime, articles pertaining to Scott Thomas Beauchamp can be found at the below URLs:

“War Bonds” 1/29/07 - http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=a420fc77-246f-4dc9-b62c-8cc98b6f1109

“Dead of Night” 6/4/07 - http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=f3f83377-7b85-4ad8-8c27-e8167e59a412 -

“Shock Troops” 7/13/07 - http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=860c9bec-a77a-4786-a869-cc893a43c8b2
A Statement from Scott Thomas Beauchamp 7/26/07: http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=f05dd2f7-2a55-4c51-9d6e-922054f97ff6

A Statement on Scott Thomas Beauchamp 8/2/07: http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=5f60f6be-9dc6-456c-93ce-249117645fed

A Scott Beauchamp Update 8/10/07: http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=be58af95-1a50-4033-a62f-9ee7289e0619

Thanks, Ben. And stay tuned, folks, as there's probably more to come. And Dan Riehl has some observations.

Stephen Spruiell has further thoughts. And there's this observation: "It does seem bizarre to me, too, that TNR didn't release these documents on their own. They are in an awful spot and it is made worse by not just providing everything they know. "

And a lengthy analysis can be found here.

Meanwhile, InstaPunk moves on to the important stuff: casting the movie, Shattered Glass 2.

LAST WORD: From Gawker:

If the magazine had come forward with how this asshole blew them off, we suspect they'd have garnered a decent amount of support. Instead, it now looks like they were just hoping everyone would forget about the whole thing.

That seems right to me.

FACT-CHECKING MIKE HUCKABEE: Shockingly, it turns out that most signers of the Declaration of Independence weren't clergymen, as he claimed. What could he be thinking? How could anyone who knows anything about the signers of the Declaration of Independence think that?

I haven't looked at the video to see if maybe he misspoke or was misquoted, but the sheer absurdity of this statement would argue in favor of that. Or, alternatively, in favor of voting for someone who knows something about the basics of American history. (Via The Corner).

THOUGHTS ON POLITICS and shy millionaires.

THAT WAS FAST: "Eliot Spitzer, the Governor of my state, has achieved a thing I would have thought impossible: He has made me yearn for the days of George Pataki."

Just seeing "Pataki" and "yearn" in the same sentence is messing with my mind.

A LOOK AT the pregnant sailor problem.

IN THE MAIL: Josh Conviser's Empyre, the sequel to Echelon.

DOUBLE-REVERSE CHICKENDOVE. "The politics aside, there is something particularly loathsome about Friedman’s snide screed this morning. . . . War supporter turned surrender enthusiast makes ironic funny about how painful this war has been for him. The terrible barrage of headlines, slogging through all those long, bitter thumbsuckers. News is hell. But apparently, he hasn’t been reading it."

J.D. JOHANNES WANTS TO GO BACK TO IRAQ and finish his documentary. He's asking for your help. He's also posted some cool video at the link. While Hollywood makes films about how we lost Iraq, he's been actually reporting what's going on. I've donated.

AS THEY RUN UP TOWARD THE 2008 ELECTIONS, the Republican leadership should probably read this post from before the 2006 elections.

Have you fixed these problems? Do you plan to fix these problems? If you don't fix them, what makes you think you'll win anyway?

VIOLENT PROTESTS in Venezuela.

IN THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: Media myths about the Jena 6. "The media got most of the basics wrong. In fact, I have never before witnessed such a disgrace in professional journalism. Myths replaced facts, and journalists abdicated their solemn duty to investigate every claim because they were seduced by a powerfully appealing but false narrative of racial injustice."

The narrative was right, but the facts were wrong. Where have I heard that before?

COP GETS SPECIAL TREATMENT in "road rage" shooting.

FIGHTING CRIME WITH lead-free gasoline?

DEVELOPING A cure for the superbug.

CHRIS ANDERSON: "So the problem with the music labels is not that music is an industry in decline, but that they have a too-narrow view of what business they're in."

SLEEP DRUGS: Only mildly effective, but wildly popular.

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Sharp Drop Seen in US Deaths in Iraq. The Bush Administration's secrecy plan is a miserable failure!

But Jules Crittenden has some thoughts on reporting.

UPDATE: Still more thoughts on the press coverage from Dean Barnett:

YOU'D THINK THIS would be a big story. After all, the mainstream media makes such a show of "supporting the troops" at every turn, you'd think it would rush to report the amazing story of our soldiers accomplishing what many observers declared "impossible" and "unwinnable" not so long ago.

It hasn't worked out that way. When General Ricardo Sanchez (ret.) addressed the situation in Iraq on October 11, he proclaimed that America was "living a nightmare with no end in sight." Naturally, the "nightmare" quote wound up in the first paragraph of the New York Times report on Sanchez's comments. What didn't find its way into the Times' report was any context of what's going on in Iraq. The "nightmare" assessment would have been a whole lot more fitting when Sanchez was helping run the show in Iraq in 2006 than it is today. . . .

WHAT'S MOST FRUSTRATING about the press's reporting about Iraq is that you just know the next time something goes wrong, be it a car bomb slipping through or a mishap involving American soldiers, that story will get above-the-fold treatment in America's major dailies. . . . Of course, there is nothing wrong with the media reporting the bad news out of Iraq. Indeed, it's their duty. But there is something profoundly wrong with the media reporting the bad news while disingenuously ignoring the progress we've made, progress that's only been made because of the sacrifices of 160,000 American soldiers.

Yes, it's almost as if undermining morale on the domestic front were a key goal. When the history of media reportage on this war is written, it will not be kind.

ORIN KERR ON Mukasey, waterboarding, and public opinion.

Plus, Simon on Mukasey, Jed Rubenfeld, and what the transcript says.

DECLARING A MAJOR in high school.

IRAN goes after the G.O.P. Well, you can't buy this kind of publicity.

THAT'S GOTTA HURT: French Intellectuals Accuse Dutch of “Unacceptable Cowardice.”

THE WILDFIRES ARE ALL BECAUSE OF GLOBAL WARMING -- I mean, no they're not!

October 23, 2007

ADVICE FOR THE G.O.P., from Bill Quick. "The two hottest issues in the country - the war on terror and immigration - favor the GOP - if the Grand Old Party has the cojones to take these issues and ride them to victory." You think?

Meanwhile, James Joyner reminds Republicans that hating Hillary is not enough.

A ROUNDUP ON fighting the Southern California fires.

And here's a huge fire-coverage aggregator courtesy of N.Z. Bear's Kithbridge company.

"DRUDGE 1, NYT 0."

HARRY POTTER AND THE OVERRATED HIPSTERS: Well, I think it's a good title.

I MENTIONED "MEAN GIRLS" AT WELLESLEY BEFORE, but now this is a really mean girl at Wellesley. "A 20-year-old female student at Wellesley College was charged today with breaking into a dormitory at MIT and stabbing her former boyfriend seven times as he slept, according to police and prosecutors."

MICKEY KAUS: "Sen. Reid has filed for cloture on the Dream Act, meaning a vote could come tomorrow (Wednesday)."

WE'VE ALL USED THIS EXCUSE, HAVEN'T WE? "I would have blogged about it if it weren't for those pesky kids."

THE DAILY MAIL: Violence is Down in Iraq. The Bush Administration's secret-keeping fails!

YESTERDAY'S PRESSURE COOKER QUESTION generated a lot of email. Here are some highlights.

Reader Mark Marshall emails:

I can't recommend enough the Stainless Steel Presto 8 Qt. at Amazon with the "Better Together" Lorna Sass book combo.

Bought it for my wife last year and it has more than paid for itself. The cookbook is excellent, and things that used to take lots of time and electricity, such as beans or legumes, are prepared quickly. Homemade apple butter and the most amazing lobster bisque (pressure wash those lobster bodies with a little clam broth) are some of our own experimentation.

Reader Rosemary Bright offers a useful warning:

Words of wisdom: when using the pressure cooker, before opening it you take off the little thing on top to let out all the steam. The key words here "Let Out ALL the Steam".

As a bride I was hurriedly cooking vegetable soup before my father-in-law came for lunch so I threw it all in the pressure cooker. I didn't wait until all the steam completely out and opened the lid (which is a twist and lock sort of thing). Soup went all over every where -- I jumped back so it didn't burn me, but it was all over the walls, the stove, the floor …. A mess.

So, Let All the Steam out before opening. Otherwise, a great way to cook fast (potatoes, for example - or rump roasts) and tender.

Good advice, I'm sure. Reader Kay Dinolfo emails:

I have both a stovetop (25+ y.o.) and a self-contained electric pressure cooker (bought off HSN). Like them both, and biggest difference in cooking is how much more you have to babysit the stovetop model to keep it cooking steadily. Not difficult, but needs more attention. The electric one, you just plug in, set the time, and you're off to the races. HOWEVER... like buying a foreign car, repairs are much more difficult on my electric one, which wound up with a broken handle. Took me ages just to find the replacement parts, and I wound up buying a freight-damaged cooker off eBay for a dollar for its parts. The stovetop model is a Presto and my local Ace Hardware store carries any and all the replacement parts (gaskets, primarily, which wear out) conveniently and economically.

Reader Thomas Wright emails:

If you like cooking beans and whole grains, or making stews and pot roasts, pressure cookers can be loads of fun. They can be used as regular pots as well, so they do double duty. I use mine at least once a month, sometimes once a week.

Pressure cooker advice is simple. For the best brand that is easily available: Fagor. They are reasonable priced, well made and easy to maintain and come in a variety of sizes.

Pressure cookers are very good at two things. Cooking grains and legumes, and cooking tough meats.

Reader John Shonder agrees:

We have this one from Fagor and use it several times a week.

The "queen" of pressure cooker cooking is Lorna Sass. I recommend this cookbook for some great recipes.

And, finally, Clarice Feldman emails:

I have two Kuhn Rikon pressure cookers. They are wonderful for making stews in a hurry and fabulous for making risotto. The best Indian cookbook writer I know recommended it--she has some curry recipes using a pressure cooker--and so many chefs were raving about risotto made (fast) in pressure cookers, I tried it. I now never make it any other way.

So there you are.

UPDATE: A tip from reader Robbins Mitchell:

I grew up in Paris,Tn and my mother would cook pot roasts and quick cook potatoes for mashing in the pressure cooker...and when she took it off the stove, she would ALWAYS hold it under cold running water in the sink for a minute or so to condense the steam before removing the little thingy on top just to make sure there were no accidents....and there never were.

I had a girlfriend from Paris, Tn when I was in college. She was a credit to her hometown.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Kuhn Rikons are high-rated, but kind of pricey.

MICHAEL YON WRITES that things are settling down in Iraq. And he emails, "Amazing. If Iraq keeps going this direction, my job will be done here next year. The violence is plummeting." Sorry to see Yon out of a job, but that'll be good news.

And maybe by next year he'll be reporting from Iran.

UPDATE: "Clyburn was right."

"MEAN GIRL" POWER, at Wellesley.

WHAT NARCISSISTIC HARVARD PROFESSORS DO when faced with a book.

CAPE WIND FALLOUT: "If local NIMBYs defeat this project, it could produce an ill wind for offshore wind projects nationwide."

BILL ROGGIO: Crunch time in Pakistan.

THOUGHTS ON U.S. / TURKISH RELATIONS, from Victor Davis Hanson.

REMEMBERING THE FORD MAVERICK GRABBER, but not fondly: "The automotive equivalent of putting John Candy in track shorts--tight, mauve and gold polyester track shorts."

IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, (free link) Gary McDowell writes on the Bork Battle's legacy. I think he's right that this represented a watershed of nastiness in confirmation fights, but I also think that Bork was an unsuitable nominee who deserved to be rejected. And I say this as someone who is, in fact, more of an originalist than Bork, whose originalism was of a rather dubious and frequently uninformed nature. This is given away in a passage of McDowell's, where he writes:

In his sober constitutional jurisprudence there was no room for any airy talk about a general right of privacy, allegedly unwritten constitutions, vague notions of unenumerated rights, or what the progressive Justice Black once derided as "any mysterious and uncertain natural law concept." For Mr. Bork, the framers said what they meant, and meant what they said.

Well, actually, here's what the Framers said about unenumerated rights:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Denying and disparaging is pretty much what Bork did, especially with his famous characterization of the ninth amendment as an "inkblot."

I responded to Bork's theories on unenumerated rights at much greater length in this article, but this kind of talk, on the part of Bork and his supporters, does nothing for the cause of originalism.

DEATHS FALL IN IRAQ, TAXI DRIVERS HARDEST HIT:

Taxi driver Ahmed Khalil Baqir used to station himself outside Baghdad's main morgue, waiting for grieving families who went there to claim their relatives’ dead bodies.

"I was totally dependent on them for my living," Baqir, a 44-year-old father of four, said." I never thought about picking up people in the street as I was being hired five to eight times a day by these families. But now it is a waste of time to wait there."

Glad to see the press isn't afraid to report the bad news from Iraq!

A LOOK AT THE NEW, IMPROVED TiVo Series 3.

ON BUGS AND BIOTERRORISM: It's feasible. You can even do it by mail. My brother mailed me a mosquito from Nigeria once, which he had lightly slapped in order to preserve evidence of its mammoth size. When I opened the airmail envelope, it came drunkenly fluttering out and I reflexively smacked it, producing a nasty smear of probably-malaria-infested blood.

And there's some evidence that Al Qaeda was working harder on bioweapons before the invasion of Afghanistan than anybody in the "intelligence community" had realized. Since then, it seems, they've had other things to worry about, but that's no reason to get complacent.

I'M SOMEWHAT SKEPTICAL: "If elected president in 2008, Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton would consider giving up some of the executive powers President Bush and Vice President Cheney have assumed since taking office."

MOLECULAR GASTRONOMY FOR THE MASSES: An interesting look from Popular Science.

THE INDISPENSABLE portable crosswalk.

PROGRESS IN HIGHER EDUCATION: "Some professors are packing heat and maybe some students too. A class in Weber State University’s Continuing Education Program is specifically aimed at getting people on and off campus to carry guns."

Jeff Soyer comments: "It’s about time a college started teaching about the civil right that dares not speak its name. . . ."

HILLARY'S ACHILLES' HEEL: Google Ads? Okay, they're not exactly Hillary's Achilles' heel.

SAN DIEGO LAW PROFESSOR TOM SMITH REPORTS:

The family unit and I are camped out in a seedy motel in La Mesa, having been evacuated from our lovely home. It's going to be too close for comfort. It already is. But many in SD have lost their homes already.

My older brother, a former volunteer fireman, talked me out of standing and fighting the fires, with talk of third degree burns and burn units.

When there's that much wind, flames can move fast.

MORE PROBLEMS AT THE ECONOMIST? Hey, once they lost Megan McArdle I figured it was all over for them.

FRED THOMPSON announces his plan on illegal immigration.

A "COLD CIVIL WAR" in America?

Maybe, but I think it's usually been that way.

IN THE MAIL: Kenneth Timmerman's Shadow Warriors: The Untold Story of Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender.

Plus, Jack Huberman's The GOP-Hater's Handbook.

BEN BARTON ARGUES THAT the business-school case method is superior to the law-school case method. Heresy!

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: The Examiner reports: Senate Republicans still slobbering over earmarks:

Democrats might want to keep in mind the old rule in politics that you never stop an opponent while he’s committing suicide. They are about to have the distinct pleasure of watching a slew of Senate Republicans jump off a political cliff. These Republican stalwarts haven’t gotten the message — that the voters who dismissed the GOP majority in November 2006 aren’t going to put the party back in control as long as it keeps voting for more of the earmarks that fueled the “culture of corruption” in Congress. It’s also going to be vastly more difficult to get those same voters to pull the lever for the party’s presidential nominee so long as pork-addicted GOP senators keep sticking their snouts in the trough.

They lack essential self-discipline.

WHEN COMPUTER RECOMMENDATIONS GO WRONG: I got this unfortunate juxtaposition when visiting the Amazon home page this morning:

STEVEN LANDSBURG on climate-change economics.

THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE: Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Bush administration has now been accused of trying to cover up good news from Iraq. They'll stop at nothing!

UPDATE: A report from Iraq by Jeff Emanuel, who's circumventing the coverup. But note that he's careful to include some qualifications on the good news, suggesting that the Bush Administration has gotten to him, too . . . .

BRIAN MICKLETHWAIT ON ECONOMIC HAPPENINGS IN FRANCE: "Thus, economic decline often impinges upon an electorate not in the form of rather meaningless statistics moaned about by journalists even as life goes on happily, but rather in the form of dramatic vignettes like this one, of vulgar English people invading the formerly idyllic French countryside."

PROTESTERS GREET HILLARY in Seattle. And they aren't even anti-globo types. Though some of her donations may represent international currency flows, I guess . . . .

UPDATE: Here's a Los Angeles Times discussion of Hillary's money problems. More here from Newsday.

STEVEN COLBERT outpolls Bill Richardson. And the momentum is just beginning. Who can stop Hillary? Colbert can!

Well, no. But that will probably be his next slogan.

UPDATE: This Obama stumble could catapult Colbert ahead!

JOHN LEO: Who will stand up for campus free speech?

AT TRANSATLANTIC POLITICS, a look at the undead EU Constitution.

CAT PHOTOSHOP MADNESS: Be very afraid.

NOW YOU'RE GETTING NASTY: Troublesome similarities between Congress and the Knox County Commission. The only question is, nasty to whom? . . .

October 22, 2007

A HOMEBREW HELICOPTER IN NIGERIA: "The chopper, which has flown briefly on six occasions, is made from scrap aluminium that Abdullahi bought with the money he makes from computer and mobile phone repairs, and a donation from his father, who teaches at Kano's Bayero university. It is powered by a second-hand 133 horsepower Honda Civic car engine and kitted out with seats from an old Toyota saloon car. Its other parts come from the carcass of a Boeing 747 which crashed near Kano some years ago."

My brother lived in Kano for a while. He and this guy would have gotten along well.

NO EXPERIMENT IS A FAILURE IF YOU LEARN SOMETHING, so my experiment with the Fre alcohol-free Merlot can't be considered a failure. On the other hand, the wine was dreadful.

According to this description, "This soft, fruity red possesses the cherry-like fruitiness and smooth texture characteristic of the Merlot variety. . . . The result is a fruity, delicious beverage with the characteristic aromas and flavours of premium wine, yet with under 0.3% alcohol and fewer than half the calories." Er, no. The closest thing I can compare it to is the (decidedly not alcohol-free) Night Train Express, not regarded as a premium wine anywhere, even outside of bus terminals. And a way to get even fewer calories is to just not drink it.

Oh, well, it cost $6.99 and as I told the Insta-Wife, "at the very least, I'll get a blog post out of it." And the very least it was!

HEH:

"Violence in Iraq has dropped by 70 percent since the end of June, when U.S. forces completed their build-up of 30,000 extra troops..."

According to the Iraq Interior Ministry.

And bin Laden pipes up and tells his people they've been "lax."

When they haven't been dead. More on Osama's problems here.

OF STRAW DONORS AND straw men.

KITCHEN ADVICE BLEG: Reader Rob Long emails:

Oh-sage-of-all-cooking-gadgets: Searched the archives, but didn’t find any “pressure cooker” posts – might you have any pressure cooker thoughts/experience?

Happened upon a pressure-cooker segment on one of the shopping channels over the weekend (alas, my UW Huskies lost another blowout)… thought I might try my hand – thinking a plugin/electric, low maintenance, slow-cooker-easy model. Any experience?

Nope. I've never used one. But I'll bet some readers have advice. Anybody out there got any recommendations?

LOTS OF LINKS AND RESOURCES on the Southern California fires.

ADVICE ON UNIVERSAL REMOTE CONTROLS: I tried several about five years ago and they all sucked like bilge pumps. I wouldn't be surprised to find they've improved a lot, but I haven't been motivated to try again.

UPDATE: Stephen Green emails:

We tried a middle-of-the-line model from Harmony, because their whole line gets good reviews. And it still sucked. Bad ergonomics, lousy software, and keeping it synced with what units were on or off was impossible. Even for people paying close attention. We took out the batteries and gave it to the baby.

I'd rather use four remotes that work than one that doesn't.

Yeah, that's pretty much how I feel.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Green's Vodkapundit co-blogger Will Collier emails:

Might as well offer my $0.02 on this one since Martini Boy has weighed in… I picked up a Logitech Harmony 880 when I revamped (read: bought lots and lots of gear) my system two years ago, and it's been excellent. The web-based setup software was not great when the 880 was new (it's better now, although still not exactly as easy as iTunes), but once you do get the thing tweaked--which takes about an hour--it's bulletproof, and more-or-less wife-friendly. I've been very happy with mine, much moreso than a brother-in-law who got the newer, more expensive Harmony 1000 touchscreen version that apparently isn't ready for prime time (he returned it). I'd say 99% of the time the 880 is the only remote I need--but I still keep all the others in a convenient drawer.

Sooner or later I'll buy another one of these, but I think it'll be later.

MORE BATTLESPACE PREPARATION EFFORTS from the MediaMatters crowd. So far it hasn't been working very well for them, but they haven't quit trying.

HAPPY Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.

UPDATE: Don't miss this piece from Christopher Hitchens.

ERIC SCHEIE: "I think that the general public is fatigued to the point of being burned out. While this is often thought of as war fatigue, unfortunately it takes the form of information fatigue. People just don't want to hear any more. Part of the reason is because they have already heard too much, and they are tired of being scolded in a partisan manner if they so much as utter a war related thought. . . . However, I do watch mainstream media reports pretty closely, and what I have noticed is that at the same time the situation in Iraq improved, mainstream news reports seemed to dwindle in a direct relationship to the improvement. To me, that's a clue. But to others (especially the more "normal" people who rely on news accounts) no news is not seen as evidence of good news, but just a relief from news. Unfortunately, all they remember is the steady drip drip drip of bad news from Iraq. Without any news, they're probably just hoping that the channel has been changed."

Well, there's always t-shirt blogging.

GREG MANKIW ON the increasing cost of government. It keeps getting more expensive -- but it isn't getting, you know, better.

THOUGHTS ON TRUTH, LOYALTY, AND JOURNALISM.

JOHN BADEN OFFERS A diagnosis of corporate pathologies.

AT BLOGOMETER, a big roundup of reactions to last night's debate.

IS TOYOTA GOING BACKWARD ON SAFETY?

Our pick for safest hybrid in 2007 was, for passenger cars, the Toyota Camry and, for SUVs, the Toyota Highlander. In 2008, it looks like the safest hybrids for the passenger and SUV classes will be from GM, not Toyota. It's not even a close call in the SUV class.

Ouch.

BRUCE HENDERSON IS photoblogging the San Diego fires. Pretty eerie-looking stuff.

THE "HOT DOZEN:" A list of the top 12 toys for this holiday season. I'm a bit underwhelmed, though I do like the Fisher-Price Smart Cycle, where the kid has to keep pedaling an exercise bike to keep the game going on the TV. . . .

JOHN FUND: Louisiana elects a reform governor. What's next? A nonwhite reform governor, to boot.

YEAH, YOU'D THINK THIS DEAL WOULD BE A BARGAIN in a time of falling news budgets.

MICHAEL TOTTEN is heading back to Iraq. "’I'm out of fresh material from Iraq, so I’ll be heading back in a few weeks to get more. This time I plan to visit in Fallujah. I’ll spend more time there than I did in either Baghdad or Ramadi, and I’ll embed with the Marines instead of the Army."

He's supported by reader donations, like Michael Yon. If you like his work, consider donating.

HMM: "A judge declared a mistrial Monday for four former leaders of a Muslim charity accused of funding terrorism, after chaos broke out in the court when three jurors disputed some verdicts that had been announced. . . . The outcome came about an hour after a confusing scene in the courtroom, in which three former leaders of the group were initially found not guilty of most counts involving funneling money to terrorists. But when jurors were polled, three jurors said those verdicts were read incorrectly."

UPDATE: LawHawk has much more.

ANOTHER UPDATE: And still more, here.

WRITE YOUR OWN gun law.

AT CALL ME AHAB, an interview with Shirley Katz, the Oregon teacher who's suing for the right to carry a gun at work.

A SPITZER OVERREACH? "Top Democrats fear that Gov. Spitzer's controversial plan to grant driver's licenses to illegal aliens has endangered their party's candidates across the state -- and even threatens the presidential prospects of Hillary Rodham Clinton."

FROM AUTOBLOG, a huge roundup of green auto tech.

TOM SMITH PLAYS capture the flag with Hezbollah.

IN THE MAIL: From Charles Stross, the latest in his "Clan Corporate" novels, entitled The Merchants' War. I haven't even gotten around to reading Halting State yet, but the earlier books in this series -- which starts with The Family Trade -- have been good, so I expect that this one will be too.

JOHN TIERNEY HAS THOUGHTS ON PEOPLE talking nasty on the Net.

TNR: It's the coverup that kills you, part III.

MICHAEL BARONE: We're way past 2006:

Things are not working out as Democratic congressional leaders expected. For the first eight months of this year they struggled to find some way to shut down the American military effort in Iraq.

They took it for granted that we were stuck in a quagmire in Iraq, with continuous high casualties and very little to show for them. They pressed hard to get the Republican votes they needed to block a filibuster in the Senate and were cheered when some Republicans, like John Warner, seemed to lean their way. They worked hard over the August recess to pressure Republican House members to break ranks and vote with them. . . .

The Democrats here suffered from a lack of imagination. They could not imagine that the United States military could perform more effectively in 2007 than it did in 2005 and 2006.

Read the whole thing.

MICKEY KAUS discovers a crisis: America's missing cukes!

THE PRINCETON REVIEW has published its list of Top 50 Law Schools. It's quite different from the U.S. News list, which serves to underscore, of course, just how arbitrary these things are. Maybe I should do an InstaPundit law school ranking . . . .

GRAFT OPTIONAL. WELL, NOT REALLY: Italy proposes a Ministry of Blogging with mandatory blog-licensing.

AVIATION SAFETY: Burying the bad news?

A STEEP DECLINE IN WORLD OIL PRODUCTION? Maybe we should start offshore drilling in Florida now?

THERE ARE MORE WORLD OF WARCRAFT PLAYERS IN AMERICA than there are farmers.

And some people think that's just fine: "I don't hate WOW at all. I'm deadly serious about it being a honeyed trap for people who'd otherwise be competing with me for gigs and creative work. Like folks who get home, drop in front of the tv and zone out till the lights go dim, they're opting out of life and making room for people who would rather do than consume."

UPDATE: Reader James Greer takes exception:

I'm a longtime reader and felt compelled to comment on your World of Warcraft (WoW) entry. I think WoW is yet another example of new media providing new options, and often surprising benefits, similar to other trends that you have commented on your blog and in your book.

My wife and I both enjoy WoW and we are both employed professionals. Many of the players that I meet are in similar situations as ourselves. Few other post-workday entertainment options offer the same level of human interaction and mental activity. While this has almost reduced TV-time in my house to nil, it certainly hasn't impacted my productivity in general.

As for benefits: The most challenging events in WoW requires the coordination of 25 people working closely as a team. It shouldn't come as a surprise that the same situations that occur in the real-word when organizing 25 people, occur in virtual worlds as well. Problem-solving, politics, leadership, communication, team-building… just to scratch the surface.

Here's a prediction for you – right now there are teen aged kids gaining more practical experience leading and organizing in WoW then they'll ever learn in college. 10-20 years from now someone will cite WoW as the formative experience that they built on to become political or business leaders.

I didn't mean to give the impression that I'm anti-WOW. I'm generally of the belief that computer gaming provides many underappreciated benefits. Actually, I've written about that more than once.

MICHAEL YON WRITES ON "The bizarro-world contrast between what most Americans seem to think is happening in Iraq versus what is really happening in Iraq." It's an important report, so read the whole thing. And remember, he's supported by reader donations, so if you like his work, consider hitting the tipjar.

ALAN DERSHOWITZ: "This is an obituary for the Oxford Union, which claims to be one of the most famous and distinguished debating societies in the world. The reality is that it is no longer a debating society at all; it has become a propaganda platform for extremist views, primarily of the hard-left. It has now stopped even pretending to present both sides of controversial issues."

AN OFFER THEY CAN REFUSE: "Several major research libraries have rebuffed offers from Google and Microsoft to scan their books into computer databases, saying they are put off by restrictions these companies want to place on the new digital collections. . . . Libraries that agree to work with Google must agree to a set of terms, which include making the material unavailable to other commercial search services. Microsoft places a similar restriction on the books it converts to electronic form. The Open Content Alliance, by contrast, is making the material available to any search service."

I blame Vernor Vinge -- an evil for-profit book-scanning plot was part of the action in Rainbows End.

HEH. I SLEEP NEXT TO MUCH DEADLIER PROTECTION than this gadget. And she's attractive, too . . . .

JEFF EMANUEL reports on the situation in Iraq.

HAVE THE SWISS BECOME RACIST, or is the press misrepresenting things?

FROM A FORMER CLINTON NSC STAFFER, five "myths" about rendition.

UPDATE: Some history from Tom Maguire. I'd vote for that Al Gore. Come to think of it, I did!

I'M NOT A FAN: School uniforms with embedded RFID.

October 21, 2007

PATTERICO FINDS EVIDENCE OF FBI MISBEHAVIOR and observes: "Namely, you have an FBI agent who admits that he threatened to ensure that a suspect’s family would be tortured by a foreign government. . . . Am I the only person surprised that this hasn’t gotten much, much wider attention than that?"

A HILLARY / DRUDGE CONNECTION? Hey, the Clintons have been very, very good for Drudge. A Hillary presidency would probably double his pageviews.

UPDATE: LaShawn Barber comments.

UNITED AIRLINES STRIKES: "No wonder people hate to fly."

WHAT HILLARY CLINTON HAS IN COMMON WITH Ellen DeGeneres.

STEPHEN GREEN IS LIVEBLOGGING THE REPUBLICAN DEBATE: I just turned on the TV, and Rudy seems to be doing better than usual.

UPDATE: "I was tied up at the time" -- good line from McCain. [LATER: Video here.]

Jon Henke emails that he's liveblogging at the FredFile. More on Fred here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Okay, I haven't seen all of these debates, but it seemed to me that all the candidates were on their game to a much greater degree than they were in the earlier debates I watched. Practice pays, I guess.

But the best soundbite came from a member of Frank Luntz's focus group, who said about Hillary: "She's got a million ideas, and all of those ideas are something that America is not."

MORE: Stephen Green's sum-up: "Thompson exceeded expectations, I think, keeping him running. McCain had the best soundbites, Rudy had the best instincts, and Mitt turned out his worst performance to date."

And John Nolte was liveblogging too and observes: "Overall, I feel better about our field. Not thrilled, but better."

STILL MORE: Kit Seelye liveblogged it too, and also observed: "This debate makes it official: It’s open season on Hillary Clinton."

And Allah has video highlights.

ANOTHER REVIEW OF DAN SOLOVE'S NEW BOOK, this time from David Freeman.

SWITZERLAND moves right. Immigration seems to have been a big reason.

THOUGHTS ON BOBBY JINDAL'S TRIUMPH over racist opposition in Louisiana.

PROF. KENNETH ANDERSON relays some French criticism of the New York Times' coverage of France.

DISHONESTY ON FREE SPEECH at Princeton.

CHRIS MUIR'S Day by Day cartoon is back!

WAITING FOR BLU-RAY: So I've been holding out for this combination HD-DVD / Blu-Ray player. It got great reviews way back in July, but now it's October and it's still not shipping. There's not even an estimated shipping date. Should I keep waiting, or should I just buy an HD-DVD and a Blu-Ray player separately?

The prices have dropped enough that I might be able to buy this high-rated HD-DVD player and this Sony Blu-Ray player and not spend much, if any, more. On the other hand, the notion of having to buy two just bugs me somehow.

UPDATE: Lots of responses, but here's reader Matt Tubbs':

Why not get a PS3 and a Xbox 360? You'd pay about the same, plus you'd have two game consoles. (Plus surf the web, store pictures, video, etc)

My worry is that then I'd start gaming. . . .

GREG MANKIW ON HOW TO BE A REDISTRIBUTIONIST. Plus, Megan McArdle observes: "$5 million is the value of a moderately successful family business that throws off a couple hundred grand in income a year. You're going to hand those people an extra $25,000 tax bill each year for the sin of being self-employed? This does not sound like a recipe for enhancing America's singularly dynamic economic performance." Nope, but it would empower bureaucrats, and that's a good in itself!

POOR SOCKS:

AS THE “first pet” of the Clinton era, Socks, the White House cat, allowed “chilly” Hillary Clinton to show a caring, maternal side as well as bringing joy to her daughter Chelsea. So where is Socks today?

Once the presidency was over, there was no room for Socks any more. After years of loyal service at the White House, the black and white cat was dumped on Betty Currie, Bill Clinton’s personal secretary, who also had an embarrassing clean-up role in the saga of his relationship with the intern Monica Lewinsky.

Some believe the abandoned pet could now come between Hillary Clinton and her ambition to return to the White House as America’s first woman president. . . . Being Clinton, she also lectured readers that pets are an “adoption instead of an acquisition” and warned them to look out for their safety. (Buddy, the chocolate labrador, it should be noted, bounded into a road soon after leaving the White House and was promptly run over.)

And poor Bettie Currie.

MORE REPORTING ON THE AMSTERDAM RIOTS, from Michael Van Der Galien.

THE GIULIANI CAMPAIGN, in a nutshell.

THOUGHTS ON antiglobalism bricks, from Lawrence Cunningham.

POST AT A JOURNALISM FORUM: "I hate conservatives."

HOW TO BE A DANGEROUS SEX OFFENDER:

Eleven years ago, when she had just turned 17, Whitaker engaged in a single act of oral sex with a boy in her sophomore class on school property. That's it.

Though less than two years separated the couple — the boy was about to turn 16 — Whitaker was arrested for sodomy, a charge to which she pleaded guilty and completed five years probation. However, that plea also means that Whitaker will serve a lifetime on the state's sex-offender registry, placing her in the same category as truly dangerous people such as rapists and child molesters. It also imposes severe — some might argue unconscionable — limits on where she can live and work.

Sorry Georgia, but this is just pathetic.

MEGAN MCARDLE WONDERS why states can't run single-payer health care systems: "TennCare didn't get into trouble because there was a recession; it got into trouble because it was godawful expensive and getting more so by the minute. Costs were projected to rise by about 75% over the next five years, and even though the federal government would have picked up almost half the tab, Tennessee couldn't afford to pay it. The failure of the various state initiatives is an instructive look at our future."

TennCare was supposed to be a stalking-horse for HillaryCare. It was a disastrously expensive flop.

WHAT PEOPLE REALLY CARE ABOUT: I link to a lot of political books, but what's #1 on Amazon right now? A cookbook by Jerry Seinfeld's wife.

THE FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM ON THE Rebecca Aguilar story:

Her report is off the station's Web site and has been pulled from YouTube and other venues. If she ever returns to work at KDFW, the station will be inundated with phone calls. NAHJ will be criticized for its support of Aguilar because detractors will say it is based only on ethnicity, not ethics and professionalism.

According to her profile on the station's Web site, Aguilar said she got into journalism, and into television in particular, because she wanted to help people.

"I've been a television reporter for more than two decades," she writes near the end of that profile.

"And even though I have won several awards (including several Emmys and 2005 Texas A.P. Reporter of the year), nothing is more rewarding than someone who says I made their lives a little better cause I listened and told 'their story.'"

I wonder what James Walton thinks about his story and its aftermath.

As the Dallas Morning News noted earlier, the story embodies people's worst impressions about journalists and journalism.

UPDATE: From professional journalist to punch line. And in the comments: “Are you a sedentary person? Do you like sitting on people?”

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT, this time in Oklahoma.

They told me that if George W. Bush were re-elected, people would be thrown in jail for daring to challenge the powers that be. And they were right!

THOUGHTS ON PROPER DRESS FOR LAW PROFESSORS: I seldom teach in suits, but I usually wear a nice sportcoat. No tie, though. Actually, what I'm wearing in this picture is pretty typical.

DISCUSSING Supreme Court term limits.