November 03, 2007

HEY, I DIDN'T NOTICE IT BEFORE, but the Glenn and Helen Show has been nominated for best podcast at the Weblog Awards. Vote early and often!

MORE NON-PITY for ambitious young strivers who want to change the world while earning large salaries. "In fact, one of my biggest mistakes in life was not recognizing early that the most effective way to achieve my goals would have been to get wealthy first, then to apply that wealth toward them, as Elon Musk, John Carmack, Jeff Bezos and others have done. . . . But their fundamental premise is flawed. Who is it that really changes the world, and for the better?" Read the whole thing.

DAVID HARSANYI WAS ON NBC NEWS talking about his new book, Nanny State.

(Via the Insta-Wife.)

TRAFFIC IN OCTOBER was over 7 million pageviews, continuing an upward trend that's gone on all year. Thanks for coming by!

I FOUND AN ISLAND IN YOUR ARMS, A COUNTRY IN YOUR EYES: But I'm still not naming my kid after you.

STATING THE OBVIOUS: Corruption, not Iraq, will be the GOP's problem in 2008.

DO NOT TRUST CONTENT FROM ANDREW SULLIVAN: I can't go around answering all of Andrew Sullivan's misrepresentations, but it's telling that he can't seem to criticize me without misrepresenting what I've said. In this post he links to a truncated version of my views on the torture debate on another blog. Why?

Probably because if he linked to my actual post it would reveal some uncomfortable things. First, that I'm not pro-torture despite Andrew's pathetic eagerness to find me so, and second, that I was criticizing the Democrats' inconsistency on the subject. Oh, and third, it appears that waterboarding, over which Andrew has exercised himself so much in recent years, and upon which he has staked his many, many, many, many claims to moral supremacy, actually stopped in 2003 -- ironically, just as Andrew executed his pivot against Bush and the war -- and was only used three times. This seems pretty consistent with my view of torture, which is that I'm against it, but that it's not quite the issue Andrew wants it -- perhaps I should say needs it -- to be. Rather, especially for the Democrats, the torture debate has been a political tool, applied in an "any weapon to hand" fashion when politics dictate, but abandoned when they feel the need to talk tough on terrorism.

Meanwhile, at the Cato Institute, a correction to John Quiggin, who was led into error by foolishly relying on Andrew's representations that I had renounced libertarianism.

INFLATABLE solar arrays.

DAVE KOPEL: Fred Thompson 1, United Nations 0. Plus this: "It's been a long time since a major presidential candidate quoted Grotius, and my view is the more Grotius in America's public debates, the better. I hope Pufendorf starts to get some attention too." Apparently, Thompson was listening in law school. Plus, this observation: "It's rather telling that the UN's American defenders fail to directly address an indisputable fact: U.N. Human Rights Council's subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights has endorsed a report denying the existence of a human right of self-defense."

JOE GANDELMAN on Arnold Schwarzenegger and the California fires.

A SHARANSKY INTERVIEW by Matthew Kaminski: "Natan Sharansky's passion for democracy isn't always welcome in the West."

Makes sense. Western political leaders aren't especially enthusiastic even about democracy at home . . . .

THOUGHTS ON capital markets and the U.S. legal system.

GOING DRINKING WITH The Drinkboy. And playing stump-the-bartender. Sounds like somebody Stephen Green should get to know. But is "cocktailing" a word?

L.A. TIMES: Mukasey all but a shoo-in for approval.

Washington Post: Democratic Defections Clear Path For Mukasey.

TONY SNOW ON the news industry's decline: "There's an old boast in the business -- that the job of a journalist is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. The thing is, we never realized that we were becoming The Comfortable."

JULES CRITTENDEN: "Even the Brits, who are barely in Iraq anymore, are noticing how unsporting the Iraq coverage is."

GOOD POINT ON THE MURTHA SCANDALS: "Just imagine for a moment if this had been Newt Gingrich." Think we would have heard more?

JUST IN TIME FOR THE FORESIGHT VISION WEEKEND, Phil Bowermaster has some thoughts on transformation.

"DENTAL JOURNALISM" -- where getting the actual facts is like pulling teeth.

DICK CAVETT on Don Imus.

IN THE MAIL: Stephen Baskerville's Taken Into Custody, on marriage, divorce, and families. It actually came last week, but the Insta-Wife immediately stole it.

A STATE OF EMERGENCY IN PAKISTAN: Follow the link for a roundup.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: New ethics reform law hasn't ended earmark abuses:

Such is the mixed legacy of ethics reform passed by the new Democratic majority that took control of Congress in January on a wave of voter revulsion about corruption. The Democrats banned an assortment of sleazy practices, such as the gifts lobbyists used to shower on Congress. They also ordered lobbyists to report more fully on contacts and contributions. But they left plenty of wiggle room and, not surprisingly, there's plenty of wiggling going on. . . .

One of Congress' seamiest practices is earmarking, when lawmakers slip special projects into bills to direct your tax dollars to politically favored recipients. The Senate promised to shine a bright light on this practice. But in some cases, the reform works more like a low-watt bulb. For example, the $5.2 billion in earmarks tucked into the Senate's defense spending bill are still difficult to decipher, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a budget watchdog group.

Then there's the whole private-jet thing. Follow the link for more.

AL QAEDA THREATENS THE "AMERICAN POODLE:" Moammar Khadafy.

INSTAPUNDIT HAS BEEN NOMINATED as best individual blogger in the 2007 Weblog Awards.

PLAYING CATCH-AND-RELEASE with suspected shoe-bombers.

A LOOK AT THE TERROR WAR, and the danger of academic legal theory.

A REPORT FROM THE Brussels counterjihad summit.

IT'S NOT QUITE THE BATCAVE, but in some ways it's cooler.

A LOOK AT the fifteen ugliest cars at SEMA.

Plus, IowaHawk's got some car imagery of his own.

CLINTON AND BUSH, duped by the same source.

November 02, 2007

"YOUNG STRIVERS" IN WASHINGTON find that being a "professional world-saver" doesn't pay as well as they'd hoped.

And they're not getting much sympathy.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

Geez, we’ve been dealing with this in academic science for decades now.

I wish these people would do the math: Doing something that’s stimulating and fun, sounds great at a cocktail party, and is supported by charity or tax money means that you will probably be making peanuts. (In my field, there are usually about 200 applicants/permanent position, all with Ph.D.s.)

Don’t like being broke? Do something that makes you a profit center instead of a cost center.

Good advice anywhere.

A STUDENT PORN CLUB at the University of Texas San Antonio?

MORE DOG BITES MAN: Tom Maguire looks at the toothmarks.

YEEHAW!

So later this month, according to THIS INVITATION, the presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, is holding a "Rural Americans for Hillary" lunch and campaign briefing at the end of this month….

..but she's holding it in Washington, DC….

…at a lobbying firm…

… and specifically, though it's not mentioned in the invitation, at the lobbying firm Troutman Sanders Public Affairs…

…which just so happens to lobby for the controversial multinational agri-biotech Monsanto.

Salt of the earth.

MORE ON MURTHA: A Contractor, Charity And Magnet for Federal Earmarks:

Behind the rise of Concurrent is Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee, who helped arrange funding to launch the organization in 1988. Murtha has since arranged millions of dollars more in directed congressional appropriations called earmarks. Now Concurrent has nearly $250 million in annual revenue and 1,500 employees.

Concurrent is a prime example of how to marry entrepreneurial savvy, influence on Capitol Hill and arcane procurement rules to create budget magnets in congressional districts. Unlike many other big contractors, Concurrent pays no income tax on most of its revenue. Unlike nonprofit, federally funded research-and-development corporations, it is not chartered by the federal government. . . .

"The message they give to federal agencies is, 'We're the guys you want to play with because we have big friends,' " said Keith Ashdown, an investigator at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan group in the District that monitors congressional spending. "This is the model everyone is following."

No danger of corruption here. Move along.

REASONS TO VOTE FOR HILLARY: "Hillary Clinton, like Richard Nixon, is a hard-boiled realist, who understands national vital interests as well as political necessities. She will throw rhetorical bones to the left but govern in the center, because she will want to be reelected. She will employ all the usual suspects of the American foreign-policy making establishment and pursue a moderate-to-firm course in international relations. . . . John Edwards is fairly close to reality when he says a 'vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for the status quo.'"

ROBERT SPENCER AT DARTMOUTH: Joe Malchow has posted video, circumventing Google's censorship.

SCHUMER WILL vote for Mukasey.

UPDATE: So will Dianne Feinstein.

DEAN PETERS IS BLOGGING FROM JORDAN.

SOME SUGGESTED debate questions.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER on Hillary, Bill, and Argentina.

WILL COLLIER ON cheap HD-DVD players at Wal-Mart.

OBAMA, PIZZA, AND CHARITY: Some thoughts from Extreme Mortman.

FROM POPULAR MECHANICS, a look back at the Manhattan Project, by way of comparison with the Iranian nuke crisis.

MAKING AEROSOL PANCAKES with an Organic Batter Blaster!

SPACE ELEVATORS: A modern-day Erie Canal.

SOME POLITICAL scare tactics.

DOG BITES MAN:

Just like so many reports before it, a joint survey by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy — hardly a bastion of conservative orthodoxy — found that in covering the current presidential race, the media are sympathetic to Democrats and hostile to Republicans.

Democrats are not only favored in the tone of the coverage. They get more coverage period. This is particularly evident on morning news shows, which "produced almost twice as many stories (51% to 27%) focused on Democratic candidates than on Republicans."

The most flagrant bias, however, was found in newspapers. In reviewing front-page coverage in 11 newspapers, the study found the tone positive in nearly six times as many stories about Democrats as it was negative.

It's pointing out the obvious, but sometimes to see what is in front of one's nose requires a constant struggle.

166,000 NEW JOBS: Much better than expected. Larry Kudlow is gloating.

SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY SPEECH CODE enjoined.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Bush vetoes pork-laden water bill:

President Bush just added another resident to Vetoland, this resident being the water projects bill that got saturated with pork-barrel projects in conference. Despite having enough votes to override his veto, Bush sent the bill back as a protest against its escalating earmarks . . . .

The reason for the veto seems rather obvious. The House approved a $14 billion waterworks bill, and the Senate approved a $15 billion companion bill. Rather than split the difference and approve a $14.5 billion bill, or even go with the Senate's $15 billion, the conference committee reported out a $23 billion bill that proves that when pork multiplies, it's because taxpayers are getting screwed.

Seriously -- how did an extra $8 billion get added to the bill in conference? That's an increase of over 50% from the Senate bill, in conference. The larger embarrassment is that our elected representatives didn't see this greedy manipulation of the conference process as any big deal and overwhelmingly supported the results.

That's what pork does to corrupt the legislative process -- it buys votes. It's a bribery system that helps cover up another bribery system. One porcine paw washes the other, and the resulting appropriations grow on grotesque scales almost overnight.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Of course, if Bush had been willing to veto pork-laden bills a couple of years ago, Republicans might have held onto the Congress. Still, better late than never, I guess.

BLOGGERS' LOVE AFFAIR -- with the FEC?

Plus, a roundup of blog regulation from Italy to Burma.

NORWAY'S VERY OWN Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

The Glenn and Helen Show: Advice for Daring Girls

First, it was the Dangerous Book for Boys, and now it's the Daring Book for Girls. We talked to Daring Book authors Andrea Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz about girls, the outdoors, and the shockingly large number of fun activities that don't involve cellphones, televisions, or videogames.

There's lots of talk about hopscotch, building forts, the virtues of Swiss Army knives and scooters, and the importance of doing things out in the world. Plus, the surprising virtues of boys. And is Hillary Clinton a daring girl?

You can listen directly (no downloading needed) by going here and clicking on the gray Flash player. You can download the file and listen at your leisure by clicking right here. And you can get a lo-fi version, suitable for dialup, cellphones, etc. by going here and selecting lo-fi. A free iTunes subscription is available here, and you can visit our show archives at GlennandHelenShow.com.

This podcast was brought to you by Volvo Automobiles. Music is by Audra and the Antidote.

THIS LOOKS KIND OF COOL: Whoosh Boom Splat: The Garage Warrior's Guide to Building Projectile Shooters.

TURNING THE ETHICS TABLES: "Senate Republicans said Thursday they would invoke new ethics rules to block Democratic efforts to send to President Bush the first appropriations package of the 110th Congress. . . . Under the new ethics law, which was enacted in September, sustaining a point of order would strike the offending language, in this case the Veterans Affairs measure. The bill without the offending language would then be sent back to the House for reconsideration. Before the law, sustaining the point of order under Senate Rule 28 would essentially kill the bill. Congress changed the rules to make it easier for members to strike language inserted during the penultimate stage of the legislative process. When they regained their majority at the beginning of the year, Democrats vowed to make conference committee action more transparent after complaining for years that Republicans had abused the process by inserting provisions in the dead of night."

GOOD NEWS ON IRAQ: See Page 18. "Well, it couldn’t very well displace this Page 1 scoop: 'Schumer Stays Mum on Mukasey.' After all, when was the last time Chuck said nothing about anything?" Now that is news!

PRO-TORTURE DEMOCRATS: "Clinton, Clinton, Obama and Schumer. They have all, to a greater or lesser degree, embraced the concept of coercive interrogation (some, even torture — which is unquestionably illegal), and they have all underscored the excruciating complexity of this issue. Somehow, they are fit to lead the Democratic Party but the suitability of Mukasey — who has taken a more measured stance — to be attorney general is in doubt? What am I missing here?"

I dunno. Maybe that the "torture" debate is a political tool, and otherwise unserious?

UPDATE: Reader Patrick Cullen emails:

Simply a politocal tool? Really!?

I just cant stay with you on this one, Glenn. I don't care what party is in charge or who's zooming who on this. Its become an awful stain on our reputation. We need to maintain as much high ground as possible, and you seem to still be looking through the foggy glasses on this issue.

This is America. Surely we do not need to resort to the tactics of Stalinist Russia or the Khmer Rouge to preserve democracy. I am a two-time Bush voter who is embarrased by this Administrations power grab and lawleessness in the face of danger. I keep waiting for a glimmer of sanity from you on this...

I've been consistently against torture. The Democrats have been inconsistently against torture. If I'm looking through "foggy glasses," it's because I've failed to appreciate how much the Dems have been allowed to get away with this inconsistency.

Given that only three people have been waterboarded in interrogation, though, the discussion seems a bit overheated:

For all the debate over waterboarding, it has been used on only three al Qaeda figures, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials.

As ABC News first reported in September, waterboarding has not been used since 2003 and has been specifically prohibited since Gen. Michael Hayden took over as CIA director.

So is this an issue now because it matters, or because it's a partisan political tool? I think I know the answer. And I was entirely serious when I suggested that Mukasey volunteer to be waterboarded along with any interested members of Congress. I'll be happy to do it too: Me, the AG, and Chuck Schumer. Let the cameras roll.

ANOTHER UPDATE: "Waterboarding as performance art."

CORRUPTION IN ROMANIA, involving sausages and plum brandy.

It's takeout lobster around these parts.

SOLDIERS BUST UP STUDENT DEMOCRACY PROTESTS in Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.

VIDEO ON THE UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE'S CLIMBDOWN ON INDOCTRINATION, at Hot Air.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: "Scientists at Case Western Reserve University have genetically engineered mice that outrun, outlive, and out-eat ordinary mice while staying lean, light, and fertile well into old age. Chalk it up to a change in a single gene." This isn't quite Aubrey de Grey's Methuselah Mouse, but it's a move in that direction.

IT DOES SOUND HSUSPICIOUS: Clinton's fundraiser raises questions.

JOHN FUND ON Hillary, driver's licenses, and voter fraud.

THUMBS DOWN ON COLBERT from South Carolina Democrats. They're afraid of the Colbert juggernaut. But since the reason they gave was that he's not a national candidate, there's only one thing to do -- go national!

HILLARY SUPPORTER: Tim Russert should be shot. "Another said Russert 'should be shot,' before quickly adding that she shouldn’t say that on a conference call." Er, no.

DEPTH-CHARGING THE CANDIDATES: Mickey Kaus observes:

Rosenbaum's post seems to be functioning as a sort of depth charge that threatens to bring all the various rumored scandals about all the candidates to the surface. It would be funny if they all turned out to be true! And then Rosenbaum's initial report--that the LAT is sitting on something--turned out to be not true! ... I'm not saying that's the case. I'm just saying that would be funny.

Indeed. Meanwhile, David Zincavage observes: "Can’t one just imagine all the things that could come out in a Giuliani vs. Hillary election campaign?"

MEGAN MCARDLE:

Every single time I write about health insurance, commenters and emailers flock to tell me that I wouldn't feel this way if I, or anyone I know, had been sick and uninsured.

I'm afraid the empirical evidence indicates that you're wrong. I was uninsured, with asthma and an autoimmune disease, for years as a freelancer. I was then, if anything, more opposed to national health insurance than I am now.

Read the whole thing.

November 01, 2007

CHUCK SCHUMER defends torture if "thousands of lives are at stake."

"It's easy to sit back in the armchair and say that torture cannot be used. But when you're in the foxhole, it's a very different deal. And I respect, I think we all respect, that the President's in the foxhole every day."

More here.

UPDATE: Schumer gets strange new respect.

MORE ON THE UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE, from Fritz Schranck.

ANDREW BOLT:

THERE is a reason Iraq has almost disappeared as an election issue.

Here it is: The battle is actually over. Iraq has been won.

Whether that's good or bad for Howard is another question.

ERIC SCHEIE: When skepticism becomes heresy.

BORIS JOHNSON ON why Hillary should be President.

BLOGGER VS. NEW YORK TIMES. But the blogger has video.

FRED THOMPSON attacked as a "gun nut." Somehow I don't think this will hurt his chances of getting the GOP nomination.

ANOTHER DANGER OF THE YOUTUBE ERA: Australian Laments Ear Wax Eating Video.

DEMOCRATS SPLIT on Iran letter.

I WASN'T GOING TO RESPOND when Andrew Sullivan -- deliberately, or in unforgivable cluelessness -- transformed my statement about leaving the Libertarian Party into something about not being a libertarian at all. Andrew says a lot of silly things about me these days, and life is too short to pay attention to them. But now that silliness seems to be spreading. So let me repeat what I said before: "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." Anyone who can't understand the difference between libertarian ideas and the Libertarian Party probably isn't smart enough to be blogging, and certainly shouldn't have his page topped with the words "Of no party or clique."

AMAZON RECOMMENDS THAT I BUY A Cold Steel scottish dirk. Do they know something I don't?

Doubtful. If they did, they'd probably be recommending the sword cane. I didn't realize anybody made those anymore.

Of course, you could always defend yourself with a deadly pickle. And then destroy the evidence, with no trace left behind except for a hint of garlic-breath!

DID ISRAELI JETS prevent World War III?

CONGRATULATIONS TO F.I.R.E.: The University of Delaware has abandoned its controversial "thought reform" program.

THE LATEST EPISODE OF THE PAJAMAS MEDIA XM RADIO SHOW is now online.

PIC OF THE DAY.

BRINGING NEW MEANING to the term "roulette wheel."

TPM MUCKRAKER: Feds Probing Dem Sen. Relationship to Former Aide.

THE COMING ACADEMIC TITLE WAVE.

But if science and engineering programs are vulnerable because they don't have enough women, are universities as a whole vulnerable for not having enough men?

The complaint writes itself, and that's even before we note the absence of Men's Centers and the frequency of antimale rhetoric from faculty and administrators.

A GO-ANYWHERE KEG COOLER that's also environmentally friendly! So you can fight global warming by having a cold one, I guess . . . .

DREW CAREY ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA, at Reason TV.

HOWARD KURTZ ON HILLARY'S IMAGE PROBLEM:

She's a triangulator. A trimmer. A carefully calculating pol who says what people want to hear. A canny candidate who is allergic to specifics. That image could damage Clinton long after everyone has forgotten about her specific answer on MSNBC. Remember the Bush ad that showed John Kerry windsurfing left and right in a flip-flopping metaphor?

The media are piling on, in part because journalists believe White House aspirants should be seriously scrutinized, and in part because they are desperate to turn this into a horse race.

Yeah, it's gotten pretty dull and there's still a year to go.

DIPLOMACY IS NOT FOR AMATEURS: And, unfortunately, the professionals aren't especially good at it either . . . .

LEFT AND RIGHT BLOGOSPHERES UNITE over access to debate footage. Stories here and here.

WHAT'S WRONG with Argentina?

Lovely country, but with a history of lousy politics.

MICHAEL TOTTEN ON what the Army wants you to see.

SURGICAL Spock ears.

IN THE MAIL: Bob Drogin's Curveball, about intelligence failures and Iraq.

SOME THOUGHTS ON ABORTION AND THE COMMERCE CLAUSE.

A while back, Dave Kopel and I argued that regulation of abortion is beyond Congress's constitutional powers under the Commerce Clause.

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR Fred Thompson?

THE NEW BLACKLIST: An excerpt from Roger Simon's forthcoming book on Hollywood. Best line: "With my radical past, I suspect I could do a better job of writing left-wing movies than Hollywood has lately, judging from the box office receipts of those films."

HEH: Hillary Mulls Supporting Illegal Alien Pilot License.

THAT WAS FAST!

GEE, THAT'S A TOUGH ONE: "Is the WaPo 'running a story based off of selective quotations and gross mischaracterizations from a handful of memos?'"

UPDATE: From the comments: "Let me see if I have this straight, we can get the memos of a defense secretary in a time of war before the administration he worked for is even out of office, but we cannot get the memos of the first lady 7 years after her administration is over?"

ANOTHER UPDATE: Related thoughts:

Why is it that news sites refuse to publish the documents upon which they report? I mean, even Glenn Greenwald produced the emails he was mischaracterizing. Why can’t The Washington Post do the same with the infamous “snowflake memos” it has managed to obtain?

Because then people could make up their own minds.

BLOGGERS COMPLAIN ABOUT HILLARY to the Federal Election Commission. "The complaint, filed by Matthew Margolis and Mark Noonan, cites stories published in the Los Angeles Times and New York Post questioning contributions to Clinton’s Democratic presidential campaigns from impoverished Chinese neighborhoods in New York City." I'm not hsurprised that this has happened. And these guys wrote the book on the subject!

LIVING THE "TERROR DREAM" in America.

MICHAEL YON REPORTS that Iraqis are saying Al Qaeda has been defeated:

“Al Qaeda in Iraq is defeated,” according to Sheik Omar Jabouri, spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Party and a member of the widespread and influential Jabouri Tribe. Speaking through an interpreter at a 31 October meeting at the Iraqi Islamic Party headquarters in downtown Baghdad, Sheik Omar said that al Qaeda had been “defeated mentally, and therefore is defeated physically,” referring to how clear it has become that the terrorist group’s tactics have backfired. Operatives who could once disappear back into the crowd after committing an increasingly atrocious attack no longer find safe haven among the Iraqis who live in the southern part of Baghdad. They are being hunted down and killed. Or, if they are lucky, captured by Americans.

As with all Michael Yon reports, read the whole thing. And remember that he's supported by reader donations, so if you like his work, consider hitting the tipjar.

UPDATE: Pockets of Al Qaeda support still remain, though.

MATT WELCH: Sex scandal? What sex scandal?

What I find most interesting is that in all the speculation about who was involved, I haven't seen anyone suggest that it was a Hillary sex scandal. That must mean something . . . .

MUKASEY SHOULD GET WATERBOARDED: Both the Huffington Post and InstaPundit agree!

Of course, if members of Congress think waterboarding is torture they could just, you know, outlaw it.

UPDATE: No waterboard, but Chuck Schumer is feeling squeezed: "With a crucial Judiciary Committee vote on attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey scheduled for Tuesday, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) finds himself in a conundrum as fellow Democrats begin to turn against the man he publicly recommended for the nation’s top law enforcement spot." I guess Schumer's too far-right for today's Democratic Party!

SECOND-YEAR ASSOCIATES AT LAW FIRMS out-earn the Chief Justice of the United States.

October 31, 2007

MORE KAUS-STYLE ANECDOTAGE ON IMMIGRATION: Took my car to the car wash today. The work force used to be all Mexican; now there were no Mexicans to be seen. More results from even modest immigration enforcement? One downside: All the newly-hired American workers were kinda disorganized and slow compared to the old Mexican workforce. Maybe that will change with practice.

UPDATE: Reader James Paternoster thinks I'm too optimistic about the practice:

The roofers next door speak Spanish and work quickly, as at the carwash. There's a work ethic that must be as attractive to employers in the trades as the wages they can pay to illegals. Perhaps it's even a bigger factor than the wages: I wonder what Mickey Kaus thinks about that question. And whether Americans' experience with Mexican workers will raise expectations of tradespeople and manual workers generally? And whether that can lead to a better work ethic, or whether it will just lower the quality of service?

To be fair, these guys didn't seem lazy, just badly coordinated. But the work-ethic point is one I've heard a lot.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Steve DiSciullo emails: "The Mexicans are afraid of being fired and the Americans aren't, that's the difference."

PROBLEMS FOR THE PAKISTANI ARMY. That's bad news.

NIGHT OF THE guilty plutocrat.

Plus, very strong GDP news.

THE NEW REPUBLIC'S PUBLISHER, Elisabeth Sheldon, responds to critics. Bob Owens is incompletely satisfied.

BOOK-BLOGGING: MIchael Totten reports on Staff Sergeant David Bellavia's book, House to House, which I've mentioned here before.

DECLINING VIOLENCE IN IRAQ confuses journalists.

Because they know the narrative, but those pesky facts don't fit. . . .

NOW THAT'S SCARY: Forget zombies. I sent off my next Popular Mechanics column, got ready to take it easy for a few days, and then checked my email to find not one, but two law review articles back from the editing process for revisions. I'd prefer zombies -- they just want to eat your brain, not subject it to bluebook citation form . . . .

FOR DEMOCRATS, Iran is the new Iraq.

IAIN MURRAY ON the Law of the Sea Treaty.

ACCORDING TO THE INSTA-DAUGHTER, the new Britney CD is "actually pretty good."

HUNTING PIRATES with BOLOs of the sea.

ROBERT SAMUELSON LOOKS AT CULTURE AND POVERTY. The notion that some cultures are more likely to produce prosperity is troublingly non-multi-culti, but it is nonetheless correct. Prosperity doesn't happen on its own. It requires certain basic features that not all societies have, or even want.

This is based on Gregory Clark's new book, A Farewell to Alms, which I've mentioned here before.

FROM JAMES LILEKS, a retro Halloween.

MAN BITES DOG: CNN reports on improving security in Iraq. Video at the link.

IMPORTANT HEALTH NEWS: "While the doldrums that follow lunch are still not completely understood, recent research strongly supports a brief nap to treat them." Naps are good.

DISQUIET ON THE DANUBE: Hungarians take to the streets.

MY COLLEAGUE BEN BARTON: The Justin Timberlake of the law professoriate? Personally, I think he's more talented. And I know he has better taste in women . . . .

A WEBSITE THAT LETS YOU create your own cookbook. I like the idea for All Corn, All the Time. But according to James Lileks, that's now politically incorrect. "It's the new tobacco. Squanto's Revenge!"

LONGEVITY UPDATE: In the Washington Post, Joel Garreau writes: "Aubrey de Grey may be wrong but, evidence suggests, he's not nuts. This is a no small assertion. De Grey argues that some people alive today will live in a robust and youthful fashion for 1,000 years."

Thoughts on aging research as an election issue, here. And more background can be found here.

BEAUCHAMP ERRORS UNCORRECTED at the Los Angeles Times.

REASONS TO HATE cellphone carriers.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: Russians ordered to attend Putin rallies.

BOILING MAD.

OPTING FOR TOLERANCE in Iraq.

CHARLES JOHNSON demands a retraction from the Huffington Post over false death-threat claims.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

CHALLENGING TIME to get its facts straight.

UPDATE: More: "Poor Mark Kukis, Time writer in Baghdad."

REBECCA AGUILAR UPDATE: Writing in today's Dallas Morning News, Aguilar supporter Mark Davis argues that suspension is enough punishment, and that dismissal is unwarranted. Read the whole thing.

LEARNING TO love the prosperous.

SCENT OF A FUHRER.

IN THE MAIL: S.M. Stirling's Ice, Iron, and Gold.

THE ANBAR AWAKENING spreads to Taji.

UPDATE: Contagious cooperation.

FLYING THE CROWDED SKIES: "In the United States, airlines are making money despite delays and horrible service." All I want is a JumpJet membership.

ERIC SCHEIE on last night's debate. "I was a little surprised at Hillary’s lackluster performance."

MEN AND MARRIAGE: It's a new Ask Dr. Helen column!

VLADIMIR PUTIN: Dictator Doolittle.

NEXT WEEK I'LL BE SPEAKING at the BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas, and it's not too late to sign up.

Yeah, I know I said to remind me to avoid air travel, but I had already agreed to do this. Hope the flights are better this time . . . .

J.D. JOHANNES:

When was the last time you read in the newspaper or saw on TV the story of a successful mission?

Well, you are about to watch one now.

Video at the link.

OOPS:

Why is Rudy doing so well? People in the know used to think the rubes just didn't realize Rudy has dressed in drag and once lived with 2 gay guys; they just remembered him as the star of that 9/11 show they saw on TV that one time.

But now it's dawning on the pundits that Americans probably know all that stuff by now, so why isn't Rudy sunk? They're shuffling around for explanations.

Shuffling, indeed.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE: "Maintaining civilian control of the military is a two way street."

UPDATE: Steven Den Beste senses a double bind here:

We've been told incessantly that we can't advocate war unless we as individuals are willing to join the military and personally fight that same war. Otherwise we're chickenhawks.

And now we're told that members of the military are not permitted to express opinions in favor of the war. (Soldiers against the war like Scott Beauchamp, of course, are lauded even when it's shown that they're liars.)

Seems awfully . . . convenient.

THE NEW YORK TIMES figures out that we don't have troops in Iran.

DEAN BARNETT: The Plucky Smart Kid With The Fatal Disease.

EARTHQUAKE BLOGGING from Ed Driscoll.

ALI ETERAZ: "The future of Islamic reform lies with post-Islamism - a recognition that politics rather than religion provides for welfare in this life."

ROGER KIMBALL on the limits of openness. "The moral burden of the campaign (as distinct from its aim of benefiting its client) is not to encourage us to think more carefully about what it means to be a leader or follower, to be good or bad, to be trendy or traditional, but rather to blur the distinction between those contraries altogether. The aim is to short-circuit, not refine, our powers of discrimination. And the goal of that disruption is always at the expense of one side of the equation."

BEAM ME UP, SCOTTY: Intergalactic Hardball.

UPDATE: Ron Silver on Chris Matthews.

October 30, 2007

AT LEAST this bogus rape report won't lead to the kind of problems that we saw at Duke.

OUCH: "Isn't it sort of disappointing that one has to spend this much time telling journalists, and journalists' most ardent supporters, why it is important that journalists don't lie?"

CJR: What was CBS thinking? "I can’t help but wonder what the reaction would be if some big-name blogger had done something like this. It would have been open season on the blogosphere, with lamentations over the amateurish, rule-free environment that blogs inhabit, with the mainstream media gleefully tisk-tisking over their misguided young cousins."

ADVICE TO PROSPECTIVE LAW PROFESSORS: How to ace the job talk.

RALPH NADER sues the Democrats.

A LOOK AT "IRAQ WAR" DEATHS THAT WEREN'T.

BLAST FROM THE PAST: Reader Wayne Baisley emails: "In case you were unaware of it, 47 seconds into Brownsville Turnaround On The Tex-Mex Border, the opening track on The KLF's 1990 album Chill Out, the Mexican radio announcer mentions, 'Comandante Glenn Reynolds.'"

Heh. Yeah, the KLF was a big influence on Mobius Dick, actually, though not this album particularly. (In fact, it wasn't really any of their albums as much as some of their attitude; Mobius Dick was influenced more by Juan Atkins, Juno Reactor, BT, etc.). You can hear the sound clip here.

UPDATE: While we're plumbing the distant past, the inspiration for "A.G. Android" came from this Tom Tomorrow cartoon.

DEBATE FATIGUE DEEPENS: "Can anyone possibly be in the mood to see that none of her competitors come close to Hillary again?" Luckily, it's not affecting very many people.

UPDATE: But TigerHawk will be stolidly liveblogging anyway.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hillary on the National Archives. (Mislabelled earlier; sorry).

THE DREADED ZIONIST / IRA CONVERGENCE.

DAVID ADESNIK: "I consider it a small victory when even the UN recognizes that anti-American forces are the actual perpetrators of crimes against humanity."

MICKEY KAUS: "Do you sense there is some large mass of dark matter, an unseen Scandal Star, the gravitational pull of which is warping the coverage of what seems, on the surface, a pretty dull presidential race? I do."

More from Ron Rosenbaum. If it's there, it'll leak.

UDPATE: Reader Tony Deakin wonders if this is it. I doubt it. Not enough sex.

MEET THE NEW BOSS, YADA YADA: "Earmarks. Back-room deals. Cronyism. This is the kind of stuff the Democrats pledged to clean up during their 'Culture of Corruption' campaign swing in 2006. But members like Murtha — influential power-brokers addicted to the old ways — have very effectively prevented them from keeping their promises. At the beginning of the year, Murtha called the Democrats' ambitious ethics-reform proposals 'total crap.' Thanks to guys like him, that's what they've amounted to."

PARENTS' MAGAZINE'S list of recommended toys.

LAME PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS FROM LAW SCHOOLS are called "law porn" in the trade. Tom Smith objects to the term: "My objection is that it is demeaning to pornography."

MORE ON INDOCTRINATION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE, from John Leo. "The basic question about the program is how did they think they could ever get away with this?"

EUGENE VOLOKH: "First, killing an enemy military leader -- and apparently a highly competent one -- in the middle of a war almost always is the humanitarian decision. It takes little consideration, it seems to me, for our military to properly come to this conclusion. That Yamamoto was 'highly intelligent' and that he had lived among us might have emotionally humanized him to people who are considering his fate. But it surely didn't entitle him to any exemption from military attack. . . . There's nothing humanitarian about preserving an enemy military leader -- and instead focusing only on killing enemy line soldiers -- when that means more likely deaths for our soldiers. . . . Indeed, if Yamamoto's killing were analogous to the death penalty, then the death penalty should be acclaimed as a high moral imperative: Rather than wondering whether the death penalty saves innocent lives, we'd be nearly sure of it." Read the whole thing.

ARMED AGENTS OF THE Social Security Administration?

ACORN UPDATE: Three plead guilty in fake voter scheme.

Our podcast on voter fraud is here.

YEAH, THIS'LL FLY: Feds want to charge for photographing in National Parks.

UPDATE: Dan Phoenix thinks there's less to this story than news reports suggest.

HAVE GIRLS' HALLOWEEN COSTUMES gotten too slutty? "A bigger question is, who's designing these costumes in the first place? And why do they think parents will buy them?"

I'm okay on slutty, but not for 9-year-olds.

NAGGING WORRIES ABOUT CHINA. Me, I think that their long-term prospects are excellent if they can avoid civil war, but that they're currently in the mother of all bubbles and that it is likely to pop with a serious bang.

CLOSE, BUT NO CIGAR: A report on Armadillo Aerospace's close brush with success in pursuit of the Lunar Lander Prize.

Plus, an interview with Peter Diamandis on what's next.

MORE ON POPPIES IN AFGHANISTAN, from John Wixted.

IDEOLOGICAL REEDUCATION at the University of Delaware.

They told me that if George W. Bush were re-elected, we'd see loyalty oaths and ideological crushing of dissent on America's campuses. And they were right!

SENATOR JAMES INHOFE on the Law of the Sea Treaty.

RON SILVER HAS THOUGHTS on how to get the world to like us.

ADVERTISING AGE: "Of course, the news here is that The New Republic still had advertisers!"

IN THE MAIL: Judge Andrew Napolitano's new book -- out today -- entitled A Nation of Sheep. The thesis, I gather, is that Americans are no longer willing to stand up for freedom.

HANDWASHING: Better than antibacterial agents:

The general advice for avoiding infection is basic hygiene — washing hands or using alcohol-based sanitizers, keeping scrapes covered until healed and refraining from sharing personal items like towels and cosmetics.

But some recent laboratory studies suggest that antibacterial products containing triclosan may not be the best way to stay clean. Instead of wiping out bacteria randomly, the way regular soap or alcohol-based products do, triclosan may inhibit the growth of bacteria in a way that leaves a larger proportion of resistant bacteria behind, according to lab studies at Tufts and Colorado State Universities, among others.

The concerns are still theoretical at the moment, but of course by the time they're not it'll be a problem. On the other hand, it's hard to argue with this:

Soap companies say the worry about triclosan takes the focus away from the real culprit: the abuse of antibiotics and the need for better hygiene in general.

Unlike illegal drugs, abuse of antibiotics raises the risk of harming many, many other people. And hand-washing is always good.

Plus, this is your skin infection, in pictures.

MORE HATE in tolerant, multi-culti Europe. "Books calling for the beheading of lapsed Muslims, ordering women to remain indoors and forbidding interfaith marriage are being sold inside some of Britain’s leading mosques, according to research seen by The Times."

Europe mostly tolerates those whom it fears.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal looks at John Murtha, earmarks and an FBI investigation:

In the massive 2008 military-spending bill now before Congress -- which could go to a House-Senate conference as soon as Thursday -- Mr. Murtha has steered more taxpayer funds to his congressional district than any other member. The Democratic lawmaker is chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, which will oversee more than $459 billion in military spending this year.

Johnstown's good fortune has come at the expense of taxpayers everywhere else. Defense contractors have found that if they open an office here and hire the right lobbyist, they can get lucrative, no-bid contracts. Over the past decade, Concurrent Technologies Corp., a defense-research firm that employs 800 here, got hundreds of millions of dollars thanks to Rep. Murtha despite poor reviews by Pentagon auditors. The National Drug Intelligence Center, with 300 workers, got $509 million, though the White House has tried for years to shut it down as wasteful and unnecessary. Another beneficiary: MTS Technologies, run by a man who got his start some 40 years ago shining shoes at Mr. Murtha's Johnstown Minute Car Wash.

A review by The Wall Street Journal of dozens of such contracts funded by Mr. Murtha's committee shows that many weren't sought by the military or federal agencies they were intended to benefit. Some were inefficient or mismanaged, according to interviews, public records and previously unpublished Pentagon audits. One Murtha-backed firm, ProLogic Inc., is under federal investigation for allegedly diverting public funds to develop commercial software, people close to the case say. The company denies wrongdoing and is in line to get millions of dollars more in the pending defense bill.

I'd say that further -- and broader -- investigation is warranted. Read the whole thing, as it's a free link.

LARRY SOLUM HAS A LENGTHY POST on originalism and the blogosphere. Some earlier thoughts of mine on originalism can be found here.

HOWARD KURTZ on sex and politics.

IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, Yale Law Professor Kate Stith corrects her colleague Jed Rubenfeld on Mukasey. (Via Scott Johnson).

MARK FRAUENFELDER bought the Twin Peaks 10-DVD set and likes it: "It's a terrific package of stuff." That was a show I never got into, but lots of people felt otherwise.

PUBLIUS: Khodorkovsky 2, Putin 0.

PLEASE START SMOKING: It's for the children.

OPENING THE TAXI CAB MARKET in Minneapolis.

IN REASON: Is the war in Iraq moving from folly to victory? "All the stated goals of this war have been won." And yet Brian Doherty isn't dancing in the streets, exactly.

UPDATE: Some interesting thoughts, plus an amusing bit of "approving-link" snark.

DAVID HOROWITZ LOOKS BACK on Islamo-fascism Awareness Week and pronounces it a success.

October 29, 2007

THE LOWEST LEVEL OF HURRICANE ACTIVITY IN THIRTY YEARS. But I thought that global warming was going to produce an ever-growing number of hurricanes like Katrina . . . .

Now, however, it's going to produce an ever-growing number of wildfires like in California. So we should be safe from those for a few years . . . .

UPDATE: The real cause of the wildfires. Unsurprisingly, it's Bush's fault!

ANOTHER UPDATE: At TigerHawk, thoughts on climate change tradeoffs. "The point, of course, is not that global warming is a myth. I myself attend the church of anthropogenic climate change, if only on red-letter Sundays. Rather, it is that the proclivity of the activists and journalists who are pushing this story to inflate the threat beyond all credibility is actually damaging the case for an effective response."

MORE: Clark Stooksbury has got this right: "The irony is that most of the Southeast could use a hurricane. Whatever damage one might do on the coast, if a tropical depression were to dump heavy rains over Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Tennessee, it would be a blessing." Yeah, I've been watching the computer models for Noel and wishing that the tracks would shift westward.

MORE ON THE DIFFERENCE between Libertarian and libertarian.

NEW DEVELOPMENTS in the Goose Creek terror case.

COMMON SENSE REFORM for Medicaid.

A LOOK AT HAPPENINGS IN "ever-tolerant multi-culti Europe."

JAMES LILEKS: "I’ve noticed this: the more elaborate the grocery store promotion, the less likely I’ll care. If the store has Ten Cents Off Everything Day, I’ll show up. If they ask me to produce paperwork or enroll in a program, forget it." I agree.

ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS . . . "Insurgents."

GETTING IT WRONG -- AND NOT CORRECTING IT -- at the Los Angeles Times.

Perhaps the correction just hasn't appeared yet. They don't move very fast over there.

THOUGHTS ON MANNERS, from Dan Collins.

A RETURN TO CARTERNOMICS?

That's likely to be as popular as the movie.

THE COLBERT CAMPAIGN JUGGERNAUT, explained:

"Blogs are attracted to shiny objects, and Colbert is nothing if not a shiny object," Beutler said. "Even serious-minded bloggers can't resist."

Mmm. . . . Shiny.

FRED THOMPSON ON GUN RIGHTS, at Field and Stream's gun blog.

A 410-year-old clam. "The clam, nicknamed Ming after the Chinese dynasty in power when it was born, was in its infancy when Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne and Shakespeare was writing plays such as Othello and Hamlet." And for all those years, it was happy as a . . . well, you know.

TOM SPAULDING remembers Porter Wagoner.

MIKE HUCKABEE responds to John Fund.

AN ELECTRIC SCOOTER with a five-mile range and a 15 mph top speed. This might actually be useful for some people's commutes.

THE ULTIMATE LIST OF spendy DVD sets.

And I thought I was splurging when I ordered The Time Tunnel.

AN ENVIRONMENTALIST WORRIES ABOUT "PLUNDERING THE MOON." And note the defeatist, anti-humanity tone of many of the comments to his piece. Happily, others are more sensible.

Actually, however, Rob Merges and I have this topic covered already, in this (relatively short) piece from the NYU Environmental Law Journal. You'll pardon me if I think that our discussion is sounder, as well as more nuanced. Among other things, private property rights are likely to be both more environmentally friendly and more wealth-creating than centralized regulatory schemes.

MICHAEL YON IS WORRIED ABOUT AFGHANISTAN: "Iraq is looking better month by month. But at the current rate, surely we shall fail in Afghanistan."

Sounds like we need to take a new approach, as we did in Iraq.

UPDATE: Lawhawk says the problem is Pakistan. "Instead of fighting to win, the Pakistani government under Musharraf is fighting to simply bide time. That's a losing strategy for everyone but the Islamists, who use this time to regroup and rearm."

And read this analysis from Strategypage: "While the Taliban are seen as the major problem in Afghanistan, that is not really the case. The big problems are poppies, corruption and Pushtun tribal politics. All three of these combine to produce the Taliban. But to eliminate the Taliban, you have to destroy the highly profitable drug business, curb the corruption and deal with the Pushtun problem. None of these solutions are easy to implement."

ANOTHER UPDATE: Chuck Simmins emails:

Glenn, the problem with Afghanistan is that it is a NATO operation. The European approach, as we have seen in Basra in Iraq, involves far more accommodation, and far less giving terrorists new accommodations.

The major complaint in Afghanistan is the lack of participation by our NATO allies in the pacification / anti-terror operations. Indeed, the utter lack of preparedness for any such ops. The Canadians have been outstanding, punching well above their weight class. The Brits and Aussies have done well, too, though the Brits have given away gains through diplomacy on several occasions.

The Dutch and French Air Forces have made their ground troops look bad.

I've heard quite a few complaints about the NATO operation in Afghanistan.

MORE: A contrary note from Josh Foust of Registan:

I noticed you posted about some frustrations on the mission in Afghanistan. Over at Registan.net, we've been covering the ways it has been faltering for years, as well as a series of policy prescriptions for how to right it. The most salient to the thrust of your post is this piece on what's going on in Pakistan's tribal areas, and urges caution about drawing too many conclusions:
Link. (and more here: Link.)

I have to point out that with the possible exception of pointing fingers at Pervez Musharraf, your links to analysis are almost entirely flat out wrong. Strategy Page in particular seems to confuse cause and effect—poppies are a symptom of severe instability and a wrecked infrastructure, not a cause ( Link ); similarly, for centuries Pashtun tribal politics (called "Pushtunwali") have provided appropriate, non-violent means of conflict resolution and justice, and it is only in recent decades as we deliberately imported Saudi-style Salafism into the tribal regions that things got out of hand (the excellent Afghanistanica covered this several months ago: Link). In this analysis, corruption is likewise both a cause and symptom, though to conflate it with opium and the Taliban (or even to conflate the Taliban with Pashtunwali) is a mistake.

Similarly, the bit about NATO is at best sort of true: while it is true the European countries have been stingy in their commitments, so have we: to date, Afghanistan a total amount of aid from us what we send to Iraq every few months. From the start, it was crippled, underinvested (the first year of occupation only had a few million dollars allocated toward development and reconstruction, and already troops were being siphoned off to invade Iraq), and ignored—by both the media and by the Bush administration. It's a bit silly to complain that NATO doesn't shell out when we can barely be bothered to.

Well, unlike Europe we're busy elsewhere.

MORE: When I posted the above I didn't realize that Josh Foust had posted on this. Sorry, Josh, but taking a few hours to respond to your email is nothing I'm going to apologize to, and linking to people you disagree with is not error requiring "correction." And the rather churlish reference to "superwarblogger Michael Yon" explains why I tend to discount your analyses -- Yon's spent a lot of time in Afghanistan, he's got a lot of contacts there, and he's got a good track record.

SUPREME COURT ADVOCACY: You get what you pay for.

ANOTHER TERRORIST ATTACK FOILED: "Azerbaijan detained a group of militant Islamists preparing an armed attack near the U.S. embassy in Baku, the security ministry of the former Soviet state said on Monday."

Michael Silence thinks this is good news in the larger war on terror: "Is it not telling that the terrorists can't even pull one off in Azerbaijan? I mean, for heaven's sake, one of its neighbors is Iran." We have seen a lot of foiled attacks lately. It's as if someone's selling them out.

YOUTHFUL REBELLION OVERCOMES parental fear and prejudice. It's like the 1960s all over again!

BRUCE ROLSTON celebrates a blogging milestone. I think I'm at something like my 50,000th post, but I'm actually not sure.

IN GREENLAND, an upside to global warming. "But now that the climate is warming, it is not just old trees that are growing. A Greenlandic supermarket is stocking locally grown cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage this year for the first time. Eight sheep farmers are growing potatoes commercially. Five more are experimenting with vegetables. And Kenneth Hoeg, the region’s chief agriculture adviser, says he does not see why southern Greenland cannot eventually be full of vegetable farms and viable forests. . . . Cod, which prefer warmer waters, have started appearing off the coast again. Ewes are having fatter lambs, and more of them every season. The growing season, such as it is, now lasts roughly from mid-May through mid-September, about three weeks longer than a decade ago." During the Holocene climatic optimum, hardwood forests grew to the edge of the Arctic ocean, and Norwegian women wore string miniskirts. Downside: The American midwest was near-desert. That probably outweighs Norwegian women in string miniskirts, however appealing that may be.

TAKING DOWN terrorist websites.

Plus, behind enemy lines with a suburban counterterrorist. Somebody ought to write a book about this stuff. Oh, wait . . . .

JUST IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS! James Lileks' new book, Gastroanomalies: Questionable Culinary Creations from the Golden Age of American Cookery. I love the cover art.

JOHN FUND says that renewed interest in the "Fairness" Doctrine is all about liberals' failure to compete in talk radio:

The stakes are high. "Lovers of liberty must expose calls to restore the Fairness Doctrine for the fraudulent power-grab that they plainly are," writes Brian Anderson, editor of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal.

That's because the attempts to control the airwaves won't stop with so-called equal time rules. Al Franken, the liberal former Air America host who is now running for the Senate in Minnesota, is already slipping into the role of potential legislative censor of his old industry. "You shouldn't be able to lie on the air," he told Newsweek's Mr. Fineman earlier this year. "You can't utter obscenities in a broadcast, so why should you be able to lie? You should be fined for lying."

In fact, you can be "fined" for lying, if the person you lie about successfully sues for defamation. But the First Amendment makes it exceedingly difficult for defamation plaintiffs to prevail, especially if they are public figures--and for good reason.

Given how things are going at The New Republic, the "fines for lying" idea seems a risky move.

WALTER SHAPIRO wonders which Republican presidential candidate is most macho.

Among the Democrats, of course, it's not even a contest . . . .

THE MOTHER OF ALL TAX HIKES. Funny how Saddam's little turn of phrase has outlasted Saddam by a sizable margin.

GOODBYE RON PAUL EXPERIMENT. Hello Stephen Colbert experiment.

BILL HOBBS HAS TAKEN THE BOEING.

Me, I'd settle for a membership in JumpJet.

WHAT'S AL QAEDA GOT TO DO with the California fires?

UPDATE: Related item.

A POINT OF HONOR: Bob Owens gets serious about The New Republic.

DEMOCRATIC PARTY SPLIT OVER WAR grows deeper and angrier.

THIS PROPOSAL is likely to do as well as the boffo Jimmy Carter documentary: "Hollywood now proposes that in a new live-action movie based on the G.I. Joe toy line, Joe's -- well, 'G.I.' -- identity needs to be replaced by membership in an 'international force based in Brussels.'"

RUDY CRITICIZES HILLARY for interfering with U.S. diplomacy.

A LOOK AT political correctness in Imperial Rome.

STILL NO WINNER IN THE LUNAR LANDER PRIZE, which means that the entire two million is still on the table.

October 28, 2007

CONGRATULATIONS TO GATEWAY PUNDIT JIM HOFT. I'm feeling a bit left out.

DON SURBER WONDERS at the Associated Press's sudden enthusiasm for pork barrel spending. What could account for that?

ERIC SCHEIE: "I'm sick of living in a world in which legal trouble can be generated by robots."

I've had some thoughts on this subject myself.

ANTIWAR PROTESTS FIZZLE. Again.

How do you ask someone to be the last man to march for a mistake?

RICK ELLENSBURG, Internet detective. This cries out for an IowaHawk parody . . . .

UPDATE: More comedy gold.

MORE: Ouch. "Lacking even the ethics of a journalist."

STILL MORE: Some historical perspective.

MORE STILL: Heh: "So we now are presented with the delightful spectacle of a sockpuppet administered a wedgie by someone denying that he is in fact himself."

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL BLOGGER: It's pledge week at Tim Blair's place.

THE UNSTOPPABLE COLBERT-FOR-PRESIDENT CANDIDACY: "A million Facebook users have signed up for the '1,000,000 Strong for Stephen T Colbert' group in the last week — though the group could be read as a satire of Barack Obama's similarly-named group, which has fewer than 400,000 members after 9 months."

UPDATE: More on Colbert: "I think his goal should not be South Carolina, but to actually participate in two of the debates, one for each party he's running in. I guarantee they would be the most watched debates ever."

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Edwards Campaign, running scared, tries to gin up a snack food controversy.

SNUBBED: "The Democratic Party's convention in Florida during the weekend was like a rock concert performed solely by warm-up bands. . . .. All the leading Democratic presidential candidates followed orders from the Democratic National Committee to boycott the 3-day convention at the Walt Disney World resorts, and public campaigning in the state in general, as punishment for Florida's move to hold its presidential primary early."

MARK STEYN EXPLAINS that life is not a movie.

GERALD FORD on Bill and Hillary.

NOW THIS IS A SHOCK:

A high-profile documentary, Sony Pictures Classics' "Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains," had a poor debut, taking in just $10,573 at seven theaters. The film from director Jonathan Demme ("The Silence of the Lambs") follows the former president during a tour to promote his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid."

Failing to pack theaters for a documentary about Jimmy Carter? How fickle, the public.

MAYBE I SHOULD TRY THIS solution to air-travel woes.

THE RANGEL TAX BILL: Redistributing wealth from the "very rich" to people making between $200,000 and $500,000 a year! "Thus, as a first approximation, the plan increases the progressivity of the tax code by redistributing income from the very rich (e.g., CEOs, hedge fund managers, superstar athletes and actors) to the upper middle class (e.g., doctors, lawyers, congressmen)."

Supporting the people, not the powerful!

ERIC SCHEIE ON THE BUCHANANITES: "They may be right wing fringe, but they're providing an incalculable service to the left.. . . I wasn't going to bother with a post, because this is really nothing new for Pat Buchanan. But -- now that I've seen these characterizations of Little Green Footballs as a 'pro-Muslim, left-wing blog', I think a few words are in order."

DEBT VS. DEFICIT: "The Bush administration and congressional Republicans have spent the past several weeks celebrating the fact that the unified budget deficit for fiscal 2007 ($161 billion) was 1.2 percent of GDP. But that ratio has become increasingly misleading in recent years because the annual increase in the national debt has dwarfed the unified budget deficit and the nominal growth rate of the economy." Falling deficits are good, but not sufficient. And even during the "surpluses" of the 1990s the national debt continued to grow. It's not really a surplus unless debt goes down.

UPDATE: Charges of "an elementary analytical error." Dang. I'd hoped to achieve advanced analytical error.

PEOPLE ARE STILL CIRCULATING THE FAKE CNN STORY blaming MEChA for the California fires, so it's worth repeating that it's fake. I agree with the commenter who notes, "this is not The Onion, this is more like those phishing emails that look almost exactly like paypal or ebay." Yes, it's not meant to fool you for 5 seconds, it's meant to fool you, period.

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA on the big screen.

ENVY AND FEAR, in Canada's heartland.

COMPLAINTS ABOUT THE POLITICIZATION OF JUDICIAL RACES: But couldn't the term just as easily be "democratization?" Yeah, there's politics -- but there's plenty of politics in judicial appointments, too. It's just not out in the open.

A LOOK AT mandatory diversity in Iowa, from John Rosenberg.

MOVING THE GOAL POSTS: The Mudville Gazette notes a grudging accommodation to realities on the ground:

The narrative on Iraq - the one you see in the media, that is - is changing. Claims that "we've lost" and that American soldiers have been beaten by opponents who are righteous heroes or nine-foot tall and bullet proof are being quite subtly shifted to arguments that no potential victory (if even grudgingly acknowledged) could be worth the price. This argument may prove irresistible to those who've invested heavily in defeat.

But read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Don Surber spots similar lemons-from-lemonade behavior from CBS. "You see, if the enemy turns its swords into plowshares, that’s bad because the enemy will corner the market on plowshares."

MORE ON EVAN COYNE MALONEY'S NEW FILM, Indoctrinate U.

IN THE MAIL: John Hart's novel, Down River.

I'M SURPRISED THIS HASN'T COME AROUND BEFORE: A cubicle defense system.

GREG MANKIW ROUNDS UP tax reform proposals.

WHEN MURDERERS are heroes.

TECHNOLOGY THAT DOESN'T WORK: We've been in DC, investigating the MRSA outbreak -- we brought plenty of hand sanitizer -- and the hotel we're staying in features the Miconic 10 elevator system, where you enter your floor number instead of just pushing "up" or "down" and the system routes the elevators for maximum efficiency. Except that it doesn't work. Wait times have been as much as 15 minutes. Plus, one poor woman rushed to get into our elevator as it was heading up, only to realize that -- since there are no floor-selection buttons in the elevators themselves -- she was just stuck there until she could get off at another floor and select her destination there. Plus, there's something slightly disturbing about the lack of any controls in the elevator -- it's the "spam in a can" approach to interfloor navigation, or something. I've used these systems in big skyscrapers (the Hearst building has them) and they seem to work there, but in this hotel, it's pretty much sucked.

A PHOTO TOUR of the 2007 Tokyo Motor Show.

MUKASEY SHOULD VOLUNTEER TO BE WATERBOARDED, and invite curious members of Congress to join him. There's precedent.

"TRUMAN LIED, ALIENS DIED."

OBAMA TAKES THE OFFENSIVE: " Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Saturday lashed out at rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, accusing her of dodging tough questions about Social Security. Obama, campaigning at a senior center in Des Moines, said all the presidential candidates need to talk honestly about Social Security instead of sidestepping the issue, but he singled out Clinton—the front-runner for the nomination—for special criticism."

THE KREMLIN'S CYBER-OFFENSIVE: "After ignoring the Internet for years to focus on controlling traditional media such as television and newspapers, the Kremlin and its allies are turning their attention to cyberspace, which remains a haven for critical reporting and vibrant discussion in Russia's dwindling public sphere."

BIN LADEN ADMITS DEFEAT in Iraq.

A LOOK AT CHINA'S underground electronic music scene.

THE INFLUENCE OF "BIG MONEY" ON POLITICS: Suddenly, not such a big deal.