Instapundit.com - November 18, 2007 - November 24, 2007 Archives

November 24, 2007

IS THE DOLLAR TOO LOW? Or is the Euro too high?

Related thoughts here.

HMM: "Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has lost his lead eight days before a referendum on ending his term limit, an independent pollster said on Saturday, in a swing in voter sentiment against the Cuba ally." Not sure I trust the poll. But then, I'm not sure I'll trust the vote-counting in eight days, either.

UPDATE: Thoughts from Rand Simberg.

HERE'S MORE on the Kasparov arrest.

SORRY, Mary Katharine!

MICKEY KAUS: "L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former Telemundo anchor Mirthala Salinas have apparently 'ended their romantic relationship.' And here we all thought it was a great love!"

MCCLATCHY IN BAGHDAD: "It's like journalism's F Troop." Only without Forrest Tucker. I guess he was too real!

DON'T shoot the dog.

"HEY, HEY, HO, HO, Western Civ Has Got to Go!" So say its beneficiaries. So much of "progressive" politics looks like the behavior of spoiled adolescents.

MEGAN MCARDLE IS DEAD SERIOUS about Social Security.

"NAMED AND SHAMED:" Yes, they should be. But the political culture that produced them may well be beyond salvation, regardless. Watching the decline of Europe and Britain isn't pleasant. I certainly hope that the current trends are not irreversible. Related thoughts here.

UPDATE: Link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry! (bumped)

DEMOCRATS backpedaling on Iraq: "As violence declines in Baghdad, the leading Democratic presidential candidates are undertaking a new and challenging balancing act on Iraq: acknowledging that success, trying to shift the focus to the lack of political progress there, and highlighting more domestic concerns like health care and the economy."

UPDATE: I guess this is why. It's no good if you can't call it a defeat.

THOUGHTS ON COMBATING ANTI-AMERICANISM IN LATIN AMERICA: Despite media efforts in the other direction.

VIETNAM IN REVERSE: There was a time when I would have trusted this defense of a reporter more than the military's version. That time is past, and it's past because of the frequent dishonesty I've seen from A.P. and other media outlets in Iraq. That's too bad, but when you lose trust, you've lost it. And I just don't trust them like I used to. But then, perhaps my trust was too high all along.

UPDATE: It's not just me.

FAT, HAPPY, AND COWARDLY: The silence of the artistic lambs.

"THOSE CREATIONISTS, THOUGH -- they're way out there."

CARTOON ANTISEMITISM AT THE BRADY CAMPAIGN? It's certainly better-founded than some other cartoon accusations.

KNIGHTS IN RED SATIN: "In my own opinion, the only really dangerous government is an efficient, effective one. The best judgment of a particular democracy is how well it keeps the busybodies occupied while the rest of us get on with running things."

HILARIOUS NEW World of Warcraft commercials, featuring William Shatner and Mr. T. Well, they're pretty funny, anyway. And Shatner looks good as a shaman.

COMMENT-DELETION TRICKERY at the San Francisco Chronicle? If this is real and not some kind of bizarre caching problem, I'm torn between disgust and admiration for their cleverness . . .

Charles Johnson feels something similar, and has to resist temptation.

UPDATE: More here.

November 23, 2007

HEH: Of turkeys and pardons.

IN RESPONSE TO MY EARLIER POST on the Nokia tablet PC, various readers suggest this from Asus, but it's currently unavailable. Looks cool, though.

THE NEW SHAKERS: Jeez.

On the other hand, this explains why some people canonize Stalin, et al.

DAN SOLOVE: My impressions of Rachel Paulose.

NOW THAT'S JUST MEAN: "Eliot Spitzer of New York backpedaled like a Jets defensive back on his scheme to offer driver's licenses to illegals, and the NY Times almost covered it."

REPORTING ON black Friday shopping in New Jersey.

UPDATE: Reader Bill Adams complains:

That Amazon Black Friday sale looked great. I moved three items into my shopping cart. But when I returned to actually pay for them at 9pm, same day, sale still running -- I was informed that one item had been repriced 25% higher, the other 40% higher, while sitting in my cart.

Imagine going to a department store for a sale, picking three items, and then having them repriced by a guy with a sticker gun while you were in the checkout line (though assured the sale is still running, just not so good for the items you chose anymore.)

Since there was no physical guy with a sticker-gun I could fell to the ground in my rage, I just deleted all items in my cart. "Saved" items from past days too. But of course Amazon will never know or feel the slightest discomfort.

Unless you let people know this is going on.

Consider 'em informed -- er, assuming they read InstaPundit. I have had stuff in the cart go down before, but never up. But I seldom leave things there for longer than it takes to check out.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A bunch of shopping-disappointment complaints, involving Amazon and many other merchants. The "lightning deal" thing seems to be leaving some people unhappy -- not sure if that was Bill Adams' problem.

FRITZ SCHRANCK on air travel and congestion.

"HOW DARE YOU QUESTION HER!"

LAHOUD OUT in Lebanon.

BACK WHEN I REVIEWED THE NOKIA N800 INTERNET TABLET, I thought it was nice, but not quite there, adding: "This device is a generation or two away from being what it really wants to be. Give it a slide-out keyboard, more stable software, a slightly bigger screen, and WWAN capability and you'd have a go-anywhere Web device that would let me leave my laptop behind. The N800 isn't there yet."

Well, the Nokia N810 is looking a lot closer. More here. And a further review here. Still no EVDO, just wi-fi, but otherwise it's pretty much a go-anywhere surfing and blogging tool. And it has GPS.

The iPhone kind of meets my description, too, but with no actual keyboard. I haven't heard much about its use as a go-anywhere blogging tool -- I know when Brendan Loy tried that, he found it very awkward.

UPDATE: Stephen Green emails:

Don't worry about the keyboard on the iPhone. After a couple weeks of use it does what any well-designed input device does--it just disappears into a cloud of habit and muscle memory. But that doesn't make the iPhone a blogging tool. Until Apple figures out how to add cut'n'paste to the multi-touch screen, then the iPhone isn't for blogging. Period.

Not that you need new ways and places to blog, of course.

Well, no. Seems like adding cut and paste would be easy, though. And reader B.P. Monaco emails: "I own an iPhone (first version) and spend a lot of time blogging. It's a great tech device, wonderful if you're just surfing the net. However, when it comes to blogging on it, I found it to be an absolute nightmare."

And a customer review -- posted via the N810 -- says that the N810 is an "iPhone killer." Well, possibly. I think they're different devices, with some overlap.

D.C.'S HANDGUN BAN AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO ARMS: One hard question, and an answer.

WIRETAPPING UNIVERSITY NETWORKS for the MPAA.

TURNING THE TABLES ON AL QAEDA: Read the whole thing.

APPARENTLY, THEY SET THE BAR PRETTY LOW THESE DAYS, if these are supposed to be "blackmail photos." Good grief.

THE CANDIDATES AND THEIR FOOD ISSUES, plus the New York Times' photo editor's preferences.

ILYA SOMIN on Ron Paul, racism, and federalism.

RUMSFELD TORTURE CASE thrown out.

CENSURING DIANNE FEINSTEIN? Somehow I had missed this.

MARTY LEDERMAN:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Virginia Senator Jim Webb think they have found a solution to the problem of unconstitutional recess appointments: every three or so business days during the Thanksgiving break, they will convene "pro forma" sessions of the Senate, lasting only a minute or two. (The schedule was announced by Senator Webb on Monday.) They think this will prevent the President from appointing officers during this intra-session adjournment.

I'm not sure why they're so confident.

Read the whole thing.

YOU CAN SUBMIT QUESTIONS to the CNN YouTube Republican debate.

REMEMBERING THE Chevy Vega Cosworth: "Consider it the 1970s equivalent of dropping a Formula 1 V-8 into a Kia Rio." But with some problems.

UPDATE: Cheaper than the Pontiac Banshee!

REPORTS ON Black Friday so far. The Insta-Wife and I ventured out to the bank and the post office today; we didn't shop, but every retail parking-lot we passed was beyond full. Good retail season ahead? Looks that way from here. Me, I'm doing as much shopping online as possible -- I don't find the "bustling crowds" a holiday plus.

THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO SHOW UP -- which, apparently, won't include a lot of environmentalists.

Plus, "Mom and Dad, how could you have been so selfish?"

PRO-SPACE HILLARY? "The major presidential candidates pummel each other daily on issues ranging from the Iraq war to health care. But when it comes to President Bush's ambitious initiative to send humans back to the moon and on to Mars, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is all but alone in staking out a formal position -- and it's one that lends support to key aspects of the president's effort. . . . While the current moon-Mars mission was proposed by Bush, manned space exploration had its first great presidential champion in John F. Kennedy, a Democrat. Bush's plan for a new generation of spacecraft that can fly to the moon and perhaps to Mars got broad bipartisan support when it was approved by Congress in 2005."

HEH: "I can picture the phone call from George Bush late on a Saturday night - 'So, Perv, what are you wearing?'"

SEEING-EYE CONSTITUTIONAL SCHOLARS: A short-lived experiment.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: On Iraq, a state of denial. Read the whole thing.

Plus, a look at the Iraq issue in 2008.

IT'S A BIG BLACK FRIDAY DVD SALE at Amazon. Plus, an HDTV knowledge center.

Last night the outlet stores at Pigeon Forge were opening at midnight, and the local news showed people camped out. A couple of places here in town were opening at 4 a.m. Me, I'd rather shop online.

"I'M FEELING LUCKY" -- and losing $110 million a year in the process!

"IF WE CAN DO THIS, WE CAN DO ANYTHING:" Remembering the construction of the Empire State Building.

MICHIGAN'S ATTORNEY GENERAL MIKE COX encourages the Supreme Court to recognize an individual right under the Second Amendment. "Not only does history demonstrate that the Second Amendment is an individual right, but experience demonstrates that the broad ban on gun ownership in the District of Columbia has led to precisely the opposite effect from what was intended. For legal and historical reasons, and for the safety of the residents of our nation's capital, the Supreme Court should affirm an individual right to keep and bear arms."

FLYING GREEN with new technology Zeppelins.

WITH SOME PRODDING FROM EUGENE VOLOKH, the BBC has revised its bogus gun statistics.

VIDEO UPDATE: So yesterday I shot a good deal of video with the new HD camera, and then put it up on the big HDTV to see how it looked. It turned out very well. The video was good, and seemed to actually make people's skintones look better -- something not all HD cameras do, to put it mildly. It was much enhanced by this tiny and cheap video light (34 bucks is cheap, isn't it?). It fits in the accessory shoe and adds a bit of fill light. I shot with and without it and it made a considerable difference. The 5.1 surround sound was good, though honestly I'd rather have a shotgun option since when you're shooting video at a Thanksgiving get-together where everyone's talking at once, surround-sound doesn't really do much. Still, the performance was very good, the camera was easy to use -- the Insta-wife took it and did some shooting with no more familiarization than me pointing out where the on-off and zoom buttons were -- and the video was quite good.

I recommend -- pretty much no matter what camera you have -- that you get one of those little fill lights. We have one for the Canon, too, and it also makes a surprising difference in video quality, and in how people look.

SHIITES IN SOUTH IRAQ REBUKE TEHRAN: "More than 300,000 Shiite Muslims from southern Iraq have signed a petition condemning Iran for fomenting violence in Iraq, according to a group of sheiks leading the campaign."

MURDER PLOT TARGET shoots to kill: "He looked at me. And I shot him before he could shoot me."

FRANCE'S THATCHER, CONT'D: Collapse of Rail, Subway Strike Is a First Success for Sarkozy.

MULTIPLE BOMBINGS IN INDIA: Amit Varma reports.

INDEED: "Who is Chris Hedges? Not only was he a New York Times reporter for 15 years, he was its Middle East bureau chief in the 1990's. Yikes." Yeah, kind of makes you wonder what's going on with their current reporting staff that we won't find out for years.

THE IMPACT OF BRITAIN'S "DISKGATE:" "Suddenly, ID cards are looking truly scary, combining malevolence with incompetence – Soviet even - to Mr and Mrs Average." We've seen similar ineptitude with confidential private data in America, too. Related thoughts here. "You cannot trust any agency with people's personal data."

EQUIPPING THE TROOPS: "When I enlisted in 1985, I was issued Viet Nam era leftovers (steel pot helmet, an AR-15/M-16 with a very low serial number - heh). The past two days, I have received things that would have seemingly come from a Robert Heinlein novel. The equipment and clothing is lighter, modular, and higher quality - the first aid kit was a revelation (we even got the new clotting agent bandages)."

November 22, 2007

ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL THANKSGIVING: Turned out that we didn't have too much food -- there was a little bit of leftover turkey, and an even littler bit of leftover lamb, but it was a crowd of good eaters and the leftovers were pretty minor.

Helen and I realized today that this is the 14th time we've done the Thanksgiving dinner for both our families. We started when we'd just moved in together, and we've continued every year since. The crowd gets bigger, but it's a very nice thing to have. Hope your Thanksgiving was fun, too.

IT'S NICE TO SEE THAT TOY GUNS haven't gone completely out of style. "There’s even a fold-down bi-pod to help you steady your aim for important shots." Plus, modders explain how to get more range and power!

A TURKEY OF A HEADLINE in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

WELL, this is comforting: "The U.S. military is vulnerable to China's advanced war-fighting systems, including space weapons and computer attacks that would be used in a future conflict over Taiwan, according to a congressional commission"s report released yesterday." Maybe we should just give Taiwan some nukes and wash our hands of the situation. Kind of like China and Iran . . . .

MORE THINGS TO BE THANKFUL FOR, via Daniel Drezner.

A LIST OF long-awaited DVD releases.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING: Now let's shop!

FROM "WAR ON CHRISTMAS" to "war on Thanksgiving?"

A COLLECTION OF Thanksgiving proclamations thoughout the years.

SARKOZY PULLING A THATCHER? "If Sarkozy manages to face down the transport union, he'll have really accomplished something--and I'd expect the other public-service unions to fall into line. The real problem, as in 1968, will be the student protestors. But I've seen these kids, and they aren't the in the same league as their parents (grandparents!) from the Sixties. They'll cave, too."

ANN ALTHOUSE: "I don't want people to know what weapons I hold."

Plus, this: "Alan Greenspan has it together way more than Eric Clapton did."

IT'S A SPECIAL THANKSGIVING SURVIVAL EDITION of PJM Political. Listen online, or pick it up on XM Satellite Radio, channel 130, at 6 pm eastern today.

Among other things, advice from the Insta-Wife on holiday political arguments, and James Lileks talking about his new book.

U.N. GREENHOUSE CONFERENCE WILL overload Bali's airport with private jets:

Tempo Interaktif reports that Angkasa Pura - the management of Bali's Ngurah Rai International Airport are concerned that the large number of additional private charter flights expected in Bali during the UN Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC) December 3-15, 2007, will exceed the carrying capacity of apron areas. To meet the added demand for aircraft storage officials are allocating "parking space" at other airports in Indonesia.

I'll believe it's a crisis when the people who tell me it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis. That clearly hasn't happened yet.

AMY ALKON: How's that D.C. handgun ban working?

AMAZON'S KINDLE sold out in 5 1/2 hours. People seem to want 'em -- the Popular Mechanics folks were going to send me one, but apparently mine was intercepted by higher-ranking folks (er, that would be most of 'em) at Hearst.

HOW TO CARVE A TURKEY: With video.

UPDATE: Thanksgiving day food science! You gotta love this: "For perfect browning, McGee applies some final touches to the skin with a heat gun."

MY SISTER-IN-LAW BROUGHT HOME a book by my University of Tennessee colleague Marilyn Kallet, Jack the Healing Cat. Looks like a must for cat-lovers!

UPDATE: Also from Marilyn Kallet: One for Each Night: Chanukah Tales and Recipes.

I'LL BE COOKING A TURKEY (JUST PUT IT IN THE OVEN) AND MY USUAL LEG OF LAMB: Actually, two legs, which may turn out to be too much -- my brother has a sick kid and they won't be able to make it after all. But leftover lamb is okay, too, so I'll cook 'em both. Hope your Thanksgiving is similarly abundant, and that everyone is able to show up.

And if you need turkey-cooking advice, the Butterball folks are ready to help. Judging by their site's load-time, a lot of people are taking advantage of it.

UPDATE: From Jim Lindgren, some food history.

HOME ON A FOUR-DAY PASS, John Tammes is thankful. And we're thankful for him.

JAMES FALLOWS OFFERS constructive criticism to Andrew Sullivan.

HMM: Russian opposition election candidate shot.

MEGAN MCARDLE: "Anyone have any idea why both the third world countries I just visited offered excellent airport baggage service, while JFK took over an hour to offload my bag?"

UPDATE: More on the problems with baggage-handling. Airlines continue their war against carry-on luggage, but all it would take to fix the problem would be to make checked baggage something you can trust. People don't carry their own luggage because they like to carry their own bags. They do it out of (well-founded) fear.

JFK'S DEATH, re-framed.

GIVING THANKS: Noah Shachtman emails: "A few months back, you recommended Charles Stross' "The Atrocity Archive." I finally got around to reading it - sheer, unadulterated genius. I've ordered three more books by him, as a result. Thanks for the heads-up -- and Happy T-Day."

Thanks for the thanks! And The Jennifer Morgue is good, too. As I've noted before, it's kind of reminiscent of Tim Powers' Declare.

UPDATE: And reader Louis Gifford emails: "While people are thanking you for books you recommended, let me also thank you for The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter and A Farewell to Alms by Gregory Clark. Because of you, I know a little better about how human civilization works." Both excellent books. Thank the authors!

IN THE LONDON TIMES, Tim Montgomerie looks at different Bush foreign policy approaches toward Iran, Pakistan, and Iraq, and projects which will likely be seen as successful in ten years: "The bungled road to a democratic Iraq has been far too bloody but it's now perfectly sensible to believe that Bush's pre-emptive war may have sown the seeds for what could be the least troubled nation of the region in a decade's time. The multilateral approach to Iran may leave us with a nuclear-armed Tehran terrorising Israel and holding the world to ransom over oil supplies."

JAMES LILEKS ON what he's thankful for. Plus, Mozart-whistling turkeys!

THE YOUNGEST LAWYER in California: "This week, many 18-year-olds are celebrating their first Thanksgiving back home, taking a break from freshman year. Not Kathleen Holtz. She's celebrating passing the California bar exam and her first trial victory at a law firm."

BETTER ALL THE TIME: Phil Bowermaster on some things to be thankful for.

November 21, 2007

AMY ALKON on artists without courage. But with the pretense thereof.

REMEMBERING what they said and when they said it.

MICKEY KAUS: "The New York Times' value has been cut in half in less than three years. It's now worth a little more than $17 a share. In 2002, it traded above $50 a share. I wouldn't worry about Rupert Murdoch buying the Times at this point. I'd worry about Rupert Murdoch's nanny buying the Times."

STEPHEN GREEN on mismanaging the infowar.

Here's the question nobody is asking: Just how stupid is the Bush Administration? OK, well, really, everybody even half a step to the left of... no, wait... everybody asks that question, pretty much all the time. But in my case, I'm not trying to score points with it.

Look. The Surge™ is not about the extra troops. Oh, the extra boots on the ground were necessary to get things moving, and to show the enemy (and our Iraqi allies) just how serious we were about implementing a new strategy. But the real key was the change in tactics, not in the increased numbers.

But by allowing the press to label General Petraeus's change of strategy a "surge," without correction, gives the impression that our successes are all about the numbers.

Yeah, that's a point I've made here before, but it's one that the Administration hasn't done much to get out.

A "PHENOMENAL" DROP IN IRAQ VIOLENCE. Well, good.

CALLING FOR MORE GUNS ON CAMPUS:

Mike Guzman and thousands of other students say the best way to prevent campus bloodshed is more guns.

Guzman, an economics major at Texas State University-San Marcos, is among 8,000 students nationwide who have joined the nonpartisan Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, arguing that students and faculty already licensed to carry concealed weapons should be allowed to pack heat along with their textbooks.

"It's the basic right of self defense," said Guzman, a 23-year-old former Marine. "Here on campus, we don't have that right, that right of self defense."

Well, you know what they say: People don't stop killers. People with guns do.

ACADEMICS FOR THE SECOND AMENDMENT has been around for over ten years, but now there's a blog, and they're asking for donations to support an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in the D.C. gun ban case. I've supported them in the past, and I think they're a good outfit. Note the PayPal button at the upper right.

A NEW CAR? Or dessert?

MORE BOGUS STATISTICS ON GUNS AND CRIME, this time in an L.A. Times story by David Savage. Once again Eugene Volokh is on the job. Expect more bogus stats, though Eugene won't always be available to clear things up.

BOB KRUMM: Will the Supreme Court decide another election?

THE TRUE MEANING OF THANKSGIVING:

Every year around this time, schoolchildren are taught about that wonderful day when Pilgrims and Native Americans shared the fruits of the harvest. "Isn't sharing wonderful?" say the teachers.

They miss the point.

Because of sharing, the first Thanksgiving in 1623 almost didn't happen.

The failure of Soviet communism is only the latest demonstration that freedom and property rights, not sharing, are essential to prosperity. The earliest European settlers in America had a dramatic demonstration of that lesson, but few people today know it. . . . What Plymouth suffered under communalism was what economists today call the tragedy of the commons. But the problem has been known since ancient Greece. As Aristotle noted, "That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it."

Read the whole thing.

FROM MARK BLUMENTHAL, a Romney push-poll story reality-check.

A TRIBUTE TO AMERICA'S ABUNDANCE: Thanksgiving dinner for under ten bucks.

ERIC SCHEIE: "Yesterday was not a great day for the forces of gun control. Ed Rendell's extraordinary attempt to pressure the Pennsylvania legislature failed, and the Supreme Court voted to hear District of Columbia v. Heller."

EUGENE VOLOKH debunks bogus gun statistics:

"Handguns Are Used in Most US Assaults and Robberies," reports a BBC caption. Uh, no: According to the Justice Department's National Crime Victimization Survey (2005 data), table 66, handguns are used in 5.4% of U.S. assaults and 26.3% of robberies.

But expect to hear a lot of bogus gun statistics from the press in coming months.

LEGAL SUBSIDIES FOR NEWSPAPERS, at the expense of poor people.

ARTHUR ST. ANTOINE: Reports of GM's death are greatly exaggerated.

STEVE MARTIN on the elements of comedy.

UPDATE: More on Steve Martin, from Extreme Mortman.

SOME CONTEXT ON THE SURGE, from Damien Cave.

NEWSPAPERS: Online ad revenue is going up, but total ad revenue is still going down.

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE REELECTED, people would be imprisoned for political activism. And they were right! "Edmondson wants three taxpayers rights activists incarcerated for the dastardly crime of encouraging Oklahomans to sign a petition for a referendum on a proposed Taxpayers Bill of Rights."

PRAISE FOR HILLARY, from the Bushes.

OUCH: Wife Or Child -- Which One Has The Best Foreign-Policy Experience? "It's akin to watching two guys in a bar debate whether playing Pop Warner football gives more credibility than playing Madden 2007 when criticizing NFL head coaches. . . . Who gives these people advice? . . . The only person this debate helps is Bill Richardson."

LYLE DENNISTON suggests that it might become a political issue if the Justice Department enters the D.C. gun ban case in a way that strongly supports an individual right to arms. But I'm not sure why, other than the obvious media posturing that is likely to result. Denniston notes that the Justice Department changed its position on the Second Amendment during the Bush Administration, to support an individual right view. But in making this change the Administration was actually adopting the view repeatedly expressed by the Congress in recent decades, and so I don't see why that move should be especially controversial.

WHAT WENT WRONG with Fred Thompson's campaign? They seemed highly disorganized this summer; things are better now, I think, but they really lost momentum over several months.

A LOOK AT THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT'S rigorous approach to data security.

CALCULATING THE CARBON FOOTPRINT of the U.N. Climate Change Conference.

IN THE MAIL: Larry Niven and Edward Lerner's Fleet of Worlds.

A LOOK AT the Second Amendment as a teaching tool in Constitutional Law classes, with a link to an article by me, Eugene Volokh, Sandy Levinson, Bob Cottrol, and Scot Powe on the subject.

DAVID HARSANYI: Property right wrongly taken: "The story is so absurd, so unfair, so ludicrous, I had a difficult time believing that it could actually happen - even in Boulder."

JOHN MCWHORTER: "On Thanksgiving, while maybe a few holdouts make sure to muster up a sense of thanks for the season's harvest or a mental salute to the Pilgrims who originated the holiday, it's safe to say that for most of us what Thanksgiving is about is eating a large, starchy meal while taking advantage of the occasion to see family and friends." Not that there's anything wrong with that.

SUSANNAH BRESLIN on the Congo rape epidemic, and what you can do to help.

JACQUES CHIRAC faces a formal investigation for embezzlement.

LAWYERS, GUNS AND WASHINGTON: I've got a column in today's New York Post on the D.C. gun ban case.

The Glenn and Helen Show: Bob Levy on the Supreme Court and the D.C. Gun Ban Case

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the D.C. gun ban case, and we caught up with Bob Levy, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute and the moving force behind the case, on Tuesday morning just before the Court's announcement. We talk about the Second Amendment, the Supreme Court, and the case's likely influence on the 2008 elections, as well as why Levy bucked the advice of many to put this case in motion.

You can listen directly -- no downloading needed -- by going here and clicking on the gray Flash player. Or you can download the show and listen at your leisure by clicking right here. You can get a lo-fi version, suitable for dialup, by going here and selecting lo-fi. And you can always get a free subscription via iTunes -- and we'd like it if you did. Our show archives are at GlennandHelenShow.com.

This podcast was brought to you by Volvo Automobiles. Music is by Todd Steed and the Suns of Phere.

MORE ON CONGRESS'S NEW LUXURY JET: "One final thought: the delivery of a new 'junket jet' for Congress may infuriate a lot of taxpayers, but there's a method in Boeing's apparent madness. Winners of the KC-X and CSAR-X contracts will be announced early next year, and by delivering the C-40 now (just in time for Christmas holiday 'fact-finding' trips), the aircraft giant hopes that some of its Congressional friends will pressure the Air Force to steer those contracts toward Boeing."

UPDATE: Reader Al Reasin emails: "Since congress's new luxury jet is part of the military appropriations and with congress not funding the military as the president requested, the jet should be the first causalty of the reduction in spending required to maintain support for the troops in harm's way. While the jet has been delivered, so too late to cancel it, it should be grounded. Actually all congressional fights provided by the Air Force should be grounded. Let them all take to the airways with the regular folks and experience the problems we face. And since they are so concerned about global warming, it would reduce their carbon footprint." I'm on board!

ROSS DOUTHAT ON Stem Cells, Race, and the Future of the Science Wars.

A SECOND AMENDMENT PREDICTION, from Bill Quick: "I think Hillary will have a Sister Souljah moment and come out in support of an individual rights interpretation. In my leftist days, the New Left certainly felt that way. None of us supported disarming the Black Panthers. And, frankly, Kos isn’t exactly a hotbed of anti-gun fervor." Nope. That would be interesting.

ANOTHER HOLLYWOOD SUICIDE BOMB: Wagner James Au emails:

Not sure anyone's pointed this out yet, but *Redacted* was a giant bomb, I mean just disastrous in relation to profile, ranking *50th* place in last weekend's box office receipts.

Grossing $25,628 in 15 theaters, which means an audience of roughly 3000 people *in the entire country*. It's not even doing well for an indy movie; for example, note that a Joe Strummer documentary playing in less theaters still made more in its third week. This despite an A list director, a huge wave of publicity, high praise in the Times, the New Yorker, left-leaning sites like Salon, etc.etc.-- not even many people who presumably agree with the movie's anti-war movie thesis made the effort to see it.

Ouch. Lions for Lambs isn't exactly raking it in, either.

AN OIL-FOR-FOOD guilty plea.

IRAQIS returning home after exile. This seems like good news. Much more on the subject here.

A LOOK AT DEVELOPMENTS in northern Iraq.

November 20, 2007

MORE ON the flying imams.

MEGAN MCARDLE: "Why not nuclear? We asked. The World Bank doesn't support nuclear, though it's not clear why. Geopolitically, of course, there are proliferation concerns, and questions about whether developing countries can safely manage a nuclear plant. On the other side of the ledger, however, is the fact that without nuclear, all these developing countries are going to be dumping a gigantic load of carbon into the atmosphere. Shouldn't we at least be thinking hard about safer reactors for the developing world?"

HILLARY MOCKS OBAMA. "Hillary Rodham Clinton ridiculed Democratic rival Barack Obama on Tuesday for his contention that living in a foreign country as a child helped give him a better understanding of the foreign policy challenges facing the U.S." She's right. It's not like he's been First Lady or anything.

A HUGE ROUNDUP OF sources on the Second Amendment.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON on those Iraqi colonels.

WATCH TODAY'S ENTIRE SENATE SESSION, in this 46-second video. Which includes the pregame show. (Via Don Surber.)

MICKEY KAUS: "I'm willing to be convinced that the instinct to keep up Petraeus' 'surge' (as long as it's showing promising results) is wrong. But the recent Podesta/Korb/Katulis op-ed--'Strategic Drift: Where's the Pushback Against the Surge'--didn't come close to doing the trick."

MELISSA SCHWARTZ LOOKS BACK on seven years of blogging with thoughts of what came before: "How did anybody meet anybody and how did we learn things?"

LONG-ARMING the libel tourist.

I'M CRITICIZED FOR MY defeatist rhetoric. I say, pull out now.

HEH: A gunslinger pope?

I HAD MISSED THIS: 100 enlist at UT/Vanderbilt game.

AN ARMY OF RON JEREMIES: Porn industry losing out to amateurs. "They’re giving porn away. You can’t make money on this.”

TED KENNEDY IS unhappy with Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

EUGENE VOLOKH ON THE MEANING OF "necessary to the security of a free state."

UPDATE: Plus, the Second Amendment and the "living Constitution." And, from Dave Kopel, some background on the D.C. handgun and self-defense bans.

ILYA SOMIN: "Various people have asked me what I think of Ron Paul's presidential campaign, and whether it will be good for libertarianism. Here's my take."

IS THE IPHONE AN electronic snitch?

UPDATE: Or maybe it's a bogus rumor.

AN IGNORED EARLY WARNING ON THE HOLOCAUST: Probably wouldn't have mattered. As we've seen in more recent years, the world doesn't actually mind genocide all that much.

DENIAL.

THE SECOND AMENDMENT TERM? Read these comments from Prof. Mike O'Shea. They're from last summer, but they're totally on point.

And there are multiple posts at The Volokh Conspiracy that are worth your time.

UPDATE: Rudy Giuliani weighs in: "I strongly believe that Judge Silberman’s decision deserves to be upheld by the Supreme Court. The Parker decision is an excellent example of a judge looking to find the meaning of the words in the Constitution, not what he would like them to mean." This should help him with the gun-rights folks.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Fred Thompson comments: "The Second Amendment does more than guarantee to all Americans an unalienable right to defend one’s self. William Blackstone, the 18th century English legal commentator whose works were well-read and relied on by the Framers of our Constitution, observed that the right to keep and bear firearms arises from 'the natural right of resistance and self-preservation.' This view, reflected in the Second Amendment, promotes both self-defense and liberty."

MORE: David Hardy has thoughts on the question presented.

LOVING THE PORSCHE CAYMAN: I find it much more attractive than other Porsches, especially the rear end treatment.

GOOD QUESTION: "Why should the courts spare the government from the harsh effects of laws that are written at a high level of generality? Private citizens and business get stuck with the application of general laws, which they don't write."

"YES." That's Ron Bailey's answer to Arthur Caplan's question about whether it would be a good thing if stem cell breakthroughs let people live longer. I've written about the problem at more length here.

PARASITE VS. HOST: "In evolution, host and parasite can engage in a kind of arms race. One side adapts and evolves; the other side adapts and evolves to keep up. At the end of the day, neither side is necessarily better off than the other. . . . The phenomenon helps illustrate why sexual reproduction is important: by producing genetically varied offspring, a slower-evolving organism can defend itself against a faster-evolving one."

As I've suggested elsewhere, the same may be true in politics, though regarding that contest as a Red Queen's Race would, alas, be rather optimistic.

ANNIE JACOBSEN: Homeland security remains a joke. Just not a very funny one. More criticism here.

JAMES LILEKS ON the death of Mr. Whipple.

Also, he's got a new book coming out next week, just in time for Christmas. Lileks, that is. Not Mr. Whipple.

ERIC SCHEIE: "Pry what from my cold dead hands?"

BIG SECOND AMENDMENT NEWS: "The U.S. Supreme Court said on Tuesday it would decide whether handguns can be banned in the nation's capital, a case that could produce its first ruling in nearly 70 years on the right of Americans to bear arms."

Lots of background information on the Second Amendment here, and there's some discussion of this particular case here -- scroll down toward the end. (It starts at p. 347 in the journal, or p. 14 in your Adobe reader.)

Also, Helen and I interviewed Bob Levy, the brains behind the case, for The Glenn and Helen Show this morning; it'll be up tomorrow.

UPDATE: More at SCOTUSBlog. And here's a copy of the order. The question is phrased as follows: “Whether the following provisions — D.C. Code secs. 7-2502.02(a)(4), 22-4504(a), and 7-2507.02 — violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes?”

ARE SCIENTISTS PLAYING GOD? It depends on your religion. “Therapeutic cloning in particular jibes well with the Buddhist and Hindu ideas of reincarnation.”

Plus, anti-science religious fervor:

“Many Europeans, as well as leftists in America,” Dr. Silver says, “have rejected the traditional Christian God and replaced it with a post-Christian goddess of Mother Nature and a modified Christian eschatology. It isn’t a coherent belief system. It might or might not incorporate New Age thinking. But deep down, there’s a view that humans shouldn’t be tampering with the natural world.”

Hence the opposition to genetically modified food.

I say, tell the theocrats to shut up and let science remain free. Luckily, the stem-cell debate, at least, may turn out to be obsolete.

OUCH! "With exquisite timing, Boeing chooses a travel weekend that could go down in the annals of airborne horror to deliver a top-of-the-line Boeing Business Jet that will be assigned to Congress - those folks who have charged billions in air travel taxes over the decades and left us with 1930s blind-landing technology. . . . Funny how nobody in Washington ever mentions these $70 million jets as an example of wasteful defense spending. Or as an example of an unjustified Air Force mission that doesn't support our soldiers on the ground."

WHO WAS THAT DOG I SAW YOU WITH LAST NIGHT? "That was no dog, that was my pundit!"

But is Boris available on Kindle?

POLITICO: Giuliani playing well with young voters.

IN THE MAIL: Richard North Patterson's election novel, The Race.

JOHN MCCAIN IS saying "I told you so."

UPDATE: Rand Simberg comments. And don't miss this skeptical media account!

PREJUDICE AGAINST SOUTHERNERS, in New Hampshire?

RADLEY BALKO OBSERVES THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY of the Kathryn Johnston raid in Atlanta:

Shortly after the shooting, the police alleged that they had paid an informant to buy drugs from Ms. Johnston's home. They said she fired at them first, and wounded two officers. And they alleged they found marijuana in her home.

We now know that these were all lies. In fact, everything about the Kathryn Johnston murder was corrupt. The initial arrest of the ex-con came via trumped-up charges. The police then invented an informant for the search warrant, and lied about overseeing a drug buy from Johnston's home.

Ms. Johnston didn't actually wound any of the officers. They were wounded by fragments of ricochet from their own storm of bullets. And there was no marijuana. Once they realized their mistake, the officers handcuffed Ms. Johnston and left her to bleed and die on the floor of her own home while they planted marijuana in her basement. . . . If any good has come of this, it's that the media coverage surrounding Kathryn Johnston's death has at least exposed the country to the widespread use of "dynamic entry" tactics for routine service of drug warrants, and the rather predictable problems that come with armed police breaking into someone's home.

Your drug-war tax dollars at work. Sadly, incidents like this are all too common.

A STEM-CELL BREAKTHROUGH? "Scientists have made ordinary human skin cells take on the chameleon-like powers of embryonic stem cells, a startling breakthrough that might someday deliver the medical payoffs of embryo cloning without the controversy." Bring it on!

UPDATE: Here's more from the Wall Street Journal. If this pans out, it's the biggest story of the year.

I BLOGGED ABOUT BEING CALLED BY A POLLSTER a while ago. The Polling Project aims to systematize that phenomenon: "We're asking everyone to share their polling experiences with us via a simple form (linked below), telling us exactly how they have been polled. For too long, the polling industry has had the luxury of operating largely under-the-radar. The Polling Project aims to move polling from under-the-radar to under the microscope."

NEWS OR PROPAGANDA: You decide.

PROGRESS ON METAL STORM: "After years of development, a new class of weapon that uses computer-controlled electronic ignition instead of primers to fire projectiles may be finally taking its much coveted place in the U.S. military inventory. . . . How astounding? Try 1 million rounds per minute."

GOVERNOR SPITZER LAWYERS UP? (Via JWF).

SINCE I'VE BEEN DOING A LOT OF GUNBLOGGING LATELY, here's a link to Jeffrey Snyder's famous essay, A Nation of Cowards. Worth a read, if you haven't seen it before.

UDPATE: SayUncle emails: "Since you're gunblogging: Acting ATF Director Sullivan has responded to allegations of abuse against firearms licensees by ATF. He notes there is no correlation between the dramatic decrease of nearly 150,000 licensees and ATF revocation actions. I don't think he's paying attention."

ON THE ONE HAND, THIS IS GOOD NEWS: "The United Nations' top AIDS scientists plan to acknowledge this week that they have long overestimated both the size and the course of the epidemic, which they now believe has been slowing for nearly a decade, according to U.N. documents prepared for the announcement." On the other hand, it's a major error, and calls into question other alarmist scientific statements from the same source. Money quote -- er, literally -- "There was a tendency toward alarmism, and that fit perhaps a certain fundraising agenda."

OBAMA PULLS AHEAD in Iowa. People want "change," and apparently don't see Hillary as representing something new.

UPDATE: Taegan Goddard criticizes the way the poll was reported. [LATER: Actually, the piece is by Stuart Rothenberg, at Taegan Goddard's political wire. Sorry for the confusion -- Taegan emailed me the link and I didn't notice the different authorship.]

BAGHDAD BY NIGHT.

IN LIGHT OF THE NEW YORK TIMES' REPORTING OF PROGRESS IN BAGHDAD, Ed Morrissey thinks they owe Petraeus an apology:

Let's put the Times report into context. Just two months ago, the paper gave MoveOn a price break to run an ad that accused General David Petraeus of treason and perjury even before he testified about the security improvements. The editorial board called Petraeus' testimony "empty calories" and complained of his "broken promises and false claims of success" and asserted that Petraeus had not given an "honest accounting" in his Congressional briefings.

The Times waited until the success of Petraeus could no longer be denied to publish the truth. With every other news agency in the world reporting on the drop in violence, the rise in commerce, the flight of the militias even from Baghdad, and the unifying efforts such as the rebuilding of St. John's Catholic Church in the heart of the capital, the Times has no other choice but to rescue its credibility with an acknowledgment of reality. . . .

Now that the Times has finally acknowledged the success of the surge and the reality of Petraeus' testimony, will they apologize for disparaging the American commander so viciously? Will they retract their political hitpiece of an editorial of September 11th? Don't bet on it.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Maybe the editors don't make it to page 14! Maybe that's why reporters can get away with putting good news there . . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tom Maguire emails: "Regarding the NY Times story about improvement in Baghdad - Since you twice link to Don Surber's post noting the Wash Post placement on p. 14, it is possible that folks will get confused and think the Times put it there also (unlike the WaPo, online Times stories don't include info about the page on which they ran.) That said, dedicated link-followers will see that Captain Ed noted it as a front page story." And that's what we have here! But just in case, I'm including this clarification.

TIGERHAWK: "Two stories today make me wonder whether our governmental institutions are finally, genuinely, learning to fight this war."

IS STANFORD violating the Solomon Amendment? If so, would a False Claims Act action be viable here?

IT'S A JUSTICE SYSTEM PARALYZED BY TERROR:

In cities struggling with gang-related crimes, like Trenton and Newark, detectives said that even on the infrequent occasions when they find civilian witnesses who might be willing to testify, investigators are wary about pressuring them to appear in court. That reluctance is based on a fear that the authorities might not be able to protect witnesses from retaliation.

In the New Jersey State Police gang unit, the approach is so common that detectives have made hundreds of cases during the past five years, but used civilian testimony fewer than a dozen times, investigators said. . . . No one much disputes that the strategy amounts to something of a retreat for law enforcement in New Jersey. . . . Some state officials who support Mr. Corzine’s proposals said that New Jersey’s witness intimidation problem had grown so complex and severe that it would take a broader effort, from both government and community leaders, to combat it.

“The bad guys are willing to use tactics that the good guys haven’t yet figured out how to deal with,” said State Senator John H. Adler, chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

It's a quagmire, the local political system is inept, and the corruption and terror will never end. U.S. out of New Jersey now!

UPDATE: Professor Joseph Olson emails:

From your blog: "“The bad guys are willing to use tactics that the good guys haven’t yet figured out how to deal with,” said State Senator John H. Adler, chairman of the [New Jersey] Judiciary Committee."

The good guys know what to do, you protect yourself. But NJ bad guys have the advantage of government assistance because the NJ legislature has made certain that all potential victims will be defenseless by enacting a discretionary handgun carry permit law (under which only the politically connected and those guarding other people's money can protect themselves). A police promise to draw a nice chalk line around your dead body doesn't provide much in the way of "protect and serve." No wonder no one will testify. I wouldn't.

BTW, NJ also bans civilian use of hollowpoint bullets that effectively stop attackers.

Better working conditions for criminals yield more crime. Natch!

Yeah, go figure.

GIULIANI: The new ideas candidate?

MORE GUN DEALERS are suing Mike Bloomberg.

OBAMA: Clintons trying to establish a dynasty.

IN THE SPACE REVIEW, Jonathan Card on space property rights.

NOT THAT MANY hate crimes against Muslims. A lot more hate crimes against Jews.

BOSTON GLOBE: "Effectiveness of D.C. gun ban still a mystery."

"One of the difficult things is, you can't measure what didn't happen," Singer said. "You can't measure how many guns didn't come into the District because we have this law."

But you can measure the violence that did occur, using the bellwether offense of homicide to chart the ebb and flow of crime in the District since the ban was enacted. And the violence here over those years was worse than in most other big cities, many of them in states with far less restrictive gun laws. . . . Yet the gun culture on the city's mean streets during the crack epidemic has not abated, police statistics show. Even as the homicide toll declined in D.C. after 1991, the percentage of killings committed with firearms remained far higher than it was when the ban was passed.

"Mystery?" By any reasonable measure, it was a failure. And a predictable one, since gun control hasn't done much for crime anywhere in the United States.

HMM: "In a potential matchup with Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, Giuliani wins 50-43 percent. Republicans Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney also beat her, although their wins are within the margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points." I wouldn't make too much of this Florida poll.

November 19, 2007

ERIC SCHEIE: "Anyway, 'GOD HATES SEX' seems to be an apparent area of agreement between those waging war against sex, and those waging war against God." I'm pretty sure that both groups are wrong.

GUNS AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT: Since we may be hearing something on the subject soon from the Supreme Court, here's a link to my Guns and Gay Sex: Some Notes on Firearms, the Second Amendment, and "Reasonable Regulation," which I put up yesterday.

If you're interested in the subject generally, there's a survey of the topic in A Critical Guide to the Second Amendment, and a look at the practical consequences of taking a "states' rights" interpretation of the Second Amendment in The Second Amendment and States' Rights: A Thought Experiment. And, perhaps a bit further afield -- or perhaps not -- It Takes a Militia: A Communitarian Case for Compulsory Arms Bearing. Plus, a piece on the Miller case. And there's always this New York Times column from last year, A Rifle in Every Pot.

Lots more Second Amendment information can be found at the Second Amendment Law Libary. In particular, I recommend this short piece by William Van Alstyne. (Bumped to top).

NEW YORK TIMES: "In more than 50 interviews across Baghdad, it became clear that while there were still no-go zones, more Iraqis now drive between Sunni and Shiite areas for work, shopping or school, a few even after dark. In the most stable neighborhoods of Baghdad, some secular women are also dressing as they wish. Wedding bands are playing in public again, and at a handful of once shuttered liquor stores customers now line up outside in a collective rebuke to religious vigilantes from the Shiite Mahdi Army."

Noting the sudden, er, surge of good-news stories from Iraq, reader C.J. Burch emails: "I think some media big wigs are getting nervous about their legacy."

UPDATE: Or maybe not. Page 14?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Of course we support the troops. We've always supported the troops!

THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT: Internet autoimmune disorders, or if you prefer, Internet brownouts.

A QUIET CLEANUP? Bob Owens reports that TNR seems to have canned its chief fact-checker.

CHALLENGE AND RESPONSE.

BLOGGER HELPED NAB BILAL HUSSEIN? I wonder if Hussein will turn out to be the next -- or maybe I should say the latest -- Pham Xuan An?

But hey, there's a tradition here.

UPDATE: A debate about the role of journalists in a war zone? Yeah, let's have that . . . .

MORE COMPLAINTS ABOUT The Economist. It does seem to have gone downhill lately. In The Economist's defense, though, a commenter offers this article.

UH OH: Sikhs Seethe Over a Snub by Clintons. You don't want the Sikhs mad at you.

WHY WE HAVE A FIRST AMENDMENT -- and why Britain's authorities are somewhere between risible and contemptible. "Over in the UK, the generally left-leaning Channel 4 broadcast a program called Undercover Mosque, which included footage of a British mosque's preachers spewing hatred against women, gays and the west in general. Viewers complained to West Midlands Police. The police decided to investigate not the preachers, but the program-makers. Failing to find any evidence of criminal behavior by the network, they quite bizarrely referred the program to the broadcast regulator."

REMEMBERING Mr. Whipple.

UPDATE: From the comments: "'The kind of pictures they're making today, I'll stick with toilet paper,' he told The Associated Press in 1985." And it's only gotten worse . . . .

GIULIANI TO AMERICA: Get real.

HERE'S MUCH MORE on the Amazon Kindle e-reader. I'm going to try to get my hands on one; if I can, I'll give you a report.

UPDATE: Hey, I'm a featured blogger -- scroll down at the link above. So why didn't they send me one? Heck, I didn't even get a PR email from Amazon.

MY EARLIER POST ABOUT BEOWULF led Col. Douglas Mortimer to email: "Look, Stupid, a post talking about a 'trainer' at your gym is useless without a pic of her to go along with it. OK?"

Alas, I don't have any pictures of her. But here's the blog of another trainer from my gym, Jessica Paxson, though I think she's left my gym recently to work for the Big Orange Army and to pursue a professional bodybuilding career. She was on the cover of Muscle and Fitness last month.

TRYING TO FREE PRISONERS wrongly convicted with bogus scientific evidence.

THE INCONVENIENT TRUTH about Iraq.

REPORTS: ASSOCIATED PRESS REPORTER BILAL HUSSEIN will be charged with terrorism. More here.

61 COLUMBIA PROFESSORS dissent from the statement of 70 Columbia professors on Lee Bollinger and Ahmadinejad.

WAPO: GOOD NEWS FOR BUSH, everywhere but in the polls:

The war in Iraq seems to have taken a turn for the better and the opposition at home has failed in all efforts to impose its own strategy. North Korea is dismantling its nuclear program. The budget deficit is falling. A new attorney general has been confirmed despite objections from the left.

I'm going to be bold and predict he won't be reelected in '08.

THE JOYS OF THE Ford Fairmont.

CNN AND the politics of question-planting. Wolf Blitzer's reputation has really taken a hit over this, and rightly so.

UPDATE: More here.

IT'S NATIONAL AMMO DAY, just in case you're short on rounds.

HILLARY GOES AFTER OBAMA ON "EXPERIENCE:" Well, it's true. He's never been First Lady.

REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES battle for the law professor vote. Because that's crucial!

GLENN DERENE LOOKS AT the new Amazon Kindle e-reader. You can get InstaPundit on it, I'm told.

Photos here. Comparison with the Sony Reader here, along with this observation: "One of the Kindle’s biggest competitors may actually be a device that isn’t even in the same category: the iPhone. The iPhone isn’t particularly adept at dealing with ebooks yet, but it probably will be very soon. It might have a smaller screen, but it does everything else the Kindle can do in terms of hardware (albeit with a slower connection). And if Apple or someone else comes up a way to buy and download ebooks as easily as the Kindle store, these two identically-priced uber-devices might be in a fight that neither company anticipated."

Some thoughts on aesthetics, here.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS IN SLATE, on the good news from Iraq.

Plus, Bob Krumm: "Remember the 'Flypaper Theory'? Every day, that goal comes closer to being realized."

NOT EXACTLY POSITIVE COVERAGE FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:

Democrats in Congress failed once again Friday to shift President Bush’s war strategy in Iraq, but insisted that they would not let up. Their explanation for their latest foiled effort seemed to boil down to a simple question: “What else are we supposed to do?”

How about admit things are going much better, and try to help?

A LOOK AT the sleep-industrial complex. I like this advice: "'After a poor night of sleep we’re asking people to forget about it and go about their business as usual,' he says. 'Because if you wake up and think, Wow, what a terrible night of sleep, I’m going to have a lousy day, you’re setting yourself up for failure.'”

IN THE MAIL: Sally Bedell Smith's new book, For Love of Politics: Bill and Hillary Clinton: The White House Years. The nineties are back with a vengeance!

IF YOU LIKE BALLET, you may like this blog.

QUESTIONS ABOUT RUSSIAN NANOTECHNOLOGY WEAPONS: More answers, please.

A STAR TREK MODELED home theater.

A TRAINER AT MY GYM WENT TO SEE BEOWULF THIS WEEKEND, and she and her boyfriend were not impressed. She said they were hoping for something like 300, but what they got was "Shrek, only gruesome and not funny."

LOOKING FOR A HOUSE? "We have just the place. Good school district, only two owners in 90 years. A steal at $133K. Warning: that’s the annual property taxes."

A REPORT FROM THE L.A. Auto Show.

LOOKING AT the numbers in Iraq.

VIDEO: Bob Owens and Roger Simon interview Fred Thompson on the war on terror. Very interesting, and I think it's one of Thompson's best appearances to date.

WHAT WOULD AL GORE DO? "The former vice president, Oscar winner and Nobel laureate hasn’t made any noises about getting back into politics … yet. Nevertheless, the idea of having Gore as the country’s science czar is a good way to spark a discussion over mixing science and politics."

"HAVE SOME TURKEY, YOU FASCIST:" Advice on dealing with holiday hell.

November 18, 2007

HOW YOU CAN HELP Bangladesh cyclone victims.

UPDATE: Some good news about Bangladesh. (Bumped to top.)

IN SLATE, William Saletan on liberal creationism.

"BUCKWHEAT!" Another chance to play Name That Party!

THE NOT-SO-GREAT generation?

WOULDN'T MARK CUBAN BE COMPLAINING EVEN MORE if Fox refused to run his ads?

Meanwhile, some people are trying to organize a boycott of Redacted, -- though from what I hear about the film, that shouldn't be hard, but might be unnecessary. Like asking 8-year-olds to boycott liver and brussels sprouts. Even the Beauchamp-infested New Republic hated it. I like the commenter who referred to Redacted as "DePalma's suicide bomb." Heh.

UPDATE: Some amusing thoughts on TNR and Redacted.

TOM FRIEDMAN: "I have no idea who is going to win the Democratic presidential nomination, but lately I’ve been wondering whether, if it is Barack Obama, he might want to consider keeping Dick Cheney on as his vice president."

Obama-Cheney. Just one of several odd pairings I'm hearing today.

THIS STRIKES ME AS BAD POLITICS: "It's been less than a week since New York's Sen. Hillary Clinton and Gov. Eliot Spitzer had to climb down from their support of driver's licenses for illegal aliens. Now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has moved to kill an amendment that would protect employers from federal lawsuits for requiring their workers to speak English. Among the employers targeted by such lawsuits: the Salvation Army."

JAMES KIRCHICK: "Intervention in Darfur may fuel Muslim anger, but that can't be an excuse to do nothing."

THE RACIST ROOTS OF GUN CONTROL in Georgia.

Very interesting data on the 1906 Atlanta race riots, where mobs attacked black neighborhoods, the residents fought back (in an early form of straw man sales, light skinned residents bought guns for their neighbors), and police and the state militia responded with house to house searches for guns. The Atlanta Journal ran an editorial entitled "Disarm the Negroes," endorsing the searches with comments such as "Should a collision between the races occur, it would be too late to deplore the fact that the negroes had been permitted to arm themselves." The study also probes why GA law bans carrying at public assemblies, and notes the law was enacted after night riders attacked blacks who were travelling to a ... public assembly, and they fought back.

This kind of thing isn't news to those who have been paying attention, but it's probably news to everyone else.

JOHN TIERNEY: "The keepers of bioethics are even more alarmed than usual now that scientists have reported cloning a monkey embryo and extracting stem cells."

Some of the discussion sounds a bit familiar, which just demonstrates that these debates tend not to advance very much. Meanwhile, I still believe that Congress lacks the power to ban cloning anyway.

GETTING A YALE EDUCATION on the cheap. Well, sort of.

KENNETH ANDERSON on the Madrid bombing verdicts, law, and terrorism.

MICROWEAPONOMICS -- a new coinage from Bob Krumm.

A CHRISTMAS WARNING: "Apparently, these days, one needs to possess an itty-bitty, teeny-weeny, Barbie-sized screwdriver to be able to open the battery compartments of many of the toys on the market today. Consequently, we have tons of dolls and helicopters and singing My Little Pony Pinkie Pies around the office that have not done a thing except sit there." Be prepared!

ILYA SOMIN POINTS OUT a danger in using foreign law to interpret U.S. law: "For a Supreme Court made up of generalists, even keeping up with all the US law that the Court has to deal with is a full-time job, one that the justices often fail at. . . . This lack of expertise may help explain why those justices who do rely on foreign law never seem to do a systematic survey of the relevant foreign precedents, but instead simply pick a few examples that seem to support their position."

PARTYING WITH the science crowd.

MY LEGAL CAREER IS A SUCCESS: I just noticed I got a "highly recommended" from Larry Solum.

A TELLING QUESTION about Iraq.

SHIFTING DEFINITIONS for "conservative ideologue."

GERMANY: The soft underbelly of Europe?

WHEN JOURNALISTS "PLANT" THEIR OWN QUESTIONS -- and their careers. "NY1 Anchor Quits After Calling a Show on the Station Under a False Name."

HOW TO MEASURE ONLINE VIDEO: Just remember, all Web stats are at best rough approximations. And non-Web stats (like Nielsen or Arbitron) are probably worse.

A LOOK AT GUNS ON CAMPUS. I had some thoughts on this subject a while back.

DO WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES exist?

ROGER KIMBALL HAS THOUGHTS on affirmative action.

BOURGEOIS CONSUMERISM: Neither "empty" nor "mindless."

What is truly empty is the value that counsels A to live off of the wealth given to him by B and which B confiscated from C. And what is truly mindless is the notion that society progresses as greater numbers of us live as A's or as B's, and all the while thinking of C's as being nothing more than contemptible cows to be milked for the "general good."

Indeed.

PHONY OBAMA Swift-Boats the Swift-Boaters. Roger Simon is not amused. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I increasingly find Obama to be like a late night infomercial host - slightly charming, slightly unctuous, factually meaningless. Ready for the Presidency? Don't be silly."

ED MORRISSEY ON CNN: It all depends on what the meaning of "undecided" is. And if you accept the CNN-friendly definition, then Stephen Green's observation makes perfect sense!

A BIG ROUNDUP OF new videogame releases. Crossbow training with the Wii?

MORE ON THE BANGLADESH CYCLONE, from Joe Gandelman.

VIDEO: Fred Thompson on funding the war. This is an excerpt from a full-length interview that'll be up tomorrow.

IRAN SURRENDERS IN IRAQ: I credit the new Democratic congress!

MICKEY KAUS: "Has Hillary achieved Mutually Assured Destruction, scandal-wise? I doubt it."

BABES WITH BULLETS.

GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE: Gun control kills people. In Uganda, under U.N. auspices. Read the whole, sad, story -- the piece is a few months old, but it's a useful reminder of what's really involved in these projects.

IT'S CHILLY IN CHILE: Yeah, I know, it's weather, not climate. Just remind the newswriters of that when it's unseasonably warm.

UPDATE: Reader Robert Racansky emails:

I'm watching CNN Headline News, and they just had a report on global warming as a campaign issue.

Among the events related to global warming were "Hurricane Katrina," "California wildfires," and "Asian tsunamis." Because it's self-evident that SUVs and coal-powered plants cause undersea earthquakes -- at least to the folks at CNN.

Like I said.

BILL O'REILLY spotted in Afghanistan. No, really.

REP. WILLIAM JEFFERSON accused of two more schemes.

IN THE MAIL: Timothy Zahn's The Third Lynx.

A LOOK AT disaster response in Bangladesh. Guess who's in the lead?

MORE SECOND AMENDMENT STUFF: With a decision on certiorari in the D.C. gun-ban case coming up, perhaps this week if rumors are to be believed, I've gone ahead and posted a forthcoming article of mine before publication. Entitled Guns and Gay Sex: Some Notes on Firearms, the Second Amendment, and "Reasonable Regulation," it's a look at how courts might deal with an individual right to arms, particularly in light of the D.C. Circuit's overturning of the D.C. gun ban.

Prof. Adam Winkler has looked at some state right-to-arms cases and suggests that even if the Supreme Court finds an individual right to arms, nearly all gun control laws would wind up being upheld as "reasonable regulations." I look at some other cases that Winkler doesn't discuss -- and in particular the way the privacy and gun right cases intertwine in Tennessee -- and suggest that it doesn't have to turn out that way. The gist: If courts pay as much attention to assessing the reasonableness of regulations aimed at firearms -- where there's a textually secured right -- as they do to regulation of gay sex -- where there isn't -- firearms owners will receive considerable protection. And if courts fail to do so, the legitimacy of courts will suffer considerably.

It's a short piece, but you might find it worth your time if you're interested in the subject.

UPDATE: Here's a link to Winkler's piece, too.

VIDEO UPDATE: A reader sends a link to this item from Wikipedia, with some useful information on AVCHD and what applications can handle it. Earlier post here.

EMAIL IS FOR old people. Amusing discussion in the comments.

WIRED ON SHOPPING, and how to score the best deals online. I was at the mall doing Christmas shopping yesterday, and it was already really busy. I talked to several folks who work there, all of whom thought it would be a pretty big Christmas, retail-wise. That means I'll be visiting the mall a lot less for the next month or so, until the rush is over. I've tried to do my meatspace shopping earlier, and leave the rest for online shopping so as to avoid the crowds.

But "buy early" -- one of Wired's suggestions -- may not always be good advice: Amazon, at least, will be having a big Black Friday sale with special offers to compete with the malls.

GUN-FRIENDLY DEMOCRATS in Virginia.

PETRAEUS PICKS the next generation.

Plus, craziness in Tennessee. Yep.

AND I TOOK FEWER THAN HALF OF THEM: Over 500 billion digital photographs in the United States alone. Hard to argue with this point: "That is an enormous estimate which highlights just how much digital cameras have changed photography."

Yep. And one reason I'm an evangelist for all of this stuff is that ubiquitous digital photography and video breaks the Old Media stranglehold on news.

BARACK OBAMA, neocon. Maybe there's hope for him yet!

NORMAN HSU: The Texas edition?

RON PAUL MOVES TO THE CENTER: "Opposing gun control is a far better sales pitch than those letters of marque and reprisal." I've noticed Paul trying to mainstream himself, too. Actually, I'd be willing to give those letters of marque and reprisal a try. But, then, I'm not running for President . . . .

DAVE KOPEL ASKS IF NEWSPAPER ENDORSEMENTS MATTER. A commenter replies: "The importance of 'endorsements' by media outlets has declined as the quality of the media has declined."

MARK STEYN HAS THOUGHTS on what the world should be giving thanks for.