October 06, 2007

CONCERNS ABOUT STABILITY: Jules Crittenden writes: "I think action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iran’s terrorist training camps, and the infrastructure that supports Iranian terrorism would go a long way toward creating stability in the Middle East."

REMEMBER: MEDIA MATTERS IS "NON POLITICAL."

Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

IN ITALY: Paying mama's boys to leave mama.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: More on earmarks and corruption, with a focus on West Virginia:

WHEN she took over as speaker of the House, Democrat Nancy Pelosi said she would "drain the swamp" of political corruption. Then she proceeded to push to have her old friend Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., to be her right-hand man.

But Democrats balked. After all, Murtha was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Abscam scandal.

Still Murtha remains the leader of what can only be described as Earmarks Inc., a string of congressmen who have figured out how to use earmarks to benefit their campaigns and their families. . . .

There is a disturbing pattern of lobbyists raising money for congressmen who then steer earmarks to the clients of the lobbyists.

And some of those clients also are set up by the congressmen.

For example, Rep. Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., set up five tax-exempt groups in West Virginia, including one headed by a former staff member.

Then Mollohan steered money to those groups. The FBI looked into those connections.

Mollohan is not alone.

Read the whole thing. I certainly agree with this:

The Bush administration has done a stellar job in going after the crooks. Republican Duke Cunningham's eight-year prison sentence proves that.

In its final year, the Bush administration should not let up.

I hope the Department of Justices is listening.

35-14. It'll be an unhappy night in Georgia.

HADITHA UPDATE: IT'S SAD WHEN SOMEONE LOSES THEIR "defining atrocity." Because then how are they to do the defining they want to do?

HALLOWEEN STORIES BY Newbery Award winning authors.

Plus, a roundup of World War Two books for kids.

SADLY, SOME GOOD ADVICE from the Drink-soaked Trotskyite Popinjays for War:

So a warning to Muslims who choose to criticize their religion or even extremist segments of it. Don’t expect to get away with the sort of thing white liberals get away with saying about Catholicism or the Church of England, because they won’t like you causing trouble.

Don’t expect solidarity or support, you will be seen as the authors of your own misfortune.

Most of all, don’t expect the snidely liberals to watch your backs.

They are so very tired of you.

Sad, but true. And the lessons this offers are likely to prove unfortunate all around.

UPDATE: "We're living in a Freudian-Orwellian nightmare."

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON TOURED FORWARD BASES IN IRAQ AND REPORTS: "Almost all the Marines and Army units I visited from Ramadi to Taji to various hot spots in Baghdad and Diyala believe there has been a sudden shift in the pulse of battlefield. Sometimes without much warning thousands of once disgruntled Sunni have turned on al Qaeda, ceased resistance, and are flocking to join government security forces and begging the Americans to stop both al Qaeda and Shiite militias. Commanders in the field are cautious. They know that if the Shiite dominated government in Baghdad stays vengeful for decades of past suffering at the hands of Sunni Baathists, the reconciliation will fail. So thousands of American officers are desperately pressuring ministries to start distributing the vast wealth of Iraq’s $80 a barrel oil revenues to Anbar and Diyala before the Sunni revert back to insurgency." Read the whole thing.

THOUGHTS ON THE CULT OF CHE:

The author neglects to point out that, as far as I can tell, there is no memorial, no place of pilgrimage for the countless lives extinguished by Guevara; those accused of being "counterrevolutionary traitors," for instance. Take this diary entry from 1957, in which Che explains how he dealt with someone suspected of being a spy in the rebel's Sierra Maestra camp: "I ended the problem with a .32 caliber pistol, in the right side of his brain.... His belongings were now mine."

In 2002, Cynthia Grenier read through Che's Congo diaries and found that "the beloved revolutionary icon sounds pretty much like an old-fashioned racist..."

But he photographed well.

NAME THAT PARTY! was actually invented by Don Surber, not me.

WELL, THAT'S EASY: "Need to update a kids' book for modernity? No problem: just put Dad in the kitchen, change the police officers to women and the schoolteachers to men, and ditch any milkmen, 'pretty stewardesses,' and Wild West-style Indians. And if you want a better ratio of women, just add hair-bows."

ACTUALLY, IN SOME PARTS OF TODAY'S AMERICA I'd say that patriotism is the highest form of dissent.

CSI MISSISSIPPI: Er, if "CSI" stands for "Crappy Scientific Investigations," anyway:

In January, Mississippi's Supreme Court took an unusual step. In the murder trial of 13-year-old Tyler Edmonds, the court tossed out the testimony of the medical examiner who had conducted the autopsy of the body.

The reason? The medical examiner in the case, Dr. Steven Hayne, had testified under oath that he could tell from the bullet wounds in the body that Edmonds and his sister simultaneously held the gun to fire the fatal shot. Of course, as the court concluded, it is impossible to make such a determination from examining bullet wounds.

Former Columbus, Miss., Police Chief J.D. Sanders has been trying for years to draw attention to Dr. Hayne. "There's no question in my mind that there are innocent people doing time at Parchman Penitentiary due to the testimony of Dr. Hayne," he says. "There may even be some on death row."

In addition to state Supreme Court justices and police officers, defense lawyers, crime lab experts and state medical examiners have all made public their concerns with his practice, and with the testimony he has contributed to hundreds of cases over a 20-year career.

Scientific evidence is often neither scientific nor evidence, and there have been plenty of cases of fraud on the part of government laboratories in the past.

CHILD-BASED decadence.

ARMED LIBERAL: "If that's what 'the country’s intellectual leaders' really think, we're well and truly f**ked. What's worse is that it reads almost word for word like a slam that I laid out against just that kind of thinking."

As I've said, in some quarters, patriotism is the highest form of dissent. Er, or it would be. . . .

CRAIG VENTER CREATES artificial life? (Via Futuresheet).

IN THE MAIL: Lois McMaster Bujold's Legacy.

Very different from the Miles Vorkosigan books, but I read the first book in the series and it's good.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: A Death in the Family. "If America can spontaneously produce young men like Mark, and occasions like this one, it has a real homeland security instead of a bureaucratic one."

A SERENITY SEQUEL? I emailed Tim Minear and he was unable to confirm or deny, but he did send me a link to a story on another new project of his. Our podcast interview with Tim Minear can be heard here.

SYRIA STRIKE: It was nukes, and the U.S. Intelligence Community nearly blew it again, according to ABC: "The September Israeli airstrike on a suspected nuclear site in Syria had been in the works for months, ABC News has learned, and was delayed only at the strong urging of the United States." Condi Rice looks bad, too. Meryl Yourish has some tart comments.

A READER SUGGESTS that the monks of Burma should get the Nobel Peace Prize this year. Good idea, but it seems unlikely.

AN INTERESTING USE OF technology in the law school classroom.

I'VE MENTIONED THE FOUR HOUR WORKWEEK BEFORE, but the Insta-Wife actually bought a copy and liked it. His business advice won't really work for me, but there are some good time-management tips. One that I liked is "Practice the art of nonfinishing: If you are reading an article that sucks, put it down and don't pick it back up. If you go to a movie and it's worse than The Matrix Revolutions, get the hell out of there before more neurons die. . . . More is not better, and stopping something is often 10 times better than finishing it." It's taken me a long time to be willing to quit reading a book I don't enjoy instead of grimly slogging through it, but I've learned to do so, and I've applied that to a few other things. You get in the habit of this in school, where finishing things is a virtue. In life, not always.

MICKEY KAUS: "Remember: This is the best case NPR and the legal rights groups that feed it could come up with."

Plus, "Boomers Against Medical Cost Control."

MORE PROBLEMS FOR AL QAEDA IN IRAQ: "In a rather stunning development, the Iraqi Islamic militant faction known as Asaeb al-Iraq al-Jihadiya (a.k.a. "the Iraqi Jihad Union") has issued a new statement dated October 5 suddenly accusing Al-Qaida's 'Islamic State of Iraq' of deliberately killing its fighters in Diyala province and mutilating their bodies . . . . Though this is actually the second time this week that similar charges have been leveled at Al-Qaida in Iraq by fellow Sunni insurgents, the source of the latest set of allegations--Asaeb al-Iraq al-Jihadiya--is most unusual. Less than three months ago, the very same organization was openly working in operational partnership with Al-Qaida, and was even rumored to be considering merging its forces with Al-Qaida's."

IF THEY CAN SAY THAT WITH A STRAIGHT FACE, they can say anything with a straight face: Media Matters is "nonpolitical."

LARRY LESSIG ON ending government corruption.

I, FOR ONE, WELCOME our new Civil Service overlords.

October 05, 2007

SOUNDS YUMMY, but I'm keeping my underwear on.

GOOD NEWS ON JOBS, just right for Wall Street: Well, good.

SO I'VE NOTICED A SUDDEN SURGE OF ACTIVITY IN THE TIPJAR -- a change, since I don't really mention it much anymore -- and wondered why. My guess is that it's side-scatter from The Corner's pledge drive. I guess.

Anyway, thanks -- whatever the reason!

PEGGY NOONAN ON OUR DYNASTIC POLITICS OF LATE:

It is the nature of modern politics. A political family gains allies--retainers, supporters, hangers-on, admirers, associates, in-house Machiavellis. The bigger the government, the more ways allies can be awarded, which binds them more closely. Your destiny is theirs. Members of the court recruit others. Money lines spread person to person, company to company, board to board, mover to mover.

The most important part is the money lines. Power is expensive. The second most important part is the word "winner." The Bushes are winners; the Clintons are winners. We know this, they've won. The Bushes are wired into the Republican money-line system; the Clintons are wired into the Democratic money-line system. For a generation, two generations now, they have had the same dynamics in play, only their friends are on the blue team, not the red, or the red, not the blue.

They are, both groups, up and ready and good to go every election cycle. They are machines. There are good people on each side, idealists, the hopeful, those convinced the triumph of their views will make our country better. And there are those on each side who are not so wonderful, not so well-meaning, not well-meaning at all. And some are idiots, but very comfortable ones.

Is this good for our democracy, this air of inevitability? Is it good in terms of how the world sees us, and how we see ourselves? Or is it something we want to break out of, like a trance?

It would be understandable if they were families of a most extraordinary natural distinction and self-sacrifice. But these are not the Adamses of Massachusetts we're talking about. You've noticed, right?

I think most people have.

MEGAN MCARDLE: "Are the best journalists kind of, well, sociopaths?"

Plus this: "I'd say another emerging problem in journalism is that journalists and the people they cover are becoming more and more concentrated in a few cities. And that means that they're all each other's friends."

MICKEY KAUS: "It looks like the only Republican who's not quitting the Senate is Larry Craig."

HILLARY -- WARLIKE ENOUGH TO PLEASE TOM SMITH? Maybe: "She certainly understands the concept of enemies and the need to destroy them."

ERIC SCHEIE: Nothing is true. Everything is permissible.

DEROY MURDOCK on the Hillary juggernaut.

IF YOU MISSED IT ON XM RADIO LAST NIGHT, you can listen online today. The latest episode of PJM Political is up!

YEAH, THE SITE'S BEEN UP AND DOWN all day. I don't know why. Even when it's up, I can't always post. Stay tuned; if it gets bad enough I'll post at the backup site.

STEPHEN MOORE: "GOP Tax Dilemma: After years of waste in Congress, voters aren't buying the party's fiscal message."

The problem isn't so much the message as a loss of credibility.

DAN RIEHL: I want my Waco!

TENNESSEE FLAGS IN MASSACHUSETTS POLITICAL ADS? It's just more of that Volunteer State imperialism. Soon, everyone will be drinking Jack Daniel's and worshiping Dolly Parton.

THE RAW STORY: Senate passes intelligence bill after Democrats back down on presidential briefings, CIA jails.

DUKE LACROSSE PLAYERS sue Nifong and Durham police.

UPDATE: More from K.C. Johnson.

THOMPSON/LIMBAUGH 2008? But can Rush take the paycut?

ANOTHER BLOW TO THE NETROOTS: "Who owns your party now, baby?"

More here: "By putting O'Hanlon on her team, she's let the netroots know that she doesn't need their support, and more to the point, she doesn't want their support. How can she afford to be so dismissive of this powerful constituency? Maybe because they aren't as powerful as we'd thought." Or, at least, she's reached the point where they can't hurt her any more.

A DRAFT AL GORE website.

THOUGHTS ON PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS, from Armed Liberal.

IN THE MAIL: Raymond Feist's Into a Dark Realm, the latest in his Midkemia books beginning with the excellent Magician: Apprentice. Like Diane Duane, I remember Feist from the old days of CompuServe's Science Fiction Forum, where he was a regular participant.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE G.O.P.? Among other things, one of their education priorities is to pressure colleges on illegal downloading, endorsing a proposal that Harry Reid had already floated and withdrawn in the face of pushback from colleges.

Message to Republicans: The entertainment industries are your enemies. They're one of the main sources of money for Democrats, and provide a lot of valuable free media for them, too. Why help them out? Especialy when you might actually pick up some youth votes by taking a different position?

Jeez, this has been obvious for a long time.

PERSONALLY, I FIND THE LITTLE CHUCKLE THAT MITT ROMNEY DEPLOYS when he think he's scored a point more irritating than the Clinton cackle. But the latter gets more attention, perhaps because Jon Stewart has been making an issue of it.

THE NATIONAL JOURNAL LOOKS AT BLOGS: It's a pretty good piece, though author Bara Vaida calls me a "conservative," which is only true if "conservative" is a synonym for "supports the war." But then, that's common usage these days.

A broader look here.

A NOVEL SUGGESTION FOR COLLEGE ADMISSIONS OFFICERS: "Let's not break the law."

BILL CLINTON: Hillary's ambassador to the world?

FRANKEN ON YOUTUBE: I still think he's nobody without Davis.

YEAH, SO WHAT'S YOUR POINT? "Hello, My Name Is Bob, and I Check My Email While on the Toilet."

RAND SIMBERG AND HOMER HICKAM DISCUSS transhumans in space. It's kind of a long way from Rocket Boys.

WALTER OLSON on the Lynne Stewart / Hofstra affair.

JULES CRITTENDEN: "It’s remarkable how Katie Couric, in her effort to be viewed as more than a perky face, has emerged as an unexpectedly honest voice in the mainstream media."

IN LIGHT OF EVIDENCE THAT POPULISM AND PROTECTIONISM ARE GROWING, some thoughts of Robert Heinlein:

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as "bad luck."

I'm just, you know, saying.

EVERYTHING OLD IS HSU AGAIN: Investor's Business Daily looks at the Norman Hsu scandal and sees the same old tricks.

MULLAHS VS. MULLAHS in Iran.

BEAUCHAMP UPDATE: Bob Owens notices the dogs not barking at TNR.

DRUG CZAR TO MILTON FRIEDMAN: Drop deader!

THE ECONOMIST WONDERS why Hillary is doing so well.

October 04, 2007

EARLIER, I NOTED A POLL suggesting that Americans -- even Republicans -- are turning against free trade. But Frank Newport observes:

We don’t know how Republican voters may feel about free trade in the abstract. Whar we learn from this question allows one to say something like this: “By a two to one margin, the majority of Republican voters can be swayed to say that foreign trade is bad when they listen to a particular set of arguments both for and against it as presented in this particular question wording.” (The headline by the way references "free" trade while the question uses the phrase "foreign" trade).

It’s also not entirely clear if Republicans have “grown” skeptical on foreign trade. The time point comparison made in the article is to a 1999 WSJ/NBC poll which asked an apparently different question about whether trade deals had helped or hurt the U.S. Comparing the results of that question wording to the results of the current question wording usually would not be something that in and of itself would form the basis for a conclusion about changes in attitudes over time.

Sounds like the poll is pretty iffy. I certainly think that a shift toward U.S. protectionism would be a serious mistake. So does Barack Obama's economic advisor, Austan Goolsbee:

"Globalization" means free trade and various deregulations that supposedly put downward pressure on American wages because of imports from low-wage countries. Goolsbee, however, says globalization is responsible for "a small fraction" of today's income disparities. He says "60 to 70 percent of the economy faces virtually no international competition." America's 18.5 million government employees have little to fear from free trade; neither do auto mechanics, dentists and many others.

Goolsbee's rough estimate is that technology -- meaning all that the phrase "information economy" denotes -- accounts for more than 80 percent of the increase in earnings disparities, whereas trade accounts for much less than 20 percent. This is something congressional Democrats need to hear from a Democratic economist as they resist trade agreements with South Korea and such minor economic powers as Peru, Panama and Colombia.

Yes, they do. And it won't hurt for Republicans to hear it, either. Related item here.

AYAN HIRSI ALI FACES death threats in the United States. Rather more serious than Bruce Springsteen's bleating that some people have called him unpatriotic. But likely to be less covered.

Then there are the terror threats against Flemming Rose. I hope that Bruce never has to show the courage that these two are already showing.

GREAT TITLE: The rights of the people: now available, for the first time, to the people!

Now if that were just true.

PROPHECIES borne out.

LOTS OF CORRUPTION CASES in New Orleans. No, really.

DEMOCRATS VS. THE DNC: "The Democratic National Committee will be sued by Florida Congressguys Bill Nelson of the Senate and Alcee Hastings of the House for violating the Voting Rights Act. This is in response to the DNC plan to refuse to seat the Florida delegation to the Democratic National Convention if the delegates are selected in a too-early primary."

IT SEEMS TO ME, that the latest torture-memo news just underscores what we heard from Jack Goldsmith.

FROM NORM GERAS, thoughts on women and the holocaust.

A POST-SPUTNIK CALL TO ACTION FROM RAND SIMBERG: Fifty Years On, Time for a New Dawn.

Plus, another look at the next 50 years.

CAMCORDER UPDATE: In response to my earlier request for sites with good camcorder reviews, lots of readers recommended CamcorderInfo.com. It looks good. For higher-end stuff, people seem to like FreshDV.com. I've poked around both sites a bit and they look pretty useful.

I found this review of a Panasonic HD / flash camera I've been looking at (it's attractively priced) quite helpful. My big barrier has been the limited editing support for AVCHD, but now, "Suddenly, AVCHD doesn’t look so foreboding anymore. Support for viewing and editing is sprouting up on a monthly basis." Sounds like we're getting close, anyway. Related earlier post here.

And reader Rich Reilly sends a link to a site focusing on Sony HD. Of course, the convergence between HD and digital still photography would move faster if it weren't for the EU's tax policies, which are likely to discourage manufacturers from making equipment with those capabilities, since it will be dutied at a higher rate in Europe.

UPDATE: James Lileks emails:

That Panasonic camcorder you mentioned was the one I ordered from Amazon, a very long time ago. I’ve been looking forward to it for weeks – only to learn today that the vendor is out of stock, and the order was cancelled.

Stop mentioning things I want! It's hard to concentrate.

Er, sorry. But I like mentioning the things that I want. And, natch, other sensible people will often want them too.

A LOOK AT BLACKWATER and the debate over private military contractors.

IRAQ IS BUYING ARMS FROM CHINA: We're supposed to be worried about why. I think I have an answer though, and it's the same reason I personally have bought arms from China: They're good, and they're cheap. Some years ago I bought a Chinese SKS rifle (a lightweight Kalashnikov variant) for 99 bucks. I expected it to be reliable and inexpensive, and it was. It also shot really well, and had a surprisingly smooth trigger pull. I liked it so much I went back and bought another to give my brother for Christmas. If someone had offered to sell me an AR-15 for the same 99 bucks I might have gone with it, but they didn't, and for the price the SKS was an excellent buy.

UPDATE: SayUncle emails on the SKS: "They're great. You can't get them for $99 anymore though since the import ban. They sell for about $250. I remember when you could by them for $59 or get a three pack for $150. No kidding. I should have kept them." Yeah. Mine's quite accurate out to 200 yards, the greatest distance I've shot it at. Much better than I had expected.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Various readers inform me that the SKS is not a Kalashnikov variant, but a different design, by Simonov. And some wonder why the Iraqis need these guns. Hey, who knows? Maybe they don't. Maybe Iranian dissidents need guns that aren't obviously from the United States.

THE ANCHORESS: Al Gore's got my vote!

Yeah, I actually did vote for that Al Gore.

NO FLAG PIN FOR OBAMA: Pajamas Media has a roundup on this vital issue of the day.

UPDATE: Okay, this is a dumb and minor issue, except to the extent that it confirms some in their belief that Obama is just a stalking-horse for Hillary, and he's now taking himself out of the race. But this take is kind of funny:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said he doesn't tell his wife he loves her any more, because “I love you” has become a substitute for “true love.” The Illinois Senator said he hopes to show his love by explaining his ideas about their relationship to her. . . .

For better or worse, a President Spock won’t get elected. Candidate Obama should know that.

Perhaps he does.

"DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME, for God's sake."

BURMA: When "People Power" Fails.

Plus, Dave Kopel looks at gun control in Burma.

FURNITURE MADE FROM salvaged airplane parts. The office chair made from a B-52 ejection seat is kind of cool. I'd like those for faculty meetings, but I guess everybody'd use them every time . . . .

"GAYS FOR ROMNEY."

Somebody should make a "warmongers for Hillary" ad.

AL GORE CRITICIZES PRESIDENT BUSH for ignoring Saddam's connection to terrorism.

TRAFFIC WARS: Advantage: Patrick Ruffini.

UPDATE: AllahPundit says Kos is still huge: "Whatever Kos’s actual numbers, it’s safe to say that he’s as big as Instapundit and MM combined. Which is pretty darned big."

THE SOLAR TREES OF VIENNA: Well, technically all trees are solar of course, but . . . .

SNEAKING HSUSPICIONS: SOME QUESTIONS about Norman Hsu.

DON'T MISS THE NEW PAJAMAS MEDIA SHOW ON XM satellite radio. Tonight, 6 p.m. Eastern, on XM channel 130.

DIGITAL STILL CAMERAS COULD ALSO BE DIGITAL HD VIDEO CAMERAS if it weren't for the E.U.'s taxing authorities.

FROM THE ISN'T-THIS-GOOD-NEWS-BEING-SPUN-AS-BAD DEPARTMENT: Obesity a problem for those with HIV.

JONATHAN TURLEY: A liberal's lament: The NRA might be right after all.

The right of the people to keep and bear arms is stated in the same way as the right to free speech or free press. The statement of a purpose was intended to reaffirm the power of the states and the people against the central government. At the time, many feared the federal government and its national army. Gun ownership was viewed as a deterrent against abuse by the government, which would be less likely to mess with a well-armed populace.

Considering the Framers and their own traditions of hunting and self-defense, it is clear that they would have viewed such ownership as an individual right — consistent with the plain meaning of the amendment.

None of this is easy for someone raised to believe that the Second Amendment was the dividing line between the enlightenment and the dark ages of American culture. Yet, it is time to honestly reconsider this amendment and admit that ... here's the really hard part ... the NRA may have been right.

Read the whole thing. And you might want to read my survey of Second Amendment thinking, as well as this piece on what it would mean to take the "states' rights" argument seriously. As Tom Lehrer said, we'll all stay nice and calm, when Alabama gets the bomb.

I DON'T MIND, so long as they don't lecture the rest of us about global warming:

Indeed, as the number of billionaires worldwide keeps climbing—Forbes now pegs the figure at 946, up 23 percent in just a year—so are sales of private jets. Boeing counts among its clients Russian oil magnate Roman Abramovich and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin (they share a 767). Bombardier’s Global Express line has attracted buyers such as Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, and Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte. Oprah Winfrey purchased a Global Express XRS in 2006 through her production company. Virginia-based entrepreneur Sheila Johnson favors Dassault’s Falcon jets, as does Swiss travel-industry tycoon Sergio Mantegazza. Steve Jobs got a Gulfstream GV as a bonus in 1999. . . . The very rich love their planes. Many billionaires are intensely competitive and delight in the knowledge that their own jet is bigger, faster, or has a longer range than that of a friend or rival.

But, really, I don't want to hear from any of these people about Americans' wasteful lifestyles.

ON SPUTNIK DAY, Rand Simberg and Homer Hickam continue their debate. Also, Rand has a roundup of Sputnik links. Plus, did Sputnik create the Internet?

WAR ON TERROR DISTORTED BY WAR ON DRUGS: And note the parallels with what Jack Goldsmith was saying about government officials' fear of investigation.

JOHN WIXTED: "North Korea's decision to abandon its nuclear program could be significant, especially because it appears that it will not rely on UN inspectors but will instead involve US technicians overseeing the actual dismantling of North Korean nuclear facilities." He feels, however, that the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler has missed the real story.

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE REELECTED, we'd have an authoritarian state where children were encouraged to inform on their parents. And they were right.

CAN TECHNOLOGY MAKE OR BREAK A CANDIDATE? Possibly, but some candidates are beyond mechanical help or hurt: "All of the innovation doesn't appear to have benefited Dodd in terms of support, however. As Ambinder noted, his value on the National Journal Political Stock Exchange is a whopping 1 cent."

A CYPHERPUNK joins the Marines.

IN THE MAIL: Naomi Novik's Empire of Ivory, the latest in her alt-history series that combines elements of Patrick O'Brian and Anne McAffrey.

Novik just won the John W. Campbell Award. And I've praised her work before.

RETALIATION IN THE WORKPLACE: My colleague Alex Long has a paper on the subject, and it now looks as if the Supreme Court may grant cert. in the Crawford case, one of the main cases he discusses.

PERHAPS THE WORST NEWS OF THE WEEK MONTH YEAR: "By a nearly two-to-one margin, Republican voters believe free trade is bad for the U.S. economy, a shift in opinion that mirrors Democratic views and suggests trade deals could face high hurdles under a new president." A general opposition to free trade will be terrible for the U.S. -- and the global -- economy. I hope that this anti-free-trade sentiment is aimed only at new agreements, and doesn't extend to a rollback of existing free trade, but I'm not that optimistic.

50 YEARS LATER: It's Sputnikmania!

JIMMY CARTER LEARNS SOMETHING: "Guns trump sanctimonious handwringing."

ANTONIN SCALIA, bleeding-heart liberal: "This is another situation, like the debate over the president's detention powers, where Antonin Scalia belies the left-liberal caricature of him as an authoritarian ogre and sees eye to eye with the ACLU. He is the Court's leading advocate of the Sixth Amendment argument that juries, not judges, must determine facts that trigger enhanced penalties, which was the rationale for making the sentencing guidelines advisory. His main opponent on this issue is Stephen Breyer (not coincidentally, an architect of the guidelines as a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission), a Clinton appointee whom leftish Court observers tend to view more favorably than Scalia."

TAX AND FEND?

Plus, the world of compassionate head-tilts.

DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES courts Filipino outrage.

GREG GRANSDEN EMAILS: "Could you suggest a website that rates and evaluates camcorders, for someone who's in the market to buy one?"

I don't know of a camcorder site that's as good as, say, DP Review is for still cameras. Any suggestions?

ANOTHER FAKE WAR HERO:

ATLANTIC CITY - Where's the mayor?

Not since "Where's Waldo?" and "Where's the Beef?" has such a query caused such a stir.

In this resort, where the streets are literally paved by gambling revenues, they're taking bets on what might have become of Mayor Bob Levy and whether his disappearance signals another impending scandal involving the city's top job.

Amid reports of a federal probe into false claims that Levy admits he made regarding his Vietnam military service, the mayor drove off last Wednesday in a silver, city-owned Dodge Durango and has not officially been heard from since.

More here.

FRED THOMPSON AND JAMES DOBSON: Byron York notices the same thing I did.

J.D. JOHANNES: "I consider myself a subject matter expert on real and phony soldiers."

A somewhat related item from The American Thinker, here. And G.M. Roper has some thoughts, too.

Plus, read this piece from Robert Kaplan.

ED MORRISSEY ON McCarthyism without McCarthy.

MIDDLE TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS will vote on carrying guns on campus.

UPDATE: Voted down by student government.

JOHN KERRY NATION: "Waffles: They’re not just for politicians any more."

THOUGHTS ON THE SUPREME COURT AND ORIGINALISM, from Steven Calabresi.

He's also got a new book out on the subject, Originalism: A Quarter Century of Debate, though I haven't read it yet.

UPDATE: You can also buy the book directly from the Federalist Society.

GOD AND MAN at Dartmouth.

AND HERE I THOUGHT THEY JUST RANDOMLY SHOT PEOPLE: Blackwater copter rescues Polish Ambassador.

I GUESS THIS WOULD BE GOOD NEWS: "Sheikh Abdel-Aziz Al-Asheikh – the most senior Wahhabi cleric in Saudi Arabia -- released a rather surprising religious edict. In this fatwa, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia instructed Saudis not to leave the Kingdom to participate in jihad – a statement directed primarily at those considering going to Iraq."

I guess the Saudis figure we've killed enough in Iraq already that they can deal with the ones who are left at home.

IN BRITAIN, incitement to violence.

BEYOND LIMBAUGH AND O'REILLY: Going after talk radio in general?

NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT: Who are you calling "Heterodox?"

October 03, 2007

BARBARA OAKLEY'S NEW BOOK, Evil Genes, is out -- and with a blurb from the Insta-Wife, along with Steven Pinker, Gavin de Becker, and Orson Scott Card. (Bumped).

ADVICE FOR REPUBLICANS, from Tony Blankley: "Every faction within the GOP coalition should agree immediately to make no further demands of their party. Just as the liberals did in 1991 and 1992, the conservatives of 2007 and 2008 simply should let their strongest candidate campaign in a way most likely to gain victory. Every conservative principle thereby would be safer than if heavy demands yield a Hillary presidency."

AN OIL-FOR-FOOD EXPOSE: "When Saddam's regime systematized its Oil for Food kickback demands across the board in 2000, keeping track of the graft flowing into Saddam's secret coffers became a job so extensive that the marketing arm of Iraq's Ministry of Oil, known as SOMO (State Oil Marketing Organization) developed an electronic database to track the flow of the "surcharges," as they were called. . . . As it is, the U.S. stands almost alone in prosecuting the culprits and sending the guilty to prison. In Russia, China, Syria, Cyprus, Yemen, Egypt, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Jordan -- to name a few significant players -- there has been no such summons to justice. In Switzerland, home to a cosmopolitan nest of Oil for Food fronts, a number of companies have paid fines to federal and local authorities, but their names and the details have been kept confidential."

JACOB SULLUM: "President Bush exercised the fourth veto of his administration today, and it's the first one I like: He nixed an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program that would rely on an unfair, highly regressive cigarette tax increase while extending benefits to families that are far from poor."

QUESTION OF THE DAY: "Does anti-drug education work? It’s not as if schools are attempting to counteract all the attractive ads from the Mexican Amphetamine Promotion League ('It’s Basement Fresh!') with their cool Joe Meth character. No one ever hears anything good about meth."

MARY KATHARINE HAM on the sensual joys of eating meat.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE REPLIES TO MICHAEL NOVAK on happenings at Ave Maria Law School.

TALK OF OPENING AN IMPEACHMENT INVESTIGATION for Judge Samuel Kent.

BETTER FOUR YEARS LATE THAN NEVER: "Reuters today reported that the two main groups organizing the antiwar protests on Iraq, ANSWER Coalition and Troops Out Now are associated with the communist World Workers Party."

That puts them five years behind David Corn.

JUST WATCHED FRED & JERI THOMPSON on Fox. Interesting interview, though the kids on their laps in the first segment were a bit distracting, if cute. The key part was Fred's final line, where he said -- in response to James Dobson's comments and rumbles of a Christian third party effort -- "I'm not going to dance to anybody's tune." An implicit contrast to Hillary, as well as a demand for Republican unity, something the Republicans will need if they are to win.

UPDATE: Ian Schwartz has the video, so you can see what you think for yourself.

"WEAK HAS A FACE, AND IT'S PELOSI'S." Some right-wing talk-radio guy? Nope, The Huffington Post. (Via Dan Riehl).

HSEARCH AND HSEIZURE:

U.S. authorities have frozen the New York City bank accounts of a jailed political fundraiser and attached the contents of his $8,000 (€5,635)-a-month apartment while awaiting the outcome of claims that he stole $40 million (€28.2 million).

The Hong Kong-born Norman Hsu is charged in New York with swindling the money from investors and using some of his profits to make illegal donations to political campaigns, including that of Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. Clinton and others have rushed to give back the money.

This is no hsurprise. Read the whole thing.

FRED THOMPSON ON HARRY REID ON RUSH LIMBAUGH.

UPDATE: In a related item, Tom Maguire offers a lesson in clarity for The New York Times.

Carl Hulse losing writing-style points to the AP? That's gotta hurt. Then there's the substance . . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Related thoughts here. (Bumped).

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE REELECTED, we'd see political censorship run rampant.

And they were right! Wes Clark calls for political discourse to be rated.

FROM THE CODE OF THE WEST, TO . . . well, you'll see.

"UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE" and government control of your body? "The last few years have demonstrated that rare is the place politicians are unwilling to tread in the name of public health. Universal coverage will complete this governmental mandate to control American lifestyles."

BILL ROGGIO: "Al Qaeda in Iraq operative killed near Syrian border sheds light on foreign influence."

OH GOODY: "I neglected to mention that even as he seeks the return of the three-martini lunch, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) is setting you up for a tax on your Internet service by letting the moratorium on Internet taxes expire before his committee will mark it up."

AT DAILY KOS: SCHIP as baby steps to Hillarycare.

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH gets a bad (judicial) review in Britain: "Schools must warn of Gore climate film bias." More here.

IS HILLARY'S BABY-BOND IDEA ANTI-GAY? "I really did not think about Hillary Clinton’s $5000 Baby Bond proposal until seeing this poll by Daily Kos. . . . But if the Baby Bond is only available to families of newborns–what does that mean to gays and lesbians?"

JAMES TARANTO stands up against McCarthyism in the Senate.

HEALTH CARE FOR THE CANADIAN RICH AND FAMOUS: "Why do politicians who pay lip service to Canada’s socialized health care system travel to the United States for medical treatment?"

WHAT BILL CLINTON, BORIS YELTSIN, AND HUGO CHAVEZ have in common.

WILL FUKUDA fumble?

JASON VAN STEENWYK is reminded of Wesley Clark's existence.

HEH: "About the only way I would get invited to Columbia is if I was a Middle East dictator with nuclear weapons."

UPDATE: Funny, but actually unfair to Columbia Law School.

MORE ON THE DOINGS AT AVE MARIA LAW SCHOOL, from Michael Novak.

STILL MORE murder in Burma. The "international community" remains passive.

DARRELL ISSA warns Waxman.

A TEACHER OF AN OLD-FASHIONED SORT:

A TEACHER who swore, smoked and showed his students knife-fighting techniques has been allowed to remain in the classroom.

A disciplinary panel heard Joel Edmund Roache told year 9 students on a school camp that the best way to knife someone was to “stab them in the kidneys because then the person inhales and can’t exhale or scream”.

It's hard to find a school with a good knife-fighting curriculum these days. The Insta-Wife and I have had to teach the insta-daughter at home. Not even Sylvan would help.

OVER AT DAILYKOS, a poll on Hillary's baby-bond proposal. It's not doing as well as I'd expect.

IN THE MAIL: Charles Stross's new science fiction novel, Halting State.

Plus, Walter Bagehot's Physics and Politics, with an introduction and notes by Roger Kimball.

IS DAILYKOS'S TRAFFIC EXAGGERATED?

UPDATE: Remembering past traffic wars. This reminds me that people used to accuse Sitemeter of undercounting, not overcounting. Hey, it's not perfect, but it's free. Still, I think this caveat is still true: "measuring web traffic accurately is basically impossible." Not that measures of TV, radio, or newspaper audiences are any better.

Meanwhile, Dan Riehl looks at some Alexa numbers. I don't believe in those much, as they depend on people being dumb enough to install the Alexa toolbar. . . .

Note how Slashdot is doing on Alexa.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Frank J. emails:

I noticed all the blogs have had a huge dip in Alexa rankings over the past year without necessarily having a dip in traffic according to Site Meter. My guess is it's just more people are using Alexa as a standard and thus more people are learning how to game it. It's pretty sensitive, as I've had a significant rise in rank on Alexa over the past couple weeks just by putting the toolbar on my own browser.

Alexa is worthless. No doubt if I encouraged InstaPundit readers to install the toolbar I'd go up, which would make Alexa happy, and otherwise mean . . . not much.

And I notice people in the comments asking questions about my traffic -- er, folks, I've had an open counter for years. It's in the right sidebar, or you can click here.

A LOOK AT ATF from the inside.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Is there a connection between earmarks and corruption?

This Roll Call story might make you wonder:

Since hiring Richard Kaelin, Visclosky’s former chief of staff, at the beginning of 2004, PMA and its clients have roughly doubled their fundraising support for the Congressman. That help includes contributing 50 percent of the total funds raised through June 30, 2007, by Calumet PAC, Visclosky’s four-year-old leadership political action committee, according to an analysis of federal election records.

It is a classic Washington, D.C., triangle of interlocking self-interests: in this case, a powerful Congressman, an influential lobby shop and the lobby firm’s numerous clients. And while it is impossible to know the exact reasons that some firms get earmarks and others do not, in Visclosky’s case, there are certain irrefutable facts: PMA and its clients are the Congressman’s top fundraisers — and PMA clients his top earmarking recipients.

Coincidence? I'm sure they'd argue that there's nothing shady going on here. But why should we believe them? More coincidence here:

Clients of the PMA Group have fared particularly well by Visclosky this year. They won 14 of 28 earmarks he inserted into the Defense spending bill alone — a total of $28 million in projects, or some 52 percent of the funds Visclosky earmarked in the bill, according to an analysis by Roll Call and Taxpayers for Common Sense. (A Roll Call analysis of Visclosky’s earmarks last month undercounted his support for PMA clients, since the firm failed to file a mid-year report with the Senate detailing its work for ProLogic, a West Virginia-based company and a tenant in the technology center.)

The Indiana lawmaker’s help steering millions of federal dollars to PMA clients this year comes against the backdrop of what appears to be the firm’s most aggressive fundraising for him to date. In the first six months of this year, PMA and its clients contributed $248,400 to Visclosky’s leadership PAC and personal campaign coffers, 29 percent of his total haul.

It's as if there's a culture of corruption, or something.

UPDATE: People are accusing me of playing Name That Party! Well, I try not to make a big deal of party affiliation in these Porkbusters posts, because pork is -- quite clearly -- a bipartisan problem. But lest I be accused of hiding the ball, well, here you go.

BILL ARDOLINO REPORTS ON the evolution of the Fallujah police department.

WESLEY CLARK'S daunting free speech standard.

RUDY GIULIANI'S cell phone problem.

THE CLODFATHER. Sounds like one of those Mad Magazine parodies. Which, come to think of it, is about right.

UPDATE: Paranoid?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Helen Thomas, Mafia don?

THOUGHTS ON Burma, gun control, and David Hume.

TRASHING THE HARVARD LAW REVIEW: In dead-tree form, that is.

GREENHOUSE UPDATE: “Not only is China importing US vehicles. Not only are they importing gas-guzzling US Hummers. Now they’re importing US Hummers stretched to breaking point."

"A PANDORA'S BOX of antiwar ugly."

QUESTIONS ABOUT American culture and violence.

BILL ROGGIO looks at the Taliban campaign to overthrow Musharraf.

October 02, 2007

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. A rather positive assessment of Al-Sadr. I'd certainly like him to be right.

BOYCOTT POLITICS IN BRITISH ACADEMIA: "Bound by laws that they passed, they now howl in frustration since they find their own freedoms circumscribed. These laws were designed to silence their enemies, not themselves."

MORE ON DOINGS at Ave Maria Law School.

GETTING A LITTLE TOO CHUMMY on The View. "Yes, Whoopi implicitly acknowledged, she'd like to do Mr. Pelosi - but she might take his wife while she's at it. 'I would do her as well. But we should wait on that because you're still in office, I don't want to cause a problem.'"