February 24, 2007

ROGER SIMON WONDERS who cares about Abdel Kareem Soliman.

PATRICK RUFFINI SAYS the surge is working. Let's hope. Plus this: "When things don't go well in Iraq, we see the endless B-roll of chaos and carnage. When things are on the upswing, we tend to hear more about Anna Nicole Smith. " Things must be going really well, then . . . .

VIRGINIA POSTREL WRITES on the Transparent Society and its clueless adult enemies.

JOHN SCALZI offers a look at the money side of writing science fiction.

THROWING AWAY THE KEY: Prof. Ellen Podgor looks at sentencing for White Collar crimes.

Podgor was also a guest on this podcast.

There's a response, from Andrew Weissman and Joshua Block.

HELICOPTER SHOT DOWN BY INSURGENTS -- DOZENS DEAD: In Iran.

BECLOWNING, once again. As usual, it's self-inflicted.

But for a real blogfight, go here.

UPDATE: More restrained blogfighting here.

THE LATEST BLOG WEEK IN REVIEW IS UP, with Austin Bay talking about his new book.

THE POWERLINE GUYS now have another blog over at AOL.

XENI JARDIN POSTS A ROUNDUP on persecuted Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman.

INDEED: Bumper Stickers Are Not the Answer.

OPENING THE DOORS to the silos.

SUICIDE GOOGLEBOMBING: Heh.

THE NEW REPUBLIC goes biweekly. It seems to me that this could work, if they integrate the web content -- for timeliness that a weekly can't deliver anyway -- while putting more longer pieces, of the kind that it's a pain to read on the Web, in the magazine. But it's certainly a huge gamble. I think that TNR, which has always had a contrarian approach that went beyond the usual partisan divide, is suffering because this is a time in which the partisan divide is very sharp, and people are placed under enormous pressure to fall on one side of the fence or the other, even when they don't really agree with the bulk of either side. I suspect, however, that this is a temporary condition -- sharp partisan divides generally blur -- and that eventual blurring will probably help.

OVER AT MICKEY KAUS'S, an observation:

The truth is Hillary's campaign has been a series of ill-considered moves. Obama panicked her into a way-too-early-announcement. The cause of the panic was fund-raising (poaching of presumed supporters), which is the least vulnerable aspect of her campaign. Basically, if she wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, she wins the nomination. The most she can spend in Iowa and New Hampshire is $20 million, every last dollar counted, including the surrounding states primary television advertising that will be seen in Iowa. So money is not her problem. Imagining that it was and therefore entering the race six-to-eight months before she needed to was a MAJOR mistake. Had she entered in August or September, the surge would have run its course successfully or not. The Iran issue would be that much further along. Pandemic flu would have hit or not hit. Etc. By announcing early, she brought into play a hundred unnecessary variables.

Read the whole thing, and scroll down for some more interesting thoughts. I think that starting the campaign early is a bad idea for a lot of reasons. Aside from considerations like the above, it draws much more heavily on the campaign's most important capital, the candidate. Tired people make mistakes, and the earlier you start, the tireder you're likely to be by the final stages when it really matters. Plus, with a two-year campaign, whoever gets elected will start off already exhausted. And I'm serious about this, not just joking. Being President, especially during difficult times like these, wears people out anyway, and it can only be worse if you start off tired from a two-year campaign.

HOMELAND SECURITY has been the Bush Administration's biggest and most inexcusable national-security failure, but the Democrats don't want to make an issue of it for some reason (because they'd have to criticize a big government program?). But here's an alternative approach. Or at least a call for one. . . .

February 23, 2007

A PACK, NOT A HERD: "A tour bus of US senior citizens defended themselves against a group of alleged muggers, sending two of them fleeing and killing a third in the Atlantic coast city of Limon, Costa Rica police said on Thursday. One of the tourists - a retired member of the US military - put assailant Warner Segura in a head lock and broke his clavicle after the 20-year-old and two other men armed with a knife and gun held up their tour bus Wednesday, said Luis Hernandez, the police chief of Limon, 130 kilometers (80 miles) east of San Jose. "

NO STRINGS.

A SUBVERSIVE THOUGHT CASCADE.

ED MORRISSEY: "There's nothing more predictive than a hot, breaking poll less than 90 weeks before an election."

THE BOSTON GLOBE LOOKS AT SOCKPUPPETS, but Dean Barnett notes some errors and omissions in the account.

JAMES WATERTON REVIEWS the new documentary, Mine Your Own Business.

The review is good, and it sounds like the film is good, too. But unaccountably, he, like every other reviewer I've encountered, seems to have missed the Scooby Doo angle.

RAND SIMBERG HAS THOUGHTS on Rudy and abortion.

A LOOK AT UGANDA:

The country of Uganda plans to send about 1,500 troops to Somalia as part of an African Union peace-keeping force. The goal is to stabilize the weak government of Somalia, with the hope that the warlords will voluntarily disarm. Hopefully, Ugandan troops will be more successful in Somalia than they have in their own country.

For months now, Ugandan army troops have been garrisoned in the northeast part of the country under orders to disarm the local populace—pastoral, cattle-herding tribes known as the Karamojong. The army is attempting, and failing, to quash an uprising which was caused by prior attempt to disarm the same tribes.

But in its effort to "disarm," the Ugandan army, supported by tanks and helicopter gunships, is burning down villages, sexually torturing men, raping women, and plundering what few possessions the tribespeople own. Tens of thousands of victims have been turned into refugees. Human rights scholar Ben Knighton has used the term “ethnocide” to describe the army's campaign.

Read the whole thing.

WE'RE NUMBER FOUR: Go Vols!

EUGENE VOLOKH LOOKS AT loss of press freedoms in post-9/11 America.

DOUG WEINSTEIN: "Does anybody else think that it’s ridiculous for presidential candidates to be going at it hammer and tongs a full year before the first primary?" He thinks Edwards is smart to hang back. Plus, a look at Republican maneuvers and what Democrats should be doing.

TIM BLAIR: "Why do these people ignore science?"

TRENT LOTT, ACTING ACCORDING TO TYPE:

One big question when Democrats took over Congress was which industry would be first to feel the new majority's populist rage. Oil? Pharma? Banks? Corporate America just got its answer, direct from the angriest man to have been empowered in the past election: Republican Sen. Trent Lott.

The Mississippian was "infuriated" by the insurance industry's refusal to shell out for certain Katrina claims, most notably his own. So Mr. Lott is spearheading a ferocious campaign of political revenge that would make even Henry Waxman envious--replete with investigations, voracious trial lawyers, ambitious state attorneys general and threats of punitive federal legislation. And like most personal grievances that get morphed into policy battles, it's ending badly for consumers.

Mr. Lott's beachfront property in Pascagoula--one of three homes he owned--was swept away entirely by Hurricane Katrina's waters. Like many Gulf Coast residents, Mr. Lott was soon reminded by his insurer, State Farm, that his policy only covered wind damage--not flood damage. The senator surely knew that, which is why he'd also purchased federal flood insurance. According to his flood policy that was in effect when Katrina hit, he was covered up to $350,000 in flood damages, and he presumably collected in full. (Sen. Lott's office didn't return my call.) . . .

For his part, Mr. Lott has been busy cranking up the pressure in Washington. Not that he didn't give fair warning. In July of last year, he placed a call to Chuck Chamness, the CEO of the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, to let the industry know what was coming. Mr. Chamness later sent a letter to Mr. Lott, summing up the call. The key passage: "Your comment that you will dedicate your next term of office to 'bringing down State Farm and the industry' through all means available to you, including legislation designed to harm the property/casualty insurance industry, was very unsettling, to say the least."

Nice to know that he's got his priorities in order. Sheesh.

EGYPT'S FREE SPEECH MARTYR: A special feature on blogger Abdel Kareem Soliman over at Pajamas Media. Excerpt: "This verdict sets a legal precedent for prosecuting someone for what they write on the Internet, on charges that are not easily defined or defended against. This could be used to prosecute any blogger the government feels like punishing, and serves a huge blow to freedom of speech in Egypt."

GIVING NEW MEANING to the term abusive lab test, Erik Sofge tries out the new civilian Taser C2. Or, more accurately, the Taser C2 is tried out on Sofge. There's video.

VISITED THE INSTA-MOTHER-IN-LAW at the hospital. She's doing pretty well for someone who just had a steel rod surgically implanted in her leg. They're trying to sort out her balance problems before they let her go.

JOHN TIERNEY: Why are these models scowling?

YESTERDAY'S "BALL OF WHACKS" POST produced this email from Ball of Whacks creator Roger van Oechs:

Thanks for posting about the amazing "Ball of Whacks." Glad to hear your secretary enjoyed hers.

I was in Egypt a week or so ago, and here is a photo of me introducing the Ball of Whacks to the Sphinx. A truly cosmic moment!

I'm not sure it presages peace in the Middle East, but most of the Egyptians I showed the Ball to had fun playing with it, and told me that it had "Nice Pyramids," which I took as a compliment.

Sounds like the punchline to a Pam Anderson joke.

HOWARD KURTZ: "Beneath the hugely entertaining spectacle of a Hollywood billionaire slapping his former pal Hillary Clinton lies this question: Will much of her campaign--perhaps too much--be about Bill? . . . But what's striking is that this wasn't the vast right-wing conspiracy slamming the Clinton legacy, but a leading light of the Hollywood left, spouting off to Maureen Dowd."

Mickey Kaus, meanwhile, has more thoughts.

HEH:

Under increased pressure to announce an exit strategy from Iraq, President George W. Bush revealed plans today to bring U.S. troops home on the budget airlines JetBlue.

Mr. Bush received praise for his decision to withdraw American troops, but his choice of JetBlue to transport them raised more than a few eyebrows.

According to most official estimates, with its recent spate of scheduling problems and flight delays, JetBlue could take up to seven years to bring U.S. troops home, and possibly ten years in the event of inclement weather.

But at a press conference at the White House today, the president argued that the selection of Jet Blue was “crucial” to the success of his latest exit strategy.

“Setting an exact timetable for a withdrawal from Iraq would be playing right into the enemy’s hands,” Mr. Bush said. “By going with JetBlue, our enemy will have no idea when we’re leaving.”

To emphasizes his point, Mr. Bush added, “And neither will we.”

Across Iraq, U.S. GIs were hopeful that the news about JetBlue meant that they would be home by Christmas, or at least by Easter 2012.

Poor JetBlue.

JOHN TAMMES has posted his weekly roundup of news from Afghanistan that you may have missed.

THOUGHTS ON MEMORY, from Tom Maguire.

UPDATE: A sentencing suggestion, should Libby be convicted.

FEDERAL BOOZE POLICE GO BONKERS. Indeed.

JIMMY CARTER AT EMORY: Blogged at Jewish Current Issues. More on that story here.

DAVID HOROWITZ has a new book out on leftist bias in the academy, but this Arizona legislation is too much even for him.

UPDATE: Related thoughts here.

AUSTIN BAY:

"More troops" isn't the most significant aspect of the military "surge" in Iraq. . . .

Adding 20,000 troops to Iraq in a five- to six-month window is a significant increase but in and of itself not decisive, and certainly not a "new strategy."

The relentless, focused targeting of Shia and Sunni extremist organizations is a far more important feature of what Iraqis are calling "the new security plan" than more U.S. troops. The coalition's effort to better integrate the economic and political development "lines of operation" with security operations could have greater long-term effects. . . . Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of the new security plan is the increased aggressiveness of the Iraqi Army as it conducts counterinsurgent operations. The Iraqi military defeat of the cultist "Soldiers of Heaven" planned attack on Najaf in late January provides a dramatic example. With coalition backup, Iraqi forces launched a spoiling attack and killed or captured several hundred militants.

Maliki's national reconciliation program remains the key Iraqi political endeavor. That program began well before "the new security plan," but no security plan will succeed unless reconciliation occurs.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Chris Muir, back from his embed in Iraq, emails:

I'm not sure if it's the same thing as the Office of National Reconciliation, but I can say that the Army's MiTT teams (Military transition teams) I observed in Mosul are heavily involved in training the IP (Iraqi Police) and the IA (Iraqi Army) to self- sufficiency in both organizational and cultural integration.

Some of the Army's best are actually referred to as 'going native' a la Lawrence of Arabia, and are living with the Iraqis, working with them from within as to their (and the Army's) goals.

The State Department appears completely absent from the theatre, and the Army has done the work of infrastructure projects & rebuild, community relations, political organization,etc.

When I look around my home here this morning, I appreciate more readily the invisible but strong level of infrastructure only possible with an organization and co-operation of a society. This is what I saw the Army doing for Iraqis from scratch, and as they reiterated to me there, it 'will take time' for the Iraqis to get to that day.

But will the American public give them the time of day?

That remains to be seen.

MOMENTUM BUILDS for the automotive X-Prize.

MORE GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS, rounded up by Jules Crittenden.

February 22, 2007

LIEBERMAN AND THE DEMOCRATS: Ann Althouse is enjoying it.

ROGER SIMON thinks he knows why Geffen said what he said: "Geffen doesn't think Hillary can win."

THOSE FRED THOMPSON RUMORS just won't go away.

THIS IS JUST WRONG:

Two Florida teenagers, Jeremy and Amber, ages 17 and 16 respectively, boyfriend and girlfriend -- snapped digital photos of themselves engaged in sexual activity. They were prosecuted under state child porn laws, and convicted. . . . In Florida, Amber and Jeremy did not break the law by having sexual relations -- even though they're both teens -- but the courts decided they were criminals for having documented it digitally.

Wrong, and dumb.

WELL, THIS SUCKS: Today was the big day when my mother-in-law was going to move from her old apartment into an "independent living" setup. But while getting ready for the movers this morning she tripped, fell, and broke a leg. She had to go to the E.R., then had surgery, and is now going to be hospitalized for a while, then wheelchair-bound for several weeks. Blogging may be a bit intermittent for the next little while. Sigh.

VICTORYCAUCUS.COM has got Professor Bainbridge unhappy, but I certainly agree with this suggestion:

The national disgrace of gerrymandering has created a system in which the vast majority of House seats are safe for one of the two parties. As a result, the real action is in the primaries, which tend to be dominated by activists. As a result, we see the polarization of Congress, as GOP candidates tend hard right to win their primaries and vice-versa for the Democrats. Now the netroots plan to exacerbate the problem.

The solution seems obvious. A national system of nonpartisan redistricting designed to maximize the number of truly competitive seats. In such a system, candidates would succeed by appealing to the center rather than the extremes, which in turn would reduce the destructive influence of the rabid partisans on both sides of the net.

This is another of those things that I would be more excited about if the prospect of it working were better.

TOM MAGUIRE salutes The New York Times.

DO UNIONS improve productivity?

IRAQIS ON THE TROOPS:

Now, "If you talk to these sheiks, they’ll tell you that they’re in no hurry to see the Americans leave al-Anbar," he said.

"One thing Sheikh Sattar keeps saying is he wants al-Anbar to be like Germany and Japan and South Korea were after their respective wars, with a long-term American presence helping ... put them back together," MacFarland said. "The negative example he cites is Vietnam. He says, yeah, so, Vietnam beat the Americans, and what did it get them? You know, 30 years later, they’re still living in poverty."

Heh. Indeed.

TERROR CHARGES:

Zubair and Khaleed Ahmed came to the conference and met with a man who promised to train them to kill American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to an indictment unsealed Wednesday.

Zubair Ahmed, 27, and Khaleed Ahmed, 26, were charged with conspiring to commit terrorist acts against Americans overseas. They were arrested Wednesday in Chicago and are scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court there Monday.

Hard to know how much to make of this, but stay tuned.

THE MAD PONY BLOG is back, after a long absence. I hadn't noticed, but that's why I have readers.

QUAGMIRE!

A FACEBOOK STALKER: Now that's just pathetic.

"BECLOWNED" -- shockingly, not a neologism.

THIS SUCKS:

An Alexandria court sentenced former law student Abdel Karim Suleiman for eight articles he wrote in 2004. He had been in custody since November last year over the polemical outpourings which included one claiming that "al-Azhar in Cairo, one of the most prominent seats of Sunni Muslim learning, was promoting extreme ideas".

Another ill-advised musing - headlined The Naked Truth of Islam as I Saw it - reportedly "accused Muslims of savagery during clashes between Muslims and Christians in Alexandria in 2005".

Regarding Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, Suleiman "likened him to the dictatorial pharaohs who ruled ancient Egypt".

Well, this will put paid to that idea! Jeez.

IN THE MAIL: Another Ball of Whacks. Actually, two. I gave one to my secretary, who reported that it produced hours of amusement at home.

Why did I get sent another? I don't know. But they're fun.

A ONE-MAN COUNTERPROTEST in San Diego.

SHEILA JACKSON LEE is boosting Hugo Chavez.

GOOGLE TARGETS MICROSOFT:

Google Apps Premier Edition, to be unveiled Thursday, features online e-mail, calendaring, messaging and talk applications as well as a word processor and a spreadsheet. The launch follows Google's introduction of a similar suite aimed at consumers last August. The new Premier Edition, however, offers enhancements aimed squarely at corporate environments.

I've used Google Documents quite a bit, and it's not bad - if it just supported footnoting, it would be awesome. I've used the spreadsheet program a couple of times, too, and it seems fine. If I were a company, though, I think I'd worry about having all my important documents on someone else's servers.

TONY BLAIR ON IRAQ:

Critics of the Iraq war have painted Tony Blair's decision to draw down the British troop levels as a repudiation of the war and an end to the Coalition in Iraq. Democrats wasted no time in pointing out the supposed incongruity of a British withdrawal in the south and an American surge in the west and center of Iraq. However, the man who made the decision to draw down the British contingent said today that he would send them back if the situation warranted higher troop levels.

Read the whole thing.

HOWARD KURTZ HAS A BIG ROUNDUP on the Obama / Hillary / Geffen / MoDo dustup. Excerpt:

Man, if this keeps up, Hillary and Barack will both be bloody long before they get to Iowa. The MSM can't get enough.

In the words of Derek Smalls, Hillary and Obama are two distinct types of visionaries. Obama is like fire. Hillary is like ice. And Edwards, come to think of it, is kind of like lukewarm water. . . .

And Ann Althouse has further thoughts.

EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN:

The 9/11 Commission relied on information derived from two captured al Qaeda perpetrators for much of its picture of the conspiracy leading up to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The interrogations of these men--Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or "KSM," who masterminded the plot and got Osama bin Laden to finance it, and Ramzi Binalshibh, who acted as KSM's liaison with lead suicide terrorist Mohamed Atta--were performed by the CIA at secret locations.

KSM claimed that he left almost all the tactical details to Atta, and therefore could not say where Atta went, or whom he visited, in the final months of the plot. Binalshibh claimed he was Atta's only contact with al Qaeda during this period and that, other than himself, Atta never met with anyone on his trips abroad in 2001.

If these accounts are true, it follows that the conspiracy was a contained one, and the 9/11 Commission could preclude outside collaborators, including the participation of foreign countries. Thus, although the CIA was unable to trace the origin of the money supplied to Atta, the commission deemed this gap "of little practical significance" since the CIA's prisoners established that no one else was involved in the plot. Thus, too, when the CIA found that Iran had "apparently facilitated" the travel of eight of the 9/11 muscle hijackers in flights to and from Afghanistan (by not putting the required stamps on their passports, and by having a top Hezbollah official accompany their flights in and out of Iran), the commission could nevertheless rule out the possibility Iran or Hezbollah were "aware of the planning." The basis for this conclusion was the information provided by KSM and Binalshibh.

But what if these CIA prisoners--who after all are diehard jihadists--were lying? . . .

Yet if Mr. Garzon is correct about the Spanish connection to 9/11, it is not only the effectiveness of the CIA's interrogation of its al Qaeda prisoners that is called into question. The information from Binalshibh, KSM and other detainees was used to fill in the missing pieces of the jigsaw, and those gaps concerned the contacts the 9/11 conspirators might have had with others wishing to harm America. By saying that no one else was involved--not in Spain, Iran, Hezbollah, Malaysia, Iraq, the Czech Republic or Pakistan--these detainees allowed the 9/11 Commission to complete its picture of al Qaeda as a solitary entity.

Yet to come to its conclusion on this most fundamental issue, the commission was prohibited from seeing any of the detainees whose accounts it relied on. Nor was it allowed even to question the CIA interrogators to determine the way that information was obtained. The commission's joint chairmen themselves later acknowledged that they "had no way of evaluating the credibility of detainee information." So when Judge Garzon comes up with evidence that runs counter to detainees' claims, cracks begin to emerge in the entire picture.

Read the whole thing.

A PROTEST GOES AWRY in Australia.

TARGETING ELLEN TAUSCHER: Thomas Barnett is not impressed with the latest "netroots" effort: "I swore I'd never see that sort of dogmatic nonsense on my side like I saw it emerge--almost insanely--on the Right during the Clinton years (what I assumed would be the never-again-scaled heights of sputtering irrational rage), but I was wrong." (Bumped).

UNARMED AND DANGEROUS: A look at the increase in gun crime since Britain's gun ban. (Yes, I'm skeptical of this analysis.)

Meanwhile, in Arizona, a different sort of gun law:

Arizonans are on the verge of finally getting some legal protection against having their guns seized by the government. Sen. Jay Tibshraeny, R-Chandler, said representatives of Gov. Janet Napolitano and the National Rifle Association have agreed to a change in state law that would restrict the power of any governor to confiscate weapons and ammunition in time of emergency.

These laws seem to be springing up in a lot of places.

HMM. THIS SOUNDS LIKE BAD NEWS: "A leading economist this week warned that the world's two leading carbon trading schemes are failing to deliver the expected benefits due to a collapse in the price of carbon credits - and the situation is likely to get far worse before it gets better."

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to George Washington.

MARC COOPER REPORTS from the Democratic candidates' debate in Nevada. Presidential debates already? It's going to be a lonnnggg couple of years. . . .

But Cooper reports that John Edwards isn't worried about "candidate fatigue."

DOUBLE STANDARDS at Duke.

UPDATE: More from LaShawn Barber.

ILYA SOMIN HAS THOUGHTS on property rights in space.

Plus, a look at plans for a return to the Moon.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: "Why did a majority of Democratic senators — such as Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Harry Reid, Jay Rockefeller, and Chuck Schumer — vote to authorize a war with Iraq on Oct. 11, 2002? And why is this war now supposedly George Bush’s misfortune and not theirs?"

I HAVEN'T WATCHED THE 1/2 HOUR NEWS HOUR, and it got critically panned. But apparently the ratings were terrific. (Via Kaus). The real question, of course, is how many of those viewers stick around.

February 21, 2007

BRIAN DOHERTY: The life and times of Milton Friedman.

HEH: "Raceless Female Raped by Raceless Male at a Party Hosted By a Raceless Fraternity in the Same City Where Rich White Boys Raped A Poor Black Stripper." The press knows how to avoid giving the wrong impression when it wants to . . . .

OBSERVATIONS ON WAR, DEATH, AND POLITICS.

FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT! Arianna Huffington has more. And here's a roundup.

MORE BECLOWNING, from David Ignatius.

THE CHICAGO SPORTS REVIEW INTERVIEWS K.C. JOHNSON about the Duke (non) rape case.

UPDATE: The link above is to a PDF version. Here's the Web version, which you'll probably find easier to read. Excerpt: "You say to yourself, if I'm a supposed right wing nut, then 90 percent of the people in this country are too. . . . Put it this way: before this case started I had never seen defending civil liberties as a right wing position." It all depends on whose civil liberties, K.C. Plus this: "I think it's disappointing to me the sort of role I've played in this case to the extent that it wasn't played by professors at Duke."

BILL RICHARDSON'S SPACE POLICY has Rand Simberg excited.

DO PROFESSORS BELONG IN THE GREENHOUSE ROGUES' GALLERY?

I’m still a carbon-emissions nightmare, because last year I flew almost 50,000 miles, 40,000 of them for work. According to this carbon calculator (the only one I could find that lets you simply enter a total number of air miles), that means I produced 18.4 tons of CO2 by jet travel for my job. The site for An Inconvenient Truth says that the national average is 7.5 tons a year, so with work-related flying alone (i.e., irrespective of taxis, trains, and so forth, let alone my entire personal production of CO2), I’ve produced about two and a half times the ordinary American’s exhalations. No matter how much I also pedal and plant, I’m a global warmer.

Nor am I alone, or even the worst offender. Almost since the beginning of air travel’s commercial availability, academics have been leaving on jet planes.

Since I gave my presentation at the Harvard bloggers' conference by video, I'm going to demand extra eco-smugness points.

THE EDWARDS CAMPAIGN DENIES that Edwards called Israel a threat to world security. But Peter Bart is standing by his report. Is there video somewhere? (Via John Tabin).

PAYING ATTENTION to Bill Richardson. I like the space part.

BUZZ ALDRIN ON RETURNING TO THE MOON: "On my last trip to the moon I didn’t get to stay the whole day and had to share my accommodations with another man. If I could go back, I would expect not only a larger room, but a longer moment to gaze at the stars and the cloudy blue ball that should only be mankind’s starter home."

I HAVE A RESPONSE TO PAUL CAMPOS IN TODAY'S ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS: The opening sentence: "Paul Campos has beclowned himself."

UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein comments.

ANOTHER UPDATE: "Beclowned" is the word of the year, so far. Which has Tim Blair gloating.

MORE: I see that at least one commenter at the RMN is calling for Campos to be fired. That rather misses the point of my column. Yes, he wrote a silly, uninformed, hysterical, and rather thuggish column. But the solution to bad speech is more speech, not suppression. That Campos hasn't learned that reflects poorly on him, but I don't think firing is the solution.

STILL MORE: Linda Seebach from the Rocky Mountain News emails:

You're used to this, no doubt, but I thought you might be interested to learn that a few minutes ago the number of comments on your piece exceeded the total of all comments posted to the preceding 76 Speakout entries since we started accepting comments Jan. 23. I think I said in one of the first messages I sent you that I thought your blog had a bigger reach than the Rocky, and more engaged readers; well, there you have it.

Maybe that means I should open up comments. Or, maybe not. . . .

MORE STILL: Reader Julian Biggs emails: "Ok, maybe he shouldn’t be fired, but perhaps the keys to his very small car should be taken away." That's fair. Actually, when he's not obsessing about me, or the war, Campos can be okay. I've enjoyed his columns in the past, which is why I've been taken aback by his increasing hysteria and hostility in recent months.

And nobody seems to want me to open comments. Typical is this email from Daniel Jenkins: "If you are seriously considering opening comments, please don't. Comment threads almost always turn into grade school back and forths. I really like your current practice of posting reader emails you find insightful. "

No, I'm not serious. Comments are nice, but past a certain traffic level they tend to devolve rapidly. And I'm way past that traffic level.

FINALLY: Campos has responded over at Glenn Greenwald's. Being kind of busy, and bearing in mind the mud/pig/wrestling rule, I think I'll just point to Dan Riehl's treatment, and note that Campos doesn't seem to understand the difference between an executive order and a statute, or the point of my Libya example. Neither surprises me. And I liked this comment. Heh.

IN THE MAIL: Zachary Karabell's Peace Be upon You: The Story of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Coexistence. From the blurb:

Historians have so often focused on religious conflict--crusades, jihads, pogroms--that Karabell fears many readers have forgotten how often the devout have lived in peace with those of different faiths. To dispel this unfortunate forgetfulness, he develops a wide-ranging narrative highlighting epochs of interfaith toleration and cooperation. Readers visit, for instance, ninth-century Baghdad, where a Muslim caliph invited Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist theologians to compare beliefs; later, the tour moves on to thirteenth-century Toledo, where Muslims, Jews, and Christians collaborated in translating important classical texts; and, still later, Karabell turns to mid-twentieth-century Beirut, where disparate religions hammered out a national pact for sharing governance. Karabell concedes that some regimes have pursued ecumenical harmony merely to secure economic and political advantage, but he insists that such harmony actually reflects peace-fostering doctrines central to all of the Abrahamic faiths. Applying such doctrines, Karabell concedes, has grown more difficult in a modern world transformed by the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism.

I noted way back in the early days of InstaPundit that many people have a simplistic view of Islam -- one fostered, ironically, by the fundamentalists, who want everyone to think that they're the true and only face of Islam. This book looks as if it might be a useful corrective, though of course the people who really need to be persuaded are unlikely to read it.

NORM GERAS PUBLISHES An open letter by a group of Iranian academics, writers, and artists regarding the Tehran Conference on Holocaust Denial.

HOWARD KURTZ on the Sirius / XM merger:

The reason these two companies have 13 million subscribers willing to cough up $12.95 a month for something we all grew up thinking should be free is that commercial radio has self-destructed. . . . Really, can you think of an industry (okay, maybe American automakers) that has frittered away such huge advantages and sent its customers scrambling for alternatives?

True. Like podcasting!

MAX BOOT: Iraq as Yugoslavia.

REP. CAROLYN MCCARTHY (D-NY) has introduced a new, farther-reaching assault weapons ban.

WILLIAM BEUTLER REPORTS on a security hole at ActBlue that may have compromised donor information. These things happen all the time, though they really shouldn't.

THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE is going green.

A LEGAL HISTORY LESSON, for Brad DeLong.

A BLOGGING BLACKLIST: I wonder who Alterman would nominate?

UPDATE: Best line in the comments so far: "Nobody expects the Blogger Inquisition!"

Permalink test.

LOADS OF LIBBY TRIAL STUFF, from Tom Maguire.

THE FAA BACKS DOWN from its "collective rights" interpretation of the Second Amendment.

THOUGHTS ON blogging and perspective.

OUTLAWING INCANDESCENT LIGHT BULBS, in Australia. I like compact fluorescents, but this is a bit extreme.

THOUGHTS ON THE POLLS and Murtha's "slow bleed" strategy. Plus, Lilliputians on Capitol Hill.

SANDY BERGER UPDATE: Things just keep looking worse:

The commission's former general counsel, Dan Marcus, now an American University law professor, separately expressed surprise at how little the Justice Department told the commission about Berger and said it was "a little unnerving" to learn from the congressional report exactly what Berger reviewed at the Archives and what he admitted to the FBI -- including that he removed and cut up three copies of a classified memo.

"If he took papers out, these were unique records, and highly, highly classified. Had a document not been produced, who would have known?" Brachfeld said in an interview. "I thought [the 9/11 Commission] should know, in current time -- in judging Sandy Berger as a witness . . . that there was a risk they did not get the full production of records."

I don't think we've gotten to the bottom of this story yet.

EUGENE VOLOKH on Paul Campos.

Related item here.

MICHAEL DEMMONS thinks that gay people should support the fair tax, as it makes the tax aspects of the marriage issue moot.

February 20, 2007

JOHN SCALZI'S THE LAST COLONY gets a very positive review from Professor Bainbridge, though with one complaint: "More than once, a new John Scalzi book has done terrible things to my productivity. Thank God for tenure."

ISRAEL: The greatest threat to world peace? I'd say not so much.

MORE BECLOWNING.

DR. SANITY ON denial and outrage on the left.

SOME INTERESTING POLLING ON IRAQ: Apparently, most Americans still want to win.

JOHN TIERNEY brings back some good news from the AAAS meeting.

A WORLD WITHOUT AMERICA: An interesting ad at 18 Doughty Street.

IF YOU'VE BEEN HAVING TROUBLE WITH PERMALINKS ON MY PAGE not being stable, it's nothing I'm doing. We're trying to figure it out. It seems to have started with the Movable Type upgrade, and it seems to be getting worse. Anybody know what causes this?

UPDATE: Oh noooo -- it's spreading!

BILL ARDOLINO interviews Iraqi soldiers: "Tell the American people we need the U.S. Army here."

TERRY MORAN: "Is Giuliani 'White Enough'?"

A MESSAGE TO REPUBLICANS from the modern world.

AMERICANS more likely to elect a homosexual than an atheist President.

DOC SEARLS has more thoughts on the XM / Sirius merger.

D.C. CIRCUIT ON DETAINEES: "Today a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held that federal courts lack jurisdiction over the habeas corpus petitions filed by Guantanamo detainees."

IS P.M.S. A TOOL FOR PERPETUATING MALE SUPERIORITY? The article, by my colleague Becky Jacobs, looks the use of PMS as a defense by female defendants, and in employment-discrimination and disability claims, and suggests that this tends to reinforce stereotypes, and is harmful to women even if it benefits individual defendants or complainants. Plus, a citation to Ann Althouse!

ABC NEWS: Accused terrorist is big GOP donor. This is an embarrassment -- though if I were a terrorist I'd be a big GOP donor, too. It might help, and at the very least would ensure that prosecution would be an embarrassment.

THE POLITICO: "House Republican leaders and conservative activists are targeting critics of President Bush's plan to send more combat forces into Iraq -- and some GOP lawmakers are on the hit list." Mark Tapscott has related thoughts.

TAX ADVICE FOR lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgenders. At the always-useful TaxProf.

AN INTERESTING LOOK at hybrids and markets in California.

THOUGHTS ON Condi Rice and diplomacy.

HILLARY CLINTON'S "BRILLIANT" STANCE on the South Carolina flag controversy. It's certainly a stance that I agree with.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL REPORTS:

Iran sits on one-tenth of the world's known oil supplies but is using so much energy these days it may start rationing gasoline as soon as next month.

Part of the reason lies with people such as 42-year-old Seyd Jessem Moosavi. No one in Mr. Moosavi's family had an automobile when he was growing up. He was the first to buy one, followed quickly by his father. Now all five of his brothers have cars, and Mr. Moosavi just bought one for his 25-year-old son. . . .

Iran's leaders are keenly aware of these problems. But in recent years, they've avoided making difficult choices as global oil prices climbed. Export revenues rose even as the amount of oil exported has remained steady or even fallen. . . . Nonetheless, the situation is already wreaking havoc with the government's budget. Iran subsidizes most energy, including gasoline, diesel and many other refined products. Consumers and businesses alike benefit. Overall, energy subsidies cost the government as much as $40 billion, equivalent to almost a quarter of the country's entire economic output, according to Bijan Zanganeh, a former Iranian oil minister. That spending is fanning inflation in the broader economy. "It's unacceptable and it can't continue," he says.

Yet in Ahvaz, it's clear that pushing oil and gas production higher and demand lower won't be easy. Khuzestan province, the center of the country's energy industry, already generates 17% of Iran's electricity. But that's not enough to keep electricity flowing here in the provincial capital all the time.

I'd like to believe that this will topple the mullahs, or render them more tractable, but that's not clear.

LT SMASH THINKS that there's been a shift in momentum. I certainly hope he's right.

IF WE NEED THIS KIND OF REALPOLITIK IN THE WHITE HOUSE, I guess we'd better vote Democratic:

The first time I proposed a snatch, in 1993, the White House Counsel, Lloyd Cutler, demanded a meeting with the President to explain how it violated international law. Clinton had seemed to be siding with Cutler until Al Gore belatedly joined the meeting, having just flown overnight from South Africa. Clinton recapped the arguments on both sides for Gore: Lloyd says this. Dick says that. Gore laughed and said, "That's a no-brainer. Of course it's a violation of international law, that's why it's a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass."

Gore in 2008!

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg observes:

Before Gore became a hyper-partisan anti-Bush scream machine, he was actually a reasonable guy on the issue of extraordinary rendition (and, let us not forget, on Iraq). Indeed, after reading that I was more favorably inclined toward Gore than I've been in years, albeit for about 30 seconds.

It does not speak well of the character of so many Democrats that they can turn on a dime like this — whatever their rationalizations may be — but that doesn't change the fact that Democrats won't ever fully support the war on terror until they're take some ownership of it. Again, I don't think the let-the- babies-have-their-bottle argument is persuasive (though a real Democratic hawk would look very attractive to me). But this is a real problem and I'd love to know how else to deal with it.

Me too.

GRAND ROUNDS is up!

PAUL CAMPOS thinks I'm beyond the pale for suggesting (in this post, which he does not link) that the Bush Administration might have been better off trying to use covert action to kill Iranian nuclear scientists and radical mullahs, instead of having to look at the massive air strikes now reportedly being planned, which would surely kill more people. He hurts his credibility up front by saying that Iran is not at war with us -- when, in fact, it has been since 1979, with the deaths of many Americans, soldiers and otherwise, on its hands. (Later: Some emailers say that this means that Ollie North should have gone to jail for Iran/Contra. Well, that would have been fine with me, actually. But I said Iran has been at war with us; we, however, have not been at war with Iran. This is about what to do as that seems to be changing).

But surely talking about assassination isn't beyond the pale. Or, if it is, I'm beyond the pale with Dianne Feinstein and Joe Biden:

Senators asked FBI Director Louis Freeh Thursday to consider the legality of assassinating Osama bin Laden and other suspected terrorist leaders.

Referring to terrorist leaders, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., asked Freeh, "What is present law with respect to their takedown?" Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., said, "I would very much like a legal memorandum from the FBI, stating whether or not the prohibition against assassination of heads of state applies to organized crime units, and/or terrorist units." . . . Feinstein said arrest of terrorists is the best option but said that other "robust" strategies should be considered.

Of course, that was in 1998, when it was okay for Democrats to sound tough.

Nor were Biden and Feinstein the only ones:

Even before 11 September 2001, two members of Congress questioned the continuance of such a ban with regard to Saddam Hussein and international terrorists. In 1998, Senator Charles S. Robb stated that if Hussein continued to defy the United Nations, the United States should consider changing the executive order forbidding the assassination of foreign leaders

Then there's George Stephanopoulos, who wrote: "A misreading of the law or misplaced moral squeamishness should not stop the president from talking about assassination. He should order up the options and see if it's possible. If we can kill Saddam, we should."

Campos' claim that such actions would be illegal is misleading -- assassination is illegal, as both articles above note, only by executive order, which can, of course, be rescinded by the President. (As the second item observes, Bob Barr introduced legislation in 2001 to rescind that ban by statute). Kiling by covert military action -- as when things are blown up, and scientists or mullahs just "happen" to get killed -- is apparently outside the ban anyway. As noted in my original post, there are plenty of arguments from reasonable people why this kind of thing might be a bad idea on practical grounds. Campos, however, thinks it ought to be illegal even to talk about the subject (if you do, you might be an "accessory to murder"). Somebody tell Dianne Feinstein, et al. Er, and send Campos a copy of the First Amendment. And no, this isn't the first time Campos has called me names for agreeing with Democrats on the war.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

Campos does a pretty good job of beclowning himself by displaying his ignorance of how international law and international security actually work. Attached is an article I'm sure you've seen and I'm sure he needs to read. The author was one of my professors. Perhaps Campos should stick to the compelling and weighty analysis of America's fatness.

I hadn't realized the article, from the Washington Quarterly, was online, but here it is. And here's an excerpt:

In the international community, states have always reserved the right to use force to maintain world order and safeguard their own defense. When containment fails, diplomacy is ineffective, and a full-scale war is too costly, killing a regime leader is an option a state should seriously consider. In a world in which states will amass WMD, unlawfully invade their neighbors, and threaten other’s national and international security, national security experts and policymakers may need to reexamine their choices, including killing regime leaders, as a means of ensuring security.

It's by Catherine Lotrionte, who teaches Intelligence Law and International Law at Georgetown's Foreign Service School. Who knew that so many of us were beyond the pale? And yes, there's a lot of beclowning going on these days.

ANOTHER UPDATE: It's getting crowded out here beyond the pale, as reader James Ray sends a link to this 1994 interview with that well-known international war criminal Dave Barry:

Reason: One of the planks in your presidential campaign is the Department of Two Guys Named Victor.

Barry:: This is one of those times I wasn't kidding. At the time, we were mad at Moammar Gadhafi, which resulted in us bombing all over Libya and killing a bunch of people, but not him. Then Ronald Reagan gets up and says we're not trying to kill him, we're just dropping bombs. You can kill all the Libyans you want, but legally you can't try to kill the leader.

The other one was Manuel Noriega. Here we have a problem with just one person, and we send all these troops down to deal with it. All these people get killed and hurt, but not Noriega.

So instead of messing around with armies, get a couple of guys named Victor. The president meets with them and has breakfast, or he goes to dinner with them at the restaurant of their choice, and suggests that he's having a problem. Then the next thing you know, you read in the paper that Saddam Hussein has suffered an unfortunate shaving accident resulting in the loss of his head. We don't involve a lot of 22-year-old kids in this dispute between George Bush and Saddam Hussein.

See, this was once a kind of anti-war position. Then it was popular with Democratic officeholders. Now, apparently, it's shifted to "beyond the pale" category. It's not only important to have the right opinions -- it's important to have them at the right time.

MORE: More here:

One would expect a law professor like Campos to have authority to back up such language. But in fact, his characterizations of the relevant legal principles are over-simplified, if not flat-out wrong. . . . In short, Campos' attack on Reynolds and Hewitt betrays his ignorance of the subject matter at hand and his failure to do even the most elementary research before denouncing others as "accessor[ies] to murder." As happens so often on the left, "murderer" and "fascist" are the common coin of a polemic that bears no relation to reality. And, needless to say, Campos offers no constructive thoughts as to how we should deal with the threat Iran poses to our troops in Iraq, or the threat a nuclear Iran will pose to us and our allies.

Needless to say, indeed.

Dan Riehl adds that Campos is trying a different kind of assassination. If he hadn't let his intellectual guns go off half-cocked, he might have done better at that. . . .

MICKEY KAUS:

It's not too early to say that Hillary's performance in the opening weeks has been impressively unimpressive. It's pretty clear in retrospect, that the war with Iraq, however it comes out, was a bad gamble. A mistake, in other words. But now that we've made the mistaken gamble, it also seems clear--to Mohammed at least--that the surge might do some good. The correct position, by these lights, was War No, Surge Yes. It would be selfishly callous, in a stereotypically American way, for us to invade Iraq, make a mess, and then not be willing to pay any extra price to help fix the mess we've made. (Murtha's demand that the troops be given "a year at home"--and the heck with what happens to Iraqis like Mohammed--only emphasizes this self-interested perspective.)

Yet through a conscientiously applied mixture of high-minded comity, Machiavellian calculation, stubbornness and bad expert advice, Hillary has managed to arrive at a position that's precisely wrong on both counts: War Yes, Surge No.

Read the whole thing.

February 19, 2007

I CAN'T SAY I'M SURPRISED TO HEAR that Hilary Rosen donated to Harold Ford, Jr. And though she's getting some flak from gay-rights folks now, if he'd won I don't think people would mind as much. Especially if -- as might very well have happened -- he had been the one to give the Democrats their majority.

REDUCE CRIME BY talking about it less?

THE FUTURES MARKETS HAVE SPOKEN: "Despite wishful thinking by some conservative pundits, the odds that Libby will be convicted, as reflected by the Intrade betting market, have been creeping up and are now around 70%. The bigger question at this point is whether President Bush will have the balls to pardon him."

I HAVEN'T PAID MUCH ATTENTION TO THE MARIA BARTIROMO STORIES, but Daniel Harrison has thoughts.

EMBATTLED EGYPTIAN BLOGER ABDEL KAREEM has been disowned by his father, and the Egyptian trial looks likely to be even more of a circus than previously.

More on Kareem's situation, and what you can do to help, here.

FLU SEASON IS HERE, and Chuck Simmins offers recommendations from the CDC on what to do.

I've already prepared with the essentials. (Not for me Wesley Clark's sad fate.) He adds this advice by email: "And, if you are sick, stay home from work. Blog instead." Absolutely.

TRAFFIC CAMERAS -- FINE FOR THE POLICE, BUT NOT FOR YOU:

Lee and Teresa Sipple spent $1,200 mounting three video cameras and a radar speed unit outside their home, which is at the bottom of a hill. They have said they did so in hopes of convincing neighbors to slow down to create a safe environment for their son.

The Sipples allegedly caught Kennesaw police officer Richard Perrone speeding up to 17 mph over the speed limit. Perrone alerted Bartow authorities, who in turn visited the Sipples' home to tell them Perrone intended to press charges against them for stalking.

Perrone should be ashamed here. And I think that citizens should have the same right to photograph police that police have to photograph citizens. In fact, I think that citizens do have that right. And so, I guess, does Perrone, who later withdrew his complaint. (Via Slashdot).

IRAQPUNDIT: "Here’s a quick snapshot of the Baghdad security crackdown, from my own family’s point of view. My story involves only a single household, but – so far – it has a happy ending. I don’t pretend that this one household’s story is a counterweight to all the misery and murder that the crackdown is intended to address, but it’s my profound hope that this story is – or soon will be --representative of many other such individual tales that will be told by many other Iraqi families." Let's hope that there are many happy tales.

MEGAN MCARDLE ON GOVERNMENT:

1) People are often stupid
2) Bureaucrats are the same stupid people, with bad incentives.

Indeed.

K.C. JOHNSON rips Nancy Grace for unfairness, sensationalism, and cowardice: "Grace, who regularly mocked principles of due process, allowed guests (such as the ubiquitous Wendy Murphy) to say virtually anything denouncing the players, while challenging even the mildest assertion suggesting the players’ innocence. And, when the case imploded, this television bully, who takes such joy in shouting down guests who challenge her views, was silent."

I AGREE: "Quite frankly, it should not really matter how far off the mainstream any group is when dealing with state government. Whether it is a blogger in their pajamas, a special interest group or just Joe Citizen, state government should crack open like a piñata when asked for otherwise public information."

TRYING TO BAN "OBSCENE MUDFLAPS:"

Democratic Rep. Theresa Ulmer of Yuma supported the amendment and said it fit with lawmakers' other efforts to crack down on pornography and sexual predators.

"I personally am tired of explaining to my 11-year-old son why they (women) are depicted on mudflaps , but not all women are 36Ds. He's very confused by that," Ulmer said. "But seriously, this is about family values -- what are we going to send out as a message to our children."

The real message is that the Arizona legislature has run out of important things to do, and might as well go home and save the taxpayers some money. (Via Don Surber).

MARK STEYN RESPONDS to bogus charges that he favors genocide:

My book isn’t about what I want to happen but what I think will happen. Given Fascism, Communism and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, it’s not hard to foresee that the neo-nationalist resurgence already under way in parts of Europe will at some point take a violent form. That’s pretty much a given.

That Steyn was warning of a future, not advocating one, has always been obvious to me. And it's a serious warning, especially given that the current civil authorities in most European countries are ineffectually waffling in full Weimar mode. To blame Steyn for foreseeing the likely consequences of current fecklessness seems an absurd stretch. The reason, to answer Mark Kleiman's question, why the anti-holocaust groups have been silent about Steyn is that only the most tendentious and purblind misreading could possibly lead to Kleiman's conclusion. (But then, Kleiman has been doing that a bit often, lately).

Back in the Vietnam days we heard a lot of accusations of genocide hurled at war supporters -- but it was when the war opponents got their wish that the mass murder began, and they were very quiet (or, in some cases, actually defensive of the Khmer Rouge) once it happened. (Read this history of those years by James Webb.) We see a similar irresponsibility today, and I can't help but feel that these bogus charges are an effort to deflect attention from it.

UPDATE: Reader Rich Daisley emails: "Glenn, reading that Jim Webb piece made me laugh and then it made me cry. I wonder if he ever goes back to read his old writings. Line after line, you could replace a Vietnam reference and add an Iraq reference." Yes, it felt that way to me, too.

Meanwhile, Kleiman is sliding toward an unhealthy obsession, with a seemingly endless series of posts designed to demonstrate my perfidy, and expressing his hopes that Jim Webb will break my teeth. Let me be clear -- though clarity is never clear enough, with Kleiman -- I supported the invasion of Iraq, and the rest of the terror war, because I think the alternative would have been something much, much worse down the line, resulting in far more deaths for all concerned. And fearing something worse is the opposite of advocating it. But I fear Kleiman is beyond reason on this point. He just wants to call war supporters names, and at this he excels, in intensity if not in skill.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More on Kleiman's piece from Dave Price: "An amusing exercise in deliberately missing the point over at the inaptly named 'Reality Based Community' blog."