April 21, 2007

A BLIND COMPARISON TEST using recycled printer cartridges.

The cartridges for my printers are pretty expensive -- and one of the many colors is always running out -- so maybe I should give this a try.

HEH. But it's not just Nifong.

"MOST GUNS ARE SEMIAUTOMATIC:" Mickey Kaus explains firearms technology to a bemused Robert Wright, on Bloggingheads TV.

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh similarly educates the editors of The Economist, who appear in great need of education. Really, if The Economist is going to opine on this sort of thing, its writers need to know something on the subject.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Rahm Emanuel needs educating too.

MORE CRITICISM OF NBC, this time from Harry Shearer at The Huffington Post:

Not so easy is the answer to the question: what is the possible journalistic explanation for splashing Cho's self-dramatizing poses and self-justifying bullshit over network and cable air? Did we learn anything useful during the spate of interviews of Charlie Manson years ago, except that he was one crazy motherfucker? Cho's pathetic outpourings deserved to be put back where they came from--in a small room, with FBI guys sentenced to read/see and parse them Instead, a hundred thousand self-pitying mentally ill young men (and women?) have just been shown the road to glory one more time. A society in which it's easier to become famous for killing people than for doing something useful or constructive is one remarkable place in which to live.

Create bad incentives, get bad behavior. Meanwhile, some thoughts from Dave Cullen in Slate.

BOINGBOING BANNED IN BOSTON: This is the best argument against municipal wi-fi systems -- they're sure to be run by idiots who can't resist meddling and censoring.

ED CONE WANTS JUSTICE for fired Duke Lacrosse coach Mike Pressler.

He's owed a lot of apologies. And more than that.

CLAYTON CRAMER IS STILL TOURING in support of his book, Armed America, and Eric Scheie attended one of his appearances and -- of course -- blogged about it.

SPYING FOR IRAN? "A former engineer at the nation's largest nuclear power plant has been charged with taking computer access codes and software to Iran and using it to download details of plant control rooms and reactors, authorities said." Ed Morrissey has further thoughts.

THE COLOR OF MONEY: Colbert King charges Hillary Clinton with Hip-Hop hypocrisy.

CHINA JUNKS SPACE DEBRIS MEETING:

China has canceled the hosting of the 25th meeting of the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC).

The China National Space Administration was slated to host the IADC April 23-26 at the China Academy of Space Technology in Beijing.

The IADC is a confab of countries that, in a governmental forum, discusses worldwide coordination of activities related to issues of human-made and natural debris in space.

On January 11, China created the largest debris cloud of satellite fragments in Earth orbit after they destroyed their own weather satellite in an anti-satellite test.

The April issue of NASA’s Orbital Debris Quarterly News labels the Chinese ASAT test as creating the most severe orbital debris cloud in history.

I guess they figured nobody was going to say anything good about them anyway . . . .

FROM IRAQI BLOGGER ALAA, a mixed assessment of U.S. security strategy. "However, between the extreme course of total withdrawal and the present detailed involvement with daily operations; there is a middle way that few are talking about. Complete abandon and retreat by the Americans would indeed constitute defeat and a victory for the enemy, and would turn the tables completely and ignite a larger conflagration in the region. On the other hand the level of involvement of American and other allied foreign troops with detailed street to street policing, house searches etc. etc. should not continue indefinitely. . . . What must be realized is that as long as the U.S. is strategically present, the enemy has no hope of achieving any of his objectives. This enemy knows this only too well; and his prime objective is to bring about this withdrawal and retreat by all means. He pins his hopes on the internal situation in the U.S., and this is his most potent weapon. Therefore most of his actions and attacks are basically publicity stunts aimed primarily at the MSM and American and western public opinion."

STUDENTS REMEMBER Professor Librescu.

TECH ADVICE BLEG: Anybody out there own this Panasonic HD camcorder? It looks pretty sweet, and the Popular Mechanics folks like it, but what's it like in actual long-term use? We've got some video projects in mind for this summer, and I'm wondering whether to upgrade. The one we have now works quite well, but it's bulkier, tape-based (so capture has to take place in real time) and not HD. My sense is that waiting a while makes sense, but I'm not sure. Advice from those who haven't waited would be appreciated.

UPDATE: Andrew Marcus emails:

Glenn- I saw the "pro" version of this camera at NAB and was blown away! I haven't had time to check out the differences between the consumer version and the "pro" version, but if they are similar enough, it is a winner. I'll do more research later today and let you know.

Hmm. The descriptions look pretty similar. This review says: "The big difference - a portable 40GB hard drive that can store the contents of the SD cards and a color space more closely matched to their pro camcorders." Software seems not quite ready, though.

BLOGGER AND PODCASTER MAGAZINE is a new magazine for, er, bloggers and podcasters. Looks pretty interesting to me -- but then, I'm surely at the core of its target market.

LIEBERMAN ON HARRY REID: "We should not surrender in the face of barbarism."

HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED: A look at the 1957 Far Rockaway High School Rifle Team. It's certainly a sign of how New York has changed, and not for the better.

Meanwhile, in 2007 Yale is banning fake weapons on stage. And to think that universities hold themselves out as bastions of critical thinking where people can make fine distinctions . . . .

As Sigmund Freud said: "A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity."

Or intellectual maturity, anyway. It's certainly evidence for Robert Epstein's thesis.

UPDATE: Perhaps the Yale cast should show up in this apparel.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Eugene Volokh: "Do Yale students have a hard time telling theater from reality? Are they so emotionally fragile that they would be traumatized by seeing a realistic sword on stage?"

I think that's the Yale administrators. It's all about the unwillingness to face reality and its consequences.

MORE: Reader Ryan Robinson notes something fishy at Wikiquote:

Just wanted to point this out…

At some point since you posted the Sigmund Freud quote “A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity”, somebody went on to wikiquote.org and edited the page. They have that quote now marked as O“Misattributed”. Whoever edited the page says that they searched Google Print, but apparently they neglected to note that the version they searched is NOT the complete text of Freud’s work. Perhaps someone with access to a library can confirm or deny that quote.

Interesting how quickly the wikiquote page was modified… Also interesting that they *speculatively* attribute the quote to an opponent of gun control.

This is why wikis suck. That quote has been there for years -- then I link it and it vanishes. I think the quote's real -- at least I've seen it elsewhere before. But either the quote was bogus when I linked it -- which means that wikiquote sucks -- or the quote was real and has been deleted/marked as misattributed for political reasons -- which means that wikiquote sucks. And there's no obvious indication that it's changed since I cited it. Which means that wikiquote sucks.

STILL MORE: The Freud quote reappeared, but is now back to "misattributed" on Wiikiquote. Here's a suggestion that it isn't accurate from another source. What I hate is that it's very hard for readers to tell when I've linked to Wikiquote what it looked like when I established the link.

MORE STILL: I went to the library to look the Freud reference up myself. The quote above doesn't appear on p. 33 as cited. Instead, there is what's seen below, which appears right after an account of a dream in which a woman tries to unsheathe a dagger to kill herself, only to awaken and find she's tugging on her husband's penis:

This is consistent with the (currrent) WikiQuote version, saying that the Freud quote is actually quoting Kates' commentary on what Freud might think, rather than what Freud actually said.

Which doesn't make Yale look any less dumb. Any speculation on the sexual underpinnings of Yale's policy regarding swords on stage will be left as an exercise for the reader. . . .

JONAH GOLDBERG looks at "emotional vampirism" in the press.

A FORMER MISS AMERICA confronts some thieves:

Ramey, who won the elite beauty crown in 1944, confronted one of the three robbers on her farm in Waynesburg, Ky., about 140 miles south of Cincinnati, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.

"He was probably wetting his pants," said Ramey, who balanced on her walking stick as she pulled out a snub-nosed .38-caliber handgun.

More here.

UPDATE: She's picked up a new fan!

40 THINGS THAT ONLY HAPPEN IN THE MOVIES: Well, 39, anyway.

JOHN SCALZI EXPLAINS why blogs are egocentric.

Except when they're phony!

JEFF GOLDSTEIN: "Strange that those who call themselves 'progressives' haven’t been able to progress much since 1968, don’t you think?"

April 20, 2007

OUCH: Rutgers team skips Clinton meeting.

I HAVEN'T BEEN FOLLOWING THE WOLFOWITZ / WORLD BANK STORY very closely, but a reader sends this defense of Wolfowitz by Ruth Wedgwood that I had missed: "The most amazing thing is that all the facts were reviewed for a second time by the World Bank ethics committee last year, and again it found nothing wrong. The chairman of the ethics committee pronounced in a Feb. 28, 2006, letter that 'the ethics committee decided that the allegations … do not appear to pose ethical issues.' It is hard to square the record with the entertaining claim that the World Bank's president somehow concocted a do-nothing job for his girlfriend. It's a bum rap, and one that women professionals in dual-career families might worry about."

UPDATE: There's also this piece from today.

THEY'RE LOOKING FOR A CO-MANAGING EDITOR at Global Voices.

REAL TIME INVESTIGATIONS at the Sunlight Foundation.

KATHY SIERRA ON NPR ON BLOG COMMENTS AND CIVILITY: Makes me glad I don't have comments. Especially this: "Jacquelyn Schlesier is a full-time moderator for Chowhound, a food discussion Web site. She says keeping things civil is a lot of work. She spends as many as 12 hours a day reading through posts and deleting anything offensive, abusive or off-topic. It's a food blog. How bad can things get? Really bad, Schlesier says, especially with some topics."

People just tend to get nasty on the Web; the subject at hand, whatever it happens to be, isn't so much a provocation as an opportunity.

Also, some wise thoughts on comment moderation by Teresa Nielsen Hayden, including this indisputable truth: "Furthermore, the kind of jerks who post comments that need to be deleted will infallibly cry 'censorship!' when it happens. . . . Anonymous nastiness is easy to write, and will always find an appreciative audience. I don’t care. It’s not a manifestation of the free and open discourse of the internet; it’s a thing that destroys that discourse." Read the whole thing.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON looks at colleges.

ERIC SCHEIE ON Why facts should matter (even on the Internet).

"THIS GUY WAS PRESIDENT BEFORE I WAS:" And with many more slips like that, some other people will be, too . . . .

Obama's smarter than this. I think he's tired. Tired politicians make mistakes. He should take a rest -- the primaries are most of a year away.

"I FOUND SADDAM'S WMD BUNKERS:" Er, wouldn't this be news if it were true?

Maybe not, these days. . . .

MICKEY KAUS:

Alert emailer S.F. asks if NBC, when it broadcast baseball games, refused to show video of fans running onto the field. Most broadcasters don't, on the grounds that it would only encourage more attention-seeking disruptions. ... If that's NBC's practice, why is it OK in order to prevent the disruption of a baseball game but not to prevent mass murder? Just asking.

A cynic would say that when fans run onto the baseball field NBC doesn't make money. But when copycat mass shootings occur, NBC makes money. . . .

A LOOK AT WHO'S TAKING AID AND COMFORT from Harry Reid's statements.

THE LYRID METEOR SHOWER will strike this weekend. Should be pretty, for those in the right place at the right time.

A CALL FOR "common-sense restrictions" on freedom of assembly. From an unimpeachable source!

SHOTS FIRED AT JOHNSON SPACE CENTER: Reports seem pretty confused at the moment -- I'm watching CNN. Wolf Blitzer says weapons aren't allowed on the property, but it sounds like that didn't work. . . .

But early reports are usually unreliable, so stay tuned.

UPDATE: A report that it's a contract employee, plus much more, here. More reports, and live video streaming, at KHOU TV.

MORE: Gunman and one hostage dead; another hostage freed. Reports that gunman was shouting "Put me on TV, NBC!" are likely not true . . . .

THOUGHTS ON CHINA, and the academics who study China.

"THE BEST CHILDREN'S NOVEL about World War II."

FRED THOMPSON: "Some people think that power should exist only at the top, and everybody else should rely on 'the authorities' for protection. . . . Whenever I've seen one of those 'Gun-free Zone' signs, especially outside of a school filled with our youngest and most vulnerable citizens, I've always wondered exactly who these signs are directed at. Obviously, they don't mean much to the sort of man who murdered 32 people just a few days ago."

A ROUNDUP OF Earth Day technical tips.

SUING YAHOO! FOR RATTING OUT a Chinese dissident.

HAS OBAMA-MANIA PEAKED? "What really struck me about that audio clip though was what a gasbag Obama is. I hear a tired-sounding man, who rambles on and on. I know he's speaking before a group. I hear them respond now and then, when he mentions that Iraq is a war that should never have been waged and when he says teachers deserve higher pay. But if I didn't know who he was and that there was a crowd there, I would picture an old man slumped in an armchair, expatiating for the benefit of anyone unlucky enough to be within earshot. It's formless stream of consciousness. Oh, there is that theme of hope. The stream swirls back there at predictable intervals."

CANDIDATE CARICATURES by Roman Genn.

JAMES Q. WILSON: "Gun control isn't the answer." Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Wilson observes:

AS FOR THE European disdain for our criminal culture, many of those countries should not spend too much time congratulating themselves. In 2000, the rate at which people were robbed or assaulted was higher in England, Scotland, Finland, Poland, Denmark and Sweden than it was in the United States. The assault rate in England was twice that in the United States. In the decade since England banned all private possession of handguns, the BBC reported that the number of gun crimes has gone up sharply.

Some of the worst examples of mass gun violence have also occurred in Europe. In recent years, 17 students and teachers were killed by a shooter in one incident at a German public school; 14 legislators were shot to death in Switzerland, and eight city council members were shot to death near Paris.

The main lesson that should emerge from the Virginia Tech killings is that we need to work harder to identify and cope with dangerously unstable personalities.

It is a problem for Europeans as well as Americans, one for which there are no easy solutions — such as passing more gun control laws.

More on that here.

UPDATE: Related thoughts here.

And read this: "We decided a half a century ago that our more eccentric and, indeed, crazy fellow citizens would not be easily locked in asylums. It was a humane decision, but with the inevitable consequence that some who really need quarantine are allowed to roam the streets."

DON SURBER on NBC's airing of the Cho video: "NBC should not have shown it. This video was a peep show, not news. There was nothing to be gained in showing it. . . .As a member of the mainstream media, please, accept my apology for the airing of this video. I’m sorry."

IN THE MAIL: The latest Harry Turtledove novel, Beyond the Gap, part of an entirely new alternate-history series.

A HERO IS LAID TO REST: A report from Liviu Librescu's funeral.

MCCAIN TO CRITICS: "Get a life."

Is it just me, or has he started to enjoy himself on the trail again?

WHO IS SICK? A user-generated epidemiology map. Cool.

RADLEY BALKO looks at the National Association of Broadcasters' hatred of satellite radio.

JOHN SCALZI'S NEW NOVEL, The Last Colony -- sequel to Old Man's War and Ghost Brigades -- is now officially out. I was lucky enough to get an advance copy, and I recommend it highly.

MICKEY KAUS: "The Imus affair does look kind of small in retrospect, doesn't it?"

ADVERTISING FOR SOLAR ENERGY:

Next month Sharp plans to send a trailer with a rooftop solar panel to sites in California, for demonstrations of how the system can run a television set and other appliances (needless to say, the trailer will be towed by a hybrid vehicle). And in August, when the current campaign runs its course, Sharp expects to send posters and lesson plans to elementary-school teachers to help them teach about solar energy.

“It was children who taught parents about recycling, and children will teach parents about solar energy,” said Ronald Kenedi, vice president of Sharp’s solar energy solutions group.

Hmm. I thought ads aimed at kids, designed to influence parents, were supposed to be bad.

LETTERS TO Harry Reid.

A ROUNDUP ON YESTERDAY'S GONZALES TESTIMONY: It was mostly buried by the other news, but having heard a bit of it on the radio I have to say I was unimpressed.

UPDATE: A reader emails: "That's because Gonzales is unimpressive." Yes, he is -- not only were his responses unimpressive, but his manner. He came across as a mediocrity entirely out of his depth.

And there's this: "Yes, the AG has the right to fire these people for pretty much any reason, but he, at least, should know why he's firing them." The only winner in this deal is John Ashcroft, who's looking better in retrospect -- even to Democrats, I suspect.

MASS SHOOTINGS: "ONLY IN AMERICA" -- It only seems that way if you're uninformed.

Plus, questionable numbers in the gun-control debate.

HOWARD KURTZ: "In all the years I've been chronicling the media, I have rarely seen the tidal wave of resentment that has washed over television organizations that showed the now-infamous Cho video. In the minds of many Americans, this was a horribly offensive act, and no amount of explanation about the obligations of journalism is going to change that view."

UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch emails: "The media used up its reserve of good will when it refused to show all of the 9/11 images and when it went to court to show the most offensive Katrina images. The rest of the nation has figured out that all of their claims of journalistic integrity and ehtics are simply nonsense. Journalism is about protecting media organization profits and advancing a political point of view, period."

A LOOK AT MODERN CANCER RESEARCH: Faster, please.

PATRICK LASSWELL, with the Peshmerga in Kirkuk.

CHO OVERLOAD: "Whenever anything really bad happens, you can be sure that 'the media' will instantly become more emetic than ever, bombarding you round-the-clock with pseudo stories that endlessly repeat the some two-and-one-half facts and skein of groundless conjecture they first broadcast 36 hours ago. The banner 'New Developments' regularly flits across the bottom of the television screen, but there are almost never any new developments, only those nauseating talking heads emanating concern and sincerity while milking the story of every last drop of sentimental indulgence."

This produces higher ratings in the short run, but I think it costs them over the long run.

ORWELL'S TELESCREENS come to Britain.

CANADA JOINS ANTI-KYOTO BLOC:

This week's announcement by the Canadian government -- that it may join a U.S.-led coalition focused on voluntary emissions cuts -- could be part of a global shift away from Kyoto's binding targets.

In a somewhat surprising development, Canada, a long-time supporter of the Kyoto Protocol, announced that it may want to join the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6), a six-nation coalition focusing on voluntary emission-reduction steps and technology transfers. Many environmentalists oppose AP6 out of a fear that it may undermine political support for the legally binding Kyoto treaty.

Expect more of this kind of thing. It was a fine agreement, until it came time to live up to it!

BAD NEWS FROM NIGERIA:

The government is using the police and army to assist political gangs that are attacking opposition campaigning efforts. Last weekends local elections were often invalid because of the intervention of the more powerful government backed gangs. This weekends presidential elections appear to be headed in the same direction. If that is the case, the country will have un-elected government at the state and national level. That, plus the usual corruption, could be enough to trigger the long feared civil war.

I hope not, but that's becoming not-quite-unthinkable.

WHEN MOVIE STARS ATTACK -- their own children.

A LOOK AT Iran in Bosnia.

April 19, 2007

MARCHING AGAINST ISLAMIC EXTREMISM in Pakistan.

And in Iran.

JOE TRIPPI signs on with John Edwards. I think this is Edwards' best hire so far.

NEW GOOGLE CONTENT-REMOVAL TOOLS.

A DRAFT ARTICLE ON PREVENTING VIOLENCE IN HIGHER EDUCATION that may prove of interest. The Insta-Wife is one of the coauthors.

A POLL ON GUNS IN PUBLIC PLACES.

PLAYING "NAME THAT PARTY" at the Associated Press.

RUSSIA PUTS $1BILLION IN OIL REVENUES into nanotechnology research.

MICKEY KAUS: "NBC shouldn't have shown that video. It seems less like an 'ethical challenge' than a no-brainer. Why encourage other potential Cho's to try for a similar publicity bonanza? This isn't a Unabomber like case where publicizing a killer's electronic media kit might help identify him. We already know who did it. . . . NBC's responsibility seems especially heavy since, as the sole recipient of Cho's posthumous publicity kit, they had the power to keep it bottled up and deny him the reward he sought, no? That's not usually the case--i.e., when a killer is still at large or communicates through multiple media outlets."

FACT-CHECKING THE BRADY CAMPAIGN, at Reason. "In any case, note that the 'children' killed by firearms include older teenagers, among them 18-year-olds and 19-year-olds, a.k.a. 'adults.' Judging from the breakdown in 1998 (I can't find comparable data for 1997), more than 80 percent of gun deaths for the under-20 group involve teenagers 15 or older. About 58 percent of the gun deaths that year were homicides, and these included drug dealers shot by other drug dealers, violent criminals shot by police, and other noninnocent nonchildren. About 33 percent of the gun deaths were suicides; 7 percent were accidents."

Follow the link for more (Brady) errors and misrepresentations.

AUSTIN BAY SLAMS HARRY REID FOR WAFFLING DEFEATISM: "It would be refreshing if Reid even had the courage of his defeatist convictions. Thing is, his 'convictions' aren’t convictions. They are the political postures, and this statement is an example of his political game. He tosses a line to the Dems’ defeatist nuts then edges toward reality with an oily pirouette."

Ouch.

UPDATE: More here: "Those Democrats sure know how to support the troops!"

ANOTHER UPDATE: Heh.

AN OCTOPUS'S GARDEN at Arms and the Law. (POST UPDATED: See the update about the VPC, which doesn't appear to have been behind this story after all, as initially reported.)

CAN AMERICA TRUST THE BBC?

EUGENE VOLOKH: "What exactly is the reason for not allowing professors to carry guns?"

UPDATE: Heh.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Members of Congress want to keep their earmarks:

The Senate's Democratic leaders have a political problem with earmarks. Ever since the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska captured the public's imagination last year, they have been on record against legislators stealthily slipping in their favorite spending projects. But most senators, from both parties, really want to keep earmarks. An ingenious effort to reconcile those conflicting political desires created a remarkable tableau in the U.S. Senate Tuesday.

First-term Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina rose on the Senate floor shortly before noon to request unanimous consent for immediate enactment of a rule requiring full disclosure of earmarks. But the Democratic leadership was forewarned. Just before DeMint took the floor, the Appropriations Committee -- led by Sen. Robert Byrd, the Senate's king of pork -- issued its own flawed anti-earmark regulation. Then, Majority Whip Dick Durbin objected to passage of the DeMint rule on grounds that ethics should not be considered on a piecemeal basis.

This Democratic scenario got rave reviews from most Republicans. Senators like to be on record against earmarks while still enjoying them. The problem is that DeMint and his fellow Republican first-termer, Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, just won't let the issue rest. Amid thundering silence from the GOP leadership after Durbin's objection, Coburn declared on the Senate floor: "I would remind my colleagues that we don't have a higher favorable rating than the president at this time . . . and the reason we don't is the very reason we just saw. . . . It's a sad day in the Senate because we're playing games with the American public." . . . This is no Democrat-vs.-Republican partisan struggle. The word in the Republican cloakroom was that a GOP senator would derail the DeMint rule if the Democrats did not. The Republican leadership is not enthralled with DeMint and Coburn, and would like them to go away. They won't. They are determined to bring into the open who sponsors and who benefits from earmarks.

Read the whole thing. It's not like the Republicans were good on this when they had the majority. But the Democrats did promise to end the "culture of corruption" and all. . . .

DANNY GLOVER HAS MORE on the "secret hold" that wasn't -- exactly -- a secret hold:

While bloggers may be wrong on parliamentary procedure, they appear to be right on the money in assuming that some Republican lawmaker -- and perhaps the Senate Republican leadership -- doesn't like yet another transparency bill and may even be working to keep it from seeing action. . . .

I entered this fray as a journalist, not as an activist for or against the particular bill in question. I just wanted to ask a question and get an answer. That didn't happen. With me at least, Don Stewart chose spin over transparency, and I'm not happy about it.

So to all of you bloggers out there, I wholeheartedly endorse the underlying message of this campaign against a non-hotlined, secret, non-hold objection: Keep calling your senators and demanding answers. I don't care whether you're doing it because you're more interested in journalism (like me) or campaign finance activism. Just do it -- and don't let anyone stonewall you.

Read the whole thing. And read this from Mark Tapscott, too:

That explanation is true, as far as it goes, but it carefully excludes mention of three significant facts. First, the objection stopped the bill's advance. Didn't kill it but put it on hold for now. Second, the identity of the objection GOP senator was not made public.

I'm just an out-of-town rube, but that sure sounds like a "hold" that is "secret" to me.

The third fact ignored in the Senate GOP rationalization is this: Feinstein's proposal is a no-brainer if you believe in transparency in government but there is a history of GOP opposition to it. That is why the proposal got nowhere in the Senate when the GOP had the majority.

The way to settle the argument here is simple: Disclose the identity of the object[ing] GOP senator who can then explain why his or her procedural argument had to be made behind a cloak of anonymity. It would also be helpful to know what possible objection there could be to having Senate campaign finance reports be made public electronically, just as they are by everybody else required to file them.

Sounds fair to me.

BLOGGING FROM THE RED ZONE: Michael Totten reports from Kirkuk: "Kirkuk’s terrorists are, my Kurdish hosts explained, mostly Baathists, not Islamists. Their racist ideology casts Kurds and Turkmens as the enemy. They’re boxed in on all sides, though, and in their impotent rage murder fellow Arabs by the dozens and hundreds. They have, in effect, strapped suicide belts around their entire community while their more peaceful Kurdish and Turkmen neighbors shudder and fight to keep the Baath in its box."

He's supported by reader donations, so if you like his work, hit the tipjar.

UPDATE: Also in Iraq, Richard Miniter reports on Al Qaeda's protection racket.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A lot of readers think that this is the important paragraph from Michael's piece:

Most Americans have soured on the war and want out. I was once optimistic myself, but I no longer am. I can’t help but notice, though, that those I’ve spoken to who actually live in Iraq are more confident and less fatalistic.

Well, like I always say, read the whole thing! I can't excerpt it all, you know, or, er, it wouldn't be an "excerpt," now would it?

GEORGE WILL ON LOWERING THE DRINKING AGE: Raising the drinking age was a major betrayal of federalism on the part of the Reagan Administration. It should be undone.

More here: "When it comes to alcohol, the United States is more like Indonesia, Mongolia, and Palau than the rest of the world: It is one of just four countries that requires people to be at least 21 years old to buy booze. The only countries with stiffer laws are Islamic ones."

IN THE MAIL: Steven Landsburg's new book, More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics.

Please stay safe out there!

A FLAG FOR A TERRAFORMED MARS: At Popular Science.

"SOCIAL CATASTROPHE:" "The blood of the victims of the 'next one' is on the hands of everyone in the decision-making chain at NBC for this utterly inexcusable decision."

UPDATE: A defense of NBC.

THE KILLER IN THE LECTURE HALL: An interesting piece by Barbara Oakley in The New York Times:

Still, the Virginia Tech shootings have already led to calls for all sorts of changes: gun control, more mental health coverage, stricter behavior rules on campuses. Yes, in a perfect world, there would be no guns, no mental illness and no Cho Seung-Huis. But the world is very imperfect. Consider that Britain’s national experiment with gun-free living is proving to be a disaster, with violent and gun crime rates soaring.

In other words, most of the broad social “lessons” we are being told we must learn from the Virginia Tech shootings have little to do with what allowed the horrors to occur. This is about evil, and about how our universities are able to deal with it as a literary subject but not as a fact of life. Can administrators and deans really continue to leave professors and other college personnel to deal with deeply disturbed students on their own, with only pencils in their defense?

(Via Dr. Helen). Read the whole thing. Is it just me, or is the NYT oped page getting more open-minded?

HARRY REID ON THE SUPREME COURT'S ABORTION RULING:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) was among those who denounced yesterday's Supreme Court ruling upholding the Federal Partial Birth Abortion Act. Commenting on the decision, Reid said "A lot of us wish that Alito weren't there and O'Connor were there," indicating his desire that there has been a fifth vote to invalidate the statute, as Justice O'Connor had provided the fifth vote to invalidate Nebraska's partial-birth abortion ban in Stenberg v. Carhart.

What is curious about Reid's statement, as NPR and some news outlets have noted, is not Reid's criticism of Alito -- Reid opposed Alito's confirmation -- but the fact that Reid supported, and voted for, the federal statute upheld in yesterday's decision. . . .

So, despite his repeated support of legislative restrictions on abortion, Reid's latest comment suggests that he believes the Supreme Court's decision was regrettable and wrongly decided, and that a law that he supported is unconstitutional. To me, the latter is of greater concern. Call me old fashioned, but I believe that if a member of the Senate believes a law is unconstitutional, he or she should vote against it.

As noted, however, Reid is hardly alone in this regard. This kind of thing may explain why Congress's approval numbers are so low.

UPDATE: Yes, there's also Bush and campaign finance reform. As I've said before, that represented a betrayal of his oath.

AN UNDERGROUND TUNNEL BETWEEN RUSSIA AND ALASKA? Now there's an engineering project for you. Hard to believe there'd be sufficient traffic to justify it, but . . . .

UPDATE: Stephen Gordon at The Speculist thinks that there would be enough traffic. Problem is, it's a long way from anywhere. It's nice to connect Siberia and Alaska -- making it, as Phil Bowermaster notes, possible to drive from Paris, Texas to Paris, France. But Alaska itself is a long way from anywhere, and there aren't even rail and road connections to the Bering Strait areas where the tunnel would go.

NBC AND THE CHO VIDEO: Huge roundup at BoingBoing.

WALTER SHAPIRO: Repeal the Second Amendment. This approach is at least more honest than the usual one of just wishing it away.

UPDATE: Jeff Soyer's ready to call a whole constitutional convention.

IS FRED THOMPSON IN? Note this observation: "The money is out there. He has plenty of time to collect it. Even if he waits until Labor Day, he will have announced 2 months before GWB did in 1999." And with Internet fundraising -- where I suspect Thompson would do very well -- he has even more room, I think.

TERRY HEATON: Say goodbye to the pageview as an ad metric.

WARNINGS IGNORED: "Cho (whose full name is pronounced joh sung-wee) appears first to have alarmed the noted Virginia Tech poet Nikki Giovanni in a creative writing class in fall 2005, Giovanni said. . . . Days later, seven of Giovanni's 70 or so students showed up for a class. She asked them why the others didn't show up and was told that they were afraid of Cho. 'Once I realized my class was scared, I knew I had to do something,' she said."

But not much happened. (Which is, sadly, typical). Giovanni is pretty tough -- she's from Knoxville and I know her slightly -- and if she was alarmed, there was something to be alarmed about.

April 18, 2007

TENNESSEE MOVES TO ALLOW GUNS IN PUBLIC BUILDINGS: "In a surprise move, a House panel voted today to repeal a state law that forbids the carrying of handguns on property and buildings owned by state, county and city governments — including parks and playgrounds. 'I think the recent Virginia disaster — or catastrophe or nightmare or whatever you want to call it — has woken up a lot of people to the need for having guns available to law-abiding citizens,' said Rep. Frank Niceley, R-Strawberry Plains."

WHAT'S A BARREL SHROUD? Rep. Carolyn McCarthy admits that she has no idea, even though it's banned by her own "assault weapons" legislation. Follow the link for amusing video.

UPDATE: SayUncle offers McCarthy some technical education: "BTW, these are also known by their more common name: Handguards."

Sounds scary!

CATHY YOUNG ON PRISON RAPE:

Shortly after the Enron scandal broke in 2001, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer declared that he would love to personally escort the company’s CEO “to an eight-by-10 cell that he could share with a tattooed dude who says, ‘Hi, my name is Spike, honey.’ ” The negative reaction compelled Lockyer to offer a tepid apology in a letter to the Los Angeles Times, explaining that he had gotten carried away in righteous anger and pointing to the initiatives he had undertaken to curb prison rape.

The unusual thing about this incident was not that Lockyer made a crude joke about prison rape. It’s that he caught flak for it. While jokes about male-on-female rape are widely viewed as taboo in this feminist age, male-on-male rape in prison is a perfectly acceptable and common subject of humor on late-night comedy shows, in movies, and even in TV commercials. . . .

At present, it is very difficult—virtually impossible in some states—for inmates who have been raped to collect damages from the prison system. Guards who neglect or even condone inmate-on-inmate assaults run virtually no risk of punishment. Other serious measures to combat prison rape would include both “conservative” solutions (stricter prisoner supervision) and “liberal” ones (less overcrowding).

Even lower-end estimates given by correctional organizations suggest that 20,000 to 40,000 inmates are sexually assaulted in American prisons every year. Those are figures no civilized society should accept.

Read the whole thing. More on this subject here and in the linked posts.

A LOOK AT EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings. Still not working as they should be, a lesson we should have learned after 9/11 and Katrina.

Some related thoughts here.

I'M WATCHING JOHN KERRY on Kudlow right now and he's saying that further gun control is impractical. I wonder if he will run again?

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT, at the University of Rhode Island. FIRE is on the case.

VIRGINIA POSTREL concludes that she's a slut.

AN INTERVIEW WITH RON PAUL.

A DEFENSE OF "SWIFTBOATING."

THE TROOPS DON'T SEEM TO LIKE THE ARMY'S NEW "LAND WARRIOR" GEAR: And based on this story by Noah Shachtman, there's reason. A mature version of this stuff would be great, but climbing the learning curve is hard.

DAVE WINER to NBC: Free the video!

NO SECRET HOLD AFTER ALL? See the update to my earlier post.

MORE THOUGHTS ON GUN-FREE ZONES from Jacob Sullum at Reason.

UPDATE: Read this from Investor's Business Daily.

ZIGGURAT CON will be the first Dungeons and Dragons convention / tournament held in Iraq. (Via Boing Boing).

A REPORT ON THE TOUR DE FRED: “The conservatives say he checks the boxes but he also transcends our party. He reaches out to the middle. He brings Reagan Democrats back to our party. He has appeal that other candidates simply don’t have. . . . The man that came to see us today, in my view, is preparing to run for president.”

MARK STEYN: A Culture of Passivity.

UPDATE: Wanted: A Culture of Self-Defense.

RICH LITTLE gets a new fan.

THE VICTORY CAUCUS IS INCORPORATING as a 501(c)(4), and is looking for donors.

MICHAEL EISNER: It's time to get the public emotional about gun control. Follow the link for video.

Watch out for another one of those media-activist political partnerships like the one that brought us campaign finance "reform."

A REPORT ON THE BLACKBERRY BLACKOUT -- and its devastating psychological toll.

The photo is heartrending.

(Link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry!)

WISHING FOR CHENEY'S DEATH AT THE WASHINGTON POST: It was a mistake to pick a fight with Charles Johnson on the topic of comments.

STILL MORE ON FEDERALISM AND PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTION, from Ilya Somin.

Earlier post here.

HILLARY PLUNGING IN THE POLLS? "A majority of Americans have an unfavorable image of New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination. Clinton's current 45% favorable rating with the American public is her third consecutive reading below 50% in the past two months, and is one of the lowest Gallup has measured for her since 1993."

I wonder why that's happened? Other than a bit of waffling on the war, I can't think of anything new that she's done in that time to push her polls down.

UPDATE: Some positive spin: "Hillary is already looking Presidential in the polls!" Heh.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Frank Newport, who knows more about polling than I ever will, is mystified, too: "This is not a one-poll phenomenon. The pattern is fairly linear and persistent. . . . But so far, as others have noted as well, there is no one explanation which can be successfully defended with the available data."

Numerous InstaPundit readers suggest that it's not anything in particular, it's just that she's been campaigning and that's focused people's thinking on what they like, and don't like, about her.

LANNY DAVIS: Who cares about the "fundraising primary?"

NEW YORK NANNYISM: Eliot Spitzer is going after violent videogames. (Via Slashdot, whose denizens aren't overjoyed).

For a contrary view, read this: Porn and Violence: Good for America's Children?

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Hey, it's another secret hold in the Senate!

Yet again an anonymous Senator has placed a secret hold on legislation that would increase transparency. This time a secret hold has been placed on a bill, S. 223, that would mandate that Senators file their campaign finance reports electronically. This process would not only make these reports more readily available to the public but would also save money and resources. Yesterday this bill was blocked by an anonymous Senator who placed a secret hold on the bill. Secret holds are so looked down on these days that earlier this year the Senate itself banned the practice, although the bill containing that provision has yet to become law. But until secrets holds are banished forever, we need your help in exposing the culprit who is blocking consideration of the electronic filing requirement for Senate campaign finance reports. We need your help to find out who placed this secret hold! Call your Senators and ask them if they are the one with the secret hold on S. 223. Then report back here in the comments with your findings or email us at info@sunlightfoundation.com.

Follow the link for contact information.

UPDATE: A reader who works in the Senate says that there's no secret hold: "Yesterday, somebody attempted to move the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act up on the schedule by asking for Unanimous Consent. One or more Senators objected to an immediate Unanimous Consent to give themselves time to review the legislation. The legislation is not blocked from receiving its regular consideration; it simply did not receive an early Unanimous Consent vote. The bill will come up in regular order."

DILIGENT CORRECTIONS at The Washington Post. Okay, it's not important, but I'm glad they fixed it.

IN THE MAIL: David Linden's The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God. Neo-neocon should like the cover photo . . . .

PARTIAL-BIRTH ABORTION BAN UPHELD. I believe that the ban should have been struck down on commerce clause grounds as outside Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce. Interestingly, the opinion contains this observation from Justice Thomas:

I also note that whether the Act constitutes a permissible exercise of Congress'’ power under the Commerce Clause is not before the Court. The parties did not raise or brief that issue; it is outside the question presented; and the lower courts did not address it.

I hope that it is raised in a future case.

UPDATE: Brendan Loy notes confusion at the AP.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Avoid the rush! Get your abortion now! Hmm.

And yes, I realize that under Raich the argument above has less strength, but I think that Raich was wrongly decided. More here.

TAKING THE OATH OF OFFICE, with reservations.

INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMACY AS JUNIOR HIGH:

RUSSIA'S sense of self-esteem has long been inseparable from its relationship with America. To have America as an enemy during the Cold War gave the Soviet Union a sense of urgency and of purpose: America took Russia seriously!

The end of the cold war deprived Russia briefly of a vital adversary. It is only logical now that, as Russia tries to reassert itself on the world stage, and restore its sense of greatness, it is returning to the sort of sparring with America that it found—perversely—so comforting before.

No television chat show in Russia passes without a bout of America-bashing. Russia does not mind being resented by America. What it does mind is being ignored.

Can we set up a sort of Potemkin foreign-policy to meet the apparently inexhaustible worldwide need to be taken seriously? Kind of like a global self-esteem camp? I thought that was what the U.N. was for. . . .

A CALL FOR "SENSIBLE RESTRICTIONS" ON PRESS FREEDOM:

A practical, commonsense way of reducing gun violence -- especially in the schools -- would be a federal law prohibiting, or at least seriously limiting, the interstate reporting of sensational gun crimes like Virginia Tech for five working days.

Such a law would not affect local coverage, where there is a need for the immediate dissemination of information, but would make the event 'old news' when it was finally reported nationally and therefore unlikely to get the massive publicity that invites further, copycat violence. Even a small reduction in today's intense coverage of such events might, by not stimulating some potential gunman to action, save lives.

While 'gun' laws are hard to enforce because of the easy concealment of firearms, the public nature of 'news' would make enforcement of this law virtually automatic.

Because the delay would be short and serve a compelling government interest, it should pass constitutional muster; the Brady law serves admirably as a precedent here. While First Amendment absolutists will cavil, the simple fact is that it is as wrong to hold that the Press Clause protects a media 'right' to lethally endanger the public as it would be to hold that the Religion Clause protects human sacrifice.

He leaves out the argument that "if it saves just one life, it's worth it," though. Plus, no explicit appeal on behalf of "the children." Also, no claim that we shouldn't let Big News profit from higher ratings even as it contributes to more violence, and hence more profits! But I give it a B+.

UPDATE: Reader Stephen Hill emails: "How about a news story buy-back? There are plenty I’d like to return…"

ANOTHER UPDATE: A few readers seem to be mistaking the above for a serious proposal, rather than a mockery of gun-controllers' constitutional style. Then again, today's politics are pretty much beyond parody . . . .

But SayUncle gets it.

BLOGGERS IN EGYPT:

THEY call themselves pyjamahideen. Instead of galloping off to fight holy wars, they stay at home, meaning, often as not, in their parents' houses, and clatter about computer keyboards. Their activity is not as explosive as the self-styled jihadists who trouble regimes in the region, and they come in all stripes, secular liberal as well as radical Islamist. But like Gulliver's Lilliputians, youthful denizens of the internet are chipping away at the overweening dominance of Arab governments.

In Egypt, for instance, blogging has evolved within the past year from a narcissistic parlour sport to a shaper of the political agenda. By simply posting embarrassing video footage, small-time bloggers have blown open scandals over such issues as torture and women's harassment on the streets of Cairo.

Somebody should write a book about this phenomenon. But there's pushback. Read the whole thing.

THE EXAMINER WONDERS when Duke will apologize to the lacrosse team.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Okay, this isn't directly related to pork, but it's a good idea, and it's certainly in the ballpark:

But if Newmark has his way, there might be a new online venture that most certainly would be of interest to Washingtonians. At a private dinner in Manhattan over the weekend, Newmark expressed an interest in starting a Web site that would track the net worth of politicians while they’re in office. There are no concrete plans under way yet, but Newmark admitted that he’s done a lot of thinking about the idea recently.

One of the things that sparked Newmark’s interest in such a project was former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., who has seen his own personal fortune grow from roughly $290,000 when he first joined Congress to more than $6 million, 20 years later.

“I just don’t see why these guys are amassing personal, private fortunes while in office,” Newmark said.

This wouldn’t be Newmark’s first participation in an online venture designed to increase transparency: On Friday, Newmark announced that he had accepted a full board membership at the Sunlight Foundation, which seeks to “reduce corruption, ensure greater transparency and accountability by government, and foster public trust in the vital institutions of democracy.”

Yeah, it's kind of suspicious how these guys always seem to get rich on government salaries.

And here, by the way, is an interesting rumination by Craig Newmark on what he's learned from Craigslist. I heard it on the radio the other day, but now the audio's up. It's worth a listen.

AFTER I DISSED THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS' EDITORIAL YESTERDAY, they invited me to write a column on guns. It's here.

I think Dave Kopel did a better job in this piece for the Wall Street Journal -- but he had twice the length. Yeah, that's my excuse. . . .

UPDATE: I should stress -- my formulation above isn't as clear as it should have been -- that the invitation wasn't in response to my dissing of their editorial. They had actually emailed me on Monday. It was in spite of my dissing of their editorial. Still admirable, but not quite the same thing.

MICKEY KAUS: "Barack Obama's misguided attempt to connect the Virginia Tech murders with the Imus slur ("quiet violence") and, yes, loss of health care benefits due to layoffs and overseas competition, doesn't come off quite as obscene as you'd expect when you listen to it--because Obama's delivery is too fatigued and subdued, even depressive, to trigger the sense that he's manipulating anybody. Still, it's not exactly evidence of a fresh intelligence, or even basic common sense, at work--much less rising to the occasion." But Mickey offers a charitable explanation.

THERE'S A HIT LIST? I wonder if I'm on it? If it weren't for the honor of the thing, I'd rather walk . . . .

ARNOLD KLING HAS THOUGHTS on decision-making under uncertainty.

RUNNING THE NUMBERS on Al Gore's solar panels: "Bad Investment, So-So Environmentalism, Good Politics."

April 17, 2007

IS THE EUROPEAN UNION GOING SOFT, TOO SOON in Bosnia?

REMEMBERING THE VICTIMS: Gateway Pundit has a lengthy and moving roundup.

BLOGOMETER: "If you were expecting for the netroots to join more traditional Dem calls for increased gun control following the tragedy in Blacksburg, VA, don't hold your breath. At deadline, none of the top five netroots sites (Daily Kos, Eschaton, TPM, AMERICAblog, and MyDD) have called for any changes to gun laws (CLARIFICATION: AMERICAblog does ask for a 'revisit' of guntrol but nothing specific). And don't expect them to either. The VA Tech shootings are serving as an albeit tragic marker in demonstrating just how different Dems are in '07 than they were in '99. With bloggers in the lead, Dems have gotten past the gun-control issue and helped reclaim majorities with help from netroots backed pro-gun candidates Sens. Jim Webb (D-VA), John Tester (D-MT), and Reps. Brad Ellsworth (D-IN) and Heath Shuler (D-NC). As Rudy Giuliani faces heat from social conservatives for telling them they need to 'get beyond issues' like abortion, one wonders how many elections the GOP has to lose before they embrace a similar evolution."

UPDATE: Harry Reid is with the Netroots on this.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Don Surber: "Not so fast, Blogometer:

No, dearie, the voters of West Virginia got Democrats to change their tune. Had Gore carried us, he would have won the 2000 election without Florida.

Or if he had carried Arkansas.

Or Tennessee.

He lost each of those states because he failed to respect the Second Amendment.

Lesson learned. Kerry toted a gun to the Racine (W.Va.) rally on Labor Day 2004.

Yes, but I think the Netroots folks realized this faster than a lot of more entrenched Democratic leaders.

DON IMUS: Like a school shooter?

UPDATE: Oh, yeah, outsourcing, too. "Does this also make the poor people in developing countries who take outsourced jobs complicit in the 'violence?'" Fire Obama's writers.

ROCCO DIPIPPO reports from Baghdad: "I have observed first-hand the effects of the Bush Administration's new Iraq security plan since it began two months ago. Street violence in Baghdad and surrounding areas has declined. Shops and markets once boarded up are reopening. Iraqi civilians are venturing out onto the streets again and living their lives with less fear of being persecuted, tortured, maimed or killed. To be sure, there is still plenty of terror and violence in Iraq, but since the 'troop surge' began, it has lessened considerably." May it continue to do so.

UPDATE: Sigh.

HAPPY TAX DAY: "Our tax code is the DNA of our nation's moral compass. I am proud to pay taxes because I take pride in America."

UPDATE: Jim Treacher emails: "Another way our tax code is like DNA: It takes cutting-edge technology and thousands of man-hours to decode it."

Heh.

JERALYN MERRITT AT TALKLEFT on Virginia Tech and the gun control argument: "Gun Control is Not a Cure."

Also, check out this roundup from Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing.

Plus, at The Speculist, a Third Way approach. It may be the future.

UPDATE: Thoughts on infantilizing the culture, from Jeff Goldstein.

YOU DON'T SAY:

Everyone from economists and sociologists to Oprah knows that women work more than men. Their longer combined hours, at the home and at the office, stop men from taking afternoon naps on the couch and cause fights that end with men spending nights on the couch. And yet according to new study, those longer hours are a myth, because it's just not true that women carry a heavier load.

Will Oprah be running with this anytime soon?

TIM BLAIR: "As an environmental pioneer, I long ago became accustomed to unfair abuse from planet-flushing reactionary kilowatt-burners."

GAIL HERIOT: "Here's my question: What if the University of Texas had argued for academic freedom in Sweatt v. Painter in 1950?"