September 08, 2007

DARTMOUTH'S ADMINISTRATION does the deed. Plus, this: "Governance Committee considered censoring or limiting bloggers who write about Trustee elections."

ILYA SOMIN ON SOCIALISM: "The spectre that once haunted Europe and the world may have been defeated and discredited. But we have not yet completed the task of driving a stake through its heart."

THE VICTORY CAUCUS STILL WANTS YOU TO SUPPORT THE TROOPS by signing the online petition.

JEW-HATRED and Jihad.

A LOOK AT POLITICS AND THE EASTERN ORTHODOX CHURCH, in Romania.

A UNIQUE MELDING OF dead-tree media and blogging. I think it's very clever.

GOODBYE TO CHUCK HAGEL: "From would-be anti-war presidential candidate to a guy who wants to spend more time with his family. . . . Ironically, the man who'll most likely replace Hagel is both 1)a Democrat and 2)proudly pro-Iraq War: Bob 'Ask Me about Vietnam' Kerrey."

UPDATE: Ouch.

OKAY, HERE'S AN IRAQ WITHDRAWAL PLAN I CAN LIVE WITH:

In a report to be released Sunday, a panel of experts assembled by the U.S. Institute of Peace calls for a 50 percent reduction in U.S. forces in Iraq within three years and a total withdrawal and handover of security to the Iraqi military in five years. . . .

With some recent security improvements, the biggest problem facing the Bush administration and Iraq is the failure of politicians in Baghdad to reconcile Sunni and Shiite factions and pass critical laws to secure the fledgling new democracy. "The situation remains fluid, but a window has opened, fleetingly, for Iraq to proceed with political reconciliation. Iraq's national politicians have been unable to take full advantage of this opportunity," says the report, authored by USIP vice president Daniel Serwer.

That seems like a realistic timetable, and -- coming from the Institute of Peace -- it can hardly be called a warmongering one. And it recognizes that these things take time. Indeed, things may go faster, though this piece from the New York Times takes a less positive view.

UPDATE: McCain is still on the warpath: "McCain Warns Against Iraq Pullout."

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here, from Sunday's Washington Post. Excerpt:

In Baghdad, Crocker and O'Sullivan pressed Maliki to reach consensus with four other Iraqi leaders representing Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. In late August, the five announced agreement on a path forward on stalled legislation such as de-Baathification. A week later, Bush made a surprise visit to Anbar where he met with Maliki and the others to congratulate them, then met with the sheiks to highlight the success of the U.S.-tribal coalition.

The trip energized Bush and his team. Even Gates said he was more optimistic than he has been since taking office. While the secretary had been "cagey" in the past, a senior defense official said, "he's come to the conclusion that what Petraeus is doing is actually more effective than what he thought."

But the trip did not end the debate.

Nope. Probably nothing will, at least until after the 2008 election. Meanwhile, on the political front, a reader sends a link to this story, which I had somehow missed when it came out the other day:

Huge strides towards peace in Iraq were made during discussions between Middle Eastern power-brokers over the weekend, Northern Ireland's Deputy First Minister said today.

Martin McGuinness said four days of Finnish talks involving politicians from Northern Ireland and South Africa were a major stepping stone towards a resolution of conflict in the troubled region. . . .

Organisers said the representatives from Sunni and Shiite groups in Iraq agreed on a road map to peace during the secret talks in Finland.

The four-day meeting brought together 16 delegates from the feuding groups to study lessons learned from successful peacemaking efforts in South Africa and Northern Ireland.

Is there anything to this? Beats me. I'd certainly like it to lead to something.

MORE: Further developments here:

President Bush's top two military and political advisers on Iraq will warn Congress on Monday that making any significant changes to the current war strategy will jeopardize the limited security and political progress made so far, The Associated Press has learned.

U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who has been less forthcoming than Gen. David Petraeus in advance of his testimony, will join Petraeus in pushing for maintaining the U.S. troop surge, seeing it as the only viable option to prevent Iraq and the region from plunging into further chaos, U.S. officials said.

Crocker and Petraeus planned to meet on Sunday to go over their remarks and responses to expected tough questioning from lawmakers - including skeptical Republicans. But they will not consult Bush or their immediate bosses before their appearances Monday and Tuesday, in order to preserve the "independence and the integrity of their testimony," said one official.

Read the whole thing.

MEN ARE FROM MARS, Dennis Kucinich is from Venus.

THE TROUBLE WITH TRIBBLES is now available online. Not in the Edward Gorey version, though. Er, though that's online too, I guess. . . .

MESSAGE discipline.

OSAMA, FRUSTRATED: "It really must gall him that President Bush can fly into al-Anbar Province in Iraq, the former al Qaeda stronghold, while the only thing Osama can fly into is a rage."

ANNALS OF SEXISM: "How men cope with being cast as predators." Excerpt:

Ted Wallis, a doctor in Austin, Texas, recently came upon a lost child in tears in a mall. His first instinct was to help, but he feared people might consider him a predator. He walked away. "Being male," he explains, "I am guilty until proven innocent."

In San Diego, retiree Ralph Castro says he won't allow himself to be alone with a child -- even in an elevator.

Last month, I wrote about how our culture teaches children to fear men. Hundreds of men responded, many lamenting that they've now become fearful of children. They said they avert their eyes when kids are around, or think twice before holding even their own children's hands in public. . . .

It's true that men are far more likely than women to be sexual predators. But our society, while declining to profile by race or nationality when it comes to crime and terrorism, has become nonchalant about profiling men. Child advocates are advising parents never to hire male babysitters. Airlines are placing unaccompanied minors with female passengers.

Child-welfare groups say these precautions minimize risks. But men's rights activists argue that our societal focus on "bad guys" has led to an overconfidence in women. (Children who die of physical abuse are more often victims of female perpetrators, usually mothers, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.)

Similar bigotry regarding race wouldn't be tolerated. This, on the other hand, is embraced.

UPDATE: Related post here.

GOOD NEWS ON TAXES AND THE ECONOMY: "I have to say that I'm pretty impressed with how the debate has gone so far. To be fair, I mostly read the financial pages--but on those pages, there is a serious debate between people who are clearly interested in fixing the damn problem. There is passionate disagreement, but little fulmination about the morals of the borrowers or lenders, or the people arguing for different solutions. It may be the first time in my life I've ever witnessed an economic argument where almost everyone involved seems to feel that the matter is too important to risk hurling ideological brickbats."

Okay, actually if the economic situation has managed to scare everyone into being serious, maybe that's bad news. Where do I get some Krugerrands, fast?

UPDATE: Oh no -- hemlines are going down!

ANOTHER UPDATE: I don't know if hemlines are the reason, but Greg Mankiw notes that the bettors at Intrade now see a recession in 2008 as more likely than not.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: "Today is the 41st anniversary of the premier of Star Trek."

THOUGHTS ON single-sex education.

I WONDER IF THEY'VE GOT HIM ON A HSUICIDE WATCH:

Fugitive political fundraiser Norman Hsu was behaving erratically as he fled the Bay Area on Amtrak's California Zephyr, at one point stripping off his shirt and shoes, before paramedics were called to take him off the train in western Colorado, passengers said Friday.

Hsu, 56, on the run for the second time from a 1992 grand theft conviction in San Mateo County, was arrested Thursday after the paramedics took him to a hospital from the train station in Grand Junction, Colo. A spokesman at St. Mary's Hospital said Friday night that Hsu was in fair condition but would not say what was wrong with him.

It would be troubling if he were to die and leave so many questions unanswered.

A BUSH BLAST from the past! But really, UNICEF? Even then?

REVISIONIST HISTORY: The Associated Press gets it wrong on Kyoto again: "Readers with a long memory may recall that the United States never adopted the Kyoto Protocol because the Clinton administration never submitted it for ratification to the Senate. The Clinton administration never submitted it to the Senate for ratification because in July 1997 the Senate voted 95-0 to adopt a resolution stating that ''the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol to, or other agreement regarding, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992, at negotiations in Kyoto.'" Yet according to AP, the U.S. was a party to Kyoto until Bush unilaterally pulled us out.

It's not like this is the first time the Associated Press has blown it.

UPDATE: Maybe the AP just has a short memory.

A LOOK AT the real health care crisis. "I am talking about IIH – Internet Induced Hypochondria."

IN THE MAIL: S.M. Stirling's The Sunrise Lands, the latest in a series of alt-history novels that began with Island in the Sea of Time. I interviewed Stirling about this series a while back.

UPDATE: Opened it up and almost immediately came to an amusing easter egg -- a swordsmith named A.E. Isherman, whose motto is "The right to buy weapons is the right to be free."

FAKE BEARDS from the Al Qaeda gag shop. I'm guessing that their whoopee cushions are . . . explosively funny.

GREEN IS AS GREEN DOES: Thoughts on private jets and carbon offsets.

HSU-FLY, DON'T BOTHER ME! What made Norman Hsu run? "Much about Mr. Hsu remains a mystery, most notably the source of the money for the donations that made him a favorite in Democratic circles. . . . Mr. Hsu's past, illuminated by documents fished out of storage at various courts and interviews with former partners and friends, is full of failed businesses, a kidnapping, lawsuits and bouts of financial ruin followed by hard-to-explain recovery. . . . Politicians and donors describe a pleasant and friendly man, though most are hard-pressed to say what he did for a living."

DAVID ADESNIK notes how fast things are changing in Iraq.

THOUGHTS ON PARENTING, from Tony Woodlief.

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY WINS F.I.R.E.'S speech code of the month.

Which is nothing to be proud of.

NOT MY IDEA OF AIDE MATERIAL: "A high-ranking official in Gov. Blagojevich's office spent nearly two years in a federal prison for refusing to aid a government terrorism probe into a series of bombings in Chicago and New York City." (Via Hot Air).

UPDATE: Bill Hobbs emails: "I read the Sun-Times story. Which political party is Blagojevich from?"

It's a mystery!

REMEMBERING Madeleine L'Engle.

MICKEY KAUS: "Michelle Obama maybe doesn't need to worry so much anymore that her husband will become a god-like figure requiring her unique humanizing skills. He's losing by 15 points in the Democratic party to someone who voted for the war and hasn't apologized."

September 07, 2007

IS "UGLY NARRATIVE" newspeak for true? Interesting discussion in the comments.

WILL WILKINSON on tax increases: "It is possible that the state can make its citizens better off by taking $1.76 to spend $1.00, if those very expensive dollar bills are spent on highly valuable public goods folks can’t coordinate to provide privately. But I reckon this kind of bona fide public good is a pretty small part of the existing budget." I'm afraid you also have to allow for those missing and possibly nonexistent pumps.

ANDY ROTH IS PREPARED TO respond to bin Laden.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Another twisted tale of Congressional earmarking:

The U.S. Navy wants a business owned by the family of Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski to hand over a piece of high-tech equipment bought with some of the $9.25 million in taxpayer funds Kanjorski steered to the company.

Except no one seems to know where to find the equipment — a high-pressure pump.
The mystery of the missing pump, combined with newly unearthed evidence that federal investigators probed Kanjorski’s connections to the company, Cornerstone Technologies, has given new life to a story that seems unlikely to go away. . . .

Kanjorski encouraged the creation of Cornerstone in the late 1990s to develop — and one day commercialize — the technology. It was formed by his nephew, Peter Kanjorski, and a scientist, Bruce Conrad, who were joined in the company by four of the congressman’s other nephews and his daughter.

In 1998, with the help of Rep. John P. Murtha, a fellow Pennsylvanian and the top Democrat on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, Rep. Kanjorski earmarked $3.5 million for the research through the Navy.

Sounds like a culture of corruption to me.

UPDATE: A nepotistic connection here: "So, the head of the company he secured earmarks for is on his payroll, but he's doing a Sergeant Schultz and knowing nothing? I don't think!"

"AHISTORICAL NONSENSE:" You'll be shocked when you see the source.

SHOOT YOUR HUSBAND -- go on Oprah! (Via Brendan Loy).

DCGUNCASE.COM is a new blog about Parker v. District of Columbia, the case in which the D.C. Circuit struck down the DC gun ban. The case is now on petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court.

THE ZERO-TAX CHOMSKY/BIN LADEN TICKET: I'm for it, but only if they have to debate Ron Paul and Mike Gravel.

UPDATE: "Read my lips -- no new taxes."

ANOTHER UPDATE: Another supporter!

MORE: Incisive commentary from Frank J.: "What I don't from the video is what exactly was the reaction he was hoping from 9/11 since apparently the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq weren't it. I should also note that Osama is not a Truther since he sounds pretty sure he's responsible for 9/11. Someone should ask him about WTC 7."

A LOOK AT THE PSYCHOLOGY PROFESSION'S diversity problem.

MADELEINE L'ENGLE HAS DIED. When I was a kid, I very much enjoyed A Wrinkle in Time. And the Insta-Daughter liked it a lot too.

ARE THE WHEELS COMING OFF the anti-war bus in Congress?

DEFENDING the indefensible.

UPDATE: Tom Smith on Eric Hobsbawm: "It just goes to show, if you are very smart, reasonably dishonest, and don't care about the sufferings of actual humans, your opportunities to promote evil are really quite good, and you may come to be greatly admired."

RESOLVING THE GOLDSMITH CONTRADICTION: "In sum, Goldsmith believes that the War on Terror has been hobbled by excessive legal constraints, but also argues that the Bush Administration's response to the problem was both legally dubious and politically counterproductive. In my view, he is largely correct on both counts."

That's accurate. And I think Goldsmith is largely correct on both counts too. Plus, I agree with the commenter who says that The Goldsmith Contradiction would make a great Robert Ludlum title.

INDEED:

The surge was not going to work. But the surge has worked.

Everybody from the Brookings Institution to the Washington Post has gotten around to admitting that. Even such an inveterate war opponent as Rep. Brian Baird, who voted against virtually every bill supporting the war, has reversed his stance to accept the simple, undeniable fact that the surge is working.

But that doesn't matter anymore.

Of course not. Plus, this:

Seibel goes on to explain that the story was pegged on the Pentagon's assertion earlier this summer that U.S. casualties would likely increase with the surge of troops.

"Pentagon officials and the White House had predicted that U.S. casualties would rise, especially since the U.S. forces had launched major offensives in Diyala province, north of Baghdad, and Babil province, to the south," the response said. "One of the most recent restatements of that premise came in the White House's July 12 assessment of progress in Iraq on Pages 3 and 4.

"So what happened?" Seibel wrote. "Not what had been predicted. U.S. deaths caused by enemy action peaked at 120 in May, before the surge reached full strength or Operation Phantom Thunder was launched. Combat casualties then fell consistently for the next three months, reaching a low of 56 in August. That's the lowest number of combat casualties all year. You have to go back to July 2006 to find combat casualties at that level."

The result? Angry emails from lefties. It's like they want the news to be bad. (Via Newsbeat1).

Or, as you might put it: "In another war, all this progress would be cause for bipartisan rejoicing." Or in another country.

SEXIER THAN KEITH OLBERMANN AND TUCKER CARLSON COMBINED: The latest Corn & Miniter Show is up!

JOEL GARREAU INTERVIEWS Wiliam Gibson. Gibson: "The geezer of the future will have more plugs and jacks -- will be more into that, probably, than younger people -- because he'll need it."

AIRING FRED THOMPSON'S family laundry.

HATE TALK FROM THE HEARTLAND: I await the outrage of the New York Times editorial board.

WELL, THAT HURTS: Osama slams Democrats for not ending war.

UPDATE: Kos does some slamming of his own.

Meanwhile, Jeff Goldstein has some thoughts, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A Bin Laden roundup.

Plus, this observation about Osama: "Further proof that he is just another multi-millionaire who hates America."

A BAD DAY FOR FRED THOMPSON? I don't like this proposal for a federal marriage amendment -- if state judges need to be kept in line, it should be done by state legislatures. And Andy Roth says that Fred just misrepresented his position on McCain-Feingold on Laura Ingraham's show.

UPDATE: More on Thompson's gay marriage proposal, including video, from Ryan Sager.

ECO-HYPOCRISY UPDATE: Al Gore goes Gulfstream again.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: So much for promises that the new Democratic Congress was going to be different:

Move over Bridge to Nowhere. Congress is back in town, and clearly back to business even uglier than usual.

It takes hard work to come up with an earmark more egregious than that infamous Alaskan bridge, but California's Dianne Feinstein is an industrious gal. Her latest pork--let's call it Rambo's View--deserves to be the poster child for everything wrong with today's greedy earmark process.

The senator's $4 billion handout (yes, you read that right) to wealthy West L.A. (yes, you read that right, too) is the ultimate example of how powerful members use earmarks to put their own parochial interests above national ones--in this case the needs of veterans. It's a case study in how Congress uses the appropriations process to substitute its petty wants for the considered judgments of agency professionals. And it's just the latest proof that, no matter how much outrage the American public might display over these deals--and no matter how often Congress promises to clean up its act--the elected have no intention of reforming the process. . . .

Given the recent uproar over Walter Reed, and Congress's many calls that we do more for the men and women returning home wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan, you'd think no elected representative could possibly have the chutzpah to impede the VA's considered attempts to inject efficiency into its facilities and provide better care for its constituents. Think ever so much again. It turns out the well-to-do in West L.A. consider the veteran's center grounds their own little rolling, personal park, and they want it to stay that way--thank you very much.

Meet the new boss, yada yada.

THOUGHTS ON VIOLENCE AND MASCULINITY: "If the authors' theory is correct--that traditional masculine socialization leads to violence--then why was it that in years past, when we had more traditional masculine socialization, fewer guys were shooting up schools?"

HU'S ON FIRST?

STEVE CHAPMAN on Putin and Stalin.

IN THE MAIL: Laura Ingraham's new book, Power to the People

THE LONDON TIMES REPORTS: "Almost half of Britain’s mosques are under the control of a hardline Islamic sect whose leading preacher loathes Western values and has called on Muslims to 'shed blood' for Allah, an investigation by The Times has found."

SOME COOL FAMILY PHOTOS, from Mr. Bingley.

"LIVING WAGE" HYPOCRISY in Maryland.

AUGIE'S QUEST: A video on Lou Gehrig's disease. Every view raises a dollar for charity, and it comes recommended by John Ondrasik of Five for Fighting. (Our podcast interview with Ondrasik can be heard here).

AN INTERVIEW WITH BILL ARDOLINO in Fallujah.

MICHAEL LEWIS: "So right after the Bear Stearns funds blew up, I had a thought: This is what happens when you lend money to poor people."

MORE ON THE SURGE: "An independent commission created by Congress said Thursday that U.S. forces in Iraq could give a larger role to the Iraqi Army by early next year, if the Iraqi forces continued to improve. . . . Congressional Democrats expressed immediate skepticism, saying in a hearing that they feared the Bush administration would selectively use this, parts of other recent reports and much-awaited assessments due from senior U.S. officials in Baghdad next week - including a major congressional briefing Sept. 11 - as part of a campaign to press for still more patience."

So they set up an independent panel to dilute the impact of the Petraeus Report. Then when it reports something that doesn't fit the talking points, they express "immediate skepticism."

As Don Surber comments: "That loud gulp you heard is from the 49 Democratic senators, independent Bernie Sanders and Republican Chuck Hagel. Remember, the No. 3 House Democrat, James Clyburn of South Carolina, said in July that good news from Iraq is 'a real big problem for us.' . . . Sabotaging their own report does not help Democrats."

EX-LAW PROFESSOR? Andrew Keen knows as little about me as he does about the things he writes about. Which hasn't stopped him from spamming me for attention. All he had to do was look at the bio in this review of his book -- but maybe he didn't read that far.

I'VE ALWAYS BEEN SUSPICIOUS OF THOSE MAIL-IN REBATES. This story does nothing to alleviate those suspicions:

This is a picture of the 1,300 unopened rebate forms a Mercury News reporter found in a dumpster near Vastech, a rebate processor for Fry's Electronics.

I just ignore rebate offers, and go for the best regular price.

RON BAILEY REPORTS that the case of the disappearing bees may be solved.

THE OTHER HSU DROPS:

Norman Hsu's quickly jump-started life on the lam came to a screeching stop less than 48 hours after it began when he got sick on Amtrak's California Zephyr train and was nabbed after being rushed to a Colorado hospital, according to the FBI.

The prolific Democratic fundraiser and fugitive was busted at 6 p.m. PDT by FBI agents from the Denver office, according to Special Agent Joseph M. Schadler in the FBI's San Francisco office. . . . Hsu had fled the law for the second time by skipping out on a Wednesday court date - and $2 million bail - in Redwood City.

It'll be interesting to see what comes of this. Meanwhile, some further thoughts at Wizbang: "Norman Hsu has a great deal of questions to answer. And we need those answers. . . . Of all these, I think the source of his money is the most important. Every single investigation into his business history ends up blank -- 'there's no there there,' as Gertrude Stein once said about Oakland. He apparently had no visible means of possessing that much money, and I -- and anyone who cares the least about our electoral process -- ought to know who was trying to inject that much cash into certain candidates -- and, by extension, what they sought to gain by it."

And some big-picture thoughts here: "I think the Hsu case is bigger than Vick and Craig combined. It has a creepy, tip-of-the-iceberg feel to it. . . . Yes, there will be more Hsus to tap."

AT GAYPATRIOT, some thoughts on the religious zeal of the "outers."

PROMOTING DAVE HARDY'S Second Amendment video.

THEY'RE NOT COMING FROM A POSITION OF STRENGTH: Democrats newly willing to compromise on Iraq.

September 06, 2007

WHY AM I WRITING ABOUT POLITICS AND TECHNOLOGY, when the big news is that the Vanessa Hudgens nude photos are real!

A SHOCKING DEPARTURE: "Imagine. A political ad that focuses on 'the children.' How original."

DEAN BARNETT ON why there isn't a conservative DailyKos.

A CULTURE OF CORRUPTION?

MORE ON THE CAMPAIGN TO preemptively discredit Petraeus.

POLITICS END AT THE WATER'S EDGE: Except, you know, when they don't.

UPDATE: More at Gateway Pundit.

THE AL DURA CASE: A petition. The new French government may be more receptive.

NOT PLAYING "NAME THAT PARTY" AT The New York Times: "Among the 11 public officials arrested in an F.B.I. corruption sting in New Jersey today was a leading Democratic supporter of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign in that state, Mayor Samuel Rivera of Passaic. It was the latest legal embarrassment involving an ally of the Clinton campaign, coming only one day after a wealthy Clinton donor, Norman Hsu, missed his court date in a California fraud case and apparently disappeared."

DUKAKIS/BENTSEN. Heh.

POWERING YOUR HOUSE with a Prius. My house is wired for a generator, but I've never bought one. Maybe I should get my Highlander Hybrid modified for this. A generator is probably cheaper, though.

WIRED looks at Fred Thompson on technology issues. Hey, what other candidate gets praise from Kevin Mitnick?

MICHAEL CANNON: Socialized medicine is already here.

HOW FACEBOOK TOOK DOWN A GIANT: But was this power used for good, or for evil?

STUART TAYLOR & K.C. JOHNSON'S book on the Duke rape case gets a very positive review from Abigail Thernstrom in the Wall Street Journal. (Free link).

The book's currently #34 on Amazon.

UPDATE: Okay, now it's up to 25.

LOTS OF CONVERGESOUTH NEWS, from Ed Cone.

PEACEKEEPING IN THE BALKANS: "The United States continues to back a 'unitary' state in Bosnia. Since 1996 this has been the US position. The problem is the current 'unitary' Bosnian state really isn't."

FREEMAN HUNT thinks the Presidential race is over. "Get used to typing 'President Thompson.'"

Seems a bit early to be drawing that conclusion.

I'M SKEPTICAL ABOUT THE CLAIMS THAT THE fake butter flavoring in microwave popcorn causes lung disease in people who eat it, but I have to say that I've always found it disgusting. Maybe my sense of smell is different, but to me it's always smelled more like rancid motor oil than butter, and I always hate it when people are microwaving popcorn at the office. So if people want to ban the stuff based on dubious science, well, I'll be less upset than I might otherwise be . . . .

THOUGHTS ON POLITICAL OUTING OF GAYS, from Michael Silence.

Heck, I can remember when you weren't even supposed to out people as communists.

REUTERS GETS IT WRONG again.

THIS IS INTERESTING: "The impactor believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs and other life forms on Earth some 65 million years ago has been traced back to a breakup event in the main asteroid belt."

A KIDS' GUIDE to camping out. By a writer for "Bill Nye, the Science Guy."

MARY KATHARINE HAM INTERVIEWS BRAD SMITH about blogs, campaign finance, and federal election law.

NO SURPRISE HERE: "Congressional Democrats are trying to undermine U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus' credibility before he delivers a report on the Iraq war next week, saying the general is a mouthpiece for President Bush and his findings can't be trusted."

RICHARD FERNANDEZ REVIEWS Michael Ledeen's new book, The Iranian Time Bomb.

CORRUPTION ARRESTS IN NEW JERSEY: Another chance to play Name That Party!

THIS SURVIVAL TOOL gets a great review at BoingBoing. It does look kind of cool.

Plus, Popular Mechanics loves the Leatherman Skeletool.

FLEMMING ROSE on the terror arrests in Denmark. And Michael van der Galiën on the terror arrests in Germany.

STRATEGYPAGE:

The major problem in Iraq is back in the United States. There, many politicians either don't bother, or don't want to believe, what is actually happening, and has happened, in Iraq. In a way, that makes sense. Because what is going on in Iraq is so totally alien to the experience of American politicians. But many Americans take a purely partisan, party line, attitude towards Iraq. So logic and fact has nothing to do with their assessments of the situation.

Read the whole thing.

PAUL BREMER WRITES:

IT has become conventional wisdom that the decision to disband Saddam Hussein’s army was a mistake, was contrary to American prewar planning and was a decision I made on my own. In fact the policy was carefully considered by top civilian and military members of the American government. And it was the right decision.

By the time Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003, the Iraqi Army had simply dissolved. On April 17 Gen. John Abizaid, the deputy commander of the Army’s Central Command, reported in a video briefing to officials in Washington that “there are no organized Iraqi military units left.” The disappearance of Saddam Hussein’s old army rendered irrelevant any prewar plans to use that army. So the question was whether the Coalition Provisional Authority should try to recall it or to build a new one open to both vetted members of the old army and new recruits. General Abizaid favored the second approach. . . . Moreover, we were right to build a new Iraqi Army. Despite all the difficulties encountered, Iraq’s new professional soldiers are the country’s most effective and trusted security force. By contrast, the Baathist-era police force, which we did recall to duty, has proven unreliable and is mistrusted by the very Iraqi people it is supposed to protect.

Read the whole thing.

TRAVELLING HSUS: Suitably Flip goes Knock, knock, knockin' on Norman's door.

AS PROSTITUTES TURN TO CRAIGSLIST, the law takes notice. "Augmenting traditional surveillance of street walkers, massage parlors, brothels and escort services, investigators are now hunching over computer screens to scroll through provocative cyber-ads in search of solicitors."

SO I'M READING JACK GOLDSMITH'S NEW BOOK, The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration, and so far it's quite good. Excerpt:

It is unimaginable that Francis Biddle or Robert Jackson would have written Franklin Roosevelt a memorandum about how to avoid prosecution for his wartime decisions designed to maintain flexibility against a new and deadly foe. . . . Many people think the Bush administration has been indifferent to wartime legal constraints. But the opposite is true: the administration has been strangled by law, and since September 11, 2001 this war has been lawyered to death.

As I've said before, this war has been overlawyered, which is not to say it has been well-lawyered. Goldsmith notes that the Defense Department alone has over 10,000 lawyers, not including reservists. More:

In my two years in the government, I witnessed top officials and bureaucrats in the White House and throughout the administration openly worrying that investigators acting with the benefit of hindsight in a different political environment would impose criminal penalties on heat-of-battle judgment calls. These men and women did not believe they were breaking the law, and indeed they took extraordinary steps to ensure that they didn't. But they worried nonetheless because they would be judged in an atmosphere different from when they acted, because the criminal investigative process is mysterious and scary, because lawyers' fees can cause devastating financial losses, and because an investigation can produce reputation-ruining dishonor and possibly end one's career, even if you emerge "innocent."

Why, then, do they even come close to the legal line? Why risk reputation, fortune, and perhaps liberty? Why not play it safe? Many counterterrorism officials did play it safe before 9/11, when the criminalization of war and intelligence contributed to the paralyzing risk aversion that pervaded the White House and the intelligence community. The 9/11 attacks, however, made playing it safe no longer feasible. . . .

Two factors exacerbated this anxiety in the spring of 2004 when Philbin and I brought our bad news to the White House. The government was beginning to receive terrorist threat information that was more frightening than at any time since 9/11, according to then-CIA director George Tenet. And the 9/11 Commission was preparing to grill Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft, Robert Mueller, and George Tenet on national television about all the things that hindsight showed they might have done, but didn't, to prevent the September 11 attacks. . . .

After 9/11, the Bush administration feared for the nation's safety as much as Franklin Roosevelt had. But Roosevelt's political conception of legal constraints had largely vanished, and by 2001 had been replaced by a fiercely legalistic conception of unprecedented wartime constraints on the presidency. When President Bush and his senior advisors began to order the aggressive actions that they believed the post-9/11 situation demanded -- covert military action, surveillance, detention, interrogation, military trials, and the like -- they encountered these constraints for the first time in a major conflict.

Indeed. In his book about the 9/11 aftermath, After, Steven Brill reports that John Ashcroft's instructions to his subordinates -- repeating President Bush's instructions to Ashcroft -- were not to ever let something like that happen again. It hasn't, but that command certainly affected attitudes -- and, now because nothing like that has happened again, we find ourself back in more of a 1990s mindset.

UPDATE: Reader Holmes Gwin emails:

Welcome to the post-SarBox, Elliott Spitzer world. We in business face this on a regular basis. I can’t decide whether I’m glad public servants experience the same headaches we do or concerned because an intelligence/military failure costs lives, while a business failure costs only money (though when Spitzer was around, it also sometimes cost freedom).

In business, not only has bad judgment become a crime, so has a good decision made on the basis of incomplete information, which later turns out to have been the wrong call. This is not good for America, where innovation and risk are what we do better than Europe, China, or India.

Law and lawyers are swell in their place. The extent of that place, however, is not unlimited.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Brian Gates emails:

Do the Volokh guys have the same book? See the discussion here, for instance. They (and the Washington Post, I suppose) make it sound like Goldsmith views the administration as a cabal of anarchofascists, actively destroying the laws that should apply to them even when it would be easier to get Congress and the courts to just change the law to suit their needs better. Your post on the book has a somewhat different feel. Are you all reading the same book?

I may be wrong, but I think the folks at Volokh are reading what newspapers have chosen to excerpt, which I think gives the book more of an anti-Bush spin than it really possesses (though I'm only about halfway through so far). Goldsmith is quite critical in places, but he also makes clear (as the passages above do) that he thinks people in the Administration meant well, and were responding to near-intolerable pressures, even if he often thinks they responded in a sub-optimal fashion.

MORE: Question answered. And lest I myself be accused of selective quotation, I'll note that Goldsmith emailed me to say that these excerpts captured the central point of the book, so I think they're representative. But I'll have more on the book later.

STILL MORE: Related thoughts from TigerHawk.

MICKEY KAUS: "It looks as if Gov. Schwarzenegger is on the verge of achieving one of his big systemic reforms, an end to gerrymandered legislative districts."

FRED THOMPSON ON JAY LENO: Video here. Reviews here and here. And Joe Gandelman weighs in.

UPDATE: Just watched it on TiVo. Don't agree with Geraghty that Thompson looked too thin -- he looked good on my HDTV. I thought his performance was good but not stellar; if Fred Thompson can't perform well on The Tonight Show, he's not Fred Thompson. But he didn't do any better than what you'd expect, considering. He did well enough; it's what comes next that will matter.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More thoughts from Roger Simon.

MORE: Further thoughts on Thompson's appearance here.

PLANS FOR A U.S. SPACEPORT ARE UNVEILED:

The spaceport is quite striking, which isn't surprising given that it was designed by famed British architect Norman Foster, in collaboration with American design firm URS Corp. The facility is a low-slung structure that uses natural earth as a berm and relies on passive energy for heating and cooling, with photovoltaic panels for electricity and water-recycling capabilities. A press release describes "a rolling concrete shell that acts as a roof with massive windows opening to a stunning view of the runway and spacecraft. The terminal and hangar facility are projected to cost about $31 million, and will provide a destination experience for visitors to Spaceport America. It will include Virgin Galactic's pre-flight and post-flight training facilities and lounges, as well as the maintenance hangar for two White Knight 2 and five Spaceship 2 aircraft."

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: "Vulviform architecture"? Not that there's anything wrong with that.

September 05, 2007

OOPS, I THOUGHT I'D POSTED THIS YESTERDAY, but didn't actually publish it. FEC applies media exemption to blogs. Good news.

HSU'S ON THE LAM! Illustrated!

BIG NEWS: For the first time in 10,000 years, farming isn't the dominant industry worldwide. "And thus passes a tremendous milestone in the history of our species."

A PETITION TO SUPPORT THE SURGE. Signatures are solicited.

STEPHEN GREEN is live-blogging the New Hampshire debate. So is Ed Morrissey's crowd. Also Lance Dutson and Jason Clarke, who are there.

UPDATE: Okay, I'm not liveblogging, but all this piling-on toward Fred Thompson is as likely to build him up as to tear him down. Stephen Green comments: "First question: Is Fred Thompson smarter than you guys? Answer: If he’s having a postshow cocktail in Leno’s greenroom, he is." Similar thoughts here: "They’re spending a tenth of the debate, debating Fred Thompson. Who says that Fred can’t dominate a debate which he doesn’t attend?"

TigerHawk is blogging, too.

MORE: Okay, I think Ron Paul's bit on homeland security after 9/11 was dead-on.

But later when he talked about how the American people didn't go to war, just a small cabal of neoconservatives, he sounded like, well, a kook. What about that Iraq war resolution in Congress?

STILL MORE: Just noticed that Ann Althouse is blogging too.

FINALLY: It was more of a debate than these have been. Fox's focus group seems to think McCain did best. One interviewee: "He made me feel safe." Another: "He has experience and it came though in his answers." Big complaint about Rudy -- every answer he gave revolved around New York.

And here's video of the Huckabee-vs.-Paul spat.

Dan Riehl was watching the people meters and observes: "Putting the candidates aside for a moment, what I saw was that when the message was win in Iraq, it didn't matter which candidate was saying it - the numbers for both conservatives and moderates went through the roof. And the stronger the talk, the higher the mean number. The only other issues that came close were immigration and taxes."

And expect more video highlights at Hot Air. Allah just emailed to say that they're on the way.

CLIMATE CHANGE ACTIVISM: Air travel for me, exercise for thee. "To be fair, there apparently are other projects that don't involve tethering people in developing countries to human hamster wheels."

J.D. JOHANNES WRITES on Charles Schumer's revisionist history.

UPDATE: More here: "And let me point out that Schumer voted for this war. He sent the troops to Iraq. Now he derides their achievements. The man has no shame."

DAVE KOPEL HAS BEEN WATCHING THE TIME TUNNEL, which I remember watching in reruns as a kid. He says it holds up better than lots of 1960s TV shows.

THE OTHER HSU DROPS: "This is getting fun."

Puns are supposed to be the lowest form of humor. But not lower than my standards!

ANOTHER HSU PUN: The Norman Evasion: "Demo fundraiser skips court hearing, whereabouts unknown." The pun headline appears only on the SFGate front page, though.

A CLASSIC "OOPS" STORY: "The officers said the nuclear warheads should have been removed before the missiles were mounted onto pylons under the bomber's wings for the Aug. 30 flight from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana."

UNDERCOVER in Little Morocco.

MORE CHINESE-MADE TOYS with lead problems.

IT'S NOT JUST THE G.O.P.: "If you thought conservatives were unhappy with 'Rudy McRomney', you might want to pay attention to growing netroots frustration with 'Edwama'."

A BOY NAMED HSU: A roundup of blog reactions.

NOW THINGS ARE REALLY SERIOUS: Defective Chinese condoms.

UPDATE: Reader Fred Boness emails: "This may explain why there are so many Chinese."

MORE CHARGES OF Potemkin journalism.

FLUNKING PHYSICS at the movies.

HSU-HSU-HSUDDIO: "Rhode Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy said Tuesday he's not returning $6,600 in donations he got from Norman Hsu, a prominent Democratic donor whose criminal past was recently revealed."

Pecunia non olet, as they say.

TONY BLANKLEY IS LESS GLOOMY THAN SOME about the GOP's prospects:

My hunch is that the next election may well come down to what the public thinks of "Bush's War" in Iraq — and also which party is seen as more able on the war on terror generally.

The public view of Iraq will be event-driven — either it will be working or it won't be. Neither malicious mainstream media badnewsing, nor White House happy talk will be able to trump reality. The progress in Iraq over the last six months has broken through the media's cordon dissanitaire. That is why the defeatist Democratic leaders and presidential candidates have felt forced to concede at least "short-term military" success.

If the military success and the growing political success at the local and provincial level with the Sunni tribal leaders continues and expands its effect to the national Baghdad government and we have both military calm and maturing pro-American governance in Iraq, Democrats from presidential candidate to city council will be in an awful state.

The Republican National Committee doubtless has stored all the video of Democratic defeatism from this spring and early summer uttered not only in Washington but by their local state legislators and city officials. (From what I saw this spring, the national Democratic Party defeatism talking points were being picked up by Democratic Party congressional wannabees across the country.) This spring the Democrats pushed all their chips in for defeat in Iraq.

They can't retrieve those chips now.

Which puts them in an awkward position if things go well, sure enough.

L.A. TIMES: IS CLINTON'S CANDIDACY blocking The Path to 9/11?

Among the nearly two dozen television DVDs slated for nationwide release on Sept. 11 is the second season of "Bones," the third season of "Grey's Anatomy" and the miniseries "The Starter Wife" that aired earlier this year. Not on the list on that day or any other in the near future is last year's highly controversial "The Path to 9/11."

The $40-million, five-hour ABC miniseries, which recently received seven Emmy nominations and drew a combined two-night audience of more than 25 million viewers, is for now on the path to nowhere. Its Amazon page reads: "Currently unavailable. We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock." . . .

Nowrasteh, also one of the miniseries' many producers, said he was told by a top executive at ABC Studios that "if Hillary weren't running for president, this wouldn't be a problem."

Maybe we can get some Chinese pirate DVDs . . . . And it's more evidence that Republicans were fools not to take on Big Entertainment back when they had the chance.

SAVE FUEL: Shorten politicians' motorcades. And make 'em all drive Priuses. If we're going to save the planet, they need to set an example.

BEATING BACK OPPRESSION, one child's game at a time.

RUNNING HSU: "Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu failed to appear Wednesday for a bail hearing and a judge issued a new warrant for his arrest. Hsu forfeits the $2 million bail he posted last week." Yeah, I linked a different report on this earlier, but that was before reader Vic Havens suggested the "running Hsu" pun.

KATIE COURIC: The Anti-Cronkite?

CONGRESSMAN PAUL GILLMOR has died.

ONLINE: A new Bruce Springsteen video from his forthcoming album Magic. Somehow the opening made me think of Blue Oyster Cult, but the mood quickly changes.

UPDATE: Reader Adam Kwiatkowski emails:

Springsteen's new song doesn't sound like Blue Oyster Cult. It sounds like 867-5309/Jenny.

If you sing "eight-six-seven-five-three-oh-ni-ee-ine" when the vocals start, and at the chorus, you'll be amazed at how well it fits.

You know, he's right. Tommy Tutone, call your office! And hope this doesn't breathe new life into the Jenny Scan. (bumped)

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here. I hope the rest of the album is a bit less derivative.

LIVEBLOGGING the new iPod announcement.

NO-SHOW HSU: Democratic mystery donor Norman Hsu skipped his bail hearing this morning. His lawyer doesn't know where he is.

IS THE D.C. GUN BAN UNCONSTITUTIONAL? The Washington Post Express has an online poll. At the moment, 65% of respondents think the ban violates the Constitution.

FRED THOMPSON WANTS YOUR QUESTIONS: Jon Henke emails:

We'd like to have Fred Thompson give video responses to questions from the general public. It seems likely to be more genuine, and probably more substantive, than the brief soundbites typical in televised debates. . . . So we've decided we'll ask some blogs to solicit questions from readers, then select the top 4-5 questions the blogger thinks should be answered by Thompson and pass them to us. We'll have him answer, on video, as many of the questions as we possibly can.

So if you've got a question, email me and put "Question for Fred" in the subject line. I'll sort through 'em and pass 4 or 5 on.

UPDATE: Okay, I've sent 'em on. No more email, please!

IN THE MAIL: The FBI: A History, by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones.

THOUGHTS ON the D.C. gun ban case.

THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT corrects the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, on what seems like a fairly elementary point of firearms law.

LAW TALK: A new podcast at Concurring Opinions.

THOUGHTS ON karma and dogma.

IF THE HSU FITS: The Examiner editorializes:

Hsu’s case raises so many disturbing questions that it is difficult to know where best to begin. But let’s start with this: Where was the U.S. Department of Justice for the past 15 years? Hsu’s plea was to California charges, but pleading no contest to charges of running a Ponzi scheme designed to defraud investors of $1 million and then disappearing overseas surely merited federal attention. Did California authorities fail to inform the feds? Or did the feds just look the other way? Somebody in California and Washington needs to step forward to answer these questions.

Then there is the question of what Hsu has actually been doing for these many years on the lam.

Apparently, something lucrative enough to pay for all those donations.

WHEN IS ENOUGH ENOUGH? "Depends on whose fatigue is more indefatigable!"

TED KENNEDY FACES BLOWBACK:

Once upon a time, Ted Kennedy could count on his daily dose of veneration. The right wing hated the Massachusetts Democrat, but progressives honored him as a defender of old-school liberalism.

In a remarkable turnaround, liberals are now heaping scorn on the 73-year-old senator. Young audiences boo at his name, and the leftish "Daily Show" on Comedy Central makes fun of him.

The source of unhappiness is Kennedy's efforts to kill an offshore wind farm on Nantucket Sound. Cape Wind was to be the first such project in the United States and a source of pride to environmentally minded New Englanders. Polls show 84 percent of Massachusetts residents in favor. But now it appears that America's first offshore wind farm will be near Galveston, Texas. . . . "But don't you realize -- that's where I sail!" may stand as Kennedy's most self-incriminating quote.

Well, he deserves it.

BRIING IT ON: "Cardiac patients in Britain may soon be getting replacement heart valves grown from their own adult stem cells. . . . Yacoub's team has an even bigger goal that such research makes possible — growing an entire human heart in the lab." (Via NewsBeat 1).

ANOTHER FOILED TERROR PLOT, this time in Germany:

Three suspected Islamic militants were arrested for allegedly plotting "imminent" and "massive" attacks on the Ramstein Air Base, a major U.S. and NATO military hub, and Frankfurt's busy international airport, German authorities said Wednesday.

German federal prosecutor Monika Harms said the three - two of whom were German converts to Islam - had trained at terror camps in Pakistan and procured some 1,500 pounds of hydrogen peroxide for making explosives. And a top legislator said the group could have struck "in a few days," noting a "sensitive period" that includes the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Keep looking guys -- there are probably more out there. (Video report here).

UPDATE: More here.

WHY SHOULD LARRY CRAIG resign?

September 04, 2007

IS AMERICA GONE? "I mean, I've heard of codependency, but I've never heard of a thing called 'comegalomania.'"

I have heard of a thing called bad speechwriting, though.

GUNS DON'T CAUSE CRIME, GUN CONTROL CAUSES CRIME: Or at least, anti-gun law enforcement officers seem to have legal problems a lot.

Meanwhile, another chance to play name that party!

OUTGOING: Sent out my new article to law reviews (entitled Is Dick Cheney Unconstitutional? it's about Cheney's claim to be a legislato