October 20, 2007

WWL TV projects a Bobby Jindal win in the Louisiana governor's race.

RIOTS IN AMSTERDAM.

LEFTY PROTESTERS IN GEORGETOWN STICK IT TO THE MAN by hitting a woman with a brick. (Via Dan Collins).

I THINK THE WORD YOU'RE LOOKING FOR IS . . . well, never mind: "And yet maybe Krugman is not really an economist."

THE NEW YORK TIMES: "Every now and then, we are tempted to double-check that the Democrats actually won control of Congress last year. It was particularly hard to tell this week."

It'll be even harder to tell who's in charge if Hillary's elected! Like President Cheney, only with hair . . . .

WITH HOWARD KURTZ'S HELP, a look at skewed reporting priorities in Big Media.

NEAL GABLER acts classy.

A BIG STRAW-POLL WIN FOR MIKE HUCKABEE. But reportedly, Rudy was well-received too. More on Rudy here.

Our podcast interview with Huckabee can be found here. I found him quite straightforward and likable, notwithstanding our disagreements on social issues. We haven't interviewed Rudy yet, but we'd like to.

UPDATE: Rob Port says that conservatives shouldn't back Huckabee because he's a nanny-stater. Yep. That's why libertarians don't, too.

More nanny-state related criticism of Huckabee can be found here: "There’s little doubt that Huckabee is a 'big government' guy when it comes to taxes."

ANOTHER UPDATE: More on Rudy from Jennifer Rubin.

MORE: Heh.

GEE, DO YOU THINK? "Maybe we're winning in Iraq."

But we're not done yet. Michael Yon emails:

Am in Baghdad and there is still fighting where I am. Heard two separate IEDs go off against American vehicles this afternoon. Both were just down the road. Minor injuries except for a soldier who lost a foot, but the vehicles were badly damaged. (Both strikes were by EFP.)

Iraq is improving but there are still some very bad spots.

Absolutely. Still, it's hardly the siege of Khe Sanh. And check out this Baghdad photo essay from Greyhawk.

EARLIER THIS WEEK, BUSH SAID HE WAS STILL RELEVANT.

But searching him on Google News just now, I'm not so sure:

UPDATE: No, this isn't a photoshop. Google News was briefly returning this result for everything I searched, so I saved a screenshot.

Here's another:

DALLAS MORNING NEWS: " Anyone who doubts journalists' decency and good sense need only to have seen Fox 4's Rebecca Aguilar in action this week to have their worst impressions confirmed. . . . Although Channel 4 pulled the video from its Web site, you still may find a copy floating around the Internet. Search for 'reporter ambushes senior citizen.'"

UPDATE: Of course, this isn't very impressive either.

INSTAPUNDIT'S ISTANBUL CORRESPONDENT, CLAIRE BERLINSKI, EMAILS: "For what it's worth, there have been jet fighters flying over the Bosphorus all night, rattling the windows and alarming my cats. Someone really wants to impress upon the citizens of Istanbul that they have a lot of loud, scary planes. I dare say it's not the Israelis dumping the odd fuel tank, either."

UPDATE: Protesting Turkish incursion talk in Kurdistan.

MICHAEL YON: Positive on Iraq, but worried about Afghanistan.

"ADVANCED CROTCH-SNIFFING:" One of the many topics addressed in The Dangerous Book for Dogs, which receives a generally favorable review from the Insta-Wife.

MORE PROBLEMS WITH THE CLINTON CAMPAIGN'S FUNDRAISING, along with this complaint:

The saddest thing about all this is that no one has a very strong incentive to do the legwork on researching it. The campaigns don’t want to know if their donors are shady, as we saw in the willful blindness towards Norman Hsu. Hillary’s rivals have an incentive, of course, but there must be fundraising skeletons in Obama’s and Edwards’s closets too, just as there must be plenty on the GOP side. That makes it a game of mutually assured destruction among the oppo research teams and no one wants to play that game. The media doesn’t have a grand incentive either, the LA Times’s laudable example notwithstanding, because investigations like these are resource-intensive while basically amounting to fishing expeditions, with little guarantee of finding any wrongdoing. Plus, once you investigate one campaign, you open yourself up to charges of bias by not investigating them all. The best hope is the FEC, but does the FEC have the time and personnel — and political will, given the inevitable feeble claims of anti-Asian racism that are bubbling up here — to do spot checks like this? I’m asking honestly; I don’t know the answer. And if the answer is yes, why aren’t they doing it?

Because all this stuff is just a game to fool the rubes?

CAR-FLAGRATION: "I wanted to give a brief nod to the New Jersey-area squirrel that destroyed a 2006 Toyota Camry."

UPDATE: More flaming-squirrel destruction, from Patterico. Does Ann Althouse know about this?

NANCY PELOSI REBUKES PETE STARK: WHY? "When you’re down to your last 11%, you stop digging."

Stark's remarks were bad enough that even the lefty blogosphere had to clean things up.

UPDATE: A comparison.

MARK STEYN: "Societies in the early stages of decline can be very agreeable - and often more agreeable than societies trying to cope with prosperity and rapid growth. . . . Civilized decline can be so charming you don't notice it's about to accelerate into uncivilized decline."

I remember Poul Anderson making the same point in one of his Dominic Flandry stories.

ENABLING global money transfers via cellphone.

STEPHEN FLYNN LOOKS AT five disasters that are coming soon if we don't address crumbling infrastructure. Problem is, the political rewards for fixing old stuff are far inferior to the political rewards for building new stuff -- even if the old stuff is stuff we need, and the new stuff is showy pork.

IN NASHVILLE, bloggers and Scenesters save the Spelling Bee.

IN THE MAIL: Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark's Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons.

BENAZIR BHUTTO speaks.

PROBABLY NOT: "Is there anything more macabre, stupid and campy in the modern political confusion than a nationalist Serbian Nazi?"

A LOOK AT "GUN FREE" school zones.

MOVEON: "But really, what's wrong with using rumors and imaginary facts to serve the noble purpose of ending this terrible war?"

Meanwhile, an NPR report on Saddam and Al Qaeda.

A "HAVE YOU NO DECENCY?" MOMENT for Duncan Black. I hope he's properly ashamed.

On the other hand, is it indecent if it's true?

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY: A Black-Box Candidacy.

And The Nation is also asking questions about where Hillary's money is coming from, and not much liking the answers it gets: "Her campaign dismissed Hsu as someone who'd slipped through the cracks of an otherwise unimpeachable system for vetting donors, and perhaps he was. The same cannot be said for the notorious financier Alan Quasha, whose involvement with Clinton is at least as substantial--and still under wraps."

UPDATE: "Won't you take me to Chinatown?"

It's interesting the way concerns about Hillary's fundraising seem to cross all partisan and ideological lines.

A DIVERSITY PROBLEM at the University of Iowa.

ASIA TIMES: Pakistan plans all-out war on militants.

Commentary: "I really do not see how this can be anything but good news." Well, it's a pleasant change, if true.

SHORTER BRIAN LEITER: And it's still kind of long.

DAINTY UNDERTHINGS vs. the Junta.

October 19, 2007

MITT ROMNEY: "By the way – a few of you may have heard that I'm a Mormon. I understand that some people think they couldn't support someone of my faith. That may be because they've listened to Harry Reid."

MY EARLIER POST ON ATRIOS AND EX POST FACTO LAWS got me thinking -- some of the backlash against things that the Bush Administration has been doing probably stems from a lack of understanding of just how bad the law has always been in many areas, leading to a false impression that things represent shocking new departures from the Constitution when they really represent . . . er, . . well-settled departures from the Constitution. Search, seizure, and privacy law, of course, was already seriously damaged by the Drug War long before Bush ever took office, something that tends to be forgotten in discussions of FISA or the Patriot Act. But it goes beyond that sort of thing. Sweeping Executive authority, for example, is nothing new.

One of my favorite examples of this is a case I used to teach back when I taught International Business Transactions, a Ninth Circuit case called U.S. v. Spawr Optical Research, 685 F.2d 1076 (9th Cir. 1982). As far as I can tell, it's not online for free anywhere. But here's the gist: Spawr was charged with selling laser mirrors to the Soviet Union in violation of U.S. export law. It seemed as if Spawr had a pretty strong defense, in that the governing statute, the Export Administration Act, had expired at the time the sale took place.

But President Ford had issued an Executive Order extending the statute despite its expiration -- yes, you read that right -- and the Ninth Circuit held that this act by the President was within his legal powers under another statute, the Trading With the Enemy Act. Here's an excerpt, with footnotes omitted:

In light of the pending expiration of the Export Administration Act of 1969 (EAA),[FN3] President Gerald Ford issued Executive Order No. 11940[FN4] on September 30, 1976 to maintain the EAA regulations forbidding the shipment of specified strategic items to certain foreign countries. He acted pursuant to s 5(b) of the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA), 50 U.S.C. app. ss 1-44. When the Order was issued and while it remained in effect, the TWEA empowered the President, during a presidentially-declared national emergency, to "regulate, .. prevent or prohibit ... any exportation of ... or transactions involving any property in which a foreign country ... has any interest."Id. at s 5(b) (1)(B).[FN5] Rather than declare a new national emergency to support the Executive Order, President Ford relied on the continued existence of national emergencies declared in 1950 by President Truman relating to the Korean War and in 1971 by President Nixon concerning*1080 an international monetary crisis.

The Spawrs exported laser mirrors for the second Soviet Order, however, after the EAA had expired and before it was reenacted on June 22, 1977,[FN6] when the sole basis for the regulations was the Executive Order. The Spawrs assert that the Order did not preserve the export regulations and, therefore, the Government lacked authority to prosecute them for their exporting mirrors for the second Soviet orders because: (1) there was no genuine national emergency, (2) the regulations were not rationally related to any emergency then in existence, and (3) the lapse of the EAA shows that Congress intended to terminate the regulations.

Former section 5(b) of the TWEA delegated to the President broad and extensive powers; “it could not have been otherwise if the President were to have, within constitutional boundaries, the flexibility required to meet problems surrounding a national emergency with the success desired by Congress.” United States v. Yoshida International, Inc., 526 F.2d 560, 573 (Cust. & Pat.App.1975) (footnote omitted). Wary of impairing the flexibility necessary to such a broad delegation, courts have not normally reviewed “the essentially political questions surrounding the declaration or continuance of a national emergency” under former s 5(b). Id. at 579.[FN8] The statute contained no standards by which to determine whether a national emergency existed or continued; in fact, Congress had delegated to the President the authority to define all of the terms in that subsection of the TWEA including “national emergency,” as long as the definitions were consistent with the purposes of the TWEA. 50 U.S.C. app. s 5(b)(3). In the absence of a compelling reason to address the difficult questions concerning the declaration and duration of a national emergency under former s 5(b), we decline to do so.

Moreover, the EAA apparently was allowed to lapse only because Congress could not resolve questions relating to the antiboycott provisions. See Arab Boycott Hearings on S. 69 and S. 92, Before the Subcommittee on International Finance of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, 95th Congress, 1st Sess. 1 (Senator Stevenson) (1977). The Spawrs have offered no evidence that Congress intended to dismantle the export controls.

In conclusion, even under the demanding scrutiny the Spawrs argue is appropriate because of the criminal nature of this case, *1082 it is unmistakable that Congress intended to permit the President to use the TWEA to employ the same regulatory tools during a national emergency as it had employed under the EAA. We, therefore, conclude that the President had the authority during the nine-month lapse in the EAA to maintain the export regulations.

So Congress had basically delegated all the authority within the Export Administration Act to the President anyway, allowing him to, in effect, enact a statute by issuing an Executive Order. And it doesn't matter that Congress let the Export Administration Act expire, because the court "knew" that the expiration was for other reasons. And anyway, Congress had already given the President power to make whatever export laws he wanted to make via executive order regardless.

Worth noting, just in case you thought that sweeping Executive power in these areas was something new.

UPDATE: Reader Dan MacLaughlin emails:

"President Gerald Ford issued Executive Order No. 11940 on September 30, 1976."

Was this, perhaps, on the recommendation of his then-Chief of Staff, Dick Cheney?

Not that I disagree with your larger point - lurid examples from the New Deal era are easy enough to come up with. But Cheney, at least, has been a consistent advocate of broad executive powers for many years, whether he was in the Executive Branch, Congress or private life.

Heh. I have no idea whether Cheney had anything to do with this decision or not. The answer is probably not, as it probably came from the Department of Commerce, Bureau of Export Administration (now the Bureau of Industry and Security). But I don't really know.

I DON'T THINK THE ACTIVE VOICE IS APPROPRIATE HERE: "No matter what, Democrats are going to make a ton of money for a charity off their political vitriol."

UPDATE: Related thoughts here.

TOM SMITH: "If I were behind the veil of ignorance and could choose hunter in a rich environment like the Amazon, or associate at a big law firm, I would go with the hunter gig."

SEEMS FITTING, somehow: "A glass monument to revolutionary icon Ernesto 'Che' Guevara was shot up and destroyed less than two weeks after it was unveiled by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's government."

UPDATE: "I wish I'd done it."

RADLEY BALKO: "For seven years, the left has been up in arms about President Bush's aggressive foreign policy, his secrecy, his partisanship, and his expansive claims on executive power. It's odd, then, that they're prepared to nominate Hillary Clinton to carry the party into the 2008 elections."

Like President Cheney, only with hair!

I'VE WRITTEN ABOUT THE DANGEROUS BOOK FOR BOYS and The Daring Book for Girls.

Now reader Kevin Manley emails with news of The Dangerous Book for Dogs. By "Rex" and "Sparky:"

The Dangerous Book For Dogs provides insight on everything from the tastiest styles of shoes to chew to the proper method for terrorizing squirrels. It also contains portraits of noble dogs throughout history, the mysteries of cats and humans, and everything else your dog ever wanted to know but was afraid to ask–like how to make toys out of human's household items, or how to escape from a humiliating reindeer costume. . . . tips on crotch sniffing (under the heading "How to Make Your Owner Look Like an Idiot") and a critical guide to frequently ingested items (vomit and poop receive top marks; rocks and keys rank considerably lower).

Manley wants to know if we'll do a podcast. Er, possibly.

HILLARY, EARMARKS, THE NEW SCHOOL, AND NORMAN HSU. No wonder Bob Kerrey liked him.

THOUGHTS ON VICTORY: At The Mudville Gazette, Greyhawk posts a broad-ranging photo essay from Baghdad, along with thoughts on the situation.

THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF HISPANIC JOURNALISTS is defending Rebecca Aguilar: "What she did was obtain an exclusive interview for your station in a professional manner. This is far from the 'ambush' that has been portrayed in the blogosphere."

Hmm. That's not how it looked to me. But at least we've established the ground rules. When bloggers with video cameras start cornering TV reporters in their driveways and parking lots, we'll have to remind people that they're just "obtaining an exclusive interview in a professional manner." Given the professional standards of the local-TV field, that may even be true . . . .

AT ACE'S PLACE, a Rebecca Aguilar-inspired poll.

THE UNITED STATES: A great place to be anti-American!

MARK STEYN: "Harry Reid's Rush-and-I-don't-agree-on-much-but letter makes a small man look even more shriveled. . . . yes, I know, Senator Reid is the guy who tips his doorman at the Ritz-Carlton with campaign contributions."

Plus, Harry Reid and the Letter of Doom.

IT'S A HARD LIFE, WHEREVER YOU GO: "Ellen DeGeneres' talk show was put on hold for a day because of her emotionally wrenching dog-adoption drama."

HEH.

A NOVEL APPROACH: Issues Over Politics. It's so crazy it just might work!

A LIST OF THE 100 ESSENTIAL DVDs that everyone should own. I'm not sure I even own 100 DVDs in total. Oh, who am I kidding -- of course I do. Plus, seven different editions of Blade Runner?

MARY KATHARINE HAM finds the cure for election depression, in the latest Ham Nation.

ED DRISCOLL: "I haven't seen a hate-filled man praised in such fulsome language since...well, since last month."

RON ROSENBAUM looks at paranoia, planning, and NSPD-51. He's right to downplay the paranoia, but I suspect he's also right to observe that "If you ask me, setting aside any paranoid fantasies, it is clear on the most basic level—read it yourself—that NSPD-51 is the creation of irresponsible incompetents, bulls in the china shop of our constitutional framework. It is a recipe for disaster."

We've had a series of continuity-of-government plans, more or less like this one, over the past 50 years or so. They've pretty much all been lousy. Congress doesn't seem to want to get too involved in this process, and I don't think it attracts the best minds in the Executive Branch either.

THE PRICE OF PORK is moving higher.

A RADICAL PROPOSAL FOR GOOGLE: "Offer a dividend to stockholders."

POLICE AS HOME INVADERS: "The family of that girl who shot at a SWAT officer during a pre-dawn raid on her home is saying she thought it was a burglar and not police. Hard not to give that claim some credence. When police start using the same tactics as violent home invaders, how do you tell the difference?"

ENVIRONMENTAL HYPOCRISY UPDATE: Ted Kennedy, et al. have managed to block the Cape Wind project. I'm taking this to mean that there's no actual greenhouse crisis, but someone should ask Al Gore what he thinks.

I guess these TV ads weren't enough.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE COMMITTEE disbands.

SOME KAUS-STYLE ANECDOTAGE ON IMMIGRATION: You don't seem to see as many Mexicans around Knoxville as a few months ago, and I noticed that the landscaping outfit that does the common areas in my neighborhood -- whose workers were all Mexican as recently as this summer -- became kind of scarce for a few weeks and is now back with workers who are all quite obviously non-Mexican. Could this be related to the jailing of a local businessman for immigration violations? Probably. It suggests that even modest enforcement efforts might have a real impact. [One observation? Is that enough to mean anything? -- ed. It's Kaus's First Law of Punditry -- "Always generalize from personal experience." Okay, so long as it's Kaus-approved. --ed.]

A VICTORY ON PORK: Well, we deserve a few.

ANOTHER HSU DROPS:

All three locations, along with scores of others scattered throughout some of the poorest Chinese neighborhoods in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, have been swept by an extraordinary impulse to shower money on one particular presidential candidate -- Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Dishwashers, waiters and others whose jobs and dilapidated home addresses seem to make them unpromising targets for political fundraisers are pouring $1,000 and $2,000 contributions into Clinton's campaign treasury. In April, a single fundraiser in an area long known for its gritty urban poverty yielded a whopping $380,000. When Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) ran for president in 2004, he received $24,000 from Chinatown. . . .

The Times examined the cases of more than 150 donors who provided checks to Clinton after fundraising events geared to the Chinese community. One-third of those donors could not be found using property, telephone or business records. Most have not registered to vote, according to public records.

And several dozen were described in financial reports as holding jobs -- including dishwasher, server or chef -- that would normally make it difficult to donate amounts ranging from $500 to the legal maximum of $2,300 per election. . . . Like many who traveled this path, most of the Chinese reported as contributing to Clinton's campaign have never voted. Many speak little or no English. Some seem to lead such ephemeral lives that neighbors say they've never heard of them.

I guess it's just a testament to how strong their faith in Hillary is.

ATRIOS WRITES: "Unlike Ann Coulter, I'm no constitutional scholar, but I have been a wee bit puzzled why the prohibition on ex post facto laws would't prevent this telecom immunity bullshit."

The answer is that only criminal, not civil, action is prohibited under the ex post facto prohibition. (Don't feel bad, Atrios -- James Madison himself was confused on this at one point and was corrected, if I recall correctly, by James Iredell at the constitutional convention). In addition, ex post facto is about penalties, not amnesties. Congress is not prohibited from blocking civil actions by statute, particularly where there's a national security angle. This goes back at least to Dames & Moore v. Regan, which involved the Iranian hostage settlement, and really dates back to cases in the 1930s dealing with claims against the Bolshevik government in Russia on behalf of Tsarist-era creditors, etc. One might regard this as giving the President too much power over domestic legal actions as part of "foreign affairs" activity -- I regard it that way, actually* -- but it doesn't represent any sort of new departure.

* To my mind, a statute barring a previously valid legal claim that has actually been filed comes close to a taking, as well, but that goes beyond the scope of this post.

UPDATE: A related item. I wouldn't call $25,000 "newly flush with cash" -- especially for a Rockefeller -- but the graphic is suggestive.

DON'T BUY GAS FROM THIS ASS: An anti-Hugo Chavez billboard in Florida Alabama. My mistake, and I should've known better -- I used to vacation at Fort Morgan, which isn't far from Bay Minette.

BILL GATES, ON MALARIA, WRITES:

An Audacious Goal

This week in Seattle, an extraordinary group of people – scientists, policymakers, and advocates – came together for three days to discuss what can be done to stop malaria. Melinda and I issued a challenge to those attending the meeting. We asked them to begin charting a course to eradicate malaria – not just to control or reduce it, but to work toward a time when no one on earth is infected with malaria, and no mosquitoes carry the disease.

Today, malaria kills more than one million people every year, most of them children in Africa. That’s the equivalent of losing every student in the New York City public school system in one year.

We know that eradicating malaria is an audacious goal. But advances in science and medicine, new political commitments, and the dedication of people like you have given the world an historic opportunity to conquer malaria. It won't be easy and it won't happen quickly, but I'm optimistic that we can make this disease history.

At the forum in Seattle, Melinda and I called on the U.S. presidential candidates to commit to expand the President's Malaria Initiative, a great program started by President Bush. I hope you will join us in asking all of the candidates to make this pledge and keep the fight against malaria on the national agenda.

I am confident that together, we can produce the energy, compassion, and commitment needed to win the fight against malaria.

-Bill Gates

Also posted here. They asked me to crosspost because malaria has been a longstanding InstaPundit issue.

"STRONG PROOF" of water on Mars.

IN THE MAIL: Heather MacDonald, Victor Davis Hanson, and Steven Malanga's The Immigration Solution: A Better Plan Than Today's. Merely going for "a better plan than today's" is setting the bar pretty low, of course . . . .

DANNY GLOVER on winning bloggers and influencing the people.

JURY REACHES VERDICT IN HOLY LAND FOUNDATION TERROR TRIAL:

After 19 days of deliberations, the jury in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial returned a verdict Thursday afternoon. But it will be Monday before the defendants find out their fate.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Stickney said during a hastily called hearing Thursday that the jury's decisions on the complex case will remain sealed until Monday morning, when the case's presiding judge, U.S. District Judge A. Joe Fish, returns to town. . . .

The five Holy Land defendants, all but one a U.S. citizen, were accused of raising more than $12 million and wiring it to Palestinian charity committees, who prosecutors say were controlled by a illegal terrorist group, Hamas.

Read the whole thing.

SOME INTERESTING poll results from Afghanistan: "In a poll of Afghans conducted by Environics Research on behalf of The Globe and Mail, the CBC and La Presse, respondents expressed optimism about the future, strong support for the government of President Hamid Karzai and appreciation for the work being done by NATO countries in improving security."

I'm surprised this hasn't gotten more attention.

UPDATE: Montreal reader Greg Gransden emails: "What's ironic about these numbers is that they essentially contradict virtually all of the CBC's own reporting over the past few years, which has been relentlessly downbeat and negative. We keep hearing that Afghans are disappointed and frustrated with the Canadian air effort, that they perceive Canadian soldiers as occupiers and that they're disillusioned with the Karzai government. Now the CBC's own opinion poll shows this meme to be completely false. And the CBC's not the only MSM outlet that's been pushing this narrative... I suspect that's why we're not hearing more about it."

DANIEL SOLOVE'S NEW BOOK, The Future of Reputation, is now out, and he's put the first chapter online for free.

MICKEY KAUS: "Why did a Republican almost win a special Congressional election in a strongly Democratic Massachusetts district? Kos and Josh Marshall seem baffled." But Mickey thinks he's found the explanation.

KRAUTHAMMER'S RAZOR: "I doubt that stupidity is a sufficient explanation in this case."

A DISCUSSION OF REBECCA AGUILAR AND JOURNALISTIC ETHICS at Breitbart TV. They've also got some of the footage that KDFW has managed to get pulled from YouTube.

UPDATE: Aguilar responds: "I'm sorry you took my story the wrong way."

GREAT MOMENTS IN airport security.

THOUGHTS ON THE "FAIRNESS DOCTRINE," at Investor's Business Daily.

IF YOU MISSED IT ON XM SATELLITE RADIO LAST NIGHT, you can now hear the latest Pajamas Media radio show online.

ROB NEPPELL -- the blogger formerly known as N.Z. Bear -- on Fox Business News talking about companies, the blogosphere, and corporate reputations. KDFW should have hired him. They could have used his advice. . . .

OVER TWO MILLION DOLLARS. Wow. That's more than I'd pay.

"AMBUSH JOURNALISM:" KDFW's efforts to scrub the web of the Rebecca Aguilar video don't seem to be working.

UPDATE: The video is also still available here. If you wish to form your own opinion of Aguilar's behavior from the complete unedited video, you might want to watch soon, in case this one is taken down too.

October 18, 2007

DON SURBER LOOKS AT THE NEW YORK TIMES' COVERAGE of its own financial troubles. Best part:

“The New York Times Company, through a spokeswoman, also declined to comment.”

I wonder if the Times will publish an editorial blasting such stonewalling.

Don't bet on it. . . .

MORE LITIGATION AND RECRIMINATION AT DUKE: K.C. Johnson continues to track events.

THE REBECCA AGUILAR VIDEO has been taken down. I assume that KDFW sent its lawyers out, on the -- entirely correct -- theory that it was making the station look absolutely terrible.

But this is pretty much an admission, isn't it?

And Frontburner has a question.

Plus, this explanation: "Rebecca Aguilar has been suspended since this first aired, but how in the world did she watch this tape in the first place and not realize how horrible a person she appears to be? SarahK's theory is her producer hates her and made her run the segment to try and get her suspended."

And this: "Aguilar and the entire editorial staff at KDFW should be forced to take a two-day self-defense course at a local gun range. Hell, take a Concealed Handgun License (CHL) course and learn what responsible gunowners are really like. Of course they have to pass the criminal background check."

MORE: Dan Riehl received KDFW's rather thuggish takedown email.

If you'd like to share your views of KDFW's conduct with station management, their contact information is here. Please be polite.

I think that their behavior is very unwise, and is more likely to inflame the situation than to spare them further embarrassment. A public apology and a promise to do better in the future would make much more sense.

DATING ADVICE FROM ACE: "I've tried living as a hunter-gatherer and trust me, chicks aren't that into it."

BOMB ATTACKS ON BHUTTO: Have you noticed that the radical Islamists have basically one response to everything? I don't think it's going to win over many Pakistanis.

UPDATE: Big Bhutto roundup here.

NOTE WHERE THE STORY'S DATELINED: "BERKELEY -- Flag-waving demonstrators far outnumbered a group of peace advocates who were protesting a U.S. Marine Corps recruiting center in downtown on Wednesday. . . . 'This is 2007, and we support our troops. We are not going to let CodePINK disgrace our military heroes,' yelled Deborah Johns, a Granite Bay woman whose 23-year-old son is preparing to head to Iraq for his fourth tour of duty. 'My son is a hero, and so are all the others who served this country.'"

Outnumbered in Berkeley. Heh.

ANYONE WHO THINKS THAT THIS VIDEO is going to hurt Israel's image is, well, crazy.

A NORTHWEST BAGHDAD AWAKENING: "There has been an 85 percent reduction in violence since May."

ASK THE CANDIDATES ABOUT THEIR ZOMBIE POLICY. It's become a hot election issue downunder, thanks to John Birmingham.

VAMPIRES, WEREWOLVES, and true love.

THE PAJAMAS MEDIA RADIO SHOW is on XM Channel 130 right now -- I'm listening to Ed Morrissey. Interestingly, John McCain, whom Morrissey is interviewing, admits that his slump in the polls resulted from his immigration stance.

DOWNPLAYING CORRUPTION at the World Bank.

HOW HAVE WE LIVED WITHOUT THIS? "The EatMeCrunchy cereal bowl uses a milk reservoir system to expose only a small part of the cereal to milk at any one time, which means that most of the cereal stays high, dry, and crunchy throughout the meal."

Plus, from the comments, "it seems like it'd be more effective to design a spoon that could inject a tiny bit of milk into each bite." This reminds me of the Captain-Crunch-eating scene from Cryptonomicon.

MATT WELCH'S NEW BOOK, McCain: The Myth of a Maverick, is now shipping.

WHO SHALL RID ME OF THESE TURBULENT MULLAHS? California! "California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill on Sunday, as he previously said he would, to bar the two biggest U.S. public pension funds from investing in companies doing business in Iran."

AN ANTI-TAX EVENT IN WISCONSIN? Yes. Boots and Sabers reports. And here's more, including a report of "boorish behavior" by public employees.

WSJ: Donor Bundling Emerges as Major Ill in '08 Race:

The strange case of Norman Hsu, the textile-importer-turned-fugitive who cobbled together $800,000 in contributions for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign, is the tip of the iceberg. Candidates for offices from county commissioner to U.S. president are increasingly turning to bundlers -- individuals who ask friends, family and business associates for contributions to their candidate of choice -- to help bring in the tremendous amounts of cash now needed to wage political campaigns.

Read the whole thing -- it's a free link.

ROBOT CANNON KILLS NINE, WOUNDS FOURTEEN: In South Africa.

VIDEO BARTENDING: How to make a Sleepy Hollow, "a drink that's perfect for October because it has a serous splash of gin in it."

This has always been my key source, but the video's kind of cool.

WHITE HOUSE WINS on spying, telecom immunity. Seems like the White House is winning a lot of legislative battles lately. More thoughts here.

UPDATE: House fails to override child health bill veto.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Chris Dodd puts a hold on the telecom bill.

YOUR HOMELAND SECURITY DOLLARS AT WORK: Most fake bombs missed by screeners. Tweezers and 4 oz. bottles of shampoo, however, are ruthlessly exposed and eliminated . . . .

VIDEO: Michael Moynihan interviews Flemming Rose.

ON THE REBECCA AGUILAR STORY LINKED BELOW, Capt. Ed asks an important question: "Why wasn't management suspended? . . . . Someone approved this for broadcast, and in so doing endorsed Aguilar's methods and report. How, then, can management turn around and suspend only Aguilar? . . . If Aguilar has some unpaid leave coming as a result of this incident, at least one other person should be joining her."

MICHAEL S. MALONE: How the New York Times Fell Apart. "Like most newspapers, the Times decided to become more timely, more hip, and more judgmental than the electronic media -- when it should have become better reported, more objective, and better written; professionalism being the one arena where the new competitors would have a hard time competing. What made the Times' decision not to pursue this strategy particularly stupid was that it was, after all, 'America's newspaper of record', a role in which it justly reveled. But you can't hold that title while pandering to the political and cultural views of readers on the Upper West Side."

I MENTIONED DAN SOLOVE'S NEW BOOK, The Future of Reputation, the other day. Here's a review.

TURNING POLITICAL LEMONS into lemonade.

SHIELDING THE LEAKAGE OF CLASSIFIED INFORMATION. Seems like a bad idea to me.

CHILDREN BEFORE PORK: I got an email from Tom Coburn's office about his proposed Amendment 3358, which prioritizes health care for children over pork:

This amendment, “The Children's Health Care First Act,” simply states that none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used for any congressionally directed spending item, or earmark, until the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services certifies that all children under the age of 18 years of age in the United States are insured by a private or public health care insurance plan.

Heh.

UPDATE: The full item is now online.

BLOGOMETER: "With all due respect to Beltway Blogroll, and DailyKos' founder Markos Moulitsas, we just don't agree with Blogroll that, 'A presidential endorsement from Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos could change the dynamics of the Democratic race.'"

RON CASS: "Picking Sandy Berger tells us something important about Hillary's character. We should listen now - while it can do some good." Maybe she just owed him a favor.

IN THE MAIL: Newt Gingrich et al., A Contract with the Earth. It's about "entrepreneurial environmentalism."

DANIEL HENNINGER ON THE POLITICS OF IRAQ: "Arguably it is the proper role of politics to intervene, to question. But during Vietnam and again now, we haven't been able to avoid simultaneously putting troops on the battlefield while fighting bitterly amongst ourselves at home for the length of the war. The U.S. officer corps is aware of this. While no one is talking about a stab in the back, they may conclude that the home front and its institutions are unable to, or will not, protect their back."

The problem is that our political and journalistic classes lack sufficient patriotism to promote self-discipline, or perhaps sufficient self-discipline to allow them to act patriotically.

On the other hand, here's some important post-Vietnam progress, demonstrating that the troops have managed to improve even as the political class has deteriorated. Though there are troubling aspects to that differential.

UPDATE: Henninger's column inspired some lengthy thoughts from reader Scott Wallace, which to some degree parallel my own worries. Click "read more" to read them.

Read More ?

I HAVEN'T BEEN FOLLOWING THE PETER PAUL / BILL CLINTON CASE at all, but Gateway Pundit has a roundup.

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK:

Several hundred pages of “sensitive” government documents were strewn about outside the Rayburn House Office Building on Independence Avenue Monday evening, slipping under taxis and fluttering in the exhaust of commuter buses.

The papers appeared to be part of a report detailing the government’s response to a “dirty bomb” attack. Each page was labeled at the top and bottom: “For official use only. This is sensitive government information and distribution is restricted.”

Well, that's encouraging.

DROPPING THE HAMMER ON COMCAST: Er, literally.

CHARLES RANGEL IS PLANNING A MASSIVE TAX OVERHAUL: It's not like we don't need a massive overhaul, and Rangel has sounded pretty sensible when I've heard him talk about his plans on Kudlow. But I don't have much confidence in this Congress getting anything right, especially anything offering massive prospects for graft and payola.

FLOWER-POWER PORK. "Even by congressional standards of shamelessness, the Bethel earmark is extraordinary."

HARVEY BIRDMAN, ATTORNEY AT LAW: A videogame about a lawyer who's also a "third-rate superhero" -- or maybe it's the other way around -- gets a good review: "Like Space Ghost Coast to Coast, a lot of the plaintiffs/defendants/other lawyers/judges turn out to be Hanna Barbera villains or heroes. The two shows have a similar sense of humor, which is to say, hilariously badly awfully greatly funny and non sequitur. . . . As Harvey Birdman, you're required to gather evidence, interview witnesses, assemble your case, and finally go to trial in an effort to prove your goofball clients innocent. And of course, it's all total insanity, so you have to play by totally insane rules." So it's realistic, I guess . . . . Video preview at the link.

JOE GANDELMAN THINKS THINGS ARE looking good for Mukasey. John Bresnahan calls the confirmation hearings "anticlimactic at best."

THIS IS COOL: "University of Manchester researchers have transformed fat tissue stem cells into nerve cells — and now plan to develop an artificial nerve that will bring damaged limbs and organs back to life."

More like this, please.

UPDATE: Physics Geek says I told you so.

MEIR JAVEDANFAR thinks Putin's visit to Iran was mostly about PR: "Ahmadinejad might have gotten good publicity out of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit - but not much else."

A LOOK AT THE SOURCE OF antisemitism in the modern Middle East.

WHAT TO DO WITH loose change.

LIKE PRESIDENT CHENEY, ONLY WITH HAIR (CONT'D): More Hillary news -- first Yes, blood for oil! "Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton advocated talks to settle differences with Iran but said Saturday that Tehran would invite U.S. action if it were to disrupt oil supplies. . . . If the U.S. took military action as a result, she said, 'I would hope that the world would see that was an action of last resort, not first resort. Because we need the world to agree with us about the threat that Iran poses to everyone.'"

Plus, Hillary's the new favorite of defense contractors.

ROBERT COX: How Google should change its ad-censoring policy.

PELOSI QUIETLY WORKING ON A Bush impeachment? I'm skeptical that this is really happening, though I can see why some Democrats would want to keep the increasingly dissatisfied netroots crowd in a state of anticipation, at least until after the primary season starts.

October 17, 2007

YOUR FIRST AMENDMENT AT WORK: "So much for bloggers stalking people in the news. Leave it to a real journalist to go over the top." But when they do it, it's a sign of professionalism.

KDFW has gotten the video -- previously embedded here -- pulled from YouTube, which suggests that they feel they have something to hide. But you can see the relevant segments as part of this commentary on Aguilar's journalistic ethics, at Breitbart.tv.

I was struck by reporter Rebecca Aguilar's body-language, literally standing over him in judgment with tailored suit and umbrella. The way she looked down, literally and figuratively, on an old man who had defended his life, entirely legally, and reduced him to tears seems to me to be representative of the worst stereotypes of Old Media. Then, when she belatedly realizes that she's coming across like a bully -- because, you know, she is -- she retreats into faux-sympathy and the laughable claim that she's just helping him get his side of the story out. It's like something out of a local-tv parody on The Simpsons. Yet her webpage suggests that she's on the side of the "little guy."

UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch emails: "Maybe the media is just trying to make normal people understand how the Haditha Marines feel?"

ANOTHER UPDATE: Aguilar has been suspended. Here's the post from the D Magazine Frontburner blog that seems to have set off the storm.

FRED THOMPSON ANSWERS A QUESTION from InstaPundit reader Joel Anderson.

MORE BLOG SHENANIGANS at the Los Angeles Times.

DOUBTS ABOUT GEORGE CLOONEY'S DRAWING POWER.

MAN SHOOTS, KILLS INTRUDER AFTER parrot's alert.

SAY WHAT YOU WILL, but in at least one respect the Bush years have been a libertarian dream: "Bush's job approval rating fell to 24 percent from last month's record low for a Zogby poll of 29 percent. A paltry 11 percent gave Congress a positive grade, tying last month's record low."

Related thoughts here.

PUNDITS' SPIRITS LIFT: Will '08 Actually Be Competitive?

UPDATE: Related thoughts here.

FISA BILL PULLED: "The House's Democratic leaders pulled the bill after discovering that Republicans planned to offer a motion that politically vulnerable Democrats would have a hard time voting against." The netroots are likely to be unhappy.

EVAN COYNE MALONEY and Stanley Fish. "There are other points made by Professor Fish that I could quibble with, but I don’t want to spend too much time arguing with someone who says I have 'lean boyish looks that could earn [me] a role in Oceans 14 alongside Brad Pitt and Matt Damon.'"

Plus, Soviet-style psychology at Hamline University.

MORE ON MILBERG, WEISS, in The New York Times. "Last year, the firm was indicted on federal charges of fraud and bribery. But the political partnership has not been entirely severed. Since the indictment, 26 Democrats around the country, including four presidential candidates, have accepted $150,000 in campaign contributions from people connected to Milberg Weiss, according to state and federal campaign finance records. And some Democrats have taken public actions that potentially helped the firm or its former partners. . . . Beyond campaign contributions, Milberg Weiss became deeply ingrained in the financial firmament of the Democratic Party in other ways. Members of the firm gave $500,000 toward construction of a new Democratic National Committee headquarters, and some of them became partners in a private investment venture with several prominent Democrats. They included former Senator Robert G. Torricelli of New Jersey, who is a fund-raiser for Mrs. Clinton, and Leonard Barrack, a Philadelphia trial lawyer who was once the national fund-raising chairman for the Democratic Party. . . . The firm found a friend in President Bill Clinton, who, a few days after being seen chatting and shaking hands with Mr. Lerach at a White House dinner in 1995, vetoed legislation to make it more difficult to sue for damages in injury cases. Congress overrode the veto, but the image remained of a close relationship between the president and Mr. Lerach, a Lincoln Bedroom guest during the Clinton presidency who donated more than $100,000 to Mr. Clinton’s presidential library."

BLACKWATER MEETS THE leftist-Islamist convergence? "I'm not passing judgment on the merits of the Blackwater case, yet it's worth noting just who is going after them."

HARRY POTTER AND THE REORDER OF THE ARTISTS: A comparison of "moral rights" and the RIAA and MPAA to J.K. Rowling's goblins.

Personally, I think that's unfair to the goblins.

UPDATE: I posted this, and then SSRN went down for most of the afternoon, so I'm bumping it back up to the top.

"MAN HACKS 911 SYSTEM, sends SWAT on bogus raid."

HOMELAND SECURITY, STILL A JOKE: "A Mexican national infected with a highly contagious form of tuberculosis crossed the U.S. border 76 times and took multiple domestic flights in the last year, according to Customs and Border Protection interviews and documents obtained by The Washington Times. The Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency was warned by health officials on April 16 that the frequent traveler was infected, but it took the Homeland Security officials more than six weeks to issue a May 31 alert to warn its own border inspectors, according to Homeland Security sources who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Homeland Security took one more week to tell its own Transportation Security Agency."

I remain surprised that the Democrats haven't made more of an issue out of Homeland Security incompetence.

A LOOK AT anticompetitive practices in the real estate industry. It's a field that's overdue for a reshuffling.

GOOGLE / MOVEON FALLOUT? Reader Bill Smith emails:

After reading your post from yesterday where a reader described yanking 50% of their advertising, I decided to yank 100% my company’s advertising from Google. This has been b