May 12, 2007

BRIAN MOCKENHAUPT HAS AN INTERESTING LOOK AT ARMY TRAINING in the latest Atlantic Monthly. There's lots of interesting stuff, but the parts worth breaking out have to do with how society isn't living up to the Army's ideals, not the other way around:

Young people are fatter and weaker. They eat more junk food, watch more television, play more video games, and exercise less. They are more individualistic and less inclined to join the military. And with the unemployment rate hovering near historic lows, they have other choices. . . .

Every platoon sergeant and squad leader I spoke with told me a version of this story: Many of the new privates are smart and eager; they’re quick learners and they know what they’ve gotten themselves into, joining the infantry in wartime. But too many are physically weak, are undisciplined, or have mental and emotional problems that should have gotten them screened out at basic training, if not earlier by the recruiter. . . .

The Army’s problem, however, is really just the nation’s problem writ small. The number of Americans serving in the military has steadily shrunk from more than 1 in 10 during World War II to fewer than 1 in 100 today. The all-volunteer military has allowed most Americans to distance themselves from national service, forcing the Army in particular to work harder and spend more to get the people it needs. As former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in another context, “You go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”

Until more Americans are more willing, more able, or perhaps more compelled to serve, the Army must maintain an effective all-volunteer force with the people it has and the limited number of additional people it can recruit. And that larger conundrum is beyond the power of any generals, captains, or drill sergeants to solve.

I think it's a poor reflection on how we're bringing up kids and teenagers, and on civilian/military relations in general.

UPDATE: Reader Michael Lunday begs to differ:

I retired in Jan 2001, however, I still work with these soldiers in a contract job. Your copy of a post regarding their, shall we say, less than optimum physique, is way overstated. Tell ya what, pick a day I have a group out here and you can run with em. And these are the 24 to 38 year olds, CPTs and COLs - not the 18 to 20 year olds that leave basic.

I think they could out run, out lift and out 'hump' me (btw, hump means hike with a Ruck Sack) except when I was their age (gotta say that ya know,,,, it's a guy thing). These guys/gals are the best we have, and they are awesome.

The longest race I ever ran in was a 10k, and I considered it a victory the way Saddam considered Gulf War I a victory -- at the end, I was still alive, and hadn't puked. I'm not really built for running. [What are you built for? -- ed. Blogging! And . . . er, never mind.]

Meanwhile, reader Rashad Mahmood emails:

Look, you can't just explain away incentives by blaming it on parents. There is a simple way to increase the number and quality of volunteers for the army. Pay them more.

That's true. I was commenting more on the physical condition and discipline aspects. It's also true, however, that if society valued military service more, the psychic income involved would go up, and that's a factor as well, as demonstrated by the vast numbers of twentysomethings who toil away in rock bands despite the generally nonremunerative character of that work.

POWERLINE TO THE DNC: So sue us! "We therefore associate ourselves with our reader's statements regarding Governor Dean and invite Mr. Sandler to sue us for defamation as he threatens to sue Free Republic. This is to put him and his client on notice, however, that we intend to seek our attorney's fees under federal law for the assertion of a frivolous claim if he does so."

It seems to me that more people are trying to silence bloggers all of a sudden. Well, they told me that if George W. Bush were reelected, people who criticized the powerful would suffer. And they were right!

Why such libel claims are a bad idea, however, is discussed here.

UPDATE: Jim Treacher emails:

"It seems to me that more people are trying to silence bloggers all of a sudden"

As well as radio personalities. Interesting trend, huh?

It's "battlespace preparation" for 2008.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Dart Montgomery thinks it's all about creating a Parliament of Clocks.

BORIS YELTSIN: LESSONS FOR AMERICA PART TWO:

The Americans with whom I discussed these events were surprised at hearing about the high death toll. They didn’t realize it was this bad, nor had they been informed about the anti-Semitic nature of the riots. It seems the media had failed to do its job, which is strange considering that Moscow was swarming with foreign journalists. As far as I can remember, my personal impressions at the time were that in an attempt to stay objective, the Western journalists chose some questionable middle ground - which made their coverage anything but objective. . . .

Apparently, in their minds, a fascist must always have a swastika prominently displayed on the sleeve at all times - otherwise he’s just a victim working out grievances. These journalists wouldn’t recognize fascism if it smacked them over the head with a hammer and sickle, which is the Soviet version of swastika. They probably wouldn’t have believed me if I were to tell them that in the twisted minds of these ultra-nationalist maniacs, all Westerners were under the suspicion of being Zionist running dogs working to enslave and destroy Mother Russia. To appreciate just how crazy they were, consider the fact that one of their worst imaginary Zionist enemies was Bill Clinton.

Hmm. This sounds familiar.

JEEZ: No Disclosure: Presidential Candidates Defy Tradition, Refuse to Release Taxes.

UPDATE: Mark Kleiman notes that Barack Obama, despite being pictured with the others and a fan of 100 dollar bills, has released his tax returns, something that the story doesn't mention until way, way, down.

PEOPLE LIVE LONGER, and yet: "The average retirement age is now 62, not 65. Indeed, only 27 percent of Americans retire at age 65 or later, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute."
I find that amazing.

UPDATE: Reader Dick Thompson thinks I find it amazing because I'm assuming it's voluntary retirement:

The question that needs to be asked is how many people retire willingly at 62. I know that my company, Citibank seems to have a history of having a personnel cut about every year or so and it also seems that almost all of the people cut are in the age group of 61-63 or 64. I know that when I got retired of the thousands who were cut at that time the age range seemed to be about my age of 63. The cut the year before and the one before that had the same profile. At that age what are your chances of getting another job of the same type where you will not be told that you are way overqualified for the position, sorry.

The other companies on Wall Street seem to be doing the same thing. The problem is that the cutting is not done at the highest levels but at the middle management levels so that the highest level people stay on and those of us who were in the range of 60-100K or better (I was in the slightly over 100K range) are the ones who are cut and basically forced to retire. I would love to see some studies done on this question because I think a lot of the retirees are for this reason. When you are used to getting a paycheck of x amount of dollars then going from there to living on your 401K is not really a good option and people cash in their SSA. The other problem with this group is that the company health insurance is converted to COBRA after 3 months and you have to grab that or you lose it. Have you priced COBRA health insurance for people in the 60+ age range?

No, happily. But this is a good point.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Not quite such a good point, from Kevin Drum: "If you work in a stimulating, highly rewarding job like, say, law professor or paid blogger, it makes sense that you might want to keep working past 62. On the other hand, if you've slogged away as, say, a Wal-Mart checker or an accounts payable clerk eight hours a day for the past 40 years, it makes perfect sense that you'd want to get the hell out at the earliest possible moment, even if it means accepting a lower Social Security payment. What's so amazing about this?"

Well, yes, but I assumed that to people with low-paying jobs, retiring early is harder as they (probably) don't have big 401(k) plans, much less fat defined-benefit pensions that start at 62. Given what I hear about Americans not saving for retirement, if only 27 percent wait until 65 that means either that Social Security turns out to be more generous than is generally supposed, that people have more resources than I thought, or that there's something elese going on. One thing, I suspect, may be that many of these voluntary early retirers have spouses with good benefits packages who will continue working until they hit Medicare eligibility at 65+. Because if you retire at 62, there's a health insurance gap until 65 that is too long to cover with COBRA. Though some employers will continue health benefits for early retirees to fill that gap, I'll be not many of those are the low-wage jobs that Drum talks about.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Bruce Goldston emails: "I wonder how much this situation has been created by the huge number of public employees . . . national, state, city, and county government, and all the various municipal corporations and boards, not to mention the education establishment. Very few of those folks work til 65." That's true.

And reader Gary Thomas doubts the accuracy of Dick Thompson's account: "The fact is that the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) specifically protects employees over the age of 40 from discrimination. Companies have to bend over backward not to target them - even during early retirement 'windows' when they try to induce people to leave by giving them more retirement credit. It strains credulity to think that a company would want to get rid of the 63-year-olds- after all, they've pretty much accrued all of their pension and that cannot be taken away from them. I speak as an actuary who has worked for 10 years as an employee benefits consultant."

Well, I'm no expert, but you certainly hear a lot about efforts to squeeze out older workers. Are those stories just media myths? That's possible, I guess.

MORE: Reader Michael Hankamer begs to differ:

I read your post on early retirement and the updates that followed. I'm afraid that your reader Dick Thompson is probably right.

I'm 62, my wife is 61. She's retiring from teaching in June, and while her co-teachers and principal are supportive, her school administration is not. She could stay on (a continuing contract), but the administration could care less about keeping an experienced teacher -- it would much rather hire an inexperienced, and cheaper, teacher to replace her. ADEA doesn't apply. The administration isn't actively or inactively discriminating against her; it simply isn't trying to keep her.

My case is quite similar. I'll be retiring when I hit 63 in a few months. Not that I really want to; I love engineering. But the emotional burden of staying on in a place where I'm not supported by my management isn't worth the paycheck. So I'm leaving too.

My suspicion is that I'm far from alone. With the benefit of early social security, our pensions and savings, we can afford to retire, so we're leaving voluntarily. But not because we really want to; it's simply that the emotional burden of staying on outweighs the financial incentive to do so.

More at his blog. And note this comment regarding Kevin's Wal-Mart example.

DE-COMMUNIZATION IN POLAND: A Polish court says it's unconstitutional, leading Perry de Havilland to observe: "But surely justice cannot be served by allowing the communist era and above all, the role of the people who made it all possible, to vanish down the memory hole. If people did despicable things during the communist era, why should they escape punishment? I cannot imagine a German court being allowed to stop the process of de-nazification in Germany, so why tolerate something similar in Poland in the aftermath of communism? Forgiveness can not come before repentance and a lot of people have yet to repent. I wonder if there are any senior judges who might have an embarrassing file on their communist era activities that they would rather not see the light of day? Just wondering."

SPRINGTIME IN ISLAMBERG: No doubt it's full of FBI informants.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: If you're serious about fuel economy, propose a carbon tax. Forget CAFE standards.

RUDY GIULIANI wants a bigger army.

PATRICK BELTON HAS THOUGHTS on Sarkozy's first 100 days.

A LOOK AT THE DECLINE OF MOTHERHOOD in Canada.

UPDATE: Related thoughts here.

THE NUMBER ONE PROBLEM IN AMERICA: fat people on TV?

A REVIEW OF DANIEL WILSON'S Where's My Jetpack? A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future That Never Arrived, by (no relation) Simon Reynolds. Troubling observation: "Today we seem to have trouble picturing the future, except in cataclysmic terms." That's a cultural thing, I think, brought about more by the values of filmmakers, etc. than by anything inherent in reality. But it's true enough.

MORE ENVIRONMENTAL HYPOCRISY: The Detroit Free Press reports: "Obama talks hybrids, but his ride has a Hemi."

Nothing wrong with that, but could we have a bit less sanctimony, please? (Via Ed Driscoll).

IF YOU MISSED IT: Here's a complete set of links for the dialogue that Bob McChesney and I had on the future of media at the L.A. Times.

NICE WORK: Reporters' errors heard 'round the world.

NEXT WEEK: It's the Personal Democracy Forum in New York. Looks interesting.

THE (IMPERFECT) MAGIC OF AMAZON RECOMMENDATIONS: It was kind of cool to discover Volume Two of The Official Firefly Companion, by Joss Whedon. But I had never known that there was a Volume One. Oh, well -- I do now!

For a show that didn't even go one full season, Firefly has certainly supported a huge secondary market, with a movie, other books, etc. And, of course, the series DVD has done very well. Quite unusual. I wish the rumors of a second season straight-to-DVD had been true.

Our podcast interview of Firefly executive producer Tim Minear can be heard here.

MARY KATHARINE HAM REPORTS FROM THE MILBLOGGERS' CONFERENCE, in the latest Ham Nation.

KAROL SHEININ ON THE FORT DIX TERRORISTS: "When Elvis and Dritan Duka, two of the three brothers arrested on terrorism charges in Fort Dix, were kids, they were neighborhood bullies. When they got a little older, they became drug dealers. How do I know? They grew up in my neighborhood, my brother and his friends used to brawl with them on a fairly regular basis. My brother's best friend's mom was friends with their mom. Then they moved to New Jersey and became Jihadis."

I'D RATHER THEY FOCUSED ON STOPPING IRAN FROM GETTING NUKES:

In a letter written earlier this week to the House Intelligence Committee, the official, Michael McConnell, director of national intelligence, said it was “entirely appropriate” that the intelligence community prepare an assessment of the “geopolitical and security implications of global climate change.”

No doubt we'll soon hear that the case for carbon caps is a "slam dunk."

UPDATE: Some further thoughts on intelligence from T.M. Lutas.

STRANGE BREW: Terrorism and Saudi Arabia:

Some details of terrorist operations in Saudi Arabia have been getting out, in the wake of the recent round up of 172 terrorist suspects, and the seizure of weapons, explosives and plans. There were seven different terrorist cells involved in those arrests. One of the cells had a safe house in Syria, where meetings with terrorist groups in Iraq were conducted. The Saudis are not happy with the links between terrorists inside Saudi Arabia, and Iraqi Sunni Arabs. The Saudis have told the Iraqi Sunni Arabs that the Sunni Arab nations in the regions will not bail them out, and that they must make peace with the Shia Arab majority. Many Sunni Arabs, throughout the region, do not agree with this. But they are a small minority. Most Sunni Arabs are appalled at the body count the Sunni Arab terrorists have created in Iraq. While most of the dead are Shia Arabs, a growing number are Sunni Arabs, killed either by the suicide bombers, or by Shia Arab death squads looking for revenge. While most Sunni Arabs would like to see Sunni Arabs running Iraq, there was revulsion at Saddam Husseins methods, and even greater distaste for the subsequent mayhem by his followers.

Well, that's good. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia makes Freedom House's "Worst of the Worst" list for human rights.

LOOKING AT THE G.I. FILM FESTIVAL.

DESPITE THE CHARGES BEING DROPPED, THERE'S A LOT GOING ON STILL in the Duke/Nifong/Mangum false accusation case. K.C. Johnson continues to follow it. Latest: A call for an investigation of the Durham Police by the Attorney General.

LOTS OF LOVELY PHOTOS, at Melissa Schwartz's blog.

ADVICE FOR LIBERTARIANS AND CONSERVATIVES, from Josh Treviño. "The challenge of building the right wing, conservative, and/or libertarian movement online is in many ways less daunting than that faced by its opposites on the left."

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Talking the ethics talk, but not walking the ethics walk:

House Democrats are suddenly balking at the tough lobbying reforms they touted to voters last fall as a reason for putting them in charge of Congress.

Now that they are running things, many Democrats want to keep the big campaign donations and lavish parties that lobbyists put together for them. They're also having second thoughts about having to wait an extra year before they can become high-paid lobbyists themselves should they retire or be defeated at the polls.

The growing resistance to several proposed reforms now threatens passage of a bill that once seemed on track to fulfill Democrats' campaign promise of cleaner fundraising and lobbying practices. . . .

The situation concerns some Democrats, who note their party campaigned against a "culture of corruption" in 2006, when voters ended a long run of Republican control of Congress.

Actually, they campaigned against a "culture of corruption" before the voters ended Republican control of Congress. Since then, not so much.

UPDATE: A lovely poem:

They promised us laws to reform the corruption,
But now they're in charge, that's a needless disruption.

They've got bigger tasks -
What they are, please don't ask.

Heh.

HILLARY: Mission accomplished!

May 11, 2007

A STATE OF EMERGENCY IN PAKISTAN? "Opposition to General Musharraf’s alleged attack on the independence of the judiciary was initially led by lawyers’ associations and rights groups striving to bring Pakistan under the rule of law. But the protests have evolved into a pro-democracy movement, with broad support across Pakistan that extends well beyond earlier antigovernment demonstrations that were led by radical Islamic groups." This could end well, but probably won't. (Via Dan Riehl).

"BUSH RESIGNS:" Some wishful thinking at CNN?

Of course, they probably wouldn't like having to utter the words "President Cheney" hundreds of times a day . . .

THOUGHTS ON TAXING AND SPENDING, from Professor Bainbridge.

PUNISHING BLASPHEMY AT TUFTS UNIVERSITY: They told me that if George W. Bush were reelected our universities would be run by theocrats who wouldn't brook criticism of religion. And they were right!

Via Eugene Volokh, who has further thoughts.

MICHAEL SILENCE EXCEEDS THE SPEED LIMIT ON I-40 and still gets passed like he's standing still. Video at the link.

A LOOK AT polling on Iraq.

EXPENSIVE IDEAS from John Edwards.

VARIOUS PEOPLE think that the sound quality on yesterday's podcast was especially good. I think it's mostly just that we had a really good phone connection. They vary a lot, and alas there's not much we can do except try redialing if they're too bad. But on listening to some older podcasts, I have to say that the audio treatments we added a while back have made a big difference, too. Thanks, Ready Acoustics! (Various other podcast questions answered here.)

I HAVEN'T READ THE "NEW" TOLKIEN BOOK, The Children of Hurin, yet. But I notice that Eugene Volokh Ilya Somin liked it.

UPDATE: Sorry -- the dreaded co-blogger confusion strikes again.

A LOOK AT Paris Hilton's prison hell.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY AND I LOOK AT MEDIA CONCENTRATION in today's Los Angeles Times.

ATUL GAWANDE ON aging and what to do about it.

But be sure to read this, too.

"ICE-COLD REALPOLITIK" from Morton Kondracke. I'm afraid I'm not that cold.

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE fact-checks Barack Obama on fuel economy and finds some major errors:

Obama this week flew to Detroit to deliver his message that the U.S. auto industry is the villain for "investing in bigger and faster cars while foreign competitors invested in more fuel-efficient technology."

The domestics certainly haven't flooded showrooms with gas/electric hybrids like the Japanese. But in fairness, the newest Japanese assembly plant in the U.S. produces 14-m.p.g. Toyota Tundra pickups, not Prius hybrids rated at 60 m.p.g.

"While our fuel standards haven't moved from 27.5 miles per gallon in two decades, both China and Japan have surpassed us, with Japanese cars now getting an average of 45 miles to the gallon," Obama said.

"I'm not sure where he got that figure," Toyota spokesman Mike Michels said. "No carmaker gets 45 m.p.g. Ours is closer to 30 m.p.g."

If elected president, perhaps Obama's first appointment should be a fact-checker.

Not just for number crunching but also because neither China nor Japan mandate fuel-economy standards. And the 27.5 m.p.g. standard was set by the government, not the automakers.

(Via Matt Sheffield).

A LOOK AT JIHADI CHIC: From Jonah Goldberg.

ER, I COULD BE WRONG, but aren't the scary automatic weapons in this photo actually just AirSoft guns? (More here.)

Then there's the fun of Mayor Bloomberg slamming Virginia for "enforcing the laws." Is this guy for real? Maybe Bloomberg should try not violating federal firearms laws before he gets on his high horse.

UPDATE: Reader Josh Coray is sure these are Airsoft guns: "Being an avid paintballer and related airgun fan, yes, those are airsoft guns." Others aren't so sure. So I guess I can't blame AP for the photo too much, regardless.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More from SayUncle.

OKAY, IT'S NOT HOSPIBLOGGING, it's doctor-office-blogging, while the Insta-Wife gets imaged. Thank goodness for EVDO.

BILL HOBBS: "It's a good thing that the Alabama Homeland Security folks don't have jurisdiction in Nashville, else they might have raided the big libertarian hoedown Tuesday night."

Plus, how to get psychotic school shooters off campus. It's so simple!

IT'S BETTER THAN KEITH OLBERMANN AND HARDBALL PUT TOGETHER! The latest Corn and Miniter Show is up!

IN THE MAIL: Joe Haldeman & Martin Greenberg's Future Weapons of War. I thought at first that it was a nonfiction book by a couple of science fiction guys, which would have been pretty cool, but it's actually an anthology of military SF stories. They're all copyrighted 2007, so they're all new, apparently.

DOG BITES MAN: Zbigniew Brzezinski wrong again.

LONG LIVE THE BLOGOSPHERE: Norm Geras has some thoughts on newspapers and blogging.

HOWARD KURTZ rounds up reactions to Tony Blair's step-down announcement. It seems to me that it comes with less a bang than a whimper. Perhaps that's because he's leaving on his own, but I notice that libertarian Britblog Samizdata hasn't posted anything on the subject yet. You'd expect them to be cheering.

UPDATE: Ask and ye shall receive: At Samizdata, Perry de Havilland writes: "I do not really give a damn because it is actually not that important. Glenn expects us to be cheering, but why? About the prospect of Gordon Brown running our affairs? Sorry but that is nothing to cheer about and I cannot really see that this will make a great deal of difference to government policies."

And further thoughts from Paul Marks: "Mrs Thatcher was interesting. Mr Blair (like Mr Major) was just another statist politician."

Well, aside from the general benefits of government turnover -- which come into play more strongly when there's a change of party anyway -- I don't think the difference will be huge.

BORIS YELTSIN: lessons for America.

WALMART SALES PLUMMET, but Bob Krumm thinks that's actually economic good news: "Well, simply put: No-one likes to shop at Wal-Mart unless they have to. It’s always crowded, the checkout lines are understaffed, the place is dirty, the parking lot is a mess." Thus, when Wal-Mart goes down, it means people can afford to shop elsewhere. Interesting theory -- we'll see if he's right. Personally, I'm a Target man because he's right -- Wal-Mart is just depressing. But I'd ditch Target in a second if someone would open up a Samuel's in my neighborhood.

PHIL BREDESEN AND JOHN MCCAIN: Together at NASCAR. Hmm. A McCain-Bredesen "unity ticket?" Gentlemen, start your punditry . . . .

DEBUNKEN!

MICKEY KAUS on politicians who drive 100 miles per hour: "Isn't this a pretty basic violation of social equality?"

Er, yes. Lots of people drive fast -- I was going to visit my brother a while back, zipping along in the left lane at what I thought was the highest prudent speed for the road in my Mazda RX-8, only to find an endless array of minivan-driving soccermoms coming up on my rear bumper and signalling me to move over. Everybody drives awfully fast nowadays -- but the rest of us face tickets if we do it. As Kaus points out, Bill Richardson wouldn't even pull over when a cop tried to ticket him.

UPDATE: Reader Joe O'Rourke emails:

Though not environmentally responsible or safety conscious, most cars nowadays are more than capable of holding speeds in excess of 80mph comfortably. This is noted by your minivan experience.

20-30 years ago, cars would shake a lot while doing 75mph, or they would feel “floaty”. Chassis and suspension engineering and good quality tires have eliminated these sensations, and superior engine technology means the car doesn’t strain to hold the speed.

I think it’s time for our longer highway systems, at the least to begin raising speed limits. When a supermajority of the populace does not obey the law, is that not a mandate for increasing the limit of the law?

The problem with that is that highways would need to be maintained to a level consistent with high speeds…and, at least in the northeast, no state ever maintains their roads to a level of safety consistent with modern day speed limits…

True on all counts.

YEAH, I CAN IMAGINE things worse than polygamy, too.

HERE'S AN INTERVIEW WITH JOHN ROBB, whose book, Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization, I mentioned a while back.

SOME THOUGHTS ON character and the Presidency, from Ross Douthat.

BLAMING THE AUDIENCE for Katie Couric's failures.

A NEW AP-IPSOS POLL: "People think the Democratic-led Congress is doing just as dreary a job as President Bush, following four months of bitter political standoffs that have seen little progress on Iraq and a host of domestic issues. . . . The survey found only 35 percent approve of how Congress is handling its job, down 5 percentage points in a month. That gives lawmakers the same bleak approval rating as Bush, who has been mired at about that level since last fall." Upside for Nancy Pelosi -- she's still more popular than Congress as a whole, which means she can spin it that she's more popular than Bush!

FRED THOMPSON ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT.

Giuliani on the Second Amendment.

Barack Obama on the Second Amendment. Or, well, gun control anyway.

K.C. JOHNSON NOTES that despite the utter collapse of the Nifong prosecution, members of the Duke faculty are continuing to make fools of themselves. Sounds like more of that "rhetorical will to power by way of narrative control" that I've been hearing about.

This is not academia's finest hour.

May 10, 2007

CENSORING ART IN RICHMOND:

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama hasn't been elected and already his campaign is engaged in a cover-up of sorts.

Before the Illinois senator spoke Tuesday night at a Richmond art gallery to about 500 Democrats, an Obama advance woman asked the gallery to cover one painting deemed potentially offensive and to remove another.

Artist Jamie Boling said he first was offended by the censorship but now has mixed feelings. In today's political and cultural climate, the pictures could have been used against Obama, he said.

They told me that if George W. Bush was reelected we'd see objectionable paintings taken down. And they were right! (Via Don Surber, who comments: "Shades of John Ashcroft and the nekkid statue." Hey, thanks to Alberto Gonzales, Ashcroft is acquiring a retroactive glow!)

ARE OPIE AND ANTHONY imperiling an XM/Sirius merger? Wired's Epicenter Blog thinks so.

VETERAN SOUTHEASTERN ROCKERS will probably remember the seminal '70s punk band Balboa. Lynnpoint Records has put a bunch of their songs up online for free download now -- from a compilation I put together with Balboa guitarist Terry Hill in 2001 shortly before he died. You can get the tunes here. My personal favorites are Live Like This, The Big Sleep, and Writer and the Artist. (Bumped).

RADLEY BALKO LOOKS AT hypocrisy as a driving force:

Corzine isn't the only one. There's an increasing hubris among many elected officials that their job is so important, their time so much more precious than ours and their position in public life so privileged, that they can zip by us on the road, pushing everyday folk aside so they can get to their far more important destinations.

This is about more than just traffic laws, of course. It's about the arrogance of power. These politicians not only assume their lives, meetings and fundraisers are more important than everyone else's to the point that they don't have to follow the rules, they're willing to put other people on the road at risk to prove their point.

In 2003, The Washington Post reported that New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson routinely ordered his driver to whip down public roads at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour. Even after those reports, when a police officer attempted to pull over Richardson's car for speeding in 2005, the governor's driver refused to stop. In the last two years, Richardson's lieutenant governor has also been caught running a red light and parking in a fire zone.

For his part, Richardson refused to apologize for his law-breaking. He said he'd instruct his drivers to slow down, but cited his busy schedule as governor and said he wouldn't promise not to speed again. By April 2006, his car was seen pushing 90 again.

In 2003, South Dakota Rep. Bill Janklow blew through a stop sign while speeding and killed a man on a motorcycle. Janklow had been previously pulled over 16 times for speeding, but never ticketed.

Though Janklow was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the accident, in 2004 prosecutors determined he was officially "on the job" when he struck the motorcyclist, meaning federal taxpayers will have to foot the bill for the $25 million lawsuit filed by Janklow's victim's family.

Press reports in 2004 revealed that Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell's car had been clocked traveling over 100 miles per hour on nine separate occasions. Rendell subsequently admitted to giving his drivers permission to speed to get him to meetings, though he did promise to stop giving those instructions in the future.

After Corzine's crash in April, Rendell acknowledged that despite his prior assurances, his drivers do sometimes still exceed the speed limit to help him make appointments, but he assured Pennsylvanians that he always wears his seat belt. Well. Good thing he's keeping himself safe.

Yeah, it makes me feel better. I think we should allow citizens to arrest politicians they find breaking traffic laws, since ordinary law enforcement officials have a conflict of interest. That'll pass!

DIVORCE RATE lowest since 1970.

WOW. Today's podcast on advertising is underscored by this piece I just ran across in Advertising Age:

Since 88% of Audi buyers spent a significant amount of time on audiusa.com before purchase, Audi is spending dramatically more online this year, Mr. Keogh said, though he declined to reveal details.

88%. Wow.

KEITH HENSON UPDATE: Surprise arrest for Scientology critic. I swear, it's safer to confront the mob -- and they like it that way, I think.

JACOB SULLUM: "To me, it seems kind of strange that someone arguing in favor of hate crime legislation would single out people for criticism based on their race and age."

To me, it seems entirely predictable.

BILL HOBBS: Tax cuts don't shrink government. A.C. Kleinheider agrees.

WALMART ON CFLS:

Wal-Mart announced Thursday that its suppliers of compact fluorescent light bulbs have agreed to dramatically reduce the amount of mercury in the energy-saving bulbs. . . . The company said its CFL suppliers — GE, Royal Philips, Osram Sylvania and Lights of America — "committed to achieving a greater reduction in mercury content than the 5 mg standard set by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association earlier this year. These suppliers will also adhere to clean production techniques that will minimize mercury pollution from factories manufacturing CFLs." . . .

The mercury content in the average CFL — now about 5 milligrams — would fit on the tip of a ballpoint pen, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, and manufacturers have committed to cap the amount in most CFLs to 5 milligrams or 6 milligrams per bulb.

The majority of Philips Lighting's bulbs contain less than 3 milligrams, and some have as little as 1.23 milligrams, said spokesman Steve Goldmacher.

Read the whole thing.

THE EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY of Lou Dobbs.

TONY BLAIR STEPS DOWN, and James Joyner comments:

After eleven years, few of his countrymen are sad to see him go. Then again, that was the case for Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher, too. Leaders simply wear out their welcome after long stints in office. That’s been the case with every two term American president since FDR. Perhaps it’s inevitable in the media age, especially with the advent of 24/7 instantaneous commentary.

When we had kings, and the death of one meant a nontrivial chance of bloody succession struggles, people liked longevity in a leader. Now that the stakes are lower, not so much. Boredom is one of the great forces in politics, and nonstop news coverage makes it worse.

I was never a fan of Blair in general, and before 9/11 would have been delighted to see him go. I've never liked the soft totalitarianism that Labour has championed, and to a large degree implemented, in Britain: Cameras everywhere, political correctness, gun confiscation -- and yet a diminished ability to actually maintain public order.

On the other hand -- and it's a big other hand -- I did, along with many others, value Blair's clarity on the subject of Islamic terror, and his pro-American sentiments, which were the exception rather than the rule in Old Europe. Blair was a beacon in that regard, and we needed him I'll miss that, but honestly we're short of clarity on this side of the Atlantic, too. And I suspect we'll wind up missing that even more than Tony Blair's.

Paul Cella has some similar mixed feelings.

OUTSOURCING LOCAL NEWS COVERAGE to India. Yeah, that'll save the industry.

WILL WILKINSON: "What can we learn from 'happiness' research?"

THE KNOXVILLE NEWS-SENTINEL'S JACK LAIL on the Nashville Tennessean's decision to publish a searchable database of people with gun carry licenses: "It is an illustration that just because you legally and easily can publish databases of public information, the public might not think you should. And if you can't defend your position in answering their concerns, maybe they have a point."

SADLY, YES: "The fact that a law firm feels it necessary to train its young associates on something so basic as meal etiquette is certainly an interesting comment on modern society."

WHY NOT regulate guns like cars?

Why not?

RAPING CONDI RICE: It's all in good fun, since she's a Republican.

I predict nothing like an Imus moment here. Because black Republican women deserve it. They're traitors to their race and gender.

Probable Rice response: "Opie and Anthony? I crap bigger than them."

2700 ACTIVE DUTY SERVICEMEMBERS PETITION CONGRESS ON THE WAR: It's not news. If they'd taken the other side, it would be the story of the week month.

MICHAEL MALONE looks at newspapers' sheer stupidity.

BEN SMITH: "Forget television executives and the FEC. The new regulators of political speech are Sergey Brin, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg -the chieftains of YouTube, MySpace and Facebook, respectively." This is a reason for avoiding concentration, or dependence on a small number of Web entities.

IS THERE A PLACE FOR THE FCC IN THE 21ST CENTURY? I say no, Bob McChesney says yes, in the Los Angeles Times. Though with defenders like Bob, the FCC shouldn't sleep soundly: "The FCC is the poster child for corrupt policy making."

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING DEFICIT? May it continue to get smaller.

COMMITTEE HEARINGS ON YOUTUBE.

SURVIVORS SLAM SEBELIUS for politicizing tragedy.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT:

After the Virginia Tech tragedy, even talking about concealed carry is grounds for suspension.

They told me that if George W. Bush were reelected we'd see Americans punished for expressing their ideas. I guess they were right!

A LOSS FOR ELLIOT SPITZER:

One of the cases that former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer might have expected to be a slam dunk was his six charges against former New York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard Grasso. . . .

A New York appeals court, however, said earlier this week that Spitzer lacked authority under state law to bring the suit. In a lengthy decision that threw out four of Spitzer’s six charges against Grasso, the court said “the authority to bring suit in what the attorney general perceives to be the interest of the state cannot trump contrary determinations about the public interest made by the legislature.’’ In other words, Spitzer was not at liberty as attorney general to decide on his own what is in the public interest.

It got him to the Governor's Mansion, so it accomplished his goals.

BECAUSE IT'S NEVER TOO EARLY, APPARENTLY: Obama readying a TV ad blitz?

The Glenn and Helen Show: David Verklin on Online (and Offline) Advertising

Traditional media are worried, and new media are excited. In both cases, it has a lot to do with where the advertising money is going, and where it's not going. Nobody knows more about advertising than David Verklin, CEO of Carat Americas. Carat is the world's largest independent media buying operation, and Verklin is also the coauthor -- with Bernice Kanner -- of Watch This, Listen Up, Click Here: Inside the 300 Billion Dollar Business Behind the Media You Constantly Consume. We talk to him about what's happening now, what will happen next, and how the future of advertising might actually be more pleasant for consumers, as advertisers serve up ads based on things people are actually interested in.

You can listen directly -- no downloads needed -- by going here and clicking on the gray Flash player. You can download the file by clicking right there, and you can get a lo-fi version, suitable for dialup, etc., by going here and selecting "lo fi." And of course, you can get a free subscription via iTunes -- and why wouldn't you, really?

This podcast is brought to you by Volvo Motors USA. Music is "Nobody's Full," by the Opposable Thumbs.

A PACK, NOT A HERD: "A male employee who works at Circuit City behind the Moorestown Mall is the unsung hero that first enabled authorities to foil the Fort Dix terror plot." So long after 9/11, it's nice that people are still paying attention.

And apparently it made a difference: "Federal authorities said Wednesday that six Muslim men suspected of plotting to massacre U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix were on the verge of carrying out the attack when they were arrested this week."

ROGER SIMON, who knows something about movies, saw the canned PBS documentary Islam vs. Islamism and posts a review.

A TENNESSEE POLITICAL HERO:

State Rep. Joe McCord, R-Maryville, has resurrected his bill to regulate red-light cameras in hopes of preventing an expansion of their use.

McCord's House Bill 0698, as originally written, would have prohibited local governments from entering into profit-sharing arrangements with private companies that install and operate the cameras.

The bill, however, failed to pass the Public Safety and Rural Roads Subcommittee.

Now, McCord is trying again with language that would codify current practices.

"They can still go ahead and have cameras at red lights, but it will put into code that it shall be charged as a nonmoving violation," he said. "Yes, you'll still have to pay a $50 fee, but it does not go against your insurance record or against the points on your driver's license."

I think the original bill -- which I believe also set minimum yellow-light times because cities appear to be manipulating those to create more revenue -- was better, but the Knoxville political establishment responded to that so hysterically that it makes me suspicious of what's really going on here.

More on the problems with traffic cameras here.

AT PATTERICO, a post on the dysfunctional LAPD, by one of his readers. I guess things there were never as good as they looked on Adam 12.

BILL ROGGIO:

In March, we noted the successful model of the Anbar Salvation Council will very likely be replicated elsewhere in regions where al Qaeda has established bases of operation. We singled out Diyala in particular, as al Qaeda's campaign of murder and intimidation was beginning to anger the tribes much as it did in Anbar province. Al Qaeda's establishment of its Islamic State of Iraq, with its capital in Baqubah made the province ripe for a major Coalition operation in the region. In early March, Al Sabaah reported the local sheikhs in Diyala were organizing against al-Qaeda and its Islamic State of Iraq, "which [is] spreading corruption in the province districts." Today, the speculation has become a reality, as "Arab tribesmen in Baqubah have said they will form a tribal alliance to cleanse the Diyala province of foreign fighters and those of the al-Qaeda terrorist network in Iraq."

We need more of this sort of progress.

BILL GATES thinks the traditional ad business is over: "Microsoft thinks the advertising business model for traditional media — those venues where advertisers still channel most of their spending — will fall apart faster in the coming five years as the kind of interactive, targeted advertising that is defining the Web comes to the fore."

Our podcast a bit later today will look at this very phenomenon.

REPUBLICAN MODERATES getting restive on the war. I think this is shortsighted and wrong and likely to hurt the country. On the other hand, for the Bush Administration it's a reality. I've mentioned the three-year-rule before, but we're now past the four-year mark (five if you count Afghanistan). If Bush were a great communicator, he'd be able to help himself some, but I doubt Reagan could have held things together a whole lot better. The White House and Pentagon need to be figuring out how to deal with this, and what constructive fallback positions they can prepare.

UPDATE: On the other hand, John Aravosis is unhappy to hear that conservative Democrats will support the President. His take: "It's time to replace some conservative Democrats in Washington, DC." Hey, electing guys like that is how you took back the Congress. . . . .

AS THE SCANDALS SWIRL IN ALASKA, Republicans might want to think of a plan B in case Ted Stevens has to go.

I'M OFF FOR A JACOB T. LEVY-STYLE WAXING: More blogging later!

ABANDON RED TO GO GREEN:

Wouldn't we save a lot of gasoline quickly and cheaply if we replaced most of our "STOP" signs with "YIELD" signs?

Well, we would if most people didn't treat 'em that way already.

FRED THOMPSON: "Oh, to be sure, the French media hates us, but there are a lot of people who say ours does too. Regardless, Sarkozy’s victory has sent shock waves through the world’s media centers."

GIULIANI'S ABORTION STRATEGY, explained.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT:

The Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD) has placed a professor on forced administrative leave and has recommended that he be terminated for e-mailing a Thanksgiving message to his colleagues last November. On the day before Thanksgiving, Professor Walter Kehowski sent out the text of George Washington’s “Thanksgiving Day Proclamation of 1789” and a link to the webpage where he’d found it—on Pat Buchanan’s web log. After several recipients complained of being offended by the e-mail, MCCCD found Kehowski guilty of violating the district’s Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) policy and technology usage standards. Kehowski then contacted the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help.

“It simply boggles the mind that a professor could find himself facing termination simply for e-mailing the Thanksgiving address of our first president,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “This situation is an embarrassment to MCCCD and would be laughable if a professor’s most basic rights and very livelihood weren’t on the line.”

You know, people told me that if George W. Bush were reelected we'd see professors fired over trumped up charges of ideological nonconformity. And it looks like they were right!

SYNTHETIC PHOTOSYNTHESIS:

While researchers and technologists around the world scramble to find cleaner sources of energy, some chemists are turning to nature's own elegant solution: photosynthesis. In photosynthesis, green plants use the energy in sunlight to break down water and carbon dioxide. By manipulating electrons and hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon atoms in a series of complex chemical reactions, the process ultimately produces the cellulose and lignin that form the structure of the plant, as well as stored energy in the form of sugar. Understanding how this process works, thinks Daniel Nocera, professor of chemistry at MIT, could lead to ways to produce and store solar energy in forms that are practical for powering cars and providing electricity even when the sun isn't shining.

Faster, please.

POLITICS IN IRAN:

The biggest source of discontent in the country is economic. Inflation is about 18 percent and the unemployment rate is moving past 30 percent. Since Ahmadinejad took over, the price of oil has skyrocketed, bringing in lots more money, yet the Iranian GDP growth rate has dropped from four percent a year, to three percent. As a result, the average Iranian is worse off than before. Ahmadinejad promised to spread the oil wealth around, but that has not happened, and most Iranians are not happy. Ahmadinejad and his politically correct attitudes are the cause of the spreading poverty. Ahmadinejad has taken action, but mainly to halt economic activity with the outside world, which he considers largely hostile to Islam. Ahmadinejad wants Iran to be self-sufficient, like North Korea. You get the idea. So do most Iranians, and they are not happy about it. But they are still not willing to fight to change it.

Can't we encourage them, or something?

UPDATE: More on Iran's economy, here.

GENDER QUOTAS ON scholarly panels.

May 09, 2007

MORE PHOTO-FISHBLOGGING from Ann Althouse.

The gar is pretty impressive, and I can't really match it. But here's a pretty nice picture of a sawfish that I took when I went to the aquarium with the girls a couple of years ago.

He seemed to like watching the people through the glass. I guess we looked . . . delicious.

To me, he looked kind of like a space alien.

And don't worry, I'm not going to try to match her dead animal photos, though I passed a bloated roadside possum today and was tempted. Also, sadly, a very pretty little fox. Cars, I guess, take the role of predators nowadays.

THINGS THAT DON'T BOTHER ME: Rudy Giuliani donated to Planned Parenthood? Hey, that's okay. So have I.

I understand that the pro-life people, and the social-cons generally, are unhappy with this. But hey, a lot of gun-rights people thought that Bush was squishy on the gun issue -- and he has been. Nonetheless, he's been a lot better than Kerry or Gore would have been had they been elected; his support for the assault weapons ban, for example, was extremely limp. Likewise, the social-cons are crazy if they let this sort of thing keep them home on election day in 2008. And I think that the Republicans' troubles started -- as I pointed out at the time -- when the social-cons overplayed their hand during the Terri Schiavo affair. But hey, vote for who you want.

HMM. HOW DID I MISS THIS DEVELOPMENT?

"It seems that Europe leads Americans in this way of thinking," Romney told the crowd of more than 5,000. "In France, for instance, I'm told that marriage is now frequently contracted in seven-year terms where either party may move on when their term is up. How shallow and how different from the Europe of the past."

I'm pretty sure it's different from the Europe of the present, too. I've got family in France, and I've never heard of such a thing.

Eugene Volokh points to a post by Ana Marie Cox suggesting that Romney got this from an Orson Scott Card science fiction novel set in the future, in outer space.

Now look, I like science fiction, and I wouldn't mind a President who read science fiction -- though I'm not sure the Battlefield Earth thing helps him here -- but I also want a President with a firm grip on the difference between fiction and, you know, reality. This is just weird.

UPDATE: Ace:

A truly outrageous move on France's part to so undermine the very foundation of civilizational organization.

One problem: It's not true. . . . Coming Next: Romney explains his flip-flop to the pro-life view as caused by the new respect for life gained after witnessing the destruction of planet Alderaan, where "a million voices cried out... and then were silenced."

Of course, Ace also notes some other alternate-reality enthusiasms that are getting less press attention. Edwards should be ashamed, and needs some book-learning of his own.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader David Fleeger writes about Romney and Edwards (well, mostly Edwards' "trutherism") and observes: "I don't know about you, but for the first time I have begun to feel a little fear for the next year's elections. The nation can (probably) survive incompetence. Reality-denying psychosis is something else."

As I've said before, our political class was obviously dysfunctional in the 1990s. Times have gotten worse, but they haven't gotten better. Further thoughts from Rob Port.

MORE: A suggestion that there's less to Edwards' gaffe than meets the eye. Jeez, I hope so.

A LOOK AT TREATING AND PREVENTING HEART ATTACKS, from Darshak Sanghavi in Slate.

And here's a podcast we did a while back on heart attack treatment and prevention.

RUNNING WILD WITH MIKE GRAVEL:

"That's him!" says a Today show producer. All eyes focus on an old-fashioned Checker cab coming up Broadway, an odd relic in the teeming New York City traffic. It's a bright Thursday afternoon and dozens of sign-carrying supporters are gathered at the main entrance of Columbia University. They begin clapping and whooping for their new favorite presidential candidate—a 77-year-old most of them hadn't even heard of a week before.

NBC has taken an interest as well. A crew is on hand to film the rally for the network's morning show and its 5.3 million viewers. "Wait! Is he driving?" wonders one of the supporters. As the Checker gets closer, the white-haired man behind the wheel waves at the crowd and smiles a broad politician's smile. He is driving. Newsweek columnist and occasional Today correspondent Jonathan Alter is riding in the back seat, looking a little green. It turns out the two got in a fender bender on the way uptown. The Checker's brakes went out on Madison Avenue, and Gravel rear-ended another cabbie. But, with no injuries and after consulting a mechanic, they'd pushed on.

A rough ride for Alter, but a good couple of opening paragraphs.

JACOB SULLUM: "The federal hate crime bill is unnecessary, unjust, and unconstitutional."

NOW THIS IS JUST EMBARRASSING: Squirt guns banned at Tennessee State University.

I'm pretty sure this won't make anyone safer, unless some crook somewhere dies laughing.

MICHAEL TOTTEN TALKS ABOUT IRAQ and the French elections, on the latest Blog Week in Review.

OBEY CURSES KUCINICH. Kucinich strikes me as a bit kooky, but also as one of the least curse-inspiring members of Congress.

AL SHARPTON SQUIRMING: Not a pretty image.

I HAVEN'T PAID AS MUCH ATTENTION TO THE PELOSI EARMARKS STORY as I should have, but Stephen Spruiell has a roundup. Excerpt:

For now, it appears that the problem is less with Pelosi’s disclosure on this particular earmark and more with the state of earmark reform in general. The Democrats swept into power making a lot of noise about cleaning up the “culture of corruption” in Washington. Earmark reform was a big part of their stated agenda. First, they put a “moratorium on earmarks” until new rules governing them could be put into place. Then the House passed new earmark-disclosure requirements. “It’s good that we’re even having this discussion about Pelosi’s earmark,” Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, tells NRO, “because now [thanks to new disclosure requirements] we know that she’s the one who asked for it.”

But that’s where Democrats left it. The House rules apply only to the House. The Senate lumped earmark reform into its ethics and lobbying bill, which is now languishing in conference and has yet to take effect. Nevertheless, the Democrats must think these half-measures constitute thorough earmark reform, because the moratorium is long gone. The Water Resources Development Bill contains, along with Pelosi’s earmark, more than 800 others. Perhaps the most egregious is a provision to add sand to a California beach famous for its annual sandcastle competition.

The Democrats campaigned as a party that would clean up Washington. But the water-development bill, exemplified by Pelosi’s earmark, is nothing if not Beltway business as usual.

Meet the new boss, yada yada.

WHILE BOB MCCHESNEY AND I HAVE BEEN TALKING about the future of news media, the poor folks at Scripps have been trying to do something about it. Here's the latest internal memo, which faces the bad news admirably:

You’ve no doubt read about recent challenges in the newspaper business. We’re certainly not immune to many of these trends.

In the first quarter of this year, our total revenues were down 7.8% compared to last year, our expenses were down slightly, and our profit was down 28%. Many of our industry peers posted similar results. While online revenue remained strong (up 20%), total ad revenue fell due to classified advertising declines at our larger papers, as well as some softness in retail advertising.

The long and the short of it is that any business that has declining revenues and sharply declining profits must do something about it.

Some suggestions on what to do can be found in the comments, here.

AXIS OF SOROS?

FRED THOMPSON ON GEORGE TENET:

My attention was drawn to Tenet’s statements that al Qaeda is here and waiting and that they wish nothing more than to be able to see a mushroom cloud above the United States.

Naturally, the media emphasis is not on that. Its attention is on any differences Tenet had with the administration. The media’s premise is that Iraq should not have been considered a real threat to us and that the administration basically misled the country into war. While one may take issue with Tenent on several things, I was intrigued that on some very important issues, Tenet did not follow the media script when answering Russert’s questions.

Read the whole thing.

IN THE KNOXVILLE NEWS-SENTINEL BLOG, Les Jones looks at the handgun permit issue and concludes: "Concealed Carry Weapons Permit Holders More Lawful Than Most." Gee, do you think?

TODAY'S BRAND-CONFUSION MOMENT:

Andrew Sullivan of Instapundit questions Parsons choice of metaphor, seeing as how the Sioux nation ultimately lost the war.

Well, me and Andrew are pretty much interchangeable, I guess! But it's not BuzzTracker's finest hour . . . .

UPDATE: Reader Matthew Bown emails: "I think they meant Mickey Kos of Daily Kaus."

That must be it. . . .

WHICH NEWSPAPER WILL BE THE FIRST TO DIE? Bob McChesney and I address this question in today's Los Angeles Times. You'll never guess which one is my pick . . . .

SOME CRAPPIE BLOGGING from Ann Althouse.

IN THE MAIL: John Robb's Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization. From a quick look, it appears that Robb thinks that state sponsorship will become a less important part of the terror equation, and that we need to start hardening and decentralizing our society so as to make it more resistant to terrorism. I think he's clearly right about part two, and quite possibly right about part one. He also seems to support "pack not a herd" approaches to security and disaster response, which, again, I agree with strongly.

UPDATE: More on Robb from Ed Cone.

WHY IS OBAMA SO TIRED? "During a campaign speech, Barack Obama overstated the Kansas tornadoes death toll by a factor of approximately 1,000, saying 10,000 had died when only 12 did. He later explained that he made a mistake because he was tired."

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh points out that campaigning for President is tiring. Indeed it is. That's a reason not to start early -- as I've mentioned here before, the sooner you start, the sooner you get tired enough to make dumb mistakes. If Obama's tired enough to do that now, what will he be like in a year? I suggested a while back, after an earlier gaffe, that he should get some rest and this would seem to underscore the need.

Of course, being president is tiring too, and one of the arguments for a grueling campaign season is that it weeds out people who don't function well when tired.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Feeling the heat in Alaska:

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) has dropped his support for a controversial salmon marketing program he created that has funneled tens of millions of federal dollars to fishing industry interests in Alaska and has become an element of a Justice Department corruption investigation into the Senator’s former aide and his son, ex-state Sen. Ben Stevens (R). . . .

The AFMB’s connection to the FBI probe of Stevens’ son has brought renewed scrutiny on the project and the way it has doled out millions of federal dollars since 2003. Critics of the AFMB, including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), have long complained that it is little more than a pork-barrel conduit for special interests and large fishing companies in Alaska.

Perhaps the most high-profile example of what McCain and others call wasteful spending was a grant from the AFMB to Alaska Airlines to paint a jumbo jet to resemble a salmon, a project that cost millions but that was justified as a way to advertise Alaska salmon products.

In the state, however, the AFMB has long been seen as a mechanism for companies and individuals close to Stevens and other members of the state’s Congressional delegation to secure federal dollars.

Pork isn't just about helping the folks back home, or wasting taxpayer dollars. It's about corruption.

BLOGGINGHEADS FROM BAGHDAD: Robert Wright talks with the embedded Eli Lake, who's there covering the surge. Pretty cool. It's Must-See BloggingHeads TV. No, really -- watch it.

(Via Kaus, who has a summary).

SARKOZY vs. the Burka.

I'LL TELL DAD! Now that's leadership: "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is threatening to take President Bush to court if he issues a signing statement as a way of sidestepping a carefully crafted compromise Iraq war spending bill."

I think the political question doctrine would apply anyway. As in "Don't come running to me whenever you two get into a spat."

TIME FOR ANOTHER BOOK: Susan Katz-Keating says that George Tenet should write another book on why he presided over the dismantling of the CIA's human-intelligence assets.

ED DRISCOLL writes that 18 Doughty Street puts it all together: "18 Doughty Street appears to have been one of the first sites that has managed to really put all the pieces together to create an Internet-based virtual television network."

OBAMA GETS The Glow. With, perhaps, a little help from Photoshop. And not the Condi Rice kind.

May 08, 2007

MORE RON PAUL POLL SPAMMING: Really, I don't think this is helping him, and I doubt his campaign appreciates it.

OLD MEDIA VERSUS NEW:

"The Googles of the world, they are the Custer of the modern world. We are the Sioux nation," Time Warner Inc. Chief Executive Richard Parsons said, referring to the Civil War American general George Custer who was defeated by Native Americans in a battle dubbed "Custer's Last Stand".

"They will lose this war if they go to war," Parsons added, "The notion that the new kids on the block have taken over is a false notion."

Two points. First, doesn't this phrasing sound like Baghdad Bob? And second, while Custer certainly lost the battle, the Sioux actually lost the war. That's because they faced an opponent with better technology, more dynamism, and . . . oh, hell, you get the idea. It was a poor choice of metaphor.

FIVE YEARS ON: How significant is Padilla?

THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF ISLAMIC RADICALISM: They just don't seem to like women much, do they?

WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS? "Blogging is a new kind of speech competition -- a speech rat race. What?! Now we have to keep up with the Instapundits?!"

CATHY YOUNG: "Why is it still illegal to pay for sex?"

UPDATE: A thoughtful response, though I think I'm more persuaded by Cathy.

IF PUBLISHING LEAKS OF CLASSIFIED INFORMATION IS FREE SPEECH, then this is too, according to Verizon:

Essentially, the argument is that turning over truthful information to the government is free speech, and the EFF and ACLU can't do anything about it. In fact, Verizon basically argues that the entire lawsuit is a giant SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) suit, and that the case is an attempt to deter the company from exercising its First Amendment right to turn over customer calling information to government security services.

"Communicating facts to the government is protected petitioning activity," says the response, even when the communication of those facts would normally be illegal or would violate a company's owner promises to its customers. Verizon argues that, if the EFF and other groups have concerns about customer call records, the only proper remedy "is to impose restrictions on the government, not on the speaker's right to communicate."

This is audacious lawyering.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN Drive-In Movie Theater: "The setup is surprisingly simple." There's video.

ANDREW SULLIVAN ASKS: "If gun rights are civil rights, why would anyone feel the need to hide the fact that they own one?"

I think the short answer is that gun rights are about security, and we'd rather keep the criminals guessing. In addition, doubt about who owns guns generates what economists call "positive externalities," meaning that if a substantial proportion of homeowners have guns, or if a nontrivial number of people out-and-about are carrying concealed guns, potential burglars or assailants have to allow for the possibility that a victim or someone in the neighborhood might be armed. That produces a deterrent effect that benefits even those who do not possess guns This is why, for example, we see fewer burglaries of occupied homes in the United States than in countries like Britain with strict gun controls -- breaking into an occupied home is dangerous. Meanwhile, on a more personal level, those who are armed would prefer to have the advantage of surprise. I should also note that there's a difference between owning guns (the "keep and bear" business) and carrying guns, which is what the whole CCW permit thing is about. That distinction is explained at some length here.

But I'll turn the question around: If abortion is a civil right, why would anyone object to having a newspaper publish a searchable database of people who've had one?

I'm not ashamed! But some people might worry about prejudice from the "unenlightened and unsophisticated."

UPDATE: Some further thoughts from Eugene Volokh.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Thoughts on gun bigotry, including a reference to this amusing Slate piece by Emily Yoffe, which I'd missed. Excerpt:

So anathema are guns among my friends that when one learned I was doing this piece, he opened his wallet, silently pulled out an NRA membership card, then (after I recovered from the sight) asked me not to spread it around lest his son be kicked out of nursery school.

Sheesh. And a bit more background here, from Dave Kopel.

DANCERS FOR DEMOCRACY: Now there's a group I could get behind.

SO I SEE THIS HEADLINE and it reads "Rep. Poe Quotes Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard On House Floor."

Big deal, I think: Everybody quotes Robert Byrd eventually. Then I find out it's about quoting Nathan Bedford Forrest. Well, he knew more about military matters than Byrd, anyway. The whole stink is one of the most contrived in recent memory, which is saying a lot. Come on, guys. You can come up with better cheap shots than that.

UPDATE: Or maybe it's just an effort to distract attention from Al Sharpton's latest bigotry:

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE HAS A NEW BOOK OUT: The Complete Guide to Sarbanes-Oxley: Understanding How Sarbanes-Oxley Affects Your Business.

Via, er, Professor Bainbridge.

UPDATE: More on Sarbanes-Oxley here.

I ALWAYS HEARD THAT JOHN ASHCROFT WAS THE BIG THREAT TO PRIVACY, but now it looks as if the real threat may come from newspapers:

Barely a year after their reporters won a Pulitzer prize for exposing data mining of ordinary citizens by a government spy agency, New York Times officials had some exciting news for stockholders last week: The Times company plans to do its own data mining of ordinary citizens, in the name of online profits. . . .

Wasn't that the nefarious, 21st-century sort of snooping that the National Security Agency was doing without warrants on American citizens? Wasn't that the whole subject of the prizewinning work in December 2005 by Times reporters Eric Lichtblau and James Risen?

And hadn't the company's chairman and publisher, Pinch Sulzberger, already trotted out Pulitzers earlier in the program?

Yes, yes, and yes. But Robinson was talking about money this time.

Oh, well, then. So long as it's not about national security. (Via BOTW).

Meanwhile, some advice from Don Surber, though it's specifically aimed at the Tennessean, which raised its own privacy concerns today: "The press is supposed to be the watchdog of the government, not a watchdog of the people."

JOHN J. MILLER WRITES ON JOHN ONDRASIK AND FIVE FOR FIGHTING: You can also hear our podcast interview with Ondrasik here.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY AND I HAVE MORE ON THE FUTURE OF MEDIA, in today's Los Angeles Times.

ANNE APPLEBAUM BIDS FAREWELL TO JACQUES CHIRAC:

But try, if you can, to leave Iraq aside: Chirac's more important diplomatic legacy lies elsewhere.

Ponder closely, for example, what Chirac has had to say about Africa, where his country has enormous influence, in many places far outweighing ours. During a visit to the Ivory Coast, Chirac once called "multi-partyism" a "kind of luxury," which his host, president-for-life Félix Houphouet-Boigny, could clearly not afford. During a visit to Tunisia, he proclaimed that, since "the most important human rights are the rights to be fed, to have health, to be educated, and to be housed," Tunisia's human rights record is "very advanced"—never mind the police who beat up dissidents. "Africa is not ready for democracy," he told a group of African leaders in the early 1990s. . . .

On Saddam Hussein: "You are my personal friend. Let me assure you of my esteem, consideration, and bond."

On Eastern Europe supporting the United States in the United Nations: "It is not really responsible behavior. It is not well-brought-up behavior. They missed a good opportunity to shut up."

On Iran's nuclear program: "Having one or perhaps a second bomb a little later, well, that's not very dangerous." Theoretically, Chirac was supposed to be negotiating with Iran to give up its nuclear program at the time.

On hearing a French businessman address a European summit in English, "deeply shocked," he stormed out of the room.

As I say, it's a very important legacy: One of consistent scorn for the Anglo-American world in general and the English language in particular, of suspicion of Central Europe and profound disinterest in the wave of democratic transformation that swept the world in the 1980s and 1990s, of preference for the Arab and African dictators who had been, and remained, clients of France. In his later years, Chirac constantly searched, in almost all international conflicts, for novel ways of opposing the United States. All along, he did his best to protect France from the rapidly changing global economy.

He did enormous damage, much of it to France.

UPDATE: Yeah, I'm milking that protest photo for all its worth. Hey, soon it'll be obsolete.

THE D.C. CIRCUIT HAS REFUSED TO REHEAR Parker v. District of Columbia, in which a panel struck down the D.C. gun ban law on Second Amendment grounds. Eugene Volokh has much more, and sees the chance of a Supreme Court cert. grant as "well over 50%."

HERE'S MORE ON THOSE TERROR ARRESTS IN NEW JERSEY: This sounds like it was pretty serious, though early reports on this sort of thing are always iffy.

UPDATE: Affidavits at The Smoking Gun.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I assume that these are "Dangerous Terrorists," as opposed to those not-so-dangerous terrorists whom the DoJ will allow to own guns.

And here's a big Fort Dix roundup from Pajamas Media.

MORE: Jules Crittenden would rather distinguish between bozos and non-bozos: "It’s the smart jihadis I’m more worried about. Not bozos like these. You’d almost think these were the ones they wanted us to catch." Actually, there's a high bozo contingent in Al Qaeda. They make up for the fact that they're not especially bright by being persistent and willing to learn from their mistakes.

IN RESPONSE TO COMPLAINTS, The Tennessean has taken down its list of Tennessee concealed-weapon permit holders. I agree with Blake Wylie: "Bravo to the Tennessean. They should have done some research and put some thought into it *before* putting it online, but I'm glad they did the right thing in the end."

UPDATE: A.C. Kleinheider observes:

Whether the Tennessean did this out of an editorial anti-gun fervor, a pitch at boosting their web hits, or a simple exercise in public records, the result will be the same. The legislature will be overloaded with demands from gun owners to close these records.

Because, in the end, the Tennessean didn't do anything wrong here. Sure, it was in bad taste and ultimately destructive.

But these are, in fact, public records. The jokers over a 1100 Broadway simply made them easily accessible -- as all public information will eventually be.

This little episode should be lesson to all of us. I am just afraid that we won't learn it. When the Tennessean eventually shuts this database down and/or the legislature closes these records, screeds will be written on the power of the gun community and, indeed, kudos will be due. But the important lesson to learn is the one about privacy and open records.

And also: "Whether the Tennessean publishes the database or not is not the problem. The problem is that the database exists in the first place. Certainly, it was in bad taste for the Tennessean to publish this info. No gun owner wants the criminals to know who has firearms and the ability to carry them legally. . . . You see, whether the Tennessean publishes the names on the list is not the tragedy. The tragedy is that the list exists at all." He thinks we should have Vermont style carry, with no permit required.

I'm also already hearing proposals that Tennessee's law be amended to protect against this kind of disclosure. I believe Minnesota's law provides such protections.

MICHAEL BARONE on the realignment of America: "It has become a commonplace to say that population has been flowing from the Snow Belt to the Sun Belt, from an industrially ailing East and Midwest to an economically vibrant West and South. But the actual picture of recent growth, as measured by the 2000 Census and the census estimates for 2006, is more complicated. Recently I looked at the census estimates for 50 metropolitan areas with more than one million people in 2006, where 54% of Americans live. . . . What I found is that you can separate them into four different categories, with different degrees and different sources of population growth or decline. And I found some interesting surprises."

IRANIAN WEAPONS, American lives.

POLITICAL COVER FOR PELOSI from the Associated Press?

DRAGON STORIES from Cornelia Funke.

LETTERS FROM THE SUBSCRIPTION DEPARTMENT: At Iowahawk.

DREW CURTIS OF FARK.COM has a new book: It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News. As I've noted before, quality news is the killer app for Big Media, but they don't seem to care.

BUT OF COURSE, PARDNER: The only good cowboy is a French cowboy.

But if you're gonna be a cowboy, you gotta ditch the accordion. Or at least start playing different tunes. . . .

THE NASHVILLE TENNESSEAN has published a list of CCW permit holders.

SayUncle is contacting their advertisers to complain.

UPDATE: Uh, oh. Now they're getting pushback from Nashville talk-radio guy Steve Gill: "I bet they would freak out if we used the voter rolls and other public data to publish the home addresses of their reporters and editorial staff. After all, there are some nutcases who might try to do them harm if they knew where they lived and didn't like what they wrote in their paper. But that would be irresponsible, wouldn't it?"

This is no more a nasty attempt at intimidation than what the Tennessean has done. But I think that they'll find this strategy unwise in an Internet age. What's more, this is likely to encourage a talk-radio campaign designed to harm the Tennessean economically, something that it's in no position to want. (Heck, it looks like it already has.) Wiser heads should have prevailed.

THE MOST ETHICAL CONGRESS EVER: I love this story, because it combines both "culture of corruption" and "greenhouse hypocrisy" angles all in one!

"Friends" can fly congressmen under new rules

Led by House Ethics Committee chair Stephanie Tubbs Jones, the House of Representatives on Wednesday unanmiously agreed to loosen strict rules on members' acceptance of free airplane rides that were adopted when Democrats took over Congress in January.

The measure, adopted on a May 2 voice vote minutes before the House of Representatives adjourned at 11:59 p.m., was labeled as an effort to "clarify certain matters relating to official conduct" of the House of Representatives.

The change stipulated that members of Congress can fly their own airplanes on official business as well as accept "personal use of an aircraft ... that is supplied by an individual on the basis of personal friendship."

I wish I had some friends like that. Oh, wait, it's not that hard:

"As long as you call a lobbyist your personal friend, it is apparently OK," says Sloan, who believes the ethics enforcement process is crippled because only members of Congress can file complaints against their colleagues. "I don't see a member filing a complaint against another member for flying on someone's plane, saying they are not really friends."

Somebody needs to compile and publicize a database of these trips.

SO WE KEEP FINDING PLANETS, BUT NO SIGNS OF INTELLIGENT LIFE: Where are they?

QUESTIONS ABOUT THE "DANGEROUS TERRORISTS ACT:" Has the ACLU opposed this? I couldn't find anything on their website.

NIGERIA UPDATE:

Kidnapping in the Niger River Delta has become the second largest source of income (after stealing oil) for political and criminal gangs. But the government cannot afford to lose control of the oil production, and is just sending more troops and police to the region, to try and keep the criminal activity under control. So far, the criminals are winning.

I think you see this any time there's oil wealth and a weak government. I suspect that Venezuela will look this way after Chavez craters.

OVEREMOTIONALIZING CLIMATE CHANGE? Der Spiegel looks at the IPCC:

There is hardly a newspaper article and hardly a TV or radio program that doesn't conjure up images of "climate catastrophe," prophesy floods of gigantic proportions, droughts and hunger. Indeed, the media have developed something akin to a complete apocalyptic program.

It's the fault of the media, of course, but not exclusively. It's also the fault of a new hero, an environmental activist who likes to introduce himself by saying: "Hello, I was once the next President of the United States of America." . . .

This doesn't mean that Gore should necessarily be taken to task for his statements. He is a politician. But it is odd to hear IPCC Chairman Pachauri, when asked what he thinks about Gore's film, responding: "I liked it. It does emotionalize the debate, but it seems that it has to do that." And when Pachauri comments on the publication of the first SPM by saying, "I hope that this will shock the governments so much that they take action," this doesn't exactly allay doubts as to his objectivity. When Renate Christ, the secretary of the IPCC, is asked about her opinion of reporting on climate change, she refers to articles that mention "climate catastrophe" and calls them "rather refreshing." . . .

The problem is that the IPCC is not a political group whose goal is to exert pressure, but a scientific institution and panel of experts. Its members ought to present their results and analyses dispassionately, the way pathologists or psychiatrists do when serving as expert witnesses in court, no matter how horrible the victim's injuries and how deviant the perpetrator's psyche are.

Peter Weingart, a sociologist of science from Bielefeld, a city in northwest Germany, believes that the climate experts' lack of distance has something to do with their training. Scientists usually learn only to reflect on the results of their work, not on their role within the social decision-making process. As a result, they join forces with politicians who share their views. And in this way they do harm to science.

Read the whole thing. (Thanks to reader Garth Godsman for the link.)

TERROR ARRESTS IN NEW JERSEY:

Authorities have arrested six people in an alleged terrorist plot targeting soldiers at Fort Dix.

The Newark Star Ledger is reporting six ethnic Albanians were plotting an armed attack on the Burlington County base.

FBI Agents arrested five of the suspects in Cherry Hill and a sixth suspect was arrested in a separate location. Officials said the men attempted to purchase AK-47s from an arms dealer secretly cooperating with law enforcement.

Will Collier wonders it the tip came from Tony Soprano.

HOW MUCH MOMS SHOULD BE PAID: An amusing take.

I could put together a similar job description for myself, of course, as could any dad. But the final paragraph says it all.

EXPANDING GUN-CARRY RIGHTS in Tennessee and South Carolina. "In light of the VA Tech shootings, it’s interesting that while the typically anti-gun media tries to fan the flames of the public to support additional gun control measures, quite the opposite is happening in some state houses."

A TRIPLE-PARENTING CASE IN PENNSYLVANIA: Dale Carpenter's analysis is more thorough, but Stanley Kurtz has a better title: Ma, Pa, and Ma in PA.

NO SURPRISE HERE: "A new study has found that adolescents who use condoms the first time they have intercourse do not go on to have more sexual partners than others, and that they have lower rates of sexually transmitted diseases than those who do not use condoms the first time." Of course, part of this is probably that the type of person who uses a condom the first time is the type of person who tends to be more careful, and less impuslive, in general.

May 07, 2007

A "GREEN FUELS" REPORT CARD, from Popular Science. No silver bullets yet, alas. But then, you don't always need a silver bullet to have something worthwhile.

AN EPIDEMIC IN CHINA: Seems to only be killing pigs, as far as we can tell. But the Chinese are keeping quiet about it, which is the real story:

The lack of even basic details is reviving longstanding questions about whether China is willing to share information about health and food safety issues with potential global implications.

The Chinese government — and particularly the government of Guangdong Province, which is adjacent to Hong Kong — was criticized in 2003 for concealing information about the SARS virus for the first four months after it emerged in Foshan, 95 miles northwest of Hong Kong. After SARS spread to Hong Kong and around the world, top Chinese officials promised to improve disclosure. . . .

Hong Kong television broadcasts and newspapers were full of lurid accounts today of pigs staggering around with blood pouring from their bodies in Gaoyao and neighboring Yunfu, both in Guangdong Province. The Apple Daily newspaper said that as many as 80 percent of the pigs in the area had died, that panicky farmers were selling ailing animals at deep discounts and that pig carcasses were floating in a river.

The reports in Hong Kong said the disease began killing pigs after the Chinese New Year celebrations in February, and is now spreading. But state-controlled news outlets in China have reported almost nothing about the pig deaths, and very little about the wheat gluten problem.

A man answering the phone at the city government offices in Gaoyao, 140 miles northwest of Hong Kong, confirmed late this afternoon that pigs were dying there. He declined to give his name.

Well, isn't that comforting. The Chinese need to get their act together on this stuff, ASAP.

ANOTHER DOW RECORD: I think it's because the Democrats are in power now.

THE GATEKEEPERS' GAMBIT.

AND TODAY'S GREENHOUSE HYPOCRISY WINNER IS MARK ELLINGHAM: Publisher of the Rough Guide tourbooks that have made him rich off other people's travel, he's now attacking "Binge Flying":

Alongside guides enticing travellers to fly, Ellingham also publishes environmental titles, including the Rough Guide to Climate Change which is nominated for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books award, to be announced next week. Even so, he is keenly aware of the incongruity of making pronouncements about how people should moderate their behaviour. 'I acknowledge that I'm speaking about all of this from an apparently contradictory position but it's a question of working with what's realistic: if Rough Guides was to disappear overnight, I don't think anybody would fly any less. I think it's an entirely ethical position of mine to work with what's realistic by encouraging people to moderate the amount they fly, rather than stop altogether,' he said. 'It's up to people to make up their own minds about how they live their lives.'

While determined to encourage people to reduce the number of flights they take, Ellingham admits he has no intention of stopping himself, and he does not expect others to do so either. . . . Ellingham is aware of another contradiction in his position. While being hugely destructive, tourism also has so many positive effects that it would be disastrous to the economies of many nations if it were to stop or even be curbed.

In other words, he knows this is idiotic, but feels impelled by fashion to make a statement.

THOUGHTS ON THE DIFFERENCE between law reporting and law blogging.

HOW THE RIAA dodges RICO suits.

HUGH HEWITT IS ON THE WARPATH, on the Lileks subject.

UPDATE: A related post from Bill Peschel.

PRO-JIHAD LENINISTS and other reactions to the Sarkozy victory, at No Pasaran!

MICKEY KAUS: "Tom Maguire wonders why Jodi Kantor's front-page NYT piece on Barack Obama's pastor, Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, hasn't generated more controversy. Having now read it, I tend to agree."

DYSFUNCTION JUNCTION: Indeed.

VARIOUS PEOPLE EMAILED ME LAST NIGHT having problems with the reader survey. It seems to be working properly now.

GLOBAL YAWNING:

Saying you’re not for the environment right now is like saying you’re not for education, children, world peace, Africa or a cure for cancer. These days you would have to be a fool or a lobbyist to dismiss global warming and natural resource issues.

But is it possible that all this marketing is cheapening the cause?

Must every hotel, restaurant, shampoo, detergent and beverage that is environmentally responsible talk so much about it? Yuban “sustainable development” coffee. Paul Mitchell “protecting our planet for generations to come.” Levi’s Eco jeans.

How much green-standing can we stand? It’s enough hot air to melt Antarctica.

In no time, an inconvenient truth has become an obnoxious one.

But from what I can see, there’s as much selling as thinking going on. . . . And cynical as this sounds, how does Vanity Fair, with its May “Green Issue,” reconcile its high-minded battle cry with all those pages selling cars, bottled water, watches, perfumes and clothes?

The "Feiler Faster principle" works for the environment, too. Climate change talk is already becoming tedious, though that's in no small part due to the relentless tediousness of those promoting the issue. Those who would preach self-restraint should practice it.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY AND I TALK ABOUT THE FUTURE OF MEDIA, over at the L.A. Times site.

BEWARE THE CHICKEN-EATING SPIDER: So, after it eats its first chicken, does it tell its fellow spiders "tastes just like flies!"??

I'll be here all week. Please tip your waitresses and bartenders generously.

THE ARMY AND THE MILBLOGGERS: Xeni Jardin reports for NPR.

RON BAILEY looks at gas prices. Judging from the traffic -- and speeds -- that I see daily, gas prices aren't yet high enough to have much of an impact on people's behavior.

MORE ON THE DIANNE FEINSTEIN CONFLICT-OF-INTEREST CHARGES, from Bill Allison. There's a response from Peter Byrne in the comments, and here's an earlier piece by Byrne, too.

And I should note that while I endorse the distinction between actual conflicts of interest and the mere appearance of a conflict of interest, I should also note -- in fact, come to think of it, I have noted, together with Peter Morgan -- that Congress doesn't feel the same way:

The Office of Government Ethics has issued numerous advisory letters and formal opinions on appearance problems since its creation. And when one OGE director sensibly said that the "appearance" rule is merely aspirational, and that consequently "appearance" transgressions, standing alone, do not themselves constitute ethical violations, a Senate oversight committee quickly convened public hearings to interrogate the director, his predecessors who adopted a contrary view, and various "ethics experts." The OGE subsequently reversed itself.

So I agree with Allison's point, but, you know, geese, ganders, and all that.

THOUGHTS ON JOURNALISM and splitting the difference.

IS THE PRESS FAILING TO ASK tough questions on Iraq?

SARKOZY: France's Rudy Giuliani?

BILL QUICK: "It’s a hell of a lot easier to quit meth than either booze or tobacco. I know. I’ve done all three."

OUT TO LUNCH: An appropriate title for this Grampa-Simpson-like rant against blogs. How 2002.

DISASTER PREPAREDNESS UPDATE: Wired Magazine posts an updated disaster preparedness kit.

Some earlier InstaPundit posts on the subject can be found here, and here.

UPDATE: Chuck Pelto emails: "What about 2-3 months of stay-at-home because of a pandemic? And yes, today the health department people are talking in terms of months and not weeks of 'social distancing'."

That kind of preparedness is more than a kit. It's a lifestyle.

Prediction: If that happens, Mormonism will really come into vogue.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Some less instrumental things to include.

SO IN THE WAKE OF THE KANSAS TORNADO TRAGEDY, I finally got around to unboxing and setting up the all hazards weather alert radio that I ordered a while back. I doubt it will ever wake me in the middle of the night for an "Avalanche Warning," but if one is ever broadcast for East Tennessee, I'll know. More importantly, it will go off if there's a tornado warning in my area. It lets you set the alerts you want to hear about or ignore (though a few, like "tornado warning" are non-defeatable -- who wouldn't want to know about that?) and it lets you set it to register only for your own county or other limited areas. It was pretty cheap -- about 50 bucks -- setup was easy, and there's a battery backup in case the power goes out. Not a bad little gadget.

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY DON'T:

Have you noticed yet how so many Washington politicians and bureaucrats are ignoring the last election?

Voters tossed Republicans out of congressional power last November and gave it to Democrats promising to clean up the culture of corruption epitomized by anonymous earmarks, well-connected lobbyists and other influence peddlers.

But the truth is nothing much really has changed and isn’t likely to anytime soon, regardless of which party is in power. Many in the Washington establishment — Democrats and Republicans, elected officials and career civil servants — are determined to keep right on fleecing the American people as if the election never happened.

The Democrats have all but abandoned their campaign promises. Now they hide behind a cynical veil of excuse and delay. The Senate and House approved earmark and other ethics reforms earlier this year. Yet nobody now seems interested in working out differences between the two reform packages, so the new rules can go into effect.

It's as if those promises to clean things up were just cynical campaign slogans.

JOHN DVORAK ON THE DIGG FIASCO: Blame the lawyers.

JAMES LILEKS has gone from writing about stores to running one!

Some (sort of) background here. And, of course, from Lileks himself. But workplace courtesy demands that he pull his punches. Don Surber, not so much: "Hot type thinking in a digital world."

UPDATE: National Journal's Danny Glover -- who works at a place that actually understands new media -- call sthe Star Tribune's move "boneheaded."

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ouch! "One indicator of bad management is the underuse of assets and the inability to recognize opportunity to use the talent of the employees to their fullest. In this case, management knows what it has in James, and they're tossing it away anyway. That's not just bad management; they should keep sharp objects away from these managers and only allow them to use crayons. Please tell me that the men and women who made this decision do not drive to work unsupervised."

And Dave Barry comments: "This is like the Miami Heat deciding to relieve Dwyane Wade of his basketball-playing obligations so he can keep stats. Sometimes I don't understand the newspaper business. What's left of it."

Glad I don't own stock.

STILL MORE HERE: "If the Strib had any institutional sense whatsoever, they'd make James the poobah-in-chief of their online division, and turn him loose. They'd have the best online paper in the country in less than a month. What they're doing now is an idiotic waste of talent. Attention, newspaper publishers with a brain: here's a guy who can bring in a hundred thousand new pairs of eyeballs in the blink of an, er, eye. You say you're losing money to the web? Well, he knows more about the online world and how to communicate on it than anybody on your staff."

MORE CONTROVERSY AT COLORADO:

A couple of years back, the University of Colorado forged a nonbinding agreement with legislators, promising to protect and nurture ideological diversity on campus.

In fact, it was only last month that CU president Hank Brown expressed his apprehension to regents about the lack of movement on this front.

Well, if Brown is serious about this endeavor, he should make it a priority to investigate the firing of social conservative CU instructor Phil Mitchell - and not for the reasons you may suspect.

Mitchell, whose plight I first wrote about two years ago, believes that publicity surrounding CU's initial attempt to fire him saved his job.

But now, CU is giving Mitchell the boot after more than 20 years on the job in Boulder. And the university isn't backing down.

It's not clear just how much there is to this story, but I hope that people will look into it.

NEWSTRUST UPDATE: Got this email from the folks at NewsTrust:

Thanks so much for spreading the word about NewsTrust, which is much, much appreciated!

Our traffic quadrupled on Saturday, with over 2,000 visitors coming directly from InstaPundit. Of these, about 500 signed up as NewsTrust members, about 250 completed their email registration, and 64 had reviewed on our site as of midnight.

We’re already seeing some changes in our story listings, with publications like InstaPundit, Captain’s Quarters, Gateway Pundit and NewsBusters now showing up regularly in our top 10 lists. This is exactly what we were looking for, to counter-balance the leftward tilt on our site.

More importantly, the response so far has been generally positive, as you can tell from the InstaPundit reader comments below. Your readers are participating well in the review process, and seem to be responding favorably to our welcome message below, which prompts them to review information quality, not just ideological viewpoints.

I’m also pleased to note that your recommended story from Knoxviews on compact fluorescent bulbs is now #1 on our this week’s top-rated independent stories – a clear sign that there are things people can agree on across party lines - and a helpful discovery for me personally.

If you're interested in participating, there's a signup sheet for InstaPundit readers right here.

BETA-TESTING Fred Thompson's stump speech.

ALTERNATIVE ENERGY UPDATE: "Two hundred towering windmills, each so tall that its blades would loom over the U.S. Capitol Dome, could be built in the Atlantic Ocean near one of Washingtonians' favorite beach retreats, under a plan being considered in Delaware."

I hope Ted Kennedy doesn't have a house there.

UPDATE: Jonathan Adler observes: "As the Delaware shore is where many Beltway-types spend their weekends during the summer, this could be a real test of Washington's willingness to promote — or even allow — alternative energy sources. Sea-based windfarms make eminent sense, yet they have faced regulatory obstacles to date." Indeed they have. Instead of NIMBY ("Not In My Back Yard") it's NIMOV (Not in My Ocean View.)

MIKE GODWIN INTERVIEWS VERNOR VINGE: Well worth your time. Our podcast interview with Vinge is here.

A LOOK AT Laurie David's carbon footprint.

OKAY, I'M A HUGE FAN OF COMPACT FLUORESCENT LIGHTS. See:

But that said, the proposal to ban incandescent bulbs nationwide is idiotic. The technology isn't advanced enough, the burden on the poor is nontrivial, it will remove CFL technology from the competitive pressure of having to be better than the mature technology of incandescent bulbs, and it's a lame, nanny-state approach. It's one thing for me to experiment with them, and encourage my readers to do so. It's quite another to use force to limit people's choices.

I'VE ALWAYS FOUND THE SMELL OF FAKE-BUTTER POPCORN NAUSEATING, but who knew that it could also be deadly?

May 06, 2007

THE U.S. MILITARY launches its own YouTube channel.

MORE THOUGHTS on the subject of a Lou Dobbs for President campaign.

A UNITER, NOT A DIVIDER: They love Ron Paul at Daily Kos.

CRASHING AN AL GORE EVENT: " Al Gore's speech Saturday at the American Institute of Architects convention was closed to the media, but you can read about it in today's Express-News on Page 1B. How we cracked the former vice president's iron curtain is a mildly entertaining story. . . . So here's what happened: Our intrepid reporter, Caputo, went over to the convention center Thursday, registered under his own name and address as an 'expo only' attendee and got a pass that gave him access to the speech. Then he covered it and wrote about it. It was that easy. Purists might contend that was unethical. To me, it was like crashing a Ku Klux Klan rally. Gore didn't want coverage. We think he deserved it."

I don't think he deserved the Klan comparison, though.

I JUST HOPE THAT THIS GUY never gets hold of nuclear or biological weapons:

Paul Watson, founder and president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and famous for militant intervention to stop whalers, now warns mankind is “acting like a virus” and is harming Mother Earth.

Watson’s May 4 editorial asked the question “The Beginning of the End for Life as We Know it on Planet Earth?” Then he left no doubt about the answer. “We are killing our host the planet Earth,” he claimed and called for a population drop to less than 1 billion.

The commentary reminded readers that Watson had called humans a disease before and he wasn’t sorry. “I was once severely criticized for describing human beings as being the ‘AIDS of the Earth.’ I make no apologies for that statement,” the column continued.

No, really, I mean that. Guys like him creep me out. If he ever got his way it would be Pol Pot all over again.

I mean, next they'll be calling people who have large families "Eco-Criminals" or something. Oh, wait. . . .

Given that we're undergoing a global baby bust, this is not only nutty and totalitarian, but out of date and stupid even on its own merits.

FROM "FREEDOM FRIES" TO "FRIENDSHIP FRIES:" But politics be damned, I'm not giving up my Heinz Ketchup.

REPORTING ON A FIVE FOR FIGHTING CONCERT in Washington, D.C. With photos!

DURHAM AND NIFONG: Captain Ed says it's worse than you think.

JOEL GARREAU: Robots Are a Soldier's Best Friend.

A NEW CLIMATE CHANGE BLOG over at Nature.

THE OTHER NIGHT, I mentioned that David Chavarria, executive producer of J.D. Johannes' Iraq documentary Outside the Wire, was on TV. Now you can see the video on Hot Air. I think you'll find it worth your time.

OKAY, ONE MORE REMINDER: If you haven't done it yet, I'd appreciate your taking my reader survey.

REMEMBERING PIM FORTUYN.

MORE THOUGHTS ON SCHOLARSHIP AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT, from Randy Barnett.

COLD FUSION: Not entirely bogus after all? It would be nice if it turned out to work, but I'm not holding my breath.

AGGRESSIVE DISCOUNTING may mean that the new Harry Potter book won't be making as much money as most people think.

HE CHOSE POORLY: "A man who police said broke into a U.S. Army officer's south Augusta house to steal guns was fatally shot Wednesday by the soldier living there."

SARKOZY WINS: Substantial margin, huge turnout.

UPDATE: More here:

Nicolas Sarkozy was tonight handed a decisive mandate to change France winning the presidential election by 6% after a massive turnout in one of the most divisive campaigns in recent history.

As thousands of his flag-waving supporters prepared to gather at Paris's Place de La Concorde, where heads rolled in the first French revolution, Sarkozyites were promising a new turning point in French history from a man who has promised an "economic revolution."

Instead of calling for the end of the monarchy, they had rallied round his cry to "liquidate the legacy of May 1968", end the nanny state, loosen the grip of "political correctness", lesson the power of unions and break the 35-hour week in the name of a nation that wanted to "work more to earn more".

I wish them success.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I'm posting this photo from the Washington French Embassy protests a couple of years ago one last time. Just because. . . .

And John Wixted offers a G7 national leadership election scorecard. But I think this is a bit of an exaggeration: "They might as well have just elected George Bush." Still, it's an improvement.

A report from Paris:

85.5 % voter turnout is not only amazing, it is also without precedent. Even in France, 75% voter turnout only last happened 40 years ago. This was a HUGE election. Every last granny in the nursing home went to the polls. 53-47 under those circumstances is one helluva mandate and Sarkozy knows it.

Sarkozy just gave his acceptance speech, in which he uttered the somewhat astounding—-and from a political point of view, needless—-line: "...and let me say to our American friends, they can count on our friendship."

Read the whole thing. I'm not sure about that history, though -- wasn't the turnout similarly high when Miterrand was elected?

MORE: Nidra Poller: "C'est Matin en France."

STILL MORE: Riots. Video at No Pasaran. More here.

MORE STILL: Bill Hobbs says the West is moving rightward. Possibly; it's at least not being overwhelmed by the blandishments of leftists. But let's not exaggerate this: Sarkozy is very likely much better -- for both America and France -- than Segolene Royal would have been. And he's likely to be an improvement over Chirac. But he's still French -- and so is France -- and I don't expect dramatic changes. We're likely to see the benefits more in terms of damage not done than of positive improvements.

FINALLY: Roger Simon has thoughts on what it all means: "On a more social note, American tourists will now be heading back to France. Brush up your French." En effet.

And more here: "The U.S. has now seen the leadership of both France and Germany pass to figures who believe, as a general matter, that American power is a force for good in the world, and not something that needs persistently to be constrained. Let's hope that in 2009 the U.S. still has a leader who concurs."

Plus a study in contrast.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS grills John Edwards.

THIS SEEMS LIKE GOOD NEWS:

The Army National Guard reached its congressionally authorized end strength of 350,000 Citizen-Soldiers on March 30, six months earlier than originally projected, Army Guard officials have reported.

"The strength of the Guard has been the amazing levels of retention among members of deployed units, surpassing all expectations," said Lt. Col. Diana Craun, the Army Guard’s deputy chief for strength maintenance.

"Retention is highest among units that have returned from deployments, and retention is an essential element in end strength," she added.

It is the first time that the Army Guard has been at full strength since 1999, Craun said. Officials had projected that the Army Guard would reach 350,000 troops by Sept. 30, the end of this fiscal year.

This pattern -- soldiers who have been in Iraq being eager to re-up -- is heartening. When I expressed worries a while back, I was told that re-enlistment rates are the best indicator of how well the military is handling the strains of extended deployment. I hope that's true.

MISINFORMATION SPREADS: Now it's Rush Limbaugh pushing the dubious Steven Milloy story on the dangers of compact fluorescent bulbs.

Sorry, Rush, but there's no there, there.

THOUGHTS ON THE DIFFERENCE between activists and terrorists.

CAR-BURNINGS AND RIOT POLICE: More on the French elections.

Unofficial sources are calling it for Sarkozy. More here and here.

IN THE MAIL: Jean Edward Smith's new biography of FDR, entitled, simply enough, FDR.

LONGEVITY UPDATE: Sara Davidson interviews two scientists on prospects for giving people longer, healthy lives. They're still talking about slowing the aging process, really, rather than actually repairing the damage due to aging, but that's still progress. As the science advances, attitudes on this subject are clearly shifting.

I DON'T AGREE WITH THE ETC GROUP ON NANOTECHNOLOGY, but I think they're right to call for caution before undertaking iron-seeding of the ocean as a means of stimulating plankton growth and carbon sequestration, something I mentioned a while back.

CHERRIES DIVINE: My cousin's Internet cherry business gets a nice writeup in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I hadn't realized they were focusing on the corporate gift market, but that makes sense.

MATTHEW PARRIS on why the terrorists will lose:

Have we not noticed how incompetent are Islamic governments and organisations the world over? Has it not occurred to us that if al-Qa’eda really were as wily and resourceful as we tell ourselves they are, and if their tentacles really did extend as wide and deep as some say, they would be on the advance — not battled into a stalemate by Western security and intelligence? If I were an al-Qa’eda activist I could have blown up Parliament or shot at least one of a range of prime ministers by now. Al-Qa’eda’s failure to infiltrate or penetrate Western structures has been complete.

There is a reason for this. Islam, in its more fundamentalist form, doesn’t work. Serious, committed Islamists are most unlikely to succeed within any structures but their own. Their own, meanwhile, are notoriously inefficient and corrupt. Only by lucky coincidence have much of the world’s known petrocarbons been found beneath Islamic nations, giving them what temporary influence they wield. How can any culture which despises modernity, hates mobility, distrusts individual liberty and autonomy, persecutes those who deviate from cultural or ideological norms, imposes a kind of brutal conformity on the way people live, love and work, and at a stroke disempowers 50 per cent of its people (women) from proper education and from all career opportunity so that every boy-child it produces is being brought up by a person who knows little of the world and only a fraction of what the boy must learn — how can such a culture bestride the 21st century, as Selbourne fears Islamism will do?

(Via Andrew Bolt).

A FRED THOMPSON PROFILE in the Nashville Tennessean. He's clearly not one of those people who started running for President in eighth grade. . . .

HOW LIBERAL LAW PROFESSORS bolstered the individual rights theory of the Second Amendment. Here's what Laurence Tribe has to say about Parker v. District of Columbia:

Should the case reach the Supreme Court, Professor Tribe said, “there’s a really quite decent chance that it will be affirmed.”

I certainly hope that's right. Much more on the Second Amendment here.

THE FRENCH ELECTIONS: Nidra Poller is reporting.

But how much difference will they make, even if Sarkozy wins big?

SOME THOUGHTS, on the end of Byran Calame's tenure as public editor at the Times. I'll just add that I think the Public Editor position has pretty much been a waste, and that if they want it to amount to something -- which I tend to doubt -- they should name an outsider to the position. How about Matthew Hoy?

UPDATE: In an update, Surber doubts that Hoy would fill the bill: "Too tough a grader. He does not hand out Gentlemen’s Cs — and Pinch wants Gentlemen’s Bs for his staff. The public editor is the cop who tells people, 'Move along, nothing to see here.'"

REORGANIZATIONS WITHIN THE INSURGENCY: Herschel Smith has observations. And read this earlier post, too, which makes an important point: "The much-heralded tribal split with al Qaeda is a positive sign in the Anbar Province, but it must be remembered that even if AQI loses in this showdown, the insurgency is not defeated." It's an ongoing process, as grinding down insurgencies takes time. I also wonder how much long-term progress we can make so long as Iran (and Saudi elements that aren't quite the government, not not quite not the government) remain free to fund and supply the insurgents with near-impunity.

JULES CRITTENDEN: Impeach Bush!

GREEN NANOTECHNOLOGY is easy.

LOU DOBBS FOR PRESIDENT? Well, some people are enthusiastic.