EUGENE VOLOKH has a thorough analysis of the District Court decision in which the CIPA ‘s mandatory-internet-filtering requirement was struck down.

He also gently upbraids Andrea See, though not for blogger-stalking.

VIETNAM is accusing Sen. Bob Kerrey of war crimes.

KATIE ALLISON GRANJU says that the Iranians just don’t get it when it comes to insulting Americans.

TEENTALK! Okay, I’ve pretty much burned out on the whole teen-sex item now, but IsntaPundit has more to say — particularly on the value (or not) of a high school diploma.

WHY THEY HATE US! In yer face, Osama.

BYRON YORK accusses the FBI of Clintonian lying.

It’s a bad time for the FBI. It’s been getting hammered by civil libertarians. Now it’s getting hammered from people who feel it’s not investigating hard enough.

The cop-out answer is “if we’re getting criticized from both sides we must be doing something right.” It’s also possible, of course, that when you’re being criticized from both sides you’re just doing a lot of things wrong.

ANDREA SEE finally admits that she’s a blogger-stalker. She needs to repeat sex ed, though.

JON GARTHWAITE points out that polls showing a decline in confidence in government are not really bad news for conservatives, since they undermine the public’s willingness to support new big-government initiatives, which conservatives don’t want.

Yeah. Question is, does it help Bush? That depends on whether Bush is a conservative of the sort that Garthwaite means, or a big-government Republican in the Nixon/Kristol mode. As Nixon proved, those folks don’t do well when confidence in government declines while they’re in office.

AN INDIA-PAKISTAN PEACE MOVE, thanks to a common enemy. Makes sense to me. (Via Sasha Castel.)

BUSH MAY BE WOBBLY, but he was apparently right when he said David Gregory was just parroting memorized French — and getting it wrong to boot! I don’t want to get on my high horse for this — since my last visit to Paris there has been a warrant out for my arrest from the Academie Francaise (charge: “Murdering the French language” — also lesser charges for “mutilating the French language,” “abusing the French language,” etc., etc.). But then, I don’t pretend to be a highfalutin’ globe-trottin’ Euro-connected international correspondent, either. I found this via Henry Hanks’ page.

NEVER TRUST RANKINGS. This one is self-refuting.

BILL QUICK HAS demonstrated just how smart he is, by hiring Stacy Tabb to do a site move and redesign. He’s got a new location, and this URL will work until the DNS propagation catches up, after which the old dailypundit.com address will work again.

I must say that it’s quite a handsome site. Will all blogs be this good looking soon?

BLOGGER N.Z. BEAR has a piece in Salon today. It’s his/her first professional sale. Congrats, Bear!

WOBBLY WATCH UPDATE: Reader Craig Schamp says that I’ve ruined his day:

You say that “gun rights supporters should be very unhappy with Bush.” Of course, you’re right, but why did you have to go and say that? Bush’s gun rights stance was one of the things I hadn’t yet lost hope in. Now I have nothing, with the war on terrorism looking more and more like the war on drugs (endless and ineffective, full of political posturing), the domestic policy front completely in shambles (steel tariffs, anyone?), and the cabinet full of idiots and clueless political losers.

Unless things change, and PDQ, I think any political capital that would help Republicans in the fall will have been wasted. I also think that Bush is opening himself up for more hawkish challengers. Not that any of this would be bad. It shows the dynamics of our political system. But my concern is that Bush’s loss may turn out to be more than just a political one, if all of his bumbling on the war (at home and abroad) brings more death and destruction to the home front.

Best regards.

— Craig Schamp

P.S. I have voted for a Republican for president since 1980 (voted for Carter in 1976, first time to the pools, I’m ashamed to say). I will gladly cast my vote for a hawkish Democrat next time, given the chance.

Well, a pro-gun Democrat could do pretty well, I think, and Bush is vulnerable to attack from the right on the war unless more hawkish undertakings are forthcoming. Bush did well when he kept a clear vision. He’s been muddled lately, and it’s going to hurt him if it lasts. What’s more, I predict that if his stock falls substantially it will do so very rapidly, as a number of these matters reach critical mass.

To be fair, the prosecution in DC is (I think) only for “carrying” a gun illegally and there’s a respectable argument that laws governing the carrying of weapons don’t implicate Second Amendment rights. There’s no evidence that that’s what’s motivating the Justice Department, though.

UPDATE: Bill Quick says this is a problem for Bush, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Best of the Web is noting the contradiction between the Justice Department’s actions and its Second Amendment position, too.

HMM. Maybe this bellicose women thing isn’t just an American fashion. . . .

BRENDAN O’NEILL offers a firsthand report from the London launch of Francis Fukuyama’s book, where he says Fukuyama was asked a lot of tough questions. O’Neill comments:

But surely Fukuyama is in danger of reducing our common humanity to a shared biology? Surely there is more to tie humans together than just the fact that we share biological features like eyes, ears, legs, arms, hearts and brains? Listening to Fukuyama, it sounded like he was arguing that human equality is a natural thing, based on biology, rather than a human-created political thing, born out of past struggles, the Enlightenment, and industrial and social development. Surely it is those human-created and human-centred values that tie us together and capture our humanity, rather than our biological make-up?

I think this is dead right. The statement that all men are created equal from the Declaration of Independence referred to political and moral standing — not natural endowments, which the Framers of the American Constitution (like Enlightenment thinkers in general) were very much aware came in unequal distributions. There are enormous differences now in people’s intellectual and physical gifts. That doesn’t prevent a polity from giving people equal respect.

THE TRAFFIC DEBATE CONTINUES: Jonah Goldberg responds to Kaus (scroll up for multiple posts), and TAPPED responds to Sullivan.

Thanks for all the helpful tech tips in the comment section below. I’m going to try to digest them after lunch.

GUN RIGHTS SUPPORTERS should be very unhappy with Bush, as the Justice Department punts on the D.C. gun ban.

Apparently Ashcroft’s view of the right to arms is like the beer in a beer commercial: you can pour it, show it brilliantly illuminated, talk about how good it is — in fact, do absolutely anything except actually drink it.

NETWORK HELP REQUEST: Okay, the home wireless network sort of works. About one time in ten the laptop connects fine. The other computer never does. Both can see the network, and report an excellent connection — but when I try to launch Explorer on the laptop, the MSN log-in appears every time; when I make it go away I can access Explorer only in offline mode. The other computer just returns a “page not found” response. I’ve spent a lot of time fiddling with the Windows network settings, to no avail. Any suggestions?

SPIES IN THE FBI? Howard Owens has some thoughts.

I’VE BEEN POINTING UP MUGABE’S MISDEEDS for quite some time here. The current New Yorker has a superb article on what’s going on in Zimbabwe, which is now up on the Web. I highly recommend it, though it’s pretty depressing. Mugabe makes quite clear that he regards Zimbabwe as his personal property, and that he’ll kill anyone who gets in the way, regardless of what it means for the people of Zimbabwe.

What’s worse is that he’s still getting a lot of support from South Africa and from South African political leaders. That bodes poorly for Zimbabwe, but it’s even worse for South Africa, because Zimbabwe has served as a groundbreaker and role-model for South Africa for the past couple of decades.

HENRY COPELAND is interested in seeing bloggers make money, and he’s got some plans.

BIZARRO WORLD, CONT’D: The New Republic is savaging the Pentagon brass for being unwilling to go to war. Okay, this is a longstanding issue, as their editorial points out, but still. . . .

Key passage:

But timidity is one thing; insubordination is another. The military establishment has crossed that line several times over the last decade–when a general named Colin Powell penned op-eds in 1992 cautioning policymakers against intervening in Bosnia; and in 1999, when the Army brazenly dragged its feet in delivering to Albania the Apache helicopters President Bill Clinton had ordered for the Kosovo campaign. And now it appears they are doing so once more.

There’s nothing worse than waging war in a half-assed fashion. Stephen Green said the other day that we’ve lost the initiative. I’m afraid he’s right.

If we lose this war, it’ll be because it was mismanaged. If that happens, we need to be sure that heads roll — from the White House, to the Pentagon, to the CIA. I agree with those who see the mideast turmoil as a distraction play intended to keep us from taking decisive action. Seems to be working.

The absence of rolling heads right now, as evidence of 9/11 screwups emerges in greater and greater quantities, is already worrisome.

EX-NAZI AND EX-U.N. SECRETARY GENERAL Kurt Waldheim (what? he’s still alive?) has been visiting Lebanon to hear complaints about Israel. Hmm. Perhaps there’s an important position awaiting Waldheim at the ICRC or the UNHRC. He seems to have the qualifications.

ANDREW SULLIVAN (whose permalinks are actually working now) weighs in on the Great Web Traffic Debate. Hey guys: all it takes is an open counter. And Mickey Kaus has responded to Sullivan’s “burly beer-buddy” Jonah Goldberg’s remarks on the traffic that Slate gets via MSN and MSNBC: “It’s called leveraging monopoly power, buddy! You got a problem with that?” You tell ’em, Mickey!