MARTIN DEVON has a response to my FoxNews column on teen sex. He’s right about the drinking, and the rest.

UPDATE: Katie Allison Granju has some thoughts of her own. So does A.C. Douglas, and so does TAPPED.

The wonderfully ‘nymed Group Captain Lionel Mandrake shares some experiences, too, as does one of his commenters.

EUGENE VOLOKH has some interesting observations on open-mindedness in the Blogosphere.

KEVIN MCGEHEE says Tom Clancy may be right again. I kind of hope so.

LILEKS NAILS IT, in a discussion of the antiwarbloggers:

To my surprise, the site had an actual graphic. You might recognize the photo – Robert Capa’s famous “Death of a Loyalist Soldier.” It shows a soldier standing on a hill with his arms spread wide; either he’s just been shot or he is preparing to launch into the refrain from “Somewhere.” The site’s authors have written “Avoid This” below.

In other words: if you disagree with those who believe Bush masterminded 9-11, you are a fascist stooge; if you support fighting actual fascists, you are a blood-crazed warmonger. Anyway, lesson noted: avoid getting shot battling fascists. Stand aside and let them in.

Not hardly.

POLICE IN ONE PART OF LONDON have been basically ignoring marijuana and putting extra officers to work on street crime. The result: less street crime. Imagine.

VERY COOL DJ REID SPEED has (of course) a weblog. And in grand blogger tradition, she explains what’s wrong with airline security. (Thanks to Pieter K for the link).

ANOTHER COURT has found secret detentions unlawful, at least when used in sweeping fashion. I haven’t read the opinion, but this seems less broad than the headline might suggest.

D.C.’S HANDGUN BAN ordinance is being challenged by public defenders representing two men charged with violating it. They say that it violates the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms.

It seems to me that this challenge is likely to succeed — if, indeed, the Justice Department will even defend against it. It is the Justice Department’s position that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to arms, subject to reasonable regulations. D.C.’s outright ban goes far beyond “reasonable regulation.” Challenges to state gun control laws under the Second Amendment are complicated by the question of “incorporation,” since not all of the Bill of Rights is applicable to the states, and the Supreme Court has never addressed the question of whether the Second Amendment is incorporated. (In fact, it hasn’t taken a relevant Second Amendment case since it developed the doctrine of incorporation).

But the District of Columbia isn’t a state; it’s the federal government. So questions of incorporation don’t matter in this context. And the ban — which amounts to complete gun prohibition — goes far beyond reasonable regulation. (The fact that gun crime in the District skyrocketed after the ban makes it hard to defend on the facts, too.) The Justice Department should simply admit that the D.C. ordinance violates the Second Amendment; if it doesn’t do that, it’s going to have a very hard time explaining how it’s consistent with the views that Ashcroft has expressed.

About the only weakness is that — based on the Post story — the men are charged only with carrying a pistol without a license, rather than with possession of a pistol without a license. The Second Amendment (in my view, and that of most, but not all, scholars) doesn’t necessarily protect a right to wear a gun, only the right to own one. That’s about the only “out” I can see here. Otherwise it presents the question rather squarely. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh, as he is wont to do, has come up with a new angle on this case.

ANDREA HARRIS HAS SOME THOUGHTS ON TEEN SEX and the virtues of unsociability.

KEN LAYNE HAS SOME THOUGHTS on the FBI’s organizational problem. But where’s my copy of his book?

SFSU UPDATE: Meryl Yourish, who is SFSU central, has the latest news and lots of links on her page. Do some scrolling, too. And don’t miss this update from Joe Katzman on the Blog Burst.

OLIVER WILLIS HAS A NEW MAGAZINE. Check it out: It’s a very interesting idea.

YOU DON’T TUG ON SUPERMAN’S CAPE: Jonah Goldberg reflects on what would happen if the Islamowackos who want an all-out holy war with America got their wishes:

It would be one thing if this relatively small band of fanatics were murdering people in pursuit of something achievable. You know, if their goal were simply to get McDonald’s out of Cairo or our airbases out of the Gulf. But, if you take them at their word, their ultimate goal is to bring about the total destruction of democracy, America, and the Christian and Jewish faiths. As a practical matter, to believe that this can be achieved through an all-out battle between our team and theirs is like believing war will make squares into circles and ducks will crap plutonium.

This doesn’t mean these daft murderers aren’t dangerous. They are. But they are tactically dangerous. Strategically, they’re cuckoo for Coca Puffs. They can blow up things and kill people. But their ultimate goal, victorious jihad against the “infidels,” is no more likely to happen than the Hale-Boppers were likely to get picked up by an intergalactic shuttle bus. So think about this the next time you hear some knee-jerk pundit exclaim that if we do X or Y we will give Osama bin Laden or the Islamo-fascists “exactly what they want.” What they want isn’t going to happen. Period. If they even get close to what they wish for, they will be very, very sorry.

Goldberg can make this kind of thing sound funny — and, looked at the right way, it sort of is. But in fact, I don’t want to see the mass slaughter of Muslims that would be the only result of something close to an all-out war between Islam and America. That’s why I don’t believe in encouraging the wishful-thinkers and the outright deluded by acting weak. It can only lead to worse things down the line.

STILL MORE TEEN SEX: Eric S. Raymond says that adults are jealous and resentful of teens, and want to control teen sex accordingly.

TEEN SEX UPDATE: My FoxNews column is up. It offers a more refined view of my earlier posts on teen sex.

Well, the hardware firewall (yeah, I got one) isn’t stopping everything anymore, and one computer can see the network, anyway. So that’s something!

POSTING IS A BIT SCARCE TODAY because of the various technical issues here, and at home. My air conditioning is out, and I’m doing some computer reconfiguring at home. Thanks for all the advice. I scrapped the WAP-11 in favor of a more secure approach. Of course, then I turned out to have the wrong cable and, well, you get the idea.

In the meantime, here’s a cool project to index NYC bloggers by subway stop.

GRAY DAVIS UPDATE: Craig Schamp has comentary, and a link to this story.

THE DNS PROBLEMS were the result of a Denial-of-Service attack. HostingMatters has been in touch with law enforcement, as they seem to know where it was coming from.

THE BEAR SAYS I’m wrong about Bill Frist’s HIV/Terrorism speech, and that so is Knoxville media commentator “Bubba Mullet.” I’d say only half wrong — I thought that the meat of the criticism was that Frist was tying AIDS to terrorism via a “root cause” argument, mostly to get more money. I agree with The Bear when he notes:

What I think we can clearly conclude, though, is that he is at least suggesting that there are similarities between the problem of solving the HIV crisis, and the problem of combating bioterrorism. To me, that’s a perfectly sensible argumen