NO WAR FOR OIL: More like anti-war, for oil. This article in the New York Times points out, Hussein is favoring non-American companies from countries that are currently opposing war. So they’re against war because it might interfere with their cozy contracts with a murderous dictator. Nice to see them taking a strong moral position.

A stronger moral case exists — as Steven Den Beste has pointed out — in favor of repudiating these contracts, and Iraq’s existing debts, where countries like France, Russia and Germany are concerned. There should be consequences for supporting murderous dictators, and new countries, freed of dictators, should start out free of ruinous debts, too.

And, as Bush said in a different but related context, there have to be consequences. Crossing the United States should be expensive.

UPDATE: Reader Brian O’Connor writes:

This raises an interesting point about our friends & allies, the

French and Russians …

France and Russia indeed do have heavy financial interests in

Iraq. But I doubt that this alone accounts for the strength

of their opposition to our UN resolution. After all, we could

simply guarantee that their investments and deals with Saddam

would be honored by whatever government succeeds his. Or

we ourselves could cover Iraq’s outstanding debts in exchange

for French and Russian votes in the UN.

No … it’s not just about money. And it certainly isn’t principle.

There is almost desperation in their opposition, and I’m betting

that they are scared to death that if we enter Baghdad, we’ll find

records detailing exactly what those two countries (and others

as well) have been up to with Iraq over the past 10 years.

I’m betting that there are some documents there that would prove

to be immensely embarrassing to Paris and Moscow (and perhaps

others as well), and that Saddam is simply reminding them of that

fact in exchange for their support in the UN. I think it’s a case of

international blackmail.

Interesting.

HOW MANY CHANCES TO ARREST JOHN MUHAMMAD WERE PASSED UP?

One month after Muhammad arrived on Antigua with Gianquinto, he flew into Miami International Airport. He entered the country on April 14, 2001, with two Jamaican women and a young girl. Muhammad presented a false birth certificate, and the women and the child also presented false documents, according to law enforcement sources familiar with the case.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service interrogated Muhammad, unsure whether he was a U.S. citizen. The INS contacted the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami, but prosecutors there declined to charge Muhammad, the sources said. A conviction for presenting false identification documents carries a 15-year prison sentence.

Jeez, this guy is like the old joke: he couldn’t get arrested! No wonder he was so confident in his actually rather limited criminal skills.

Here’s more on the Antigua connection. And note that the April 23, 2001 date on this document doesn’t match the story Muhammad apparently told the feds on April 14 about having just changed his name: “One source close to the case said Muhammad told INS agents that he had changed his last name after converting to Islam and that he received the phony certificate to match his driver’s license, which listed his last name as Muhammad.” Kind of embarrassing that they fell for that.

BIG STORY ON THE PATRIOT ACT in tomorrow’s Washington Post, setting it up almost as a battle between Viet Dinh and Pat Leahy. One apparent error:

In the year since the Patriot Act was approved, the government has moved quickly to take full advantage of new and existing powers.

More than a thousand noncitizens were detained without being charged last fall, and their identities were kept secret.

If I’m not mistaken, those detentions were pretty much a done deal by the time the Patriot Act took effect, and were not based on its authority.

SOMEBODY THINKS I USE THE WORD INDEED a lot, judging by my search-engine referrers.

Indeed I do.

JUST WAIT TILL NEXT YEAR! I thought we were way overrated in the preseason polls, and boy was I right.

WALTER OLSON HAS A LOT OF LINKS on the Moscow theater attack. Most interesting is this report from the Telegraph:

The Telegraph has learned that a number of Arab fighters, believed to be of Saudi Arabian and Yemeni origin, were among the group that seized control of the theatre.

“There were definitely Arab terrorists in the building with links to al-Qa’eda,” said a senior Western diplomat. “The Russians will now want to know how much help the Chechens received from bin Laden’s organisation.”

Mr Putin had claimed that “foreign elements” were involved and suspicions about al-Qa’eda’s connection deepened after the Chechens broadcast a pre-recorded message on the Qatar-based al-Jazeera television network, which is frequently used by bin Laden and his lieutenants.

Can’t say I’m terribly surprised to hear this, but it’s news nonetheless.

LOOKS LIKE IT’S NOT JUST AMERICAN IRAQIS WHO ARE SICK OF SADDAM HUSSEIN — as this article in the New York Times demonstrates:

In a country where the merest hint of dissent had been a death sentence in years past, many foreign reporters have been approached in recent days by individuals offering forbidden thoughts. Taking advantage of moments in which the official “minders” assigned to journalists by the information ministry were distracted, or briefly absent, these Iraqis burst out with vehemence against the government, and often against Mr. Hussein personally.

One man, an out-of-work engineer, sat down beside a reporter relaxing at a Baghdad coffeehouse. After initial pleasantries in English, the man, who gave his age as 58, glanced about to make sure he was not being overheard, then leaned forward and said that almost no Iraqis would support Mr. Hussein if he allowed Iraq’s dispute with the world over weapons of mass destruction to plunge the country into another war.

“We had eight years of war with Iran in the 1980′s, and all we got was death,” he said. “Then we had the war over Kuwait, and more death. Nobody here wants another war. We want jobs. We want peace, not death.” The man left without giving his name, and disappeared quickly into the crowd. . . .

“What the Iraqi people would like to hang on their walls would be banners saying, `Yes, yes, Mr. Bush. Yes, yes, America.’ There are 22 million Iraqis, and every one of them has 100 stories to tell of their suffering under Saddam.” He gestured to the secret police building and added, “If you go there, you are lucky if you live three days, maybe five.”

Hmm. Maybe those Ceaucescu comparisons aren’t so out of place after all. This conclusion sure sounds that way:

Several Iraqis said scores of Baath Party members had mailed their membership cards to party headquarters in recent weeks, apparently in a bid to distance themselves from Mr. Hussein should an American invasion come.

With a membership of about 500,000, the party has a monopoly on virtually all top positions in the government, armed forces and state security agencies — the very apparatus of fear that has kept Mr. Hussein in power. In the past, quitting the party at a time of crisis for Mr. Hussein would have been seen as treachery, and treated as such. But now, apparently, those mailing in their cards have chosen to take that risk in the hope of avoiding something still more menacing — the specter of the kind of vengeance killings that have been seen elsewhere when brutal oligarchies have come tumbling down.

The trick is, of course, that for Saddam to be deposed by Iraqis, they have to believe that the alternative is having him deposed by Americans. Somebody tell these people.

ORRIN JUDD says that Harry Belafonte was righter than he knew.

BURIED IN THE ANTIWAR COVERAGE: A true man-bites-dog story that isn’t getting much play:

All in all it’s exactly the same as every other story written to cover every other recent Iraq war protest. However, buried down at the bottom of the article is this little nugget:

About 500 Iraqi exiles came to Washington to show support for efforts to remove Saddam from power.

Tamir Musa, an Iraqi who has lived in Michigan for 10 years, said, “The war is good if it goes to kill Saddam Hussein. He has a lot of bombs. He’s terrorist number one.”

The focus of the story is on the hundreds of thousands of anti-war protesters, but their presence is to be as expected as flies on a dog turd. And considering the anti-war machine has done this exact same protest two or three times recently, how is this big news? On the other hand, 500 Iraqis show up in Washington to support the war, and this isn’t big enough news to warrant more than two tiny paragraphs at the bottom of the anti-war article?

Apparently not.

UPDATE: Here’s another report on the protests, where Palestinian flags were much in evidence.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here are some photos of the Iraqi demonstrators with “Kill Saddam” signs, etc.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s a firsthand blog account of the protests.

CNN WON’T USE THE “T” WORD: “The death toll suffered in bringing an end to the three-day Moscow theatre siege has risen to 90 captives and 50 hostage-takers.”

“Hostage-takers?” Jeez.

UPDATE: Reader James Davila writes:

You can give CNN feedback on their coverage at this link. I’ve just written them a note on their lack of use of the word “terrorist” in the article on the storming of

the Moscow theatre. It would be nice if a few thousand of your readers did the same.

Well, go for it if you’re so inclined.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Michele has noticed, too.

THE SNIPER LETTER appears to be influenced by an offshoot of the Black Muslim movement called the “Five Percent” movement — though the Five Percenters apparently don’t regard themselves as Muslims. The evidence seems a bit shaky to me.

UPDATE: Louis Farrakhan acknowledged today that Muhammad was a Nation of Islam member. Which means he’s not really a Muslim at all, at least in the opinion of most non-Nation of Islam Muslims. In fact, I seem to recall that the Saudis actually fund some sort of program dedicated to pointing out that the Nation of Islam isn’t really Islam.

Which isn’t to say that he sees things this way himself, or that he might not have been a Useful Idiot. Stay tuned.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Roy Innis is warning of terrorist infiltration into Black Muslim groups, especially those operating in prison.

RIAA HONCHO HILARY ROSEN debated file-trading at the Oxford Union and lost. Slashdot has lots of links and information.

AID AND COMFORT: Even the New York Times has to acknowledge it. And this quote shows the mindset of the “peace” movement:

“I don’t think there’s any way to sidestep the fact that there have been abuses” in Iraq, she said. “However I come from the United States, and my primary responsibility is to speak out against the U.S.A.”

There was a time, you know, when Americans thought they had a different primary responsibility by virtue of their citizenship, especially when in hostile foreign countries. And, actually, most still do. The rest do stuff like this.

UPDATE: Here’s an article by John Tabin on “peace” activist Kathy Kelly, who’s the speaker quoted above. It’s entitled “Evil’s Enablers.”

BILL HOBBS is a fine blogger and journalist who’s looking for work that’s a bit more full-time than what he’s doing for Corante. Somebody hire him.

DANIEL DREZNER has thoughts on Bush’s grand strategy. He says it’s more multilateralist than people realize.

I HAVEN’T BLOGGED MUCH about the “peace” protests today because I don’t have a lot to say that I haven’t said before. But this passage from a rather sympathetic report says it all:

In Washington, civil rights activist Al Sharpton addressed Mr. Bush, even though the president was at an economic summit in Mexico.

“It would have been good for you to be here, George, so you could see what America really looks like,” Sharpton said. “We are the real America.

Al Sharpton, claiming he’s the real America as he talks to a man who isn’t there. Seems about right.

STEVEN DEN BESTE RESPONDS to the anti-warbloggers. Meanwhile, Russell Wardlow describes who we’re fighting in terms that the anti-warbloggers will probably dislike.

AZIZ POONAWALLA has a long post on Osama bin Laden’s ignorance of, and misuse of, Islam. It’s well worth reading.

UPDATE: Aziz emails: “I just realized, that I think I just did my first

Fisking. Of OBL, no less :)” Heh. My favorite line in the post is this one, though: “I drive an SUV. Whether I’m killing the Earth or helping muslims do hajj depends on your point of view, I guess.” If I drove an SUV, I’d give the latter response to any green types who complained.

NOW THIS IS INTERESTING:

BERLIN (AP) – Passports for three of Osama bin Laden (news – web sites )’s wives were found in the apartment of a Yemeni arrested last month in Pakistan and believed to have been the key contact person between the Hamburg cell of Sept. 11 plotters and al-Qaida, a German news magazine reported Saturday.

Der Spiegel, which did not cite sources, said passports for an unspecified number of bin Laden’s children also were found when Ramzi Binalshibh was arrested in Karachi last month. Binalshibh is now in U.S. custody.

Sounds promising to me.

THIS POST on Paul Wellstone’s death yesterday drew the following email:

Glenn– Your decision not to discuss the political impact of Senator Wellstone’s untimely death is just a little too slick, too “correct,” and well, a wee bit pompous. Everyone out here knows you’ve thought about the political ramifications of the senator’s death, just the same as we have. Unless you knew the Senator personally, I truly doubt you are in shock or mourning the loss. So why act that way?

Well, the truth is, I just didn’t feel like writing about who was going to take the Minnesota Senate seat after hearing that. I disagreed with Wellstone on some things, but watching them rerun some of his 1990 commercials reminded me why I liked him. He had a sense of humor, he didn’t take himself, or politics, too seriously, and, by all appearances and accounts, he wasn’t a dick.

And while the outcome of the Senate elections is important, I’m kind of tired of seeing it presented like it’s the only important thing in the world, and of seeing people so desperate to win that they’ll say anything. In the words of Chrissie Hynde: “What’s important in this life? Ask the man who’s lost his wife.” Or read this.

MICHAEL KAZIN writes on the need for a patriotic Left.

BELLESILES UPDATE: Here’s a story in the Boston Globe by David Mehegan, who was on the Bellesiles story early:

At the same time, mainstream scholars raised questions about research Bellesiles did into probate records. His credibility problems were compounded when he said that he had lost all of his research notes in a flood at Emory. A Globe review last year found that San Francisco records Bellesiles cited in his book had been destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire there, and that records in Providence and Vermont contradicted his book and explanations on his Web site. . . .

”His answers raise doubts about his veracity,” the report states. ”He seems to have been utterly unaware of the importance of the possibility of replication of his research. His responses have been prolix, confusing, evasive, and occasionally contradictory. Even at this point, it is not clear that he understands the magnitude of his probate research shortcomings.”

Although the report also says, ”we do not believe it possible to state conclusively that Professor Bellesiles engaged in intentional fabrication or falsification of research data,” it adds, ”we are seriously troubled by Professor Bellesiles’s scholarly conduct. … the failure to clearly identify his sources does move into the realm of falsification.”

Bellesiles is characterized as “defiant.” This seems to me a mistake on his part, though some posters over at HNN expect him to carve out a niche as the “von Daniken of gun history.”

QUESTIONS ABOUT CHECHEN TERRORISTS: From Cold Fury.

JOHN MUHAMMAD, frequenter of homeless shelters, had a laptop in his car. Wonder if the cops have it now?

UPDATE: Hmm. “Thompson recalled a laptop computer, its screen glowing blue, on the car passenger seat.” The blue screen of death! I blame Microsoft for driving him over the edge. . . .

THE FBI IS NOW HOLDING NATHANIEL OSBOURNE — a Michigan man who is the co-owner of the car used in the shootings — as a “material witness.”

HAPPY FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY TO ALFRED E. NEUMAN — and a lesson for those who claim that they’re being “suppressed” today:

The era was the 1950s, the gray flannel fifties, and Mad magazine, which began publishing early in the decade, was so subversive that the FBI actually investigated it, sometimes sending agents to visit the editors and, in the words of an FBI document, “firmly and severely admonish them.”

Mad’s reaction was to draw funny cartoons of J. Edgar Hoover.

Note to Ted Rall: they were funny cartoons.

MISSING TROOPS IN AFGHANISTAN? This story from the Frontier Post says there are 40. It’s not a tremendously reliable source, and I haven’t seen anything on this elsewhere, but here’s the link for what it’s worth.

MERYL YOURISH reflects on the media’s unwillingness to call the Chechen hostage-takers terrorists:

In my lexicon, guerrilla fighters and rebels are names for the people fighting military forces and choosing military targets. The second you move on to deliberately targeting civilians, you are no longer anything but a terrorist. But hey, what do I know? Here’s the AP description of the scene . . . .

Captors. Gunmen. Hostage-takers. Not terrrorists, though many of them were clad in the latest of bomb-belt fashions. Dozens of their hostages are dead today, many wounded, and these simple “rebels” are described as above.

The terrorists have won the language war. Or is it the multicultis and the PC crowds? Certainly, the newsroom staffs across the globe have succumbed to the mindset of—captives. Why else are they so afraid to call a bloodthirsty killer a terrorist?

When is a terrorist not a terrorist? When the media say so.

Mark my words: this is more likely to breed prejudice and vigilantism than to prevent it.

A PALESTINIAN WOMAN was dragged from her home and killed in an atrocity that probably won’t get much attention because it was conducted by Palestinians.

SPEAKING OF CNN — they’re now calling John Muhammad “John Williams,” in an apparent policy of only calling people by adopted Muslim names when they’re not terrorists. (They don’t call Muhammad Ali “Cassius Clay,” now do they?)

This seems to be part of an overall move to “de-Islamicize” the sniper case. For the authorities, there are two obvious motivations for this. First, if it’s “not terrorism,” then the fact that it happened isn’t a failure of “anti-terrorism.” Second, to the extent that people buy this it makes the anti-American Islamic movement look weaker. For the PC forces of the media, it probably appears necessary to ensure that mobs of peasants with torches and pitchforks won’t set out for the nearest mosque. (Though in fact such distortions make such violence more, not less, likely in my opinion, by breeding distrust of the authorities.)

Anyway, here’s the actual bin Laden fatwa, which clearly encompasses individual acts of terror against America. So the notion that an Islamic terrorist has to be a card-carrying member of Al Qaeda to be a genuine terrorist is absurd under its own terms. Excerpt:

The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies–civilians and military–is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God, “and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,” and “fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in God.” . . .

We — with God’s help — call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God’s order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it.

(Emphasis added.) Now this doesn’t tell us the specific motivations of John Muhammad, but it does make clear that claims that people who act without a direct connection to Al Qaeda, or people who also rob liquor stories, can’t be Ladenite terrorists are just, well, wrong.

(Fatwa link via Neal Boortz). NOTE: Reader Haggai Elitzur has sent this 1998 analysis of the Fatwa by Bernard Lewis from Foreign Affairs. Lewis’s translation differs slightly; Elitzur says it’s better, but I’m not in a position to judge. Don’t miss this point in which Lewis notes that that even if most Muslims disagree with this kind of reasoning (and they do) only a few need believe it to create problems. STILL MORE: Aziz Poonawalla emails that it’s not a real fatwa, but a call to hirabah (senseless or stupid war), and sends this link to a discussion on alt.muslim on the subject.

UPDATE: And as people have tried to minimize the Al Qaeda connection to the Bali blast, too, it’s worth remembering that bin Laden threatened Australia last year based on its role in the independence of East Timor.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reid Stott emails this link to the arrest warrant, which uses the name “John Williams.” He adds: ” agree with what you’re saying re: playing down the adopted Muslim name, but it isn’t CNN that’s doing it.” Well, it isn’t just CNN. As I said, the government has an interest in playing down this connection, too.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Jay Caruso responds.

STILL MORE: Then there’s this from The Smoking Gun:

A jovial, laughing John Allen Muhammad can be heard on an official audio recording of the alleged sniper’s appearance last year in Pierce County District Court to formally change his name. In April 2001, Muhammad made a brief appearance before Judge Molly Davis to request that his name be formally changed from John Allen Williams for “religion purposes” (he had converted to Islam years earlier). When Davis granted the name change after only a few perfunctory questions, Muhammad joked, “I feel cheated,” since he was not called on to present witnesses or paperwork or approach the bench. “These are fairly routine,” Davis said.

(Emphasis added). There’s streaming audio of the hearing there, and lots of other links. Reader Allan Gornow, who sends the link, remarks: “Perhaps Ted Turner will provide some decent computers to his news operation so they can access significant information about serious stories.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Bill Herbert says I’ve gone off the deep end on this issue. Well, I was thinking about why this bugs me so much while I was shopping, Lileks-like, at Target. What this reminds me of is the Administration’s absurd claim last year that no one could possibly have foreseen the 9/11 attacks. It may have been true that the failure to prevent the attacks was entirely non-culpable — but the claim that they were utterly unforeseeable was so absurd that it was an insult.

Likewise, it may well turn out that — despite rather a lot of suggestive evidence — the sniper attacks by a guy named Muhammad who said he supported the 9/11 attackers and who seems to have had a lot of money and airplane tickets for a homeless guy will turn out to be pure, garden-variety nuttiness. But that doesn’t change the fact that a lot of people seem to be bending over backward to be sure it looks that way, and that’s why I’m harping on the issue.

LAST UPDATE: Natalie Solent explains what I mean.

APPARENTLY CNN DOESN’T CARE, but the news from Algeria is pretty horrifying:

The Algerian news agency says suspected Islamic extremists have killed 21 people from the same family, including a three-month-old baby. The attack took place in the north-western province of Chlef.

Five other people were reported to be in a serious condition with bullet wounds to the head.

How come this stuff doesn’t get covered?

TARNISHING THE IMAGE OF ISLAM: SKBubba is concerned that some people may get the wrong idea from recent events.

BELLESILES UPDATE: Erin O’Connor worries that Bellesiles isn’t unusual, but is just the tip of the academic-corruption iceberg:

There were peer reviewers who did not do their job when Bellesiles first began publishing his work on early American gun ownership, and there were the editors who chose them. There were editors who ignored the attempts of scholars such as Clayton Cramer to alert them to problems with Bellesiles’ work and there were publishing houses that did not see past the chance to make a buck and a splash. There were prize committees that decorated Bellesiles with top professional honors.

I cannot speak for the quality of Bellesiles’ training, nor do I know any more than anyone else about where in his work methodological carelessness cedes to blatant falsification. But I do know something about what graduate education in the humanities looks like, and I know something, too, about how low on the list of scholarly priorities such non-flashy things as thorough documentation and judicious restraint are. Until we start interrogating our systems of peer review, our patterns of professional reward, and the professional training we do, or don’t do, in our Ph.D. programs, we have not yet begun to address the issues the Bellesiles case raises.

Well, Bellesiles’ behavior was extraordinary — but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a lot of other problems out there. I agree that peer review is highly overrated as a means of catching fraud. Peer review is pretty good at catching unsound methodologies, but true frauds just fake the data, and peer reviewers don’t double-check those.

UPDATE: Chris Fountain emails that the story isn’t in the print edition of today’s New York Times.

ANOTHER UPDATE: John Bono thinks he knows what’s coming next.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Megan McArdle is offering a prize to the first reader who spots a journalist or academic “making reference to, without irony, Bellesiles work “proving” that early Americans didn’t have a lot of guns.”

Like the bogus Marc Herold study on Afghan civilian casualties, I imagine that Bellesiles’ work will live on. And I’m still waiting for a public retraction on the matter from reviewers like Garry Wills. But I’m not holding my breath. Don’t miss this post from Megan, either.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Megan has a winner. Well, sort of. Personally, I think people should be given at least a few days to update their web pages.

HERE’S AN UPDATE on the Russian hostage rescue, which appears to have gone well, though not quite as well as it appeared late last night. Apparently 67 hostages are dead, out of about 750. Considering that the building (and the terrorists) were wired with suicide explosives, that’s good.

Interestingly, the report claims that the Russians used a sleeping gas to incapacitate people. I’m somewhat skeptical of this, since knockout gases have been the holy grail of nonlethal-weapons research and as far as I know there haven’t been any good ones developed. Then again, it’s not like I follow the field that closely.

We should be grateful that the Russians managed this so well, as it makes a repetition of these tactics less likely.

UPDATE: There’s more coverage here from the Moscow Times, which is spinning this very positively. I think it is positive, but the spin is quite evident.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Perry DeHavilland is very happy with this outcome, and says that in the long run it’s always safer not to give in to terrorist demands — which is, of course, true.

THE NEW SMARTERHARPERSINDEX is up!

Harper’s repeats statistics already discredited in print by Matt Welch, and seems incapable of reading a UN document. In other words, a pretty typical effort.

CNN IS REPORTING that Russian forces are in control of the theater and Chechen leader Barayev is dead. (But he’s been reported dead before more than once — and note the Wahhabi connection.) That’s all at the moment — reports are still rather fragmentary and confused.

UPDATE: Here’s what Reuters has, but it’s pretty skimpy. CNN says approximately 20 dead, but it’s not clear how many are hostages and how many are terrorists.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s a longer story from UPI. And here’s the AP story.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s the latest on what appears to have been a fairly successful antiterrorist rescue mission. And Bill Quick has some thoughts.

THE POST HAS THE SNIPER LETTER up in PDF. Tony Adragna has a link and some comments.

UH-OH. Explosions and gunfire near the theater in Moscow. Meanwhile Damian Penny observes:

So, in the capital of the world’s second leading nuclear power, hundreds of people are being held hostage by terrorists who are almost certainly connected to the people who murdered 3,000 civilians on 9/11. As we speak, the final showdown between security forces and the terrorists may be beginning. And what are the 24-hour news channels showing?

CNN has Connie Chung talking about the sniper. (Look, they got the fucker, alright?) CTV NewsNet is stuck on its CRTC-mandated 15-minute loop. (Top story: the sniper. When I watched it a couple of hours ago, the Moscow hostage-taking was not even mentioned.) And CBC Uselessworld Newsworld, funded by the Canadian taxpayer to provide an alternative to the horrible, shallow, corporate American news networks, is showing a shocking expose of burlesque houses. (A half hour ago, they were showing Fashion File.) Incredible.

Sigh.

WILL THE LAST BLOGGER TO LEAVE SAN FRANCISCO please turn out the lights?

AN, ER, “IMPERIAL ‘MISTING,’” by Misha, of the recent New York Times article on John Muhammad’s rifle.

IT’S NOT ABOUT BELLESILES, but John Rosenberg has a long post on the work of Jon Weiner, best known to readers of InstaPundit as Bellesiles’ last defender in print, who is described as The Nation’s “academic commissar.” Unlike Rosenberg, I never worked at The Nation, and some of this is inside baseball, but there may be some readers who find it interesting.

BARRELFISKING: Rachel Lucas replies to Michael Moore.

BELLESILES UPDATE: Here’s the story from the Emory Wheel, which will have a longer treatment next week. Meanwhile, Eugene Volokh has this to say about two of Bellesiles’ biggest critics:

I know Lindgren in person, and Cramer by e-mail, and have always had high regard for their work, which was indispensable in bringing this matter to light, and helping correct the historical record. This is not an occasion to congratulate them; but it is one to thank them (and the others who researched the issue and helped publicize the research) for doing well a difficult, unpleasant, but important job.

That seems about right. (Scroll down to here for more).

UPDATE: Reader Richard Heddleson writes:

More interesting than Muhammad’s last name is the total blackout on the wire services of Bellesiles’ resignation from Emory. If this had been Charles Murray or Abigail Thernstrom being forced to resign you know it would have been at the top of the paper.

Checking the wire-service search engines via Drudge, it appears he’s right. There’s no mention whatsoever of the resignation. Disgraceful.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s a summary of the investigative report, from History News Network.

ONE MORE: There’s an AP story finally, though it rather glosses over the charges against Bellesiles, putting him in the same category as other historians accused of using insufficiently attributed quotes.

WALTER OLSON has a huge collection of links on the Moscow terrorist attack. Most worrisome is Asparagirl’s fear that this could happen here.

UPDATE: Jen Taliaferro notes that London theaters are increasing security and suggests that those on Broadway might want to do the same.

THESE ARE OBVIOUSLY ANTIGLOBO TYPES who showed up a day early for tomorrow’s “peace” rally.

JONAH GOLDBERG WRITES ABOUT RACIAL PROFILING and the D.C. sniper case:

Interestingly, James Allen Fox, a respected criminologist at Northeastern University–who favored the Caucasian icy-loner scenario–collects a database of sniper homicides. He found that out of 514 sniper murders between 1976 and 2000, 55% of the murderers were white. This, of course, would mean that whites are actually underrepresented among the ranks of sniper-serial killers. One can only assume that in a better world this increasingly influential subculture will look more like America.

Speaking of subcultures, various news organizations delved deeply into the sniper subculture, explaining how the mantra of “one shot, one kill” was increasingly popular among “ex-military” and “police” types. Much of this was egged on by Tom Diaz, an analyst with an antigun group called the Violence Policy Center. Mr. Diaz told the Chicago Tribune. “We do not yet know what specific firearm is being used.” But “it is clear the gun industry stands ready to arm and train anyone with the fantasy of being a real live sniper.”

This may be true, but as sniper groups have been insisting for the past month, it was never likely that the Washington-area murderer was a professionally trained sniper at all. He used the wrong ammo and shot from a very short range when compared with a pro or serious amateur.

No, the most relevant story line about John Allen Muhammad is not his stint in the Army–mainly as a combat engineer. It is that last name of his, which he assumed only in the past year or so. Indeed, throughout the month of sniper coverage few news organizations would entertain the idea that the serial sniper was directed or inspired by al Qaeda. A few op-eds appeared in late October, but generally speaking the networks and major newspapers only brought up the idea to shoot it down.

It seemed at times that many members of the press were much more eager to return to cultural politics as usual, which in this case meant getting back to smacking around white conservative men, even by proxy. When those two Hispanic immigrants were mistakenly arrested at a phone booth this week, the cameras seemed to linger lovingly over the Bush/Cheney, Marine Corps and NRA bumper stickers on their van. When an unsavory former military man was wanted for questioning in Baltimore, the New York Daily News was ready with a headline: “HUNT ARMED RACIST: Supremacist sought in sniping spree.”

I wonder how many of these folks are embarrassed about this now? Not nearly enough, I’d guess.

UPDATE: John Hawkins comments on the “sniper subculture.”

A WHILE BACK I put up this post based on a Wired story about an independent musician who said he was being screwed by eBay. Now Greg Beato says that the whole thing may have been bogus.

BELLESILES UPDATE: Michael Bellesiles has resigned from the Emory faculty:

October 25, 2002

Robert A. Paul, Interim Dean of Emory College

I have accepted the resignation of Michael Bellesiles from his position as Professor of History at Emory University, effective December 31, 2002.

Although we would not normally release any of the materials connected with a case involving the investigation of faculty misconduct in research, in light of the intense scholarly interest in the matter I have decided, with the assent of Professor Bellesiles as well as of the members of the Investigative Committee, to make public the report of the Investigative Committee appointed by me to evaluate the allegations made against Professor Bellesiles (none of the supporting documents, however, are being made public). The text of the report is now available online at www.emory.edu/central/NEWS/.

Emory considers the report authoritative.

In conducting this investigation, Emory has scrupulously observed the procedures laid out in our published policy statement regarding matters of alleged research misconduct. Throughout the investigation process our efforts have been guided by the objectives of maintaining the highest standards of scholarly integrity, while also striving to ensure the confidentiality of the proceedings and to protect the rights of a member of Emory’s faculty.

The Investigative Committee was chaired by Stanley N. Katz, Professor of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, and included Hanna H. Gray, Judson Distinguished Professor of History Emerita and President Emerita, University of Chicago, and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, James Duncan Phillips Professor of History, Harvard University. I hereby express my appreciation to these distinguished scholars for contributing their effort and expertise to the resolution of this matter of such great importance not only to Emory but to the wider scholarly community. Committee members have stated that they will not discuss or respond to questions about the investigation or the report.

Emory also wishes to express its thanks and appreciation to Professor Bellesiles for his many years of service and his many valuable contributions to the University.

Emory now considers the investigation of allegations of research misconduct against Professor Bellesiles in connection with his book Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture to be concluded and resolved.

Here’s a link to the report mentioned above, and here’s a link to Bellesiles’ own statement.

UPDATE: A historian reader writes: “Yowza… I just read the Emory report. Even taking account of the dodgy language for the benefit of a colleague, that is mighty damning stuff. I could teach a whole semester on research methodology and ethics from this.”

Well, somebody should. Clayton Cramer has extracted some highlights from the Emory report. Oh, and this post by Charles Murtaugh from a while back is worth reading, too. And this piece by Don Williams from May explores the impact of Bellesiles’ problems on the gun control movement.

UPDATE: Oh, and I can’t believe I forgot to post this link to James Lindgren’s Yale Law Journal piece on Bellesiles’ errors, which the investigative committee obviously found very significant.

THE GUN ISSUE looks like a loser for Democrats even in Maryland according to this poll:

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend recently called for expanding Maryland’s ballistic fingerprinting law to include rifles, while Bob Ehrlich has remarked that a few of Maryland existing gun laws should be reexamined to judge their effectiveness. Maryland voters have their own opinions: Fifty-three percent agreed that “[w]e already have enough gun control laws – we need to better enforce the laws already on the books.” Thirty-six percent statewide felt that “[w]e need more and stronger gun control laws.” Eight percent took the opposite view, that “[w]e have too many gun control laws now.” The remaining 3% gave no answer.

Better enforcement of existing laws is the favored position in every demographic subgroup in the survey, except among Democrats and residents of the Washington suburbs. Fifty percent of Democrats, and 54% of voters in the DC suburbs, say we need more and stronger gun control laws. Among undecided voters, just 31% opt for more and stronger laws, with 61% saying that we need better enforcement of existing gun control statutes.

That “better enforcement of existing gun control statutes” answer is a problem, of course, given the recently publicized failures that Maryland has had in that department.

BARBERS ARE NOW DEMANDING AN APOLOGY FROM JESSE JACKSON for his comments about the movie “Barbershop.” Heh. It’s a bad year for Jesse:

Members of the National Association of Cosmetologists led by Chief Executive James Stern Thursday said Jackson erred when, in September, he demanded the film’s makers apologize for for jokes about U.S. civil rights icons Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks made in the movie.

Stern told Reuters his group had screened the film, a comedy starring Ice Cube as the young owner of a community barbershop, and the 100 or so African-American cosmetologists at the screening found nothing offensive about the movie.

“Reverend Jackson did not consider the future of black filmmakers,” said Stern, adding that now, every time a black filmmaker produces a movie or writes a screenplay, they are going to have to consider whether they will offend some group, which in turn will stifle their creativity.

“We, as blacks, have to let the movie studios know that when he (Jackson) is wrong, we’re willing to speak out for ourselves,” Stern said.

Stern added that members of his group have seen their businesses hurt by Jackson’s comment, and he said if the leader of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition did not apologize himself, his group would sue Jackson for defamation of character.

A Jackson spokeswoman was not immediately available to comment.

I’ll bet she wasn’t. I think it’s time for Jesse to retire. There’s no need for a “spokesman” once people are willing to speak for themselves.

BLOGGER.COM HAS BEEN HACKED! Take appropriate steps. Those of you who have moved away from Blogger should make sure you’re not using the old password for your new blog, just to be sure.

UPDATE: From Jason Shellen of Pyra:

Yes, it appears someone is having fun with one of our servers. Right now

we can tell you that:

- All your data is backed up, including email, user settings and what

not.

- Billing/credit card information is handled separately.

- We are working to restore from our most recent backup right now.

- The security problem that led to this attack will be fixed before we

bring Blogger back online.

Sounds like they’re on top of it.

SEN. PAUL WELLSTONE has died in a plane crash along with his wife, daughter, and some unnamed campaign workers.

UPDATE: It feels unseemly to be talking about this so soon, but another blogger who’s unable to post because of the Blogger hacking incident sends this link to what he says is the relevant Minnesota statute. I plan to engage in no further discussion of the Minnesota election today.

CORRECTION? Now a couple of people say this is the relevant statute. And now Jason Rylander emails with this one, too.

If I’ve missed anything I’ll update it above, but — even though I realize that it’s inevitable people will be talking about this with the election so close — I really don’t want to write any more about this right now. I’ve always rather liked Wellstone despite disagreeing with him on some issues, and I find his death very sad. The Torch affair was farce: this is tragedy.

Here’s an obituary by a former student.

BELLESILES NON-UPDATE: Many people were expecting a decision yesterday. Now there’s some speculation that Emory will release its decision this afternoon, so as to bury the news over the weekend. Stay tuned.

YOU KNEW THIS WAS COMING: The first of no doubt many lame “the Army made him do it” pieces.

SKBUBBA emails:

Where did a basically down and out and practically homeless guy get the money to purchase a somewhat expensive rifle and sniper accessories? And a car? Is this guy a stooge for somebody, or a beta test? Your Islamoterrorist theory is starting to sound more and more likely, even if it is just a rogue operation.

I also wondered about the poor illegal immigrant saps that pulled up to that phone booth in a white van. Did Muhammad/Williams set them up? You know how these guys hang around certain parts of town looking for work. I

can see Muhammad/Williams telling them “yeah, hey, I’ve got some work for you. Be at this phone booth at 10:00 or whatever and I’ll give you details and

directions.”

Interesting questions. I hope that some of the journalists working on this story are following up on them.

UPDATE: Rod Dreher points out that someone was asking these questions — and trying to get the FBI interested — before the shootings started. Here’s the story Dreher refers to. Excerpt:

Once, Muhammad told Grant that he had to travel a long distance, possibly to Jamaica or the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean, to sign some papers on a land sale, Grant said. Grant said he wondered why Muhammad would fly to do that when the job could be handled by mail.

In the post 9-11 climate, Archer felt it was worth a call to the FBI.

“I felt like he was part of an organization. I felt like he had some connection with terrorists. … I said he’s got connections somewhere with somebody who’s got money,” Archer remembered telling the FBI.

This, mind you, while Muhammad was living in a homeless mission. Sounds suspicious to me.

DIANE E. finds profiling alive and well at the Times — along with some after-the-fact airbrushing. She notes: “This may seem a lot of trouble to go for one silly quote. The point is that even after two black men were identified as suspects the NY Times clung to the model of the snipers as motivated by fantasies associated with the extreme right.”

Yeah, but whose fantasies, exactly?

DAVID FRUM has very handsomely arranged to have his Telegraph piece from the other day revised to credit John Hawkins. (It had earlier credited an anonymous “internet essayist,” because Frum didn’t know where the piece, forwarded him in an email, had come from). Here, by the way, is a link to the essay by Hawkins, entitled “Confessions of an Isolationist Wannabe.”

FISKING ROBERT RENO: Suman Palit is unimpressed with Reno’s latest column, which suggests that “the constitutional right to ‘bear’ arms must be abridged in new and more imaginative ways.”

So Reno is openly calling for “imaginative ways” to “abridge” the Bill of Rights? And these guys think that Ashcroft is a threat to civil liberties? (Palit: “I can think of imaginative ways to abridge every single Amendment on the grounds that it hurts someone, somewhere.. a bag of peanuts to the first person who can tell this man why we don’t. “)

Palit calls Reno’s arguments “childlike,” but frankly that credits Reno with a degree of innocence that is not evidenced by his statements.

THE REV. BRIAN CHAPIN has some tart comments on the way the media covered the sniper affair. They’re worth reading in light of the media self-congratulation underway today. And the cartoons are terrific!

A DEFENSE OF AMERICA — AND CONDEMNATION OF “AMERICA-HATING LIBERALS” in a rather surprising venue. Excerpt:

When the news of 9/11 broke on the West Bank, those freedom-loving Palestinians were dancing in the street. America watched all of that – and didn’t push the button. We should thank the stars that America is the most powerful nation in the world. I still find it incredible that 9/11 did not provoke all-out war. Not a “war on terrorism”. A real war.

The fundamentalist dudes are talking about “opening the gates of hell”, if America attacks Iraq. Well, America could have opened the gates of hell like you wouldn’t believe.

The US is the most militarily powerful nation that ever strode the face of the earth.

The campaign in Afghanistan may have been less than perfect and the planned war on Iraq may be misconceived.

But don’t blame America for not bringing peace and light to these wretched countries. How many democracies are there in the Middle East, or in the Muslim world? You can count them on the fingers of one hand – assuming you haven’t had any chopped off for minor shoplifting.

Hmm. Maybe there’s hope for The Mirror after all. Or maybe the fact that John Pilger’s anti-American screeds haven’t staunched its hemorrhaging circulation is finally convincing people that the market for such blather is limited.

THE GWEILO DIARIES has a firsthand account of John Ashcroft’s address in Hong Kong. It’s not a very positive one.

HEY! LOOK AT THIS! A Nobel Peace Prize winner who actually helped people! Must’ve been an oversight.

HISTORICAL IRONY: Geitner Simmons writes about French intellectuals’ rethinking of the Napoleon myth.

ARTS AND LETTERS DAILY IS BACK!

CLAYTON CRAMER has crunched some numbers on ballistic registration. His conclusion is that in the best-case scenario, not many additional murder cases could be solved — only 78 “rifle murders” a year, for example, and that’s the kind of case that’s the alleged justification for registration, given the sniper case. Which was solved via other means anyway, of course.

WHOOPEE CUSHIONS AS MARITAL AIDS: More than I want to know about Charles Murtaugh’s home life, in an otherwise very interesting post.

JOHN CARNEY NOTES that John Muhammad was registering his killing machine on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Hmm, he changed his name right after the attacks, too. But remember, he’s just a lone nut. No connection to Islamic terror here.

Andrew Sullivan notes:

But we do know the following: he was a convert to Islam, he changed his name recently, he harbored “strong anti-American feelings and had publicly praised the terrorist attacks of September 11,” he actively supported the Nation of Islam, and the New Jersey plates for the car were bought on the first anniversary of September 11, immediately after which a bomb scare emptied the DMV building. Call me crazy, but isn’t that a striking series of coincidences? To read the papers this morning is like looking at several massive dots with no-one daring to connect them.

Indeed. Yeah, sure, the guy’s got a history of violence and lunacy, too — but so do most terrorists. They’re not very admirable people. As Sullivan concludes:

So we have a Muslim convert, sympathetic to the murderers of 9/11, terrorizing the nation’s capital, and coming close to shutting its daily life down. I don’t see that it matters whether he was formally a member of al Qaeda or some other group. In fact, it’s more disturbing if he is not.

Maybe that’s why a lot of people don’t want to think about it. Sullivan raises some other questions worth thinking about, too.

MICHAEL MOYNIHAN notes an effort to criticize Bush that seems unable to avoid lapsing into Stalinism.

WHO CARES WHAT THE LAW SAYS? A priceless quote in the New York Times:

Mr. Faraday was careful to say its copies of the M-16 were not assault weapons, since they do not have collapsible stocks, flash suppressers or a mounting to install a bayonet, some features that were ruled out by the 1994 ban. The magazine of the XM-15 also holds only 10 rounds, the permissible limit set by the 1994 ban.

In addition, the rifle is only a semiautomatic, requiring a trigger pull for each shot, not fully automatic as a military rifle, which allows multiple rounds to be fired with a single pull of the trigger.

But Kristen Rand, the legislative director for the Violence Policy Center in Washington, a gun control group, said that the XM-15 seized in Mr. Muhammad’s car still had features that mimic an assault weapon.

“It complies with the letter of the law, but it is still an assault rifle,” Ms. Rand said.

Hmm. It was the gun “fanatics” who said that the assault weapon ban was purely cosmetic. But now the VPC seems to agree.

JEN TALIAFERRO HAS LOTS OF UPDATES on the Moscow hostage situation. This isn’t getting the attention it deserves from the U.S. media.

RAND SIMBERG IS CYNICAL ABOUT THE MEDIA:

Hmmmm…an African-American fellow by the name of Muhammed. Nope, no Muslims here, folks, nothing to see, move along.

The disappointment among the press corps that it wasn’t an evil right-wing white militia type is almost palpable. Now they don’t get to talk about the culture of hate, and blame Rush Limbaugh, and talk radio, and all of us evil right-wing bloggers. In particular they don’t get to do it two weeks before a mid-term election, in which they can paint Republicans as bigoted enablers of right-wing violence.

He has some suggestions regarding bigoted enablers of violence that they should be covering instead.

A PRIESTLY TIP? Here’s an interesting angle on how the sniper story was cracked.

DAVID HARSANYI WANTS TO KNOW what the hell is wrong with Jimmy Breslin.

WHY I LOVE MY JOB: A paper that a student wrote in my Space Law seminar last year on the environmental ethics of terraforming Mars has now become a nice little article in the Environmental Law Reporter.

MORE ON BALLISTIC FINGERPRINTING, from Alphecca.