EVEN EL AL SECURITY ISN’T PERFECT.

UPDATE: Michiel Visser writes that it’s not even close. (Permalinks not working, blah blah, scroll down, blah blah, Blogger sucks, blah, blah.) His comments:

As someone who went through Tel Aviv airport last Thursday, I have to debunk the myth. Although security is a notch up from your regular airport, I was actually disappointed. The screeners seem to consist of 20-somethings plucked from the Tel Aviv nightlife, and I saw many people who were late for their flights being ushered through a much less secure track. Also, things were so chaotic that it wouldn’t be too difficult to smuggle something through if you’re really determined.

This just reinforces my point that, overall, “security” isn’t the best response to terrorists. Guards are sure to get bored and can’t be the best. Terrorists only have to have one good day; guards have to be good all the time, which is impossible. The best defense against terrorists is to kill them first. The Israelis, contrary to popular belief, haven’t really done that, because we haven’t let ‘em. We should start letting them, and we should do it ourselves. That will do more good than any number of searches or metal detectors, and with far less damage to civil liberties at home.

DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH: As the slow response — and continued cases of denial — with regard to the Bellesiles affair illustrate, things have gotten bad enough where academic standards are concerned that even Stanley Fish is sounding like a traditionalist:

One suspects, that is, that the reluctance to act is a principle, not a principle rooted in the right of everyone to a confront his or her accusers in a public hearing, but a principle rooted in something like class prejudice. The idea is that, generally speaking, people like us — people who have degrees and publications and who while away the time by reading French or German poetry in the original — are “naturally” responsible; and even if we occasionally seem to be slighting the job, our reasons, were they plumbed and brought to the surface, would turn out to be good and even noble. We might now and then fail to live up to the letter of our mundane obligations, but even in doing so we would no doubt be hearkening to the higher imperative of the spirit.

True enough, though one would expect to hear this from some curmudgeonly right-winger, not from Stanley Fish. Or maybe his new enthusiasm for academic discipline is just a consequence of his having been a dean for a while. . . .

Think I’m exaggerating about Bellesiles? Read this statement by Columbia University historian Ken Jackson (scroll down) who says, in essence, that the Bancroft Prize shouldn’t be revoked, because even its wrongful award is now just a part of history and thus shouldn’t be changed.

(In a probably unrelated development, Emory President William Chace is stepping down.)

UPDATE: Here, by the way, is something I wrote about academics and accountability last year.

THIS CUNY TENURE DENIAL is creating a stink, since it seems to be based on political views, and perhaps gender. There’s a story in the Chronicle of Higher Education, too, but it’s subscriber-only.

CULTURAL INDICATOR? Watching “The Groove Squad” on TEENick, I notice that a bunch of peace-sign-painting hippies are . . . the bad guys! Hippies never used to be the bad guys. These are definitely bad. And treated as ugly and out of date, which may be worse.

HUGO CHAVEZ HAS USED TROOPS TO SEIZE CONTROL OF POLICE IN CARACAS. Hmm. If Bush and Ashcroft used troops to sieze control of the D.C. police, people would say it was a dictatorship being born. But I expect we’ll hear the usual cavils if I characterize Chavez as a dictator. . . .

Not from Jorge Schmidt, though, who emails:

BBC report omits some important background: Chavez and his allies announced as early as January their intention to take control of the PM. They took a number of steps to that end, including conducting an inventory of the PM’s arsenal, and manufacturing a phony hunger strike by a handful of pro-Chavez officers who invaded the PM’s communications center. This “intervention” is an indispensable step for Chavez if he is to avoid ouster; local and municipal police departments have protected anti-Chavez demonstrators and leaders, and have sufficient firepower and traning to limit the effectiveness of the thuggish Bolivarian Circles. As Mayor Pena declared, “the Government is disarming the police and giving weapons to the violent [Bolivarian] circles.” The timing of this step is also given by the opposition’s decision to soon announce the date of a national strike of indefinite duration.

Stay tuned. This isn’t getting the attention it deserves. El Sur has more, including results of a poll showing that most Venezuelans are unhappy with Chavez.

POSTWATCH WRITES:

I told you guys you’d miss Rep. Bob Barr, the righty Rep. from Georgia who’s still in office only because of the lame-duck session. Well, apparently he’s leading the charge against John Poindexter’s creepy Total Information Awareness strategy and the Cyber Security Enhancement Act.

There’s more.

TIM BLAIR POINTS OUT, well, the sort of thing we’ve come to expect.

UPDATE: Damn Blogger! Follow the first link; it’s currently at the top of his page.

AL QAEDA EXPOSED: Cyberwarrior “Johnathan Galt,” who has been behind some anti-Al Qaeda hacking incidents, now has a page with video clips of Al Qaeda spokespeople and sympathizers telling who the enemy is. I can’t vouch for the authenticity of all of these, but they sure look authentic, and they’re consistent with other things we’ve heard from Al Qaeda and its sympathizers. Note the presence of American and British supporters.

(Via Samizdata).

MERDE IN FRANCE has a French print report (not online) that “when military actions start ‘Baghdad’s residents could take to the streets waving American flags that are being secretly manufactured in the city’s bazars.’”

Interesting, if true. Wonder when we’ll see this reported on Al Jazeera?

UT BLACKFACE UPDATE: Good news, bad news, and a surprise in this account from the Daily Beacon student newspaper. The good news is that, despite some early indications to the contrary, the University isn’t planning any disciplinary action against the fraternity:

While stating that the university condemns the actions of the students involved, Shumaker stressed that the administration would have no authority to punish the offenders. He cited previous federal court rulings that found punishment for such actions to be in violation of the First Amendment.

The bad news is that it’s still being used as an excuse for PC-style maneuvering, with non sequitur demands for a new department of African-American studies (I’m not against that, but I don’t see the connection) and with this remark by President Shumaker:

We must have at UT an atmosphere that is free of violence and discrimination.

True enough, but there never was any violence, just some guys in makeup. If you didn’t know better, you might think that Shumaker had just halted a lynching.

But now for the “surprise.” Here’s my favorite quote, from a student activist who obviously isn’t fully indoctrinated with standard-issue political correctness:

Gray also pressed the president on the decision to not levy any punishment on those involved in the incident.

“The Second Amendment gives us the right to own a gun,” she said. “If the university can prevent the student body from exercising that right while on campus, why can’t it punish people who abuse their First Amendment rights?”

Heh. And a suggestion that the University lower its admission standards for black students so as to increase black enrollment (you know, what’s usually called “affirmative action”) appears to have been shouted down as racist. So even in the midst of a classic PC scandal, the edifice of political correctness is showing some prettty major cracks.

SQUATTING IN BARBRA STREISAND’S WALLET? PunditWatch is up!

JEFF COOPER POINTS OUT another reason to be skeptical of the latest alleged bin Laden audiotape: someone who knows Osama pretty well says it isn’t him.

The varous “leaks” from official sources saying that the tape is probably authentic are almost enough to make me endorse the conspiracy theories floated earlier, that the U.S. government has reasons to pretend that Osama is still alive even if it knows otherwise. After all, there was no obvious reason for the Administration to go public with those, and quite a few obvious reasons not to. Yet leaks like that don’t happen by accident. Say, maybe Tom Daschle is actually part of the disinformation campaign! Poor Tom — he’s not a carping critic, but a misunderstood patriot.

IRANIAN STUDENTS ARE CLAIMING VICTORY:

Students who have staged Iran’s biggest pro-reform protests for three years claimed a victory for freedom of speech Sunday as Iran’s supreme leader ordered a review of the death sentence against a dissident academic.

The week-long student rallies and strikes in support of history lecturer Hashem Aghajari, condemned to hang for blasphemy, had raised political tension at a crucial stage in the power battle between Iran’s reformists and hard-liners. . . .

Students greeted the news as a victory and said they would consider ending mass protests at campuses across the country.

Did Amnesty or Human Rights Watch come loudly to Aghajari’s defense? If so, I missed it.

This earlier post by Allan Prather notes that Khomeini’s grandson joined the protests.

UPDATE: William Sjostrom reports that he can’t find anything from Amnesty. But Brian Jones emails this link to a Human Rights Watch denunciation of the Iranian execution order. Advantage: HRW!

ERIN O’CONNOR HAS SOME FURTHER CRITICISM of Germaine Greer’s latest op-ed, previously addressed by William Sjostrom:

Okay, so the substitutions sometimes cede into nonsense. But that only makes the temper of Greer’s “discourse” that much more clear: hers is a discourse of irrational blame and vitriolic hate, a discourse in which one group is described as wholly superior to another group whose inferiority is treated as natural and right, a discourse that quite literally does not make sense–except, insofar, as it participates in the deliberate nonlogic of demonization. And yet it is printed in one of the world’s most respected papers, the product of one of the twentieth century’s most influential feminists. Its place in that paper speaks to how profoundly respectable hatred of men has become in our enlightened culture, as well as to the role feminism has played in making such hatred a badge of liberal propriety.

The bit about men being malignant tissue says it all. As Greer calls men a cancer on an otherwise healthy female society, so Hitler said that “The Jews are a Cancer on the breast of Germany”; so radical Islamists call Jews a “cancer” on Palestine.

Strong stuff.

UPDATE: A couple of readers have expressed skepticism about the anti-male animus that this post, and some others I’ve put up over the last few days, indicate. (This message from reader Dan Hobby is typical: “Reading Glenn Sacks thoughts on this subject, one word comes to mind: pinhead.”) All I can say to them is, tell it to Doris Lessing:

I find myself increasingly shocked at the unthinking and automatic rubbishing of men which is now so part of our culture that it is hardly even noticed,” the 81-year-old Persian-born writer said yesterday.

“Great things have been achieved through feminism. We now have pretty much equality at least on the pay and opportunities front, though almost nothing has been done on child care, the real liberation.

“We have many wonderful, clever, powerful women everywhere, but what is happening to men? Why did this have to be at the cost of men?

“I was in a class of nine- and 10-year-olds, girls and boys, and this young woman was telling these kids that the reason for wars was the innately violent nature of men.

“You could see the little girls, fat with complacency and conceit while the little boys sat there crumpled, apologising for their existence, thinking this was going to be the pattern of their lives.”

Lessing said the teacher tried to “catch my eye, thinking I would approve of this rubbish”.

She added: “This kind of thing is happening in schools all over the place and no one says a thing.

“It has become a kind of religion that you can’t criticise because then you become a traitor to the great cause, which I am not.

“It is time we began to ask who are these women who continually rubbish men. The most stupid, ill-educated and nasty woman can rubbish the nicest, kindest and most intelligent man and no one protests.

“Men seem to be so cowed that they can’t fight back, and it is time they did.”

You can disagree with this if you like — though, frankly, I think doing so is a confession of utter blindness to reality — but quit telling me that this is some creation of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. It’s not, and you only diminish your credibility by pretending (or, more embarrassingly, actually believing) otherwise.

ANOTHER UPDATE: It’s not new, either. Here’s an interview on the subject from 1994, with Camille Paglia and Christina Hoff Sommers. And, for that matter, Betty Friedan wrote about “female chauvinist boors” in McCall’s back in 1972, though I can’t find a copy of that essay online. And still people seem inclined to pretend that the problem doesn’t exist.

ALLAN PRATHER HAS MORE on Iranian student demonstrations, here, and here. And here is a piece by Michael Ledeen from last week.

Things seem to be coming to a head in Iran. Let’s hope they break our way.

TOM FRIEDMAN IS CHANNELING JIM BENNETT in this column on NATO:

In fact, I imagine after this round of expansion that when you call NATO headquarters in Brussels, a recording will answer that will go something like this: “Hello. You have reached NATO. Dial 1 if you want help consolidating your democracy. Dial 2 if you need minesweeping. Dial 3 if you need anti-chemical warfare trucks. If you need to fight a real war, please stay on the line and an English-speaking operator will assist you.”

Hmm. Expanding Anglosphericism? But here’s my favorite passage:

There is one scene that really sums it up. It involves a U.S. F-15 jet fighter that is ordered to take out a Taliban truck caravan. The F-15′s co-pilot bombardier is a woman. Mr. Bowden, who had access to the communications between pilots, describes how the bombardier locates the truck caravan, and with her laser guidance system directs a 500-pound bomb into the lead truck. As the caravan is vaporized, the F-15 pilot shouts down at the Taliban — as if they could hear him from 20,000 feet — “You have just been killed by a girl.”

Let’s send that one out on Al-Jazeera.

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS TAKING ON GREEDY BUSINESSES by launching an antitrust investigation of the New Times L.A. takeover. Lots of possibilities for this kind of thing in the media field, where price-fixing and anticompetitive practices are rife, and have long gone unpoliced.

HERE’S AN EXAMPLE OF FRENCH MILITARY COOPERATION that isn’t getting much attention. I think the French prefer it that way. Though most of the basing and infrastructure involved here is French, the story barely indicates it.

WHY COLLEGES ARE SHORT ON MALES: It’s a “hostile environment” for men:

However, there is another, unacknowledged reason why some males don’t go to college—rampant anti-male feminism has made college campuses a place where many males feel unwanted and unwelcome. To use a feminist term, our universities have become “hostile environments” for young men.

There are some first-person accounts.

UPDATE: Reader Melissa Davis writes:

I agree with the young man who wrote this piece. Women who witness this sort of hostility should try and speak up in defense of the men who are its target. I tried every now and then in college, but it was hard. But we owe it to them. Kind men stood have stood up for women in similarly hostile situations in the past. Perhaps not enough of them did. Maybe at some point parity will be reached. I can dream, can’t I?

Don’t give up.

I JUST GOT AN EMAIL saying that there will be big student protests at Isfahan University in Iran tomorrow morning. No link yet. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to a story on these protests generally.

THREE MEN, BELIEVED TO BE FROM TUNISIA OR MOROCCO, have been arrested for plotting to release cyanide in the London Underground.

THE INTERNATIONAL SENTINEL is Carla Passino’s blog. It takes a somewhat more Euro-sympathetic line than InstaPundit, but (or perhaps “thus”) is well worth your attention.

A RELIGION OF PEACE, from Hanah Metchis.

UPDATE: Justin Katz writes that Metchis’ passage is sufficiently out of context that it gives a false impression. So does P.J. Hinton.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Sasha Volokh has more.

SOME PEOPLE WILL PROBABLY COMPLAIN ABOUT THIS PROGRAM, but it seems sensible enough to me:

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 — The Bush administration has begun to monitor Iraqis in the United States in an effort to identify potential domestic terrorist threats posed by sympathizers of the Baghdad regime, senior government officials said.

The previously undisclosed intelligence program involves tracking thousands of Iraqi citizens and Iraqi-Americans with dual citizenship who are attending American universities or working at private corporations, and who might pose a risk in the event of a United States-led war against Iraq, officials said.

If we go to war, these people will be enemy aliens (in fact, in light of the Congressional declaration, in a sense they already are). Keeping tabs on enemy aliens is normal for wartime. I suspect that this was deliberately leaked, as a way of discouraging untoward activity.

UPDATE: And here’s more evidence that it’s justified.

CLAYTON CRAMER blogs a report from the American Society of Criminology, where he was on two panels.

I WENT AND LOOKED AT A NISSAN 350Z, and I have to say I was very impressed. In fact, it’s only the second time I’ve ever looked at a car and felt a strong temptation just to buy it on the spot.

However strong, though, the temptation was immediately quashed by a dealer add-on sticker tacking over five grand on to the regular sticker price. Jeez. I’m surprised that Nissan will let them do that.

AMITAI ETZIONI reports on a species of underreported hate crime: worldwide violence against Christians by Muslims.

MERDE IN FRANCE reports that French TV portrays Osama bin Laden sympathetically, George Bush hostilely.

LINDA SEEBACH WRITES about weblogs and the future of media. She even mentions next week’s Yale Law School weblog conference.

WILLIAM SJOSTROM ISN’T IMPRESSED with Germaine Greer’s latest: “It isn’t shocking, dear, it is just obnoxious. Freedom for women came in the west that she despises; women are crushed in the bin Ladenite world she so adores. No wonder she makes a living in a university.”

And shouldn’t that be embarrassing for the university?

THIS DECISION may do more to rein in big-government excesses than any legislation we’re likely to see in the next two years:

In a ruling that could cost the Justice Department millions of dollars, a federal judge has ruled that lawyers at the department who routinely work more than 40 hours a week are entitled to overtime pay under the 1945 Federal Employees Pay Act.

I think that this is a good thing. My government-lawyer friends will likely agree, of course. But if you think the Justice Department is overreaching, then something that forces it to weigh priorities can only be a benefit.

JOHN J. MILLER ON THE REPUBLICANS’ SOUTH DAKOTA SENATE DEFEAT:

There’s a similar explanation for Mr. Thune’s 524-vote loss: a Libertarian Party candidate, Kurt Evans, drew more than 3,000 votes. It marks the third consecutive election in which a Libertarian has cost the Republican Party a Senate seat. If there had been no Libertarian Senate candidates in recent years, Republicans would not have lost control of the chamber in 2001, and a filibuster-proof, 60-seat majority would likely be within reach. . . .

The problem also affects gubernatorial races. Jim Doyle, the incoming Democratic governor of Wisconsin, probably owes his 68,000-vote victory to the 185,000 votes cast for Ed Thompson, a Libertarian and brother of Tommy Thompson, the former Republican governor. In Oregon, Ted Kulongoski, the Democrat, won by 33,000 votes as Tom Cox, the Libertarian, pulled in 56,000 votes. The only reason the governor’s race in Alabama was so close this year as to be disputed beyond election night was that the Libertarian candidate, John Sophocleus, attracted 23,000 votes.

Well, the solution is for the Republicans to avoid the big-government intrusiveness that alienates libertarian-leaning voters. But are they smart enough to realize that? The push on the Homeland Security bill, and Trent Lott’s comments about reopening the abortion issue, suggest that they’re not. But this is how third parties traditionally have an impact — by costing one of the two major parties close elections.

UPDATE: Robert Prather has more. Clayton Cramer, meanwhile, thinks this is much ado about nothing.

HERE’S A CALL FOR RESEARCH into nanotechnology safety, from a reputable source.

REFUGEE UPDATE: The DodgeBlog guys have hooked up with Sasha Castel.

OKAY, NOW THIS IS JUST FRIGHTENING. And sad.

ARTHUR SILBER HAS UPDATES on the dumb Front Sight lawsuit against Diana Hsieh. Start here and scroll up for more.

It’s obvious that Front Sight’s lawsuit has so far bought it far more bad publicity than Diana Hsieh’s blogging ever did. Front Sight should go sue itself. Or, er, something.

LOOKS LIKE SADDAM is arranging a bolt-hole:

SADDAM HUSSEIN has made secret plans for his family and leading members of his regime to be given political asylum in Libya in the event of a war with America or a successful internal coup in Baghdad.

The extraordinary steps taken by the Iraqi leader to provide an exit strategy for key relatives and associates, which includes paying $3.5 billion (£2.3 billion) into Libyan banks, provide the first evidence that Saddam is now facing up to the prospect of being toppled from power.

Even as he makes public statements of defiance and vows to defend his country against an American invasion, The Times has learnt that Saddam’s secret emissaries have been visiting Libya and Syria to ensure that there is an escape route for his family and top cronies.

The deal with Tripoli does not include providing refuge for Saddam or for Uday, his eldest son. If either were to seek political asylum in Libya, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi would come under intense international pressure, particularly from Washington, to hand them over for war crimes.

Hmm. If Saddam is trying to get his family out, but not himself, that would seem to mean that he expects to go down with the ship. Or perhaps “in a blaze of glory.” Assuming that this report is correct (which may be a big assumption) this may be as troubling as it is reassuring.

PROFESSOR PETER KIRSTEIN HAS BEEN PUNISHED by St. Xavier University for his email. I’m not actually sure that I approve of this — I think Kirstein should be shamed, not punished — though most of this punishment consists of shaming, it’s true. And, I suspect, had Kirstein sent an equally abusive email to a student from a black college the punishment would have been at least as severe. Still, I don’t believe in punishing people, especially academics, for their opinions, however lame and loathsome. But, of course, my expansive views of free speech have not held sway with university administrators for some time.

UPDATE: Here’s Kirstein’s apologia.

SWEDEN AGAIN: Swedish blogger Martin Lindeskog reports some new economic data that don’t make Sweden look especially good. No Mississippi comparison this time, though. Maybe someone else will do one of those.

UPDATE: Bjorn Staerk has more on Scandinavian taxation and economics.

PC DOUBLE STANDARDS: Reader Mark Shawhan writes:

I wanted to take issue with your recent post on what you see as a double standard for left and right (the one made on 11/15). Essentially, I’m wondering where the evidence is for your agreement with James Lileks that “Yes, every opinion is valid – but as a famous pig once remarked, some are more valid than others.” So far, your discussion of the matter has cited Mr. Lileks’ post on the subject, the fracas at UT over the hate speech code there, and Martha Burk’s “modest proposal,” and I fail to see how any of these items support your claim of a double standard.

Here’s how I see it: My point in pointing to Burks was that a non-lefty white male who wrote something similar, but aimed at women, wouldn’t be allowed the defense of “spoof.” Lilek’s point was that a non-lefty white male who painted something similar, but aimed at black people, wouldn’t be allowed the defense of subjectivity. And the Kappa Sigma blackface incident seems to me to be proof of both.

Separately, Kevin Drum of the usually excellent CalPundit blog emails that he’s surprised I haven’t censured Kathryn Jean Lopez for “deliberately falsifying” Burk’s piece. I didn’t take from Lopez’s posts that she had done that. Looking at Drum’s blog, I find a post that seems to call me a liar. I don’t see why. (And I don’t think I ever got the email he says he sent, though I get so many I wouldn’t swear to that). But in my post on the subject, I added a link to the text of what Burk wrote, and to a CNN transcript saying it was a spoof, as soon as I got them. You can read the post here, and see if you think Drum’s characterization is justified.

But, as I thought was abundantly clear, my point was that if, say, Hootie Johnson wrote a piece calling for all women to be equipped with Norplant, to be removed only with the consent of their “designated partners” nobody would be bending over backwards to cut him slack because it was a spoof. How hard is this point to understand?

Too hard for some people, apparently. As I say below, a lot of people on the left are so thoroughly blind to the double standard that they can’t believe people who point it out aren’t somehow, pulling a fast one. All I can say is, get real, guys. You’re only fooling yourselves. And the hysterical response that appears every time someone points out the hypocrisy of the left on these matters seems to suggest that you’re having trouble even with that.

BRUCE ROLSTON IS FACT-CHECKING MARC HEROLD, who absurdly continues to insist that his bogus, inflated Afghan civilian casualty estimates are still valid.

MICHAEL MOORE: Busted again, as Rachel Lucas rescues his “payback Tuesday” letter from the memory hole.

SORRY I’VE POSTED SO LITTLE today. I’ve been busy. I’m in the office now, but I’m about to do a couple of phone interviews on nanotechnology. More later.

JAMES LILEKS has an extensive take on the suicide-bomber painting that I mentioned below. You should read Lileks’ whole treatment, of course, but here’s an excerpt:

“Self-Portrait of a Racial Cleanser” might get the same treatment by a newspaper – I think the piece would have some comments by protesters; this story has none – but it wouldn’t get the same treatment on campus. Even if the artist intended it as a condemnation of white supremacists, one suspects he would not be permitted his interpretation of his painting; there would be no talk of the equality of subjective reactions. Intention would matter for naught. Intention would be trumped by the effect it had on the aggrieved. The painting would be draped in a day. . . .

Let us now return to the words of the Art Center’s mouthpiece:

“Art is subjective,” she said. “Used as a metaphor or presented as the artist’s personal statement, every opinion is valid and every viewer is entitled to his or her own interpretation.”

Yes, every opinion is valid – but as a famous pig once remarked, some are more valid than others. It’s amazing how much validity you get on campus when you make Jew-killing sexy.

Hamas solidarity AND hot obliques – now that’s progressive.

Yes. And what’s striking is that so many people on the left — as shown in “but it was a joooke!” defenses of Martha Burk’s fertility-control-for-men piece — just don’t get this double standard. They’re blind to it. But it’s there. And if people keep pointing it out, maybe they’ll notice. Plenty of other people have.

UPDATE: Paintings of suicide bombers can mean anything. But this, on the other hand, was so obviously beyond the pale that it called for immediate University action!

SOFIA SIDESHOW is a blog from Bulgaria. Excerpt:

The Right is not hated or stereotyped here in Sofia, like in some parts of the US (cough).

I still find it exhilarating when an liberal American (invariably an actor) makes an off-the-cuff political statement, absolutely sure to hear no conflicting views—possibly even believing that none legitimately exist—and yet finds himself the minority at the table, with genuinely offended Bulgarians glowering at him (or her).

I’ll draw back the curtain on one example: One American fellow (a nice guy, mind you, not some kitten-eating troll) with some minute knowledge of Bulgaria mentions loudly over his foie gras how capitalism is hurting this country.

The Bulgarian girl, 10 years the younger, stares at him like he grew a second head. And the fellow continues with what he thinks is the final and immutable proof of his assertion.

He says, “Prices were cheaper back during the previous government, isn’t that right? Now I mean, you didn’t have cuisine then like MacDonalds,” he sneered that last word, “but hey?”

My only note is: “but hey” is not an acceptable ending to a point you are trying to make. “But hey…” is a poignant failure to discipline your mind, to examine the full breadth of what you are trying to argue. Often, it is avoidance of the revelation that your point is actually no excuse for whatever you are defending.

The girl looked like she was going to use her knife, but instead, she told him that everything was indeed much, much cheaper under Communism. Bananas, she said, were only 5 stultinki per kilo [US: 2.5 cents]. He nodded, knowingly. Except, she added, there were no bananas.

You could buy bread for 2 stultinki per loaf…He looked at her warily now…But bread was rationed.

You would go to a market and buy a picture of bread. Then, when the government made a radio announcement, that picture could be turned in at a government center, for bread, after waiting in line, sometimes for hours.

Medicine was free, she said. There was none (well, none for The Workers).

He looked around like he had zips on the wire. Backup! Repeat: I need backup!

Yes, she went on, bread is now a 50 stultinki, and bananas are now 150 stultinki a kilo, but now you can buy as much as you want, any time. Fresh bread, for everyone, with no lines.

She’s spent most her life as a non-Communist, but she still said the last part with a hint of awe.

He sat there for a moment, mulling, then said this:

“But it’s still a lot more expensive, isn’t it.”

Indeed.

Indeed, indeed.

ROD DREHER REPORTS stepped up security in New York. Last night, a reader from the D.C. area reported a lot more fighter-plane activity than usual. Maybe the latest terror warnings are a little more serious than earlier false alarms.

UPDATE: I got this email with regard to Rod Dreher’s report:

I saw your comment on Rod Dreher’s observation of National Guardsmen in New York City, and wanted to clarify the situation. I’m an officer in the National Guard here, and we have been securing Grand Central and Penn Station continuously since Oct 2001 (my battalion was the first one in after Sep 11th). What Rod saw was not something new (perhaps he just hadn’t noticed before).

Just wanted to set the record straight!

On the other hand, the fighter-aircraft report seems solid. Here’s another email, very consistent with what I got last night:

I live in Germantown, MD, about 34 miles north of downtown D.C. As regards your report of “fighter plane activity”, what I observed from my patio last night appeared to involve four fighter aircraft, at about a couple of thousand feet altitude (hard to tell, it was dark, and I could only see their anti-collision beacons). They were flying tight circles, and sounded as if they were occasionally going on afterburner. Two went to my right (East), the other two left (West). Right in the middle of this “air show” I observed a slow flying, brightly lit aircraft at lower altitude flying off to the West. It appeared to be a helicopter, but I couldn’t hear rotor noise over the roar, to confirm this. The impression I got was that the fighters were “sanitizing” the area to the right and left ahead of the slow, low aircraft. Possibly it was a practice for some sort of “insertion” mission? I’ve lived at this address for nine years, and never saw any such activity before.

Interesting.

WILLIAM SJOSTROM reports on the new face of appeasement: “So now we have the appeaser line: pretend to be a hawk, but a sensible one; admit that past hawkishness was a good idea, but then try to minimize it.”

Well, as the saying goes, hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. So, in a way, I think this is a sign of progress.

PLANS FOR RECRUITING BATTLEFIELD TRANSLATORS in Iraq: StrategyPage explains what’s in the works.

Interesting.

DIFFERENT OUTLETS, DIFFERENT HEADLINES: The New York Times is predictable, though.

DAVID HOGBERG REPORTS on a campus pro-war rally.

A COUPLE OF AMUSING READER OBSERVATIONS on the suicide-bomber portrait. Check ‘em out.

DODGEBLOG REFUGEE MOMMABEAR has moved to new digs. Drop by with a casserole.

ANDREW SULLIVAN writes that Saddam is getting nervous.

WHY THE DEMOCRATS CAN’T THINK STRAIGHT ABOUT NATIONAL SECURITY: Heather Hurlburt explains, in the Washington Monthly.

DAVE TROWBRIDGE WONDERS if Osama bin Laden has pulled a Hari Seldon:

What if bin Laden recorded a series of “gloats” about various operations (planned, desired, or even merely likely) that, in the event of his death, could be hacked together to give the impression that he was still alive? Certainly the rhetoric wouldn’t change, just the names of the countries and the types of operations, both of which are not that large a set of possibilities. It seems to me that with a little imagination and not much more time expended, a set of recordings could have been produced that could keep Osama alive for years beyond his actual death, rendering him, in effect, undefeatable.

This wouldn’t surprise me at all.

UPDATE: This is old news to the blogosphere, but if you missed it earlier, here’s a story on the peculiar bin Laden / Asimov link.

WHAT ARE INTELLECTUALS GOOD FOR? Yale Kramer tells a story that suggests “not much.”

On the other hand, I could have passed his little test with ease. I’ve got proof.

AIRBRUSH AWARD: Rachel Lucas reports that Michael Moore has scuttled the page on his website that proclaimed election day would be “payback Tuesday.” Reports Rachel: “Well the link to it is gone now. Not even in the archives.” She’s still got it, though.

THE MISS CLEO / AL JAZEERA CONNECTION: No, really, that’s what it’s about.

HANS LABOHM writes that Western imperialism is generating a backlash in the Third World. “Ecoimperialism,” that is.

UPDATE: Suman Palit had a post on this a while back, too.

MICHELLE MALKIN REPORTS that the INS does little to stand in the way of terrorists. Meanwhile Matt Welch and Dr. Frank report that it does its best to hassle harmless people. I suspect that both stories are true.

DEMOCRATS ARE CLAIMING “CONSERVATIVE MEDIA BIAS:” Ed Driscoll isn’t persuaded.

UPDATE: Porphyrogenitus has uncovered a media conspiracy so vast. . . Well, so vast that Bob Scheer is in on it, and he’s the last to hear about everything.

HARRY W. POTTER: Last week, Chris Suellentrop of Slate angered a lot of fans with a rather negative assessment of Harry Potter. Potter, wrote Suellentrop, is no hero, but a pampered jock who inherited his powers and enjoys unwarranted public acclaim while others — like sidekicks Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, and Cedric Diggory — do the heavy lifting of fighting evil.

Of course, Suellentrop is wrong. It’s true that Potter inherited his powers (as with “The Force” in the Star Wars universe, magical potency is mostly inherited, for some reason). But Potter in fact brings a lot more to the table than Suellentrop gives him credit for. Sure, Hermione is smarter, Ron is better at chess, and Cedric is braver and better-looking (he’s “extremely handsome,” we’re told). But Harry Potter is the keystone, the essential element. Without him, the fight against Voldemort would be lost before it was begun. In fact, it wouldn’t be begun at all.

What he brings to the table are personal qualities rather than talents. He’s loyal, and more importantly he inspires loyalty. And he has a clear vision of what matters. Everyone else is able to forget, or to convince themselves to ignore, the threat posed by Voldemort. Harry, on the other hand, never forgets. Potter even has to deal with purblind Eurocrats, like Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic:

Look, I saw Voldemort come back!” Harry shouted. . . . “I saw the Death Eaters! I can give you their names. . .”

“You are merely repeating the names of those who were acquitted of being death eaters thirteen years ago!” said Fudge, angrily. . .

“You fool!” Professor McGonagall cried. “Cedric Diggory! Mr. Crouch!” These deaths were not the random work of a lunatic!”

“I see no evidence to the contrary!” shouted Fudge, now matching her anger, his face purpling. “It seems to me that you are all determined to start a panic that will destabilize everything we have worked for these last thirteen years!”

Harry couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He had always thought of Fudge as a kindly figure, a little blustering, a little pompous, but essentially good-natured. But now a short, angry wizard stood before him, refusing, point-blank, to accept the prospect of disruption in his comfortable and ordered world — to believe that Voldemort could have risen.

Hmm. This sounds kind of like someone else whose warnings of “evil” are sometimes mocked, and who is often underestimated by journalists. George W. Potter? Or Harry W. Bush?

UPDATE: A reader emails: “Not only is Suellentrop wrong, he’s unoriginal. I mean, isn’t this exactly Snape’s refrain, for the past four books?” Hmm. Severus Suellentrop? No, . . .

WEAR BLACKFACE AND YOU GET SUSPENDED: Paint something that people find offensive on other grounds and you win an award:

The 4-foot-by-6-foot oil painting by Cong Lu, 24, depicts a young Asian man pulling up his shirt to reveal explosives strapped around his midsection. A pistol is tucked into his waistband. The piece is entitled, Self Portrait of a Martyr.

The painting, one of 78 works on exhibit at the school through December, hangs in the building’s main lobby at 200 Grant St. The piece was awarded Student Best of Show, and the artist received a $1,300 Allied Arts Award, given yearly to an outstanding young artist.

But a handful of students have complained about the painting, which they interpret as hostile, anti-American, anti-Semitic and anti-Christian. They also object to the title, which equates suicide bombers with martyrs.

Leona Lazar, executive director of the ASLD, said she understands why people find the painting so troubling – but that’s no reason to remove it or banish it to a less-visible position.

“Art is subjective,” she said. “Used as a metaphor or presented as the artist’s personal statement, every opinion is valid and every viewer is entitled to his or her own interpretation.”

I guess the guys at Kappa Sigma should have tried that argument. More proof of Dale Amon’s point about the unevenness of these standards.

UPDATE: From the “maybe it is subjective” department, a reader writes:

Without knowing anything about Cong Lu or his painting, I can’t help but see parody in it. The suicide bombers believe they are on a divine mission, presumably; Cong Lu has borrowed their trappings and title for a preening and arguable homoerotic exercise in narcissism. Maybe that’s not what he intends, but that’s what I see. I think it’s hilarious.

Heh.

UPDATE: Reader Laurence Rothenberg writes: “What would happen if someone painted, ‘Self-portrait in Blackface?’”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Ben Gibson writes (as did several others) “Why does the painting of the “martyr” have breasts? If it is supposed to be a man, well, that is a nice set of hooters. It does not look like a gal other than the prominent breasts. Perhaps this martyr guy has some issues.”

Actually, I think it’s just bad technique, with those meant to be bulging, manly pecs. But since we’re informed that this is all subjective anyway, I’m going to say “nice rack on that suicide bomber!” Another (female) reader noted where the pistol is pointing and said “he’d better be careful or he’ll blow off his tiny little suicide-bomber penis!”

ONE MORE UPDATE: Reader Ken Summers says this reminds him of the line from Fun with Dick and Jane: “Don’t go off half-cocked.” And Tucker Goodrich reports:

Just got back from Boston, where I saw the following bumper sticker:

“Martyrdom is for Suckers”

Indeed it is. Somebody should translate that into Arabic.

TORA! TORA! TORA! UPDATE:

They had survived bombs at Pearl Harbor and torpedoes across the Pacific — but say they were nearly sunk by political correctness in the city of Los Angeles.

City officials who had barred veterans of Pearl Harbor from commemorating the attack on Dec. 7 by attending a showing of the 1970 film “Tora! Tora! Tora!” at a city-owned movie theater did an about-face Wednesday.

Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who Tuesday said “I wanted to be very sensitive to the Japanese-American community,” changed her mind Wednesday in the face of outrage from veterans’ groups and called for “disciplinary action” against theater officials for discriminating against veterans.

Heh. That’s quite an “about-face” indeed. But that’s the thing about the PC crowd: in their hearts, they know they’re wrong.

SECULAR MARTYRDOM IN IRAN:

It’s a pity that so much of the attention given to the Islamic world is lavished on its thugs and psychopaths; a pity because its men and women of courage are largely overlooked.

The case of Iranian academic Hashem Aghajari is a striking example. Dr. Aghajari gave a public lecture in June calling for political reform and “religious renewal,” and challenging his fellow Iranians not to “blindly follow religious leaders.” The result was that he was charged in Iran’s religious courts with apostasy, where he was found guilty Nov. 6 in a closed-door trial. He is to be hanged. . . .

Aghajari has the right to appeal his verdict, presumably allowing a deal to be worked out that could defuse the crisis. (Similar death sentences have been reduced on appeal.) But his lawyer now says that Aghajari doesn’t want to appeal. According to the lawyer, Aghajari says that “those who have issued this verdict have to implement it if they think it is right or else the Judiciary has to handle it.” He thus appears to be risking his life so as to force Iran’s judicial establishment to confront its own barbarity.

Read the whole thing.

IRAQI SOLDIERS are shown practicing for a U.S. invasion in this rare undercover photo.

IS IT JUST ME? Or is this new logo for the “Information Awareness Program” that will track all sorts of personal information about Americans just a wee bit creepy?

Oh, graphically it’s okay. But it looks like something that would be painted on the elevator doors in a bearded-Spock world, or in some bad Colossus-knockoff movie. And it’s not as creepy as its British counterpart. But still. . . .

UPDATE: Reader Dave Lane says he’s willing to live in the bearded-Spock world, so long as women’s fashion follows along. All I can say to that observation is that now I’m really worried. I mean really worried.

ANOTHER UPDATE: And a more substantive one. . . . Henry Hanks emails that Rush Limbaugh just came out against the Information Awareness Program: “He reiterated his statement from Sep. 12, ’01 about not sacrificing liberty… he said the database to which Safire refers is unnecessary and probably won’t become a reality.” Good.

THE INDEPUNDIT WONDERS WHY THE ANTI-WAR CROWD ISN’T CELEBRATING the return of inspectors to Iraq. He has a number of other questions, too. Pat Buchanan is involved.

HERE’S A FIRST-PERSON ACCOUNT of Scott Ritter’s speech at CalTech last night:

Next someone asked Ritter how his story had changed since 1998. “It hasn’t changed; it’s evolved.”

There’s much more.

UAVS IN CIVILIAN LIFE: It’s not just the military that’s using unmanned aircraft, as Noah Shachtman reports in The New York Times. It sounds, though, as if the bureaucracy is having trouble keeping up with the technology:

Jim Brass, a colleague of Mr. Herwitz at the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., sought to use a drone last November to look at a forest fire in the San Gabriel Mountains, north of Los Angeles.

But the Federal Aviation Administration refused to let the drone fly. Getting to the fire, a “controlled burn” begun by the Forest Service to thin trees, would have involved flying through the approach to the suburban airport in Ontario, Calif., and the F.A.A. did not want a drone in crowded airspace.

It is a common problem for civilian drones. A small, piloted airplane can operate pretty much anywhere with little or no notification. But flying a drone means filing for a certificate of authorization, a narrowly drawn permission slip from the F.A.A. to roam a small strip of the skies. Getting the certificate takes months.

“We aren’t pursuing commercial applications over America because U.A.V. flights are so restricted by the F.A.A.,” Mr. Sliwa said, reflecting a common approach in the industry. The agency has yet to issue minimum standards for the drones’ hardware and software. There are no guidelines on how the drones’ human operators should be trained.

The fact that the pilot of a small plane is likely to share the fate of his/her craft is, of course, an added spur to responsibility — and one that isn’t present with unmanned aircraft. But nonetheless, it seems as if the FAA needs to catch up with the times.

MINNESOTA BLOGGER MITCH BERG HAS THIS TO SAY about Garrison Keillor, in response to Keillor’s latest in Salon:

Keillor is a funny man, a generally superb humorist, and Prairie Home Companion is a weekly ritual – even my children (9 and 11) love it. But Keillor is in his entirety a creation of the public sector. And like any public institution, he suffers the public with the same grace as do the cashiers at the Department of Public Safety. Having known, socially and professionally, many who’d worked with him, having met many more who’d dealt with him in a variety of capacities, one notes this: Keillor treats those he perceives as superiors with unvarnished obsequeity; Peers, he addresses with a veneer of respect; underlings, he treats like cat litter, to be rubbed underfoot and…well, you know how it ends, right? Having known a few people who’d worked on PHC, the metaphor basically fits.

Keillor is reacting to a Republican sweep the same way the Teacher’s union, or the National Orgization of Women, do; with doomsday rhetoric, with chicken-little doommongering, with nasty, defensive slurs – and the added fun of lots of personal slurs against “the enemy.”

Following these observations is a point-by-point Fisking of Keillor’s assertions that, if there were any justice, would have Keillor apologizing profusely and begging forgiveness.

But there isn’t any justice where the likes of Keillor are concerned. Except that provided by the Blogosphere.

UPDATE: Tacitus has some interesting observations on Keillor, and a comparison of Keillor with Lewis Lapham.

LIVING BY PERMISSION: Arthur Silber agrees with William Safire that the homeland security bill is a bad idea. And reader Howard Veit has this to say about the Poindexter plan:

I don’t think there is even a remote chance the Republicans would have carried the day last week if people knew this guy was still in government AND working for the Bush Administration. I am stunned by this. He almost wrecked Reagan, and Bush sure ain’t no Ronnie.

Bad news. Worse news is that the Democrats are so stupid they didn’t think to make an issue of this. I guess “stupid” is the wrong word here, but so self absorbed in their PC petty agenda politics it didn’t seem important.

Yeah. Here’s what I wrote a while back. Here’s another item on the subject. Also here, and, well, here. Meanwhile, here is the sort of thing we ought to be doing instead.

UPDATE: TalkLeft has picked up on my Homeland Security proposal, though some of the commentators there seem mired in rather silly concerns about “vigilantism.” But SKBubba likes the idea! But scroll down for his rather negative take on the Homeland Security bill.

The Yale Weblog Conference page has been updated, with a cool new graphic. It’s always nice to see Ivy League people not taking themselves too seriously! And, yes, it’s open to the public, though of course security will be tight and it may move to a secure, undisclosed location at the last minute.

HAROLD FORD makes a promise that Nancy Pelosi probably won’t match: “If I cannot lead Democrats to the majority in two years, I will step down in favor of someone who can.”

Ford also observes:

Although Democrats have traditionally sought the upper hand on domestic issues, we now live in a post-9/11 world. If we want the American people to trust us to govern, we cannot take a dismissive or defeatist attitude toward issues of national security.

One area of stark contrast between my opponent and me is Iraq. Rep. Pelosi opposed the president and voted against the resolution. I worked with Republicans and Democrats to pass a narrowly tailored resolution and joined Democrats and Republicans in voting for it. Ultimately, congressional support helped the administration negotiate a strong resolution that won the unanimous approval of the U.N. Security Council.

But no matter how individual members voted on the resolution, our problem as a party in this most recent election was that we raised objections rather than offered solutions. Many Americans may be apprehensive about the president’s national security strategy, but they understand that he has one, and that the Democrats don’t.

He also suggests that Democrats could learn a lot from Phil Bredesen’s successful campaign for governor, which I’ve said as well. I know some other members of the Ford family somewhat, but I’ve never met Harold. By all accounts, though, he’s sharp — and this would seem to prove it. The Democrats could do worse. In fact, they almost certainly will.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, here’s some advice for the Republicans that they’d do well to think about.

MERDE IN FRANCE is a bilingual Paris-based weblog that’s very much worth checking out.

ANTIWAR DEFLATION: A “study” by a group of “medical experts” reported in the New Scientist reports that an Iraq war could produce 500,000 casualties, mostly civilians.

This is progress. Before the Afghan war the usual suspects were claiming that millions would die. Now they’ve trimmed their hyperbole to a mere half-million. Another five or ten wars and maybe their estimates will start to approach reality.

I wonder, though. After reading a piece in The New Yorker (not on line) about German civilian casualties in World War Two, and then this post by Jim Henley on not going far enough in the Afghan war, it occurs to me that trying so hard to prevent civilian casualties might be a mistake. I’m all for minimizing civilian casualties to the extent possible, consistent with winning the war. But if people are beaten so bloodlessly that they don’t feel beaten, and have no real reason to dread a confrontation with the United States, is this really a good thing?

UPDATE: N.Z. Bear says I’m wrong. But my point isn’t that civilian casualties are inherently good, but that we shouldn’t let fear of civilian casualties cause us to lose the war. And I think that’s something we’re at risk for.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader writes:

As it stands right right now we are not out to defeat the Iraqi people, just their dictator. If, after he is removed, they elect another threat to the US then it will be necessary to defeat the Iraqi people. We don’t usually hold the people responsible for their tyrant’s behavior. If they start to become like the people of Palestine, supportive of terrorism, then they would definitely need to feel defeated.

Yeah, that’s what I was trying to say, more or less. Though we held the Germans responsible for Hitler, and wreaked far, far worse damage on them than anything the Iraqis are likely to experience.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Donald Sensing has a long and thoughtful post in response to my thoughts above.

P.C.U.: Lest my posts on the dumb University of Tennessee blackface incident (and the much, much dumber response of the University thereto) give the wrong impression, I should note that the car parked next to mine in the faculty parking lot yesterday bore a bumper sticker reading: “CHARLTON HESTON IS MY PRESIDENT.”

COULD MICHAEL MOORE BE DISHONEST? Jay Caruso reports that Canadian gun regulators think so. Apparently, he’s accused of using “sneaky editing” to make it look as if it’s easier to buy ammunition in Canada than it really is.

WILLIAM SAFIRE DOESN’T TRUST JOHN POINDEXTER or the proposed Department of Homeland Security.

Neither do I.

THOUGHT POLICE? “Hate crime police raid 150 homes.”

A few people were arrested for, you know, real crimes. But “most have been arrested on suspicion of making racist threats and of homophobic harassment.” Those could be crimes, of course, if they’re real threats, or real harassment. But the extent of political correctness in Britain makes me wonder.

The photo accompanying the BBC article shows police facing a stereotypically Muslim family; it doesn’t say whether they are victims or perpetrators. Adriana Cronin has more over at Samizdata.

ATTENTION, VICTIMS OF THE HARPERCOLLINS PR MACHINE: Michael Crichton’s next novel, which will be out on November 25, will be about “rogue nanotechnology.” (Here’s a link to the Amazon review page.) There’s a huge PR offensive about to unroll. Crichton’s even writing about nanotechnology for Parade!

I know next to nothing about the book — just what’s in the review linked above — and I have no idea about the quality of the information that HarperCollins is sending out. But if you want to write about nanotechnology, here are some sources you may want to check out:

1. The Foresight Institute website.

2. Nanodot, a Slashdot-style discussion board devoted to nanotechnology.

3. Small Times, a webzine about nanotechnology and related subjects.

4. Nanotechnology Magazine, which is pretty much what it sounds like.

5. Some stuff by me: Environmental Regulation of Nanotechnology: Some Preliminary Observations, in the Environmental Law Reporter. Do Not Be Afraid, Do Not Be Very Afraid: Nanotechnology Worries Are Overblown in TechCentralStation. Nanotechnology Research Must Be Supported on FoxNews. I also have a paper on nanotechnology coming out from the Pacific Research Institute, coincidentally right around 11/25.

6. The Foresight Guidelines for Molecular Nanotechnology, which are all about preventing “rogue nanobots,” and which, if followed, would have prevented the events in Crichton’s book. Which, of course, is why they weren’t!

Of course, I don’t blame Crichton for employing such a device. Everybody needs a plot driver, whether it’s realistic or not. As Daffy Duck said in the Loony Tunes version of Jack and the Beanstalk, “Well, I better start climbin’ this thing, or we won’t have much of a picture.”

TORA! TORA! TORA! UPDATE: The L.A. Examiner has more on what’s going on there, and why it’s so dumb.

THE BISHOPS HAVE A POSITION ON THE WAR. Ken Layne has a position on the bishops.

HERE’S SOMETHING MORE ON MUHAMMAD AND MALVO:

Federal authorities are investigating whether accused snipers John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo had ties to a growing sect of militant American Muslims committed to waging holy war against the United States.

Law-enforcement authorities yesterday said investigators want to know whether the suspects — now awaiting separate murder trials in Virginia — were involved with Jamaat al-Fuqra, a militant Muslim group with documented ties to international terrorism that has been linked to 13 slayings and 17 firebombings in the United States and Canada.

The al-Fuqra network, through an offshoot group known as the Muslims of America, has established a patchwork of more than two dozen communes from New York to California, including a sizable retreat in Red House, Va., 30 miles south of Lynchburg, where as many as 200 people live in trailers in a guarded community.

Michelle Malkin emailed me about this on October 24. Advantage: Malkin!

UPDATE: Justin Katz was fingering al-Fuqra on October 5! Advantage: Katz!

WOW. IT LOOKS AS IF MSNBC IS SPARING NO EFFORT to get the best people.

It’s bound to be better than Donahue.

THE LIBERAL CASE FOR WAR AGAINST IRAQ — in The American Prospect of all places. Excerpt:

We now find ourselves about to go to war with Iraq, and most liberals have lined up against such an invasion. Their main argument rests on the thesis that Saddam Hussein can be deterred. This argument is bad for liberalism for three reasons: because its veracity is highly suspect, because it is woefully inadequate as a statement of policy and because it is not, in fact, a “liberal” argument at all.

There’s more. Does Kuttner know about this?

IBERIAN NOTES, by John and Antonio, has moved. Update your bookmarks and blogrolls with the new URL.

At least they’ll have permalinks now.

A WHILE BACK, I WROTE ABOUT this law enforcement disaster in Houston, in which police went after drag racers and then, not finding them, proceeded to arrest everyone in a K-mart parking lot, for a total of 278 bogus arrests. (I seem to recall that the Houston police chief wound up losing his job over this, but I’m not sure.)

At any rate, it looks like something similar is going on in Wisconsin, where police raided a fundraiser and charged 445 people even though only three were found to have drugs. (Three people with drugs on them out of nearly 450? I doubt you’d get that low a percentage if you frisked the House of Representatives.) I spoke with one of the organizers, an artist who spends his spare time doing historical renovations named Gary Thomson. He said that in his mind they were definitely “profiled and targeted because we were playing electronic music.”

I’ve written about this sort of idiocy before, but I’m sorry to say that too many members of law enforcement don’t seem to have gotten the message. But here it is: You’re idiots. How can I trust you to chase terrorists — or even burglars — when you show such an appalling degree of arrogance and bad judgment?

I’m sure there will be a lawsuit. The question is, will the public officials behind this disaster lose their jobs? They should.

UPDATE: Here’s more on the Houston case, where the police chief wound up under indictment for aggravated perjury. And here’s the website for the haunted house party. And here’s what one letter to the editor said: “If the Racine City Council was running Green Bay, 63,284 people would have been ticketed at the Monday night Packer game because of 70-some people getting drunk, rowdy and urinating in the men’s room sinks.”

Do they play electronic music at those games?

UPDATE: Sean Hackbarth has more on this.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s more on the Houston case, where lawsuits are proliferating like, well, lawsuits after a dumb mass-arrest. And The Comedian has this update.

THE KIRSTEIN AFFAIR IS COVERED OVER AT HISTORY NEWS NETWORK.

There’s also a piece by Joyce Appleby on the Bush Administration’s “radical bellicosity.” The reader who sent the link says that it’s “ripe for a Fisking,” and a quick perusal suggests that he’s right. Unfortunately, I’m headed for a faculty meeting and don’t have time right now. (“I have a Fisking for that, but it is too long to include in the margin. . .”) So I’ll leave this as an exercise for the reader — though I can’t help noting that people who think the Administration’s policy has been radically bellicose have little appreciation of what a response based on actual radical bellicosity would look like. Contrast, say, what Curtis LeMay would have done, with the Bush Administration’s approach to get some idea of what I’m talking about.

UPDATE: Hmm. There seems to be some pretty good Fisking going on in the comments section at the bottom of Appleby’s piece. Here are a couple of my favorite excerpts:

I find it odd that Prof. Appleby, who I am sure thinks of herself as progressive, would use John Randolph of Roanoke to support her position.

—

I wish you were right. I would very much prefer a world in which America could simply turn inward and “set an example.” But choosing this option in the face of attacks already completed against us is choosing to submit to the will of our self-declared opponent.

Is Bush acting in a “radically bellicose” manner? Given our true capacity for mayhem, I’d say that he has acted with great restraint.

There’s more.

UPDATE: Geitner Simmons has discovered an Appleby / Bellesiles connection. Well, it’s not really so surprising.

AMERICAN DIPLOMATS SOURING ON EUROPE?

Well, the Europeans may still be able to count on the sympathies and cultural deference of many East Coast journalists, but something has shifted among the diplomats, the think tanks and even many of the academics. At a think-tank meeting last week, when a European diplomat asked rather patronizingly what all these American weapons were actually for, a renowned liberal academic simply quoted Kipling’s line about “Making mock of uniforms that guard you while you sleep.” And then he turned on his heel and walked away.

When liberal academics start quoting Kipling, the world has changed. And the Europeans, as usual, are the last to figure it out.

POLICE HAVE SHUT DOWN TRAFFIC in downtown Washington, D.C. to investigate a suspicious truck.

MARGARET ATWOOD UPDATE: Porphyrogenitus has found that Martha Burk, currently busy trying to achieve gender integration at Augusta National, has made some fertility-control proposals of her own. Call it A Handmaid’s Tale in reverse.

UPDATE: Here, via The Corner, is the article in question. Excerpt:

So how do we control men’s fertility? Mandatory contraception beginning at puberty, with the rule relaxed only for procreation under the right circumstances (he can afford it and has a willing partner) and for the right reasons (determined by a panel of experts, and with the permission of his designated female partner). This could be easily accomplished with a masculine version of the contraceptive implants some judges are now trying to force on some women by court order.

Controlling men’s fertility would not be a hard restriction to enforce. The fertility authorities could use a combination of punishments for men who failed to get the implants and for doctors who removed them without proper authorization. The men could be required to adopt one orphan per infraction and rear her or him until adulthood. The doctors, could lose their licences or, in extreme cases, go to prison.

Sounds pretty creepy to me. In the Corner post linked above, Kathryn Jean Lopez says that this is exaggeration for effect. Perhaps. But I can only imagine the response in, say, Ms. if some conservative male engaged in similar exaggeration where women’s reproductive rights were concerned.

UPDATE: A bunch of people have emailed me this CNN transcript with this portion highlighted:

SCHLUSSEL: You wrote in Ms. Magazine where you believe in forced sterilization of men. And not only that, but you think that men should have to go before a committee before they have kids. That’s worse than China.

CARLSON: Actually, Martha Burk, it’s interesting…

BEGALA: Let her defend herself.

CARLSON: No, but I want to put it on the screen. We actually have the piece you talk about, how your moral code is offended by discrimination against women. You don’t say — you don’t seem to be upset about women’s colleges and the Girl Scouts.

I want to show you your article. It’s entitled “Sperm Stops Here”…

BURK: In “Ms. Magazine.”

CARLSON: … in Ms. Magazine. “How do we control men’s fertility?” Mandatory contraception beginning at puberty with the rule relaxed only for procreation under the right circumstances and for the right reasons, et cetera, et cetera.”

Pretty authoritarian even by the standards of feminism.

BURK: Hey, if they’re going to restrict abortion, buddy, we’ve got to do it this way.

However, if you scroll down, you do find her saying that it’s a “spoof.” No doubt, though with the likes of Burk it’s hard to be sure sometimes. But I repeat my point above — non-lefty white males aren’t allowed such spoofs, which probably wouldn’t even be printed in a mass-circulation magazine, and which would certainly produce an outpouring of indignation after the fact. It all goes back to Dale Amon’s point that political sensitivity varies more with the speaker than with what’s spoken.

WHILE I WAS AT THE GYM I saw Daniel Pipes on Fox. The caption was “PROFESSORS OF HATE,” and Noam Chomsky appeared on the screen briefly. I don’t know what was said (the captioning was off, and I didn’t have my headphones) but I imagine it was along the lines of this oped.

I heard an NPR piece on antiwar protests a couple of weeks ago that suggested, rather hopefully, that college campuses would be the seedbed of a new anti-war movement. I don’t think so. The reason is that American universities don’t have the moral capital they had a generation ago. Back then they were seen as the responsible abode of the future elites, with many private schools still holding some lingering moral authority in the minds of many from their historically religious character. Deans and University Presidents were seen as responsible, thoughtful and patriotic: pillars of society in an entirely non-ironic sense. So campus opposition to the war meant something.

Now, however, the situation is different. We’ve seen universities squander their moral capital on decades of silly stuff, from free-Mumia causes celebre to P.C. idiocy and thuggishness, to open anti-Americanism, to — as we’ve seen recently — barely and reluctantly addressed instances of outright academic fraud.. What’s more, a much greater percentage of America has actually been to college, experiencing these kinds of things firsthand. America’s academic class is on the defensive, nowadays, and to a large degree it deserves to be.

The result is that I don’t think the American academy is in a position to offer much moral leadership nowadays, on the war or anything else. And I don’t think that what leadership it tries to offer is likely to be accepted. That’s too bad, in a way, but when institutions persist in acting irresponsibly, people tend to view them with less respect.

CHILD EXPLOITATION IN BERKELEY? Hell, at least we’re not seeing this there. Yet.

A PACK NOT A HERD: My TechCentralStation column is up. It has more on a citizen-based antiterrorism campaign.

The piece was written week before last, but got put back so that my paper-ballot column could run on election day. Otherwise I would have put in a reference to this post by Jim Henley, which elaborates on the “pack not a herd” theme that Jim coined, and which has some suggestions for TV producers, too.

UPDATE: Tough Times says Henley is wrong.

YESTERDAY I MENTIONED MICHELE NEWTON. Now I notice that her song “Broken Pavement” has risen to Number One on the Adult Alternative charts at MP3.com. Not bad.

A couple of people have emailed to ask me the about the history on this project, but it’ll have to wait until tomorrow. I’m solo-parenting at the moment while my wife’s away, and I’m beat.

UPDATE: A reader emails that he wasn’t crazy about the tune, and that he then listened to another, randomly selected, band and didn’t like it either. His conclusion: “Thus, MP3.com sucks.”

Puhleez. If you randomly pull CDs out of the bins at Tower you won’t like most of what you hear either. And with MP3.com (and similar sites), you get to hear the music for free. And even download it for free. So you won’t ever do what I did recently with Groove Armada’s latest, which is pay twenty bucks for something you only listen to once. Now that sucks.

ANOTHER VICTORY FOR THE COMMERCE CLAUSE: A New York law banning interstate wine sales has been struck down as a burden on interstate commerce. The so called “dormant commerce clause” has also recently been employed to strike down New York laws on tobacco and porn. Here’s some general background.

UPDATE: Professor Brannon Denning writes to correct me, as I omitted the 21st amendment:

Though I like cheap liquor and wine as much as the next person, the NY decision and those like it (e.g., from TX and VA) are wrong, wrong, wrong. The 21st Amendment was intended, in large part, to remove the strictures of the dormant Commerce Clause doctrine from state regulation of liquor imported into their borders. Not only did “drys” want to make sure that Congress didn’t repeal the Webb-Kenyon Act, but “wets,” too, wanted to make sure that fundamentalists didn’t get control of Congress and use the Commerce Clause to re-impose Prohibition.

If your readers are interested in the reasons why, steer them to my “Smokey and the Bandit in Cyberspace” article, still hanging fire at Constitutional Commentary.

I am proud that I have found one issue in which my strongly (and I mean *really* strongly held) personal beliefs point one way, and my research another. So proud, in fact, that I’m going to have another drink before I go to bed.

Brannon’s right about the 21st Amendment — though the governing caselaw is, by his lights, wrong, I believe.

IS BIN LADEN ALIVE? Maybe.

UPDATE: And then there’s this to worry about.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Nelson Ascher suggests that even if he’s alive, the preference for audio tapes might tell us something:

Is Osama alive? We don’t know, obviously, but the goal of releasing a tape is to use it as proof that yes, he is. The main argument that has been used against this kind of vocal proof is to say that were he among the living, he could as easily have sent videos instead of audiotapes. But, what if he has been badly wounded, having had for instance his face desfigured or some limbs amputated? Then he surely wouldn’t want us to see that some kind of punishment has already reached him, not at least before his own revenge, right? Well, maybe this could explain the lack of images.

Yeah. Personally, I’m quite skeptical of these tapes. As a sound engineer, I could put together a genuine-sounding tape pretty easily if I had access to a lot of genuine old tapes.

BRIAN LINSE just had his one-year blogiversary. A sometimes-obstreperous child, but cute as a bug’s ear nonetheless.

I’M SHOCKED, SHOCKED, TO READ THIS:

When he brought these incidents to the attention of police, they requested–and he granted–permission to tap his home phone. UCLA installed a red panic button next to his desk, ensuring that campus cops could respond within minutes to any crisis in his office. The FBI even assigned an agent to track down his tormenters. (To date, they have not been found.) All of this might sound like the prelude to a textbook hate crime, but the Abou El Fadl case has a twist: The callers weren’t angry white men accusing him of terrorist sympathies; they were fellow Muslim Americans accusing him of selling out the faith.

If you can’t safely espouse a liberal Islam in the United States, where, exactly, can we expect it to catch on?