EVELYN NIEVES HAS ANOTHER PUFF PIECE ON THE ANTIWAR MOVEMENT, in tomorrow’s Washington Post. Once again, as with this earlier piece, it seems to rely on movement supporters for all the key quotes, and is completely lacking in any sort of skepticism. My favorite quote:

“I said that all mothers should automatically be against war,” Reed said. “It was against their nature to be violent instead of nurturing.” Maybe, she said, it was time to start a movement — Mothers Against War.

Reed is a “retired Hampshire College drama teacher” — not exactly evidence in support of Nieves’ largely unsupported assertion that the antiwar movement is expanding beyond the usual suspects.

Is it “creeping Rainesism?” I hope not. Even staffers at The New York Times are weary of Raines’ biases.

MERDE IN FRANCE has an Al Qaeda leadership scorecard. Rather a lot of them are dead or in captivity.

ZACH BARBERA writes on political correctness at U. Mass.

MICHAEL MOORE SAYS HE’S BEEN BLACKED OUT ON AMERICAN TV. Tim Blair responds with Nexis research that shows that isn’t true at all.

Maybe Tim should write a book entitled Michael Moore is a Big Fat Liar. I’d buy it!

EVEN A FLATWORM TURNS AWAY FROM PAIN: And apparently there are some Palestinian leaders who are smart enough to do the same.

I DIDN’T REMOVE LETTER FROM GOTHAM from my blogroll because I knew she’d be back. I was right. Heh.

KEVIN PHILLIPS says that the Democrats are in trouble — losing ground with blacks, latinos, and working-class whites — because of their pursuit of big-money donors. And he identifies a particularly damaging constituency:

In California, for example, it is Democrats who are favored by the state’s largest and richest industry: communications and entertainment. Davis had so much money this year that he might have been better named Green Davis. Much of this moola, however, comes with the same price tag that usually accompanies GOP money: fealty to those who contribute it and diminished interest in the day-to-day concerns of ordinary working Americans.

Some entertainment industry money is, in a sense, worse, because it mixes fat-wallet economics with liberal chic, the kind of cultural politics caricatured in Middle America by jokes about Concerned Citizens for Humane Lobster Traps or epitomized by the decision in San Francisco last year to allow city employees to have sex-change operations at public expense. Hollywood combines both Democratic weaknesses in one Gucci briefcase.

And the Gucci briefcase belongs to Jack Valenti. Or maybe Hillary Rosen.

(Via Armed Liberal).

SUMAN PALIT has some thoughts on Islam in India.

U.S. MUSLIMS ARE BEGINNING TO QUESTION SAUDI DONATIONS:

“For too long we’ve depended too often on overseas financing to keep our institutions alive. This comes at the price of our intellectual independence and integrity,” said Mairaj Syed, a UCLA graduate student in Islamic studies.

His comments sparked an online debate about the donation on San Francisco-based AMILAnet, a Muslim-oriented discussion group. . . .

Saudi Arabian donations have helped finance more than 1,700 mosques, Islamic centers and schools around the world. The kingdom has fully or partially financed Islamic centers in Los Angeles; San Francisco; Fresno; Chicago; New York; Washington; Tucson; Raleigh, N.C.; and Toledo, Ohio.

I think that they’re right to question the money, which is in support of an agenda that is, quite literally, anti-American.

UPDATE: Here’s a longer version of the story from the L.A. Times. Excerpt:

Some Muslim scholars have argued that such leanings are fundamentally intolerant and, taken to their extreme, are used as a religious justification for the terrorism of Osama bin Laden and others.

“The main reason we lack legitimacy among many Americans is because we don’t take a critical look at the theological orientations within the Muslim community that could produce ugly acts like 9/11 or the Taliban regime’s destruction of Buddhist statues in Afghanistan,” Syed said in an interview.

Others argued that acceptance of foreign donations could prevent American Muslims from criticizing the human-rights records of Muslim states.

“Saudi Arabia is a corrupt, dictatorial, fascist state that is an embarrassment to Islam and Muslims,” wrote Sarah Eltantawi, communications director of the Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council. Accepting foreign donations from such regimes “could set us back decades, or keep us in the ‘straddling the fence’ posture vis-a-vis Muslim dictators and oppressors that we seem to be shamefully stuck in today,” she wrote.

In his own posting in the online debate, Aslam Abdullah, the editor of Minaret magazine in Los Angeles, called on Muslims to reject all donations from Persian Gulf monarchies because they constitute “immoral money” earned off oil revenue and other sources that rightfully belong to the people of the Gulf countries, not to their kings.

Bravo. A lot of bloggers have been calling for moderate Muslims to take this kind of a stand. Now some are doing it. Let’s support them.

THE MYSTIC CHORDS OF MEMORY: Rachel Lucas has a project in mind.

OKAY, THIS IS ABSOLUTELY THE LAST WORD on the whole subject of “de-linking.”

IS AL QAEDA IN A CANNIBALIZATION PHASE? Dave Roberts emails:

I’ve seen a few reports, still unconfirmed, that one of the suicide bombers in Kenya was Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah. If it’s true it indicates that Al Qaeda isn’t just burning up recruits but is actually consuming the seed corn, the leadership team. Here’s a blurb on Abdullah from CNN: link

The name Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah is well-known to authorities and terrorism

experts.

Abdullah, also known as “Saleh,” is the al Qaeda leader of East African cells and a member of al Qaeda’s leadership group, the shura council, according to federal prosecutors. The name Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah is well-known to authorities and terrorism experts.

More recent reports link make it clear the identification isn’t firm yet, but the implications are interesting.

Maybe the supply of African suicide bomber recruits is zero, so the Arab leaders had to do it themselves. Maybe Al Qaeda is so shattered and hunted that the leaders are willing to suicide rather than be captured and miss out on all those virgins. In any case, if the identification turns out to be true, it’s a good sign for the anti-terror campaign.

Stay tuned.

I’M FEELING GUILTY because I missed seeing my brother’s band play last night. But — having had multiple houseguests for a week, and knowing that I’d be in the office writing my Administrative Law exam (early, for the benefit of a couple of students who need to take it early) I just couldn’t get up for it. The curse of responsibilities.

OKAY, IS THE “STEVE CARTER” WHO WROTE this letter to Salon about “black male nerds” the Steve Carter I think he is?

JOSHUA FERGUSON HAS A THEORY about the recent phony bin Laden tape. I think he’s right.

SECTION TWO is a blog featuring former Spinster Gena Lewis, along with some other people. It leans left, and anti-war.

MOIRA BREEN EMAILS to ask if I know of a fund for the benefit of Kenyan survivors of the Al Qaeda attack in Mombasa. I don’t. If anyone reading this does, please let me know and I’ll post the information.

UPDATE: Here’s a post asking the same question by Andrea Harris.

IMAO SAYS THAT THE AMERICAN COMPANIES WHO AID COMMUNIST CHINESE CENSORSHIP are accessories to murder.

I haven’t followed this issue as closely as I should have, but anyone who is helping the Chinese censor the Internet deserves to be criticized. Savagely.

THE SAUDI TERROR CONNECTION STORIES JUST KEEP ON COMING:

As FBI agents in Chicago pursued an investigation into alleged terrorist financing in 1998, they ran across a curious money trail that soon led them into a diplomatic swamp. A local chemical firm that was suspected of laundering money for Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group, had received a $1.2 million cash infusion from the International Relief Organization, the U.S. branch of one of the world’s biggest Islamic charities. Determined to “follow the money,” they traced some of the charity’s funding to a surprising and sensitive source: the Saudi Embassy in Washington.

THE MONEY FLOW from the Saudis set off alarms in Washington. Investigators were told by top Justice officials to move carefully, according to sources familiar with the case. Some Justice higher-ups appeared worried that any inquiries into the operations of the Saudi Embassy could jeopardize U.S.-Saudi relations. “There was a concern about national security,” said one investigator. The agents did as they were told. A court affidavit spelling out $400,000 in money transfers to the organization was carefully edited—to omit any reference to the Saudi cash. Instead, the document referred blandly to funds from an unidentified “embassy of a foreign government.” The president of the chemical firm was later convicted of fraud. But charges were never filed against the Saudi-financed charity. Investigators complain they were actively discouraged by Justice Department brass from pursuing the group’s possible links to terrorism.

This just proves that softness on the Saudis precedes the current Administration, which is hardly news except maybe to Ted Rall. What’s interesting is that this stuff is coming out now.

PUNDITWATCH IS UP!

MEDIA BIAS: Jack O’Toole finds Rush Limbaugh’s response to Tom Daschle’s whining as unimpressive as he found Daschle’s whining itself. I caught part of the interview, and I’m inclined to agree.

MULLAHS RUNNING SCARED? Tom Holsinger emails two interesting articles. This one announces a letup on religious-policing efforts aimed at young lovers:

TEHRAN, Nov 29 (AFP) – Iran’s police is not authorised to arrest young unmarried couples seen in the streets anymore, the government-run Iran newspaper reported Saturday.

“The police forces are not allowed to stop and question young boys and girls seen together in the streets, as in the past, unless there is a private complaint filed against them”, a Tehran judge was quoted as saying by the government daily Iran.

He also points out this Jeff Jacoby column, which points out that, like the Iranian mullahs, the State Department appears to be finally recognizing the unpopularity of the current regime in Iran. “What prompted the change I don’t know. But if the Department of State is finally prepared to support President Bush’s policy on Iran, it can only be good news for the war against radical Islamist terrorism.” I think it means that the State Department now sees regime change as inevitable.

MORE “RIGHT WING BIAS” AT THE NEW YORK TIMES? Check out this story about FoxNews:

LESLIE H. GELB, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, watches international news obsessively, skipping from channel to channel. “I never watch a commercial,” he said.

He now considers Fox News Channel often to be a more reliable news source for international reporting than CNN or the nightly network news. Fox, he said, provides a “fairer picture, a fuller version of the different parts of the arguments” over world affairs.

Mr. Gelb said he makes a distinction between Fox’s news coverage and its opinion programs, like “The O’Reilly Factor,” which he considers biased. But even here, he finds himself drawn to Fox. “CNN’s commentary tends to be less biased and less interesting,” he said.

A lot of other people who do not fit comfortably into the right-wing stereotype of Fox viewers apparently agree.

Of course, in the listing of right-wing hosts, the Times omits the decidedly non-right-wing Greta von Susteren. But still, it’s obvious that Howell Raines has been bought off by the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. And I’m sure we’ll be hearing that from some quarters, shortly. . . .

UPDATE: I think it’s a grassroots revolt. Sort of like what’s happening in Iran, only without the dancing.

JOHN ASHCROFT — NOT-SO-SUPER GENIUS: This sounds like a dreadful idea to me:

The Bush administration is developing a parallel legal system in which terrorism suspects — U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike — may be investigated, jailed, interrogated, tried and punished without legal protections guaranteed by the ordinary system, lawyers inside and outside the government say.

It is sadly true that there’s some legal authority for such an approach, stemming from the Civil War and World War II. But it’s still a terrible idea, and in particular anything that breaks down the protections of American citizens is a terrible idea because it raises the potential for politically-motivated abuse of power in a way that a system aimed at non-citizens does not.

KARL ROVE — SUPER GENIUS? Looks like it. At least, I just turned on This Week and George Stephanopoulos is characterizing the “Is Islam Evil?” debate as one between a tolerant George Bush and an intolerant Pat Robertson. Heh. Looks like triangulation to me. I mean, I think both Bush and Robertson are sincere in their positions, but casting the debate this way has got to help Bush, both at home and abroad. And I kind of doubt it’s an accident.

CRAZED ANTI-AMERICANISM: Mark Steyn is taking the term literally:

I was in the Gulf six months ago, and I came to the conclusion that a majority of the people I met – somewhere between 55 and 70 per cent – were, to use the technical term, nuts. That’s to say, they believed things that no rational person could believe. You’d be talking to an attractive, westernised, educated Bahraini lady doctor and she’d suddenly start babbling on about how there was no plane that crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, all the footage had been faked by the government. “But I know someone who saw it from his office window,” I said. “He just thinks he saw it,” she replied. “The Americans know how to do these things.” . . .

Well, about halfway through this last week in Canada, I realized I was beginning to feel about my homeland exactly the way I’d felt in Araby: these guys are nuts. . . . Most Canadians and most Europeans are kind, gentle people but, Bush-wise, they’re the ones who are mentally challenged. The “moron” line is simply inadequate: no rational person can believe a twice-elected Texas Governor, successful US President and overthrower of the Taliban is a moron unless a majority of Americans are morons, too. And in that case how come the morons have a global dominance unparalleled in history? As with those wacky Arabs and their Zionist conspiracies, Euro-Canadian anti-Americanism is a psychosis.

Actually, it’s an example of successful propaganda. Recognizing that these folks care more about feeling good about themselves than about actual accomplishments in the real world, Bush has given them a way to do just that, while he occupies himself with, well, the real world. It’s brilliant: Everybody’s happy. Sure, American dominance over the world continues to grow, but the Euros secretly like that — it’s certainly better than taking responsibility for the world themselves, and it allows the luxury of sounding dire warnings from the sidelines that no one is expected to take seriously or actually act upon. Like any shrewd negotiator, Bush has figured out how to give the other guy what he really wants, while still getting his way.

ROBERT FISK WEIGHS IN ON THE KENYA BOMBING — and, surprise, it’s Israel’s fault! And America’s.

William Sjostrom responds to Fisk’s tired screed.

Here’s my favorite out-of-touch-with-reality segment:

The Afghanistan-trained men of Mr bin Laden’s legion do not spring from the squalor of Gaza or the occupied masses of the West Bank. They are ruthless, highly motivated, intelligent – just for once, William Safire was right when he called them “vicious warriors” – and they may be more than a match for Israel’s third-rate intelligence men. Israel’s rabble of an army can kill child stone-throwers with ease. Al-Qa’ida is a quite different opponent.

Israel, you see, may be capable of defeating all the Arab armies at once, but it’s no match for the forces of Al Qaeda — trained in the harsh crucible of Afghanistan, where its troops withstood American assaults for days at a time!

In truth, the “strength” of Al Qaeda is like the “strength” of Ted Bundy. It’s not that they’re especially formidable, they’re just willing to do things that other people aren’t, which means that they can take advantage of surprise. But that only works for a while, and it doesn’t mean that they’re especially tough when it comes to the clutch.

What’s pathetic is just how obvious it is that Fisk (1) has lost touch with reality; and (2) is basically rooting for the other side.

UPDATE: Bill Herbert points out this fawning story on bin Laden by Fisk, from way back. Meanwhile Dan Hartun emails that Fisk is repeating himself.

DAMIAN PENNY excoriates America for stifling dissent. I’m ashamed.

PLAYING INTO BUSH’S HANDS:

BAGHDAD — Serious doubts surfaced over the surprise nature of new arms inspections in Iraq when a United Nations spokesman admitted the head of a suspected weapons site had been given advance warning of the visit by the UN experts to his facility on Saturday.

You can trust the U.N. — to do stuff like this every time.

YESTERDAY I suggested that “Buy Nothing Day” was looking like a flop. I seem to have been right.

FUNNY — I haven’t heard Noam Chomsky, or Marc Herold, or Germaine Greer, or Robert Fisk talking about these villagers whose lives were shattered by a bombing attack:

“I don’t know why this happened to us or what we will do,” said Walinki, her voice shaking. “There are dozens of children who don’t have parents now. We have no one to support them.”

With that, she watched as the grave-diggers continued their work. This is not a place where grave-diggers are hired, where there are gated cemeteries. People dig the graves for their own relatives and bury them next to the huts where they live.

Not a word. Strange. . . .

GENE SPERLING ADVISES Democrats to push for a freeze on tax cuts.

THE STORY THAT WON’T DIE: More on the Saudi funding of 9/11 hijackers, in the Washington Post.

THE CATO INSTITUTE IS CHALLENGING D.C.’S GUN-CONTROL LAWS as violative of the Second Amendment. Cato is reportedly about to file suit.

READER JACOB SEGAL sends this article as an example of right-wing bias at the New York Times. What do you think?

A DICK-TRACY-STYLE two-way wrist radio, for under fifty bucks! Is this a great century, or what? Now if the Diet Smith Corporation would just get to work on those moon colonies. (Via Gizmodo).

WHEN PROFESSORS ATTACK — they often make fools of themselves. Another riff on the Kirstein affair.

LAME. (Via Fraters Libertas).

THE TREASON OF THE INTELLECTUALS:

Behind both kinds of treason there lurks an ugly fact: second-rate intellectuals, feeling themselves powerless, tend to worship power. The Marxist intellectuals who shilled for Stalin and the postmodernists who shill for Osama bin Laden are one of a kind — they identify with a tyrant’s or terrorist’s vision of transforming the world through violence because they know they are incapable of making any difference themselves. This is why you find academic apologists disproportionately in the humanities departments and the soft sciences; physicists and engineers and the like have more constructive ways of engaging the world.

Le Corbusier dedicated a book “To Authority.” I can think of some others who might as well have.

THE HEAD OF THE ARAB EUROPEAN LEAGUE HAS BEEN CHARGED WITH INCITING RIOTS in Antwerp last week:

The authorities were shocked by the targeted nature of vandalism this week. Flemish pubs and black-owned businesses in the Borgerhout district were attacked, but shops displaying AEL stickers were spared.

Belgium’s liberal media agreed yesterday that the country’s experiment with tolerant multiculturalism had totally broken down.

The Flemish newspaper De Morgen said: “For a decade, the immigrant quarters of this country have turned into reservoirs of frustration, even hate. They have found a voice in Abou Jahjah.”

Abou Jahjah rejects assimilation, demanding segregated schools and self-governing, Arab-speaking ghettos.

(Via LGF).

I SAW LEON FUERTH on FoxNews yesterday. I tuned in midway through, and the discussion seemed to have degenerated — I didn’t get much from the conversation except that Leon was pissed with the interviewer.

What did strike me, though, is how good he looked. I’ve noticed this phenomenon a lot — get people out of the White House, or off the Hill, and they just look so much better. Clearer eyes, better color, the sleep-deprivation-induced puffiness gone from their faces, the stress-induced overtones gone from their voices. You see the same transition in the other direction when they go in, but the breakdown is usually more gradual than the recovery, so it’s not as dramatic. It kind of makes you wonder why people want those jobs, though.

JACK O’TOOLE RESPONDS to the suggestions by Al From and Bruce Reed that I mentioned yesterday: “That’s true, and it’s good advice, but the Democrats probably need to lose another election before they’ll be ready to listen.”

MORE ON THE EURO-AMERICAN DIVIDE:

To my knowledge I was the only American participating. This was an occasion for Europeans–Germans especially–to talk frankly to other Europeans. The panel on which I spoke was chaired by Reiner Pommerin, a professor at the University of Dresden, colonel in the German air force reserves, and advisor to the German Ministry of Defense. My fellow speakers included Germany’s former ambassador to the U.K., the current German ambassador to Poland, a DaimlerChrysler managing director, and a professor from Britain. We were to focus on transatlantic relations.

Throughout the two days, Pommerin set the tone with an aggressively antagonistic attitude toward all things American. “Thank God we had the 11th of September,” he declared–for this showed the U.S. how it feels to be humbled. Herr professor-colonel went on to suggest that Americans often feel nostalgic for the “good old days of slavery in the nineteenth century.” He told ludicrous stories about seeing empty bottles and litter piled “one meter deep” along roadsides in America, illustrating our environmental slovenliness. He insisted the seemingly mighty U.S. military was now a hollow force, all flash and no substance. . . .

This simple reality needs to be faced squarely by Americans: In a great variety of areas–foreign policy, demography, religion, economics–Americans and Europeans are growing apart. While the September 11 attacks deepened American sobriety, patriotic feeling, and national resolution, in Europe they merely created one more flashpoint for division. European elites, already worried they won’t be able to keep up with America over the next generation, are now approaching panic as the U.S. coalesces, during its September 11 recovery, into an even steelier and more determined colossus.

Some Europeans complain that the U.S. is more and more heading off on its own without them. They are right. America’s psychic link with Europe, I suggest, is fading extremely rapidly. Keep in mind that there are currently 32 million people living in the U.S. who were born abroad, and very few of these new Americans are from Europe. For two generations now, the new blood flowing into the U.S. has come primarily from Asia, Central and South America, the Near East, and the Caribbean. America is becoming a cosmic nation, comprised of all peoples, rather than just an offshoot of Europe.

I think this may be true — though if the United States breaks with Europe it will be more a result of a European push than an immigrant pull.

CHRIS MOONEY SHARES A FIRSTHAND ALIEN VISITATION REPORT. Well, sort of.

A FEW MONTHS AGO I WROTE THIS:

I predict that within the next year we’ll see major and intrusive efforts to protect Big Entertainment and Big Software, disguised as efforts to protect us against hostile hackers.

Now there’s this on Slashdot:

Now this article tells about Longhorn’s new filesystem being based on the the future Yukon server. And surprise it will only work with new hardware, which they want to be Palladium enabled. And all pitched to you under the rubric of Security & Efficency. For years MS has been accused of only wanting people to run MS Software. Now according to the article, ‘Microsoft doesn’t think computer users should have to use one program to read and write a word-processing file, another to use a spreadsheet, and a third to correspond via e-mail. Rather, the company thinks, a single program should handle it all.’ One program to rule them all, one program to bind them, indeed.

Eternal vigilance.

MINNESOTA BLOGGER MITCH BERG has some thoughts on the Nazi-defaced Norm Coleman billboard and the climate of hatred that leads to such acts.

THEY’RE CALLING IT A SECOND IRANIAN REVOLUTION: Hope it works out better than the first one. But it would pretty much have to. I’m surprised we’re not hearing more about this, but then I’ve been surprised all along:

The fierce dedication to Islam, the Iraq-Iran war, and the 1979 revolution once made Bolooki’s family quintessential supporters of Iran’s conservative clerics. But their desire for reform is indicative of a significant change below the surface of the political battle now playing itself out in Tehran.

“It’s like a volcano coming up, which you can’t see until it blows.” says one Iranian analyst here.

Hardline supporters of the regime vow to bring five million militants onto the streets today, in a climactic show of strength designed to counter 10 days of prodemocracy student protests this month.

More Iranians are choosing sides in an explosive debate that pits Islamic rule – defined by Iran’s unelected conservatives, who have held key levers of power since the Islamic revolution – against popular democracy. . . .

A Western diplomat says that the current regime “is under more pressure than at any time since the revolution. Something has to give,” he says. “Reformers are no longer prepared to compromise. [President Mohamad] Khatami is still regarded as the only one who can peacefully bring about change, and that’s what people really want.”

“If [the system] survives the next year intact, I think it will survive,” says the diplomat, adding that the conservative camp may not grasp the changes afoot. “It’s the same with all dictators – they do not see their own demise.”

Well, I hope to see their demise soon.

DOES THE KORAN PROVE THAT MUSLIMS ARE VIOLENT? Jacob Sullum examines the debate, and Razib K. responds.

KENYAN BOMBING BACKFIRES: “We love America. Go away Al Qaeda!” shouted Kenyans.

Hmm. Will “Al Qaeda go home!” graffiti be next? Why not? They are the imperialist aggressors, after all, in the most literal sense.

THE NEW SMARTERHARPERSINDEX IS UP.

WAR AND PEACE, PACIFISM AND SIN: Donald Sensing has some observations.

BLOGROLL UPDATES: The blogroll is huge. It’s almost beyond my control to keep updated (but Matthew Yglesias’s link finally goes to his new site!). I do my best, though. I’ve added a few new ones, too. In response to popular demand (well, several emails) I’ve moved a few people up from the general blogroll to the big-journalism section, where they’re easier to find and probably really belong. (What, Postrel writes for the New York Times and isn’t “big journalism?” asks a reader. Good point.) If you notice any errors, let me know.

WHY AM I BLOGGING SO MUCH? My daughter (whose computer is in my study) has a new computer game, and she’s so into it I don’t want to make her quit.

ALPHECCA WEIGHS IN on the whole Conservative Media Bias issue. On the other side of the question, I got a long, thoughtful email from Dave Roberts, endorsing this piece on the Daily Howler.

It seems to me that there are three issues here. One is that the media world is very different than it was the last time we had a Republican President. (This is the gist of Alphecca’s comments). Another is that any President has a lot of power to set the media agenda — most of the anti-Bush complaints along these lines seem to me to be near-verbatim echoes of what I heard conservatives say about Clintonian media control. And finally, and most interesting, is the extent to which a lot of journalists and pundits, including many who lean left, seem to despise Al Gore as a phony at a very personal level. So far I haven’t seen a piece that pulls all three of these threads together.

NICK DENTON SAYS I’M UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT.

MY SHARIA AMOUR: Mark Steyn on the new, culturally-sensitive Miss World pageant.

But you just know that he wrote the whole column to have an excuse for the pun in the title.

LOTS OF VENEZUELA UPDATES at El Sur. Just keep scrolling.

CHARLES OLIVER has thought about Mary Daly’s support for a world with only 10% men and he likes the idea: “A 9:1 ratio? Heck, Hugh Hefner insists on a mere 2:1 ratio of women to men for his parties. So in essence, this arch feminist would turn the world into the Playboy Mansion with spares. Sounds good to me.”

Of course, Charles is assuming he’d be one of the men left. . . .

Meanwhile, Jim Miller reports on a nation that had a ratio leaning that way, but with results that Mary Daly probably wouldn’t endorse.

ANOTHER BLOGOSPHERE WEDDING is in the offing. Congratulations and best wishes!

BELLICOSE WOMEN ARE A PROBLEM FOR THE DEMOCRATS, reports Thomas Edsall:

Andrew Kohut, head of the Pew Research Center, found a dramatic shift in women’s views about the creation of a national missile defense system. Just before the attacks, his polling showed that 29 percent of women and 42 percent of men agreed that “we need a national missile defense system right now.” In October, after the attacks, support among men grew only slightly, to 47 percent, while among women the percentage soared to 51 percent, with 59 percent of women with children backing immediate creation of such a system.

Similarly, a post-9/11 survey by the Winston Group, a Republican firm, found that a higher percentage of women than men backed the idea of arming commercial airline pilots (76 percent as compared with 73 percent).

All of these findings point to the increased receptivity of women to the generally more aggressive and tougher stands of Republicans on issues of military preparedness and dealing with foreign adversaries. These shifts may be temporary, a product of the terrorist threat. But while a war with Iraq might come and go, no one knows how long the threat of terrorist attack will continue. There is no reason to believe that this aspect of the political environment will change in the near future.

Meanwhile, Al From and Bruce Reed have some advice for the Party:

[S]top pretending that we can win a majority simply by energizing our base. . . .

Half that battle is simply respecting the values of mainstream America in the first place. We will never be the party that loves guns most, but we can respect law-abiding citizens’ rights to own them. We will never be the pro-life party, but we can show that we want abortion to be rare as well as legal.

I think they’re on the right track.

ARE WOMEN MORE LIKELY THAN MEN TO SLEEP WITH INTERNS? This poll says so, for whatever that’s worth.

(Via Amish Tech Support).

AFGHAN WOMEN ARE MAKING DOCUMENTARY VIDEOS — but they’re having trouble getting them on TV. I think we should encourage Afghan state television to broadcast these.

OKAY, THAT’S A NEW ONE: I was doing a post on the laptop, when the cats chased each other across my lap. A paw hit the wrong key and the post got deleted somehow. Heh.

INSTAPUNDIT IS NUMBER ONE! I’m not sure what this means, but it’s nice to be on top. Thanks to reader Michael Safrin for the link.

GEITNER SIMMONS has some observations regarding hate speech, and accusations thereof.

THE SAUDI CONNECTION TO 9/11 GETS MORE ATTENTION in an article by Stephen Schwartz in The Weekly Standard. Wahhabism, the state religion of the Saudi royal family, is intimately bound up with terrorism, he writes.

HATE CRIME IN MINNESOTA.

UPDATE: Juan Gato, channeling Tom Daschle, blames Garrison Keillor.

IT’S “BUY NOTHING DAY” AND — to judge from the crowds at the mall parking lot — this is having about as much impact as similar advocacy-group publicity stunts. Steven Chapman asks:

Why is it that every Left-Green-Christian plan for Saving The Planet (TM) involves individuals spending less and having less, and governments taxing more and spending more? And is it any wonder so many of us think they’re retarded for trying to squeeze the square peg of Less into the round hole of More?

No wonder at all.

INTERESTING REPORT FROM CANADA:

Toronto’s recent wave of street murders — more than 40 since the beginning of 2001 — debunks the claim that Ottawa’s gun registry is making Canadians safer from crime. As the price tag for this colossal bureaucratic mess nears $1-billion, it is clearly time for the federal government to consider shutting it down and redirecting some or all of the resources to real crime-fighting measures.

Nearly all of the Toronto murders have been committed with handguns. Yet handguns have been subject to registration in Canada since 1934. In fact, registration has done nothing to stem the use of handguns in murder: In the past 15 years, the proportion of all firearm murders committed with handguns has nearly doubled in Canada from just over one-third to nearly two-thirds.

Imagine that — just as gun-rights supporters predicted.

WHAT’S MOST INTERESTING ABOUT THIS ITEM on a “mystery contrail” is that it’s evidence of someone comparing satellite images with radar tracks and air-traffic-control information.

SOPHOMORIC, YET SATISFYING: ShellShocking reports on things you can only say at Thanksgiving.

JORGE SCHMIDT POINTS OUT THIS EDITORIAL in the Washington Post:

THE WORLD’S fourth largest oil producer, a key American supplier and ally, stands on the brink of a political explosion, and possibly a civil war. Its capital increasingly is split between hostile armed camps; military and police units are faced off against each other, central highways are sometimes blocked by burning barricades. . . .

Mr. Chavez, a muddled socialist whose closest political ally is Fidel Castro, was himself democratically elected in 1999; he then used a series of referendums and new elections to rewrite the constitution and extend his term until 2007, even as he wrecked Venezuela’s economy and antagonized the military and middle class. A new election or referendum — like that ordered yesterday by Venezuela’s national electoral council — would offer a way out. But Mr. Chavez has been reluctant to agree — his supporters said they would appeal the council’s decision — and increasingly the opposition appears to hope that he can be forced out of office, as he was briefly last April. Opposition supporters rally around some 140 military officers who have rebelled against the government and occupied a city square, while Mr. Chavez’s followers vow to fight any coup in the streets. Both sides have been arming themselves.

Hmm. Where might you have heard about this before?

MERYL YOURISH says that the latest attacks indicate that Al Qaeda is growing desperate.

I also note that, as I suspected, the bin Laden tape now appears to be a fake. That strongly suggests that he’s dead. The IndePundit agrees. And he’s got, er, pictures.

IS IT SEXIST TO WISH FOR A WORLD WITH FEWER MEN? My earlier post on feminist scholar Mary Daly’s expressed desire for a world where only one person in ten was male (which one reader called Strangelovian) has inspired Eugene Volokh to wonder whether such sentiments are sexist or not. I don’t know: Would wishing for a world with fewer black people be racist?

Megan McArdle is less charitable to Daly:

I am not under the impression that all feminists, or even professors of Women’s Studies, believe this sort of nonsense. But I’ve spent enough time around the movement to know that the majority don’t challenge the people saying it, which is almost as bad. . . .

I’m also aware that the reason they say things like that is that no one pays attention to them. But if you’re going to propose genocide with the offhand arrogance of a high school essayist, you can’t really complain that no one takes you seriously.

Well, it’s not exactly genocide, but I take her point. And if, say, Andrew Sullivan expressed the wish for a world that was 90% male, I feel sure he’d be accused of something along those lines.

UPDATE: Reader John Beckwith writes:

Just a thought but maybe, deep down, Ms Daly anticipates the eventual imposition of Sharia.

In this case it actually makes sense to limit the number of men. Islamic law allows men to take up to 4 (and, in some interpretations, more) wives. This feature of Sharia often leads to undesirable consequences like 9 year old girls getting married and legions of sexually deprived young men hanging around the mosque with little entertainment beyond waging suicidal jihad. Ms Daly’s proposal would perfect Osama’s version of heaven on earth by rightsizing the ratio of breeding stock in the human popluation.

Paving the way for a better Sharia is odd agenda for a feminist, to be sure, but at least it would unshackle Ms Daly and her sisters from the oppression of Western patriarchy.

Yes, it does seem to be the Western variety of patriarchy that Daly and her ilk find troubling.

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh thinks that my analogy to racism, above, is overdrawn. Hmm. Maybe. Maybe not. Some people who emailed me found rather disturbing overtones in Daly’s language. So did some commenters on Megan McArdle’s page.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Brian Carnell is puzzled by Eugene’s stance.

HOWARD KURTZ ON AL GORE’S LATEST:

Al Gore has become a true believer in the vast right-wing conspiracy. . . .

Maybe he’s just frustrated that his book isn’t selling better, despite a zillion media appearances with Tipper.

Let’s say Gore is right, that conservative news outlets are trying to blacken the reputations of people like him. Doesn’t complaining about it just sound like whining? Or is he playing to his base, the way conservatives have done all these years by moaning about the liberal media?

After all, if you’re going to take on Saddam and Osama, you’d better be able to deal with the likes of the Washington Times. The conservative media aren’t going anywhere. Deal with it.

Poor Al. Clinton could have pulled this off, but Al just can’t.

UPDATE: Greg Wythe, who was blogging furiously on Thanksgiving, wonders when “Clinton envy” will become a term in popular discourse.

PERRY DE HAVILLAND has some observations on context where the Kenya attacks are concerned.

AMERICANS ARE MORE POPULAR IN BRITAIN than at any time in the past several decades, according to a poll reported in The Scotsman. Moral: “Don’t believe everything you read in the Guardian.”

Commenting on this, Tim Blair observes: “Everything? Try anything.”

CITIES ARE BECOMING MORE RACIALLY INTEGRATED, especially in the South and West. Increased integration appears to be a function of growth.

UPDATE: And here’s more good news: More African Americans starting businesses.

TALKLEFT REPORTS that the ACLU has gotten involved in the battle over Racine, Wisconsin’s dumb anti-rave raid. (I wrote about the raid here a while back). You can also see the party organizers’ website on the subject here.

JAMES LILEKS has a fine Thanksgiving post. No surprise there.

ARABS RIOTED IN ANTWERP Wednesday night. It hasn’t gotten much attention in U.S. media, but Live from Brussels has all the details. And scroll down to read the point about Berbers.

NO BIAS AT THE NEW YORK TIMES: Check out this headline:

6 Israelis Die at Polling Station; Sharon Wins

No comment required.

MICKEY KAUS has been blogging up a storm while the rest of us have dozed in a turkey-induced coma.

SOME APPALLING PICTURES from Kenya.

DINNER HERE WAS A SUCCESS, except that next year I think I’ll cook a second leg of lamb. Both the turkey and the lamb looked like they had been attacked by hungry piranhas, but the lamb was the most popular. Now I’m going to drink beer with my brother. Woohoo!

I HAVEN’T SAID ANYTHING ABOUT the absurd appointment of Henry Kissinger to find the truth behind the 9/11 attacks because, well, it just seems too absurd for words. David Corn and Mickey Kaus are not so encumbered, and they’re both appalled.

All I can figure is that the Bush Administration has an equal-and-opposite mole to the one Tony Woodlief has identified at NPR.

ONE OF THE THINGS I’M THANKFUL FOR: Sgt. Stryker!

JEN TALIAFERRO HAS PUT UP HER SIDE in the latest delinking brouhaha. Me, I agree with the Volokh position on all of this stuff.

Somehow, it’s hard to take it seriously in a house full of family, and the smell of turkey and lamb cooking.

THE TURKEY’S IN THE OVEN! And the lamb is marinating. I’ve been snacking on some of my mother-in-law’s excellent hummus to keep up my strength.

Here’s a link to an account of the first Thanksgiving. Still no word of what Tony is cooking (last year, I remember, he decided not to do the leg of lamb). But Will Vehrs has a 25-pound turkey in the oven.

UPDATE: Tony has posted his menu and it sounds yummy.

BLOGGING WILL BE INTERMITTENT TODAY: I’m cooking a turkey and a leg of lamb. (I wonder what Tony is cooking?) As usual, we’ll be having my family and my wife’s family over, so it’s a pretty big affair. But the computer’s right here, and it’s always on, so I’m sure there will be some posting. Happy Thanksgiving! Despite all, we have much to be thankful for.

ONCE AGAIN, THE NEW YORK TIMES IS PLAYING CATCH-UP TO THE BLOGOSPHERE, with a story on the shortage of female warbloggers, something that was bruited about the blogosphere months ago. Jeff Jarvis is unimpressed, and not shy about saying so:

(1) Anyone of any gender who wants to start a blog can. Nobody will stop them. So you can’t argue that some bigger power structure — blog executives, the old blog boys club — is stopping them. The only thing stopping nonbloggers from . . . blogging is themselves. That, after all, is the whole point of this new medium: It’s anybody’s. It’s everybody’s.

(2) There are many, many great women bloggers. I don’t need to start listing them. You know them.

Even the writer has to admit that there is no frigging point to her story: “But women are, in fact, blogging in big numbers.” So why write it? Why print it? Just because it fits?

I don’t think the story is quite that bad, but maybe my expectations for the Times are lower than Jeff’s. What I think is curious is that the author didn’t interview more female bloggers, especially warbloggers. Sure, she interviews Virginia Postrel, but (1) Virginia writes for the Times, which makes it kind of inside-baseball; and (2) Virginia isn’t blogging much anymore. (Why not? Come back, Virginia! We miss you!) Rebecca Blood is mentioned, but she’s not a warblogger by any means, and the article seems just to be drawing from her book — she isn’t actually quoted. The other women quoted are non-warbloggers.

But the reporter could have gone down my blogroll and found a lot of women warbloggers who blog more-or-less daily. Talking to them might have shed some light on the story. My guess is that women who do warblogs are interested in different things than women who don’t.

The interesting thing to me isn’t that there are fewer women warbloggers than men. It’s that there are so many more women warbloggers than there would have been ten years ago. The Times missed the bellicose-women trend entirely in this story. I can’t help but feel that a conversation with Michele, or Brooke, or Athena, — all of whom could be found without getting past the “A” section of my blogroll — might have been enlightening. And led to a better story.

MY BROTHER, in his beloved-uncle role, is telling my daughter a bedtime story. We just finished watching Mystery Science Theater together (off the swell Rhino 1st-season DVD collection). So I thought I’d check my email and when I look I’ve got a bunch of messages from somebody using the pseudonym “Henry Flowers.” There are a lot of them, with subject lines like “Den Beste reveals his ignorant bigotry,” and “Typical lying Republicans.” They’re full of typos.

And I wonder — what kind of guy sits up the night before Thanksgiving churning out that kind of embittered, yet utterly pointless, stuff instead of enjoying life and the holidays?

Al, get some help.

AUSTIN BAY WRITES ABOUT MICRODEVELOPMENT EFFORTS in Africa.

SOMEHOW, THIS DESCRIPTION reminds me of the color commentary from a televised golf tournament. Heh.

OKAY THIS WHOLE DELINKING THING seems to be spreading. Is that such a good idea?

WHY DEMOCRATS SHOULD LOVE FEDERALISM: Read my FoxNews Column — coauthored this time with Professor Brannon Denning — to find out.

HOMELAND SECURITY: Maybe it’s me, but this kind of reminds me of this.

What do you think?

I WAS GOING TO BUY A DIGITAL CAMERA today, but thanks to Nick Denton’s Gizmodo site, I found this article saying that prices are likely to drop sharply in the next few weeks. Thanks, Gizmodo!

My wife, interestingly, was up in New York last week doing a TV show and dropped by her cousin’s palatial loft in Chelsea. He gave her a cup of coffee from some outrageously fancy $700 coffeemaker that he’d found via “this great website called ‘Gizmodo’.” It’s a small world.

IS ALL THE ANTI-MEDIA STUFF FROM DEMOCRATS A COORDINATED CAMPAIGN? Neal Boortz and Hugh Hewitt think so. (And Hewitt calls InstaPundit a “third-tier force” in the media! Woohoo! I think that’s a tier or two higher than I deserve, actually — but I’ll take it.)

Justin Katz, meanwhile, wonders if the Arab News is in on the campaign, too?

YOU CAN HEAR ME ON “DIGITAL DIALOGUE” HERE, right now.