HUH. Over 53,000 pageviews today. That’s a lot for a Sunday. Must be the protests.

Does this make me a tacit supporter of A.N.S.W.E.R.?

No.

ANTIWAR PROTESTS: A pale shadow of what we saw 12 years ago?

DESTINATION: BRITAIN! Adil Farooq, who lives there, is horrified by Britain’s asylum policies.

NOOO!

UPDATE: NOOooo!

ANOTHER UPDATE: NOOOOOoooooo!

WATCH THOSE HARD DRIVES: They’re harder to clean than you think. The last sentence in this story makes me think that there’s an interesting story behind the story.

(Via Ray Garraud).

PROTEST NUMBERS from around the world. There’s more, including the attendance at the Detroit Auto Show (where people showed up Saturday to look at SUVs in numbers dwarfing the entire American protest turnout) here. And some questions for protesters, and answers, linked here. Also, photos and firsthand reports from the protests here.

UPDATE: Environment-friendly marchers? Well. . . . In a weird kind of way, these pictures make sense.

GENIUS MUST BE RECOGNIZED.

DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ? Robert Musil looks at history.

History? Hey, Saddam just had an election!

A PACK, NOT A HERD: I got an email saying that the story about two high school students downing a would-be school shooter (or at least a would-be “Jeremy”) that I posted on Friday night will be reported on CNN tomorrow.

WE’RE ALL JUST PUPPETS, and Cathy Seipp is pulling the strings. Well, yeah. But we don’t mind.

JUST SAW THE MEDIA MATTERS BLOGGING EPISODE, which was quite different from the rough cut that I had seen earlier. I liked the old music better (techno vs. the Bobby McFerrin — I think — in the new cut), but overall I thought it was pretty good. And I still think that Oliver Willis should have a TV show.

UPDATE: Pejman Yousefzadeh has a review up (two key points: Megan McArdle is “hot” — and why not a sequel focusing on Iranian-Jewish webloggers?) And Anil Dash has comments focusing on the, um, “opportunities” he hopes the appearance will produce. . . .

A WHILE BACK, I linked to a story from the Los Angeles Times pronouncing Milwaukee the “most segregated” city in America. Angry Milwaukee reader Rob Burg sends this story and this story reporting a study that pronounces the Census Bureau data leading to that conclusion wrong.

TACITUS is issuing a challenge to anti-war bloggers: Disavow A.N.S.W.E.R. and what it stands for. And he’s got some pretty graphic stuff on what it stands for.

UPDATE: Radley Balko responds. Oliver Willis has a response, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Megan McArdle comments:

I’ve seen a number of people say that it doesn’t matter that A.N.S.W.E.R. organized the anti-war marches — they may be quasi-marxist apologists for Stalin using the anti-war rallies to advance a hard-left statist agenda, but why should we let that stop us from marching in a good cause?

Come again? Would you go to a fundraiser for abandoned puppies organized by the Klan? Please do not bother trying to convince me; of course you wouldn’t. You’d donate money to a shelter, or adopt a puppy, but no matter how good the cause was, you wouldn’t stand up to be counted alongside the guys in sheets.

She’s also designed some nifty t-shirts. Where do I order one? (LATER: Why here, of course!)

ANOTHER UPDATE: Lots of comments on Tacitus’s original post. My favorite, however, is not precisely on point, but it is funny:

hmmm connecting dots.

Stalin: big mustache, vicious dictator

Saddam : big mustache, vicious dictator

A.N.S.W.E.R.: Stalinist organisation opposes move to unseat Saddam.

question, if Bush had a big mustache would they be ambivalent over their support of Saddam?

Hmm. Big mustache. Cowboy hat. . . . All I can say is, Tom Selleck for President! Let’s bring America back together. . . .

Heh.

Meanwhile, Steven Jens asks, “What is it with evil men and mustaches?”

JUSTIN KATZ WRITES on conservatism and change in the Islamic world.

ELECTROMAGNETIC WEAPONS? DefenseTech has some links and information. And scroll down for more on the unfolding Los Alamos scandals, which are getting less attention than they deserve.

UPDATE: Steven Den Beste, who knows about this kind of thing, has comments here, and here.

RON BAILEY WRITES ABOUT NEUROSCIENCE AND ITS CRITICS, particularly Francis Fukuyama.

I’ve written about neuroscience, too, but while I was worried about how other people might use it to control us, Fukuyama is more worried about how we might use it to control ourselves. Which sums up the difference between my position and Fukuyama’s on a number of subjects.

STUFF I MEANT TO LINK THIS WEEK, but never got around to:

This article by Buzz Aldrin and Ron Jones on space tourism;

This magisterial post by Lynxx Pherrett on human trafficking worldwide (it’s not just the UN peacekeepers!);

This column by Rand Simberg on space commercialization;

Reality Carnival — the whole blog, which as you’ll see lives up to its name;

This post on why I was wrong, and this post on why I wasn’t, in my discussion of Eldred (LATER: Larry Lessig says I was “sensible”); and

This post from the Bitch Girls, commenting on the C-SPAN coverage of the protests yesterday.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten a bunch — when I find this stuff I leave the screen open meaning to go back to it, and sometimes I just don’t get there.

DOES THIS ELECTION mean I’m not supposed to call Castro a “dictator” any more? I’m with Josh Chafetz on this one:

This just goes to show that, in addition to being brutal and oppressive, the Cuban regime is also incompetent. All 609 ran unopposed? Which genius in Fidel’s inner circle was in charge of this? Couldn’t they at least scare up two Communists to run against each other, so they could at least plausibly claim to be holding free elections? As it is, why even bother with the election? — it’s not fooling much of anyone …

But there are those who will point to it, just as there are those who think that Saddam just won a democratic election.

DAMIAN PENNY is running a contest for the dumbest protest sign seen yesterday. Get your entries in!

ATRIOS IS RUNNING THIS QUOTE from an article in the Knoxville alt-weekly Metro Pulse:

In late 1969, a group of about 25 demonstrators marched from campus down Alcoa Highway to the airport. The intent was to symbolically greet the soldiers who weren’t coming home. “The only thing that really hurt,” recalls organizer Charlie Reynolds, “is that one of the students insisted on carrying a North Vietnamese flag.”

Reynolds was UT’s ranking expert on demonstrating. An ordained Methodist minister and still a professor of religious studies at UT, he was new to campus. Born in Alabama, Reynolds had been involved in civil rights demonstrations there as early as ’61. Since then, he’d been pelted with eggs in Boston and faced firehoses in Heidelberg. When Nixon came to town in 1970, Reynolds, finishing his first year at UT, would lead the opposition.

Yeah, that’s my dad. I’ve linked to this piece a couple of times myself (here’s one mention, from last June), as a matter of fact. There’s also an article from 1971, I think, that Garry Wills wrote for Esquire, though it’s not online as far as I can tell.

To Atrios, it’s funny that my father protested a different war. To me, of course, the most important line is this one:

“The only thing that really hurt,” recalls organizer Charlie Reynolds, “is that one of the students insisted on carrying a North Vietnamese flag.”

My father and I disagree on the current (projected) war, but we don’t disagree about how unfortunate it is that that peace movement — and this one — have been ruined by jackholes who are really just posturing, or actively rooting for the other side.

And I actually marched with my Dad in Boston, but that was protesting Louise Day Hicks.

WELL, THEY’RE CALLED ANARCHISTS FOR A REASON: An amusing story from yesterday’s protests.

PUNDITWATCH is up!

GARY HART HAS LAUNCHED HIS 2004 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN WEBSITE. I think he’s the strongest Democrat in the field.

Here is the Hart website, which can also be reached at http://hart2004.com.

POWER LINE POINTS OUT that an anti-Hugo Chavez rally in Miami drew 50,000 people — about as many as the largest credible estimates for the D.C. antiwar rally yesterday. In the words of Power Line:

[T]he anti-Chavez, pro-freedom rally by Cuban-Americans and others in Miami was likely larger than any of yesterday’s antiwar rallies. How much coverage did it get in your local newspaper?

That says something about the limited appeal of the antiwar movement. And about what the mainstream press considers news, and what it doesn’t.

UPDATE: ToneCluster points out that 100,000 people protested against Chavez in Caracas yesterday.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Porphyrogenitus notes that more people will be showing up for the NFC and AFC championship games than showed up at any of the protests. (Heck, based on official figures more people showed up to see the lame Tennessee Vols lose to Florida last fall than showed up at all the American antiwar protests combined.)

He also notes that the ESPN coverage — unlike coverage of the antiwar protesters — includes detailed analysis of the records and backgrounds of the participants, and concludes: “I wonder why ‘pure news’ reporters look down on sports reporters?”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Charles Austin emails:

More people didn’t just show up to see the Vols lose to Florida, they paid for the privilege! I would have said that unlike the pro-Saddam demonstrators, they did not regard their opponent’s supporters as feckless, hygenically challenged, evil morons, but we are talking about Gator fans after all.

Meanwhile, Oliver Willis emails this link to a page with video that purports to show 350,000 people at the San Francisco rally. I couldn’t get the video to play, but I regard that claim as absurdly inflated.

And reader Ronnie Schreiber sends this observation:

A couple of the reports on the various anti-war protests said that a number of the protesters’ signs mentioned SUVs. Today is the last day of the 2003 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Michigan. Last year there were 759,907 people who paid to get into the nine day show and crowds so far have exceeded last year’s attendance. The last Saturday of the show is typically the day with the highest attendance which means that yesterday there may have been more people attending the Detroit auto show to look at the latest SUVs than there were anti-war protesters in both SF and DC.

Sure enough, thanks to the wonder of Google News, I found this story, reporting that:

Event organizers predicted the final turnout by Monday evening could approach the 2000 record of 802,300. Saturday’s attendance alone was projected to top 120,000 people.

So, using official numbers, it seems that there were certainly more people looking at SUVs in Detroit yesterday than were protesting the war across America. You may, of course, doubt the truth of the official numbers — and crowd estimation, especially with large crowds where people don’t have to pass through turnstiles to get there is hard — but it seems rather unlikely to me that the Washington, D.C. and San Francisco municipal governments are such hotbeds of warhawkery that they would be deliberately under-reporting the numbers by a factor of ten, as the organizers are claiming. (LATER: Schreiber emails to point out that the Auto Show charges admission, and so probably has a very reliable count compared to what you get with open-air events. True enough.) (STILL LATER: A reader emails that yesterday’s attendance was 142,865. I can’t find that anywhere on the Web, but if so, well, the outcome’s pretty clear.)

Meanwhile, Charles Johnson reports that press accounts are whitewashing the presence of radical Islamists at the protests.

UPDATE: And James Hudnall has a pop quiz for protesters. Read it.

KEITH RICHARDS isn’t scared of terrorists:

“I say to Osama and the boys bring it on, evaporate me,” Richards said on the eve of the band’s Australian tour. “If it gets to the stage where these guys are dictating if we rock or not, then forget about it.”

Paul McCartney, on the other hand, is less defiant.

WILL WILKINSON is unimpressed by the invocation of Martin Luther King at yesterday’s protests:

I have no idea what the man would have thought of our present situation, and I doubt others are in a much better position. I guess when you do such an awful job making a moral case against the war, you’ll take whatever associations of moral authority you can muster. (And this from someone who is by no means in favor of the war.)

But his picture is an icon, and these protests seem to be mostly about the parading of icons. What the antiwar left needs, however, is some iconoclasm.

UPDATE: A reader points out that King’s views on Zionism probably wouldn’t be very popular with many of these protesters.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The King letter linked above appears to be a hoax. I actually checked on Google, found it in a number of places that looked reputable, and went with it. But another reader sends this link to a post explaining that it is probably bogus, though it goes on to note: “the message of the letter (Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism) was one Martin Luther King, Jr. had indeed articulated.”

PEACE AND, ER, LOVE? Knoxville band Jag Star will be travelling abroad to entertain troops for the U.S.O. Unfortunately, this has gotten them hate mail:

But a couple of weeks ago, Jag Star was notified it had been selected. “When I read the email, I was sort of stunned imagining going to Afghanistan. But I want to go. I hope it brings out the patriotic part in me. It’ll be cool to hang out with the troops and talk to them.” . . .

They’ve gotten some nasty emails from people against the war. “Some people have said to me, ‘I don’t believe in war, I don’t believe what they’re doing,’” Lewis says. “I don’t think it’s fair to say that because I don’t think those people want to be over there to kill someone. I think they want to be home with their families. I hate talking about politics because I know how angry people get. I think our job is to go over there and give them something positive.”

Lewis says she’s looking forward to talking with many of the troops while she’s there.

I mentioned Sarah Lewis earlier here when she won a prestigious national songwriting award. Here’s the band’s website.

YOU ASKED FOR IT: Evidence of Saddam’s nuclear program:

The documents seized at the homes of the two scientists, however, confirm what Western intelligence has been arguing all along, that Saddam is continuing with his quest to develop the first Arab atom bomb.

Ever since the inspectors arrived back in Iraq two-and-a-half months ago, Saddam has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal the true nature of his nuclear weapons programme. . . .

That’s a “material breach,” of course — but no doubt Saddam’s apologists will soon start arguing that it doesn’t prove that he has weapons now, that he deserves them anyway to resist U.S. hegemony, etc., etc.

(Via LGF).

UPDATE: Even the Guardian is backing war with Iraq now. Kind of an anticlimax for the peace protests, isn’t it? I mean, if you’ve lost the Guardian, (well, strictly speaking it’s the Guardian/Observer, but still. . . .) who have you got?

Oh, wait! I know! I know that one! Call on me!

A READER SENDS THIS REPORT FROM SAN FRANCISCO:

The rally started at 11:00 A.M. PST and the parade got going down Market Street at around 11:50 A.M. Very peaceful overall. One organizer specifically shooed away a woman with a blank red flag (IMG_5308a) probably to avoid having communist symbols. Didn’t see one sickle or hammer. Very boring.

I’d estimate at least 10 -15 people per second going down Market so that’s about 45,000 people per hour for at least an hour and a half (I left at 1:20 P.M.) One cop said he was told 45,000 people were there total so obviously that sounds low to me.

The photos are mostly of specific signs. I tried to get the best ones as grist for the mill. I’m an amateur photographer with professional lenses.

S.U.V.s seemed to be a popular topic for the signs.

So there you have it. More pix here, here, and here. Note the pacifistic theme of wishing Bush would choke on a pretzel.

UPDATE: “God Bless Iraq” and Cheney as Hitler: Here are more pictures from the San Francisco protests. And I’ll have some pics from the D.C. protests soon.

(LATER: Here’s a lengthy report with pictures from San Francisco by Russell Wardlow, who says “Apparently, it’s all about oil.” He then proceeds to channel David Corn.)

The digital camera: a blogger’s best friend. Well, one of them.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s a reader report from the Washington, D.C. protests:

I spent several hours at the DC protest today. My impressions:

1 – It was a peaceful demonstration; relatively well-behaved. I saw no shouting matches, confrontations with police, or fights. But I didn’t see any counter-demonstrators either, although I was told there was a small counter-demonstration at the other end of the mall near the Viet Nam War Memorial.

2 – My guess at size of the crowd is on the close order of 50,000, arrived at by estimating the area of the demonstration and dividing by 10 square feet per person. I heard another estimate of 30,000 was given on C-SPAN, so I’m probably not too far off. It couldn’t have been much larger, since if you went off the mall by one block in any direction, you couldn’t tell there was anything going on – if anything, the rest of the area had less than normal traffic.

3 – The speakers – those I could hear, at least – gave the usual excuses. No blood for oil. Money for jobs, not for war. Drop Bush, not bombs. Teach peace, not hate. No war without just cause. Collateral damage means Iraqi children. Main street, not Wall Street. Iraqis are people too. Not in our name. Nothing particularly new or original.

4 – The demonstrators seemed to be of two separate demographics: the 18-25 year old students (expected) and the 50 to 60-year old Viet Nam protestors (completely unexpected). In fact, it seemed to me to be almost ‘old home week’ for the Viet Nam era types: “Hi, how are ya?” “Long time, no see.” That sort of thing.

5 – Finally, I was struck by the attitude of the protestors. “Whiny” and “smug” come to mind, as does “entitled.” I know that doesn’t cover the territory, but I’m having a hard time finding the right words to describe it. “Condescending” might be better, as in “I’m clearly your moral superior, therefore I’m entitled to dictate the solution.” “Whiny” as in “You’re not listening to me. How can you not recognize my superiority?”

6 – ANSWER clearly had significant role in organizing and staffing the protest; the number of participants carrying professionally done (by ANSWER) signs was astounding. Were all the protestors members and sympathizers? Probably not, but the number of signs suggests that a significant minority probably were.

Pet Bunny has more coverage from D.C., and many more pics, along with amusing commentary.

STILL MORE: Jim Henley doesn’t have pics (somebody buy that man a digital camera!) but he has posted a lengthy report from the perspective of a marcher — though I suspect that his “PEACE NOW! SOCIALISM NEVER!” sign made him something less than typical. And here’s a report from fellow-marcher Max Sawicky, who fits the profile somewhat more closely. And this report, from David Kenner, features many, many photos of the D.C. protests, which he characterizes as something more like a retro-nostalgia act than a revolution.

OH, GOD, NOT MORE STILL: When I asked for “pictures from the D.C. antiwar protest” I didn’t really mean this. I mean, I really didn’t mean this. But Laurence Simon is not to be denied. Or he’ll put one of those Amish hex-sign things on me.

LAST ONE: Yes, I know my correspondents are giving higher crowd estimates than the official ones. Make of that what you will. Crowd estimates are notoriously tricky.

But here’s the last word on crowd estimates for yesterday.

THIS PIECE BY ANN MARCHAND IN THE WASHINGTON POST quotes a lot of people from A.N.S.W.E.R. but says nothing about the group’s pro-Saddam, pro-North Korea, anti-American leanings. Even if mentioning that it’s a front for the Workers’ World Party, as David Corn has reported, is out — calling people communists, I suppose, might sound McCarthyite, even though surely that isn’t the case when they really are communists — I would think that mentioning that it’s a group that’s actively rooting for the other side would only be fair.

If the Ku Klux Klan organized a pro-war rally, even if a lot of the protesters were just useful idiots who didn’t know who was behind it, I somehow think the Post would manage to ask a few tough questions.

UPDATE: Reader John Fenton points out:

Scroll down far enough and you’ll see that she refers to the organizers of the counter-demonstration as “conservative.”

But of course. Count on the Post to look for the political motivations behind the patriotic slogans! Well, sometimes.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Greg Sperla writes:

Just wanted to let you know that you’re 100% right about the roots of ANSWER. I attended a seminar they put on at my campus at SFSU and probably heard more about the Socialist Workers Movement than I heard about ANSWER. They aren’t shy about it either, most of the members are very forthcoming about their political assocations, I don’t understand why this comes as such a shock to some people.

I guess it’s a shock to people because they haven’t read about it in the Post.

But this article in the Mercury News does point out some, though not all, of ANSWER’s unsavory connections and notes that many peace protesters don’t care because they feel that worrying about them would hurt the cause. No enemies on the left, and all of that.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s a later, but similarly friendly story in the Post by Manny Fernandez and Justin Blum. Fernandez wrote another story earlier this week, reproduced on A.N.S.W.E.R.’s website, that briefly raises but dismisses any concerns with the organization.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Rand Simberg has questions about A.N.S.W.E.R.:

Can a group whose basic premise seems to be that the US government under its constitution is the source of all evil in the world, and that all of its initiatives are to be opposed, in a knee-jerk fashion, be said to be in any way patriotic?

That would be a “no,” Rand. But I don’t expect the Post to point it out.

ERROR CORRECTION UPDATE: Greg Beato praises my courage for daring to criticize the Washington Post despite my MSNBC gig, but takes me to task for inexactitude in characterizing the Marchand piece as interviewing “a lot of people from A.N.S.W.E.R.” He’s right, and I was wrong. A better way of putting it would have been “a lot of people from the antiwar movement, and some people from A.N.S.W.E.R.,” as the article talks a lot about A.N.S.W.E.R. but also quotes mostly people who aren’t clearly actual members of A.N.S.W.E.R. I don’t think that affects my basic point, though, about the sloppiness, or dishonesty, of talking about A.N.S.W.E.R. at length without examining the organization’s essential anti-Americanism. And calling A.N.S.W.E.R. anti-American isn’t just a pejorative, but descriptive.

POWER LINE has protest photos and comments on A.N.S.W.E.R.

MICKEY KAUS is dissenting from Linda Greenhouse’s opinion. Or something like that.

TACITUS HAS BEEN WATCHING the Washington, D.C. protests on C-SPAN and is not impressed. “Sorry, they’re not just dim bulbs — they’re apologists for genocide and tyranny. My mistake. I forget that we live in a country where the left will howl about you if you express addled nostalgia for the Confederacy, but march alongside you if you strongly support the proprietors of modern-day slave camps.”

Some of us, of course, are unhappy with people who do either.

UPDATE: Also via Tacitus, look who’s showing his appreciation!

MERDE IN FRANCE is reporting miserably low turnouts for antiwar protests there.

UPDATE: Just emailed Paris correspondent Claire Berlinski to ask how big the crowds were. Response:

So small that I had no idea there were any. The crowds for the post-Christmas sales on the rue de Rivoli were murder, though. I thought I’d faint trying to get at the snakeskin boots.

Western consumerism reigns triumphant.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jeralyn Merritt sends this link and says the crowd looks big to her. I don’t know — the actual photo shows at most a few hundred people, tightly framed, so it’s kind of hard to judge by that. In fact — though this is pure speculation — it looks like the kind of photo I’d take if I wanted to make a small demonstration look big. (LATER: Kind of like this description.) Where’s the aerial photo showing people covering acres and acres? Anybody got one?

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Charles Johnson reports that turnouts seem to be low all over — except in Damascus. Then there’s this not-entirely credible report from Baghdad.

STILL MORE: Merde in France emails:

The French media would do everything possible to make the crowds look big if they could. This evening’s news only covered the entire subject of international demonstrations for about 6 minutes with the majority of time concentrated on Washington DC (where the thinned out crowd was very evident).

No attempt was made to create the illusion of mass protests. It just wasn’t possible from any angle.

Perhaps the snakeskin boots were too appealing.

Damian Penny also reports low turnouts worldwide, though the tentacles of the antiwar movement did reach to Newfoundland, with results he reports.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Collin May joins the chorus reporting that French protest turnout was dismal.

STILL ANOTHER UPDATE: Sounds like the turnout in Sweden was better, at least on a per-capita basis.

TONY ADRAGNA has some thoughts on Eldred. Jack Balkin, meanwhile, wonders whether Eldred means the DMCA is unconstitutional.

HIGH SCHOOL RIFLERY PROGRAMS ARE, er, booming in Georgia:

“Something unique has happened in Georgia,” said Bob Mitchell, the head of USA Shooting, the organization that oversees the country’s Olympic and International shooting programs. “Georgia has the best youth shooting education and competition program in the country. I want to use that same model in other states.”

And, not entirely a surprise, girls are dominating the sport. I’d like to see this, and high-school Junior ROTC, pick up across the country.

UPDATE: A reader responds:

In the 50s my high school had a rifle club, and kids were on the school bus once a week bringing their rifles into school and home; and nobody thought anything of it.

NJ, Pingry School, Hillside.

Yearbook entry (1959) has a Rifle Club, Middle School Rifle Club, and Rod and Gun Club, pictures of kids standing in usual portrait, but with guns.

I knew things were screw up when the first thing after 9/11 they disarmed all the passengers instead of putting a large knife at each seat.

Yes, but the times they are a’changin’.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Peter Gookins emails:

Talk about “times a-changin”….I attended two schools in the D.C. area in the ’50s and ’60s that had riflery programs – one was a private school in the subutbs and the other a D.C. public high school from which I graduated. I grew up in D.C.close to the Zoo, and during the years I was 13-15 (early ’60s) on Friday afternoons after school I used to sling my 22 on my shoulder – uncased for the first year until I got a rifle case for Christmas – and ride the bus (public transit) down Connecticut Avenue to Dupont Circle, walk the three blocks to the NRA building and shoot with a junior rifle club, and reverse the trip about 9:30 PM. No one ever batted an eye. Try that now.

Yeah. And yet we’re not as safe as we used to be.

C-SPAN will be covering the anti-war protests live. I wonder how many stories about the protests will look at A.N.S.W.E.R. in detail? Not many, probably.

These guys — who can fairly be called unreconstructed anti-American Stalinists who are, quite clearly, not so much for peace as on Saddam’s side because, well, that’s what they are — are the Trent Lotts of the antiwar movement. Except that the antiwar movement is perfectly happy with them, as long as they supply the troops, and the press is playing along.

Personally, I won’t trust any anti-war activist who isn’t carrying a DISARM SADDAM lunchbox. Or at least wearing the DISARM SADDAM baseball cap.

UPDATE: Here’s a link that I found via Jim Henley, to a page with lots of information about A.N.S.W.E.R.

ANOTHER UPDATE: No, that’s not my lunchbox. It’s Patrick Ruffini’s.

DONALD RUMSFELD is right again as he heaps scorn on a guy who deserves it utterly. I’ve seen the photos.

WELL, IT’S ABOUT TIME:

Protestors gathering for anti-war demonstrations in several cities around the globe called on Saddam Hussein to disclose all weapons of mass destruction, disarm and to comply with all United Nations sanctions.

I like what they’re chanting, too. Heh. If only . . .

I SHOULD BE IN BED, but how can I go to sleep without posting on this news?

The Bush administration has signed off on the ambitious nuclear-rocket project — though not specifically for the Mars landing — and the president may officially launch the initiative during his State of the Union address on Jan. 28, NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe said in an interview with The Times. The project, dubbed Project Prometheus, would greatly expand the nuclear propulsion plans that NASA quietly announced last year when it said it may spend $1 billion over the next five years to design a nuclear rocket. NASA and the Bush administration are keeping the lid on the details, including how much more the agency expects to request from Congress, but O’Keefe said the funding increase will be “very significant.”

I suppose it won’t be anything like this. Unless, of course, there’s already somebody worried about this.

REMINDER: If you’re going to be at the DC anti-war march tomorrow, on any side, please post pics and accounts. And email me so I can link ‘em.

SOMEBODY JUST EMAILED ME to remind me that he’d sent me an email that I hadn’t read yet. I’ve been a bit busy and distracted this week, what with home remodeling, snowstorms, and assorted other things. I’ll try to catch up on the email over the weekend, but no promises.

STEVEN DEN BESTE WRITES on what he sees coming. And it’s not the Super Bowl.

SEND IN THE BATTLE ‘DROIDS! Trent Telenko has a post on Winds of Change about swarms of automated UAVs controlled by a single operator. Meanwhile, DefenseTech links to video of a Predator drone dogfighting with an Iraqi fighter.

AMPERSAND has a post on this Human Rights Watch report about sexual violence in Sierra Leone. The U.N. peacekeepers don’t come off very well (they are implicated in a number of rapes), but then, neither does anyone else, really.

UPDATE: Celeste Bilby, on the other hand, says that Human Rights Watch has dropped the ball in the Congo.

THIS READS LIKE AN ONION PARODY, but it appears to be real: “Animal ‘Rights’ Activists Confront Homosexuals Over Leather ‘Pride’”:

“We decided to come to the Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend in our ‘pleather’ [false leather] and ‘animal friendly’ gear so we could show our gay friends that you can have just as sleazy a look without killing any animals,” said Dan Mathews, a homosexual PETA campaign coordinator outfitted in “pleather” from head to toe.

Mathews said he and his fellow PETA activists, a transsexual and a cow mascot, did not travel to Washington to antagonize or condemn the leather event and its participants.

“We’re just [trying] to get them to think about things,” Mathews said. “They’re just an unthinking crowd when it comes to this issue.”

Well, it doesn’t say it’s a parody, but it is. Even if it’s true.

A PACK NOT A HERD! A reader emails with this story:

I work (dispatcher) for a small town police dept (total of 26 sworn officers –counting the Chief) on the California coast, about half way between LA & SF.

Today we had a report from the high school of a juvenile with a pistol holding a classroom (teacher & students). All of my units immediately responded and the first one arrived within 2 minutes. On arrival, we found that the 15 yr old was down, disarmed and restrained due to the actions of two of the students (a 15 yr old & a 16 yr old). Although the suspect (15 yrs old) claims to have brought the pistol and taken everyone hostage so as to have a captive audience for his own suicide, he made sure he had a full magazine in the pistol and a spare magazine available (9mm FMJ – 29 rounds total). The two young men (not jocks, both are relatively scrawny) spontaneously took it upon themselves to disarm the suspect and prevented a tragedy (even if he had only blown the top of only his own head off, it would have been horrific for the kids who had to watch).

I think that the “don’t get involved” mentality has taken a beating lately, and I think that’s a good thing. I have his name, but I’m not using it since he says this is more information than has been released to the public, officially.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to the story, which is as described above. Excerpt:

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. — A suicidal sophomore student was arrested Friday after he briefly held about 25 classmates and two teachers hostage at gunpoint, police said.

The unidentified boy was tackled by two classmates, who took a loaded 9 mm semiautomatic gun from him, police Sgt. John Allen said.

No injuries were reported.

Police were called to Arroyo Grande High School at 9:11 a.m. after they received a report of a student with a gun, Allen said.

The unidentified 15-year-old pulled out the loaded weapon and pointed it at two teachers in his sophomore English class, ordering them to sit down, Allen said.

I expect that this won’t get much coverage — though it should.

FORGET SUV’S: BAN PRIVATE JETS! You know, some enterprising politician could get mileage (and I don’t mean frequent-flier mileage) out of this one. Talk about your class warfare!

I’ll bet that the Hollywood crowd won’t get behind this crusade, though.

ERIC ALTERMAN ASKS, PLAINTIVELY:

Al Sharpton, Cynthia McKinney and Carol Moseley-Braun? Is this some kind of secret conservative conspiracy to show America only the worst of Black America in the race for the presidential race? Who’s next, Michael Jackson?

Of course, Alterman must really be a shill for the conspiracy himself, since he’s promoting Cornel West as an alternative. I mean, West is certainly a lot better than those three, but he’d still be a Karl Rove wet-dream as a Democratic politician.

“JUST SPOILS OF A RIGHTEOUS WAR” — Eugene Volokh picks up on this quote from Julian Bond and asks when we decided to fight a war against 17-year-old Americans of Asian descent.

PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH has a column on nanotechnology in today’s TechCentralStation.

SHARDS OF HONOR: Austin Bay writes that the United Nations is destroying what little credibility it has left.

MAX POWER writes:

It’s appallingly symptomatic that an anti-war group is appropriating the spectre of nuclear war in a commercial against stopping Iraq’s attempt to obtain nuclear weapons. I’m not a W fan, but there’s something wrong with someone who has more faith in Saddam Hussein’s control of nuclear weapons than Bush’s.

Yes, but then I remember when the left was actually opposed to fascist dictators.

I’m not the first to ask this question, but why aren’t there antinuclear protests outside Iraqi and North Korean embassies?

WELL, WE NOW HAVE A REDONE WALK-IN CLOSET off the master bedroom. The redo gives us a lot more space. Of course, so did throwing away all the stuff we threw away when we emptied the closet out, and the other stuff we threw away when we put the stuff back.

I don’t want to think about which part — the free part, or the expensive part — did the most good. And I shouldn’t, anyway, because the free part wouldn’t have happened without the expensive part. Hmm. There are whole sectors of the economy built on this phenomenon.

I’VE MEANT FOR DAYS TO LINK to Ted Barlow’s endless lightbulb-joke blogging but I kept getting distracted. It’s been a pretty distracing week. But go, read, and laugh.

HERE’S A LONGER ARTICLE about the Racine rave raids’ inglorious end. Great work by the ACLU and the EMDEF.

UPDATE: I’ve got more on this case over at GlennReynolds.com.

MICHAEL MOORE has been rejected as commencement speaker at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. There was quite an email debate over the subject. Here’s my favorite line:

One student chimed in that the speaker should be Chris Rock: “I’d be happy with a comedian, just not a comedian who poses as a journalist.”

I don’t really think that Michael Moore is a comedian. But I don’t think he’s a journalist, either.

UPDATE: Reader L. Neil Swanson writes: “Perhaps Moore is best described as an ‘inadvertent comedian’. ”

HOWARD KURTZ WRITES:

Of course, the folks who seem most upset by affirmative action don’t seem terribly concerned about preferential treatment for children of alumni.

You hear this all the time. But I think it’s a bogus comparison. The reason why we have laws against race discrimination, rather than laws demanding strict meritocracy in all things, is — or at least so I thought — that race discrimination is much, much worse than merely favoring alumni.

The logical implication of statements comparing racial discrimination with legacy preferences for alumni is that racial discrimination isn’t uniquely bad. But is that true? But for an accident of history, might Martin Luther King have been leading marches against legacy preferences, or athletic recruiting? I don’t think so.

UPDATE: In a related matter, SpinSanity says that Democrats’ charges that Bush “opposes civil rights” are unfair.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Steve Verdon has a question about this.

MEGAN MCARDLE, who has now seen the Media Matters show on weblogs (I have to wait until Sunday), has been getting email from people wanting to know how to start a blog. She has advice that is, characteristically, useful and clear.

WHY I DON’T HAVE COMMENTS: Because past a certain level of traffic, comments turn into a chatboard. Or even a trollboard. And I don’t have the time to police them. But I can’t beat this response from Colby Cosh to people who complain.

DON’T CLICK ON THIS LINK unless you’ve got a high-speed connection, or a lot of patience. It’s a four-minute film by the Marine Corps on Afghanistan, with hints of an unspecified war to come. Very well done.

The reader who sent the link says it will be playing in movie theaters later this month.

EARLIER TODAY, I posted a photo and blurb about the Pink Pistols, but here’s the whole story. Excerpt:

The alleged intruder survived the neck wound last March and was charged with breaking and entering. Miner said she doesn’t know if she was targeted because she lives openly with her girlfriend in the Boston suburb of Arlington, Mass.

But like other members of a burgeoning group called the Pink Pistols, she’s challenging the notion that gays and guns don’t mix. . . .

Read the whole thing.

RACINE, WISCONSIN HAS FOLDED, as it should have, and is dropping its dumb rave prosecutions as well as promising not to do it again, in exchange for not being sued into bankruptcy. Maybe the Houston example did some good.

(Via TalkLeft).

DONALD SENSING WRITES that the “peace movement” doesn’t deserve credit for good intentions, because it doesn’t have good intentions. His brush is perhaps a bit broad — there are certainly people who are well-intentioned and honorable who oppose the idea of war in Iraq, though I think that they’re wrong — but in terms of the organized movement, well, he’s more or less on-target.

Meanwhile there’s a march on Washington this weekend (yeah, another one, and it’s organized by A.N.S.W.E.R. again, apparently.) If any bloggers are attending and posting accounts and pictures, please let me know. Meanwhile, here’s more about A.N.S.W.E.R.

I wonder if the Washington Post’s Evelyn Nieves will write another piece quoting antiwar protesters about how successful their movement is?

UPDATE: Christopher Johnson has comments, too. And Steven Den Beste responds to some conspiracy theories.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Justin Katz has some comments, too. And Christopher Hitchens has some tart observations.

SHOULDER-FIRED MISSILES are a threat to airliners, and not much is being done about it. Maybe someone should tell TNR.

THE SNOW WAS FUN. We got about three inches, which the local media treated like the blizzard of the century. When I got home my wife and daughter were outside — my wife went in, I went back out, and we walked in the snow and had a snowball fight with some local kids. Got back and my wife was making homemade chicken soup. The only downside: my daughter’s bummed that she won’t get out of school tomorrow because it’s already a holiday. Oh, well.

I’m going to sit in front of the fire and drink a cognac later. That’s what snowy weather is for, right?

THE DISSIDENT FROGMAN OBSERVES:

Maybe some chaos theory (no pun intended) could explain the convergence.

Nonetheless:

- Socialists invented the death camps.

- Socialists developed the death camps.

- A bunch of Capitalists “cow-boys” liberated some death camps and wiped out some (National-)Socialists.

- Other Socialists still run death camps.

And guess who’s going to take care of the problem again?

Most probably the same bunch of Capitalist “cow-boys” (their sons actually).

God bless them.

And their daughters, too. (Parallel French blog entry omitted).

ON WEDNESDAY, GlennReynolds.com debuts on Microsoft’s MSNBC.

On Thursday, Microsoft announces a dividend and stock split. Coincidence?

Er, well, of course. But I appreciate the emails suggesting otherwise.

IT’S SNOWING HERE. That doesn’t bother me, but it’s set off the predictable panic, so my 4 o’clock appointment has been moved up to 3:00. Back later.

CAN YOU SAY “MATERIAL BREACH?” I knew that you could. I don’t think that this excuse will fly.

I’VE GOT A LONG POST ON ELDRED over at GlennReynolds.Com. I suggest that this is a blow for the limited-government wing of the Court. You may also be interested in this earlier piece on a related topic.

MICHAEL BARONE writes about waging post-industrial war in Iraq. It’s a good piece, and I especially agree with this conclusion:

Our last line of defense must be those high-skill, high-tech, and high-initiative strengths. The heroes who brought down United Flight 93 in Pennsylvania and the alert truck driver who engineered the capture of the alleged beltway snipers used cellphones and ignored centralized authorities’ rules (the truck driver acted on leaked information) to stop determined killers. We can fight today’s wars with fewer troops than we used to need. But every citizen should stand ready to fight at any time in any place.

Absolutely. A pack, not a herd.

HOWARD KURTZ writes on the psychological quirks that lead people to run for President. My favorite quote:

“Anyone who is going to run for president has to be weird,” says Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia.

I think there’s something to this, and here’s an excerpt from a post on the subject that I made back in September of 2001:

But if Kaus is right, our system actually selects for people who love the job. And since, as most people (perhaps even Kaus) would agree, being President is a job no sane person could really love for eight years then what does that say about our Presidential selection system? Is it selecting for kooks? Certainly a lot of our Presidents have been, er, mentally less than admirable: Kennedy, with his risk-taking and narcissism, LBJ with his megalomania, bullying and, well, LBJ-ness, Nixon with his paranoia, depression and obsessive-compulsiveness, Clinton with his narcissism, sexual compulsiveness, and compulsive lying. Carter was/is clearly sane — and also stands as evidence for Kaus’s position. Ditto for Papa Bush. Reagan is a tougher question: he certainly wasn’t crazy. And as an actor, I suppose he was able to play the President in a way that made the experience more enjoyable for him than it would be for many others. (Yes, I know, there’s some reason to think that his mental faculties were already beginning to fail before he left office — but I don’t think that’s the same as the sort of personality-disordered thing that Nixon, Clinton, etc. had going on).

I guess I’d have to call the crazy-President corollary to Kaus’s theorem unproven, but with a lot of suggestive evidence. Hmm. Here’s a slogan for ’04, for whatever candidate wants it: ” ______ in ’04: JUST CRAZY ENOUGH TO WANT TO BE YOUR PRESIDENT!”

The slogan’s still available. . . .

MORE ON THE PINK PISTOLS.

AZIZ POONAWALLA has a post comparing Christian fundamentalism and Muslim fundamentalism.

THIS IS HOW IT’S DONE, FOLKS: James Lileks politely Fisks John LeCarre to within an inch of his life. Excerpt:

I’m pretty sure Stephen King is skeptical about the war, for example. I know his politics. But he hasn’t made the leap so common to others in the scribbling, warbling and gesturing arts – he doesn’t think we’re all dying to hear his prescriptions for Middle East foreign policy. Oh, interview him on the matter and he might pop off, but I can’t imagine him sitting down, firing up a Winston Light, and telling himself that this 1200 word essay will change the world, because people will think: hey, it’s Steven KING talking! He wrote “The Stand,” and his fictional account of the repercussions of biological weapons programs gives him a unique perspective. Let’s lend an ear!

But he’s just warming up at that point. Read the whole thing, especially the “ecology” discussion. And the statistics on Afghanistan. And — oh hell, just read the whole thing. It’s Lileks. You won’t mind.

THE SIEGE OF BLOGGERGRAD HAS BEEN LIFTED: John Ray reports that China has unblocked Blogspot. No doubt it was the many “Fiskings” they received via email that prompted the change.

THE NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE profiling InstaPundit (well, really me) is up. It’s pretty good.

They seem to think that I write a lot for a law professor, though. Of course, they didn’t know about Jack Balkin‘s amazing 4704-word day!

I was going to comment on one minor item, but Eugene Volokh — as usual — is ahead of me.

THIS is what I was talking about. When North Korea falls and the evidence of this sort of thing becomes undeniable — and, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn, evidence that South Korean politicians knew about it but kept quiet for years — the political ramifications in South Korea are likely to be dramatic.

THE KOOLAID TASTES GOOD, DOESN’T IT? Jack Balkin has blogged an amazing 4704 words today. Welcome to the Blog Collective, Jack. I told you resistance was futile.

“COASTISM?” A newly identified form of invidious discrimination.

IAIN MURRAY has been sacked for blogging — and with no notice, even though his previous boss approved. Shameful, and one that lowers my opinion of his employer. If they’re dumb enough to do something like this, why trust their judgment generally?

Anyhow, add your sympathies in the comments, and feel free to drop something in the tipjar while you’re there.

Here’s something new. Go over to Kausfiles for the exclusive.

TIM BLAIR IDENTIFIES THE Michael Moore / Kate Winslet connection? Could this be true?

He also points us to a picture of Sheryl Crow in a more appropriate t-shirt.

HERE BE DRAGONS. No, really.

JACK BALKIN isn’t very happy with the Supreme Court’s decision in Eldred either. I’ve just skimmed it — I’m very busy with something else, about which more later — but it seems that Stephen Breyer has a better understanding of what limited and enumerated Congressional power means, in this context, than do the alleged strict constructionists on the Court.

UPDATE: Still busy, but Donna Wentworth has the roundup.

HERE’S A STORY FROM PITTSBURGH about a woman who chased off an intruder by brandishing a gun:

Hall stared at him and thought, “I’m not going to make this easy for you.” She decided that if the man thought she already had the gun, she needed to use that to her advantage.

“The way the house was made, if I’d let him get any closer, I’d be trapped,” Hall said. “So I grabbed my daughter under my arm, like a football or a sack of potatoes, and then came around the corner and charged. I ran over him, through him, I don’t know what.”

Once upstairs, Hall reached high into a closet for the gun her father had given her several years ago, after an elderly woman who lived across the street was murdered. She grabbed a cordless telephone, too, and called 911 as she went back downstairs with the gun.

When Tompkins saw her, he fled back out the broken window.

Police responding to the scene spotted a suspect running through some yards in the neighborhood and arrested Tompkins, a native of Queens, N.Y., whose criminal record dates to 1992, with 12 cases, including robbery, simple assault, reckless endangerment and drug charges.

Tompkins told officers he was covered with cuts on his hands and face because he had dived headfirst through Hall’s window. When they arrested him, police found a 7-inch black-handled knife and a 4-inch metal crack pipe.

He turns out to have stabbed a homeowner in a previous burglary. This reminds me of an earlier incident in Pittsburgh a few months back, when an armed woman shot a serial rapist who had been eluding police. Good thing this wasn’t Britain, or Ms. Hall might be dead now.

Yeah, I know, this is a lot of gun posts today. I guess the Washington Monthly piece got me noticing this stuff again.

UPDATE: Ahh, why fight it? Here’s a story on the Orange County Pink Pistols.

IT NEVER STOPS: No sooner have we seen the many flaws in the Washington Monthly’s water-carrying piece for the Violence Policy Center than it’s time for. . . The New Republic’s water-carrying piece for the Violence Policy Center. At least this piece admits where the story comes from, but still. . . .

I’m tired of Fisking these things. Somebody else will have to do the heavy lifting on this one. But here’s just one tendentious passage, typical of the genre:

When I left the gun store, I drove for ten minutes to a parking lot outside Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport with a clear line of sight to a dozen or so planes waiting at the terminal. . . . Unlike a terrorist, I, of course, hadn’t bought a .50-caliber rifle at the store a few miles away.

Actually, a more accurate phrasing would be “Exactly like every terrorist in the world, I, of course, hadn’t bought a .50-caliber rifle at the store a few miles away.” The VPC, and the journalists who carry its water, would have us believe that Osama shops at gun shows and gun stores. It’s not true. I’m not against trying to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and terrorists — but, honestly, is gun control the first, or the fiftieth, line of defense against terrorism? Or is this just political opportunism of the first order? I link, you decide.

It’s in the linked post, but for your convenience I’m going to post my decoding of gun-control groups’ classification of firearms here:

“Saturday Night Specials” (cheap handguns) = Bad, must be banned

“Military Style Handguns” (expensive handguns) = Bad, must be banned

“Assault Weapons” (inaccurate, short-range rifles) = Bad, must be banned

“Sniper Rifles” (accurate, long-range rifles) = Bad, must be banned

There’s a definite pattern, isn’t there?

UPDATE: Democratic Blogger SKBubba emails:

I’m proud to say I bought my 1911 Colt .45 Commander at the same store (Buck’s in Daytona, after the required background check and waiting period of

course) where Bernard Goetz bought his handgun. I did not, however, encounter any targets of opportunity on the drive home. Dammit.

We need more Democrats like him.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Robin Roberts emails:

The journalist pretending to worry about a terrorist using a .50 BMG rifle on aircraft is hilarious since we know from the Nairobi attack on the El Al airliner that real terrorists already have Soviet era SAM’s.

Yes, there is that. Here’s a link to an article on that subject, which I found on Roberts’ blog.

UPDATE: TAPPED doesn’t like this post. But, you know, when you write stories that uncritically recycle advocacy-group claims, people will say that you’re in the tank, and I don’t think there’s anything unfair about that. As for the rest of TAPPED’s post, well, I think it’s pretty much self-Fisking. Just imagine what TAPPED would write if Ann Coulter said “just because no Arab Americans have set off nukes in major cities doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start cracking down on them now, while there’s still time. . . .” I don’t see TAPPED’s invocation of box-cutters as a very compelling argument for more gun control, either.

In truth, there might, somewhere, be a plausible argument for different regulation where these guns are concerned. But it wouldn’t be couched in hysterical advocacy-group language of the “Osama’s gonna get you!” variety. Osama doesn’t have to worry about the Brady Act, as those storehouses in Afghanistan showed. He had tanks and howitzers.

Terrorist control is what we need. Gun control is just politics.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Suman Palit takes up the challenge. Flit, on the other hand, thinks there’s something to the TNR story. But, as I say above, regardless of whether there’s a reasonable argument to be made here (and I rather doubt there is), that story doesn’t make it. Bruce and I had an interesting email argument last night, in which he said that if you don’t draw the line somewhere, it’ll be 20mm sniper rifles next. But, actually, the line is already drawn (by ATF regulation, I think, not by statute, though as we’ve already established I’m not only no Michael Barone, I’m also no Dave Kopel) at .50 caliber.

BIG WIN FOR BIG ENTERTAINMENT: The Supreme Court has upheld the Bono Act. Here’s the quick story, and there’s lots more at Howard Bashman’s site.

MORE EVIDENCE that we may need to apply gun control to police, first:

FORT WORTH – Police acknowledged Friday that an undercover officer was masked and brandishing a gun when she was shot by a store clerk who believed that he was about to be robbed. . . .

Bao Nguyen, son of the store owner, said the masked officer never identified herself as a police officer as she entered the business at 968 Elmwood Ave. He also said he did not see any police insignia on the officer’s raid jacket — only a “dark figure” with a gun — when he pulled his .380-caliber handgun and fired once.

“In my mind, I knew if I didn’t shoot this person, they’re going to shoot me first and then my dad,” Nguyen, 28, said.

Police said they are investigating whether the officer followed proper procedure when she walked into the store wearing a mask and carrying a gun, instead of waiting for the suspect to exit.

What’s sad is that stories like this one, or this one are not all that unusual. Of course, there are those who would argue that the solution is to ensure that nobody but police officers can have guns. Given that approach’s dismal failure in Britain, though, I think that a better solution is to teach police officers that it’s really dangerous, and usually stupid, to go into homes or businesses unannounced and with weapons drawn. How hard can that be? Apparently, it’s a challenge.

UPDATE: Reader Jim Dewey makes an excellent point:

Since when do cops wear masks? The Lone Ranger was a vigilante using silver bullets to maim his victims, not a role model.

Cops don’t have to follow the Geneva Convention, but this SAS-model of masked cops is an unsafe deception on the American public. Who are we supposed to trust?

Yep. Though in his defense, the Lone Ranger (1) didn’t do drug raids; (2) worked for free; and (3) was a good shot.

My EARLIER POST about a Washington Monthly article on guns and John Muhammad apparently generated a fair amount of critical email to the Monthly, leading to a reply from the article’s author, Brent Kendall. I’ve appended the reply to the original post, so that everything’s in context and so that preexisting links to my post will also lead to the reply, but I’m posting a note here because it’s long since scrolled off the main page. Bottom line: I’m unconvinced, but you can read the reply and decide for yourself.

UPDATE: Kopel has replied to Kendall. Same location.

YOU KNOW THAT NPR IS IN TROUBLE when it gets this kind of criticism for bias in Boston, and in The Boston Globe:

The near-capacity crowd of about 900 who gathered at Boston’s Temple Israel on Monday night for a debate on Middle East media coverage (mostly NPR’s coverage) sided largely with the prosecutors. Staunch supporters of Israel, they applauded loudly when Zelnick or Tobin assailed what they saw as anti-Israel bias or shoddiness in public radio’s reporting of the Palestinian-Israeli bloodshed. . . .

The battle over public radio’s credibility is a serious one. In the past few years, supporters of Israel have effectively targeted NPR as the poster child for egregious anti-Israel bias. WBUR, the local outlet, has lost more than $1 million from underwriters who have suspended funding. The advocacy group CAMERA, or the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, has built a constituency by publishing harsh critiques of NPR’s work. And when protesters chant, as they did on Monday night, that ”NPR distorts the news, covers up attacks on Jews,” it’s a sign that animus against public radio is reaching toxic levels.

To their credit, Klose and Christo have sought, via much community outreach, to make peace with their detractors. But Monday’s discussion – in which they relied on an unconvincing blend of deference, obfuscation, and condescension – revealed that they don’t have a coherent strategy.

Er, maybe because the charges are true? Here’s the conclusion:

If public radio is willing to wage a public battle on this issue, Klose might try a new tactic. He might explain – without semantic gymnastics – exactly why NPR thinks its Middle East journalism is fair and right.

That may not win any converts, but there didn’t seem to be any at Temple Israel either. And at least NPR will extend to its detractors the courtesy of leveling with them.

NPR didn’t seem to have any trouble deciding who was right and who was wrong in Bosnia. I wonder why the Middle East is so much harder for them?

MORE ANTI-AMERICAN TWADDLE from a Dutch journalist who’s quoting Napoleon in support of anti-imperialism.

His email address is at the bottom of the page. Honestly, you read this kind of stuff and it’s enough to make you think that they’re CIA stooges sent to discredit the antiwar movement. God knows, they’re doing the job regardless of who’s paying them.

UPDATE: Nelson Ascher emails: “Napoleon may have been right or wrong. But what future do people like this Dutch gentleman have, people who, besides having no sword, do their best to keep proving day after day that they don’t have a mind either?”

STUART TAYLOR WONDERS if the FBI will ever be up to the job of dealing with terrorists. So do I. Well, actually, I’m wondering less and less. . . .

“THE HOTTEST DAY OF THE SUMMER so far was drawing to a close and a drowsy silence lay over the large, square houses of Privet Drive … The only person left outside was a teenage boy who was lying flat on his back in a flowerbed outside number four.” That’s the opening passage from the new Harry Potter novel, now scheduled for publication June 21.

Plus, Larry Tribe emailed the other day that the long-awaited second volume to the third edition of his Constitutional Law treatise will appear about the same time. It’s going to be a big summer around the InstaPundit household.

CELEBRATE DIVERSITY! Heh.

KEN LAYNE delivers a Frisco Fisking — or should that be a “Frisking?”

ARE YOU PAYING (FOR) ATTENTION? My TechCentralStation column is up.

MICKEY KAUS discovers press bias against welfare reform.

THOREAU WITH A BLOG. Well, sort of.