SANDY BERGER’S GUILTY PLEA leaves some people unsatisfied.

TODD ZYWICKI offers thoughts on why campus intellectual diversity matters.

TOUR THE INDIAN BLOGOSPHERE: This week’s Blog Mela is up!

READER STEVE OR TANYA — it’s one of those joint email accounts, so I don’t know which one sent it — writes:

I was looking forward to your perspective on the death of Terry Schiavo. Are you feeling uncomfortable with your previous ideas regarding her situation?

Although I’ve always tried to be pleasant to the Christian Right folks even where we disagree, I really think it’s best if I don’t weigh in right now. I turned down a slot on Hugh Hewitt tonight because I was afraid I’d use words that would get him an FCC fine. But I’ll refer interested readers to this post-mortem at Blogs4God, and these thoughts on federalism from Right-Thinking. And Bill Ardolino is right about the Hillary 2008! implications of a lot of this stuff. And, if you’ve got a strong stomach, you can read this.

UPDATE: But here’s the good side, from reader David Prentice:

I saw you on Kudlow’s show with Hugh H. and John H. last week and had intended to write earlier. I have just learned about your hate mail (and your wife’s) from some the right and wanted to give you some encouragement and thank you for what you do.

After I watched the show I had wanted to say how much I appreciated the dialogue you all had on that show because it showed by example how you could debate very opposite sides of an issue without rancor and bring light to it. I am what Andrew Sullivan would derisively call a right wing religious zealot. Full disclosure: I disagreed with your position on this matter, but I do so appreciate your spirit in putting forth your ideas, I always have appreciated your writings even when I disagree.

I love your blog, have been reading it for about a year now along with Powerline and Hugh Hewitt (You are my bookmarked 3!). I appreciate all of your view points and most of all your civility and the ability to find good information.

I am very disturbed to hear about the mail you have received from others who believe as I do. It is shameful and despicable and belies what they (myself included) claim to believe. I apologize for their horrible judgment, and want to encourage you to keep your weblog going strong in spite of all the nastiness.

Thank you again, you are appreciated by some of us “religious zealots” out there.

Well, I always hope that people can disagree without being disagreeable. The people who can’t usually wind up losing. Some people certainly get this: Hugh does, and John Hinderaker — who’s been the target of moonbat assaults from the Left himself — certainly understands the difference. Not everyone does. Those people are the fringey minority, for the most part, though I have to say that I was taken aback, and disappointed, by the Jonathan Last assault I mention below.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I’ve gotten a whole lot more emails along the lines of David Prentice’s, for which I’m quite grateful. You know that the nasty folks are unrepresentative, but they’re so damned energetic about it that it’s hard to keep that in mind at times.

IT’S PAYBACK TIME for Megan McArdle.

MOLECULAR MANUFACTURING, step-by-step: The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology notes that it’s closer to reality than we might think.

A SANDY BERGER GUILTY PLEA:

WASHINGTON — Former national security adviser Sandy Berger (search) will plead guilty to taking classified material from the National Archives, a misdemeanor, the Justice Department said Thursday.

Berger is expected to appear in federal court in Washington on Friday, said Justice spokesman Bryan Sierra.

(Via Joe’s Dartblog).

IN THE MAIL: No god but God, by Reza Aslan. Looks interesting, though it will no doubt be controversial.

I’M ON THE RADIO WITH JEFF & BILL NOW.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY CLEARS SELF OF ANTISEMITISM: But this doesn’t sound kosher:

In an effort to manage favorable coverage of its investigation into the complaints, the university disclosed a summary of the committee’s report only to the Columbia Spectator, the campus newspaper, and the New York Times. Those newspapers, sources indicated to The New York Sun last night, made an agreement with the central administration that they would not speak to the students who made the complaints against the professors.

The Sun obtained a copy of the report without the permission of the university administration. Last night, when a reporter from the Sun came to Low Library, the central administration building, for a copy of the report, a security guard threatened to arrest the reporter if she did not leave the building.

According to one student, senior Ariel Beery, one of the campus’s most outspoken critics of the professors, a Columbia spokeswoman told him that students were not being shown the report yesterday “for your own good.”

That’s not very impressive.

UPDATE: The Columbia Spectator story — at least the one that’s on the web now — does quote some of the students.

I’LL BE INTERVIEWED ON THE RADIO by Jeff Goldstein and Bill Ardolino in just about an hour — it’s supposed to start at 3:10 Eastern. Details here. It should be a subdued and decorous affair, with those two in charge.

UPDATE: Gerard van der Leun has liveblogged it, “Without Any Regard for Accuracy.” Looks fairly accurate to me, actually, with due allowance for snarkiness — but the Godwin’s Law violation didn’t originate with me; I was responding to one.

HANDING OUT CHEESE, BRATWURST, AND KRINGLE: But what about beer?

I’M SHOWING THIS FILM in my Constitutional Law class today. I don’t generally like to show films, but as I noted last year, unlike most movies involving the law, this one does a surprisingly good job of capturing the legal issues, and strategies, involved. I wish there were more like it.

I COULD SCREAM is a new blog looking at the plight of Islamic women.

MORE ON CENTRAL ASIA: StrategyPage is not optimistic:

Uzbek President Islam Karimov and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazabayev are concerned that they will be overthrown like Askar Akayev in Kyrgyzstan. Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have both been plundered by their presidential families. Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan all suffer corruption, unemployment and sluggish economies. All three conditions are linked by the greed of the presidential families and the politicians that support them. In all three countries, the support for the leadership is so narrow, that the police and army cannot be trusted to open fire on large demonstrations of angry citizens. But first, Kyrgyzstan has to sort out who is in charge. If this is done in such a way that most corrupt politicians are out of work, then Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan could be next. But for the moment, a lot of the crooked Kyrgyz bureaucrats may be able to buy their way out of this mess, and the “Tulip Revolution” may end up on the mulch pile.

Stay tuned.

LASHAWN BARBER IS EVERYWHERE! I mean, everywhere!

ZIMBABWE ELECTIONS: Publius has a roundup of news on how things are going. And Will Franklin has photos. Meanwhile, Zimbabwean bloggers report goalpost-moving:

Reports reaching us from a number of activists in different locations around the country indicate that, contrary to the electoral ground rules set down by zanu-pf, presiding officers are now being instructed not to publish the results of poll immediately following the completion of the vote count at each polling station. Instead presiding officers are now under instructions to convey the results to the constituency centers and to await authorization from the Harare command center before releasing the results to the public.

Our informant in Binga reports that presiding officers in that constituency have been ordered to lock the polling stations at the close of polling and withdraw all means of communication from agents to ensure that nothing is communicated. This means that the results will not be published at the polling stations when the vote has been completed. The presiding officers are under instructions not to communicate any information about the poll until the consolidated result for the whole constituency has been verified and announced centrally. This is a major departure from the electoral procedures laid down by law.

So are the foreign election observers complaining? Hmm. Stay tuned.

AMBER ALERT: Jason van Steenwyk notes another missing headline.

LA VIDA ROBOT: This is a great article from Wired about “How four underdogs from the mean streets of Phoenix took on the best from M.I.T. in the national underwater bot championship.”