AUSTIN BAY writes that the Newsweek Koran-flushing debacle may turn out to be the press’s Abu Ghraib. It’s a must-read post with lots of links and background.

On the other hand, here’s a different analogy:

NEWSWEEK regrets it got a part of the story wrong. NEWSWEEK vows to continue looking into the charges. If there’s no substance to the charges, NEWSWEEK undoubtedly wants to break that story.

Heh. And read these comments, too.

UPDATE: The blogosphere catchphrase seems to be “Newsweek lied, people died.”

And Roger Simon observes:

There is a strong argument to be made that this is more serious than Rathergate. This is journalism at its most insidious and dangerous. Newsweek may end up having to fire some of its editorial staff, as well as the reporters involved. I watched their Washington bureau chief Dan Klaidman on the Geraldo Show tonight and he looked like the proverbial deer in the headlights. His answers were weak and evasive.

These guys don’t understand the difference between covering a minor domestic “gotcha” story and national security matters. To them, there isn’t a difference. If they’re that clueless, it’s no surprise that they don’t know how to respond when they’re caught.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Chris Breisch emails:

What’s amusing is that the same people who will scream about an evil American corporation which puts people at risk from carbon monoxide pollution will completely forgive another evil American corporation which puts people at risk by publishing falsehoods. The latter is equally as dangerous to American citizens, and perhaps more so, since countries rarely go to war over pollution, but often go to war over propaganda.

And Roger Kimball asks:

Why is it that all the stories you read in Time-Newsweek-The New York Times-The Washington Post-Etc. or see on CNN-The BBC-CBS-NBC-Etc., why is it that all their stories about Iraq, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, etc., why is it that the presumption, the prejudice, the predisposition never goes the other way? Why is it that their reporters always assume the worst: that we’re doing dirty at Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., and are primed to pick up and believe any rumor damaging to the United States? Shakespeare knew that rumor was a “pipe/blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures,” not to be trusted. So why do these journalists, trained to sift evidence, to probe sources, to listen beyond the static of rumor: why do they only do so in one direction, so to speak? Yes, I know that’s a self-answering question, at least in part, but it is worth pondering nonetheless.

As I’ve warned before, if Americans conclude that the press is, basically, on the side of the enemy, the consequences are likely to be dire.

A NIGHT AT RFK: Baseball Musings offers blog video, including fan interviews and action shots.

A “JUDICIAL REBELLION” in Egypt.

MINESHAFTBLOGGING, at Dartblog. I like the sunken car.

ECONOBLOGARAMA: This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up. Early!

GATEWAY PUNDIT has more on violence in Uzbekistan, including video.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE NBA IS UP, for those interested in hoopblogging.

And for those interested in a different kind of shooting, the latest Carnival of Cordite is up, too.

GEE, THANKS GUYS:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Newsweek magazine on Sunday said it may have erred in a May 9 report that said U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, and apologized to victims of deadly violence sparked by the article.

Two points: (1) If they had wrongly reported the race of a criminal and produced a lynching, they’d feel much worse — which is why they generally don’t report such things, a degree of sensitivity they don’t extend to reporting on, you know, minor topics like wars; and (2) If a blogger had made a similar mistake, with similar consequences, we’d be hearing about Big Media’s superior fact-checking and layers of editors.

People died, and U.S. military and diplomatic efforts were damaged, because — let’s be clear here — Newsweek was too anxious to get out a story that would make the Bush Administration and the military look bad.

UPDATE: Reader John Lynch says I’m wrong:

Newsweek isn’t the problem. The problem is that people will kill over a book being desecrated. Actually, over a anonymous report buried within a third rate weekly magazine. There is something wrong when people value a book, of which there are millions, over human lives. This is the real problem, and Newsweek isn’t the source of it. The problem is an ignorant and violent subculture within the islamic world, and the general lack of tolerance about religion therein.

Well, there’s plenty of blame to go around. But in this light, where are the “transgressive artists” — Andres Serrano, this means you! — who are willing to take on this mindset in the name of free speech, desensitizing the religious fanatics through repeated acts of outrageousness? Sure, some of them will probably be car-bombed, but bravely transgressive artists surely wouldn’t let that discourage them from bravely demonstrating their commitment to trashing icons. Right?

ANOTHER UPDATE: N.Z. Bear despins the defensive spin.

Meanwhile, even before Newsweek’s admission, Hubrisblog was noting the implausibility of the claim. Certainly my copy of the Koran is way too big to fit down a toilet, and it’s in fairly small print. I should note that StrategyPage — and, by extension, InstaPundit, since I linked StrategyPage’s post on Thursday — was also ahead of the curve on this one, for reasons having nothing to do with toilet technology.

Reader Daniel McAndrew emails: “If the book were the Holy Bible of Christian faith (that was desecrated) then wouldn’t there also be riots resulting??”

I don’t recall any riots resulting from Serrano’s Piss Christ, or the large number of tiresomely blasphemous imitators he spawned.

MORE: Michael Demmons agrees with John Lynch: “Yeah, Newsweek screwed up badly, but the death and destruction is a result of crazy, psychopathic people incapable of forming a rational response that doesn’t include, well, killing and destruction.”

At a larger, moral level this may be true. But given that this was entirely predictable given that (1) Al Qaeda propaganda turns on stuff like this; and (2) Historically, such rumors have been used to stir up trouble in the region (remember the Sepoy Revolt, based on false rumors that the British greased their cartridges with pig fat?). If the folks at Newsweek are too ignorant to realize this, or too sloppy to care, then they shouldn’t be in the news business.

DAVID GREENBERG, who guest-blogged for Daniel Drezner, writes about his experience in The New York Times. Shockingly, it turns out that not just anyone can blog well.

Ann Althouse, Pejman Yousefzadeh, and Sheila O’Malley comment on Greenberg’s experience.

I WAS ON RELIABLE SOURCES earlier today with Dan Okrent and Arianna Huffington. Trey Jackson has the video. The subject of puppy-blending came up.

I should note that Huffington exaggerated my role in the Trent Lott affair — or, at least, failed to give sufficient credit to Atrios and Josh Marshall.

SOMEONE TELL MICHAEL MOORE: “A strongly pro-war film has been premiered at the Cannes film festival – and it comes from Iraq. . . . It is framed by scenes of the main characters, now exiled in France, rejoicing at the fall of Baghdad in 2003.”

STRATEGYPAGE on Operation Matador:

The foreign terrorists are, to put it mildly, disliked even in this part of Iraq. Although the local smugglers have been making some money working for the terrorists, everyone knows that these wild eyed foreigners mean only death for Iraqis. Either from their suicide bombs, or the battles between them and American and Iraqi troops, the terrorists are considered bad news and best avoided. In fact, the marines received a friendly reception in many villages, the people relieved to see someone who could run off the terrorists and restore order. Iraqi police, troops and border guards have come in behind the marine operation, as the Iraqi government has not had any presence in this area since early 2003, and not much before that. . . .

An increasing number of Sunni Arab leaders have distanced themselves from the terrorists. Nearly five hundred Iraqis have been killed by terrorist attacks so far this month, and few Iraqi Sunnis can put a positive spin on this any more. . . . While Sunni Arab propaganda, especially outside Iraq, blames all this on “the American occupation,” inside Iraq the mayhem is blamed on foreign fanatics, particularly from Saudi Arabia. Iraq and Saudi Arabia have never had a cozy relationship, and that long standing tension has been pumped up because of all those terror attacks carried out by Saudi Arabian Islamic radicals.

The Saudis are going to have a problem with a larger, unhappy neighbor unless they clean up their act.

BILL GATES says that cellphones will kill the iPod. That’s funny, because at BlogNashville Dan Gillmor was showing me his cellphone / MP3 player and saying that he didn’t listen to his iPod anymore.

WILL FRANKLIN has a roundup on the Taiwanese elections, which can’t have pleased Beijing.

THE NEW YORK TIMES REPORTS:

WASHINGTON, May 14 – Several of the nation’s most prominent environmentalists have gone public with the message that nuclear power, long taboo among environmental advocates, should be reconsidered as a remedy for global warming.

Their numbers are still small, but they represent growing cracks in what had been a virtually solid wall of opposition to nuclear power among most mainstream environmental groups. In the past few months, articles in publications like Technology Review, published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Wired magazine have openly espoused nuclear power, angering other environmental advocates.

If you want to have a technological civilization, and not emit C0₂, nuclear power is pretty much the only way to go at the moment.

THE AUTONOMIST is liveblogging the Muslim anti-terror rally in D.C. But where are the photos? We want photos!

UPDATE: Now there are photos!

ANOTHER UPDATE: More reporting, and photos (including one of Judith Weiss from Kesher Talk), here.

SPEAKING OF LOCAL-BLOGGING: Dan Gillmor’s Bayosphere is getting ready to launch.

A “DENIM REVOLUTION” in Canada?

MICHELLE MALKIN: “Hug a Thug” doesn’t work.

LIVING OFF THE LAND: Wretchard has a traveling-light approach to the blog reporting kit I wrote about earlier. And here’s what Bill Quick is going with.

UPDATE: Bill’s got a local-blogging project in the works, too.

TOUR THE INDIAN BLOGOSPHERE: Shanti Mangala is hosting the latest Blog Mela.

LOADS OF WAR NEWS, over at Bill Roggio’s excellent blog, The Fourth Rail. Just keep scrolling.

TIM WORSTALL notes a new UN report on Iraqi casualties that’s rather at odds with the Lancet report, and wonders why it’s not getting nearly as much attention. “Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m way off base or something, actually wanting attention paid to this new report, perhaps the same amount of attention as was paid to the one that came out just before a US Presidential election.”

UPDATE: Tim Blair has more, including a dialogue with the other Australian Tim.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The other time comes in for criticism.

STRATEGYPAGE LOOKS AT JAPAN’S MILITARY PROSPECTS:

Japan reprocesses plutonium for its many nuclear power plants, which gives it the ability to make nuclear weapons if it needs to, and it does have a strong space-launch capability (many ICBMs have become the means to launch satellites and other vehicles into space). Japan could have a working nuclear weapons capability in one year should they decide to.

The underlying truth is that at this time, Japan is arguably the strongest power in East Asia – and it is at this point with one hand tied behind its back. Should Japan be pushed to the point where it feels it needs to use all the military power it is capable of generating, it could readily become a superpower in military terms. . . . The only reason Japan is not a superpower is because it has chosen not to pursue that course.

This may change, if the Chinese continue to seem interested in pursuing an expansionist policy.

SISYPHEAN MUSINGS has thoughts on recruitment and retention, in the context of the Army’s new 15-month hitch. His take seems quite right to me.

IAN HAMET invites readers to try their hand at constitutional interpretation. Free speech is involved.

My contribution: Obviously, the part about a ” well regulated Intelligentsia” only refers to state-paid academics such as myself, and it would be absurd to read this provision as extending the right to own and read books to the Great Unwashed. That way lies madness.

UPDATE: Rand Simberg writes that he thought he and Bill O’Reilly had already solved this problem.

WATCH OUT, GEARBOX! There’s a new auto-blogging carnival, The Carnival of Cars, and the first installment is now online.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES is up, over at Boudicca’s Voice.

GATEWAY PUNDIT has an Uzbekistan update, with video.

YEAH, BLOGGING’S BEEN LIGHT TODAY: Hung out with the Insta-Wife, and saw my nephew Balram, who’s visiting for a week or so.

Back later.

MICKEY KAUS is fact-checking Rush Limbaugh, with an assist from Tom Maguire.

DEFENSETECH looks at military base closings and their impact on defense research.

THIS EFFORT BY HOUSE REPUBLICAN JOHN MCHUGH to get women out of combat zones strikes me as a bad idea. Certainly, judging by this after-action report, women are doing pretty well in Iraq.

AMIT VARMA IS EXPANDING UPON some comments he made on CNBC.

ARTHUR CHRENKOFF explains underreported good news from Iraq — in The New York Times.

I wonder if certain underinformed Australian broadcasters have seen it?

ISLAMIC BIOLOGICAL WARFARE:

It turns out there are there are Islamic “Weapons of Mass Destruction” after all. In particular, biological weapons. But these mass killers have been developed within Islamic nations, and are doing most of their damage there. The war on terror has taken many American doctors to Islamic nations, and they have discovered a heretofore hidden AIDS epidemic. . . .

But it’s not just AIDS. In Nigeria, faith based paranoia on the part of Islamic clergy, and politicians, caused a polio epidemic, which is now spreading to other Islamic nations. The UN has been trying for years to wipe out polio (which has been eliminated in most Western nations). In the last few years, UN medical resources were massing to wipe polio out in one of the last places where it still thrives; northern Nigeria. But some local Islamic clergy got the idea that these foreigners and their medicine (polio vaccine) were actually out to poison young Moslem females and make them sterile. Yeah, it’s nuts, but it went over big in northern Nigeria and stopped the polio eradication program cold.

Can shooting yourself in the foot be a biological weapon? Metaphorically, anyway.

ED CONE: “I feel a little sorry for George Lucas, who can’t seem to help making joyless boring movies and has to know that the LOTR cycle flushed him from the pantheon by demonstrating the superiority of Tolkien as a fantasy writer and Jackson as a fantasy filmmaker.”

I think that’s a bit harsh; Lucas has made some great films. It remains to be seen whether this new effort will be one of them. Here is some more evidence that it won’t be.

TODAY IS THE TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY of the MOVE bombing in Philadelphia.

UPDATE: Bill Hobbs has more on the bombing and its context.

VIOLENCE IN UZBEKISTAN: Gateway Pundit has a roundup.

UPDATE: More here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Related post here.

JOHN HAWKINS is Fisking Cal Thomas. IowaVoice adds: “I don’t see what the paranoia is all about here. It’s a bit early for the MSM to be circling the wagons.”

MOXIE: “It seems there is no reason for me to blog anymore. Not only is Arianna taking over the blogosphere, but she also has a gay houseboy named Andrew.”

DAVID BOAZ: “If conservatives don’t want federalism any more, will liberals pick up the banner?”

There does seem to be a lot of fair-weather federalism on the right these days.

SUGGESTIONS SOLICITED: I’m trying to put together a generic blog-reporting kit, kind of like what I used to shoot the blog video and photos at BlogNashville. (Yes, that was in the nature of an experiment, as well as an effort to encourage others). But though my setup works pretty well, it’s probably not the best, and I’d welcome any suggestions. This would be for a package that could be sent to bloggers, often outside the United States, to facilitate reporting, so it should be rugged, (comparatively) cheap, and easy to use.

I use a Dell Inspiron 700m laptop, which I like a lot. The one I use is overkill for blog-journalism: It has the DVD-writer, for example. But the downside is that it has an SD slot only. Not a big deal — I just used a USB cable to hook up my camera — but more options would be better. Key laptop features: Decent display (so that when you edit photos or video you can see what you’re doing), long battery life, lots of I/O options, reasonably light, cheap and rugged.

For the stills and video I used this cheap Sony, which did an excellent job with video and — very important when you’re interviewing people — audio. (A filmmaker even emailed to ask what external mike I used. None: Just the matchhead-sized built-in one. But the sound was clear despite background noise). Still, while I’m quite happy with it, is there anything better?

Software: I edited those photos with MicroGrafx Picture Publisher 7, an obsolete and only-sort-of-available program. It’s not Photoshop, but it’s good enough, and it’s easy and fast. I can open it and edit, size, sharpen and save a photo in not much more time than it takes for Photoshop to load, or so it seems. Is there something similar that’s still available? Cheap, fast, easy, and good enough. (I haven’t used GIMP, but I hear it’s not terribly user-friendly.) The Dell came with a trial version of Paint Shop Pro 8, which seems to be an updated-but-not-improved version of the MicroGrafx program.

I edited the video with Windows Movie Maker 2. Advantage: It’s easy, and it’s free. Disadvantage: Saves only in WMV. (I cheated and resaved the Quicktime versions with Vegas Video). Is there a good, easy, and cheap video editor that saves in multiple formats? One that nontechnical people (or at least those less geeky than me) would find friendly? I’m thinking maybe SONY Vegas Movie Studio, which I think is basically the Vegas Video Factory software from Sonic Foundry, which I’ve used and which is OK. (Alternatively, of course, someone else could do the format conversion later). Other suggestions?

Aside from these, what else should be in a package like this, given the constraints of toughness, reasonable cost, and ease of use? Email me if you’ve got any ideas.

UPDATE: Adam Keiper emails with suggestions from his experiment:

Other things worth including in the kit, space permitting:

- extra batteries and an extra flash card for the camera;
- headphones, if you’re doing video-editing while an event is going on live;
- and, in case lots if people want to plug in their laptops and there aren’t many outlets, it doesn’t hurt to have a small power strip.

Good points.

I FIND YOUR LACK OF FAITH IN THE BLOGOSPHERE disturbing . . . .

A FEDERAL JUDGE has struck down Nebraska’s ban on same-sex marriages. Eugene Volokh has some thoughts.

JOHN COLE WRITES that the Bolton nomination is no big deal:

In six months this will not even be an issue other than in hysterical MoveOn.Org fund-raising e-mails. I have complete faith in the capacity of the United Nations to chew up and spit out whoever we send there.

Read the whole thing.

THE CARNIVAL OF TOMORROW is a blog-carnival of futurism-related posts.

CHRIS NOLAN:

Here’s something that’s been bothering me for months now. So I decided to keep track.

The Atlantic Monthly, a magazine that styles itself as one of the nation’s more thoughtful periodicals, has steadfastly avoided running a major feature by a woman writer since the beginning of the year. I’m not joking. And I’m not over-reacting. I have the past four months – that’s the past six months of editorial planning, a half-year, a substantial amount of time – sitting on my desk. I saved them for just this reason.

None of the magazine printed since mid-December carry any substantial written, by-lined contributions by women. What does appear is brief, usually in the back-of-the book critic’s section or in “The Agenda” at the front. And to add insult to injury, the magazine’s one featured female writer, Sandra Tsing Loh, a self-styled celebrity Mom who you may know from NPR, has dwelled for two months in a row on her kids, on her kids’ schools and books about women like her. What’s worse, the headline on this month’s piece makes a joke about schools and “breast-milk-curdling.” Dudes, when your kids are ready for school, most of them have stopped breast feeding.

One hopes.

VERONICA KHOKHLOVA contrasts two writers.

COMMENTS ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE BLOGOSPHERE, from Peter Hannaford in The American Spectator.

Comments on Hannaford — with an emphasis on the “evolutionary” part — from Sissy Willis, who also has more here.

SOME EXCELLENT LOCAL-BLOGGING from SKBubba, here (regarding radiation at Oak Ridge) and here (regarding sundry local political shenanigans.)

That’s OK — at least we’re better than Montgomery County!

HOME: The Insta-Wife is reclining comfortably, reading a magazine.

ANOTHER BUCHANAN-FISKING, this one from Stephen Green:

It took 40 years, but today Pat Buchanan hit bottom on the slippery slope from Young Turk conservative columnist to Nazi Apologist troglodyte.

Ouch. And that’s just the beginning.

UPDATE: Clayton Cramer writes:

I will tell you, if this was an essay written by a high school student, or even a college student, I would assume that he did not understand the history of that time. But Pat Buchanan knows better. I have long resisted the popular leftist view that Pat Buchanan is an anti-Semite. Reading essays like this makes such a position more and more sensible.

It’s not just leftists who think that.

ROGER SIMON NOTES an Ivy League upset, as bloggers Peter Robinson and Todd Zywicki appear to have won seats on the Dartmouth Board of Trustees.

UPDATE: It’s official. Hugh Hewitt observes: “The message the Robinson-Zywicki election sends is simple, and I think of much wider applicability than just Dartmouth: Colleges and universities are out of touch with large segments of their alums, and those alums do not like the policies and practices they read about at their alma maters.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: I think it’s more likely to work than this approach.

HERE’S MORE ON CONDI RICE and the right to bear arms:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, recalling how her father took up arms to defend fellow blacks from racist whites in the segregated South, said Wednesday the constitutional right of Americans to own guns is as important as their rights to free speech and religion.

In an interview on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” Rice said she came to that view from personal experience. She said her father, a black minister, and his friends armed themselves to defend the black community in Birmingham, Ala., against the White Knight Riders in 1962 and 1963. She said if local authorities had had lists of registered weapons, she did not think her father and other blacks would have been able to defend themselves.

Now that she’s Secretary of State, she has an opportunity to press for treating the right to arms as an international human right. Sure, most governments don’t recognize it now, and are shocked at the suggestion. But that’s true with all newly-recognized rights:

After all, the human rights community has long argued that all sorts of dramatic changes in international law are justified if they might make genocide unlikely and has been nothing less than flexible in discovering such “post-first-generation” human rights as “developmental rights,” “environmental rights” and a “right to peace.”

Surely a right to defend oneself against massacre — particularly when, once again, the international community has failed miserably to prevent genocide in Darfur — is as plausible as those others.

UPDATE: Countertop Chronicles notes that the transcript is up, and this stuff isn’t in it. Poking around, I found this story from the L.A. Times, which says that the interview “was taped for airing Wednesday night.” So maybe they cut it out of the broadcast part?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Yep, that’s what happened. Thanks to reader Joe Zwers, here’s a link to the full interview transcript.

I’M HOSPIBLOGGING AGAIN: The InstaWife is in for a minor procedure, except that they have to have a cardiologist in for it to turn off her ICD before, and then restart it after, which means it has to be done in a hospital. Yuk. I’m pretty tired of hospitals.

USA TODAY is writing about milblogs, and here’s an interesting tidbit:

Many of the soldiers and their families will likely print out the stories, or save the blog pages on hard disks or CDs. The Library of Congress is preserving one of the “milblogs,” The Indepundit by Lt. Scott Koenig, 33, of the U.S. Naval Reserve.

Making history, one blog at a time.

INSTAPUNK OPENS A 55-GALLON CAN OF WHUPASS ON PAT BUCHANAN. And it’s richly deserved. But then, it usually is, where Buchanan is concerned.

UPDATE: The topic is unrelated, but speaking of opening up a can of whupass, watch this commentary aimed at members of Congress who complained about yesterday’s evacuation.

BETTER THAN MOWER-BLOGGING: It’s roto-tillerblogging!

IN THE MAIL: Roadside America: 365 Days, a beautiful book of car photographs by photographer and InstaPundit reader Cindy Lewis, whose website is here. I was disappointed to see only one photo of a Barracuda hemi, though.

UPDATE: Of course, looking at these photos of classic cars would only depress James Lileks further.

STRATEGYPAGE on press irresponsibility:

AFGHANISTAN: Taliban Get a Boost from American Media

May 12, 2005: Anti-American protests have spread to the capital, sparked by an unsubstantiated accusations by a U.S. newsmagazine. Newsweek magazine published a hearsay item about American interrogators at Guantanamo desecrating the Koran to intimidate suspected terrorists. The Taliban has been trying to spread similar stories, but have no credibility. American media has more clout, even if the story in question is basically a rumor. The pro-Taliban groups will push this story as much as they can, but the Taliban support is basically restricted to some Pushtun tribes in southern and eastern Afghanistan.

The press is exquisitely sensitive to the risks posed by, say, racial insensitivity in reporting. It’s too bad they’re not so careful with regard to things that might get American troops killed.

UNSCAM UPDATE:

UNITED NATIONS — A U.S. Senate committee probing corruption in the U.N. Oil-for-Food program released new evidence purporting to show that two prominent politicians from Britain and France received millions of barrels of Iraqi oil in exchange for their support of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Citing contracts, letters and interviews with former Iraqi leaders, the probe set out evidence Wednesday to back the claim that British lawmaker George Galloway (search) and former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua (search) accepted oil allocations under the scheme.

Galloway and Pasqua have denied any wrongdoing in the Oil-for-Food program.

Pardon me if I’m not surprised to hear this. There’s more background here, including a link to the Senate report, and an observation that the BBC is downplaying the bribery bit. Pardon me if I’m not surprised to hear that, either. Paul Musgrave has more.

UPDATE: Interesting bit from footnote 5 of the Senate Report: “Terrorist individuals and entities who received allocations include the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Abu Abbas, and the Mujahedeen-e Khalq.” (Via Power Line, which has much more).

ANOTHER UPDATE: BritBlog The Daily Ablution has much more on Galloway, and his rather dubious statements in his own defense.

MR. ROBOTO: “I will never again type the word BlogNashville.” (Via Rex Hammock).

SHE’S GOT THE GAY GUN-NUT DEMOGRAPHIC SEWN UP: Jeff Soyer endorses Condi Rice for President.

MICKEY KAUS:

Evan Smith on Dennis Miller: “He could have been Bill Maher ….” Now that’s a low blow. I thought these days Bill Maher was the one kicking himself thinking he could have been Bill Maher.

Instead of a bum, which is what he is. . . .

MORE PRC SHENANIGANS in Hong Kong.

MICHAEL TOTTEN DESCRIBES THE CEDAR REVOLUTION, in an article in the latest L.A. Weekly.

RON BAILEY:

Politics in the 21st century will cut across the traditional political left/right rift of the last two centuries. Instead, the chief ideological divide will be between transhumanists and bioconservatives/bioluddites.

I’m not so sure, but if things work out that way I know which side I’ll be on. But then, I’m an Accelerationista. . . .

WILL COLLIER:

Yesterday, United Air Lines was allowed to dump its pension plan on the federal government. That’s bad news for pretty much everybody except UAL’s accountants and execs: employees and pensioners are going to get considerably smaller payments than they’d been promised, and everybody who pays taxes gets to pick up the tab.

Whatever you call this, it’s not free enterprise. Megan McArdle has related thoughts.

AMBRA NYKOL: “Complaining about how you wish more people would visit your website is the antithesis of cool. Keep that stuff to yourself. Don’t rant about it on your weblog. That is what nerds do.”

BAINBRIDGE ON CONASON on Bush on Yalta.

UPDATE: Matt Welch writes that quite a few people are getting overly exercised on this subject: “It has been official American policy to bury Yalta in symbol and by name for at least a decade now. . . . I’m just suggesting that those looking for a Stab in the Back or at least a John Birch slap within the remarks of the president may have stumbled onto a plot even more sinister, because the Clintonites are in on it, too.”

STANDING UP FOR TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE:

The Republican chairman of Seminole County, Florida says his bid to head the state party was sabotaged because a letter accused him of having been married six times.

He says the correct number is five.

Well, OK then. (Via Blake Wylie).

UPDATE: I think this is more evidence that the Republicans should be taking advice from InstaPundit reader Madhu Dahiya.

HERE’S THE NASHVILLE SCENE’S COVER STORY on the BlogNashville conference.

UPDATE: Here, however, is the most shocking report so far.

ARRESTING PEOPLE FOR “ACTING UNPROFESSIONAL AS A REPORTER?”

Following hard on its adoption of official interpretations of the Bible, this is beginning to make me think that Montgomery County, Maryland has some serious problems with governance.

ED MORRISSEY:

Pity the poor United Nations. Not only is the management at Turtle Bay hopelessly corrupt and inept, its new blogosphere apologists don’t appear very bright, either. Not only did they run a lame attack post about Roger L. Simon’s recent focus on history’s largest embezzlement scam, they sent out e-mails to bloggers asking us to promote it.

Oops. Roger’s response is here, but I like what one of his commenters said:

Maybe they’d feel better if you laid off the Oil-for-Food business for awhile and concentrated on the Congo sex crimes scandal instead.

Heh. Actually, they probably would.

DAVID CORN reports on evacuating the Capitol today, and observes: “I’m going to have consider telecommuting more seriously.”

IRANIAN BLOGGERS MEET WITH A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE and blog about it in English. Global Voices has the links.

TIGERHAWK offers a tax-reform plan.

OVER AT THE COUNTER-TERRORISM BLOG, Andy Cochran was moblogging the evacuation via his Blackberry. Posts here and here.

UPDATE: Timeline here.

PROF. BAINBRIDGE IS BLOGGING FROM A FACULTY MEETING:

My vision of purgatory is a meeting that never ends. So my one hope is that St. Peter will apply these earthly hours against my stint in Purgatory.

Even if he doesn’t, it’ll likely seem like Heaven by comparison.

MARK GLASER: Seven Big Ideas (and one pet peeve) from BlogNashville.

CARNIVAL-O-RAMA: Don’t miss this week’s Carnival of Education.

And there’s also this week’s Carnival of the Vanities, as well as the latest Christian Carnival.

If that’s not enough — and swell as it is, why should it be? — you can check out this week’s Carnival of the Liberated, which rounds up Iraqi blog posts, and another installment of the revived Carnival of the Revolutions, featuring posts by and about democratic revolutionaries around the world.

CONDI RICE: “‘Democratization,’ Rice told the foreign ministers, is ‘not an event, it is a process.’”

Indeed.

DID THE NEW YORK TIMES PUBLISH A MISLEADING CHART on marginal tax rates? TaxProf has a roundup.

IN THE MAIL: Matthew Simmons’ Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy.

Simmons says that the Saudis are a lot closer to running out of oil than the world realizes, and that Saudi production is at unsustainably high levels right now. This certainly contradicts the ever-more-optimistic Saudi claims about reserves and production capacity. I’ve wondered what was behind the Saudi claims, though I’m no expert: My actual thought was that the Saudis were trying to discourage exploration elsewhere, but the other possibility is that they’re in a desperate endgame.

Simmons’ book is blurbed by bigshots, but I hope it’s wrong. It’s certainly another argument for doing what we know we need to do anyway, which is to increase efficiency and find other sources of oil, and energy generally.

UPDATE: A skeptical take on the oil-shortage scenario, here, and here’s a CSIS report on Saudi oil reserves that specifically responds to Simmons’ claims and finds them wanting. Beats me, but as I say, it’s pretty clear what we should be doing.

THE PHANTOM PROFESSOR: Inside Higher Education looks at an anonymous prof-blog and its chilly reception by the SMU administration.

SORE LOSERS: A pretty hard-hitting TV spot on the Bolton battle (video here). I have to wonder why the vaunted Karl Rove machine didn’t have these things ready to go when Bolton was nominated, though. Transcript here. (Via Gateway Pundit.)

BLAST FROM THE PAST: John Hiler’s excellent Microcontent News is back.

PRAWFSBLAWG:

What is the most widely read work of jurisprudence by those in the legal system? Is it H.L.A. Hart’s The Concept of Law? Ronald Dworkin’s Law’s Empire? No . . . it’s actually the Multistate Bar Exam. . . . It therefore comes as a great surprise that the Bar exam has received such scant scholarly attention.

Some interesting thoughts on what that means follow.

AUSTIN BAY looks at the recent anti-American conclave in Brazil and observes:

Anti-American elites have staged a conference in Brazil’s capital, Brasilia. And they immediately discovered their various gripes with “America” didn’t mesh. Nope, varied stripes of jealousy, hate, envy, and fear of liberty aren’t the foundation for a cohesive “united front,” though bellicose demands and “we’re victims” propaganda will get them headlines.

His point about the Berbers is also well taken.

JEFF JARVIS: “Is Google the next AOL?”

JON STEWART ON CABLE CHANNELS AND BLOGS: Crooks and Liars has the video, and Ed Cone has some comments.

JIM FLETCHER has posted some superb photos of the Smoky Mountains online, and he’s now selling prints from his site.

Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that Exposure Manager, where I host my photos, has added a lot of cool new features, including sharpening and color correction.

KEVIN SITES has made his entire mosque-shooting video available on the Web. BoingBoing has the story, and a link.

THIS IS PRETTY COOL: My BlogNashville video has been captioned for the deaf and hearing-impaired. The folks responsible hope to do more of that sort of thing, and also to use the captioning to make Web video search-engine friendly.

RON BAILEY REPORTS that James Q. Wilson has resigned from the President’s Bioethics Council. No word on why, but Bailey observes:

Two of the seven members of the Council who voted in favor of proceeding immediately with therapeutic cloning to produce human embryonic stem cells are already gone–Wilson’s departure makes it a third.

Council Chairman Leon Kass replaced the two earlier dissenters with three tractable bioconservative intellectuals whose views on bioethics Kass finds less challenging. The question is will Wilson’s replacement be yet another bioconservative clone?

I’ve been critical of the Council in the past, here and here, though it’s worth noting that Wilson emailed me to defend Kass a time or two. Here’s the advice I offered Kass, at the beginning.

JOHN HAWKINS OFFERS ADVICE TO BLOGGERS, especially new ones.

THE BELMONT CLUB has a roundup, with maps, of the fighting along the Syrian border and what people are saying about it.

UPDATE: Chester has multiple posts on what’s going on.

A CANADIAN CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS?

The House of Commons has passed a motion that calls for the Liberal government to resign, but the Liberals are shrugging it off as only procedural.

The vote, which passed 153-150, is one of several attempts by the opposition to bring down what has become a shaky minority government under Prime Minister Paul Martin. Though the Liberals tried hard to block the Opposition Conservative motion, they are sticking to their view that losing it doesn’t mean they’ve lost the confidence of the House of Commons.

(Via Newsbeat 1.) Steven Taylor has more here and here, and Ed Morrissey has further thoughts. Is Canada now a banana republic? I think it’s still a bit early to proclaim that.

UPDATE: This is cool — a Canadian M.P. blogging from the floor via his Blackberry.

More comments here and here.

REACTIONARY BOOBS against nanotechnology: But I’m sure they’re nice boobs, once you get to know them.