IRANIAN WOMEN PROTEST IN IRAN: Reports, and lots of pictures, at Publius.

TIM CAVANAUGH:

I’ve gotta get on record saying this rash of celebrities claiming they’ve been involved in stalkerazzi-related traffic accidents is straight-up bullshit. How can anybody be taking these claims at face value? Out-of-control skank Lindsay Lohan, who has already racked up an abysmal driving record in her 18 years, gets in a crash with a photographer, and we’re supposed to assume the photographer’s at fault? Accident-prone xanthochroid Cameron Diaz blames nameless shutterbugs for her bad luck, and the papers believe her? The legendarily high-strung J.Lo shows signs of persecution anxiety, and that’s the fault of the paparazzi?

I’d prefer, of course, if all of these stars were no longer covered. Give ‘em what they want . . . .

TURNABOUT for the mullahs?

MARK STEYN: Who can stop China from conquering the world? The Chinese communists! Read the whole thing, and especially the conclusion.

ETHIOPIAN OPPOSITION UNDER ARREST: Gateway Pundit has the report, and video.

MICHAEL YON has posted lots of new reporting from Iraq.

DON’T MISS THIS WEEK’S BritBlog roundup!

A FISH, A BARREL, A SMOKING BLOG: Tom Maguire fact-checks Frank Rich in a big way.

THIS IS COOL:

As video cameras, and digital storage devices (like the iPod), grow smaller and cheaper, they have become useful as a military intelligence tool. The latest example of this is a lightweight video camera that can be attached to a helmet, and the video stored on a 30 gigabyte hard drive the size of an iPod. That provides enough storage for 2-46 hours of video (depending on the resolution.)

It was civilian security personnel, former military people, who first started doing this sort of thing. Small vidcams attached to the dashboard, were used to photograph a mission. Reviewing the tapes later would often reveal an attempted attack, or some other danger that needed to be studied, and dealt with in the future. Now a British company, Double Vision (DV), is producing wearable vidcam systems for police, journalists, military personnel and athletes.

I want some of these for bloggers. . . .

ROGER SIMON NOTES A DISTURBING EXAMPLE of Microsoft sucking up to China. Bill Gates, and the rest of the Microsoft crowd, should be embarrassed, and I agree with Roger that if this story bears out, it’s hard to imagine MSN Spaces doing well with the blogging community.

LOTS OF PHOTOS, and an essay, at Rick Lee’s place.

HOW’S THE ERIC FLINT BOOK? I’m only few chapters into it, but so far it’s good. I’m not a big fan of Andrew Jackson, but Flint gives him a 3-dimensional portrayal. Sam Houston gets a much bigger role than he had historically, which is cool since he’s a local boy (my mother is even librarian at Sam Houston Elementary, which claims some connection with the nearby school where he taught). Flint’s non-PC despite being a (way) lefty, and it’s good reading so far.

IN WEST VIRGINIA, notes Dave Kopel, an employee’s right of self defense trumps the employer’s right to order employees not to defend themselves.

MORE ON THE ALGERIAN CONNECTION:

Algeria has been the center of Islamic radicalism in Africa for over a decade. Even more so than Egypt, where many of the intellectual founders of Islamic radicalism come from. Algeria is where most of the foot soldiers of the movement came from. Egypt defeated its Islamic radicals a decade ago, while Algeria has crushed them only in the last year. Over the last few years, many of the Algerian Islamic radicals have fled to Europe, and other Islamic countries. About a quarter of the 400 foreign terrorists captured in Iraq are from Africa, and a similar percentage of the foreign terrorists killed in Iraq are believed to be from Africa (mainly Egypt, Morocco and Algeria.) But the most dangerous Islamic terrorists are those who fled south, to set up camps in the thinly populated Sahel (the semi-desert area south of the Sahara desert). Al Qaeda, using its network of Islamic “charities” provides some of the financing for these new terrorist bases, as well as the money to send African Islamic radicals to Iraq.

Keep an eye on this.

“CITIZEN OF NOWHERE:” ERNEST MILLER RESPONDS to the Jay Rosen item on Bob Franken noted below.

HERE’S A GLOBAL VOICES SKYPECAST on China’s attack on blogs and bloggers.

GATEWAY PUNDIT has more on the East St. Louis voter fraud trial. Plus a shocking example of cultural insensitivity. Don’t these people care about world opinion?

THE LOS ALAMOS WHISTLEBLOWER-BEATING STORY looks to be bogus, according to DefenseTech.

INTERESTING POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS in The Netherlands and elsewhere:

The backlash against Hirsi Ali has astonished and disappointed many Dutch feminists, who continue to count themselves among her biggest fans. Margreet Fogteloo, editor of the weekly De Groene Amsterdammer, said flatly that Mak is crazy. “People like him feel guilty because they were closing their eyes for such a long time to what was going on,” she said. In what appears to be a Europe-wide pattern, some feminists are aligning themselves with the anti-immigrant right against their former multiculturalist allies on the left. Joining them in this exodus to the right are gay activists, who blame Muslim immigrants for the rising number of attacks on gay couples.

Stay tuned.

“WHEN I’M REPORTING, I’M A CITIZEN OF THE WORLD:” Jay Rosen reflects on this statement by Bob Franken, in the process of examining journalism’s declining reputation.

UPDATE: Franken’s would seem to be a case of “asymmetrical skepticism.”

THE STORMTRACK BLOG is tracking Tropical Storm Arlene.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES is up!

OFF TO THE BEACH. Blogging will continue, but at a reduced pace, and email response will be degraded as well.

Among other things, I’m taking this Eric Flint alt-history novel about Andrew Jackson and the War of 1812 for beach-reading. It has a good Amazon review from Mark Whittington. I’ll report on how it turns out from my perspective.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF TOMORROW is up! And so is the Carnival of Cordite.

A SPANKING for the CJR over the Navasky matter.

TUNKU VARADARAJAN looks at why Indians are dominating the National Spelling bee.

That’s a topic I had some thoughts on a while back. But if this keeps up, we’ll have to rename the National Spelling Bee “The Anglosphere Challenge” — except that that name is already taken . . ..

UPDATE: Reader Madhu Dahiya makes an excellent point:

As an Indian-American reader of your blog I’d like to point out that these are American kids after all. I am very proud of my Indian heritage, but I’m an American first and foremost. These kids are growing up here. They *are* part of the anglosphere – the 21st century globalized, American Anglosphere, and I think they are holding up to the challenge quite well :)

Indeed.

JAMES LILEKS: “I hate to break it to these theorists, but it does not take guts for a young man to want to have multiple sex partners. It takes guts to settle down and have a family and rein in the roaming libido.”

Indeed.

JUDGE-BLOGGING at the Carnival of the Chillin’.

ADAM BELLOW has thoughts on the death of his father.

JOE KATZMAN has a lengthy must-read post on Zimbabwe, genocide, and human rights.

HAROLD FORD, JR.: Down on Dean.

STRATEGYPAGE:

Conservative Islam is the foundation of Islamic radicalism, which is Islam carried to a murderous extreme. This movement is weakening in the place where it originated; Saudi Arabia. One of the most telling signs has been the decline and fall of the religious police. The Mutawwain — national “religious police” – or “Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Suppression of Vice” has long been a force in Saudi Arabia, acting against any perceived “un-Islamic” behavior in an attempt to preserve religious purity (e.g., it’s better that women should burn to death in a fire than that they appear without their veils). Over the past few years, however, the Mutawwain have come under increasing pressure. Long regarded not only as arbitrary, but also corrupt, the organization is under investigation by the official state prosecutor, and its budget and personnel have been cut repeatedly; from over 2000 officers just five years ago there are now apparently only some 700.

It’s probably still too early to bid on the Riyadh “Hooter’s” franchise, though.

PRE-DEPARTURE, AUSTIN BAY has posted lots of interesting stuff. Just keep scrolling.

BILL HOBBS notes CNN’s move on the blogosphere.

JAMES MADISON WHO?

THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE has news from Spain.

JOE GANDELMAN reports on China’s crackdown on blogs.

UPDATE: BlogCritics has more on the subject.

MORE INTELLIGENCE PROBLEMS:

A highly classified intelligence report produced for the new director of national intelligence concludes that U.S. spy agencies failed to recognize several key military developments in China in the past decade, The Washington Times has learned.

The report was created by several current and former intelligence officials and concludes that U.S. agencies missed more than a dozen Chinese military developments, according to officials familiar with the report.

The report blames excessive secrecy on China’s part for the failures, but critics say intelligence specialists are to blame for playing down or dismissing evidence of growing Chinese military capabilities.

“Excessive secrecy” on China’s part? Given that this “highly classified” report was leaked, it seems like we could learn from them. . . .

And the intelligence community keeps missing big developments, doesn’t it?

UPDATE: More here.

NERDS MAKE BETTER LOVERS? Well, duh.

FALSE MODESTY? Well, the real kind is out of the question.

JEFF JARVIS HAS MORE on the 9/11 Memorial debacle: “This mess at the World Trade Center falls — once again — squarely at the feet of Gov. Pataki. We need to demand that Pataki and Bloomberg open up the process and assure us that this will not turn into the International Flagellation Center.”

MICKEY KAUS still has questions for The Boston Globe’s Mike Kranish.

UPDATE: Still more questions, and a few answers, here.

DEFENSETECH reports that the space race is going global.

I just wish the space race were bigger.

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION HAS SPOKEN OUT against violence in Ethiopia. Gateway Pundit has the scoop.

IS RESISTING GENOCIDE A HUMAN RIGHT? That’s the question posed in a forthcoming law review article by Dave Kopel, Paul Gallant, and Joanne Eisen.

I’ve had related thoughts myself, here. And you may want to read this article by Dan Polsby and Don Kates, too, if the topic interests you.

SO MUCH FOR FEDERALISM (CONT’D):

A Texas Congressman has introduced a bill that impose a nationwide prohibition on municipally-sponsored networks.

Dubbed by the Author, Representative Pete Sessions (R-Texas), the Preserving Innovation in Telecom Act of 2005, the bill prohibits state and local governments from providing any telecommunications or information service that is “substantially similar” to services provided by private companies.

The bill, HR 2726, is similar to a host of state bills pushed by telecommunications companies aimed at fending off municipally-run wireless networks.

Via Cynical Nation, which observes:

How times have changed. Modern technology and a new political climate have resolved sharp differences between two different camps that had been papered over until recently. On the one hand, there are limited-government conservatives and libertarians who chafe at unnecessary government intrusion in the commercial sphere, regardless of whom it benefits. On the other side are “conservatives” like Congressman Sessions here, to whom corporate profit is more important than restraining government meddling.

Related column of mine, here. And here’s an amusing bit: “U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) wants to take state and local governments out of the broadband business. It’s for their own good, the former Southwestern Bell executive said. ”

HUGH HEWITT is criticizing Howard Fineman for relying on an anonymous source so soon after the Newsweek Koran-flushing debacle. Hugh points to some non-anonymous sources, as well.

MAX BOOT:

All the headlines about “Abuse of the Koran at Gitmo” are absolutely accurate. Brig. Gen. Jay Hood’s internal investigation has uncovered some shocking incidents. On at least six occasions, Korans were ripped up. They were urinated on three times, and attempts were made to flush them down the toilet at least three other times.

Why aren’t millions of Muslims rioting in response to these defilements? Because the perpetrators were prisoners, not guards. As John Hinderaker notes on weeklystandard.com, the most serious desecrations of the Koran at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility were committed by the Muslim inmates themselves.

Read the whole thing, which is quite justifiably harsh on the news media and NGO hysteria surrounding this report.

ALLISON HAYWARD’S NEW BLOG, Skeptic’s Eye, has a lot on the FEC Internet rulemaking, which makes sense as she is a former FEC staffer.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL calling for the arrest of Bush and Rumsfeld?

MORE ON WARD CHURCHILL from the Rocky Mountain News.

J.D. LASICA’S DARKNET: HOLLYWOOD’S WAR AGAINST THE DIGITAL GENERATION, which I mentioned a while back when it was in press, is now out.

One point he makes, which I think is very important, is that the various restrictions promoted by Hollywood and the record industry aren’t just intended to protect their intellectual property, but to make it harder for independent creators to compete with them in the larger market.

J.D. has a book blog, too.

MICHAEL SILENCE posts the results of a newsroom survey on blogs.

RANDY BARNETT ON THE RAICH CASE:

The Ninth Circuit finally got its revenge on the Supreme Court justices who seemed to delight in reversing it. In Gonzales v. Raich, it gave the conservatives a choice: Uphold the Ninth Circuit’s ruling favoring individuals engaged in the wholly intrastate non-economic activity of growing and consuming cannabis for medical purposes as recommended by a doctor and permitted by state law, or retreat from the landmark Commerce Clause decisions of U.S. v. Lopez (1995) and U.S. v. Morrison (2000). Either way the Ninth Circuit wins. But with Justices Kennedy and Scalia on the liberal side of the Court, the Ninth Circuit won big. So did Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who first implemented this strategy in the child-porn case of U.S. v. McCoy.

As I’ve written elsewhere, stuff like this is why it’s hard for me to get excited about the filibuster fights; principled federalists seem rather thin on the ground, and I don’t see any great likelihood of getting more.

UPDATE: On the other hand, Julian Sanchez puts the best possible face on the Bush Administration’s commitment to federalism and limited government.

HERE’S A PIECE on the FBI’s I.T. problems.

AUSTIN BAY HAS FURTHER THOUGHTS on journalism and the war. And if you want to help out his independent journalistic efforts, visit his tipjar.

BIRTHDAY CATBLOGGING: Precious seems to be flourishing in her new home. Thanks, Dr. Tony!

I FINISHED RADICAL EVOLUTION last night. I thought it was quite good, and it’s well worth your time and money if you’re interested in technological change.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF GAMERS is up.

CHESTER HAS SOME THOUGHTS ON ZIMBABWE, inspired by Philip Bobbitt.

UPDATE: Publius has a Zimbabwe roundup, where it appears the protest is having some effect, but that the government is wielding a heavy hand against strikers.

STRATEGYPAGE:

More towns in Iraqi’s “wild west” are being pacified. The usual drill is not another Fallujah, but a government official meeting with local tribal and religious leaders, where an offer is made. Iraqi and American troops are coming. Neighborhoods that support the government will see little or no fighting as a search is made for weapons, bombs and the like. Neighborhoods that wish to resist will be hit hard. By now, everyone knows how smart bombs work. Increasingly, Sunni Arab leaders are being told, by their followers, that all this violence is not worth it. After Saddam fell, Sunni Arabs continued to believe in fantasies. For the last two years, the collective delusion was that the Americans had no stomach for guerilla war, and the Kurds and Shia Arabs could never get a government together. Today, Sunni Arabs who can get away on a little vacation, go north to the Kurdish north, or south to Shia Basra. In both places you can sit in an outdoor cafe without fear of a suicide bomb going off down the street. The Kurds and Shia have more jobs, more reconstruction and less crime. The Sunni Arabs don’t want to live in their own mess any more. They don’t want to live in a combat zone, especially while the Kurds and Shia are not.

It’s not all good news, though, and here’s some of the bad:

The biggest obstacle to economic revival is not terrorism, but corruption. For example, over a third of Iraq’s potential oil revenue is lost to corruption and theft. . . .

Iraq may be free of Saddam, but it is not yet free of the corrupt practices that allow someone like Saddam to take power, and keep it. While much is made of the terror Saddam used to keep Iraqis in line, we forget that he often used corruption, and the willingness of too many Iraqis to take the money and look the other way. The corruption has gotten so bad, especially the oil thefts, that the government is planning on firing several hundred thousand government workers. The money simply isn’t there to pay them. The money, instead, is in the pockets of local criminals, or foreign bank accounts belonging to corrupt officials. Until Iraq can confront and conquer this enemy, they will not be able to enjoy the benefits of their oil wealth.

This is an endemic problem throughout much of the world (I could tell you some Nigeria stories . . .), but seems to be especially bad in Iraq.

JAMES PINKERTON has thoughts on Intelligent Design.

DARFUR AND THE PALESTINIANS: A modest proposal.

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE JOURNALISM OF WARFARE, by Keith Windschuttle. (Via Bill Quick).

RYAN SAGER ON THE “REFORMERS:”

In fact, the Internet resembles in many ways the campaign-finance reformers’ long-sought utopia: full public financing of political campaigns. While the government is of course not financing anyone on the Internet, the outcome is the same: For an absolute pittance, every idea, every political philosophy, every candidate has access to a soap box.

The only limitation is how many people care to listen.

Why, when the free market has gone and created the exact state of affairs the reformers have long claimed to desire, are the McCains of the world looking to crack down?

Because the reform movement has never been about freedom. It has always been about control.

Indeed.

MORE THOUGHTS ON THE SINGULARITY, at Centerfield.

A CALL FOR REVOLUTION IN ZIMBABWE: If Rep. Rangel wants to make Holocaust comparisons, they would be better aimed at Robert Mugabe.

UPDATE: Much more on Zimbabwe, from The Belmont Club.

THE HYSTERIA SPREADS: Charles Rangel compares Bush’s foreign policy to the Holocaust.

Really, Bush’s ability to drive his opponents stark, raving bonkers is almost supernatural.

MICHAEL LEDEEN is condemning the silence on Iran’s use of torture.

Meanwhile, there are numerous reports of unrest in Iran.

UPDATE: More on Iran here.

MATT WELCH:

How people can derive pleasure from evidence of the suffering of innocents is beyond me, and few sights are more unseemly to my eyes than seeing a Lonely Planet-waving travel snob whine about how some current or formerly misgoverned hellhole has been “ruined” by all that yucky reconstruction, material success, and (worst of all!) tourism.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Reader Patrick Prescott sends this link to a post with related thoughts.

HEH:

We most assuredly are not jiving you: Howard Dean–scion of Park Avenue, former governor of Vermont, a state that is 96.8% people of pallor–is faulting Republicans for being white, even though he himself is whiter than an albino polar bear with dandruff.

Did I say “heh?”

LEBANON HAS PROTEST BABES: Norway has countered with a protest goat. To each his own, as they say.

UPDATE: I counter with one of these.

THERE WAS SOME QUESTION whether, when Saddam fell, we might just keep going into Syria. Looks like we should have considered it.

JEFF JARVIS IS MAD AS HELL about what’s going on with the 9/11 memorial. Sounds like he should be, as he says it’s turning into “what Bill Maher has wanted: a Why They Hate Us Pavillion.”

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Roger Simon offers a suggestion. And Sissy Willis is angry at “the grave-robbers of Ground Zero.”

RICH, BLOGGY GOODNESS: This week’s Carnival of the Vanities is up!

MICHELE CATALANO wishes a happy birthday to Donald Duck.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF EDUCATION is up!

IN RESPONSE TO MY POST ON THE SINGULARITY, below, Jim Bennett sends this link to an excerpt on the subject from his recent book.

THE FOLKS AT ANKLEBITINGPUNDITS say that the latest Washington Post poll is wrong. This far from an election, it’s hard for me to get too excited about polls, one way or another. And given their track record even close to elections, it should probably be hard for me to get excited about them, period.

AUSTIN BAY has a long post on the strategic situation in Iraq and Syria that’s a must-read. And consider hitting his tipjar as he heads back that way to do some firsthand reporting.

ANNE APPLEBAUM: “I don’t know when Amnesty ceased to be politically neutral or at what point its leaders’ views morphed into ordinary anti-Americanism. But surely Amnesty’s recent misuse of the word ‘gulag’ marks some kind of turning point.”

Howard Kurtz: “Excuse me, but did Schulz say that it’s okay to unleash words like ‘gulag,’ even if it’s not an ‘exact or literal analogy,’ because it gets him booked on Fox News? Is that the new standard? Yes, Chris, I called the president a war criminal because it was the only way I could get on Hardball?”

DO IT MAKE IT YOURSELF: My TechCentralStation column is up.

I’M ABOUT A THIRD OF THE WAY into Joel Garreau’s book, Radical Evolution, and there’s much talk about the Singularity (including a very cool interview with Vernor Vinge). (Decent short description of the Singularity concept here).

But while I think that the Singularity is something to take seriously, I also think that the focus — shown in the interview and the passages surrounding it — is a bit myopic. The fear is that we’ll wind up creating superhuman intelligence, and that it will quickly take over the world. Personally, I suspect that superhuman intelligence will be harder to create, and less superhuman, than many suspect. But that’s not the main point. The main point is that the dangers, in my estimation, don’t come from the creation of a godlike (or demonlike) superhuman entity. Or at least, if such an entity exists, the threat won’t be because of its intelligence. As I wrote a while back:

It is not obvious, however, that intelligence has much to do with world domination. Certainly, those currently ruling the world did not attain their positions by virtue of their intelligence, and it may be that, like James Branch Cabell’s eponymous protagonist Jurgen, superintelligent machines would find that “cleverness was not at the top of things, and never had been.” While scientists and computer experts, whose chief pride (as with Jurgen) lies in their intelligence, would tend to regard superior intellect as the sine qua non of power, this view can be quickly dispelled by a glance at the headlines.

The bigger danger won’t be the creation of a godlike artificial intelligence. It will be the creation of many millions (and eventually billions) of individuals with powers that would have been until recently regarded as godlike, in the rather small space that humanity currently inhabits. That problem will be reduced, however, if we expand beyond the earth beforehand. I certainly agree with Stephen Hawking that the alternative is extinction. But I think that we’ll do it in time.

Overall, I’m less afraid of the singularity than some. And one characteristic of entering a singularity is that you don’t generally realize it as it’s happening — like crossing the event horizon of a black hole, it’s not apparent while it’s underway. We may be entering the Singularity already. As my alter ego suggests, cloning seems frightening now. One day it will seem . . . quaint.

UPDATE: More thoughts here.

“YOU ALL LOOK ALIKE TO ME:”

Many Republicans probably voted for George Bush dozens, if not hundreds, of times in 2004, according to Democrat party Chairman Howard Dean, “by taking advantage of the fact that Democrat poll workers have difficulty distinguishing individuals from among a crowd of white Christians.”

“Thanks to their pale skin, round eyes and khaki trousers, Republicans just blend in,” said Mr. Dean. “So they vote, get in the back of the line and vote again. And because they’ve never made an honest living in their lives, they could do that all day long.”

Howard Dean is pretty much a one-man ScrappleFace full-employment guarantee.

UPDATE: James Lileks: “It must rankle the moderates to hear him fling this nonsense on a daily basis, after all; it’s like having Pat Buchnan run the GOP and make constant fulminating speeches against Commie-Lezbo Vegans.”

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL is rather hard on the Raich decision. As it should be.

DISTURBING DEVELOPMENTS IN BOLIVIA: Gateway Pundit has more, and so does Publius.

IMAGINE NO CORRUPT AND INEFFECTUAL INTERNATIONAL BUREAUCRATS — I wonder if you can:

Leahy said too many legislators saw the United Nations as an “easy place to beat up” but that the United States should not be acting unilaterally “simply because the United Nations happens to be here within the borders of the United States.”

“It is hard to think of a world without the U.N.,” he said.

It’s not clear to me what the location of U.N. headquarters has to do with anything, though.

ARNOLD KLING writes on the political implications of thinking vs. feeling.

I know somebody who needs to do more of the former, and less of the latter.

MICKEY KAUS on Kerry’s 180: “He raises as many questions as he answers.”

Including this one: Why are we still talking about him?

GLOBAL VOICES Podcasts.

NOT WITH A BANG, BUT WITH A WHIMPER: My thoughts on Kerry’s Form 180, over at GlennReynolds.com.

DAVID PLOTZ’S BOOK, The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank is out. He writes about his own experiences as a sperm donor in Slate today.

CECI CONNOLLY’S “100 MURDERS” STATEMENT has been corrected. Follow the link for video.

YES, THE INSTAPUNDIT STORE IS BACK: Actually, it never went away, I just took it off the “Recommended” links a year or so ago and forgot to put it back. But hey, Father’s day is coming, and what would make a better present for Dad?

UPDATE: Reader John Thompson emails: “An Instapundit thong? Glenn, really…”

He’s right. An InstaPundit Thong for Mom is the perfect present for Dad!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Betsy Gorisch emails: “Hmmm. Well, I think an Instapundit Thong for Dad is the perfect gift for Mom!”

THE ANSWER IS: “Because homeland security is still a joke.”

The question:

At a time when the United States is tightening its borders, how could a man toting what appeared to be a bloody chain saw be allowed into the country?

With apologies to the Amazing Karnak.

INDEED: Eugene Volokh points to this story with the jokey headline “Blame Canada:”

The 17-year-old Bucks County boy charged with having bomb-making equipment in his bedroom and threatening to blow up his school is a Canadian who hates Americans, prosecutors say.

Obvious headline. On the other hand, the CBC, according to a just-released Fraser Institute study, is engaged in what sounds a lot like paranoid hate speech:

The CBC’s television news coverage of the United States is consistently marked by emotional criticism, rather than a rational consideration of US policy based on Canadian national interests, according to The Canadian released today by The Fraser Institute.

This anti-American bias at the CBC is the consequence of a “garrison mentality” that has systematically informed the broadcaster’s coverage of the US. Garrison mentality was a term coined by Canadian literary critic, Northrop Frye. He used it to describe a uniquely Canadian tendency reflected in our early literature, a tendency, as he put it, to “huddle together, stiffening our meager cultural defenses and projecting all our hostilities outward.”

One hopes that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation will review its stance before any more innocent schoolchildren are threatened. . .

UPDATE: Reader Chris Buchholz emails:

I must say I don’t buy it. It reminds me of when the liberals were blaming Tim McVeigh on Rush Limbaugh. It wasn’t Rush’s fault McVeigh was crazy.

Well, yes. The presence of ellipsis is generally a tipoff that I’m tongue-in-cheek here, you know. Canadian reader David Peer, meanwhile, emails: “I tried to detect the satire in your concluding remark about the CBC and ‘anti-americanism,’ but I just can’t see it.” Look harder!

I guess I should put that Andrea See quote about my dry sense of humor back up.

I HAVE A LIBERTARIAN SOLUTION TO THIS PROBLEM: Over at The Corner we’re seeing a rather large number of abortion-related posts today. In this one (which really goes beyond the abortion issue) Kathryn Jean Lopez decries a poll showing that 80% of Americans think that pharmacists ought to have to fill prescriptions for contraceptives even if they’re personally opposed to birth control.

Of course, this only matters because pharmacists enjoy a government-created monopoly on the dispensing of prescription drugs. Just take that away, and the problem disappears, too. In the meantime, like others who enjoy government monopolies, they are forced to make some concessions to public convenience. That doesn’t strike me as an overwhelming imposition, but if the pharmacy profession feels otherwise, I’ll be the first to support a move to eliminate its privileged position.

A FEW SNARKY LEFTY READERS want to know why I haven’t written about Kerry’s reported Form 180 release. They’ll no doubt be delighted to discover that it’s the subject of today’s MSNBC post, which will be online whenever MSNBC gets it there. In the meantime, Tom Maguire has a roundup.

HUMAN/WILDLIFE ENCOUNTERS: Daily Pundit notes a story of a woman eaten by a grizzly bear at a Canadian golf course.

David Baron’s excellent book, The Beast in the Garden: A Modern Parable of Man and Nature, is a must-read on this subject, which will grow more important as predators come back. (We have our own issues in my area, I’m told, as black bears reintroduced into the Big South Fork are wandering beyond its boundaries.) Here’s a column I wrote on Baron’s book back when it came out.

ISN’T THIS STORY KIND OF, WELL, STALE? Yale grades portray Kerry as a lackluster student.

The photo, on the other hand, looks like a career-killer to me.

No wonder his campaign was trying to keep this stuff out of the news!

UPDATE: Ann Althouse, who was way ahead on this story, is now saying I told you so. In the blogosphere, no story is ever too stale for that!

More perspective here. Multiply election-damning facts: (1) French was one of his best grades; (2) It was still a lousy 77; (3) And that’s even after living in France and Switzerland. And with that, let’s breathe a(nother) sigh of relief and let this story go.

MORE: Soxblog has another I-told-you-so. It’s never too late in the blogosphere!