PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: I was talking about PorkBusters on CNN earlier today. Ian Schwartz has the video. Jeff Jarvis — who was on the show too — has thoughts on PorkBusters and paramedia.

ALBION’S SEEDLING is a weblog devoted to Anglosphere matters.

TOM MAGUIRE:

Neither the Times nor the WaPo seem able to keep certain details of the Wilson/Plame/”16 Words” saga in proper order. . . .

The WaPo continues to amuse as they explain Wilson’s motivation:

“The Niger claim was central to the White House’s rationale for war.”

So central that it was not part of either the 2003 State of the Union or Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN on the case for war.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Heh.

SERENITY was number two in the box-office rankings this weekend.

BIPARTISAN IDIOCY: Here’s a list of congresspeople who are pushing the broadcast flag.

IT’S BOOBIES — and in a good cause! It’s the annual blogger boobiethon.

I HAVEN’T READ CHRIS MOONEY’S BOOK, The Republican War on Science, but I suspect that he makes a lot of points that — given my longstanding problems with the Bush Administration’s positions on cloning, etc., and the Kass Council — I probably agree with.

On the other hand, Virginia Postrel takes a different position:

U.S. scientists and their supporters tend to assume biomedical research is threatened by know-nothings on religious crusades. But as the Canadian law illustrates, the long-term threat to genetic research comes less from the religious right than from the secular left. Canada’s law forbids all sorts of genetic manipulations, many of them currently theoretical. It’s a crime, for instance, to alter inheritable genes.

And the law has provisions the fabled religious right never even talks about. It’s a crime to pay a surrogate mother or to make or accept payment for arranging a surrogate. It’s a crime to pay egg or sperm donors anything more than “receipted expenses,” like taxi fares. Since eggs are used not just in fertility treatments but in research, this prohibition stifles both.

Meanwhile, in backward, intolerant America objections to embryonic stem-cell research and therapeutic cloning are less politically persuasive than they were a few years ago. With the support of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Congress is close to a veto-proof majority to expand federal subsidies for embryonic stem-cell research. Many conservative leaders are uncomfortable opposing potentially lifesaving research.

Read the whole thing. The problem, alas, is that there are lots of anti-science types on both ends of the political spectrum.

SUICIDE BOMBING at the University of Oklahoma: Gateway Pundit has a roundup.

EVAN COYNE MALONEY HAS AN UPDATE on the Bucknell “hunting terrorists” fiasco. A secondary scandal is that the President of Bucknell University cannot use the word “inferred” correctly in a sentence.

GOOD NEWS FROM IRAQ, via the The New York Times:

Along the way, the American 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division and the Iraqi 2nd Battalion, 2nd Brigade of the 5th Division have become a rare pairing of the two armies in Iraq. While some Iraqi soldiers have been criticized by their American counterparts for a lack of discipline and commitment, the Iraqis at Normandy have become so efficient that they took the lead in military operations in their 1,200-square-mile area.

“When people say it’s horrible that you are training those Iraqi soldiers because they will never be as good as we are, they are missing the point,” said Capt. Mike Whitney, commander of the 1-30th’s Alpha Company. “No, the Iraqis will never be as good as we are, but they don’t have to be. They just have to be better than anybody they face here.”

Read the whole thing, which interestingly appears in the Sports section.

UPDATE: And don’t miss this post on military recruiting from The Mudville Gazette.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Dwight Green emails:

“No, the Iraqis will never be as good as we are, but they don’t have to be. They just have to be better than anybody they face here.”

It is funny that newspapers have been so critical of the U.S. Government (including the Knight Ridder papers), whether under Clinton or Bush. And I’m not just talking about getting somewhere between everything and most everything wrong on many unfolding stories.

I can’t get the San Jose Mercury News to change my subscription from every day to weekends only. If this were Iraq, I’m sure I could file this under U.S. military incompetence. As it is, they can only blame the contracted deliverer. As someone else has said, I’m tempted to say screw him and screw the company. However I won’t stoop to that level, even if the contractor is simply a mercenary.

Thank goodness the boots on the ground in Iraq are consistently better than many service employees here in the U.S. OK, a little harsh, but then they are too without ever looking in the mirror.

Thank goodness the military isn’t as bad as my newspaper.

Ouch.

I’M SUPPOSED TO BE ON CNN about 1:30 ET, talking about PorkBusters, Tom Delay, Judith Miller, etc. If you’re new to this, here’s the background, and here’s the PorkBusters webpage.

UPDATE: Here’s a transcript.

GENERAL DAVID PETRAEUS spoke at Princeton on the Iraq situation and TigerHawk has a report.

TOM MAGUIRE has more thoughts on the Judith Miller story. More here.

“THE MOST PAINFUL CORRECTION” at the New York Times.

UPDATE: More here and here.

BLOGGING HAS BEEN LIGHT, because we’re over hanging out with my grandmother. My mom’s off to Hilton Head for a while, and we’re swapping off the grandmother-sitting with my sister. I’ve been going through some of her old pictures and making digital copies. Here are a couple of her and my grandfather at Daytona in 1938, a year before my mother was born.

Everybody who’s old was young once; we know this, of course, but it’s surprisingly easy not to really think about it. Lileks could give you a thousand words on that, but all I can give you are the pictures.

SHOOTING DOGS in New Orleans. (Via Bill Quick).

DAVID EDELSTEIN liked Serenity, but really loved Firefly.

MORE ON BILL BENNETT AND INTERPRETIVE THEORY, from Jeff Goldstein.

Related thoughts on language here.

UPDATE: More thoughts here.

SCOOTER LIBBY AND JUDITH MILLER: Power Line has the documents.

IS SPACE SPENDING PORK? Sometimes.

WHAT I’M READING: Richard Morgan’s latest, Woken Furies: A Takeshi Kovacs Novel. I’m in the bookwriting crunch period, and I had tried to quit reading novels to get more done, but discovered that losing that downtime actually hurt rather than helped.

I like this book so far — I’ve liked his earlier Takeshi Kovacs novels, like Altered Carbon and Broken Angels. (Market Forces, on the other hand, left me cold and I didn’t finish it — a book with that title should have a more economically plausible setting.)

ON AVERAGE, THEN, I guess the Bennett Brothers are being treated fairly: “While Robert Bennett is drawing insufficient criticism for blaming Scooter Libby for Judith Miller’s stay in prison, his brother Bill Bennett is taking unjustified heat for comments he made on the subject of abortion.”

A DEFENSE of Yahoo! et al. in terms of cooperation with the Chinese government.

SOME THOUGHTS on the economic impact of an avian flu pandemic. Meanwhile, here’s troubling news about Tamiflu resistance.

UPDATE: “And the worst part? No chicken soup.” Uh oh.

I AGREE WITH PHIL BOWERMASTER STEPHEN GORDON: Why can’t we get the $100 laptop here?

NOTHING wild about Harry.

A PROTEST PHOTO, contextualized.

THIS ZOGBY POLL of Iraqi business attitudes finds them quite optimistic.

MY REVIEW OF RAY KURZWEIL’S The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology is out in today’s Wall Street Journal. The link is free to non-subscribers.

UPDATE: Reader Joe Ciccoro emails:

An interesting review of an interesting book.

“Mr. Kurzweil himself, thinking exponentially, imagines a plausible future, not so far away, with extended life-spans (living to 300 will not be unusual). . .”

Do we want that? Can we afford that?

Let us assume that those who will live to 300 will be active and productive, not demented for 200 of those years. Isn’t it likely that it will take a rather vigorous application of medical technology to keep them that way? We will simply not have the money, medical resources, or the physical space to accommodate that many more people. We count on disease, physical deterioration, and death to keep the population down, just like a herd of wildebeeste counts on lions to do the same.

If, in the future, we are able to expand lifespans to 300 years, it will necessarily be only for a few select individuals, not for the population as a whole. And it does not take much thought to consider how those few will be selected.

Actually, I don’t think that’s true. I’ve written on that very topic here and here. And Kurzweil argues that costs for life-extension technologies will decline just like costs for other technologies. At first, like cellphones, it will be very expensive and basically only for the rich. Not long afterward it will be ubiquitous.

Andrew Roth, meanwhile, has a post on the review that manages to work in Sandra Bullock.

JASON VAN STEENWYK says that Steve Lovelady is misrepresenting his work.

MORE QUESTIONS about who Judith Miller is protecting.

And if you read this item from Slate, you’ll see that rather a lot of people don’t think the official story adds up.

UPDATE: Hmm. Much ado about nothing?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Still more questions here: “her claims to be protecting a source and a principle are unbelievable. . . . Now, the Times has published a story about the release, and it doesn’t add up.”

TIGERHAWK REPORTS on a Condi Rice speech at Princeton.

Compare it to this AP report. (Via Roger Simon).

UPDATE: Another firsthand account that can be compared with media reports.

PUBLIUS:

While the most over-reported story (and the most debunked) story in the press this past August was the drafting of and the opposition to the Iraqi constitution, the most under-reported story in September is how ongoing negotiations have moderated large portions of the document’s opposition. In fact, as some of the contentious issues have been negotiated down, and the document has circulated amongst the general population, its approval and acceptance has become more likely. . . . Now, it appears that secular parties are rising to the top, while religious parties are beginning to wilt.

Read the whole thing.

JEFF GOLDSTEIN has more thoughts on intentionalism and interpretation.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: “Citizens Apply Internet Pressure.”

JEEZ, I HATE THESE THINGS: A reader sent me an email asking why I never link to The Belmont Club. Er, I do. But when I responded, I got this:

I apologize for this automatic reply to your email.

To control spam, I now allow incoming messages only from senders I have approved beforehand.

If you would like to be added to my list of approved senders, please fill out the short request form (see link below). Once I approve you, I will receive your original message in my inbox. You do not need to resend your message. I apologize for this one-time inconvenience.

Click the link below to fill out the request:

I didn’t click. Don’t send me email if you have this service on your site, unless you’ve added me first. I don’t have time — or inclination — to waste my time in order to save yours, and I think the whole thing is rather rude.

On the original topic, I like The Belmont Club and have linked to it often, just not lately, I guess. No special reason. Same with InstaPunk and a long list of other sites. Usually, if I haven’t linked a site in a while, it’s not because of any special reason or because I’m mad(heck, I still link Junkyard Blog sometimes). It’s just, you know, whatever blogging groove I’m in at the moment.

UPDATE: Okay, now I’m really unhappy. Reader Anne Sullivan sent me an email complaining that I hadn’t answered some earlier email that I never saw, and when I sent a reply, I got the same damn message above.

I repeat — DO NOT email me if you are too lazy to have added my name to your whitelist before you do.

And I’m not the only one to feel this way.

PORK PROGRESS?

Rep. Mark Udall has joined Republican budget hawks on legislation that would give the White House new authority to pare congressional spending bills. . . .

It would authorize the president to pull specific items out of massive appropriations bills and then force Congress to hold up-or-down votes on the proposed cuts. It would apply to fiscal year 2006 spending bills, plus the huge, multiyear transportation plan that critics have said is loaded with wasteful, pork barrel projects.

Stay tuned.

A QUESTION FOR WAYNE ALLARD on Colorado Pork.

A U.N. EFFORT TO TAKE OVER THE INTERNET domain system has been rejected. That seems like an awfully good thing to me.

UPDATE: Much more, including this observation: “But of course, it gets better. Because the UN bends itself into all kinds of twists to justify holding a summit on the Internet in a nation that does not allow open access to it.”

JONATHAN RAUCH on New Orleans: “In other words, if a severe hurricane struck, the city’s flooding and abandonment was not what would happen if the plan failed. It was the plan.”

IN THE MAIL: Pedro Sanjuan’s memoir, The UN Gang : A Memoir of Incompetence, Corruption, Espionage, Anti-Semitism and Islamic Extremism at the UN Secretariat. It’s blurbed by Abe Foxman, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and Larry Eagleburger.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: It pays to read Instapundit! The Foresight Conference covers nanotech from every angle, from today’s applications and policy issues to advanced research and long-term visionary goals. If the cost has held you back, you can contact the organizers — disclosure: I serve on their board — to get the “Instapundit group discount”. Call Elaine at +1 650 289 0860 extension 256, or email elaine@foresight.org for details.

LESSONS FROM KATRINA and the response:

Accounts from local officials of widespread looting and unspeakable violence — which now appear to have been significantly overstated — raised the specter at the time that soldiers might be forced to confront or even kill American citizens. The prospect of such a scenario added political and tactical complications to the job of filling the city with troops and set back relief efforts by days. . . .

Washington’s experience in Louisiana has prompted the White House to seek ways to shoulder locals out of the way if another similar disaster crops up in the future. President Bush has asked Congress to consider mechanisms that would allow him to quickly place the Pentagon in charge of such disasters, making it easier to use assets such as the 82nd Airborne Division, highly trained, regular Army soldiers who specialize in moving to an area quickly and securing it. As it was, cumbersome federal regulations generally prevent Mr. Bush from sending regular Army troops to enforce order in American cities unless they are expressly invited by a state’s governor.

For the Federal Emergency Management Agency, rumors of lawlessness simply delayed on-the-ground relief efforts and turned even routine errands into a cumbersome exercise. One official, who was posted at the Superdome, said federal rescuers and doctors were required to secure armed escorts even for short trips across the street.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Austin Bay thinks that federalizing, and militarizing, disaster response is probably a mistake.

JOHN FUND thinks that ABC is softening up the electorate for Hillary. I watched a little bit of Commander in Chief and I’m not sure it’ll work that way: I wonder if Hillary won’t wind up being compared to Geena Davis, which is more likely to harm her than to help her.

UPDATE: Hmm. Could the real beneficiary of all this strong-woman TV hype be Condi Rice?

MICHAEL TOTTEN is blogging from Lebanon, where he’ll be staying for quite some time.

IOWAHAWK SAVAGELY DEFENDS HIS STATE’S PORK against “a shadowy group of agenda-driven internet extremists.” As you might expect, though, he lost me at the puppy part.

THANK GOD PEOPLE ARE FINALLY CATCHING ON: Several years ago, my brother and I (as eco-folk band “The Meadowlarks”) released a song called “How Many Flowers Must Die,” about the senseless slaughter of our petalled friends on Valentine’s Day.

Driving home tonight, I heard an NPR story featuring a song by Brad Paisley called “How Many Flowers Have to Die?” addressing the same point in a highly similar fashion. (“Stop the senseless killing . . . Tell me, how many flowers have to die?”) Advantage: The Meadowlarks!

The Floral Rights movement is finally picking up steam. . . .

UPDATE: Of course, this effort from the same “we can invent a cheesy fake band and write and release a song in a single six-pack” era is also seeming pretty timely about now. Everything old is new again!

Hey, come to think of it, this effort is timely, too, though it wasn’t finished over a six-pack, alas.

MORE SERENITY reviews rounded up by Daniel Drezner.

By the way, I got an email from the PR guy who handled this, and he was ecstatic about how it’s worked out. I’m going to try to follow up on that later and get more details.

JUDITH MILLER IS OUT OF JAIL, and Plame expert Tom Maguire looks at what it may mean.

UPDATE: Mickey Kaus: “You mean she was sitting in jail all because she never bothered to inquire and find out that the waiver that would free her was genuine?”

Orin Kerr: “If you’re Bob Bennett, Judith Miller’s top-shelf lawyer, wouldn’t you try to clear this up before your client spent three months in jail? Something about this seems fishy to me.”

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE:

I’m ashamed that Lipscomb University, a school I attended for three years, hasn’t stepped forward to reject the $3 million federal subsidy it is supposed to get to build a parking garage, so that money can go to hurricane relief. A wealthy private Christian university really ought not to be asking taxpayers to fund its parking garage.

Lipscomb is currently in the middle of one of those alumni giving drives. I received the pledge/donations mailer just the other day. Until Lipscomb returns the $3 million, or donates it to hurricane relief, I won’t be donating another dime to the school – and I’ll be urging other alumni to take the same stand.

Meanwhile, Ed Morrissey is extending this principle to the United States Senate, and he’s not alone:

My good friend Mark Tapscott of the Heritage Foundation called me today and asked me why I had not yet blogged about Porkbusters. I told him that without having much to contribute that I didn’t want to distract from the effort made by other bloggers. He suggested that I could assist the program by expanding the Not One Dime More effort to Porkbusters … which I think is an excellent idea.

Not One Dime More targeted the National Republican Senatorial Committee for the failure of GOP leadership to get George Bush’s judicial nominees confirmed or even in process. Now we want to target both parties’ Congressional election commitees, the NRCC and the DCCC, by withholding funds while the parties act to protect their pork. For those representatives who refuse to pare the pork, we need to cut off their political oxygen until they turn blue and their campaign chests grow cold. Tell your Congressperson that while they protect the pork we discover, while they continue to vote for budgets with these useless and wasteful projects when the funding could defray the hurricane relief efforts, we will send Not One Dime to their efforts to re-elect their incumbents.

Seems like it would be smart for the GOP to get ahead of this issue, while it still can.

DARFUR UPDATE: Yesterday:

Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick Wednesday briefed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the current situation in Darfur.

“In general in Darfur, what you are seeing is [that] the large scale organized violence has substantially subsided,” said Mr. Zoellick. “But the situation remains very fragile and dangerous.”

Mr. Zoellick said that while Sudanese government forces have withdrawn, their government-backed Arab militias, known as the “janjaweed,” have not disbanded and are still contributing to the violence.

Today:

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said Thursday an unprecedented attack on a displaced persons’ camp in Sudan’s embattled Darfur region reportedly has killed 29 people.

Antonio Guterres, chief of the U.N. agency, cited aid workers’ reports of the attack Wednesday at Aro Sharow camp which also left 10 seriously injured. These reports said up to 300 armed Arab men on horses and camels attacked the camp in northwest Darfur and burned about 80 makeshift shelters.

Between 4,000-5,000 Sudanese were believed to be living in the camp and most reportedly fled into surrounding countryside, UNHCR said. The nearby village of Gosmeina was also reportedly attacked and burned.

Why don’t we send guns and trainers?

THIS SOMEWHAT UNDERCUTS claims that we’re living in some sort of 1984-world:

A federal judge has rejected former Attorney General John Ashcroft’s attempt to block a lawsuit by claiming that the threat of terrorism exempts the government from following peacetime regulations.

The decision allows a lawsuit by two Muslim men who were detained after the Sept. 11 attacks to go forward against Ashcroft and other high-ranking federal officials. The two, who were later deported, are seeking to hold the officials responsible for their confinement and alleged abuse at a federal jail in Brooklyn where Arab and Muslim men were held after the terror attacks.

U.S. District Judge John Gleeson’s ruling Wednesday also opens the door for depositions of Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller and other officials, who will be questioned under oath about their personal knowledge of detention policies if they are unable to successfully appeal the decision.

As I recall, though, the detainees were charged with various crimes — such as immigration law violations, etc. — not simply with “being Muslim.” And, in fact, these guys were apparently guilty: “Elmaghraby and Iqbal were deported to their home countries after serving time for charges unrelated to terrorism — Elmaghraby for a counterfeiting charge and Iqbal for fraud.”

Prosecutors enjoy nearly unlimited discretion on whom to prosecute, and if federal prosecutors chose to prosecute people they feared might have terror connections for unrelated crimes I don’t see how that can make out a constitutional violation. Perhaps, though, I misunderstand the claim, as the story isn’t very clear.

I’LL BE ON CNBC’S Kudlow & Company about 5:40 today, talking about the PorkBusters project.

If you’re just coming to this, here’s the background on the PorkBusters project, and here’s the PorkBusters page.

UPDATE: Ian Schwartz has video. Thanks, Ian!

COULD A TOM-DELAY-PAYBACK be on the way? Looks pretty thin to me, but that may not matter.

RUDY GIULIANI is still way ahead in Patrick Ruffini’s straw poll.

What’s more, his lead extends across different kinds of respondents. Online polls are iffy, but I think Patrick’s gets enough people from the group of activists and serious political junkies to be an indication — and it’s not even close, with Giuliani way ahead of the number-two candidate, George Allen. Giuliani is even ahead among those calling themselves conservative, as well as those calling themselves libertarian. He trails Allen among those who tag themselves as pro-life, but not by much. Overall, he looks pretty strong, and he’s certainly a stronger national candidate in the general election than Allen, who is far less well-known. Perhaps most tellingly, he leads in a runaway among fiscal conservatives, outpolling the next three candidates combined.

Could Giuliani be the Perot of this decade? If he wanted to be, I think he could. (Heck, if the two parties continue their spiral of mutual destruction, he might even get elected as an independent.)

MICKEY KAUS: “Here is Harriett Miers’ bio … and here’s Michael McConnell’s. Assume they’re both fine people. If you had to make a snap decision, which one should be on the United States Supreme Court?”

GRAND ROUNDS is up!

TAMMY BRUCE, JAMES HUDNALL, AND EUGENE VOLOKH: Profiled over at the PJ Media site.

SECURITY PROBLEMS AT NUCLEAR WEAPONS LABS? The source is a union that’s crossways with the feds, but given the experience at Los Alamos this bears scrutiny.

UPDATE: More here.

JOHN ROBERTS has been confirmed, by a rather hefty margin.

JOHN TABIN thinks that Tom Delay’s departure is a promising development in terms of controlling spending. I think he’s right.

UPDATE: Read this post from the GOP stalwarts at AnklebitingPundits:

The GOP ran against lobbyists. Not specific lobbyists but rather the very idea that “K Street fat cats” (as we called them) were drafting legislation and deciding policy for a decrepit Democrat majority. We ran against corruption, such as Rostenkowski and all that. We were then an anti-Washington party, dismissing the “corridors or power” as a giant piggy bank for the highest bidding special interest groups. Hillarycare was just icing on the cake.

And yet somewhere along the line we became what we despised. . . . Clearly the Congressional GOP has lost much of its bearings, and is turning into the 1992-1993 version of the Congressional Democrats. And the question arises, what’s the point of having a majority if that majority doesn’t stand for anything useful?

The GOP is at serious risk of losing a decisive chunk of its voters to a Perot-style movement.

GREG DJEREJIAN: “The 7/7 bombings were all about the Iraq war, right? Ah, but alas the French don’t appear to get a pass as a result of their noble non-interventionist policies…”

TOM DELAY UPDATE: Howard Kurtz has a roundup, and so does Joe Gandelman, who observes: “Now, as DeLay becomes the first House leader to go on trial in a century, the GOP is at a perilous crossroads — and so are the Democrats.”

I think we’ll see more of this late-1990s-style ethics warfare come around again. It’s a pretty standard second-term phenomenon.

JEFF GOLDSTEIN has thoughts on the media’s Katrina errors.

IN THE MAIL: Jay Greene’s Education Myths : What Special-Interest Groups Want You to Believe About Our Schools and Why it Isn’t So. Thesis: “One major reason people find it plausible that schools are inadequately funded is that they know many schools aren’t performing well. But while adequate funding is a necessary condition for school success, it is far from sufficient by itself.”

HEH: “I love the way Glenn Reynolds comes in for a gratuitous beating.”

Doesn’t everyone?

PORK UPDATE: Looks like we’re seeing signs of awakening sense:

The Senate was up to its old tricks Monday evening. It prepared to pass, without debate and under a procedure requiring unanimous consent, a federal infusion of $9 billion into state Medicaid programs under the pretext of Katrina relief. The bill, drafted in secret under bipartisan auspices, was stopped cold when Republican Sen. John Ensign voiced his objection. . . .

Fear has enveloped Republicans who see themselves handing the banner of fiscal integrity to the Democrats. The GOP is losing the rhetoric war, even though Democrats mostly push for higher domestic spending, because Republicans, while standing firm against tax increases, have also declined to cut spending. Fearing the worst in the 2006 and 2008 elections, Republican senators who would not be expected to do so are looking to McCain to lead the party back to fiscal responsibility. . . .

President Bush’s opposition to the Grassley-Baucus bill was meaningless. Bush could not kill the bill by objecting, but any senator could, and Ensign did. Ensign noted that Congress had appropriated an extra $62 billion in the wake of Katrina.

Read the whole thing.

BIRD FLU IN SOUTHEAST ASIA: Gateway Pundit has a roundup.

MICHAEL YON has another report from Iraq posted.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY has more thoughts on Louisiana:

As we’ve also noted, nine months before Katrina, three officials of Louisiana’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness were indicted for obstructing an audit of the use, or misuse, of federal funds for flood-mitigation activities.

Louisiana ranks third in the nation in the number of indicted officials per capita. Just the past generation has seen a governor, an attorney general, a federal judge, a state Senate president and a swarm of local officials convicted of assorted crimes.

Police Superintendent Eddie Compass didn’t say why he suddenly resigned. But it comes after his department announced that about 250 New Orleans police officers — 15% of the force — could face punishment for leaving their posts without permission during Katrina.

Before Katrina, New Orleans was a crime-ridden city with a murder rate 10 times the national average. Only one in four murders result in a conviction, largely because retaliation against potential witnesses is common. Yet New Orleans had only three cops per 1,000 residents, a ratio less than half that of Washington, D.C.

It’s a serious problem, and another reason why we shouldn’t just be throwing money at rebuilding efforts.

TENNESSEE REP. MARSHA BLACKBURN is blogging about pork over at RedState, and responding to criticisms from commenters. More here.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Several folks have heard back from their elected representatives. Here are some posts about the responses they got.

Dave Price was impressed with Barack Obama’s response.

Reader Julie Martin-Korb wrote Paul Sarbanes and reports: “Mr. Sarbanes is proud of his spending initiatives, and he is opposed to tax cuts for the wealthy ‘in this time of need,’ but the only sentence in his letter that is even remotely responsive to my request is this: ‘Simultaneously, Congress must continuously review federal spending in order to ensure that our Nation pursues a responsible economic course while providing needed recovery funds.’”

From Rochester, New York, Evan Dawson of 13 WHAM TV News emails:

I’m a reporter for the ABC News affiliate in Rochester, NY, and the pork-for-relief plan was our lead story on Monday, September 19th. Here are quotes and responses from two representatives:

From Rep. Randy Kuhl (R): “Are there some earmarks in the transportation bill that are key to economic development? In this area, with some of the earmarks that I was able to put in, they are. So I would be very hesitant to have them removed, because I think you have to have economic development in this country if you’re going to be able to support hurricane relief.” In other words, he’s not willing to trade in his pork, as it would undermine the country’s capacity to charitably support hurricane recovery efforts.

From Rep. Louise Slaughter (D), when asked about trasnportation bill pork: “A lot of it is frivolous.” However, when pressed regarding her own pork (Slaughter secured, among other things, $1.6 million for the Rochester Art Walk — an outdoor museum), she responded, “Well, we’ll look and see. That is indeed, as you point out — it’s in the transportation bill. We’ll look and see what can be postponed and what can be put off.” But she closed by saying that her first preference is to eliminate “Bush’s tax cuts for the extraordinarily wealthy.”

As a reporter, I take no position on the pork-for-relief proposal. I just wanted to help alert the public as to where their federal representatives stand.

I hope that lots of local media folks will do the same thing. Meanwhile, Matt Duffy continues his ongoing, though largely fruitless, dialogue with Rep. Tom Price of Georgia, and thinks that Price’s office is mostly interested in “slowing down my efforts at getting Price to answer these specific questions.” Gee, d’ya think?

Reader Robert Hahn shares this scintillating response from Rep. Donald Payne:

Thank you very much for your email. I always appreciate the chance to hear from constituents. Your issues are of concern to me; please be assured that I will take your views under consideration. If you haven’t already, please stop by my website at www.house.gov/payne.
Please feel free to email me again, and thank you very much for your letter.

Hahn adds: “I suppose if I get a non-form letter reponse in the next couple of days, I’ll forward that along.” We’ll be waiting!

Maybe for a while. Reader Jim Uren emails: “I emailed [Rep.] Anna Eshoo D-CA five days ago. No response.”

Zachary Rethorn notes that Sen. Mike Dewine is still reviewing proposals.

UPDATE: This column on PorkBusters gets it right: “It may be that only 30% of the items on the Porkbusters wishlist will be cut in, say, the first fiscal year after the Porkbusters campaign begins. That does not preclude another 30% or so being cut the next year. And the year after that as well. And so on. Changing the entitlement culture is an incremental process. But eventually, the small gains can add up and we can achieve a budgetary process that is more fiscally responsible than the one we are currently saddled with. Recognizing this fact will go a long way towards fashioning a successful anti-pork political strategy. And it is not like the political facts on the ground don’t make it easy to cut pork.” Indeed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s more, from Republican columnist Frank Cagle:

Bush may still be popular with the branch of the Republican Party that only cares about abortion, stem-cell research and displaying the Ten Commandments, but the fiscal-conservative small-government don’t-tread-on-me wing of the party has had enough.

He offers some advice on what the GOP needs to do to avoid disaster, which he sees as otherwise inevitable.

Meanwhile, Carroll Andrew Morse is worried that Katrina reconstruction will turn into pork. I’d say it’s a well-founded concern.

And reader C.J. Burch emails:

I have to admit, I’m surprised more of the fiscally responsible conservatives in the mainstream haven’t signed on to this idea. They certainly should. Why haven’t they? Where’s Robert Novak? Where’s George Will? Have you gotten any help from the folks over at the Corner? How about Fred Barnes and Bill Kristol?

How about ‘em? My sense is that while complaining about corruption and waste and how they doom our society is considered acceptable punditry, attempting to do anything about the problem is seen as hopelessly naive.

MORE SERENITY REVIEWS: Here, here, here (“Where Sith was fast food that left you feeling nothing but gas, Serenity was a seven course meal.”)

Also here, here, and here, as well as here, here, here, and here.

Also here, and here.

UPDATE: Here’s another, from Will Collier.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon talk about stuff, in Time.

MORE: Still more blog reviews, here, here (“Much better than anything Lucas has done in the last 10 years. Go see it.”), here, and here.

IPOD NANO PROBLEMS: “Apple Computer Inc. , responding to consumer complaints that the screen on its sleek, recently introduced iPod cracks too easily, said on Wednesday it will replace any defective units.”

EVERYBODY MAKES MISTAKES, but this is a fairly big one:

Judge John G. Roberts Jr., nominated to be chief justice of the United States, was not the author of an unsigned memorandum on libel law that was the focus of an article published in The New York Times yesterday. The Times erroneously attributed it to him.

Bruce Fein, a Washington lawyer who was general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission in the Reagan administration, said yesterday that he wrote the memorandum, a caustic critique of New York Times v. Sullivan, the 1964 Supreme Court decision that revolutionized American libel law, and of the role played by the press in society. . . .

Three people quoted in the article discussed the Fein memorandum, provided to them by a reporter, on the assumption that it had been written by Judge Roberts.

Oops. (Via Bill Quick, who observes “Trust, but verify.” Indeed.)

AUSTIN BAY has some observations on Zarqawi’s role in Iraq.

TWO WORDS YOU can’t say at Bucknell. They’re playing right into Evan Coyne Maloney’s hands by acting as unpaid marketers for his documentary!

CHARGES OF RACISM in the Tennessee Legislature.

TOM DELAY has been indicted. I’m on travel and haven’t had time to read the many emails I’ve gotten proclaiming his obvious guilt or persecuted innocence, but it’s obviously an embarrassment for the G.O.P. On the other hand, maybe his replacement will be better at finding pork . . . .

HOWARD KURTZ has a roundup on the PorkBusters effort.

ROGER SIMON wants your help.

MICKEY KAUS wonders why the New York Times hates poor people: “TimeSelect–and with it Web access to columnists such as Paul Krugman–is unavailable to those too poor to have credit cards. . . . News of the NYT policy comes at a time when Hurricane Katrina has raised profound issues of race, class, and gender.” Heh.

I FORGOT TO LINK THIS YESTERDAY, but Patrick Ruffini’s monthly GOP straw poll is up again. Giuliani and Rice are once more in the lead, in the respective “real” and “fantasy” categories.

AS I MENTIONED LAST NIGHT, I liked the Serenity preview. In fact, I liked it enough that I ordered the Firefly DVD set. I figured that for 29 bucks it had to be worth it.

KATRINA FOLKLORE VS. FACT, over at Gateway Pundit.

MORE GREEN, LESS RED over at the PorkBusters site, but there’s still a long way to go. If you haven’t called your Senators and Representative and asked them what locally directed federal spending they’d cut, you may want to go ahead and do so. And if you hear back, email me with the subject line “Pork Response” (and don’t use that for anything else, please) and I’ll follow up.

THE SUPREME COURT has granted cert. in the Cuno case. That probably makes this conference on state tax incentives and the Cuno case at the University of Minnesota a lot more relevant.

ANNE APPLEBAUM on the Louisiana pols’ demands:

Surely this is not the time for the government to write blank checks, for legislators to get greedy about unnecessary canals in their districts, or for federal agencies to launch projects that make future flooding more likely. Surely this is the time to spend money wisely. Right?

Wrong — and if you thought otherwise, then you, like me, are still learning how deeply corrupt America’s legislative branch has become. . . . Despite the fact that Louisiana spent hundreds of millions of dollars on water projects that turned out to be unnecessary, or even damaging, the proposal makes it possible to suspend cost-benefit analyses.

In its scale and sheer disregard for common sense, the Louisiana proposal breaks new ground.

But, as she says, it’s just a more-dramatic case of the usual pork. I wonder if we won’t see a revival of Balanced-Budget Amendment enthusiasm, and perhaps even a revival of Perot-style third-party enthusiasm (which would be devastating for the Republicans) if things don’t come under control.

ORIN KERR: “[Y]ou can bet that Justice Breyer will uphold the basic idea of anticipatory warrants. Shortly before he became a Justice, Breyer approved anticipatory warrants under the Fourth Amendment. . . . Note how Breyer replaces the textual requirement that ‘no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause’ with a somewhat different inquiry into whether the warrant ‘can help assure that the search takes place’ when probable cause exists.”

MONTANA — THE PORK STATE!

The Bozeman City Commission voted unanimously Monday night to keep $4 million in federal appropriations for a downtown parking garage — despite pleas to redirect the funds to Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.

Not very impressive. (More background here).

NIKON HAS ACKNOWLEDGED PROBLEMS WITH ITS DIGITAL SLRS: I’m not sure if this covers the autofocus problem that I experienced.

SO, AS I MENTIONED EARLIER, I went to see the blogger-screening of Serenity. I liked it. There were quite a few people from the law school and the local blogging community there, and my sense is that most people agreed.

The trailer was quite reflective of the film. I thought the acting was good, and the whole film had a human touch that many science-fiction action flicks lack. The cinematography was more TV-like than movie-like, but I actually liked that effect. And the sound, often boomy and annoying in films of this type, was excellent.

One of my colleagues attended (not a blogger, but a serious geek — yes, the stillsuit one — who has watched all the Firefly episodes and who is a huge Joss Whedon fan) and she liked it a lot, and noted the presence of the trademark Whedon humor.

I enjoyed it, and I think it will do very well.

UPDATE: Other blog reviews here and here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Also here, here, here, and here.

And here!

“THE MANOLO, he is the six-figure blogger.”

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY:

How much do U.S. taxpayers owe Louisiana? Surely not the whole $250 billion that the state now wants. Congress needs to stand up for fiscal sanity.

Call us cheap or churlish, but our sympathy for the Pelican State’s political leaders is starting to fade. Louisiana has been ravaged by two hurricanes, much of its largest city is in ruins and huge numbers of its people are without homes. All true.

But if America’s spirit of compassion has no limits, its public purse does. The federal government is rightly helping Louisiana clean up, rebuild and guard against future catastrophes.

But it’s not obliged to hand over hundreds of billions in aid with no questions asked. . . .

Congress already has approved $62.3 billion in Katrina aid for the Gulf Coast and will no doubt have to allocate several billion more to cover damage from Hurricane Rita. So even by the standards of post-Katrina politics, Louisiana is starting to look a tad greedy.

Very few will come forward to make such an observation at this point. But more should, and Congress needs to muster up the courage, for once, to fulfill its obligations to American taxpayers.

Actually, a lot of people seem willing to make that observation, which is a testament to the extent of the Louisiana pols’ overreaching. Indeed, I think we’ll see a real — and much-needed — debate on whether to fund the rebuilding of New Orleans, beyond the port, at all.

UPDATE: Nick Gillespie urges politeness.

OUCH.

INDEED: “So we now have two major reports — one on the New Orleans Times Picayune website and the other in the L.A. Times — about the way in which the major media spread all sorts of hysteria about the conditions inside flooded New Orleans. How will this jibe with all the talk about how the media threw off its self-imposed shackles after 9/11 and found their critical and passionate voice yet again?”

MORE THOUGHTS on higher education, from Victor Davis Hanson.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Here’s a Nashville story — with video — interviewing Blake Wylie on Tennessee pork and PorkBusters. Contact your local media and suggest they cover cuts in your area!

UPDATE: Could this be a sign of progress?

Republican leaders are taking pains to demonstrate a growing commitment to fiscal restraint one week after a contentious standoff with House conservatives over federal offsets to pay for recovery efforts in the hurricane-beleaguered Gulf Coast region. . . .

Unlike most years, GOP House and Senate leaders will offer a continuing resolution that temporarily funds the government at the lowest of three possible levels: the current fiscal 2005 level, or the level passed in either the House or the Senate appropriations bills this year, according to knowledgeable GOP aides.

Like the space elevator experiment below, it’s a baby step, but it’s a step.

RAY KURZWEIL’S NEW BOOK, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology is now out, and getting considerable attention (along with an enviable Amazon ranking). Here’s a review from the San Jose Mercury News and here’s a piece in the Boston Globe. A roundup of some blogosphere posts can be found here.

SPACE ELEVATOR UPDATE:

A private group has taken one small step toward the prospect of building a futuristic space elevator.

LiftPort Group Inc., of Bremerton, Wash., has successfully tested a robot climber — a novel piece of hardware that reeled itself up and down a lengthy ribbon dangling from a high-altitude balloon.

The test run, conducted earlier this week, is seen as a precursor experiment intended to flight validate equipment and methods to construct a space elevator. This visionary concept would make use of an ultra-strong carbon nanotube composite ribbon stretching up to 62,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) from Earth into space.

It’s a baby step. But it’s a step.