TECH QUESTIONS: First, is the Video iPod really as good as Warren Bell says it is? I mean, he’s a TV guy and everything, but still …

Second, I’d like to interview people by phone for podcasts. Is one of the various computer-based VOIP setups — e.g., Skype, Vonage, Google Talk, etc. — easier to use? I’d like to call people on Skype or whatever, record the results to a .wav file, then edit it in Adobe Audition. Will Skype or whatever let you record your calls, or are there third-party solutions to do that? (Is it reWire compatible?)

And is there something that makes it easy to do the same kind of thing with video, to create a video podcast? I’ve been meaning to research this, but why not cut out the middleman and ask you folks . . . .

UPDATE: Spoons emails:

It’s every bit as good as you’ve heard. There are other machines that might be better pure video devices, but iPod is hands down the best MP3 player around, due largely to its integration with the phenomenal iTunes. With the ever-expanding library of video and TV offerings there, not to mention some fantastic video podcasts, there’s plenty of video content available. While flying to Texas for Frank J and Sarah K’s wedding, I watched the entire first season of “The Office”, one of several shows available through iTunes.

As for the gadget itself, the screen is phenomenal. It’s incredibly bright, clear, and crisp. It’s also amazingly easy to watch a screen of that size, even for semi-extended periods of time. If you’re already familar with iPods, you know the controls are simple and intuitive.

I bought the 60GB version not because I think I’ll ever fill more than 30 gigs, but because the battery life is significantly better. Video does suck juice quickly, but even on the 30 you ought to be able to get about 2 hours. I can get at least 3 with the 60. Of course, if you stick to music, the battery will last much longer.

If you’re tempted to buy the video iPod — buy it. You won’t be disappointed.

Dang. I was afraid of that. And Rob Port emails:

First, the video iPod is amazing. My girlfriend and I got each other one (using my PJ Media money) for Christmas. Its my first iPod, and I’m blown way. I wasn’t sure I’d like watching video on the small screen, but its actually pretty good. And hooking the iPod up to my TV is even better. The picture is about what you’d get over an antenna. Perfectly acceptable.

As for podcasting using Skype, I’ve been using a program called Mix Cast Live to record my podcasts with a state Rep. here in ND over Google Talk. It works pretty great. A little bit of echo on the person I’m calling’s end, but that doesn’t show up on the recording and can be minimized by adjusting volume. It works good. Not broadcast quality, but good enough for my purposes.

Thanks.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Don Wolff sends a link to this review from G4TV — they like the Creative Zen Vision better in many ways.

MORE: Evan Coyne Maloney emails:

You ask: “is the Video iPod really as good as Warren Bell says it is?”

One word answer: YES!!!

Also, as a provider of video content, I am impressed with how easy it is to add video podcasts to the iTunes Music Store. There’s a little bit of a wait before the entry appears, but other than submitting the podcast URL and picking a category for it, you really don’t have to do anything. As someone with virtually zero musical talent, it is pretty cool to be able to type your name into the iTunes Music Store and see a listing come up.

Very cool. I’m weakening . . . . Especially as Ian Schwartz emails:

By the way, about the video iPod. I got one about 2 weeks ago and am extremely happy with it. I just ordered a nice skin at www.iskin.com, which I strongly suggest getting if you like to keep your product clean. I used to own an iPod, an old one, and the back of [the metal part] is stained with every finger print on it. Also, tonight I just got this program that lets you convert .wmv to .mp4 (the file type that is used to put video on an iPod) .. so now with videos I put on my site, I put a download link for .mp4 so people can put video on their iPod. Pretty cool if you ask me.

So, basically, all the cool video guys like it.

HERE’S AN INTERESTING REPORT:

Saddam Hussein loyalists who violently opposed January elections have made an about-face as Thursday’s polls near, urging fellow Sunni Arabs to vote and warning al Qaeda militants not to attack.

In a move unthinkable in the bloody run-up to the last election, guerrillas in the western insurgent heartland of Anbar province say they are even prepared to protect voting stations from fighters loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.

Graffiti calling for holy war is now hard to find. . . .

But Saddam loyalists have turned against Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant whose fighters travel to Iraq from across the Arab world to blow themselves up in a bid to spark sectarian civil war.

“Zarqawi is an American, Israeli and Iranian agent who is trying to keep our country unstable so that the Sunnis will keep facing occupation,” said a Baathist insurgent leader who would give his name only as Abu Abdullah.

Well, dang. They’ve finally figured that out. Next they’ll catch on that Al Jazeera is a CIA front . . . .

But this can’t be making Zawahiri very happy:

Egyptian-born Ayman al-Zawahri said the global Islamic community had “no hope for victory” until all Muslims signed on to the al-Qaida-led jihad.

Oops. Sorry, pal.

Much more on what’s going on among the various factions in Iraq can be found in this piece from StrategyPage, which has been noting this split for a while.

UPDATE: More bad news for Zawahiri: “Moderate Muslim clerics in about half a million mosques across Bangladesh on Friday preached that suicide bombers are the enemy of Islam.” Heh. Indonesia isn’t looking so good for him either: “Volunteers from Indonesia’s largest Islamic organisation will guard churches across the world’s most populous Muslim nation on Christmas amid fears of terrorist attacks on those places, the group said on Friday.”

Did I say “heh?” Well, I’ll say it again. Heh.

A PACK, NOT A HERD:

A Mexican national is in federal custody in Honolulu after witnesses said he threatened a sleeping baby and lunged toward the cockpit during a flight from Los Angeles to Honolulu Saturday night.

Passengers arriving on Saturday night’s Northwest Airlines flight told authorities they were scared when Santiago Lol Tizol, 37, raged through the aisles, ignoring the flight crew and threatening to kill the baby.

He was believed to have been traveling alone, authorities told KITV-TV in Honolulu.

Passengers tackled and restrained Tizol when he lunged toward the cockpit.

Another air-safety success, without the involvement of the Homeland Security folks.

CATHY SEIPP offers advice to the L.A. Times: “Staff writers at The Times often turn in very little copy (one story a week is not atypical), which means some are getting paid around $2,000 per mediocre, grudging piece. Wouldn’t it be better to spend that money on freelancers (or bloggers!) who, if they can’t work themselves up into something worth reading, don’t get paid? Let the heads roll, I say.”

Read the whole thing. It certainly seems clear that bloggers know more about the L.A. Times than the L.A. Times knows about bloggers . . .

UPDATE: Meanwhile, way back in 2001, Matt Welch was writing:

What I mean to say is that there’s a new wind blowing, friends, and people who have been domesticated in mono-daily newsrooms these past 30 years will not be the ones to detect it first. . . .

It’s not just a question of underappreciated genius anymore. Something has been going on these past three months (not to mention the five years before that), yet 95% of large media companies – especially monopolist newspapers – seem utterly ignorant of it, or at best powerless to react to it. Have you ever been the hiring man at a newspaper? I have, twice. One of the fundamental duties of that job, it seems to me, is to be hyper-aware of the talent fermenting in your own back yard, and nimble enough to make room for it on your staff. Think that happens at any dominant newspaper in the country? This, ladies and gentlemen, is what we mean by the term “uncompetitive industry.”

And yet, they still haven’t learned.

MORE: Reader Michael Gebert emails:

I think you’re being unfair to staff writers at the LA Times. If Mickey Kaus is right about the layers of editors at that paper, writers may only write one piece a week, but I’d bet they write it ten times before it runs.

Glad I don’t own stock.

GATEWAY PUNDIT has photos and video from the Dongzhou massacre in China.

THE MEANING OF “GOOD NEWS:” Phil Bowermaster does some research and learns some things about the press.

RACE RIOTS IN SYDNEY: (Via NewsAlert).

Tim Blair has much more.

UPDATE: Bill Quick has a question.

THE CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES is up!

TOM MAGUIRE looks at Viveca Novak’s tale.

THE POTATO GUNS arrived yesterday. I’ll post a report later.

UPDATE: A smashing success. I wish you could have seen the Insta-Wife and Insta-Daughter chasing each other around and giggling.

TIGERHAWK looks at the geopolitical significance of the Miss World contest.

MORE MEMORIES OF RICHARD PRYOR. And Bill Quick remembers Eugene McCarthy.

FROM CNN’S RELIABLE SOURCES THIS MORNING:

On the media and U.S. v. insurgent propaganda

[UPI CORRESPONDENT] PAM HESS: If there’s a criticism to be made of the American media…[it] is that we are quite vigilant about U.S. propaganda. We are less so about insurgent propaganda. The 24-hour news cycle feeds into that, but we don’t quite know what to do with the information that they send us, so it becomes he said-she said reporting.

It’s not online yet, but they emailed it to me.

UPDATE: It’s online now, here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ian Schwartz has video.

GEORGE WILL on law schools and the Solomon Amendment:

A striking alteration of America’s political landscape since 1960 has been the marginalization — actually, the self-marginalization — of the professoriate. An inhospitable campus climate has prompted the growth of public policy think tanks and publications that sustain a conservative intelligentsia that helps elect and staff conservative administrations. And faculties have adopted increasingly adversarial stances toward an increasingly conservative public and its institutions.

Today’s schools bristle with moral principles that they urge upon the — so they think — benighted society beyond their gates. But as Roberts blandly reminded the schools regarding their desire to bar military recruiters: “You are perfectly free to do that, if you don’t take the money.”

Somehow it makes me think of Dan Aykroyd in Ghostbusters:

Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn’t have to produce anything! You’ve never been out of college! You don’t know what it’s like out there! I’ve *worked* in the private sector. They expect *results*.

Too many people in academia don’t seem to realize that the money has to come from somewhere. And you hear people talk about how academia needs to adopt an “adversarial stance” toward the larger culture, without thinking much about why the larger culture would want to pay for that.

KOS TAKES A BOLD STAND AGAINST AFFIRMATIVE ACTION and in favor of pure merit.

Hey, maybe he really is the voice of moderation in today’s Democratic Party . . . .

THE TROUBLE WITH THIS REPORT is that you have to ask yourself: Would you have relied on the French?

More importantly, the persistence of the whole issue demonstrates the colossal folly of the Bush Administration’s effort to take the United Nations seriously in 2002, something that — like Bush’s failure to fire a lot of people at the CIA following 9/11 — has led to considerable grief and no discernible benefit.

UPDATE: On the “would you have relied on the French?” point, reader Betsy Gorisch emails: “Well, that’s one trouble with the report. The other trouble with it is, why would you believe them about it now?”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader George Gooding emails:

If the French knew in 2001 and 2002 that the Niger reports were baseless, why was the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs Director for Nonproliferation telling the United States on November 22, 2002 (per the SSCI report) that they had intelligence showing that Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium from Niger?

For more on this, and some pertinent questions that need to be answered Link

There are a lot of questions.

OIL DEPOT EXPLODES IN BRITAIN: Here’s a big roundup, and Sean Hackbarth has more, including photos.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOT MUCH: Michael Crowley’s item in the New York Times Magazine about how conservative blogs are more effective is up and, well, it’s not much. Especially in light of all the brouhaha about it. It’s about 200-300 words, quoting only “liberal activist Matt Stoller” and (indirectly) other unnamed Democrats, about the message discipline of Republicans. OK. Whatever.

UPDATE: Yes, the bit about Drudge being quick to pass on the latest tidbit from the blogosphere is also dubious. Drudge is, in fact, pretty aloof where the blogosphere is concerned. In fact, the whole “superior message discipline” theory seems doubtful to me.

The Democrats’ real problems come from their positions, and their candidates, not from Republicans’ media operation. They’re still in denial about that, though, and Crowley’s story couldn’t be better for the Republicans if Karl Rove had written it himself.

RADLEY BALKO has much more on the Maye case in Mississippi. There’s more here, and you should probably just scroll around his blog as he’s got other posts as well. I hope that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour will look into this ASAP.

IT’S A BUSH LANDSLIDE! First one of those I’ve seen, actually . . . .

HERE’S A NARNIA ROUNDUP, and here’s an article from the (London) Times condemning over-literalism.

UPDATE: Reader Melissa Feagins emails with this review:

Leaving aside the Christian allegory and opinions as to the writing ability of C.S. Lewis, my husband and I took our three kids to see The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe today. The theater was full and not just of parents with kids. I saw teens and several older couples with no children along. My eight-year old dubbed it, “the best movie ever!” It’s a two and a half hour movie and my five-year old sat almost perfectly still through the whole thing and there was none of the usual chatter you hear from children in theaters. More unbelievably to myself, I sat through the whole thing. I have arthritis in one of my hips and I never sit down for more than an hour at a time anymore and that not very often. I left the movie stiff and limping, but more than entertained. It was well worth the $25.00 it cost us to see the show. If you haven’t taken the InstaFamily to this film, please do. It’s wonderful in every way: faithful to the book (the beginning scene does explain how the children come to be living with the Professor, but that’s the only real difference and a great addition, I think), marvelous acting, great cinematography and effects. I’m no expert on literature or film, but I LOVED this movie and highly recommend it to all.

The audience reviews seem to be quite positive.

THE CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES is up! More blog carnivals here.

STEPHEN HAYES:

FOR THE SECOND TIME IN recent weeks the Department of Defense has denied a request from The Weekly Standard to release unclassified documents recovered in postwar Iraq. These documents apparently reveal, in some detail, activities of Saddam Hussein’s regime in the years before the war. This second denial could also be the final one: According to two Pentagon sources, the program designed to review, translate, and analyze data from the old Iraqi regime may be shuttered at the end of December, not just placing the documents beyond the reach of journalists, but also making them inaccessible to policymakers.

As a consequence, the ongoing debate over the Iraq war and its origins is taking place without crucial information about the former Iraqi regime and its relationships with presumed U.S. allies and known U.S. enemies.

Read the whole thing.

SOUND FINANCIAL ADVICE from Megan McArdle. Especially the stuff about spending and debt.

One other piece of advice: Marry someone who has a level head about money. I’m always amazed at how often people’s financial problems are really marital problems.

MICHAEL TOTTEN is now blogging from Cairo.

Meanwhile, Bill Roggio is blogging from Ramadi.

RICHARD PRYOR has died. So has Eugene McCarthy.

SHADES OF TIANANMEN: Gateway Pundit has a big roundup and links to audio.

UPDATE: Big blog-reaction roundup here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A useful observation: “China’s development, though extraordinary, is one that is leaving behind several hundred million people. Though they are not necessarily in worse-off terms than before the economic rennaissance began, in relative terms the gulf is ever yawning. China’s development has become something like an egg – the smooth, hard outside shell gives the impression of stability and depth though it shrouds a fragile interior. . . .Secondly and most importantly, we must remember that Shanghai ain’t China, it’s the glistening, candy shell, and the windowpieces for the passing shoppers to see. The inside of the store, however impressive the window, is in fact quite different.”

A NASTY PLANE CRASH IN NIGERIA: Port Harcourt is the hometown of my Nigerian relatives, though most reside in Lagos now. I haven’t heard any news from them, though.

SO I’VE BEEN READING THE PAGE PROOFS for An Army of Davids, and that’s been fun: No matter how many times you read a manuscript in process — and it’s always a lot — when you see it set in type and formatted as a book it looks fresh and different.

One thing that has struck me is how much of a debt I owe to Virginia Postrel. The book’s topic is different from hers, but themes and ideas from The Substance of Style, and The Future and Its Enemies (and references to them both, along with some of her New York Times columns) just keep cropping up. Virginia’s books have gotten a lot of attention, of course, but I think that in twenty years we’ll still look back and see them as underrated. If you haven’t read them, you should.

Jeff Jarvis and Nick Denton crop up a lot, too. Visionaries all!

AN OPEN LETTER TO HALEY BARBOUR on the Corey Maye case.

SATELLITE RADIO UPDATE: People have asked about reception. It works fine in the car, with the car antenna simply sitting on the dash. (The manual says that may not work well, but driving around West Knoxville it seems to work fine). I haven’t used it like a Walkman yet, with the portable antenna.

NEW SHOPPING TREND: “[S]hoppers have embraced a shift away from traditional gifts, such as sweaters and watches, toward experience gifts such as spa treatments and trips that enhance the lifestyles of friends and relatives.”

Of course, I noted this in 2003.

FROM HOMOSEXUALITY AS MENTAL DISEASE to “extreme bias” against homosexuality as a mental disease, in just a few decades:

Mental health practitioners say they regularly confront extreme forms of racism, homophobia and other prejudice in the course of therapy, and that some patients are disabled by these beliefs. As doctors increasingly weigh the effects of race and culture on mental illness, some are asking whether pathological bias ought to be an official psychiatric diagnosis.

So when homosexuality was unpopular, it was a mental disorder. Now that it’s popular, not liking it is a mental disorder. Evidence for either position? Not much. My diagnosis: How about we recognize a disorder consisting of turning intellectual fashions into pseudoscience? Seems like this is a case of “mental health” consisting largely of agreeing with whatever political opinions psychiatrists hold at a particular moment in time. Psychiatry, heal thyself. (Via Either End).

UPDATE: Heh.

MORE: Related thoughts here:

I might take those who advocate a new diagnosis more seriously if they included hatred of conservatives as another example of pathological bias. But, even then, it’s the individual’s intense hatred that’s the real “disorder” — regardless of its object.

Indeed. Dr. Sanity has further thoughts, too.

Still more here.

MORE: Still more disapproval of this approach.

JIGSHA DESAI videoblogs a Christmas Tree cutting, and offers expert advice on which tree to pick, while Dipti Vaidya interviews people about their favorite Christmas ornament.

NEWSBEAT 1 on the Canadian elections: “The Conservatives are clearly targeting the long-suffering middle-class — too rich to be poor, too poor to be rich. Martin seems content to go after anyone anywhere who might be bribed to vote Liberal.”

WHETHER YOU’RE A FEMINIST or a Mobilist, your carnival is up. Other carnivals are here.

HERE’S MORE on the Mississippi no-knock case involving Cory Maye mentioned below.

MASSACRE IN CHINA:

Armed with guns and shields, hundreds of riot police sealed off a southern Chinese village after fatally shooting demonstrators and searched for the protest organizers, villagers said Friday. . . .

During the demonstration Tuesday in Dongzhou, a village in southern Guangdong province, thousands of people gathered to protest the amount of money offered by the government as compensation for land to be used to construct a wind power plant.

Police started firing into the crowd and killed several people, mostly men, villagers reached by telephone said Friday. The death toll ranged from two to 10, they said, and many remained missing.

State media have not mentioned the incident and both provincial and local governments have repeatedly refused to comment.

Gateway Pundit has more, and notes that some media outlets seem confused as to the location. [LATER: Or maybe not.]

UPDATE: More here.

MORE: Here’s a followup report:

Residents of a southern Chinese village near Hong Kong where police opened fire on demonstrators described a tense standoff in the area on Saturday with thousands of armed troops patrolling the perimeter and blocking anyone from leaving. Frightened villagers said they were either hunkering down at home or arguing with police who are refusing to return the dead to their families.

A Hong Kong newspaper quoted villagers accusing Chinese officials of trying to cover up the killings on Tuesday in Dongzhou, a village in Guangdong province.

Residents said police opened fire on a crowd of thousands protesting against inadequate compensation offered by the government for land to be used for a new wind power plant. Up to 20 were killed, villagers said, while some said dozens more were missing.

It was the deadliest known use of force by Chinese security against civilians since the killings around Tiananmen Square in 1989, which drew an international outcry.

So far, the outcry in this case seems rather muted.

READER ANDREW TICKLE sends this interesting article on lessons from Iraq.

CATHY SEIPP LOOKS AT problems with contemporary parenting.

IN THE MAIL: Finding Serenity : Anti-Heroes, Lost Shepherds and Space Hookers in Joss Whedon’s Firefly. Looks pretty interesting, with chapters by science fiction writers Mercedes Lackey, Tanya Huff, and others, plus one by cast member Jewel Staite.

I haven’t even finished watching the Firefly DVD set yet — last night, after a long day that included going over the first round of page proofs for the book, I sat down with a glass of wine to watch . . . a videotape of a faculty candidate’s “job talk” from Monday, which I missed because I was otherwise engaged. When I finish watching those, I’ll get to the Wonderfalls episodes, but that may be a while.

UPDATE: Here’s a blog review of the book.

A DEBATE ON THE ECONOMY, featuring Larry Kudlow, Andrew Roth, Paul Hoffmeister, Russ Roberts & James Hamilton.

INSTAPUNDIT’S AFGHANISTAN PHOTO-CORRESPONDENT, Major Robert Macaraeg, sends this report and photos:

A few days ago I received a phone call and email from a university student at the newly reopened University of Kandahar. I was asked to help the student with MSgt Radermacher of the USAF to move over three air cargo pallets of books for the new library that the University is opening. Afghan students at George Washington University collected the books and the US Air Force transported them under the Denton Program for no cost. The students arranged for a Jingle truck for the final leg of the journey and with US Military personnel provided the elbow grease to load the truck with the books. The students were grateful for the books and the Air Force and Army personnel were happy to contribute to the growth of Academia in Afghanistan.

Have fun in America and Merry Christmas.

Likewise, Major.

DALTON CONLEY HAS THOUGHTS on a man’s right to choose.

UPDATE: A related post from Jason Smith of Generation Why?

LOTS OF PEOPLE like to pick on Zogby polling, and I remember that some of them used to tout his stuff as really good. But this does seem like a bit of an embarrassment.

TAXPROF has a chart of federal tax revenues since 2003.

DID HE SAY BOMB? Reports differ. Of course, they often do.

SHAVAR JEFFRIES on school choice: “In the current model, public schools have little incentive to respond meaningfully and systematically to the interests of Black parents, particularly poor Black parents, as these parents simply do not have the political capital to impact systematically the way in which public schools deliver education. A choice model, however, consistent with the most basic predicates of freedom and democracy, begins to grant poor people the opportunity to opt out of the public system if it continues miserably to fail their children.”

BLOGS4GOD ROUNDS UP Christian bloggers’ reactions to the Narnia movie.

I SET UP THE SATELLITE RADIO last night, and it was very easy: Charged the battery, called a toll-free number, and was up and running in about 15 minutes. The sound is good (I plugged in my excellent Sennheiser iPod headphones instead of the cheapie earbuds that come with it) and the user interface is quite easy to navigate.

However, on the advice of reader Christopher Fox I ordered the antenna / headphone combination yesterday; I’ll report on those when they arrive. He says that performance is a lot better with those, and the price was low.

WALTER SHAPIRO defends the New Hampshire primary.

I’m not sure I agree, but I liked his book, One-Car Caravan.

THE FAIR TAX FRIDAY Carnival is up. For more carnivals, click here and look right.

A REVERSAL ON GAY MARRIAGE in New York.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: The National Journal’s Daniel Glover notices that Senator Tom Coburn has put the PorkBusters logo on his website.

I hadn’t noticed that, but it’s pretty cool. As Glover observes:

Shared logos are becoming a regular feature in the blogosphere as bloggers unite in common causes. But it’s not often that you see one of those logos on a congressional Web site.

The logo from the PorkBusters campaign, in fact, appears to be the first to achieve that status. Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn has the logo displayed prominently on the right side of his Senate Web site, just under a ticker that shows the rapidly increasing federal debt. The logo also appears on a separate page dedicated to the PorkBusters cause.

Welcome aboard, Senator.

And remember: Congress is out of session now, so legislation is on hold, but that means that if you’d like to meet with your Congressmember while he/she is home, it’s a good time.

IF A COP BREAKS INTO YOUR HOUSE UNNANOUNCED, and you shoot him thinking he’s a burglar, it’s self-defense. But Radley Balko reports on a case of a wrong-house no-knock raid that has led to what sounds like a total miscarriage of justice:

As the raid on Smith commenced, some officers – including Jones — went around to what they thought was a side door to Smith’s residence, looking for a larger stash of drugs. The door was actually a door to Maye’s home. Maye was home alone with his young daughter, and asleep, when one member of the SWAT team broke down the outside door. Jones, who wasn’t armed, charged in, and made his way to Maye’s bedroom. Because police believed Maye’s side of the duplex was still part of Smith’s residence, they never announced themselves. Maye, fearing for his life and the safety of his daughter, fired at Jones, hitting him in the abdomen, just below his bulletproof vest. Jones died a short time later.

Maye had no criminal record, and wasn’t the target of the search warrant. Police initially concluded they had found no drugs in Maye’s side of the duplex. Then, mysteriously, police later announced they’d found “traces” of marijuana and cocaine. I talked to the attorney who represented Maye at trial. She said that to her knowledge, police had found one smoked marijuana cigarette in Maye’s apartment. Regardless, since Maye wasn’t the subject of the search, whether or not he had misdemeanor amounts of drugs in his possession isn’t really irrelevant. What’s relevant is whether or not he reasonably believed his life was in danger. Seems pretty clear to me that that would be a reasonable assumption.

In a way, this is the flipside of the Miami airport shooting. And I regard the shooting of a cop in this situation similarly: It’s a tragedy, but the risk is, and should be, borne by the person who’s acting unreasonably. Here, it’s the cop’s. When you break down people’s doors and charge in unannounced, you do so at your own risk, cop or not.

Radley has more reporting here, and observes:

Put yourself in Maye’s shoes. You have no criminal record. You’ve done nothing wrong. In the middle of the night, in a bad neighborhood, you awake to find someone attempting to break down your door. The door flies open, and a man in black paramilitary gear comes storming into your bedroom, where your infant daughter also happens to be sleeping.

Not only is that set of circumstances “reasonable ground” to think that someone is about to do you “great personal injury,” and that you’re in “imminent danger” of said personal injury being accomplished, you’d be crazy not to take quick action to defend yourself.

The SWAT team was in Maye’s home illegally. And they failed to exercise due dilligence in obtaining the search warrant, given that they were obviously unaware that the target of the warrant was a duplex with a second residence. These are facts.

If the facts are as he reports, this guy never should have been charged — and he should have had a lawsuit (though those, unreasonably, are usually losers) against the police for breaking down the wrong door. The cop who was shot was the police chief’s son. And there’s a racial angle, too.

More here and here.

UPDATE: Reader Steve Alexander emails:

My brother and I (both military officers and strong police supporters) were just discussing “no-knock” raids last week. A citizen has every right to defend himself in his home to unknown intruders. Not too long ago, a family was the victim of home intruders posing as cops. I’d be hard-pressed to believe anyone barging in my home in the middle of the night, especially if I KNEW I wasn’t a criminal. “No-knock” raids should be illegal in all 50 states.

Further, why doesn’t the Hollywood crowd take up the cause of a truly wronged black man on death row, instead of real criminals like Tookie and Mumia?

Excellent question. Unlike those other cases, this seems like one without a political angle. It’s unclear whether that will get it more attention, or less.

JORDAN GOLSON has a roundup on the Midway Airport plane crash.

UPDATE: Lots more from The Travel Bloggers.

HERE’S A GRAMMY NEWS ROUNDUP: As a member of the Recording Academy, I get to vote, but I can’t think of a year when I’ve been less excited. But maybe I haven’t been paying enough attention.

A LOOK AT FEDERAL SPENDING, 1970-2005.

JERALYN MERRITT REMEMBERS JOHN LENNON: Lots of people wonder what he’d be doing now. I’m skeptical that he’d be a Republican today if he had lived, but who knows? He went through a lot of changes in a short period.

Back in the 1980s, researching a novel that nobody has read, I watched some old British TV of the Beatles (Ready, Steady, Go! and so forth) and what struck me was how burly and tough the early (1965-66) John Lennon looked, compared to the one I remembered. I had heard stories of him breaking people’s ribs, and they didn’t seem very credible in light of my memories of the fragile and emaciated Yoko-era John. But looking at the earlier Lennon, well, yeah.

So who knows? But I think it’s a mistake to make Lennon into anything today — even a poster boy for handgun control — instead of remembering him as he was. He never got the chance to develop into whatever he would have been, and that’s the tragedy of his death, of course.

UPDATE: Some memories from Gerard van der Leun: “We’d finished filming John and Yoko for the video a day or so before. It was their last video, but of course we didn’t know it at the time.”

TIAN LOOKS AT SOME hysterically overpriced cookware. No, really: “When he revealed the price, it was so overpriced that it is truly laughable! . . . If you don’t have any cash on hand, a 48-month payment option is available with 18% interest rate.” Spare me.

At the recommendation of various readers back during the Great Cookware Thread, I bought some Cuisinart Multiclad stuff, which was quite cheap even compared with All-Clad, which I thought was expensive until I saw this stuff, and with which I’ve been very happy. And I’m even happier when I compare the price with the stuff Tian’s writing about. Holy crap!

And for the Insta-Wife, who’s kind of hard on pots, I bought a few pieces of Chefmate stuff from Target. Even cheaper, and not half bad considering the price.

DOMESTIC TERRORISM HASN’T GONE AWAY:

Six people were arrested in a string of ecoterrorism attacks in the Pacific Northwest dating to 1998 _ four fires that caused millions in damage and the toppling of an 80-foot power transmission tower, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

The arrests were made Wednesday in Arizona, New York, Oregon and Virginia.

The radical groups Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front had claimed responsibility for most of the acts.

The extent of this sort of terrorism is underappreciated.

MICHAEL TOTTEN: “Americans are aiding and abetting pan-Arabism. Seriously. This isn’t a joke.”

UPDATE: Ack, it’s not by Michael, it’s by one of his cobloggers on his blog. Sorry.

LITTLE BOXES: Here’s an interesting followup on my TCS column.

GUN CONTROL IN CANADA, YESTERDAY AND TODAY: It is ever thus. Read this, too.

POLICE HAVE VIDEO PROBLEMS in San Francisco.

U.S. ECONOMIC GROWTH IS “GALLOPING.”

Meanwhile, France’s problem is not enough Wal-marts.

THE CARNIVAL OF EDUCATION IS UP! And some others (look right!).

DON HO, CARDIAC PIONEER:

Ho had his own stem cells injected into his heart Monday night, which is expected to improve the muscle’s pumping ability by as much as 70 percent.

Ho suffers from cardiomyopathy and his doctor said conventional surgery could do nothing to ease the inflammation. The procedure, which is not available in the United States, was performed by former University of Michigan cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Kit Arom and overseen by Dr. Amit Patel of Pittsburgh.

I hope this works, and that if it does it becomes available in the United States.

NEWS FROM IRAQ, via the Washington Post:

As Iraqis nationwide prepare to go to the polls for the third time this year on Dec. 15 — this time for a new parliament — candidates and political parties of all stripes are embracing politics, Iraqi style, as never before and showing increasing sophistication about the electoral process, according to campaign specialists, party officials and candidates here.

“It is like night and day from 10 months ago in terms of level of participation and political awareness,” said a Canadian election specialist with the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, a group affiliated with the U.S. Democratic Party that is working to ease Iraq’s transition to democracy. . . .

In January, most candidates outside the dominant few parties largely eschewed campaigning, fearing they could be kidnapped or assassinated. Now, even long shots are getting into the act. One day this week, National Democratic Institute instructors explained get-out-the-vote techniques to a dozen members of the Free Iraq Gathering, a new coalition that “probably won’t get many more votes than you see in that room,” according to an institute employee.

Sounds positive to me.

THE LAST REFUGE OF POLITICAL SCOUNDRELS: Paul Martin proposes a handgun ban for Canada. Because a ban on rampant political corruption would be too hard to enforce . . . .

ON THE BALL: Even though I selected 2-day shipping, the satellite radio I ordered yesterday showed up this morning as I was leaving for work. That’s pretty impressive. No time to fool with it today, but I’ll charge up the battery tonight and post a report.

A SOLAR-ENHANCED PRIUS: Cool, in a geeky sort of way.

At the gym this morning, I parked between another Highlander hybrid and a (non-solar) Prius. That probably says more about my neighborhood than their overall sales, but maybe not. A few years ago it was Chevy Suburbans and Toyota Landcruisers as far as the eye could see.

FOUR YEARS AFTER THE TALIBAN FELL — and four years and a month after people pronounced Afghanistan a hopeless, Vietnam-like quagmire — an ABC News poll says that Afghans are optimistic about the future:

77 percent of Afghans say their country is headed in the right direction — compared with 30 percent in the vastly better-off United States. Ninety-one percent prefer the current Afghan government to the Taliban regime, and 87 percent call the U.S.-led overthrow of the Taliban good for their country. Osama bin Laden, for his part, is as unpopular as the Taliban; nine in 10 view him unfavorably.

Progress fuels these views: Despite the country’s continued problems, 85 percent of Afghans say living conditions there are better now than they were under the Taliban. Eighty percent cite improved freedom to express political views. And 75 percent say their security from crime and violence has improved as well. After decades of oppression and war, many Afghans see a better life.

Read the whole thing. (Via BarcePundit).

UPDATE: Major John Tammes, who spent some time in Afghanistan with the Ordnance Corps, and also served as InstaPundit’s Afghan photo correspondent (see some of his photos here) sends this email:

I saw your story (and link to the Barcepundit) on the optimism of the Afghans. The past few months have been a little difficult – feelings of letdown, etc. Seeing something like this is…validation.

You and Franco have made my day!

Good! As I’ve said before, if you read the news coverage and it leaves you dispirited, demoralized, and depressed, that’s not an accident. That’s the goal.

HERE’S A ROUNDUP OF BLOG REACTION to the Miami airport shooting. It’s tragic, but as the InstaWife was saying this morning, traveling with a bipolar who’s off his meds is like traveling with a diabetic who’s not taking insulin: unwise.

KOS: A voice for moderation in today’s Democratic Party.

LEARNING TO LOVE SPRAWL: My TechCentralStation column, which revolves around Robert Bruegmann’s Sprawl: A Compact History, is up.

Bruegmann’s book is very interesting, and I predict that it will be very influential.

MORE THOUGHTS ON G.M., over at GlennReynolds.com.

Meanwhile, the UAW — with behind the scenes support from GM — is holding up pension legislation in Congress.

JULIE FIDLER has a survey she’d like people to take.

MARC DANZIGER BUSTS a conspiracy theory. Sheesh.

CLIVE DAVIS has a Narnia roundup.

IT PROBABLY LACKS THE POP APPEAL of his Harry Potter piece, but I just got a piece of fan mail from Rob Merges regarding this article by my colleague Ben Barton on tort reform, innovation, and playground design, so I guess I should link it.

JOHN LEO writes that Harvard Law is outperforming Yale on faculty diversity.

BOB WOODWARD IS VALERIE PLAME: Discussed at Tom Maguire’s.

VIOLENCE AT THE POLLS IN EGYPT: Gateway Pundit has a roundup.

MOHAMMED OF IRAQ THE MODEL has a report on the impending Iraqi elections. The opening paragraph illustrates that the Iraqis have achieved parity with other democracies!

I SHOULD HAVE MENTIONED THIS SOONER, but Scott Adams has a blog. Not surprisingly, it’s quite good. I particularly recommend his advice on how to debate.

“GROWING OIL SUPPLIES MEAN LOWER OIL COSTS:” Wow, that’s more support for Mickey Kaus’s outrageous theory about prices. Someone should look into this!

SHOTS FIRED by air marshal at Miami airport. A suspect is dead, but it’s not clear what he’s suspected of.

THE CONSUMERIST, Nick Denton’s new shopping site with an angry, bitter edge, is now up!

And no, he didn’t buy me a sports car in exchange for this mention. Though feel free, Nick!

HAS THE WHITE HOUSE joined the War Against Christmas?

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON ON THE CUNNINGHAM SCANDAL:

But we can’t let this collective carcass picking — as voyeuristically titillating as it may be — distract us from the two vital issues this story raises: the corrupting role that money continues to play in our politics, and the overly cozy relationship between those in power and those in the media whose job it is to cover them.

I mean, where was the Washington press corps on this story?

Here you have a Congressman making $158,000 a year, living (and partying with lobbyists) on a yacht docked at the Capital Yacht Club and driving a Rolls-Royce — and not a single Washington journalist thought this worth looking into? If one of them had followed the spoils, it would have quickly led to a defense contractor buying the yacht, christened the “Duke-Stir”, while at the same time receiving massive government contracts authorized by the defense appropriations subcommittee Cunningham sat on.

But, instead, the Beltway Gang turned a blind-eye — so jaded and accepting of how the game is played in Washington that the corruption didn’t even register.

Which isn’t uncommon. I suspect that bloggers could accomplish a lot in unmasking corruption by looking at politicians’ lifestyles and matching them against their declared incomes. So could journalists, but they don’t seem to do much of that.

AUSTIN BAY writes on Iraqi reconstruction efforts.

IN JUST A FEW MINUTES, Michael Ledeen and Marc Cooper will be debating online. There’s also a contest to name their show. I favored “Nattering Nabobs,” but they vetoed it. (There was also a potential naming dispute with the philosophical blog “Nattering Nabobs of Postivism,” and you can’t be too careful about those things, it seems . . . .)

A PEARL HARBOR ANNIVERSARY ROUNDUP at LaShawn Barber’s place.

NUDE PHOTOS OF JENNIFER ANISTON raise legal questions.

SOME OVERLOOKED ASPECTS of Condi’s Eastern Europe trip.

SATELLITE RADIO UPDATE: So after reading all the responses to this post on XM and Sirius, I wound up ordering this one. Though a few people had complaints, the vast majority of emailers seemed happy with either XM or Sirius, regardless of which they had. So as a tie-breaker, I decided to go with loyalty to the one that carries my brother’s stuff — and that was offering a really good deal.

SAMBUCKS loses to Starbucks. This seems silly to me.

THANKS, Business Week.

BURNING CARS AND BURNING GIRLS: A German feminist looks at the French riots. (Via Winds of Change).