PROPOSED CUTS IN FARM SUBSIDIES: Good idea. The Nebraska Guitar Militia will be pleased that there may be a bit less “Farming the Government” in the future. Though I wouldn’t bet the, er, farm just yet.

UPDATE: Virginia Postrel:

Will other Republicans stand up for fiscal responsibility and market principles? Will conservative pundits make a big deal of this issue? Will the libertarians and liberals who’ve scored the Bush administration for its earlier fiscal (and trade) foolishness? In other words, is there any kind of vocal, principled coalition to balance the concentrated interests of subsidized agriculture?

We’ll find out, won’t we?

YES, IT’S A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GAME THEY’RE PLAYING: SKBubba notes something that I had noticed — that the Bush Administration let news of Rumsfeld’s offer to resign after Abu Ghraib leak out now, when it was too late to help them before the election, and observes:

I thought that the Gonzales nomination was being offered up as a sacrificial lamb for Abu Ghraib to take the heat off of Bush and Rumsfeld and that his confirmation defeat would put an end to the whole sordid affair.

Now that he’s confirmed, and apparently nobody gives a damn, Rumsfeld comes out and takes responsibility. Go figure. Maybe he was Plan B? These guys are playing a level of 3-D Vulcan chess that I can’t even comprehend.

I think they’re playing the long game, not the short game. And here’s another example: the retroactive increase in death benefits paid to the families of servicepeople killed in action. They waited until after the election, when doing it sooner might have gotten them some votes. At a guess, I’d say that they want the troops to know it’s genuine, and not just political — and that’s why they waited.

Stephen Bainbridge notes that Michael Kinsley is confused, too. Well, if SKB is confused, I’d expect Kinsley to be flummoxed.

THOUGHTS ON THE WARD CHURCHILL STORY, and the future of academic freedom, over at GlennReynolds.com.

Meanwhile, Churchill is showing his usual diplomacy: “A professor who likened World Trade Center victims to a notorious Nazi suggested to a magazine that more terror attacks may be necessary to radicalize Americans to fight the misuse of U.S. power.”

ANOTHER SUSPICIOUS DEATH IN GEORGIA:

GEORGIA was yesterday plunged into crisis after it was revealed a political associate of dead prime minister Zurab Zhvania had apparently committed suicide.

There were fears of a return to the old Soviet ways of dispensing with political foes by alleged accident or suicide after the third death in the government in as many days.

Zhvania, a moderating force in the Georgian government, and a colleague died apparently of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a faulty heater last week.

Next somebody will fall down an elevator shaft or something. (Via Publius Pundit).

THEY’RE LIVEBLOGGING THE SUPER BOWL at AnkleBitingPundits and at Capt. Ed’s.

UPDATE: Hey, they’re blogging it at USA Today, too!

ANOTHER UPDATE: More liveblogging here (focusing on commercials) and here. And a list of livebloggers here, courtesy of Liveblogging.org.

MORE PRAISE for John Scalzi’s book, Old Man’s War, from reader Al Reasin:

I just finished reading Old Man’s War. What an entertaining and engrossing book. I couldn’t put it down until I was finished reading it. I hope Mr. Scalzi writes again with the same characters. Ah, what an amazing universe he weaves.

I liked it very much, and so far I don’t think I”ve heard from anyone who didn’t agree.

ORANGE REVOLUTIONS IN CENTRAL ASIA: I’m not sure those can be pulled off just yet. But we should be supporting them.

UPDATE: Plans for elections in Haiti, too. It’s even harder for me to be optimistic there, but it’s worth a try.

MY GOODNESS: There’s now an entire blog devoted to the Eason Jordan matter, which seems like a big deal to me. I wonder how this will fare in comparison to the unwritten blacklist that Gerard Van der Leun describes.

It seems to me that if Jordan was misunderstood, he should be working hard to get the video of his presentation out. That would clear up any misunderstanding, wouldn’t it?

UPDATE: Interesting comparison of how much attention the James Dobson / SpongeBob story got in relation to the near-blackout of Eason Jordan’s remarks.

JACK BALKIN IS UNDERWHELMED with the reasoning of the New York gay marriage opinion I linked the other day.

UPDATE: Related thoughts from one of Balkin’s students.

BELDAR is blogging again.

WHY DON’T I HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY about Max Schmeling’s death? Er, why would I? It’s not really my kind of subject. Schmeling comes off pretty well in my law school classmate Chris Mead’s book, Champion Joe Louis: A Biography, which was excerpted as a cover story in Sports Illustrated when it came out. But I don’t know much more than that.

MICKEY KAUS writes that it’s not about the nipple:

I watched the game with a group of non-evangelical, non-moralistic dads who were uniformly horrified. The problem for them wasn’t sex–their kids see flesh all the time in videos–but a form of sexism, not prudery but piggishness. Surely there are some types of behavior–homophobia, perhaps, or racism, or Republicanism–that even Frank Rich wouldn’t want implicitly endorsed during a telecast watched by most of the country’s teens and pre-teens. Yet the press has effectively recast this complicated issue as an uncomplicated case of “Nipple-gate,” of blue-noses overreacting to the sight of a breast. No wonder red staters respond negatively when New Yorkers call them simplistic.

The only two forces in American politics are joyless religious prudes and the brave cosmopolitans who resist them. Everyone knows that! At least, everyone who reads Frank Rich, and nothing else . . . .

WINDS OF CHANGE has some questions for antiwar progressives. Here’s one: “What would have been the best, most legitimate way for Iraq to achieve democratic elections? Can it be applied to Burma, North Korea, Iran, and other dictatorships?”

UNSCAM UPDATE: Closing in on Kofi?

ACADEMIC FREEDOM UPDATE: Jim Lindgren has a lengthy post on professor Hans Hoppe of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, whose story I linked earlier. Lindgren: “As with so many of these stories of supposed academic misconduct, one must be careful not to assume that the whole story has been told, since usually only one side is talking publicly. But if Hoppe indeed said what he says he said and no more, then I think that it is the administrators at UNLV who deserve reprimands. They should have explained to the student that such claims are clearly within academic freedom, whether true or false. I have no doubt that what Hoppe said would be offensive to some students—and indeed, he is probably wrong on the merits of most of his claims—but his claims are empirical ones. The proper response of someone who is angry with Hoppe is to gather evidence tending to show that he is wrong, and to challenge Hoppe to offer his own evidence to support his claims.”

Judging by Hoppe’s online teaching evaluations (a dubious source, I’ll admit) not everyone is offended. Though why students should have a right not to be offended — and why only certain types of “offense” count — is beyond me.

UPDATE: Power Line, meanwhile, features a skeptical email claiming that “academic freedom” is largely illusory these days. And Roger Kimball writes that Ward Churchill is not the problem.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Evidence for the weakness of academic freedom, here: “A graduate student at LeMoyne College has been expelled for writing a paper on his opinion that corporal punishment should be allowed in the classroom. ”

NORM GERAS has transcribed some Iraqis’ comments on the election from the BBC. Interesting reading.

ED MORRISSEY remains Eason Jordan central. Just keep scrolling, as he offers quite a few links suggesting that the story will hit the Big Media next week. Meanwhile, here’s a column on the subject from Jack Kelly in the Toledo Blade. And Hugh Hewitt is all over this story, too.

WALTER OLSON WRITES that Mayor Bloomberg’s overreaching is likely to backfire:

In January, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg signed a bill passed by the City Council making gun makers and dealers liable for crimes perpetrated with their products unless they adopt a “code of conduct” that, among other things, would limit the number of handguns they can sell to one person and require background checks on prospective buyers at gun shows. The strange thing about this new law is that it applies not only to sales within New York City, but also to sales in other states and cities. . . .

When the issue returns in this year’s (more pro-gun) Congress, Mr. Bloomberg’s new law is likely to serve as a prime exhibit of the case for federal pre-emption on the issue of gun liability. The new city law makes it absolutely clear that anti-gun enclaves intend to inflict their will on other states. Lawmakers from the rest of the country will then, appropriately, move to defend their states’ preference through federal legislation.

The mayor and City Council of New York seem to think they can make laws that bind the rest of the country. That’s an arrogant stance – and when the rest of the country is heard from, it’s apt to be a losing stance as well.

Indeed.

EUGENE VOLOKH: Who benefits from academic freedom? You do!

Meanwhile, I agree that this Ohio legislation is a bad idea, but I also agree that it’s a warning shot that shouldn’t be ignored.

“HARD FACTS HAVE FINALLY CRACKED THEIR ECHO CHAMBER:” Austin Bay responds to a slam from The Guardian.

REUTERS IS WINGING IT again, according to Craig Brett.

ANN ALTHOUSE wants to see Russ Feingold run against Condi Rice in 2008.

We could do worse. And probably will!

NORM GERAS, who has profiled so many bloggers, is profiled himself in the Sunday Times.

MUSIC INDUSTRY SUES 83-YEAR-OLD DEAD WOMAN:

Gertrude Walton was recently targeted by the recording industry in a lawsuit that accused her of illegally trading music over the Internet. But Walton died in December after a long illness, and according to her daughter, the 83-year-old hated computers.

More than a month after Walton was buried in Beckley, a group of record companies named her as the sole defendant in a federal lawsuit, claiming she made more than 700 pop, rock and rap songs available for free on the Internet under the screen name “smittenedkitten.”

I’m guessing that this was a ‘bot-based complaint, and I really think that there ought to be consequences for initiating legal action on such a flimsy basis. Live people sign affidavits on these matters, after all, swearing that they have ascertained the facts. (Via Basil).

TIM BLAIR has a roundup of news brieflets.

And yeah, blogging’s been light today. But I’ve had a lot of domestic chores. It’s not all floor-scrubbing, though. At the moment, I’m blogging from the deck, where it’s nearly 60 degrees and steak-grilling is about to commence. There are chores, and then there are chores.

Another sort of roundup can be found here.

DVD-BLOGGING: The Insta-Daughter was watching Mulan II, which we picked up at Target today. I was busy cleaning — the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser is great at getting scuffmarks off hardwood floors, so great that I wound up doing a lot more than I meant to when I started — and didn’t pay much attention to the plot. (Something about how it’s important to get to marry who you want, I think.) But the DVD autoplays — no menu to navigate unless you want to, just stick it in, and it goes.

I wish they were all like that. I’m frequently annoyed when whoever programmed the DVD menus was so anxious to show off all the features that I have to actually think about what to do to get it to simply play the damn movie. And fancy menus often confuse kids. Disney’s got that figured out, but I wish they all worked that way.

UPDATE: Forget DVD-blogging. The theme for this post is obviously cleaning. My former student Heather Hubbard emails:

I cannot believe you are blogging about the magic eraser. And, I especially cannot believe that I am writing to you about it! Ned’s mom gave me some magic erasers as stocking stuffers for Christmas in 2003, and they have changed my life. I have those experiences all the time when I end up doing way more cleaning than I intended. The magic eraser is excellent at getting up scuff marks off of Ned’s white linoleum kitchen floor. I start with one little spot, and end up cleaning the entire floor! (In fact, I think I’ll go clean right now!) And, since they are kind of expensive, Ned is under strict orders not to use them himself.

Another cleaning product that is great is Tilex soap scum remover. I discovered that one in college. But, one warning: do not combine Tilex soap scum remover with the power of a magic eraser. The Tilex will completely eat away the magic eraser.

Also, I have been meaning to email you about the cult of the ipod and my one problem with my ipod. I love my ipod, and I want everything to be perfect with it, but it is not perfect. I am training for the Country Music Marathon, and I thought that the ipod would make my Saturday long runs go by much faster. (I even have a Marathon training playlist with all of the high-energy songs.) However, I am disappointed everytime I run with it because it freezes up after 1-1.5 miles of running. Then, I have to stop, lay it flat, and press the “select” and “menu” buttons at the same time for six seconds, and it works again. But, it ticks me off so much that now I have switched back to my old armband radio. I am using the ipod in my car and at work (with some great little speakers Ned gave me for Christmas), and that is it. Any suggestion on how to get my ipod to stop freaking out on me?

I hope all is well at UT. I miss being at law school. It was a whole lot more fun than actually practicing law.

Quite a few people feel that way, alas. And if you have any iPod advice for Heather, send it my way and I’ll pass it on.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Everybody seems to agree that the problem is caused by the iPod’s inability to tolerate a lot of bouncing. Most people recommend an iPod Shuffle or some other flash-based player instead. Some say that carrying the iPod by hand will work. (I use this armband and haven’t had any problems, but my running may be less bouncy).

On cleaning, many people endorsed the Magic Eraser. And reader Julie Carlson weighs in on her favorite device:

My latest favorite is the Clorox Bleach pen. I needed to clean the grout in my kitchen floor tiles. We remodeled a few years ago and I noticed the peachy-colored grout was getting dingy. The bleach pen gets the bleach where I want it, and there is even a little scrubber thingy on one end. Grout looks like new!

Mmmm. New grout.

UNSCAM UPDATE:

The sense of an organisation unwilling to acknowledge the nasty realities of a changed world has been much in evidence this week after the publication of the first of Paul Volcker’s reports on the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal.

Mr Volcker, the 77-year-old former chairman of the US Federal Reserve and no enemy of the UN, stated: “We are not here to tear down, we are here to restore.”

Whether that is possible has become the crucial question. With the US television networks and senior congressional figures feasting on the detail of the report yesterday, there was a sense that the inquiry may be getting out of hand.

This week’s interim report was commissioned after detailed allegations surfaced following the 2003 Iraq war suggesting that Saddam Hussein’s regime had perverted the UN-run scheme by raking off cash that should have gone to Iraq’s sick and starving.

An estimated $1.7 billion (£900 million) was skimmed off the $64 billion programme and used by the Iraqis to win favours from 270 influential figures abroad.

As the report drily noted: “It is evident that the Iraqi regime attempted to gain favour by granting oil allocations to persons the programme did not recognise as oil purchasers.”

Read the whole thing. And read this, too.

UPDATE: Fingers are pointing every which way:

LONDON (Reuters) – Former U.N. head Boutros Boutros-Ghali refused to take all the blame for Iraq’s scandal-tainted oil-for-food program on Saturday, pointing the finger at his successor Kofi Annan.

Heh.

JIM LINDGREN WRITES on academic freedom and the Kalven report.

UPDATE: On the other hand, Richard Posner has these observations on academic freedom, inspired by Larry Summers:

But no one who has spent much time around universities thinks they’ve ever “encourage[d] uncircumscribed intellectual explorations.” The degree of self-censorship in universities, as in all institutions, is considerable. Today in the United States, most of the leading research universities are dominated by persons well to the left of Larry Summers, and they don’t take kindly to having their ideology challenged, as Summers has now learned to his grief. There is nothing to be done about this, and thoughtful conservatives should actually be pleased. As John Stuart Mill pointed out in On Liberty, when one’s ideas are not challenged, one’s ability to defend them weakens. Not being pressed to come up with arguments or evidence to support them, one forgets the arguments and fails to obtain the evidence. One’s position becomes increasingly flaccid, producing the paradox of thought that is at once rigid and flabby. And thus the academic left today.

Indeed. (Via The New Editor).

ANOTHER UPDATE: Related story, from UNLV, here.

THE BLOGOSPHERE GETS FEISTY: It’s Jonah Goldberg vs. Juan Cole, with Justin Katz chiming in.

Meanwhile, contradictions are noted in other remarks. Moore, Churchill, and Chomsky don’t represent the Left — even when it agrees with them most of the time!

UPDATE: Jon Henke emails to suggest that it’s odd to see Max Sawicky complaining about guilt-by-association, when Sawicky himself ran a contest to associate me with the most objectionable thing said by anyone on my blogroll.

Henke observes: “I guess he had a change of heart.” I guess he did. Funny, though — you shouldn’t have to scroll past Alterman’s name before figuring out that a place on my blogroll isn’t necessarily an endorsement, anyway.

ANOTHER UPDATE: David Bernstein sends this link as his contribution to the Cole-fest.

MORE: A reader suggests that Sawicky has succumbed to obsession. Heh. Wouldn’t be the first time.

STILL MORE: From someone who pays a lot more attention to Sawicky than I do.

MORE STILL: The Belmont Club on the Cole/Goldberg fracas: “But it was the declining vigor of Marxist thought coupled with new conservative ideas that poured the most fuel on the flames. Discourse between Left and Right could only remain civil for so long as Conservatives remained meek or had no counter-pulpit. . . . What has changed is that, with the decline of the MSM, there is nothing which prevents incivility from becoming a two-way street. And I’m not sure either the Left or the total system can contain the stress.”

IT’S A FAIR COP:

Manolo says, the Manolo he has little interest in the politics, and tends not to give much attention to the doings of the politicians. but here he must curse the memory of the American President JFK, for having the great head of the hair, and for the killing of the practice of the wearing of the hat.

Except among the hat-wearing elite, whom Manolo calls “the man who is not afraid to wear the hat, and as the consequence, wears the hat well.” Indeed.

Interestingly, if you look here, there’s not even a category for hats. And if you search for them, you get a page of baseball caps, cowboy hats, and toboggans. Manolo and Roger have a lot of work to do.

UPDATE: More on hats, from the hat man.

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

HEH.

GAY MARRIAGE IN NEW YORK:

NEW YORK (AP) — A judge declared Friday that a law banning same-sex marriage violates the state constitution, a first-of-its-kind ruling in New York that would clear the way for gay couples to wed if it survives on appeal.

Gay rights activists hailed the ruling as a historic victory that “delivers the state Constitution’s promise of equality to all New Yorkers.”

(Via Howard Bashman). I haven’t seen the opinion yet, so though I support the outcome I don’t know whether the reasoning is persuasive.

UPDATE: Here, via Joe Carter, is a link to the text of the opinion.

A CALIFORNIA RESIGNATION:

Besieged Secretary of State Kevin Shelley resigned today in the face of multiple investigations of his political and professional conduct.

Arnold will appoint his successor. (Via California Mafia).

UPDATE: John Baker emails: “The LA Times never mentions Mr. Shelley’s party affiliation. Is it safe to assume he is a Democrat?” Yes, it is.

ANOTHER UPDATE: BoiFromTroy has more.

UNSCAM UPDATE: The Economist reports on the Volcker investigation:

Mr Volcker’s interim report answered some, though by no means all, of the questions surrounding the scandal. According to the report, Saddam-era Iraqi documents indicated that the programme head asked Iraq to allocate oil to a company called African Middle East Petroleum (AMEP), represented by a friend of Mr Sevan’s, Fakhry Abdelnour (who is also a distant cousin of former UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali). In return, Mr Sevan fought to allow Iraq to buy spare parts for its oil infrastructure, as opposed to food and the like, with its oil-for-food proceeds. In doing so, said Mr Volcker, Mr Sevan placed himself in a “grave and continuing conflict-of-interest situation”.

Both Mr Sevan and Mr Abdelnour had claimed to have been in contact just once, at a 1999 conference. But a search of Mr Sevan’s office found two of Mr Abdelnour’s business cards with different addresses, and telephone records showed repeated calls, both directly between the two men and probably through an intermediary. Shown the records, Mr Sevan admitted developing a friendship with Mr Abdelnour: “I came to like the guy. He’s an interesting character, you know.” And Mr Sevan’s explanation of bank deposits totalling $160,000? From an aunt, now deceased, he said. The committee found that she had lived modestly in a plain two-bedroom flat in Cyprus, purchased for her by Mr Sevan.

Read the whole thing. I agree that this is just the opening round.

PAMELA BONE:

The great silence by left-leaning Western feminists, and other large parts of the left, to human rights abuses carried out in the name of Islam is, to see it as its kindest, caused by an overdeveloped sense of tolerance or cultural relativism. But it is also part of the new anti-Americanism. Look at American Christian fundamentalism, they say.

Dislike of George Bush’s foreign policy has led to an automatic support of those perceived to be his enemies. Paradoxically, this leaves the left defending people who hold beliefs that condone what the left has long fought against: misogyny, homophobia, capital punishment, suppression of freedom of speech. The recent reaffirmation by Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie has been met by virtual silence; as has the torture and murder in Iraq of a man who would be presumed to be one of the left’s own – Hadi Salih, the international officer of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions. The hard left these days is soft on fascism, or at least Islamofascism.

The religious right in America would, if it could, wind back access to abortion and some other women’s rights. But as far as I am aware, no Christian fundamentalist in the US has suggested banning women from driving cars, or travelling without their husbands’ permission, or forcing them to cover their faces. Contrary to popular opinion, one is not the same as the other.

This isn’t quite fair. Western feminists were happy to condemn the Taliban until it looked as if someone was going to do something about them. And they’ll happily condemn the Saudis whenever they look like our allies.

Of course, there are some true Christian theocrats out there. “Christian Reconstructionist” Gary North, for example, supports capital punishment for children who curse at their parents:

Reconstructionists provide the most enthusiastic constituency for stoning since the Taliban seized Kabul. “Why stoning?” asks North. “There are many reasons. First, the implements of execution are available to everyone at virtually no cost.” Thrift and ubiquity aside, “executions are community projects–not with spectators who watch a professional executioner do `his’ duty, but rather with actual participants.” You might even say that like square dances or quilting bees, they represent the kind of hands-on neighborliness so often missed in this impersonal era. “That modern Christians never consider the possibility of the reintroduction of stoning for capital crimes,” North continues, “indicates how thoroughly humanistic concepts of punishment have influenced the thinking of Christians.” And he may be right about that last point, you know.

Strangely, North is sometimes featured among antiwar “libertarians.”

FILI-BUSTED: I think people have pointed out this Chemerinsky flipflop before. It’s okay to change your mind, of course, but it’s better to acknowledge it.

ON JANUARY 30, TOM MASON BLOGGED THIS:

I want to point out something to everyone who is bashing Senator Kennedy for calling for an immediate withdrawal of 12,000 troops following the elections. That was the Bush administration plan all along, except for the “immediate” part. U.S. forces were increased by 12,000 in the last month or two in order to help with security for the elections. So we will see the troop levels decrease by 12,000 in the very near future. I wonder if when the troops start coming home, the MSM will say that Bush realized that Kennedy was right after all?

Senator [Kennedy] is not stupid. He made a prediction on an event he knew was going to happen. Now he’s hoping that everyone will be too stupid to notice.

And voila! Kennedy’s plan works.

Of course, timing is everything. By calling the war lost, and calling for the withdrawal of troops, right before the Iraqi election, Kennedy was being tactically “smart” but also giving heart to the enemy. Except that they’ve probably learned by now that he’s not a reliable guide to American political opinion.

IF YOU CAN’T DANCE, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.

Fortunately, the Iraqis can. And I love the Nietzsche quote.

MICKEY KAUS is slagging Howard Kurtz for ignoring the Eason Jordan scandal, once again invoking Kurtz’s CNN connection as a conflict of interest. And over at my new GlennReynolds.com post on the Jordan scandal, I note Kurtz’s silence too.

But on the other hand, if Kurtz’s relationship to CNN is what’s keeping him quiet then why is almost everyone else in the news media keeping quiet, too?

The real problem here is institutional, I think, and focus on things like personal conflicts of interest merely serves to obscure the larger problem.

UPDATE: Shannon Love has a legislative proposal.

THE ARTFUL WRITER is a blog for screenwriters. Excerpt:

Senator Feinstein may pretend to be a liberal, but all politics is local, and corporate Hollywood has her in their pocket. Indeed, there wasn’t one single senator who felt big business didn’t deserve these latest new protections.

That’s good for those of us making a living in this industry.

I’m not so happy.

BUSH IS SUBTLER THAN I THOUGHT: Vik Rubenfeld notes that the “Syrian Accountability Act” that Bush invoked during the State of the Union speech was originally introduced by Barbara Boxer, back when she was taking a somewhat more hawkish line.

UPDATE: Another blast from the past: Harry Reid used to support Social Security reform: “Most of us have no problem with taking a small amount of the Social Security proceeds and putting it into the private sector.”

Interestingly, so did FDR: “In a written statement to Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plans should include, ‘Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age,’ adding that government funding, ‘ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.’”

Now that’s a real blast from the past. Is it “ultimately” yet?

ANOTHER UPDATE: It looks as if FDR was talking about a different portion of the Social Security plan. This would have involved, essentially, a sort of government-supplied 401k plan.

EVAN COYNE MALONEY AGREES that Ward Churchill shouldn’t be fired:

We find these comments reprehensible. But we also believe that the best way to combat Professor Churchill is by opposing him with more speech. Creating an environment where tenured professors can be fired for controversial remarks is a dangerous precedent to set. Academic freedom provides a wide berth, and that’s by design. Sometimes, controversy is merely the result of childish, mean-spirited remarks, but it’s also true that many of mankind’s most brilliant thinkers aroused controversy in their day. If they’d been silenced because others were upset by what they had to say, then we’d all be poorer for it. To ensure that professors can safely pursue the most innovative thinking, academic freedom should be respected.

Shoddy scholarship–not a knack for generating controversy–is the primary reason Professor Churchill shouldn’t be holding his professor position. Still, the University of Colorado should have noticed that and acted when Churchill initially came up for tenure. Instead, low standards on the part of the university allowed him to gain tenure and even to chair a department. By giving Churchill tenure, the university made a tacit promise to stand behind him in the face of controversy. The university should respect that promise and protect his job.

We suspect the University of Colorado is acting not out of principle but a desire to quell a public relations disaster.

This is why tenure decisions are so important. And universities who tenure bad people should have to live with the consequences.

UPDATE: Sounds like they feel differently. Colorado blogger Bob Hayes reports: “I think the University of Colorado is about to sell Ward Churchill down the river. ” He reproduces an internal C.U. email that he got, which does sound like it’s laying the groundwork for that. I agree with Hayes, and Maloney: They shouldn’t have hired him, but they shouldn’t take the easy way out now that he’s gotten controversial, either.

HISTORY CARNIVAL #2 is up, with history-blogging on a wide variety of subjects.

MORE ON EASON JORDAN: “I notice CNN is no longer using the ‘bloggers are taking his comments out of context’ line. Now we are told, ‘he was not clear enough in explaining his assertion.’”

There’s supposed to be video. And why isn’t David Gergen talking?

UPDATE: Here’s some context for the Eason Jordan affair.

IN THE MAIL, from Oxford University Press, a copy of my colleague Robert J. Norrell’s book, The House I Live In: Race in the American Century. It looks quite interesting.

THIS IS INTERESTING: Amazon’s Achilles’ heel has always been shipping costs. But now they’re offering a sort of frequent flyer club where you get unlimited free shipping for $79 a year. (2-day air — overnight is just $3.99).

I’m sure that would save me money, and it suggests to me that Amazon is trying to get more business from people who are already heavy customers. (It also suggests to me that they have enough buying power to squeeze a hell of a deal out of their carriers.) Is this also a preemptive measure against up-and-coming competitors like Overstock.com? People keep telling me that they like Overstock, but I haven’t used it much. But though I like Amazon a lot, I’d certainly be happy to see them face competition.

ED CONE ON WARD CHURCHILL:

I loved my friends like brothers. They died at the hands of terrorists. Their memory is insulted by this guy. They were not imperialists, or even imperialist dupes. But you know what? The slandering bastard should be allowed to speak.

Yes. Though I think it’s the criticism that speech will bring, rather than the speech itself, that University administrators don’t want to face.

IN PLENTY OF TIME FOR DINNER: This week’s Carnival of the Recipes is up.

ETHNIC WARFARE at San Francisco State University.

SONIA ARRISON WRITES about the mainstreaming of transhumanism. And Alyssa Ford writes that the next big political divide will be between transhumanists and technophiles on one side, and bioconservatives and lefty-Luddites on the other.

I hope not, but as Rand Simberg observes: “If this is the next political divide, I know which side I’m on.”

LINDA SEEBACH emails with the news that the National Conference of Editorial Writers is thinking about ethics. Here are some of the questions they’re asking their members:

The task force will contact all of the syndicates to go over questions that have been raised on this groupserv and elsewhere. This will allow us to compare how syndicates are set up to deal with issues like those that have come to the forefront this year and also ascertain how we can be effective in correcting factual errors.

Among the questions:

How do you screen columnists and editorial cartoonists?
Do you have an ethics policy?
What policy do you follow if contracted columnists/cartoonists violate standard journalism ethics (regardless of where you have an individual ethics policy)?
Do you have a fact-checking process for columnists? How does it work?
When editorial writers or editors find a factual error in a column or cartoon, what effective means can be used to communicate that error and have a correction made?

It’s a start, I guess. Meanwhile, on the ethical front, Patrick Ruffini has some comments on how Big Media folks use blogs:

The Globe takes the White House to task for not distinguishing between conservative and “non-partisan” media. But the Globe does the same in its article, failing to disclose which “Internet bloggers” are fueling the story — (cough)Hatrios(cough)Kos(cough) — and any hint of which political party they might be associated with.

With all the discussion about policing the blogosphere, shouldn’t there be a journalistic code of ethics for how the blogosphere’s work is cited? The Globe glosses over its sourcing by noting that “issue was raised by a media watchdog group and picked up by Internet bloggers” — which is a euphemism for “I didn’t do any original reporting on this. I just cribbed it from Atrios, Daily Kos, and David Brock.”

Why would the Globe be hesitant to provide hyperlinks to the two or three key blogs that brought the story to public attention, or mention their names in its print edition? Is it because disclosing what blogs Globe reporters actually read in their spare time might reflect poorly on the credibility of the story?

Indeed it might.

EASON JORDAN GETS HAMMERED FOR HIS DAVOS STATEMENTS, which seem to be untrue in all respects:

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, during a discussion on media and democracy, Mr. Jordan apparently told the audience that “he knew of 12 journalists who had not only been killed by U.S. troops in Iraq, but they had in fact been targeted,” according to a report on the forum’s Web site (www.forumblog.org). The account was corroborated by the Wall Street Journal and National Review Online, although no transcript of the discussion has surfaced. Rep. Barney Frank and Sen. Christopher Dodd were also present, but calls to their offices were not returned in time for publication.

In any event, it’s an assertion Mr. Jordan has made before. In November, as reported in the London Guardian, Mr. Jordan said, “The reality is that at least 10 journalists have been killed by the U.S. military, and according to reports I believe to be true journalists have been arrested and tortured by U.S. forces.” This is very serious stuff, if true. Yet aside from Mr. Jordan’s occasional comments, there’s no evidence to support it. Mr. Jordan’s almost immediate backpedaling seems to confirm this. In a statement to blogger Carol Platt Liebau, Mr. Jordan said, “To be clear, I do not believe the U.S. military is trying to kill journalists in Iraq. I said so during the forum panel discussion. But, nonetheless, the U.S. military has killed several journalists in Iraq in cases of mistaken identity.” He added, “three of my CNN colleagues and many other journalists have been killed on purpose in Iraq.” He didn’t elaborate by whom.

According to information on CPJ’s Web site (www.cpj.org), between 2003 and 2004, 12 journalists were killed as a result of U.S. fire. None was from CNN. At least a few of those were instances of mistaken identity. In one case, Terry Lloyd of ITV News was in an SUV at the start of the war in March 2003. As CPJ notes, an investigative report in the Wall Street Journal cited accounts of U.S. troops who recalled firing upon cars marked “TV” since it was believed suicide bombers were using them to attack U.S. troops. It appears, however, that Mr. Lloyd’s vehicle was caught in a crossfire. Aside from this one dubious case, none of the other reported deaths even remotely resembles intentional targeting by U.S. troops.

Jordan needs to stop hiding behind the PR people and explain what he was talking about. Or resign. There is corruption in Jordan’s business, and he looks to be part of it.

SHOULD WARD CHURCHILL BE FIRED? Eugene Volokh has a long and thoughtful post; he agrees with me and with Steven Bainbridge that the answer is no — except that false claims of being an Indian, under his circumstances, might constitute resume fraud. Read the whole thing.

And here’s Bainbridge’s take:

This is one of those occasions when those of us on the right need to suck it up and echo the line famously attributed to Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” We do not remain true to our values if we are willing to say “free speech for me, but not for thee,” even if that is what Churchill likely would say if the shoe were on the other foot.

He’s right.

UPDATE: More background on Churchill from Gerard van der Leun. And The Belmont Club wonders why the story is getting so much attention, nationally, concluding: “the attention lavished on a relatively obscure academic recalls the inordinate power of the Scott Peterson and Michael Jackson cases to put more newsworthy subjects into the shade. The fascination may not be with Ward Churchill himself but with the Leftist demimonde glimpsed briefly through him.”

APPARENTLY, JAMES WOLCOTT has found a new pseudonym. And an editor.

A PACK, NOT A HERD:

Citizens of Al Mudiryiah were subjected to an attack by several militants today who were trying to punish the residents of this small town for voting in the election last Sunday.

The citizens responded and managed to stop the attack, kill 5 of the attackers, wounded 8 and burned their cars.

Heh. May there be more such responses. (Via GayPatriot).

THE L.A. TIMES IS BUSTED AGAIN for repeating an already-exploded canard. What’s next, the return of the plastic turkey?

AFTER YUSHCHENKO, this is going to make a lot of people suspicious:

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) – Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania, who helped lead Georgia’s revolution that toppled the corruption-tainted regime of Eduard Shevardnadze, died early Thursday in a friend’s apartment from what officials claimed was an accidental gas leak from a heater.

Georgia’s interior minister said there was no reason to suspect foul play, but a lawmaker reportedly pointed the finger at “outside forces.” His remarks were aimed at Russia, which has ties with Georgia’s separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and prompted a terse response from Moscow.

I think that this is likely to hurt Putin’s position.

UPDATE: Thoughts on Georgia, and why it matters, here.

DAVID ADESNIK: “Safia al-Souhail was a special guest of the First Family last night at the State of the Union Address. According to al-Souhail, the man who murdered her father on Saddam’s behalf just happens to be one of the businessman who made millions off of the Oil-for-Food scam. Al-Souhail even says that the assassin received the oil vouchers as a reward for his work.”

YESTERDAY, I noted some math problems at the New York Times and joked that this made me worry about their social security coverage.

Well, it’s not the NYT, but the Washington Post had its share of dropped balls on the subject today. More here. To its credit, the Post corrected quickly — just as a blogger might. Perhaps this suggests a gradual convergence between the two modes.

AUSTIN BAY has more thoughts on Eason Jordan:

I’m waiting for CNN to release the actual audio or a full-written transcript of Eason Jordan’s remarks in Davos, Switzerland. That will clarify and –to pinch CNN’s word—properly “contextualize” Jordan’s alleged anti-US slur. We do know this: Jordan’s statement –whether chitchat or slander– was made before an international audience that included a score of Third World elites. These are the ruling class fat cats who have a big say back home about who gets to do what. They are the movers and shakers who have power to influence industrial concessions and –here’s the kicker in this analysis– with a wink and a nod can grant a news organization access to people and places. These elites are themselves potential news sources, bigshots who can add hardhitting soundbites.

Read the whole thing. And read this, too.

UPDATE: Oil-for-food, RatherGate, Eason Jordan — Roger Simon sees a common factor.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Michael Totten has more on Jordan.

LEGALIZING ABORTION IN IRAN? Perhaps they’re trying to demonstrate that they’re progressive.

YOU REALLY CAN buy anything on Amazon!

GAY GROUPS are trying to stop San Francisco from crushing their civil rights.

WARD CHURCHILL UPDATE:

The American Indian Movement Grand Governing Council representing the National and International leadership of the American Indian Movement once again is vehemently and emphatically repudiating and condemning the outrageous statements made by academic literary and Indian fraud, Ward Churchill in relationship to the 9-11 tragedy in New York City that claimed thousands of innocent people’s lives.

Churchill’s statement that these people deserved what happened to them, and calling them little Eichmanns, comparing them to Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who implemented Adolf Hitler’s plan to exterminate European Jews and others, should be condemned by all.

The sorry part of this is Ward Churchill has fraudulently represented himself as an Indian, and a member of the American Indian Movement, a situation that has lifted him into the position of a lecturer on Indian activism. He has used the American Indian Movement’s chapter in Denver to attack the leadership of the official American Indian Movement with his misinformation and propaganda campaigns.

That’s got to hurt. One can, of course, be of Indian descent without being an enrolled member of a tribe. Churchill, however, appears to have misrepresented his status.

UPDATE: Indian Country Today has much more:

Suzan Shown Harjo, a columnist for ICT who has tracked Churchill’s career, said that aside from the in-laws of his late Indian wife, he has not been able to produce any relatives from any Indian tribe.

Beyond the question of his personal identity is the question of his standing to represent Indian opinion, not only on 9/11 but also in his other published works. Mohawk ironworkers helped build the World Trade Center and other monuments of the New York City skyline, and one crew was actually at work in the flight path of the plane that struck the second tower. St. Regis Mohawk Chief James Ransom noted that they joined rescue teams at great personal risk.

Churchill’s other writings repudiate not only the U.S. but also most Indian tribal institutions. In one 1994 essay, he described tribal self government as a ”cruel hoax” carried out by ”puppets” of ”an advanced colonial setting.” He equated the status of Indian tribes in the U.S. to that of European colonies in Asia and Africa. His analysis reflected an extreme version of European left-wing ideology.

But wait, there’s more:

Far from suffering for his views, Churchill appears to have been sought out by many in the universities as a representative of American Indian thinking. But to many Native intellectuals, he is traveling under false pretenses, both in his ideology and his personal identity.

So Henry Farrell is rather wide of the mark (as usual) when he suggests that I’m being dishonest in noting that Churchill’s beliefs are representative of a depressingly wide swath of academia. There’s clearly a swath that prefers a fake Indian spouting extreme European leftism when it can get one, so much so that the spouter is actively sought out because of those views. That’s no surprise, of course, to anyone who has been paying attention to academia, which Henry apparently has not.

(Via View from a Height).

ANOTHER UPDATE: Boy, Farrell sure picked the wrong week to try to argue that support for hate-filled leftist stupidity isn’t really a problem in the academy. Churchill, after all, was an administrator at a major American state university. Now we have the ongoing problems at Columbia, a major private university:

COLUMBIA University is about to host yet another apparent anti-Semite. But President Lee Bollinger is still bent on saving his school’s image — rather than grappling with its real problems.

On Feb. 10, Columbia’s Heyman Center for the Humanities will host a talk by Tom Paulin, an Irish poet infamous for telling an Arab paper that Brooklyn-born Israeli settlers “should be shot dead . . . they are Nazis, racists, I feel nothing but hatred for them.”

Paulin also says that Israel has no right to exist and that he resigned from Britain’s Labor Party because it was “Zionist.”

Of course, Paulin may be defended — if that’s the word — as a mere anti-semite, not an anti-American. Except that he seems to have a special hatred for American Jews:

THE Board of Deputies of British Jews is considering making a complaint to the police over a newspaper interview with the poet Tom Paulin in which he is reported as saying that American-born settlers in Israel should be shot dead.

Honestly, the problem seems hard to deny — unless, that is, you’re in denial. Hostility toward America, and the West generally, is far too common in the academy, and members of the academy not only aren’t doing much about it, too many of them are trying to pretend it doesn’t exist now that people are pointing it out. This is doubly ironic in light of decades of PC efforts to purge the adademy of “hate speech,” efforts which seem to be applied with a rather sharp double standard in which the likes of Paulin and Churchill are seen as “provoking debate,” rather than as practicing hate speech. This certainly makes it appear that some kinds of hate speech are viewed as acceptable, or even good. (Would C.U. have hired this guy?).

MORE: Matt Bruce says that Churchill shouldn’t be fired for his remarks, as that would be a violation of academic freedom. I agree, of course, but academic freedom is no guarantee against criticism. Whether his rather dubious status as an Indian is a firing offense is a different question, and I don’t know enough to have an opinion.

And it’s nice to see that Brown University is not only admitting the problem, but also trying to figure out what to do about it.

On the other hand, here’s another university shutting down efforts to help American soldiers.

IT’S NOT JUST ARMSTRONG WILLIAMS, CONT’D: “NBC Reporter Was on U.N. Lobby Payroll .”

AUSTIN BAY IS ALL OVER THE VOLCKER REPORT: Bottom line: “This is damning. It’s clear Oil For Food was a corrupt mess, that it was used by Saddam’s regime, and that very senior UN leaders benefited from the corruption. Oil For Food boss Benon Sevan has been publicly fingered.”

What’s more, it’s likely to be the tip of the iceberg, as internal investigations usually don’t get all the way to the real dirt.

UPDATE: Mark Coffey says it’s the Thornburgh Report all over again. Yeah.

IT WAS DENTAL SURGERY THIS MORNING, and I’m now in the window between the sedation wearing off and the codeine pills kicking in. I’ll be kicked back watching Gilligan’s Island and Lost in Space DVDs, and not blogging for a while.

But in the meantime, Hugh Hewitt and Ed Morrissey are all over the Eason Jordan story, as is Power Line. Reportedly there’s a video of Eason’s talk — so let’s see it. Now.

And here’s an interesting comparison of media treatment of Social Security reform in 1998 vs. media treatment today.

Finally, Jeff Jarvis isn’t letting go of the Sarah Boxer scandal. And keep scrolling at The Belgravia Dispatch for some interesting analysis of Bush’s foreign policy points last night.

HOPES AND FEARS FOR BUSH’S SECOND TERM: Reason rounds up comments from a lot of smart and famous people. Also me.

And, by the way, this from the Reason folks is also highly recommended.

THOUGHTS on Bush’s Iran Strategy.

UPDATE: Max Boot: “George Bush Talks Big, and He Delivers.”

DUMB INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAWSUITS are killing the model aircraft and ship business.

WINDS OF CHANGE has a State of the Union roundup. And Hugh Hewitt ties it together with Eason Jordan. Well, sort of.

Meanwhile, Dartblog offers a Tom Shales State of the Union review retrospective. And Mickey Kaus writes: “The NYT’s Todd Purdum seems to have heard the grand, ‘sweeping’ speech he expected Bush to give as opposed to the speech Bush actually gave. … When the facts go against the safe, hack, preordained CW theme, print the safe, hack, preordained CW theme!”

HARDBALL’S SOTU ANALYSIS wasn’t quite this bad, but it was pretty lame — especially Chris Matthews’ recycling of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen as if he were saying something new and profound.

EASON JORDAN HAS RESPONDED to his critics, but this doesn’t make sense to me. Am I missing something?

UPDATE: Apparently, I’m not. And Steve Sturm has questions about Jordan’s numbers.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reportedly, foreign journalists aren’t corroborating Jordan.

Meanwhile, I just searched Poynter and there doesn’t seem to be any mention of this story at all there. And Ed Morrissey notes that it’s being ignored across the big media. I notice, however, that Poynter found time to mention charges that one obscure correspondent might actually like Bush.

Even Wonkette isn’t buying this.

IDEALISM ON CAMPUS hasn’t died, after all.

SHORT AND TO THE POINT: What he said.

ANKLE-BITING PUNDITS will be liveblogging the Democratic rebuttal. They’re running an open comments thread, too.

NICE JOB. The inaugural was OK, which for Bush is a success. This, on the other hand, was actually good, making it Bush’s best speech ever, I think. He seems much more comfortable and relaxed, probably because of the Iraqi elections going so well. I think we’re just figuring out just how much the Administration’s plans turned on that. He bet on the Iraqi people, and he won.

UPDATE: Matt Barr emails: “September 20, 2001 is a pretty high hurdle.”

Yeah, but in a way this was just the second half of that speech.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Krauthammer calls it “pedestrian.” Taegan Goddard, though, observes: “It was very powerful stuff, no matter how scripted,” but adds, “I do wonder what some of Bush’s base thinks about the kiss he gave Sen. Joseph Lieberman as he made his way out the House chamber, however.” Hmm. I must’ve missed that part . . . .

And Brendan Loy says the quote of the night came from Andrew Sullivan, on CNN. (But there’s a pretty good one here: It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!)

MORE: Here’s a transcript of the speech as delivered.

Mickey Kaus: “Not exciting, but highly effective. Or, rather, highly effective because it wasn’t exciting.” He likes the Social Security treatment, too.

David Adesnik: “Don’t the Democrats have something better to offer than telling us the Indians and Chinese are going to steal our jobs?”

The Diplomad: “It’s quite an experience sitting in front of a large screen TV in a foreign land surrounded by foreigners — many of them not friendlies — listening to the President of United States speak.”

Jeff Goldstein offers a summary of the Democratic response that is similar to Andrew Sullivan’s. But very nuanced.

MORE STILL: Pelosi is busted not only on style, but on substance: Luckily for the Dems, nobody was watching by then.

Meanwhile, Pejman Yousefzadeh writes: “This speech was infinitely better than the State of the Union address President Bush delivered one year ago.” He didn’t like the gay marriage stuff, though.

PRAISE FOR THE TROOPS, and a posthumous medal-of-honor winner’s parents. Nicely done, and a very long ovation.

UPDATE: Oops. The medal-of-honor winner was SFC Paul Smith. Those were the parents of Sgt. Byron Norwood.

IT’S HOT LIVE STATE-OF-THE-UNION CHAT at The Command Post. Express yourself!

BOBBY JINDAL and some others are holding up purple fingers as Bush talks about the Iraqi vote.

TOUGH ON SYRIA, easy on the Palestinians. Got a big ovation on the Syria part, too. Hmm. But now he’s talking about Iran. . . .

To the Iranian people: “As you stand for your own liberty, our nation stands with you.” Big ovation — dems stand too.

UPDATE: Hosni Mubarak may not like it.

“THE ONLY FORCE POWERFUL ENOUGH TO STOP THE RISE OF TYRANNY AND TERROR, and to replace hatred with hope, is the force of human freedom. Our enemies know this, and this is why the terrorist Zarqawi recently declared war on what he called ‘the evil principle of democracy.’ . . . The advance of freedom will lead to peace.”

Gotcher “root causes” approach right here! “Exit strategy,” too!

He’s spelling out the Bush Doctrine more clearly than he’s done before.

“FREEDOM FROM FEAR:” Nice FDR allusion, but I’m still not impressed on homeland security.

THIS SHOULD MAKE JERALYNN MERRITT HAPPY: More for DNA testing to ensure innocent aren’t convicted, more for training defense lawyers in capital cases.

GAY MARRIAGE, ABORTION, STEM CELLS, I disagree with him on all of these. Republicans seem to be applauding, Dems remaining seated.

Capt. Ed notes: “He spent ten minutes, by my watch, on Social Security. He spent thirty seconds on the Federal Marriage Amendment. Anyone need an explanation?”

I’M AGNOSTIC about Social Security reform, but pitching it to “young Americans” is a shift. Most talk about Social Security has been aimed at old people.

UPDATE: Interesting cross-generation blog-dialogue on Social Security. Maybe Bush knew what he was doing.

FULL TEXT of the speech, here.

BR’ER RABBIT ALERT: “I welcome the bipartisan enthusiasm for spending discipline.” Translation: You called me a big spender — now don’t complain about the cuts.

UPDATE: Ditto the energy stuff, especially the nuclear bit. You complained I didn’t have an energy plan — well, here it is!

LAPHAMIZATION ALERT: The Telegraph is already reporting: “President George W Bush said last night the Iraqi election had opened a ‘new phase’ in the troubled country, allowing American forces to shift their attention from stemming the insurgency to training Iraqi security forces.”

SOTU BLOGGERS: Capt. Ed is liveblogging. So is Stephen Green, and John Cross. Power Line, too. And here’s a list with a lot more folks who are doing the same thing. So is WorldWideRant.

Patrick Ruffini will be liveblogging, but he’s also preblogging via the prepared text.

UPDATE: LaShawn Barber offers an open comment thread if you want to weigh in.

VIRGINIA POSTREL writes about Andrew Sullivan’s blog-hiatus, and I just got an email from a journalist asking me questions about the burdens of blogging. So since it sounds like this topic is coming up, here are some thoughts.

Virginia (and Andrew, and for that matter Mickey Kaus) are all right that there’s a tension between blogging and doing longer, more thoughtful work. (As Kaus says, “The short deadline usually beats the long deadline, and a blog is a continuous short deadline.”)

I deal with that, because I write two or three law review articles a year, and they’re long and require a lot of thinking. I have to block out time to do that, and sometimes I find it helpful to use a computer that’s not on the web.

But it works the other way, too. The Insta-Wife has been having a lot of health problems lately — this is an intermittent thing — and when that happens I’m really not in the right mental and emotional state to engage in that kind of big-project concentration anyway, and when I try there’s usually some sort of interruption. I can blog from the cardiologist’s waiting room — and I have — but I couldn’t get much work done on a book or a law review article in that setting. And when you’re in a cardiologist’s office, you’d lots rather blog than pay attention to what’s around you . . . . (I notice there are a lot of bloggers with sick wives, like Capt. Ed and Bill Hobbs, to name just two, so I must not be the only one to feel that way).

There are two downsides to blogging. One is that it can fill up your time, one five-minute chunk after another. The other — much worse — is that it forces you to pay attention to the news, which is usually depressing, infuriating, or frightening, or some combination of all three.

But the upside to blogging is that it can be done in five-minute chunks. My usual strategy is like the old story about filling the can with rocks and sand — if you put the big rocks in first, there’s plenty of room for the sand to flow around them, while if you put the sand in first, the rocks won’t fit. I try to schedule the big stuff first, and blog around it. And when the rocks won’t fit, even by themselves, there’s still room for the sand.

JUST GOT AN EMAIL FROM CNN ON THE EASON JORDAN SCANDAL (the new one, not the old one). I’ll be frank — I don’t believe it. Here’s what it says:

Many blogs have taken Mr. Jordan’s remarks out of context. Eason Jordan does not believe the U.S. military is trying to kill journalists. Mr. Jordan simply pointed out the facts: While the majority of journalists killed in Iraq have been slain at the hands of insurgents, the Pentagon has also noted that the U.S. military on occasion has killed people who turned out to be journalists. The Pentagon has apologized for those actions.

Mr. Jordan was responding to an assertion by Cong. Frank that all 63 journalist victims had been the result of “collateral damage.”

Pardon me if I don’t fully trust Jordan in light of his past behavior. And it sounds like there’s more than just context involved. I’ll believe it when I see the video, or a transcript.

UPDATE: Roger Simon comments: “A full and direct explanation from Mr. Jordan himself is needed here, not corporate spin, especially given the rather different accounts from eyewitnesses.”

JIM LINDGREN: “Incredibly, the European Union has come out against human rights activists in Cuba and in favor of Fidel Castro.”

It’s not that incredible. But Vaclav Havel is unhappy with the E.U.:

I can hardly think of a better way for the EU to dishonor the noble ideals of freedom, equality and human rights that the Union espouses — indeed, principles that it reiterates in its constitutional agreement. To protect European corporations’ profits from their Havana hotels, the Union will cease inviting open-minded people to EU embassies, and we will deduce who they are from the expression on the face of the dictator and his associates. It is hard to imagine a more shameful deal.

Cuba’s dissidents will, of course, happily do without Western cocktail parties and polite conversation at receptions. This persecution will admittedly aggravate their difficult struggle, but they will naturally survive it. The question is whether the EU will survive it. . . .

It is suicidal for the EU to draw on Europe’s worst political traditions, the common denominator of which is the idea that evil must be appeased and that the best way to achieve peace is through indifference to the freedom of others.

Indeed it is.

ACTIONFIGUREGATE: More over at GlennReynolds.com.

UPDATE: Shannon Love writes:

The whole ActionFigureGate episode really makes me think about the standards applied by international major media(IMM) to the stories they disseminate. Why was major media so quick to disseminate pictures of an action figure as a genuine hostage photo?

More to the point, why are major media so quick to disseminate anything that a terrorist group, or purported terrorist group, releases?

The quickest way to get the prime spot in IMM today is to release a picture of somebody with a gun to their head. The IMM will immediately disseminate the picture and all your demands and statements!

For the terrorist, it is like being given millions of dollars in free advertising.

Back in the 20′s and 30′s, businesses tried to advertise themselves by pulling dangerous publicity stunts. They used human flies, faked car crashes, exploding buildings or anything they thought would get them free media attention. After a time, however, the media developed a consensus standard that such events would not be reported and the stunts for the most part stopped .

The media stopped covering the events for two reasons: (1) they sold advertising so giving away free advertising hurt the bottom line and (2) people were getting hurt and they were getting hurt only because the media was paying attention. When they stopped paying attention, people stopped getting hurt.

In fact, media organizations were held liable for injuries that resulted. Read the whole thing.

BILL FRIST will not be running for reelection in 2006. Here’s a look at the race for his seat, which is already shaping up.

A VICTORY in the War on Terror — brought to you by G.I. Joe and his friends!

OPERATION PHOTO lets you donate your used digital cameras to the families of servicemembers serving abroad, so that they can email family photos. Sounds worthwhile to me.

ARE THOSE REAL INSURGENTS, or “action figures,” on this week’s Newsweek cover?

I’m just, you know, asking.

REACHING OUT TO THE OPPOSITION: A nice exchange at LT Smash’s place.