HISTORY, for those who think it started in 2001.

UPDATE: More history, from Jon Henke. And Tom Maguire looks at some more recent history.

MORE: TM Lutas asks what’s different since the Clinton years.

BUSH DOUBLES DOWN: I just watched Bush’s speech. Nothing new there for anyone who’s been paying attention to the speeches he’s been giving over the past couple of weeks. But one big thing struck me: In this national televised speech, Bush went out of his way to take responsibility for the war. He repeatedly talked about “my decision to invade Iraq,” even though, of course, it was also Congress’s decision. He made very clear that, ultimately, this was his war, and the decisions were his.

Why did he do that? Because he thinks we’re winning, and he wants credit. By November 2006, and especially November 2008, he thinks that’ll be obvious, and he wants to lay down his marker now on what he believed — and what the other side did. That’s my guess, anyway.

UPDATE: Ian Schwartz has video of the speech. Here’s the transcript. (Part Two here). And here is a reaction, and advice for Bush, from Lorie Byrd of PoliPundit.

And, yes, the hounds don’t seem to have made an impression.

Meanwhile, Ed Morrissey and Michelle Malkin were liveblogging the speech. And read this from RealClearPolitics, too.

More here from GayPatriot.

Still more here. And proud Bush-hater Jonathan Chait writes: “I am not, to say the least, a fan of President Bush. But a portion of his speech tonight genuinely moved me and made me think more highly of him.”

Gateway Pundit: “After Only 1,000 Days, Bush Takes Credit for Iraq.” See the timeline.

MORE: Hmm. “Sunnis say they want to work with U.S.” Best quote: “‘We now believe we must get on good terms with the Americans,’ Hemaiym said.” Do tell.

STILL MORE: Here’s a big roundup of blog reactions from PJ Media.

And more reactions are here.

MEDIA BIAS: It’s worse than you thought, according to a new UCLA study. (Via Dan Riehl).

UPDATE: Reader Michael Schrage sends more evidence in support of the study’s conclusion, in the form of this unbylined AP “analysis” of Bush’s speech. [LATER: The story runs here under Ron Fournier's byline.]

And here’s more on the topic, from Ed Driscoll.

SCIENCE FICTION RECOMMENDATIONS: As promised, here are some. I’m not including fantasy or alt-history here — maybe I’ll do that later. Just real science fiction.

Anyway, in no particular order:

Joe Haldeman’s Camouflage: It’s not anything like the Forever War, and as I noted earlier the ending is a bit abrupt, but I liked it.

I liked Peter Hamilton’s Pandora’s Star enough that I ordered the sequel, though it hasn’t come yet.

Series often run dry, but the Larry Niven Ringworld-derived Man-Kzin Wars series has gotten a new lease on life with installments X and XI which are pretty good. The Kzin have always been one of my favorite alien species.

The Heechee are another, and Fred Pohl’s new book, The Boy Who Would Live Forever was very good. His AI-Chef hero is pretty fun, too.

John Birmingham’s Designated Targets, sequel to the Hillary-Clinton-inspired Weapons of Choice, is very good. I’m not sure if I should score it as alt-history or science fiction, but I’m putting it here since there’s interdimensional travel involved.

It’s been a big Scalzi year for me: I liked Old Man’s War, and its sequel, Ghost Brigades. And Agent to the Stars was fun, too.

It’s also been a big Charles Stross year, with Accelerando coming out. And you might also like his Iron Sunrise, which features a warblogger hero. You can read Accelerando free on his website.

Richard Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs novels, Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, and Woken Furies are all very good. On the other hand, I couldn’t get through Market Forces: I just found its premise impossible to swallow.

Well, that’s a pretty fair assortment. Here’s an earlier post with science fiction recommendations, and here’s one with alt-history recommendations. And here’s another along those lines. Meanwhile, here’s a post from last year with lots of other book recommendations. That should be enough to get you going!

But don’t forget, you can get a lot of excellent science fiction books, many quite recent, for free online at the Baen Free Library. And don’t miss the introductory essay by Eric Flint.

GOOD NEWS YOU MIGHT MISS: Afghanistan’s first elected national assembly in 30 years is meeting. Murdoc Online has more, and observes: “If, at the end of September 2001 you had said that both Iraq and Afghanistan would have elected new democratic national governments by the end of 2005, I would have said you were a bit too optimistic. I’m glad to be proven wrong. Why are some people so disappointed that things are going so well?”

Why, indeed?

MY BROTHER’S BAND, COPPER, is apparently more appealing than “America’s Hottest College Girl:”

Jake: (More hyperventilating) What’s the least romantic thing a guy has ever done to you?

Allie: I got asked out on a date to a Copper concert. He met me at the door, he paid my way in, he bought me 3 or 4 shots of tequila, as soon as Copper walked out onto the stage, he disappeared.

Jake: Rough…

You gotta focus on the band! Rough for her. Cool for Copper! Thanks to reader James daSilva, who spotted this.

BOY, the Big Media coverage of Katrina — which so many media folks were congratulating themselves on at the time — isn’t looking very good now that we know what actually happened. More here: “The New York Times and Los Angeles Times both put forth front-page stories this weekend that dramatically contradict much of their own coverage of the disaster.”

Hmm. Bogus reporting that inflames racial tensions. This could be as damaging to society as violent videogames. We need Congressional hearings!

UPDATE: More here from Keith Milby.

THIS SOUNDS DUMB:

Yesterday a trio of Democratic senators with presidential ambitions introduced federal legislation that they believe can pass constitutional muster.

The legislation, unveiled at a press conference by Democratic senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Evan Bayh of Indiana, would essentially codify the industry’s current voluntary rating system. It assigns games letters from “EC,” meaning appropriate for early childhood, to “AO” for “adults only.” Retailers who sell games rated “mature,” “adults only” or “ratings pending” to children under 17 could face fines of $5,000 per violation.

My TCS Daily column will explore this at more length, but did I mention it’s dumb?

UPDATE: More criticism from Seven Deadly Sins and Entropy Manor, where we get this observation: “While I don’t like the increasing level of mature content in today’s video games, I don’t think making it a federal crime to sell them to children is the answer. While I deplore the increasing levels of violence and sex in our culture, I deplore government intrusion into a role which is properly that of the parents.”

A NEGATIVE REACTION to Time’s People of the Year choices, with some suggested alternatives. I think it was a pretty dull and uninspired choice on Time’s part. Ed Morrissey agrees.

UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis observes: “this is one more indication how we are reentering an age of leadership by the very rich . . . should the millions who gave billions after the tsunami have been the cover subjects, perhaps?”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch emails:

I’ve had my disagreements with Jeff, but he’s right about this. Funny, the MSM has become much more pro super-rich folks since the super-rich became movers and shakers in the Demorcatic party. Wonder why?

No, not really.

DICK CHENEY makes a surprise visit to Iraq.

THE INSTA-DAUGHTER is celebrating Christmas vacation with a marathon viewing session revolving around the Simpsons seventh season DVDs, which came on Friday. I’ve watched a couple of them with her, and wish I had time to watch them all.

When I was a kid I would have loved being able to do that. Also the computer games, car-mounted DVD players, etc. Today’s kids have it good in some ways.

ERIC UMANSKY:

My understanding from talking to a liberal law professor and reading a relevant case is that–contrary to much of the chatter–the constitutionality of the NSA spying is actually unclear.

Yes. As I note below, many people think the Constitution provides far more protection for privacy in communications than it actually does under existing caselaw.

STRATEGYPAGE on the Iraqi elections:

This relentless progress of democracy is causing quite a commotion throughout the Arab world. While it is fashionable to denounce the American presence in Iraq, and what the Americans were doing, the Arab language buzz on the net is going in unexpected directions. Because of al Jazeera and the Internet, young Arabs everywhere are not only able to observe what it happening in Iraq, but to discuss it with young Iraqis. These discussions are not noted much in the West, because they generally take place in Arabic, and often via email and listservs. The non-Iraqi Arabs are impressed at the proliferation of media in Iraq, and the eagerness of Iraqis to vote, and make democracy work. The economic growth in Iraq is admired, and is already attracting entrepreneurs from other Arab countries. The more cynical non-Iraqis believe that it will all come to nothing, and that another Saddam will eventually emerge and shut down all this democratic nonsense, as is the case in most of the Arab world. But the pessimists appear to be in the minority. Arabs are tired of dictators, economic stagnation, the corruption and living in a police state. Moreover, there’s a nimble quality in Arab thinking that allows them to simultaneously blame the Americans for going into Iraq, and praising the result.

Read the whole thing.

THIS SEEMS LIKE GOOD NEWS: “World Trade Organization negotiators approved an agreement Sunday requiring wealthy nations to end farm export subsidies by 2013, a support system that poor nations say puts them at a competitive disadvantage.” They’d hoped to accomplish much more, though. Daniel Drezner has more, and reports that the EU officials are “grumpy.”

THE INSTA-WIFE HAS ADVICE on dealing with family during the holidays, as well as some thoughts on why it matters.

SOUNDS LIKE THE ARMY IS blowing it with bloggers:

That is, they seem to have been given a highly negative sense of the blogosphere, and were discouraging soldiers from posting anything that might affect anything. Which to me is sass-akwards. Milbloggers, in my non-humble opinion, have done more for the war effort and more to correct misleading reports than the entire Army Public Affairs Branch has (note: this is not a slam on them, but praise for the MilBlog community). The Army should be encouraging troops to give *more* information on their first-hand impressions and how things are going, not less. “Winning the War” begins at home – we’re not going to be defeated here, but may have to pull out because of people’s impressions at home, which in my opinion seem to be shaped by misleading reports of what the overall picture here is. (Note again – I’m writing less from my own direct experiences than from the impression I get second-hand, both talking to people who have direct experiences and reading what I consider to be reliable sources). This attitude towards soldier-bloggers, which might be limited to just the 4th Division, seems to be another example of the Army shooting itself in the foot – making its mission harder.

That seems right to me. I understand concerns about operational security, but this seems more like a (doomed) effort to regain lost control over information flow. Given the ready market for it in big media, damaging information will still flow freely — this will just make it harder for the helpful stuff to get out.

SOME ODD BEHAVIOR BY THE CIA seems to be explained by Colin Powell:

THE US administration was never told of doubts about the secret intelligence used to justify war with Iraq, former secretary of state Colin Powell told the BBC in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday night.

Mr Powell, who argued the case for military action against Saddam Hussein in the UN in 2003, told BBC News 24 television he was “deeply disappointed in what the intelligence community had presented to me and to the rest of us.”

“What really upset me more than anything else was that there were people in the intelligence community that had doubts about some of this sourcing, but those doubts never surfaced to us,” he said.

(Via Mark in Mexico who has further thoughts). And read this Claude Rains reference from Powell, too.

I’M NOT SURE IF THIS IS A REAL SCANDAL, but it doesn’t look very good:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s AIDS charity paid nearly a half-million dollars in consulting fees to members of his political inner circle, according to tax returns providing the first financial accounting of the presidential hopeful’s nonprofit. . . .

World of Hope gave $3 million it raised to charitable AIDS causes, such as Africare and evangelical Christian groups with ties to Republicans _ Franklin Graham’s Samaritan Purse and the Rev. Luis Cortes’ Esperanza USA, for example.

The rest of the money went to overhead. That included $456,125 in consulting fees to two firms run by Frist’s longtime political fundraiser, Linus Catignani. One is jointly run by Linda Bond, the wife of Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond, R-Mo.

On the other hand, it may not be that unusual:

“One of the things people who are running for president try to do is keep their fundraising staff and political people close at hand. And one of the ways you can do that is by putting them in some sort of organization you run,” said Larry Noble, the government’s former chief election lawyer who now runs the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics that studies fundraising.

Nonetheless, it seems a bit iffy, to say the least.

UPDATE: Reader Justin VanNingen is skeptical:

The AP story about Bill Frist’s charity giving money to groups with “Republican Ties” makes this look more like a hit piece than decent reporting.

First off, a simple Google search on “Esperanza USA” shows (3rd listed!) that Howard Dean met with Esparanza USA’s head Rev. Cortes and endorsed them. This happened just over one month ago.

Second, Samaritan’s Purse is an Evangelical group whose head is Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham — a Democrat. SP does not have a track record of getting into politics like Focus on the Family or CBN.

If this is what counts as a scandal in DC these days, the country must be doing alright. Either that, or the AP is desperate.

Either of those is possible, of course. Joe Gandelman, meanwhile, is more critical, and has a big roundup on the subject. Lots of politicians have semi-captive nonprofits, though they’re more often think-tank-like operations. To some degree, of course, this is just more evidence that the nonprofit sector needs more scrutiny; whether there’s more to this story, well, we’ll see.

WE KNEW IT ALREADY, but it’s still news that he’s saying it:

The chief U.N. investigator into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri said in remarks published Saturday that he believed Syrian authorities were behind the killing.

It was the first time that Detlev Mehlis has unequivocally accused Syria of responsibility for Hariri’s assassination since opening the U.N. probe in June.

Stay tuned.

TOM MAGUIRE has questions for the New York Times.

UPDATE: Lots more here. And there’s this: “I cannot remember the last time, or first time, this newspaper reported a leak that was helpful to our war effort.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Much more here. Plus, “Frog-marched to the hoosegow?”

And Sen. John Cornyn is criticizing the Times rather harshly. In a later post, Tom Maguire finds some other members of Congress “annoyingly hypocritical,” and observes:

News flash – we are still a representative democracy, despite the evident unwillingness of our opposition party to bestir itself. If this secret program was so outrageous, the Senate and House Democrats who had been briefed on it should have spoken up. Instead, we get profiles in courage as, per the Times, Reid, Rockefeller, and others are unavailable for comment.

My take: This story was bad for Bush on Friday, but it’ll be bad for a lot of other people by next week. My earlier post on this topic is here.

MORE: Glenn Greenwald says that the Cold Fury post to which I link above misquotes the statute. [LATER: Al Maviva of Cold Fury says that Greenwald is misquoting him.]

I’m still hoping for a lengthier analysis by Orin Kerr. I’ve taught FISA in the past, but it’s been a couple of years and I’m busy grading Administrative Law exams. Of course, Orin’s probably got his own stack of bluebooks. In the post of Orin’s that I linked to before, he noted that the area is very complex and unclear, and suggested that people read this District Court opinion. But note that it’s only a District Court opinion.

It’s also worth noting that there are two distinct issues here: Whether the wiretapping (or other interception) was legal, and whether the leak was legal. The leak almost certainly violated the law. The wiretapping is not so clear: Most people fail to appreciate how limited their protection against government surveilliance is, both under statutes and under constitutional law. And that’s doubly so where international communications are concerned. (And, except for the small possibility of a constitutional-tort action, the main remedy for unconstitutional surveillance can be found in the exclusionary rule, which only comes into play if someone is prosecuted and the government tries to introduce the surveillance into evidence — meaning that, as with the exclusionary rule in general, the remedy is worthless if you’re never charged with anything, say because you’re innocent.) Nor is this a phenomenon that can be blamed on the Patriot Act or the Bush Administration, particularly — the protections are just quite limited indeed, and prone to technical parsing on such questions as whether the communications were “stored,” even momentarily, en route. (For a non-FISA example of that kind of parsing, read the Steve Jackson Games opinion from 1994, long before the Patriot Act). You may find these legal interpretations offensive — I do — but they’re the law as it is.

And this observation seems to be correct: “What is clear is that this is not some Watergate-type rogue operation, as seemingly hoped by some. In addition to repeated congressional notification, the program has been heavily lawyered by multiple agencies, including the Department of Justice and NSA and White House, and is regularly reviewed. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Secretary of State Condi Rice have both insisted that program is legal. The fact that some might disagree with whatever legal advice and conclusions the president has received does not make them right or the program illegal. But at this point, we, the public, don’t really know what these news stories are really about, do we?”

MORE: Dafydd Ab Hugh has more questions for the Times. I think that there will be a lot of those.

FINALLY: Matt Rustler has advice for people on the left and right.

CHRISTMAS/HOLIDAY ADVICE to blog readers: Don’t do this here, as I don’t need it, but go to one of your favorite blogs and make a donation or send an appreciative email. Especially one of the smaller blogs, where the attention is especially likely to be noticed and appreciated. There are a lot of blogs out there, and the bloggers with low traffic often work just as hard as the ones with big numbers. Let ‘em know if you like their work.

DO IRAQIS WANT DEMOCRACY? David Adesnik looks at the polls.

UPDATE: This report sounds like good news, too:

Although no official vote figures have been released, authorities estimate just under 70 per cent of Iraq’s 15 million registered voters cast ballots Thursday.

The big turnout – particularly among the disaffected Sunni Arab minority that boycotted the election of a temporary legislature last January – have boosted hopes that increasing political participation may undermine the insurgency and allow U.S. troops to begin pulling out next year.

Democratization is a process, not an event. But it’s a process that seems to be moving ahead.

SOME INTERESTING NOTES on the spread of democracy in the mideast.

WTO UPDATE:

Protesters opposed to lowering trade barriers swung bamboo sticks at police Saturday and tried to storm a convention center where World Trade Organization delegates were negotiating a global accord on farming, manufacturing and services. At least 70 people were injured.

Security forces scattered the crowd with tear gas and pepper spray, and 900 people were detained after the worst street violence in Hong Kong in decades. The injured included 10 police officers.

The protesters included South Korean farmers, Southeast Asian groups and activists from the United States and Europe. They are concerned that WTO efforts to open up global markets will enrich wealthy nations at the expense of poor and developing countries.

Actually, of course, they have this exactly backwards.

Daniel Drezner is blogging from the middle of all this: “The result is that I’ve spent this evening looking at policemen sheathed in protest gear — gas masks, body-length Plexiglas shielding, truncheons, etc. — while drinking and dining at the hotel buffet along with a healthy number of WTO delegates. It’s more than a bit surreal.”

He adds, however: “The truly bizarre thing is that, having ventured out earlier in the evening, I’m quite certain that the number of curious onlookers outnumbers the actual protestors, the press contingent outnumbers the protestors, and the police most definitely outnumber the protestors. The Korean protestors are certainly causing inconveniences beyond their numbers, but this is a much smaller contingent of activists than were present at either Seattle in 1999 or Cancun in 2003. And any press report suggesting otherwise is full of it.”

Nice to know. And as Drezner notes, Hong Kong blogger Simon World has much, much more on the topic.

MORE: Stephen Spruiell was there, and reports of the protests: “It was one of the most appalling things I’ve ever witnessed.”

GREG DJEREJIAN chides me on the torture issue, and I have to say that he makes a strong case. As my uncharacteristically heated response to Andrew Sullivan the other day illustrated, Sullivan’s needling long ago got my back up, and has led me, consciously and unconsciously, to affirmatively avoid writing about this topic in response, as Djerejian suggests. That no doubt represents a flaw in my character, but then, I am not without flaws.

UPDATE: I somehow thought that Arthur Silber had stoppped blogging, but he emails this rather lengthy post.

IF I HAD TO BET, I’d say that this was another Nancy Oden case (i.e., bogus) but if this report is true, it’s time for more shakeups at DHS. I find it doubtful, however, that the DHS is spending much time looking for signs of incipient Maoism. (Via Brian’s Study Breaks).

SO I SHOULD HAVE BEEN grading Administrative Law exams last night, but I made the mistake of starting John Scalzi’s new book Ghost Brigades yesterday afternoon, got totally sucked in, and read until I finished it about midnight last night.

As that might suggest, it’s really good. It’s only sort of a sequel to Old Man’s War, though it takes place in the same world and with some of the same characters. Perhaps for that reason, it doesn’t suffer from the slowed pace and inconclusive action that many second-of-series books do: It’s a self-contained story, and you could read it and enjoy it even if you hadn’t read Old Man’s War, though you’d miss out on some of the background. At any rate, I liked it very much, and I think that anyone who enjoyed the first book will like this one just as much.

Various people have asked for other science-fiction recommendations, but I don’t have time to post that now. I’ll try to do something up later.

POPULAR MECHANICS has been doing an in-depth investigation of the Katrina disaster, and posting reports to its blog in advance of a big forthcoming article. Here’s one:

To understand the full impact of Katrina, you have to make a distinction between New Orleans and the rest of the region. New Orleans suffered devastating inundation due to the various levee breaks, but wind damage was moderate. When you fly over the city, you see a patchwork of blue FEMA-supplied tarps on roofs. But the real damage came from below as floodwaters from failed levees rose and quietly soaked homes through and through. Only in areas where the levee failures were particularly sudden and intense—like the Industrial Canal and the 17th Street Levee—were houses physically demolished.

Outside the city you see a different story. We drove east out of the city on I-10, crossing over the famous twin-span bridge across Lake Ponchartrain. (Today it is a crowded single span as crews install temporary roadways across the destroyed portions of the northern span.) For the next eight hours we drove in a big loop through Slidell, Biloxi, Gulfport and Pass Christian. In all that time we never left a zone of hurricane destruction that ranged from moderate damage to total annihilation. And this is after three months of clean-up operations. . . .

Biloxi ought to be Exhibit A in any discussion of whether current coastal development regulations make sense. The beachfront properties were devastated, but only a few hundred yards inland, damage was moderate. Maybe there’s a lesson there for developers? Apparently not. Compared to New Orleans, where whole neighborhoods remain deserted, Biloxi is crawling with construction teams. Most of them are busy rebuilding hotels right at the water’s edge.

Read the whole thing, and scroll down the blog for other reports.

UPDATE: Reader Barry Dauphin emails:

I take some issue with the portrait painted by Popular Mechanics. I don’t dispute what they saw in Biloxi, etc. But they are under reporting the wind damage. There are lots of blue tarps all over the greater New Orleans area. Damaged roofs are not caused by flood waters. There is no question that the levee breaches were the cause of the most substantial damage and the reason the city is a semi-ghost town. But having been in New Orleans at Thanksgiving, I think Popular Mechanics is minimizing the damage from the storm other than flooding (I have pictures). The rest of what is written seems accurate.

And Mississippi reader Jane Meynardie emails:

I agree that floating casinos are stupid. But as for the notion that Biloxi ought to be Exhibit “A” for how not to develop a beachfront, I must protest. Many of the homes that were destroyed on Biloxi’s beach (and in Pass Christian, Gulfport and Bay St. Louis) were over 150 years old. (One in Bay St. Louis was over 200 years old and was built with axe-hewn wood prior to our first sawmill.) They took everything nature threw at them better and for longer than most of the crap that builders are putting up today under current codes (including our brand new $50+ million federal courthouse well off the beach). Many were built of cypress designed to withstand the water if it got wet. Beauvoir (the retirement home of Jefferson Davis, given to him by my great-aunt’s sister-in-law) survived this storm, although it took a battering, and still commands the beachfront. There was NOTHING wrong with those homes and nothing stupid about their location. Some acts of nature are simply too ferocious and too freakish for anything short of concrete pilings to withstand, and God help us if we turn that beautiful beachfront that He has given us into a wall of concrete condos. Biloxians and Biloxi’s architecture could teach the rest of the world a good bit about how to survive these things. We’ve been doing it for generations.

So noted.

DARFUR UPDATE: As usual, alas, it’s bad news:

Darfur has fallen into anarchy, with army troops, pro-government tribal militias, bandits, anti-government rebels and AU peacekeepers all fighting one another. It’s a low key war, with the main objective being to rob, rape and kill civilians, or loot UN relief operations, or trying to stop the all the lawlessness. There are only about 7,000 AU peacekeepers, and, technically, they are only supposed to be observing, not protecting. Such is the chaos, that few countries are willing to offer more peacekeepers. Historically, this sort of widespread tribal warfare is nothing new. But in the past, news of the atrocities took a lot longer to get out to the rest of the world. Getting the news faster has not made it any easier to stop the violence. Since Arab Sudanese run Sudan, they have the rest of the Arab world to protect them in the UN, and make it difficult for sanctions or war crimes investigations to get anywhere. Officially, the Arab world denies that there are any Moslem-on-Moslem atrocities being committed by Sudanese Arabs.

Here’s a big Darfur roundup from AllThings2All.

BLOGGER-TURNED-WAR-CORRESPONDENT BILL ROGGIO has an article on the Iraqi elections in the new Weekly Standard. Read the whole thing. He’s also got a followup post on his blog. And here’s a Flash presentation of photos he took.

ROBERT NOVAK is leaving CNN for FoxNews: I think he’ll be happier there.

JOHN SCALZI says we need more entry-level science fiction:

And this is the point: Fantasy literature has numerous open doors for the casual reader. How many does SF literature have? More importantly, how many is SF perceived to have? Any honest follower of the genre has to admit the answers are “few” and “even fewer than that,” respectively. The most accessible SF we have today is stuff that was written decades ago by people who are now dead. You all know I love me that Robert Heinlein as much as anyone, but why does my local bookstore still have more of his books than anyone else’s in the genre? The most effective modern “open doors” to SF are media tie-ins, which have their own set of problems: They’re fenced in grazing areas that don’t encourage hopping into the larger SF universe, and also, no one but unreconstituted geeks want to be seen on the subway with a Star Wars or Star Trek book in tow.

Good point. And, by the way, I finished Ghost Brigades (late) last night. I’ll post a review later today.

MIKE KREMPASKY says there’s good news at the FEC.

TYPEPAD IS BACK UP: It’s to their credit that an outage like this is rare enough to be big news.

UPDATE: Slashdot reports that this is a symptom of how the growth of the blogosphere is straining data centers.

HUGH HEWITT thinks the non-reauthorization of the Patriot Act is a big disaster. I’m not so sure.

UPDATE: There’s some unhappiness at The Corner, too. And there’s also a sense that Bush has lost a lot of legislative battles lately: Harriet Miers, the McCain Amendment, the Patriot Act renewal, etc.

Well, he has. The Miers nomination was a mistake from day one. The McCain Amendment and Patriot Act renewal defeats — which I’m not convinced are bad things in and of themselves — are defeats for Bush, but even if you think they’re bad on the merits, they’re certainly proof that despite claims of impending fascism we actually live in a country where checks and balances work. The Administration (which won far too easily on the Patriot Act the first time around, in my opinion) can’t be charged with running roughshod over its opponents, and only an idiot can claim that we live under the iron rule of the Bushitler regime. The system may or may not be producing the right answers, and that’s often hard to tell until later anyway, but it’s working as designed. Meanwhile, in light of these losses the White House might want to look to its legislative operation, and ask if it needs revamping. I think the answer is yes.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Kathryn Diamond emails:

I think President Bush recognizes he has weak support among the Republicans in the Senate.

One specific, concrete example is John Bolton’s nomination. The conduct of the Republicans in the Senate ranged from feckless to disgraceful.

And, now that Bolton is proving to be a very effective UN ambassador, we need to worry about the Senate Republicans’ judgment.

I believe the Senate Republicans fear the media more than their local constituents. Or fear the national media might make them look foolish in front of their local constituents.

Good point.

STEM CELL UPDATE: This report says that “If South Korean cloning hero Hwang Woo-suk falls from grace in what could turn out to be one of the biggest scientific frauds in years, he might take U.S. stem cell researcher Gerald Schatten with him.” On the other hand, this report says that Hwang is standing by his research: “South Korea’s best known scientist said Friday he stands by his breakthrough stem cell research despite a barrage of fraud allegations, and vowed to prove the findings within days.”

Meanwhile, here’s an article from Slate by Daniel Engber on the investigation of scientific fraud. And here’s a piece I wrote a while back that looks at some past experience in the area.

ANDREW SULLIVAN says he never called being wrapped in the Israeli flag “torture.” But in this post he listed it under the heading of “Anti-Islamic Torture,” along with a variety of nasty behaviors with nothing to suggest it’s not of the same order. And see this post, too. He says he doesn’t think fake menstrual blood is torture, but he sure has paid a lot of attention to the subject in that context for someone who doesn’t.

Sullivan’s heart has been in the right place on the issue, most of the time, at least, but his head has been sorely absent. Nor do I understand why he’s thought it useful to pick at me regularly, as opposed to, say, the bloggers who actually support torture.

Perhaps he’ll improve. As others have noted, “Tomorrow is always another day at andrewsullivan.com.”

UPDATE: James Taranto emails: “I wonder where Sullivan gets the idea that I ‘concede’ he never said ‘fake menstrual blood’–i.e., red ink–is torture. I did use the phrase ‘”torture” and “abuse,”‘ but I certainly didn’t indicate that I thought he made the distinction, and indeed my impression is that he uses the terms more or less interchangeably. Oh well, go figure.” Or not.

A DELL BATTERY RECALL: Happily, my Inspiron 700m isn’t affected, but a lot of models are. Applel and HP notebook computers have recalls, too.

JOHN HINDERAKER IS QUESTIONING THE TIMING of the New York Times’ story on NSA surveillance — and calling for an investigation of the leaks, and prosecution of the leakers. “Under the Plame precedent, this case is a no-brainer. The intelligence officials who leaked to the Times should be identified, criminally prosecuted, and sent to prison.”

UPDATE: Peter Schramm: “There will be more on this, you can count on it. ‘

OP-EDS FOR PROFIT: A disappointing story about Doug Bandow and the ubiquitous Jack Abramoff. I’ve had PR people offer me considerable sums to write op-eds, going back before InstaPundit, but I’ve always declined. That fact, and the fact that the topics in question weren’t political in an obviously partisan sense, makes me think that there’s a lot more of this going on out there.

UPDATE: Jonathan Adler reports similar experiences.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Ronald Stack emails:

I used to work at a PR/public affairs agency. Soliciting op-eds, letters to the editor, etc. in support of the client’s position was SOP. We only solicited people who we determined actually to support our side, because (a) they could withstand follow-ups from reporters and (b) they didn’t ask for money.

Note that in many cases the authors were public officials or others who could not legally accept payment. Note also that the agency would often draft the articles that were to be submitted under the supporter’s byline. The client paid us for those, but we did not pay the supporter.

Despite “PR ethics” being a classic oxymoron, my recollection is that we saw a difference between renting someone’s expertise (and paying them as we would any freelancer) and renting their prominence or reputation.

Indeed. I’ve written about that phenomenon here. And Rand Simberg has questions.

THE ROLL CALL VOTE will be useful in 2006:

For the second time in as many months, the House rejected calls for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq with a vote Friday that Democrats said was politically driven and designed by Republicans to limit debate on the war.

In a 279-109 vote, the GOP-controlled House approved a resolution saying the chamber is committed “to achieving victory in Iraq” and that setting an “artificial timetable” would be “fundamentally inconsistent with achieving victory.”

Democrats voted against the resolution by a roughly two-to-one margin, underlining splits within the party over alternatives to President Bush’s Iraq war policies.

Stay tuned for the political ads. Is this starting to feel like a setup?

MORE FAKE NEWS? Well, sort of.

ATRIOS, OF COURSE, has been warning people about this for years. But no one listened, and now it’s too late.

TYPEPAD UPDATE: Anil Dash emails:

I saw your post on TypePad’s downtime, and since I work with the team, I just wanted to send you a quick update. We’re verifying all the data before we restore it, and just put up the older pages in the interim while that happens.

Once we’re sure we can turn everything back on, we should have the application running by 1pm PST. If any recent posts don’t show up on the blog pages then, people can republish their blogs and they’ll be current.

Thanks for saying you’ll assume we’ll have it fixed — that’s not always the default assumption people in the blogosphere make. :)

Yeah, I know, everybody’s a critic. . . .

THE PATRIOT ACT REAUTHORIZATION HAS FAILED:

The 52-47 roll call by which the Senate voted to reject reauthorization of several provisions of the USA Patriot Act. Sixty votes were needed to overcome a filibuster of the bill.

Voting “yes” were 2 Democrats and 50 Republicans.

Voting “no” were 41 Democrats, 5 Republicans and one independent.

Follow the link to see how people voted. I think this is a good decision. While my earlier fears about the Patriot Act haven’t really been borne out, my earlier instinct that this was a bureaucratic wish-list masquerading as antiterrorism seems to have been well-founded. Are these things necessary? I don’t know, but the proponents of the bill haven’t met their burden of proof.

UPDATE: Here’s more from Orin Kerr:

For those of us who think of the Patriot Act as actual legislation rather than a symbol of the Bush Administration, this is rather puzzling stuff. The dirty little secret about the Patriot Act is that only about 3% of the Act is controversial, and only about a third of that 3% is going to expire on December 31st. Further, much of the reauthorization actually puts new limits on a number of the controversial non-sunsetting provisions, and some of the sunsetting provisions increased privacy protections. As a result, it’s not immediately obvious to me whether we’ll have greater civil liberties on January 1, 2006 if the Patriot Act is reauthorized or if it is allowed to expire.

The Patriot Act’s supporters, and its detractors, could both do a better job of arguing their cases. But the burden of proof is on its supporters and, as I say, they haven’t met it. Of course, I didn’t think they had met it the first time around, when it passed with almost unanimous bipartisan support.

TYPEPAD IS CURRENTLY BELLY-UP, which is why you’re not able to reach your favorite TypePad blogs. I assume they’ll have it fixed as soon as they can.

THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR: The Insta-Daughter got one of these gadgets for her birthday and it’s surprisingly smart. This would have been an amazing example of artificial intelligence a few years ago. Now it’s a kid’s toy.

UPDATE: Read this, too.

HOW TO SAVE MONEY: Over at Asymmetrical Information, Winterspeak and Megan McArdle offer a bunch of cheap and easy things to cook.

SOME POST-ELECTION THOUGHTS from Iraq, at Iraq the Model.

JIM BENNETT on the Sydney riots: “Democracy, immigration, multiculturalism. Pick any two.”

ANDREW ROTH looks at how protectionism is killing an American industry and may lead to jobs being sent overseas.

IN THE MAIL: An advance copy of John Scalzi’s Ghost Brigades, the sequel to his blogospherically-acclaimed Old Man’s War.

I was going to make Wonkette’s new novel my next read, but I think Scalzi may take priority: I prefer science fiction to Washington politics, these days.

CARNIVAL-O-RAMA: The Carnival of Education is up. So is the Carnival of the Vanities. And don’t miss the Tangled Bank science carnival. And there are lots more blog carnivals here.

UPDATE: The second edition of Fair Tax Friday is up, too.

MAX BORDERS: “No one wants to see a family of four killed by a drunk driver. But the United States has veered way out of the lines in its DUI laws, and it’s time to rethink them from bumper to bumper.”

I blame the influence of M.A.D.D., which has morphed from an anti-drunk-driving group into a neoprohibitionist anti-alcohol group.

DOMESTIC SPYING BY THE NSA? If this report is true, it really is a major shift in U.S. surveillance policy — though I’m not sure whether snooping on international calls that originate or end in the U.S. is such a big departure. Orin Kerr has more. “While the statutory privacy laws have an exception for this type of monitoring, see 18 U.S.C. 2511(f), and the constitutional limits on e-mail surveillance are uncertain even in traditional criminal cases, the constitutionality of warrantless interception of telephone calls in situations like this is really murky stuff. ”

I can’t see any very compelling reason to bypass the courts here, especially given that warrants in these cases are almost always granted. Which makes me wonder what’s up.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (free link) has a big article on the growth of videoblogging. I think there’s more to the phenomenon, but it’s nice to see it getting some attention.

HALEY BARBOUR is reportedly getting a “red-carpet reception” in Washington as he asks for Katrina relief money.

I wish he’d turn at least a bit of his attention to the Cory Maye case.

THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE: Ed Morrissey wonders why the New York Times editorial page isn’t excited about Iraq.

UPDATE: Victor Davis Hanson has a related observation:

For some time, a large number of Americans have lived in an alternate universe where everything is supposedly going to hell. If you get up in the morning to read the New York Times or Washington Post, watch John Murtha or Howard Dean on the morning talk shows, listen to National Public Radio at noon, and go to bed reading Newsweek it surely seems that the administration is incommunicado (cf. “the bubble”), the war is lost (“unwinnable”), the Great Depression is back (“jobless recovery”), and America about as popular as Nazi Germany abroad (“alone and isolated”). But in the real adult world, the economy is red-hot, not mired in joblessness or relegating millions to poverty. Unemployment is low, so are interest rates. Growth is high, as is consumer spending and confidence. Our Katrina was hardly as lethal as the Tsunami or Pakistani earthquake. Thousands of Arabs are not rioting in Dearborn. American elderly don’t roast and die in the thousands in their apartments as was true in France. Nor do American cities, like some in China, lose their entire water supply to a toxic spill. Americans did not just vote to reject their own Constitution as in some European countries.

The military isn’t broken. Unlike after Vietnam when the Russians, Iranians, Cambodians, and Nicaraguans all soon tried to press their luck at our expense, most of our adversaries don’t believe the U.S. military is losing in Iraq, much less that it is wise now to take it on. Instead, the general impression is that our veteran and battle-hardened forces are even more lethal than was true of the 1990s — and engaging successfully in an almost impossible war.

Nor are we creating new hordes of terrorists in Iraq — as if a young male Middle Eastern fundamentalist first hates the United States only on news that it is in Iraq crafting a new Marshall Plan of $87 billion and offering a long-oppressed people democracy after taking out Saddam Hussein. Even al Jazeera cannot turn truth into untruth forever.

Read the whole thing.

GREAT NEWS FROM IRAQ, but Charles Krauthammer notes the bad news in Iran:

Lest you get carried away with today’s good news from Iraq, consider what’s happening next door in Iran. The wild pronouncements of the new Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have gotten sporadic press ever since he called for Israel to be wiped off the map. He subsequently amended himself to say that Israel should simply be extirpated from the Middle East map and moved to some German or Austrian province. Perhaps near the site of an old extermination camp? . . .

Everyone knows where Iran’s nuclear weapons will be aimed. Everyone knows they will be put on Shahab rockets, which have been modified so that they can reach Israel. And everyone knows that if the button is ever pushed, it will be the end of Israel.

As far as I’m concerned, in light of these statements the Israelis are entitled to launch a first strike of any magnitude, whenever they choose.

THE ARAB NEWS editorializes:

It was the voice of the Iraqi people that was being heard yesterday, not the bomb blasts of the terrorists. What little violence there was as millions crowded toward their local polling stations only served to demonstrate how incoherent and pointless are the efforts of the men of violence to change the country through further bloodshed.

Indeed. Nice that they’re noticing it.

POWER LINE has video of Iraqi election commercials, which is pretty cool.

JULIAN SANCHEZ looks at NPR’s notorious right-wing bias.

THE JAWS OF KARL ROVE’S TRAP TIGHTEN:

House Republican leaders drafted legislation on Thursday that rejects calls for withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq as “fundamentally inconsistent with achieving victory” and said they would force a vote on Friday.

It would be the second time in five weeks that GOP leaders maneuvered for a vote on the war in the face of Democratic calls for a timetable for withdrawal.

The resolution expresses the commitment of the House “to achieving victory in Iraq.”

It’ll be interesting to see who votes against it.

MARK STEYN was on the Hugh Hewitt show tonight, talking about the Iraqi elections, Rep. Murtha’s latest comments, and more. The transcript is here.

SOME KATRINA FOLLOWUP:

The interviews, combined with Thursday’s testimony, indicate vast confusion about who was ultimately responsible for the levees.

Regulations show that the Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for building levees and conducting annual inspections, and the state is charged with training and overseeing New Orleans levee district officials.

The Orleans Levee District, headed by a board of politically appointed commissioners, is responsible for day-to-day maintenance and repair of levees _ usually by staff engineers. An Aug. 16 work order released by the Senate panel, for example, shows that inspection crews did check the levees but also cut nearby grass and green space.

The former president of the commission described a lax _ if festive _ inspection process by its appointed members.

“You have commissioners,” former president James P. Huey told investigators in a Nov. 29 interview. “They have some news cameras following you around, and all of this stuff. And you have your little beignets, and then you have _ you go do the tourist and that and you have a nice lunch somewhere or whatever. They have this stop-off thing or whatever. And that’s what the inspections are about.”

Read the whole thing, which also shows that nobody seemed to know who was in charge.

CAYMAN ISLANDS UPDATE: I’ve written before about the debate over whether to construct a Dolphinarium on Grand Cayman to attract tourists. Now there’s a poll on the Cayman Compass (lower right) if you’d like to express your view.

MORE ON TORTURE: They’re still wrangling over the McCain bill, but I think it’s pretty much certain to pass, with at most minor modifications. And at the risk of sounding like an Alexander Bickel proceduralist, I think that’s a good thing even aside from the merits: This sort of thing is Congress’s duty. I’m not sure, however, that the bill is specific enough, and I think that an unclear bill will either chill legitimate interrogations, or leave gray areas that will permit conduct that’s tantamount to torture or — likely as not — both. But I’m not sure about that, and at least Congress is making some sort of move to address its constitutional responsibilities.

Meanwhile, I think there’s an excellent discussion of the topic by Mickey Kaus and Robert Wright over at their very cool Blogging Heads TV site.

And Andrew Sullivan — pursuant to his apparent brand differentiation strategy, I guess — is bravely standing up to the “NRO-Reynolds chorus,” whatever that means. I don’t think I really agree with Mark Levin, Rich Lowry, et al. on the specific subject at hand, though I confess that I haven’t followed that particular pissing match very closely. However, I do agree with them that Andrew has been consistently, pompously, and annoyingly moralistic and irritatingly unspecific. So if that’s the chorus, well yes — but it’s a song that has a lot of notes, most of them struck by Andrew himself. And I’m irritated with him, not for the reason you might think — because I disagree with Andrew — but more the contrary, because every time I read one of his preening posts, I find my opposition to torture weakening in response, even though I’ve been consistently in opposition to torture since 2001 (and before). God help me if he ever starts blogging in support of nanotechnology and bans on cloning — I’ll probably start looking at Leon Kass more sympathetically. It’s like listening to Robert Bork talk about original understanding jurisprudence.

AUSTIN BAY has questions the media should ask Howard Dean and John Kerry.

WIKIPEDIA WARS UPDATE: With all the criticism of Wikipedia, here are two interesting stories. First, a study claims it’s as accurate as Brittanica.

Second, my brother (the history professor one, not the budding rock-star one) notes that after a bunch of academics criticized Wikipedia for being inaccurate, some of them came up with a novel idea: Help make it better!

He’s got posts on that shocking phenomeon over at Cliopatria, here and here.

RUSS FEINGOLD is offering some pretty compelling reasons to oppose the Patriot Act renewal legislation. Read the whole thing, but this excerpt is telling:

Let me make one final point about sneak and peek warrants. Don’t be fooled for a minute into believing that this power is needed to investigate terrorism or espionage. It’s not. Section 213 is a criminal provision that could apply in whatever kind of criminal investigation the government has undertaken. In fact, most sneak and peek warrants are issued for drug investigations. So why do I say that they aren’t needed in terrorism investigations? Because FISA also can apply to those investigations. And FISA search warrants are always executed in secret, and never require notice. If you really don’t want to give notice of a search in a terrorism investigation, you can get a FISA warrant. So any argument that limiting the sneak and peek power as we have proposed will interfere with sensitive terrorism investigations is a red herring.

As I say, read the whole thing. (Via Jacob Sullum, who observes: “Now even the senators who haven’t bothered to read the legislation cannot credibly pretend to believe this law enforcement wish list is all about fighting terrorism.”)

Here, by the way, is what I wrote on September 11, 2001:

It’s Not Just Terrorists Who Take Advantage: Someone will propose new “Antiterrorism” legislation. It will be full of things off of bureaucrats’ wish lists. They will be things that wouldn’t have prevented these attacks even if they had been in place yesterday. Many of them will be civil-liberties disasters. Some of them will actually promote the kind of ill-feeling that breeds terrorism. That’s what happened in 1996. Let’s not let it happen again.

Yeah, I can call ‘em.

CURTIS LEMAY AND JOHN MURTHA: An interesting comparison.

KERRY DECIDES TO HELP SHORE UP BUSH WITH HIS BASE:

MA. Sen. John Kerry said last night that if Dems retake the House, there’s a “solid case” to bring “articles of impeachment” against President Bush for allegedly misleading the country about pre-war intelligence, according to several Dems who attended.

Kerry was speaking at a holiday party for alumni of his WH ’04 bid.

I first heard this theory right after the ’04 election, from Limbaugh or Hannity or someone else I dismissed; it seemed dumb to me. But obviously, I was wrong — or at least, my “too dumb for the Democrats” threshold was set too high. What’s funny is that lots of Bush supporters would be okay with the GOP losing the House as a way of teaching the Republican House a lesson for its pork-laden profligacy — but not if it’s going to let the Democrats bring a politically-motivated impeachment resolution over the war. (Will those who voted for the war, like Kerry, resign, too?) So by making this statement, Kerry makes a Democratic recapture of the house notably less likely, by motivating GOP’ers who might otherwise stay home to turn out.

Of course, you can count on Kerry to say the wrong thing at the wrong time, as quite a few of those “alumni” could probably attest. . . .

UPDATE: Donald Sensing emails: “Don’t you really mean your ‘too dumb for the Democrats’ threshold was set too low? Because they sure jumped over it with ease!”

I stand corrected.

MORE COMMENTARY on today’s press coverage:

There is an interesting disconnect in the U.S. media, and it goes beyond the usual complaints of pessimism or hostility to the American war effort. Go back and look at the transcript of NBC’s “Meet the Press” for Nov. 27, which we noted the next day–and in particular the journalist roundtable, which features five senior Washington journalists, all of whom seem to agree that democracy in Iraq is a dead letter. The only mention of Iraq’s then-forthcoming election was in a setup quote from the White House press secretary. To hear the journos talk, it was as if they hadn’t even heard that Iraqis were going to the polls.

And yet the producers at CNN and Fox appear to have regarded a genuine election in Iraq as such a routine event that it didn’t merit continuous live coverage. (Both stations did break into the recorded fare for occasional live updates.) It’s quite a striking indication of just how out of touch with the outside world are those within the Beltway media bubble.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Here’s a roundup of Iraqi blog coverage from The Seattle Times.

I’M ON A PODCAST for the ideablog SinceSlicedBread along with Amy Sullivan of The Washington Monthly. I’m not sure I was all that sparkling, but she gets good reviews. . . .

MATT POTTINGER: “Why I gave up journalism to join the Marines.”

THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE looks at the Iraqi elections, and what some people were saying not long ago. Plus, this cool opener:

CNN International’s front-page headline: “Ballots counted in Iraqi election”

Think about how mundane that sounds on one level – and the amazing story it tells for just that reason.

Read the whole thing.

RADLEY BALKO has more on Cory Maye.

WELL, THIS IS BAD NEWS:

A doctor who provided human eggs for research by cloning pioneer Hwang Woo-suk said in a broadcast Thursday that the South Korean scientist agreed to withdraw a key research paper because most of the stem cells produced for the article were faked.

Roh Sung-il, chairman of the board at Mizmedi Hospital, told KBS television that Hwang had agreed to ask the journal Science to withdraw the paper, published in June to international acclaim. Roh was one of the co-authors of the article that detailed how individual stem cell colonies were created for 11 patients through cloning.

Roh also told MBC television that Hwang had pressured a former scientist at his lab to fake data to make it look like there were 11 stem cell colonies.

In a separate report, a former researcher told MBC that Hwang ordered him to fabricate photos to make it appear there were 11 separate colonies from only three.

This piece of mine on scientific fraud would seem to be timely again. This sounds a bit like the Summerlin mouse case.

AS OMAR REPORTED EARLIER, turnout in Iraq appears to be quite high — with Saddam’s hometown showing 80%. And overall it was up substantially from the last election. (Via ATC).

That’s great news, though not everyone seems to be as excited about it as I am. But hey, we’ve all got our priorities. [LATER: Some of the lefty blogs linked above have commented now.]

IN THE MAIL: Joel Miller’s Size Matters : How Big Government Puts the Squeeze on America’s Families, Finances, and Freedom. My blurb says it should be a political call to arms. I hope that it will be, as it’s a virtual manifesto for the PorkBusters movement, and it doesn’t just stop there.

Miller has also been my editor on An Army of Davids, and in fact I was attracted to the publisher by the chance to work with him, since I was a big fan of his drug-war book, Bad Trip, which seems especially insightful in light of the Cory Maye case.

AUSTIN BAY offers an analysis of the New York Times’ coverage of the Iraqi elections.

OMAR REPORTS that voter turnout in Iraq is quite high. Tom Smith says the atmosphere is like a block party. (Though one where you still have to watch out for crazed Islamist suicide bombers. . . .)

Meanwhile, an embedded reporter visiting Iraq for the first time notes the difference between media accounts and reality on the ground:

Everything I thought I knew was wrong.

Maybe not wrong, but certainly different than the picture in my head.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: A little informal exit polling in Najaf.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Gateway Pundit notes that the BBC says we’ve achieved stability in Iraq, and observes: “that headline has more shock value than a bomb in Baghdad!” He’s got a big roundup, with photos and links to video.

WRITING IN THE L.A. WEEKLY, Michael Totten reports on partying with Hezbollah: “Hezbollah’s South Lebanon Commander Sheikh Nabil Qaouk said the militia wants to build strong relations with American journalists and academics. Yet its attempt to make a good impression on me failed spectacularly.”

ARNOLD KLING: “Policy pundits are unhappy with the state of health insurance. What is the problem? After considering some alternative theories, I believe that the best explanation is simply that most people do not want health insurance.” I do! But Kling says I’m in the minority.

NEWS FROM IRAQ: Over at the PJ Media site, Omar & Mohammed of Iraq the Model, plus stringers from all over Iraq, are posting reports and photos from the Iraqi elections. This will go on all day.

It’s a bit of an experiment still, but I hope that we’ll see a lot more of this kind of coverage from all sorts of places, on all sorts of topics, as things progress.

If you have any comments on the coverage, email me and I’ll pass ‘em on — or you can use the email form in the left-hand column on the main Pajamas page.

UPDATE: Here’s a blog-report from Bill Roggio, too. He’s in Barwana and notes: “The poll site sits right beneath the now-destroyed Barwana bridge, where Zarqawi terrorists routinely executed residents for not conforming to their perverse interpretation of Islam.” Note the past tense. He concludes: “Barwana, once part of Zarqawi self declared ‘Islamic Republic of Iraq,’ is now the scene of al-Qaeda’s greatest nightmare: Muslims exercising their constitutional right to chose their destiny.”

Heh. Indeed.

AUSTIN BAY: “With Iraq’s latest trip to the polls, the great revolt continues. . . . Democratic politics, emerging in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine, are providing an alternative to the afflictions of war, terror and tyranny.”

BRITAIN AND THE JOINT STRIKE FIGHTER: Potentially a major foreign policy disaster, and bad for the GOP: “Because the reason things have reached this point lies in the US Congress, and it’s Republicans not Democrats who have created this situation.” Reps. Henry Hyde & Duncan Hunter are singled out. But read the comments for some interesting discussion.

EUGENE VOLOKH ENDORSES John Scalzi’s Agent to the Stars. He’s right, of course, that it’s not as “meaty” as Old Man’s War, but it has a charm of its own.

Among its charms, I guess, is that you can read it for free online here, if you want.

MORE DRUG WAR STUFF being slipped into the Patriot Act renewal.

IRAQIS VOTE: A multimedia presentation from the Detroit Free Press.

STINGINESS UPDATE:

Donor fatigue? Not this year. Even after the outpouring of donations for the Indian Ocean tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, holiday giving is robust this season and 2005 could well set an overall record, U.S. charity officials are reporting.

“It seems to be a phenomenal year,” said Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. “Donor fatigue is something not many charities are seeing.”

Which is good, because it’s been a big year for disasters.

TONY SNOW wants the Barrett report released.

UPDATE: Reader Peter Schiavo emails: “Everything else gets leaked in D.C. Why not this report?”

JACOB SULLUM: “How big a boob is Ted Stevens? So big that the Alaska Republican has me defending the Transportation Security Administration. Stevens and several other senators are in a tizzy about TSA’s plan to let passengers carry small tools and scissors (up to four inches long) onto airplanes. . . . I’m guessing that when Stevens flies someone else takes care of his bags.”

UPDATE: Ted Stevens needs to hear from the tweezer people.

Air security is a joke. Stevens is a joker.

I MISSED BUSH’S SPEECH TODAY, as I was in a faculty hiring meeting this afternoon, but it gets a good review at RedState.

Here’s the text of the speech. My only (perhaps overly hopeful) interpretation: Bush’s comment about accepting responsibility for intelligence errors — and for fixing the problem — is not so much an apology as an announcement that he’s going to do some housecleaning at the CIA. I certainly hope so, anyway.

AN IRAQI VOTER explains things. Ian Schwartz has video.

UPDATE: Here’s a report from Basra.

TRUTH ON THE GROUND: Interesting oped in the Washington Post from a Marine who’s headed back to Iraq. Read the whole thing.

DAM BURST: Jim Hoft is all over the story.

CLAUDIA ROSETT: “My conversations with the latest victim of Syrian terror.”

RADLEY BALKO has a big Cory Maye roundup posted.

WELL, HERE IT IS: There are lots of entries in the digital camera carnival. (You can read my earlier posts here and here.) Also, here’s an earlier post of mine on printers, and one on slide-scanning for those with big collections they’d like to digitize. My HP wireless printer, by the way, is also a scanner and comes with a negative carrier, though it won’t scan mounted slides. I haven’t tried it out in that application yet, though. But lots of people around the blogosphere have experience I lack in all sorts of areas.

For those who sent email, but no blog links, I’ll try to do something with those later, but a blog carnival consists of links to blog posts, so if there wasn’t a link to a blog post, I didn’t include it. Here’s the roundup:

Brian Leon writes on the joys of normal lenses.

Bill Hobbs, on the other hand, takes a non-normal approach.

Nathan Brindle likes his Nikon D70 and passes on some things he’s learned.

Mattazuma’s Revenge likes the Panasonic Lumix and explains why. My brother has one, and it’s great — except that the smooth finish is so smooth that it’s easy to drop. Use the lanyard.

Paul’s Perspective wants to put together a massive spreadsheet-comparison of digital camera features and prices, and wants help.

The Planning Blog likes the Canon Ixus 50, and has some sample photos.

Mein Blogovault offers winter photoblogging.

Sissy Willis offers a post on homemade photo-Christmas Cards.

Jason Coyne writes on what comes after “camera suicide.” A newer, more expensive camera!

Kevin Menard is blending old and new.

Almost Average reviews the Canon Powershot G6.

Chuck Pace takes an assignment from his wife.

Matt Gordon notes that his digital camera blog has a whole category on how to buy digital cameras and printers.

Ryan Cousineau posts an essay on digital photography for the non-professional.

Brian Frye posts some examples of what you can do with a cheapie digital camera. Lots!

Matthew Hoy sings the praises of the Olympus E-500, and posts a picture.

Robert McNickle sings the praises of the Canon Digital Rebel XT.

Over at DailyPundit, praise for a truly waterproof digital camera.

Cathouse Chat notes how much you can do with a cheap Sony.

But Dr. Melissa Clouthier says that size does matter! Well, yeah.

Pete the Elder looks at what can be done with a cheap Kodak.

Rick Lee compares his old pocket camera with his new one. Lots of interesting photos.

The just-married SarahK posts happy thoughts and cat pics.

Chuck Simmins takes a plunge.

And Mark Draughn writes on the joys of upgrading.

Finally, there are lots of good resources at Steve’s Digicams and DPreview.com, both linked on the right of this page. Check ‘em out if you have more questions.

UPDATE: Eric Scheie sent his entry to the wrong email, but here it is now.