I ONLY CAUGHT A COUPLE OF MINUTES of Hugh Hewitt on Larry King before the Insta-Daughter switched to “Fresh Prince” reruns. He was pushing his new book, Painting the Map Red, and talking about immigration. He’s been saying for a year that this is the Achilles’ Heel for the GOP in 2006, and he seems to be right.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

The Presidential political chess game with the Clintons in 2008 will involve a third party. It is too early to know the issue but it could be immigration.

The Clintons know the democrats cannot win a two candidate race in a national election. The red state blue state problem for democrats is getting worse, not better. The blue states are shrinking in population ratio to the red states at a time when the current ratio will not elect democrats. This is a generational trend that won’t change in Hillary’s political lifetime.

Bring in the third party candidate that erases the red state electoral advantage. Is it risky? Sure it is – a third party could pull more from the democrat base than republican but it depends on the issue.

Reagan is still defeating the democrat party in the south. The true Reagan Democrat (me) is a southern conservative ideologue who chooses common sense over ACLU causes. The democrats may never get us back – but a third party can. An articulate public figure could turn an issue like immigration into a rallying cry for Jacksonian and Reagan Democrats.

Perot did this with the NAFTA issue.

It could happen again.

Yes, the conditions are ripe (see below) for a third party challenge, and immigration is a strong issue.

SUPPORT FOR BANNED AUTHORS — from Borders?

SOME THOUGHTS on the first obligation of educators in times of disorder.

THOUGHTS ON religion, Starbucks, and a temple of the law.

IN BRITAIN, a “secret cabinet document” on avian flu is getting a lot of press, and it offers a rather apocalyptic scenario, though I detect the scent of politics in places. Of course, bird flu may never become human-transmissible at all, but this should certainly encourage governments to take the task of preparing for new outbreaks of disease more seriously. Bill Frist and Ray Kurzweil are behind such an effort.

MICKEY KAUS on Brad De Long on immigration.

MARK STEYN:

But, while Charlie Sheen is undoubtedly a valiant leader, you couldn’t help noticing it was followers the anti-war crowd seemed to be short of on the third anniversary. The next weekend half a million illegal immigrants — whoops, sorry, half a million fine upstanding members of the Undocumented-American community– took to the streets, and you suddenly realized what a big-time demonstration is supposed to look like. These guys aren’t even meant to be in the country and they can organize a better public protest movement than an anti-war crowd that’s promoted 24/7 by the media and Hollywood.

Well, OK, half the anti-war crowd aren’t meant to be in the country either, if they’d kept their promise to move to Canada after the last election. But my point is there’s no mass anti-war movement. Some commentators claimed to be puzzled by the low turnout at a time when the polls show Iraq increasingly unpopular. But there are two kinds of persons objecting to the war: There’s a shriveled Sheehan-Sheen left that’s in effect urging on American failure in Iraq, and there’s a potentially far larger group to their right that’s increasingly wary of the official conception of the war. The latter don’t want America to lose, they want to win — decisively. And on the day’s headlines — on everything from the Danish cartoon jihad to the Afghan facing death for apostasy — the fainthearted response of “public diplomacy” is in danger of sounding only marginally less nutty than Charlie Sheen. . . .

To win a war, you don’t spin a war. Millions of ordinary citizens are not going to stick with a “long war” (as the administration now calls it) if they feel they’re being dissembled to about its nature. One reason we regard Churchill as a great man is that his speeches about the nature of the enemy don’t require unspinning or detriangulating.

Read the whole thing, especially the last paragraph. Bush’s problem on the war is that he’s losing the Jacksonian base, which is no longer confident that he’s willing to do whatever it takes to win, regardless of foreign or public opinion.

UPDATE: Reader Barry Dauphin emails:

It does sound like the Jacksonians might be bailing on the President, but then they aren’t able to live up to Jackson. This isn’t 1940s where dissemination of information was controlled through filters called “editors” and prior to the plethora of relativisms of contemporary times. If the Jacksonians have another candidate in mind, let them name him/her. The silence will be deafening. If the Jacksonians truly believe their rhetoric, it’s time to suck it up and carry some of the rhetorical weight that someone like Steyn have been carrying. Too many are sounding retreat or simply grousing. Is this a long, hard slog or not? If it is, then the tough Jacksonians should stop acting like whining, ninny wimps and instead be constructive. Dealing with the anti-war rhetoric or with policy that is not exactly to their liking is surely easier than actually crafting and implementing policy in these times.

This is a fair criticism up to a point. But nobody but the President can be President, and you can understand people who would support a full-hearted war being unwilling to support a half-hearted one. On the other hand, I remain unconvinced that now is the time to go all Duncan Black on the mideast, and am reluctant to second-guess too much on that account.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Harmon Dow thinks the GOP has earned a loss in 2006:

Speaking as a card-carrying Jacksonian (Southern boy, Scottish on mother’s side, both families in their 4th century as Americans, & a military brat to boot) let me tell you what I’ve been thinking lately. My problem isn’t with Bush. I can live with him – I tell my liberal friends here in Chicago that he’s really really a moderate, but they can’t seem to grasp that.

My problem is with the Republicans who don’t back Bush. They didn’t back him on Social Security, they don’t seem to be backing him on immigration, & I don’t think they are stepping up to the plate & backing him on the war.

So this Jacksonian is thinking “why bother with the Republicans?” After the fall, we’ll have two more years with Bush in the White House. He’s not going to budge on the war. I expect I’ll just sit this one out.

The Congressional Republicans don’t seem to have put themselves in a good position. Bush haters won’t vote for them. But Bush-lovers may not either. Meanwhile, reader Fred Butzen writes:

You write, “… you can understand people who would support a full-hearted war being unwilling to support a half-hearted one.”

That is half correct. Large numbers of paleo-conservatives (e.g., W. F. Buckley) would be much happier with a Kissingeresque put-in-a-strongman-and-nail-down-the-lid strategy for the Middle East. They want no war at all.

What the paleos don’t understand is that since 1989, the world has changed utterly. Societies that are in juxtaposition influence each other and, sooner or later, arrive at an equilibrium; with the advent of globalization and the Internet, all societies now are juxtaposed. Bush grasps what so many of his critics on the right miss: either we will make them more like us, or inevitably they will make us more like them.

Iraq is the first step on a long road to making them more like us. It may be too little, it may be too late; but it’s a strategy, which is more than the isolationists of the left or right are offering.

I’ve always felt that Kissinger’s reputation exceeded his accomplishments. And yes, the alternative is surrender, or megadeaths. Meanwhile, here’s more on how things are going and what that means for strategy.

UPDATE: More thoughts on what we ought to be doing — more aggressive combat in Iraq, basically — here, along with a worry that America doesn’t have the stomach for it. You can’t win a war if you’re not willing to fight; Bush can be blamed for not being aggressive enough, of course, but he hasn’t had a lot of support at home.

I’m no expert, and hence don’t offer a lot of military suggestions, but I wonder if a Pablo-Escobar style campaign against the Iranian mullahs — going after their business interests, vacation homes, etc. using irregular forces — might be more effective than air strikes or an invasion, with less risk. For that matter, such an approach might work against some of the Saudi supporters of terror.

UNSCAM UPDATE: Claudia Rosett has coffee with Benon Sevan, a key figure in the oil-for-food scandal.

KARL ROVE’S MOLES ARE EVERYWHERE: Some places are banning the American flag to prevent “antagonism.”

As Jim Bennett says: Democracy, immigration, multiculturalism. Pick any two.

TOM ELIA ASKS: “Is it possible that professors and graduate students as a group are more depressed than the overall population? That’s the only conclusion I can come to after reading this particular story about a University of Texas zoologist who thinks the Earth would be better off if 90% of humans died.”

Given that academics’ lives are generally pretty good, it’s hard to see why academics should be more depressed. It’s perhaps better to say that academics’ negative statements get more media attention. The media tend to focus on the negative, even when it’s not really there.

And people in the media have good reason to be depressed, based on their declining readership/viewership.

JOE GANDELMAN thinks that the Jill Carroll case is a black eye for blogging. I do think that people are too quick off the mark sometimes, and that’s a phenomenon that seems to apply to bloggers on both left and right. On the other hand, it’s a phenomenon that seems to apply to non-bloggers, too. Still, bloggers should try to think about this stuff first, and — of course — should be quick to correct when they’re wrong. Just as Big Media should.

UPDATE: Paul Mirengoff wonders about the people who don’t have guns to their heads.

A BOTCHED SUICIDE BOMBING IN TORONTO? Nicholas Packwood emails this report:

The heart of Toronto’s trendy Yorkville shopping district was shocked to a standstill Sunday after an explosion killed one man at a Tim Horton’s outlet.

Police would not confirm early reports that a man had entered the washroom shortly before the blast with explosives strapped to his body.

Early reports are often wrong, so keep that in mind.

UPDATE: Reader John MacDonald emails:

While it’s not online yet, the Police Chief had a short press conference a half hour ago. They are only in the early stages of the investigation but he says the fire Dept told him there was an “intense flash”. He wouldn’t confirm whether it was an explosion or not.The deceased is still in there (washroom). They are sort of downgrading it to an accident or someone just trying to do themselves in. So early reports may or not be right.The eye witnesses described it as an explosion at first.

Stay tuned.

THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE: “The active-duty Army and National Guard have met their recruiting goals for the past five months.”

ARMY OF DAVIDS AGGREGATION UPDATE: I’ve kind of fallen behind on this in recent days, but here’s an interview about the book in the latest U.S. News & World Report, and here’s another by Robert Bluey.

MICHIGAN’S ATTORNEY GENERAL is investigating the Ford Foundation. I don’t know anything about the specifics of this case, but I suspect we’ll see a lot more nonprofits coming under this kind of scrutiny given the growth in the nonprofit sector in recent years and the often insiderish and back-scratching nature of nonprofit governance. (Via newsalert). See this earlier post on the Ford Foundation and nonprofits generally, too.

THE CARNIVAL OF CARS is up!

BRIAN DUNN recommends the military site Stand-To!

THE FUNERAL’S OVER. IT WENT WELL, if you can say that about a funeral. Reader Thomas Stege wrote yesterday:

If you are like me, I think you will find the funeral and its aftermath to be somewhat of a happy event, what with catching up with aunts, uncles, cousins and friends that you wouldn’t normally see. 91 years is a long life. I’m sure you gave her much joy.

It did turn out that way: like a family reunion of sorts. That was her final gift to us, I guess. And yes, it was a long life, well-lived, but I’m still sorry she’s gone.

ANOTHER CIVIL RIGHTS VICTORY: “Yesterday the Nebraska legislature defeated a filibuster, and passed a Shall Issue law for licensing the carrying of concealed handguns by adults who pass a background check and a safety class. Nebraska’s governor has said he will sign the bill into law.” Read the whole thing for a summary of how things stand nationwide. Plus Jim and Sarah Brady shift to a far more reasonable position, assuming they mean what they say.

Amusing question in the comments: “If the GCA/Brady system doesn’t violate the rights of gun owners, then what possible objection could there be to implementing the same system for voting?”

ANN ALTHOUSE on blogging and the pro-Test movement. “I love the idea of one guy, alone on the other side of a big, active demonstration, and, instead of being outnumbered, using a blog to draw out the numbers on his side that exist, out there, dispersed in the general population.”

Here’s the pro-Test blog.

DARFUR UPDATE:

The violence in Darfur continues to spread into neighboring Chad. The fighting along the Sudanese border not only involves Chad rebel groups, but also pro-Sudanese government militias that have been raiding the refugee camps just across the border in Chad. To further complicate matters, Sudanese rebel groups have been coming to the refugee camps, to recruit, and to get supplies.

It still seems to me that arming the victims would be a good idea, although Jim Dunnigan has said otherwise.

And here, by the way, is a Darfur website recommended by U.Va. law student Mark Finsterwald.

DANNY GLOVER LOOKS AT the downside of a famous name.

NOT ENOUGH BOOTS ON THE GROUND:

The gangs of Haiti have become less political, and more just criminal and mercenary. The gangs make economic growth impossible, and play a major role in keeping everyone poor. It’s believed that at least 20,000 police are needed to regain control of the streets from the gangs, but only 7,000 cops are available. The UN also has 1,750 foreign police available, who are limited by their limited language and cultural skills. The 7,300 UN peacekeepers really can’t police, and are instead used for general security and raids on major gang operations. It would take 3-4 years to recruit and train 20,000 police. Even then, given Haiti’s two century history, there’s no assurance that this large police force would not be as corrupt as in the past. The biggest problem in Haiti is that no one has any new ideas that seem likely to break the cycle of corruption, poor government and poverty that has cursed the country since its founding.

Unfortunately, the place is hard to ignore, too. Culture, alas, does turn out to matter.

CANADA’S WESTERN STANDARD is a breath of fresh air on the Canadian media scene. It also needs your help.

RAMESH PONNURU:

1) Republicans are preparing to bring the Federal Marriage Amendment to a vote. So I guess the plan from now on is to do this in all even-numbered years, and then throw the idea aside in odd-numbered ones? I know a lot of people support the FMA for principled reasons, but a decisive number of Republicans are clearly just picking on gays for political profit.

2) Republicans are leading a charge to subject “527 groups” to onerous regulations. A minority of them, again, have sincere and above-board reasons for doing this. Most of them just want to shut down groups that are trying to beat them in elections. For a majority to restrict the freedom of others to try to boot them out is pretty much a textbook definition of the abuse of power, isn’t it?

Indeed.

WE’RE ON THE ROAD: The funeral is today. Blogging will remain limited for another day or two. Sorry — tried to give you plenty to read before we left yesterday.

INAYAT BUNGLAWALA looks at apostasy and Islam.

IN THE MAIL: A pretty interesting-looking book on Teddy Roosevelt. “His era shared many features with that of the twenty-first century, including growing economic interdependence, failed states unable or unwilling to discharge their sovereign responsibilities, and even a loose equivalent to today’s international terrorist networks in the form of an anarchist movement that felled Roosevelt’s predecessor, William McKinley.”

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Declan McCullagh reports that technology pork is on the rise:

Buried deep in the initial version of a vital federal spending bill last year were some unlikely items slated for government money: a Waterfree Urinal Conservation Initiative, a Virtual Reality Spray Paint Simulator System and a community ski association in Telluride, Colo.

Not all the programs included in earlier drafts of the legislation, which was supposed to pay for Department of Defense operations and the war in Iraq, were included in the final version that President Bush signed Dec. 30. But such earmarks for favored recipients–known colloquially as pork–have become easier than ever for politicians to secure because of the rapid growth in homeland security and military spending, especially if they can find some plausible technological veneer.

Exact figures are difficult to obtain, mostly because spending bills tend to be intentionally obfuscated and specifics are usually absent from legislative text. Government watchdogs, however, say earmarks ostensibly related to technology are clearly on the rise.

“A lot of those projects are really directed at one company rather than a larger role of improving technology,” said Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste.

A database compiled for CNET News.com by CAGW, a taxpayer watchdog group, also indicated a rise in technology pork projects from fiscal 2003 to 2005.

Read the whole thing. He thinks that things may be improving as the result of porkbusting efforts. I hope he’s right. This is clearly evidence that we need more transparency in the process.

A PRAYER STUDY shows no benefit:

In the largest study of its kind, researchers found that having people pray for heart bypass surgery patients had no effect on their recovery. In fact, patients who knew they were being prayed for had a slightly higher rate of complications.

Researchers emphasized that their work can’t address whether God exists or answers prayers made on another’s behalf. The study can only look for an effect from prayers offered as part of the research, they said.

They also said they had no explanation for the higher complication rate in patients who knew they were being prayed for, in comparison to patients who only knew it was possible prayers were being said for them.

Hmm. What’s the prayer equivalent of a placebo? Scott Ott, meanwhile, offers an alternative take.

DUNCAN BLACK: “I’m not the ‘Instapundit of the Left.’”

True!

On the other hand, this claim — “I generally read through and fact check stuff I link to” — seems a bit of a stretch.

UH OH:

Capitol Hill police plan to issue an arrest warrant today for Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.).

The warrant is related to the incident Wednesday when McKinney allegedly slapped a Capitol Hill police officer.

Charges could range from assault on a police officer, which is a felony carrying a possible five year prison term, to simple assault, which is a misdeamenor.

She should have just flipped him off, though that might have gotten more press. . . .

STEPHEN GREEN:

President Bush isn’t a fascist, and I can prove it.

We’ve seen what American bookstores and publications and universities do when confronted with real fascists: they knuckle under. You might not be able to find those Danish cartoons anyplace respectable, but you’ll sure find lots of anti-Bush stuff.

Ipso facto, America is doing just fine, thankyouverymuch.

Excellent point.

CINDY SHEEHAN gets no respect from Rep. Jack Kingston, who calls her a “nutcase.”

PHOTOS LIKE THESE aren’t likely to stir sympathy for illegal immigrants.

UPDATE: Reader John Borell emails:

Do you know what is disturbing about that web site? At first I assumed it was something like what Little Green Footballs shows — the absurdity of one side’s argument. Not until the end did I realize that the site was done by a proponent of the movement — those photos are a source of pride!

My goodness, this issue cries out for some cooling down. I have no problem with an immigrant having ethnic pride. Mine did (Irish, English, German and Italian. Espeically the Italians). But ethnic pride, watered down through the successive generations is a far cry from a demand to deport all Europeans.

I fear, though, that this issue is going to get uglier. The extremes on both sides are doing our great country a disservice.

Yes. And here’s an interesting question: Why so little immigration protest in South Florida?

POWER LINE NEWS VIDEO makes its debut.

A BREWING FIGHT OVER accreditation in higher education. We need a fight on that subject, but I’m not sure this is the right one.

POLLING OUR WAY to national security?

UPDATE: Related thoughts here. (Via Newsbeat 1).

MORE: Starving the NSA?

OKAY, I CRACKED AND BOUGHT ONE TOO. Only in black. Like people say, once you hold one, you want one.

IRINA SLUTSKY OF GEEK ENTERTAINMENT TV interviews Larry Lessig.

A PATENT THICKET may be retarding nanomedicine.

MICKEY KAUS: “Note to Doris Kearns Goodwin–Ben Domenech Died for Your Sins.”

THROWING DOWN THE GAUNTLET at Borders. More here.

AP SAYS IT DIDN’T PLAGIARIZE but relied on interest groups: “The article written by the AP, ‘Security Clearance Rules May Impede Gays,’ attributed its information to gay rights groups, who happened to be wrong and who received their information from Raw Story.”

UPDATE: Jon Henke emails: “Didn’t the New York Times just do a story ripping bloggers for relying on information provided by Wal-Mart (an interest group)?”

Yes, but it’s okay when Certified Professional Journalists^TM do it.

TEXAS’ AGGRESSIVE ENFORCEMENT of public intoxication laws has generated considerable backlash. Perhaps that’s because the Texas legislature seems to be really, really dumb:

Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, was instrumental in getting the increased staffing, as a member of both the powerful Senate Finance Committee and the Criminal Justice Committee, which oversees the alcohol commission.

Although he agreed hearings are merited, he defended the principle of in-bar citations.

“Even though a public drunk is not planning on driving, that could change in an instant,” he said. “There is certainly potential danger.”

Even though a Senator is not planning on taking bribes from the underage-goat-sex lobby, that could change in an instant. Best we lock them all up now.

JEFF TAYLOR looks at FBI ineptitude leading up to 9/11, a topic I’ve been writing about for some time.

IF YOU HAVEN’T BEEN TO WINDS OF CHANGE lately, drop by. There’s also lots of immigration-blogging at Asymmetrical Information. And Tom Maguire is on a roll.

WE’D ALL LOVE TO SEE THE PLAN: Well, actually, Brian Dunn has taken a look. Jim Geraghty also has a series of posts. Just keep scrolling.

INSTAPUNDIT has its own Amazon page.– with reviews and everything. Seems like I ought to have noticed this before, but if I did I don’t remember it.

HELEN AND I ARE INTERVIEWED at the latest Israellycool podcast.

PEGGY NOONAN WRITES that anxiety about immigration is really anxiety about assimilation.

AN ARMY OF DAVIDS: The Mark Steyn review. “It’s one of the most enjoyable reads I’ve had in a long time.”

Cool. It doesn’t get any better than that.

EUGENE VOLOKH reports on New York University’s extremely lame explanation for its censorship. Read this later post, too.

I just wonder when some anti-abortion, or whatever, group will recognize how easy it is to silence contrary opinions in the literary and academic worlds. When you reward behavior you get more of it. NYU is rewarding thuggery. On the other hand, they’re certainly providing the American public with an education — an education in how little all their talk about free speech and academic freedom means. To NYU, at least.

UPDATE: Perhaps NYU should consider poetry.

THE INSTA-WIFE POSTS a lengthy iPod nano review.

UPDATE: No, I didn’t give her one of these.

JOHN TAMMES GOES from de-cruiting to recruiting.

A LETTER TO CHARLES TAYLOR. “The letter would be almost comical and childish if the outcome weren’t so depressing.”

BORDERS AND WALDENBOOKS CHICKEN OUT: If you don’t like ideas, don’t bother arguing with them. Just threaten to kill people. They’ll back down. Or at least their booksellers, universities, and governments will. How long before other groups take this lesson to heart?

Advancing toward fascism, one cowardly institution at a time.

UPDATE: More here: “As a former President of the PEN Center USA (western US branch of PEN), I am calling for that organization to stand up against Borders/Waldenbooks.”

THE BELMONT CLUB has a couple of interesting, and somewhat “gloomy,” though he denies it, reports on events in Iraq. But unlike most of the Big Media analysts, he knows what he’s talking about, and has perspective. Just keep scrolling.

UPDATE: Bill Roggio has more here and here.

SO I GET A COPY OF THIS BOOK in the mail, and my secretary’s comment is “Somebody trying to tell you something?” Heh. Nothing I haven’t been told before . . . .

CATHY YOUNG looks at equal rights for unwed fathers.

STEVE JOBS IS A GENIUS: The Insta-Wife, who’s not into gadgets the way I am, finally cracked and bought an iPod nano yesterday. She then spent all night happily buying songs off iTunes to fill it. If you can sell gadgets to her, you’re sure to make money.

WHEN IT RAINS, IT POURS: My brother-in-law’s benign tumor turns out not to be benign: It’s a “high grade pleomorphic rhabdomyosarcoma, stage III.” Any oncologists out there with special knowledge of this apparently rather rare cancer?

LICHTBLAU SAYS ONE THING: Transcript says another.

JEFF GOLDSTEIN says that “it seems those who claim to despise Bush are secretly so confident in him and his administration . . . that it is they who regard 911 as a lucky blow.”

JILL CARROLL HAS BEEN RELEASED by terrorists in Iraq. Some are speculating that it happened because of last week’s successful hostage rescue.

MICKEY KAUS is blogging up a storm on immigration. And there’s more at QandO.

YES, BLOGGING HAS BEEN LIGHT for the past couple of days, and will likely remain so for a couple more. Sorry.

JACK GOLDSMITH has responded to my last post, over at Slate’s “Book Club.”

MYSTERY POLLSTER says the American Medical Assocation is guilty of poll fakery. And read this post, too.

This makes the AMA look rather untrustworthy, and will cause me to entertain additional doubts regarding other public advocacy efforts it engages in.

TROUBLING STUFF AT NEW YORK UNIVERSITY: Eugene Volokh and Diana Hsieh have more.

UPDATE: Reader Louis Rossetto emails: “Can we officially label this ‘A Crisis in Higher Education’® yet, a la what Time used to be able to do and get away with? Harvard, Columbia, NYU, Yale . . .”

Meanwhile, NYU alumnus Steven Sullivan emails:

I just wanted to write quickly to note the NYU event calendar for today, which is right on the main NYU page at www.nyu.edu. There’s a “coming out chat” and a “sex toy party” in addition to a seminar in the “Sex Work Matters” series going on today and tomorrow. All are open to the public. Now, I find nothing offensive in all this. But I feel certain there are some who might. Is John Sexton going to make sure no one comes in from off-campus who might not agree with the content of those sponsored events?

Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I’ve already written President Sexton a polite letter. I’m sure I’ll get something brief, chilly and condescending in return.

Sexton’s actually not a bad guy. But we’re seeing a distinct lack of backbone here.

MAX SAWICKY says that the FBI is oppressing the Kurds in Virginia. Sounds like this could use some more scrutiny.

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh would like more information.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Mark Tapscott reports:

It’s gotten little attention in the mainstream media but a potentially landmark measure authored by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, and Sen. Barrack Obama, D-IL, was taken up by the Senate today. Call it the “Show Us the Money” amendment for Uncle Sam.

The measure is Amendment 3175, which is one of a bunch of amendments to the Lobbying Reform Bill now being considered by the Senate. Odds are very good that every Member of the Senate will have the opportunity to vote for or against the Coburn/Obama amendment.

The Coburn/OBama amendment directs the U.S. Office of Management and Budget to establish a publicly available database of the more than $300 billion the federal government spends each year via contracts and grants to more than 30,000 groups, businesses and organizations.

Trent Lott seems to have killed it. “Put another way, Lott just told taxpayers to butt out.”

MY RESPONSE TO TIM WU is now up, over at Slate’s “Book Club.”

HUGH HEWITT’S NEW BOOK seems to be doing quite well.

TIM WU has posted a response to my first post, over at Slate’s “Book Club.”

MORE ON SELF-MADE MEDIA: My TCS Daily column is up.

MY GRANDMOTHER, CHARLSIE FARRIOR TEAL, DIED TODAY, at about noon. It was sudden and quite unexpected; we’d all gone out to dinner Saturday and she seemed to be doing very well, but at 91, well I guess “sudden” isn’t really the word.

Got the call from my mother and headed out there, cancelling my afternoon class. Got there before the paramedics left; there were several nice deputies from the Knox County Sheriff’s Department there (they always do that when someone calls 911 to report a death) and even a Chaplain (they do that, too). They were very helpful and considerate.

Spent the afternoon dealing with funeral home stuff, etc. (the funeral will be in Birmingham, where there’s still some family, though my grandmother outlived all but one of her friends — her friend Ethel Claire, whom she met when she was 19, is still alive but has a broken hip and probably won’t make it).

My mom is spending the night with us tonight. Back later.

Meanwhile, to the right is a picture of my grandmother from last year, and below is one of her and my grandfather from Daytona in 1938. She had a long, and good, life. I’m still sorry that she died, though.

TIM WU (coauthor of Who Controls the Internet?) and I are doing a Slate book club revolving around our respective books this week. The first installment, by me, is up here.

IN THE MAIL: Orrin Judd’s new book, Redefining Sovereignty. Rather timely, I’d say.

MORE AGGREGATION: Danny Glover reviews both An Army of Davids and Crashing the Gate.

IMPOVERISHED ACADEMIC DR. RUSTY SHACKLEFORD will blog for food.

ISRAELLYCOOL will be covering the Israeli elections today. So is Allison Kaplan Sommer. And check out Vital Perspective.

JIM BENNETT SAYS that he sees an emerging consensus on immigration: “Assimilation is going with the grain of American culture and history, and must be the focal-point of any attempt to address the problem. Securing the borders is a close second. Whatever the position of the major parties, I think the popular demand for reform is so strong that some poltician will emerge to ride that horse.”

UPDATE: Here’s an interesting net immigration map, in which country sizes reflect immigration. (Via John Chilton).

JESSE WALKER WRITES on why unlicensed broadcasting shouldn’t be a crime.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER CHARGES FRANCIS FUKUYAMA WITH “FABRICATION:”

A convenient fabrication — it gives him a foil and the story drama — but a foolish one because it can be checked.

But that’s just the beginning of a rather serious takedown. Not that his history of being wrong about, well, pretty much everything has hurt Fukuyama’s career so far.

UPDATE: Ron Butler emails: “Francis Fukuyama, the Paul Ehrlich of geopolitics?”

Pretty much.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Byron Matthews emails: “His peculiar talent is to sense the intellectual tide and quickly ride it, which makes him the David Gergen of geopolitics.”

Ouch.

PAYBACK KILLINGS: Zeyad offers a much less clinical view of the phenomenon that StrategyPage described a couple of days ago. He’s not very happy about what’s going on, to put it mildly.

Of course, Zeyad also illustrates, as he has in the past, that he’s better at reporting not just the good, but also the bad news than most of the professional reporters in Iraq.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “Zeyad is Sunni.”

True, and that’s got to color his views, but I’ve always found him to be an honest reporter and it’s not as if he’s been spouting the Ba’athist/Sunni line.

PRINCE CHARLES, ISLAMIC DISSIDENT. And yet he’s a piker compared to Camilla.

GRAND ROUNDS is up!

MODERATE MUSLIMS in Madison.

THE F.E.C. AND BLOGS — this seems like good news:

The Federal Election Commission decided Monday that the nation’s new campaign finance law will not apply to most political activity on the internet.

In a 6-0 vote, the commission decided to regulate only paid political ads placed on another person’s website.

The decision means that bloggers and online publications will not be covered by provisions of the new election law. Internet bloggers and individuals will therefore be able to use the internet to attack or support federal candidates without running afoul of campaign spending and contribution limits.

Adam Bonin — who did excellent work on this — calls it a “netroots win.” Mike Krempasky — who also did excellent work — observes: “This is a tremendous win for speech.”

AN ARMY OF TRANSLATORS: Here’s a news story on the Saddam document release.

HEH. If this report is true, it serves ‘em right: “Hussain Andaryas said the publicity surrounding the Abdul Rahman case had resulted in a surge of interest in Christianity among Afghans.”

IS THE AP PLAGIARIZING BLOGS? A “we do not credit blogs” policy doesn’t sound like much of a defense. (Via Majikthise and L’Ombre de l’Olivier). Whether or not it’s plagiarism, exactly, it’s certainly tacky.

UPDATE: Jim Lindgren says the AP does credit blogs, regardless of its stated policy: “I find this story triply strange.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Roger Simon says it’s all part of the class struggle. Onward, comrades!

MOUSSAOUI says he had advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks. This should get him the death penalty, but it also underscores the damage done by the inept investigation after his arrest. As I noted some time ago: “FBI investigators misunderstood the law, and were thus too slow to search Moussaoui even though the evidence in their possession was more than sufficient. The bureaucratic resistance to searching Moussaoui was so great that field agents in Minnesota wondered — before Sept. 11 — if Usama bin Laden had a mole in Bureau headquarters.”

MUCH MORE ON IMMIGRATION: Over at GlennReynolds.com.

FIGHTING FOR Internet freedom in Cuba.

HUGH HEWITT HAS A NEW BOOK OUT: It’s called Painting the Map Red: The Fight to Create a Permanent Republican Majority.

I wish him well with the book, but I’m not that interested in the idea of a permanent Republican majority. I’m pretty disappointed in the Republicans now, and I’d just as soon see them under whatever discipline that the notion of a not at all permanent majority provides. That doesn’t seem to be enough. . . .

HEART-FRIENDLY BACON: “Geneticists have mixed DNA from the roundworm C. elegans and pigs to produce swine with significant amounts of omega-3 fatty acids — the kind believed to stave off heart disease.” Finish your bacon, dear — it’s good for your heart!

UH OH: “The Supreme Court refused Monday to block a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times over columns that linked a former Army scientist to the 2001 anthrax killings.”

MORE ON YALE’S Taliban problem. And read this, too.