WHAT HATH KELLER WROUGHT:

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales raised the possibility yesterday that New York Times journalists could be prosecuted for publishing classified information based on the outcome of the criminal investigation underway into leaks to the Times of data about the National Security Agency’s surveillance of terrorist-related calls between the United States and abroad.

Those editorial demands for leak investigations in the Plame affair were ill-advised, as many pointed out at the time.

I DON’T THINK I’VE LINKED RANTBURG LATELY, but you should still be reading it, as it collects all sorts of war news in one convenient location.

REPRESENTATIVE WILLIAM JEFFERSON captured on video taking a $100,000 bribe: Gateway Pundit has a roundup. This whole “culture of corruption” is getting way out of hand.

Plus there’s this: “$90,000 found in congressman’s freezer . . . The money was divided among various frozen food containers, according to the heavily redacted affidavit.”

Some readers may recall that Jefferson also used the National Guard to secure his home in New Orleans during the Katrina aftermath. Another triumph for Louisiana politics! However, the bribery story puts a new spin on this bit from the story about Jefferson’s urgent visit to his home amid the flood: “Finally, according to the source, Jefferson emerged with a laptop computer, three suitcases, and a box about the size of a small refrigerator, which the enlisted men loaded up into the truck.” Hmm.

THE CARNIVAL OF THE CAPITALISTS is up!

A LEBANESE BLOGGER visits Israel. Excerpt:

The inevitable question came. The question that I hesitate to answer honestly when I’m unsure of my own personal security. “So then, where are you from my friend?”.

I gauged the situation. He didn’t seem like a fanatical person. He seemed friendly. His eyes spoke softly. He cared to know. I told him.

“I’m Lebanese.”

I felt that he wanted to lurch to the back of the car and grab me. But not in an aggressive manner.

“Inta Libnanae? Ana Libnanae” (You’re Lebanese. I’m Lebanese.)

I was stunned. Speechless.

A Lebanese Jew. A Lebanese citizen who practiced Judaism. I’ve never met one before. I should have known he was Lebanese from the beginning. It was after all the nicest Mercedes taxi I’ve been in since coming to Tel Aviv. We have a weakness for brands.

Read the whole thing.

MICHAEL BARONE:

Things are better than you think. Yes, I know, most Americans are in a sour mood these days, convinced that the struggle in Iraq is an endless cycle of bloodshed, certain that our economy is in dismal shape, lamenting that the nation and the world are off on the wrong track. That’s what polls tell us. But if we look at some other numbers, we’ll find that we are living not in the worst of times but in something much closer to the best.

Yes, and if we elect a Democrat to the White House we’ll hear a lot more about those good numbers . . . .

UPDATE: Some related thoughts here on good times and bad.

THE ANCHORESS: “Inexpressible groanings seem to be the stuff of my life these days.” Drop by and offer her your warm thoughts and prayers.

DYMPHNA:

Remember the 1930’s when so many of Europe’s intelligentsia came to America to escape Fascism? Albert Einstein was one; Karen Horney was another. Our intellectual ranks and our universities were enriched as Europe’s totalitarian rumblings caused the educated ranks to flee to safer shores.

It seems to be happening again. In addition to Hirsi Ali’s imminent departure from the Netherlands, there is a growing feeling that Europe is not safe for those who dissent even a little from the received wisdom of the bureaucratic state, or dare to confront the Muslim taqiyya so prevalent there.

Poor Europe needs all the smarts it can get; it would be much better off if it could keep those people.

AN INDIRECT APPROACH ON IRAN: I think that’s pretty much the strategy.

UNILATERAL? NOT US! I caught John Howard’s interview on Wolf Blitzer’s show as I was in the car, and the CNN folks were kind enough to send a transcript. This bit was quite amusing:

BLITZER: So the UN – excuse me for interrupting. The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, said this on May 12th. He said, “I have insisted very clearly both in private and my contacts with the America administration and publicly that I think it’s important that the United States come to the table and that they should join the European countries and Iran to find a solution.”

He’s the secretary general. Do you agree with him?

HOWARD: Yes. Well, when I talk about the United Nations processes I mean the processes through the Security Council. I mean, I respect the views of the secretary general but when I talk of the process I mean the process which is now underway which involves the potential for further resolutions by the United Nations Security Council and I think that is the path at this time that ought to be followed.

Three years ago there was criticism of the United States and her allies, including Australia, for not further using the processes of the United Nations.

The view was taken then that that was not going to work. We now, in relation to Iran, have the opportunity to see how full those processes can be made to work. It’s quite a test for the United Nations and we’re very keen that that test take place.

Yes, it is quite a test for the U.N. And I can see why Bush, Blair and Howard would be “very keen” to see that test take place. And yes, Howard certainly can rub it in.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: A look at the explosion of spending since Republicans took over Congress:

Even excluding spending related to Katrina, defense and homeland security, discretionary expenditures jumped 22 percent.

Perhaps more startling, this spending energy has been fueled by nearly unprecedented consumption of pork — the government variety, that is. Pork-barrel projects in the federal budget grew from 1,439 in fiscal 1995 to 13,997 in fiscal 2005, leading one to believe Republicans had been so deprived of this kind of nourishment over the 40 years they were out of the majority that they couldn’t resist gorging.

Just a whisper of an appropriations measure causes frenzy in both houses as members queue up weeks ahead to insert their favorite vote-garnering projects. Conscious about the bad publicity in the past for “bridges to nowhere,” the good lawmakers cut back on the number of earmarks, from 9,963 in 11 appropriations bills, a 29 percent decrease over last year’s 13,997. That is highly commendable, right? But wait. The $29 billion spent on the reduced number of pork projects actually was a 6.2 percent increase over the $27.3 billion spent the previous year.

Among the “crucial” items listed in the Waste folks’ annual Pig Book was $13.5 million for the International Fund for Ireland which helped finance the World Toilet Summit; $6.4 million for wood utilization research; $1 million for the Waterfree Urinal Conservation Initiative, and $500,000 for the Sparta, N.C., Teapot Museum. These political necessities were provided at taxpayer expense while wind and water inundated Louisiana and Mississippi and bombs blew away soldiers in Iraq.

Sigh. House Majority Leader John Boehner told us in his PorkBusters interview that constituents are mad about this, and that he hears that wherever he goes. I think that if people want to see progress here, they need to communicate those sentiments loudly and often.

UPDATE: Stan Brown says that spending isn’t nearly as bad as this makes it sound.

THIS IS A SAUDI TEXTBOOK: The Saudis are not our friends. They are, in fact, at the root of global Islamist intolerance and violence to a degree at least as great as that of Iran. They must change peacefully, or be changed.

BRENDAN LOY: “I see on my cell phone that the mayor who fiddled while New Orleans drowned has been re-elected. Sheesh.”

I predict substantially less support for New Orleans reconstruction. Betweeen the Louisiana delegation’s absurd overreaching in demanding a huge amount of pork-laden funding, and this, they’ve managed to squander a lot of the sympathy that was present in in September. Louisiana’s political class isn’t just greedy — it’s greedy and stupid. Louisiana will pay the price. And probably complain of unfairness when it does.

UPDATE: Will Collier weighs in.

IN MY EARLIER POST on immigration and Iraq, I speculated that many of those leaving are Sunnis. Sure enough, StrategyPage reports — as part of a comprehensive Iraq report that’s worth reading in full — the following:

Sunni Arabs are only 15-20 percent of the population. They used to be closer to 20 percent, but increasing numbers of Sunni Arabs have been fleeing the violence, and Iraq. Most missed are the middle and upper class Sunni Arabs who form the backbone of the Sunni Arab community, and the Iraqi economy and business community. Harassed by gangsters and terrorists, these Iraqis are giving up on the new Iraq, at least for now, and heading to nearby Arab nations or, for the most disenchanted, the West. To many Kurds and [Shiite] Arabs, all Sunni Arabs should be expelled from Iraq. For these bitter victims of Saddam’s decades of abuse, Sunni Arabs have been the cause of most of Iraqis’ problems, and don’t seem to have changed their attitudes much since 2003. But many Sunni Arabs have changed their attitudes, and are trying to work out deals that will give them a place in a democratic Iraq. But first, the Sunni Arab community has to purge itself of its thugs and gangsters. This isn’t easy.

Read the whole thing. And read this piece on tribal militias, too.

UPDATE: Brian Dunn thinks that the Sunni departures are a good sign: “The fact that backers of the Baathists are now leaving Iraq is not a sign that we are losing. It is a sign that the enemy is losing. They see little hope of running things any time soon and are getting out of town before the new cops come around with war crimes and human rights violation charges in hand.”

That’s no doubt true for some. Others, though, are probably feeling pinched between pressure from the remaining holdouts (who, like guerrillas in general, put the most pressure on their own people) and fear of Shia retribution on a fairly undiscriminating basis. True, that hasn’t happened yet, and probably won’t, but I can understand why people wouldn’t want to take their chances.

IT’S AS IF THEY’RE ALL CROOKS OR SOMETHING:

Democratic leaders began this year thinking that Republican corruption in Congress would be one of their most lethal campaign weapons, but GOP officials say that firepower has been defused by new accusations of bribery and other abuses against Democrats.

“The Democrats’ attempt to paint this as a one-sided issue has come back to bite them. They have a lot of ethics problems in their own closet,” said Ron Bonjean, spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Illinois Republican.

The latest scandal emerged from the investigation of lobbyist Jack Abramoff and lawmakers of both parties who purportedly did legislative favors for him and received lavish trips, gifts and campaign contributions in return, as well as the conviction on bribery charges of former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, California Republican.

It since has widened in the House, where the ethics committee announced last week that it had begun investigating two lawmakers: Reps. William J. Jefferson, Louisiana Democrat, and Bob Ney, Ohio Republican.

The committee is investigating whether Mr. Ney received benefits and gifts from Abramoff as a result of official actions he took. It also will examine accusations that Mr. Jefferson was given money, stocks and other benefits from a technology company in exchange for helping the firm obtain business in Africa. Both men have denied wrongdoing.

Last night, FBI agents raided the Rayburn House Office Building, where Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Ney have offices, Reuters news agency reported. . . .

Another Democrat, Rep. Alan B. Mollohan of West Virginia, is the focus of an FBI investigation for his purported role in obtaining millions of dollars in pork-barrel appropriations for his state, a network of groups he set up that benefited from the money and a personal fortune that grew from $565,000 to more than $6.3 million in just four years.

Mr. Mollohan, the ranking Democrat on the ethics committee, was forced to resign that post under pressure from party leaders.

Stay tuned.

THE BLOGOSPHERE HAS PEAKED: “Employers wiping out Net surfing on the job.” Just watch those pageviews plummet!

WISCONSIN’S REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR, MARK GREEN, sits down with bloggers. Sean Hackbarth has the report, and audio.

AT GAY PATRIOT: “I just finished Mary Cheney’s book Now It’s My Turn: A Daughter’s Chronicle of Political Life and recommend it as the most important book addressing a gay topic of the year, if not the past few years. Indeed, it is must-read book for anyone who wishes to talk honestly about the Bush Administration’s record on gay issues.”

FOOD AND FATNESS NOW AND THEN: One argument as to why people are fatter now has to do with restaurant portion sizes, which are a lot bigger than they used to be. Despite other arguments, Helen and I are always reminded of that when we visit Long’s Drug Store, a Knoxville landmark that hasn’t changed much since it opened fifty years ago.

As you can see, Helen’s lunch is pretty small: Nothing supersized here. Of course, all she got was two eggs scrambled and toast.

But I got a cheeseburger. Still, it’s no Monster ThickBurger — just a modest piece of ground beef and some fries. (The crinkle-cut kind, still the best despite the McDonald’s little-fry heresy.) They were actually more generous with the fries than usual.

Whenever we eat here (not all that often, alas) I think that it’s a James Lileks kind of place, though it’s perhaps more fifties-homey than fifties-glitzy, which seems more Lileksesque.

The other nice thing about our lunch is that it cost $7.16 — plus tip, which was rather more than 15%. I don’t feel like the waitresses should suffer for the low prices.

ANOTHER ROUGH DAY FOR AL JAZEERA: I hope these guys were from the Paris bureau, so that it’ll at least be familiar.

DON’T GET TOO FAR ahead of the news cycle.

THE NSA TRANSCRIPTS of my phone calls have somehow leaked.

RANDY BARNETT has thoughts on judicial power and legislative restraint.

BACKUP PODCASTING: Various people wonder about my podcasting backup system. It’s just the Dell Laptop, running Sony Acid Music Studio (the cheap version of the Acid Pro that I use regularly) and Sound Forge Audio Studio 8 (the cheap version of Sound Forge, which takes the place of the Adobe Audion that I usually use). Both are entirely adequate, though not as powerful as the stuff I regularly use. And they’re a lot cheaper.

Sony seems to have managed to avoid ruining Acid and Sound Forge since taking them over from Sonic Foundry. On the other hand, judging by the customer reviews Adobe has managed to screw up Adobe Audition 2.0. I use version 1.5, which is quite close to the Cool Edit Pro that it replaced, but I figured that Adobe couldn’t resist messing with things. Given that I hate Adobe’s user interface, and overall design philosophy, I doubt I’ll upgrade.

THOMAS DOHERTY: “The religion that once put the fear of God into Hollywood now has less influence over motion picture content than People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.”

MAD MAX TIME:

Eastern Chad is now home for over 250,000 refugees, most of them in camps run by the UN and associated NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations). About 20 percent of the refugees are Chadians, fleeing the increasing violence between Chadian security forces and various rebel factions. Some of the guys with guns are just bandits. These gangs, plus raiders from Darfur, and many of the Chad rebels, prey on the refugee camps, as well as the relief organizations. For example, relief organizations, despite hiring locals as armed guards, have had some 30 of their vehicles stolen. Food supplies and equipment are also taken regularly. The UN wants to send in peacekeepers to guard the refugee camps and the movements of relief supplies and aid workers. The Chad government doesn’t want foreign peacekeepers, but it unable to provide security along the Sudan border. There’s not exactly a war going on along the frontier. It’s more like a breakdown in law and order, and dozens of groups of armed men wandering around stealing whatever they can. These guys are not interested in fighting. If they encounter security forces, or another armed group, they may exchange some fire, and if the other guy doesn’t flee, just move on.

Sigh.

IRAQI PARLIAMENT APPROVES NEW CABINET: That seems like good news. Things seem to me to be proceeding pretty much in accordance with this prediction from last year.

UPDATE: More thoughts here and here.

ALPHECCA NOTES A RARITY: positive media coverage of the NRA convention.

MILBLOGS: A Guantanamo roundup, plus a report from Korea.

THIS IS COOL:

Those “never say die” robots on Mars — NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity — continue to chalk up science at their respective exploration sites.

Looming large for the Opportunity rover at Meridiani Planum is Victoria Crater — a grand bit of territory that’s roughly half a mile (800 meters) in diameter. That’s about six times wider than Endurance Crater, a feature that the rover previously surveyed for several months in 2004, gathering data on rock layers there that were affected by water of long, long ago. . . .

“All of the cameras continue to work remarkably well and are continuing to acquire beautiful images,” said Cornell astronomer Jim Bell, the panoramic camera payload element lead for the Mars Exploration Rovers. “They have proven to be extremely robust to the extreme conditions on the Martian surface … large temperature swings, fine dust everywhere, large cosmic ray flux,” he told Space.com.

Since the twin rovers independently landed on Mars in January 2004, Spirit’s cameras have taken about 82,000 pictures. Opportunity has taken about 71,500 pictures, for a combined downlinked image data volume of about 19 gigabytes. About 54,400 of Spirit’s images and 49,500 of Opportunity’s are high-resolution panoramic images, Bell said.

It’s always nice when things work better than expected.

MICHAEL NOVAK didn’t much like The Da Vinci Code.

GOOD NEWS FOR RAMONA DIXON: “The tumor is benign.”

I HAD EMAILED CLAIRE BERLINSKI for an update on goings-on in Turkey, but to no avail. Claire responds:

No, Glenn, I’m in Paris right now — otherwise I would surely be keeping you posted. David, meanwhile, is in Iraq, where evidently, contrary to all expectation, the only excitement to be found is a local sheep going into labor. He and I have both noticed that we have but to leave a country for all the excitement to begin. Given that we are both journalists, this is something of an odd karmic liability.

We’ll both be flying back on Tuesday, and I’ll tell you what we see when we get there. I would remark, though, that the phrase “rallying spontaneously” seems unlikely to me to be correct. This is the Turkish Republic we’re talking about, large rallies are never more spontaneous than Al Gore doing the Macarena. I wish I could tell you more, but right now I’m no closer to it than you are. Stay tuned, though, I’ll let you know when I’m back on the scene.

Changing the subject, I have been at times been tempted to respond to those who disagree with my assessment of the moral climate of the Netherlands, but if the invalidation of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s citizenship does not persuade them, they are not susceptible to persuasion, so I may as well save my time and breath. Still, I think the event should be noted, and I note it thus.

I look forward to hearing more. And maybe we should pay Claire and David to visit places that need pacification!

PERSONALLY, I think it’s fine if professors want to pose topless. (Photos probably NSFW, though not terribly titillating). I think they should be more reluctant to call student bloggers “unAmerican” just for criticizing them over their political views, though.

GOT A PHONE CALL FROM MICHAEL YON tonight. He’s back from Afghanistan, and says he’s really happy to be back in the States. He also reports that the Bill Roggio item I linked earlier is exactly right, and that the opium crop in Afghanistan is swelling. He’s a big fan of some of the alternative crop efforts there, though it’s hard for me to imagine that many crops could compete economically with opium. I’m still not sure why the United States doesn’t start buying the stuff from farmers, which at the very least would drive up prices and put the squeeze on the warlords. Anyway, it was nice to hear that he’s doing well, and we’ll try to get him on another podcast soon. (Our earlier interview with Yon, if you missed it, is here.)

UPDATE: Mark Kleiman rains on my buy-the-opium idea: “It’s an old idea. We tried to buy Khun Sa’s crop in the late 60s. It never works. The market defeats it every time.”

Dang, supply-and-demand! Well, an even better solution would be drug legalization, of course. Then they could sell to Pfizer, not to organized crime. Kleiman has more here.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE GREEN LINE: Michael Totten blogs from the West Bank. And don’t miss the post-script.

CANNIBALISM IN CONNECTICUT? “Ah, it’s sad, this message that there’s no such thing as a liberal hawk. I wonder what Hillary’s thinking about all this.”

THE RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM seems to be getting out of hand.

HP UPDATE: Well, I finally got to someone at HP last night (my slowness, not theirs) and the computer is on its way back for repairs. They were quite nice. Am I getting special blogger-treatment? Possibly, but I’ve gotten several emails like this one from Gary Wishon: “My HP laptop was picked up FedEx on Tuesday and I was using it again on Thursday PM. With a follow-up call 2hrs after arrival. I’d buy HP again anytime–and have.” And I didn’t get any horror stories like I keep hearing about Dell (though I note that my own experiences with Dell have been mostly good). I’ll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, I’ve demoted the HP to family-room duty and done what I’ve meant to do for a while, putting a dedicated audio PC in the studio. I ordered one of these machines from Sweetwater Sound, and it came today. Had a minor setup glitch, called their support number, and got it taken care of with minimal hassle thanks to a guy named “Mikey.” He even gave me some useful advice on configuring my M-Audio interface box with the computer, which is cool. The new computer is much quieter, which is nice.

UPDATE: Heh.

MORE ON TURKEY:

Turks have had enough of their government’s unwillingness to take responsibility for its actions and its incitement. What some Turks are asking, though, is why the U.S. media is paying so little attention to the crisis. This isn’t just an instance of Turks being Turkey-centric. But it seems that when Islamists threaten to make inroads, U.S. media is all over the story. But when liberals fight back, there is silence. This is not only true in Turkey, but extends to general media sympathy toward Islamism.

Yes, it does seem that way.

BILL ROGGIO REPORTS ON AFGHANISTAN:

The news reports of a major Taliban offensive in southeastern Afghanistan are inaccurate, as Coalition offensives and Taliban attacks have been lumped together to give the impression of a coordinated Taliban assault in multiple provinces. A reading of the various reports indicates that while the Taliban has launched a major strike on a police station and government center in Helmand province and a small scale attack on a police patrol in Ghazni, as well as two suicide attacks against U.S. contractors in Herat and an Afghan army base in Ghazni, the fighting in Kandahar was initiated by Afghan and Coalition security forces during planned operations. Over 100 have been reported killed during the fighting, with 87 being Taliban. Well over half of those killed were killed during the Coalition offensives in Kandahar.

He’ll be reporting from Afghanistan starting next week, as he’s heading over on an embed. Read the whole thing, and this report from StrategyPage has more.

THE BLOG WEEK IN REVIEW PODCAST is up, featuring me, Austin Bay, Eric Umansky, and Tammy Bruce. Topics include the NSA call-tracking program, Egypt, Iran, and more. Shockingly, Eric and I wind up agreeing a lot.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Some pretty good news, according to Mark Tapscott:

National Journal’s Peter Cohn is reporting an agreement among Senate and House negotiators to cap spending in the emergency spending bill for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and Gulf Coast hurricane recovery to $94.5 billion.

The total would include, according to Cohn, the $92.5 billion originally requested by President Bush and approved by the House of Representatives, plus an additional $2.3 billion to fund avian flu preparations. The National Journal is a subscription-only publication, so I can’t provide a link to the full article.

Keep your eye on the ball. Er, and your hand on your wallet.

I THINK THIS IS GOOD NEWS: “Tens of thousands of Turks are rallying spontaneously in favor of secularism and liberalism.”

SOME FURTHER THOUGHTS on parenting and expectations.

IN THE MAIL: Stanley Bing’s 100 Bullshit Jobs…And How to Get Them. Number 13 is “blogger.”

N.Z. BEAR offers advice to the White House. “Recognizing that the White House is not a blog, I think it can be informative to read their email as if it were a blog post, and judge it by the same standards we would apply to a blogger’s work. And by those standards, it falls rather short.”

THE UN-SILENCED BILL HOBBS has started a new web PR consulting company called Mesh Media Strategies, and reports via email that he’s already got a stable of clients.

JOHN TAMMES offers another roundup of news from Afghanistan that you’ve probably missed.

THE CARNIVAL OF LIBERTY is up!

UH OH: “The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the professional association of CPAs, has sheepishly announced that it has lost a computer file containing the names, addresses, and social security numbers of some of its members.”

AMIR TAHERI looks at leading indicators in Iraq:

Since my first encounter with Iraq almost 40 years ago, I have relied on several broad measures of social and economic health to assess the countrys condition. Through good times and bad, these signs have proved remarkably accurateas accurate, that is, as is possible in human affairs. For some time now, all have been pointing in an unequivocally positive direction.

The first sign is refugees. When things have been truly desperate in Iraqin 1959, 1969, 1971, 1973, 1980, 1988, and 1990long queues of Iraqis have formed at the Turkish and Iranian frontiers, hoping to escape. In 1973, for example, when Saddam Hussein decided to expel all those whose ancestors had not been Ottoman citizens before Iraqs creation as a state, some 1.2 million Iraqis left their homes in the space of just six weeks. This was not the temporary exile of a small group of middle-class professionals and intellectuals, which is a common enough phenomenon in most Arab countries. Rather, it was a departure en masse, affecting people both in small villages and in big cities, and it was a scene regularly repeated under Saddam Hussein.

Since the toppling of Saddam in 2003, this is one highly damaging image we have not seen on our television setsand we can be sure that we would be seeing it if it were there to be shown. To the contrary, Iraqis, far from fleeing, have been returning home. By the end of 2005, in the most conservative estimate, the number of returnees topped the 1.2-million mark. Many of the camps set up for fleeing Iraqis in Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia since 1959 have now closed down. The oldest such center, at Ashrafiayh in southwest Iran, was formally shut when its last Iraqi guests returned home in 2004.

A second dependable sign likewise concerns human movement, but of a different kind. This is the flow of religious pilgrims to the Shiite shrines in Karbala and Najaf. Whenever things start to go badly in Iraq, this stream is reduced to a trickle and then it dries up completely. From 1991 (when Saddam Hussein massacred Shiites involved in a revolt against him) to 2003, there were scarcely any pilgrims to these cities. Since Saddams fall, they have been flooded with visitors. In 2005, the holy sites received an estimated 12 million pilgrims, making them the most visited spots in the entire Muslim world, ahead of both Mecca and Medina.

Over 3,000 Iraqi clerics have also returned from exile, and Shiite seminaries, which just a few years ago held no more than a few dozen pupils, now boast over 15,000 from 40 different countries. This is because Najaf, the oldest center of Shiite scholarship, is once again able to offer an alternative to Qom, the Iranian holy city where a radical and highly politicized version of Shiism is taught. Those wishing to pursue the study of more traditional and quietist forms of Shiism now go to Iraq where, unlike in Iran, the seminaries are not controlled by the government and its secret police.

A third sign, this one of the hard economic variety, is the value of the Iraqi dinar, especially as compared with the regions other major currencies. In the final years of Saddam Husseins rule, the Iraqi dinar was in free fall; after 1995, it was no longer even traded in Iran and Kuwait. By contrast, the new dinar, introduced early in 2004, is doing well against both the Kuwaiti dinar and the Iranian rial, having risen by 17 percent against the former and by 23 percent against the latter. Although it is still impossible to fix its value against a basket of international currencies, the new Iraqi dinar has done well against the U.S. dollar, increasing in value by almost 18 percent between August 2004 and August 2005. The overwhelming majority of Iraqis, and millions of Iranians and Kuwaitis, now treat it as a safe and solid medium of exchange

My fourth time-tested sign is the level of activity by small and medium-sized businesses. In the past, whenever things have gone downhill in Iraq, large numbers of such enterprises have simply closed down, with the countrys most capable entrepreneurs decamping to Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf states, Turkey, Iran, and even Europe and North America. Since liberation, however, Iraq has witnessed a private-sector boom, especially among small and medium-sized businesses.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: In response, Greg Djerejian sends this story from the New York Times claiming an exodus of middle class citizens from Baghdad. I heard a similar story on NPR a few weeks back, interviewing Iraqi expats in Jordan — but the story omitted any overt mention of what seemed obvious from the interviews, which was that the refugees were former Baathists. Can’t tell if that’s true here, but Jim Hoft has looked at the NYT’s numbers and says they’re not supported. So it’s hard to say for sure.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Much more here.

MORE: A less-positive take here from Iraq the Model: “On the other hand many of my friends, relatives or the people I know have either left Iraq or are planning to do so.”

MICKEY KAUS ON THE BORDER:

The logic seems inescapable. The U.S., in this sense, is an attractive nuisance like a swimming pool. If you want to keep neighborhood children from using the pool, and possibly drowning, you don’t partially fence it in. You completely fence it in. … Full funding for full fencing! … P.S.: Sure, Bush has said “it’s impractical to fence off the border.” But earlier this week he wasn’t willing to flatly endorse even the 320 miles the Senate supported. Today he was. Give him time. He’s caving fast!

Mexican immigrants are adults, though, not children.

HOW AN IRAQI MINISTER is using the Washington Post. And vice versa.

REQUIRING A PHOTO ID TO VOTE? Doesn’t seem that unreasonable to me, given that I have to show one to buy a beer.

UPDATE: Reader Barry Dauphin emails that he had to show one to buy Claritin-D.

PODCASTING ELIOT SPITZER AND ANDREW RASIEJ from the Personal Democracy Forum.

I’M PROUD OF HARPER’S for publishing the Mohammed cartoons, but Ed Driscoll has some questions.

THE AMNESTY PROTESTS CONTINUE TO BEAR FRUIT: The Inhofe Amendment, which makes English the national language of the United States, has just passed the Senate by a sizable margin.

HOWARD LOVY on the latest raft of toxic nanotechnology stories:

It’s frustrating to read and hear some of the coverage of this “story,” since basic rules of journalism are apparently thrown out the window. Science and technology writers, especially, should know that there have actually been no tests showing that nanotechnology is toxic to anything or anyone. The old nanotube rat and buckyball fish studies show that if you pump these beasts full of raw nanoparticles, they’ll probably suffocate or become brain damaged.

Any company that dumps a bunch of raw, uncooked, unengineered nanoparticles into any product would not actually be practicing “nanotechnology.” So, these oft-repeated studies show absolutely nothing about the potential toxicity of nanotech products. It shows that scientists are practicing science, one small step at a time.

Indeed.

STEPHEN BAINBRIDGE has thoughts on The DaVinci Code.

IT’S A TRIBUTE TO EDUCATION over at Hot Air.

HEH: “If you’re reading this at work, the answer is: ‘Research. Why do you ask?’”

JAY ROSEN offers advice for Tony Snow and the White House. I think it’s pretty good.

UPDATE: Mary Katharine Ham: “The more Snow, the better.”

DOKTOR FRANK’S NEW NOVEL KING DORK gets a review from the InstaMom, a children’s librarian. Click “read more” to read it.

Plus, Doktor Frank hits upon a new marketing strategy.

Continue reading ‘DOKTOR FRANK’S NEW NOVEL KING DORK gets a review from the InstaMom, a children’s librarian. Click “…’ »

THE PUNDIT is flat.

AL GORE, RESURGENS: Howard Kurtz has the skinny.

NOT IN THE MAIL: For some reason, no one has gotten around to sending me a copy of Helen Thomas’s new book, Watchdogs of Democracy? : The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public. However, I did get a press release saying that “Today’s journalists, to hear Thomas tell it, have become subdued and are failing to fulfill their most vital role in American life: to be the watchdogs of democracy.”

Well, just because it barks at everything doesn’t mean it’s a watchdog. Something Thomas herself might keep in mind. . . .

CAN’T WIN FOR LOSING: “Fading slugger hurting team by playing, but S.F. even worse without him.”

Thanks to reader Bo McIlvain for this amusing headline.

JONATHAN ADLER: “If Congress really cares about high gasoline prices — even if the gasoline is more affordable than in decades past — they should consider the role of current federal policies in reducing supply, balkanizing markets, enhancing price volatility, and discouraging alternative fuel sources. Yet if Congress won’t even reduce tariffs on ethanol imports — which would significantly reduce the costs associated with current ethanol mandates — I see little hope for more meaningful policy reforms.”

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT, in Boston. Meanwhile, London Mayor “Red Ken” Livingstone goes after an anti-Chavez blogger.

IN THE MAIL: Shmuel Bar’s new book, Warrant for Terror : The Fatwas of Radical Islam, and the Duty of Jihad.

A NEW APPROACH to North Korea?

SYRIA IS ARRESTING PRO-DEMOCRACY ACTIVISTS: Norm Geras has a roundup.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: I like this from Dennis Hastert:

Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) today made the following statement regarding Senate attempts to use an across-the-board cut to make room for additional spending it included in its $109 billion emergency supplemental bill. The Senate passed its bill, which is more than $15 billion over the President’s $92 billion budget request, earlier this month.

“Any calls from the Senate for an across-the-board cut to make room for a bloated supplemental will be met by a busy signal in the House. The House will not join a shell-game spending spree with taxpayer dollars. President Bush requested $92 billion for the War on Terror and Hurricane Katrina relief spending. The House has passed a bill that exercised fiscal restraint. The Senate needs to throw overboard, unnecessary add-ons and help us get the needed funds to our troops in the field and our fellow citizens suffering the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.”

Yes. That’s certainly consistent with what Majority Leader John Boehner said in our PorkBusters interview. Boehner, by the way, also said that we may see a vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment this year.

Meanwhile, I like this proposal for term limits for Congressional appropriators. It might even be a cure for Pork Envy.

CAM EDWARDS reports that the NRA is going after mayors and police chiefs who support gun control.

ED MORRISSEY calls John Conyers’ oped on impeachment disingenuous. Personally, I wouldn’t trust Conyers with my Thanksgiving turkey.

COMMENTS ON MURTHA’S LATEST, here and here. Plus, a call for censure.

STRATEGYPAGE:

In the last seven months, the U.S. Army has met or exceeded all of its recruiting goals. In that time, over 160,000 people have enlisted, or re-enlisted. The total strength of the active duty and reserve forces are 1.2 million men and women, all of them volunteers.

Except for a few months in 2004-5, the military has been able to maintain its strength, despite wartime conditions. The biggest problem has not been casualties (only about 10,000 soldiers have been killed or disabled so far, less than one percent of overall strength), but the disruption to family life caused by so many troops getting sent to combat zones. This discouraged re-enlistments in reserve units, although mainly among the non-combat troops. In combat units, re-enlistments were at record levels.

Interestingly, the biggest recruiting aid has been word-of-mouth from the troops themselves.

MICKEY KAUS is blogging up a storm on immigration.

HMM: ” President Bush helped raise $17 million for the Republican Party Wednesday, a welcome financial boost amid GOP gloom over the possible loss of majority control of Congress in November. ”

Put that together with the whole barbershop thing and I’d say it’s too early to write ‘em off yet.

A HAROLD FORD BLOG: I’m mostly seeing signs of activity from the Harold Ford and Bob Corker campaigns — though the latter includes annoying voicemail spam from Bob Corker’s mom — but what’s happened to Ed Bryant and Van Hilleary?

THE DA VINCI CODE gets a lukewarm review in the Times: “In spite of some talk (a good deal less than in the book) about the divine feminine, chalices and blades, and the spiritual power of sexual connection, not even a glimmer of eroticism flickers between the two stars. Perhaps it’s just as well. . . . So I certainly can’t support any calls for boycotting or protesting this busy, trivial, inoffensive film. Which is not to say I’m recommending you go see it.”

Ouch. The audience reviews are pretty negative, too, overall though I suspect that many of them haven’t seen the film.

On the other hand, the New York Post’s reviewer loved it.

RAMONA DIXON IS IN SURGERY NOW: Scroll to the bottom for the latest.

ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS ARE ASKING THE FDA TO REGULATE NANOTECHNOLOGY:

Citing research suggesting that some invisibly small engineered nanoparticles might pose health risks, a coalition of consumer and environmental groups petitioned the Food and Drug Administration yesterday to beef up its regulation of nanoparticle-containing sunscreens and cosmetics and recall some products.

The legal filing was synchronized with the release of a report by the environmental group Friends of the Earth that highlighted the growing number of personal care products with nanoingredients, defined as smaller than 100-millionths of a millimeter.

I’m agnostic on whether this is a good idea, but I think it underscores — as I’ve noted before — the unwisdom of the industry’s strategy a few years back of identifying nanotechnology with this kind of stuff instead of with the more “spooky” advanced possibilities.

UPDATE: Steven Den Beste notes a math error that I shouldn’t have missed, but did:

Lemme see: 1/100 million == 10^-8. A millimeter is 10^-3 meter. Multiply them together and you get 10^-11 meter. So they’re talking about banning particles smaller than 10 picometers.

The smallest atom is helium, which is 280 picometers in diameter. The only things smaller are elemental particles such as protons, neutrons, and electrons. I guess we have to ban everything made out of them, right?

It would be interesting to know if this is the Wapo’s mistake, or if Friends of the Earth really are that clueless. I wouldn’t want to bet either way.

Jeez, I read that as 100-millionths of a meter, not a millimeter, and so it’s hard for me to blame the Post. But it seems like a mistake that’s easier to miss than to make in the first place.

UPDATE: Reader Josh Mandir says the problem isn’t math, but English:

I went through the same calculation that Steven Den Beste did and basically came up with the same answer and was ready ro ridicule the math error myself, but I realized that they probably mean 100 units of 1 millionth of a millimeter. One millionth of a millimeter is a nanometer, 100 of those is 100 nanometers. And 100 nanometers seems to be about the upper limit of what you could reasonably call something nano in science.

Hmm.

UH OH: “The conservative blogosphere’s anger towards President Bush has begun to resemble the foam flecked frothy faced insanity of the left. And I do not like the comparison.”

TIM CHAPMAN JUMPS INTO the Tapscott/Geraghty debate.

PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW HOW HEWLETT-PACKARD has responded to my computer crash. Not at all, yet, because I haven’t called them. Too busy producing the podcast (on the backup machine — here at InstaPundit we take a blasting and keep on ‘casting) to call. I’ll keep you posted.

A MINOR CORRECTION: Right after Bush’s speech, I linked to a report at The Corner suggesting that Lou Dobbs liked the speech. If he did, he has apparently reconsidered.

Okay, a while back I was skeptical of Seth Roberts’ new book, The Shangri-La Diet: The No-Hunger, Eat Anything Weight Loss Plan. Most diets don’t work, and this one sounded particularly oversold. Lots of folks emailed that they like it, though, and Helen was interested, so we decided to look him up and see what he had to say about it. Can you really lose weight with a little bit of sugar-water or olive oil?

It’s an interesting approach — though my two-week test-drive hasn’t seemed to do much — and he has some useful thoughts on societal attitudes and behaviors regarding food and fatness in general. Plus, Helen — a Weight Watchers expert — has some insights of her own.

You can listen to the interview directly (no iPod needed!) by clicking right here, or you can subscribe via iTunes (we like that).

There’s an archive of previous podcasts here.

Music is by Audra and the Antidote.

As always, my lovely and talented cohost is soliciting comments.

FIXING IMMIGRATION FROM SOUTH OF THE BORDER: Some further thoughts on Mexico and America, over at GlennReynolds.com.

DONALD SENSING has further thoughts on parents and children in response to my TCS column.

JOHN SCALZI INTERVIEWS author Nick Sagan.

MORE COFFEEBLOGGING: Various people wanted followups on my earlier coffeemaker post, and, anticipating requests for more consumer-blogging, I have undertaken an actual in-home coffeemaker test.

I ordered this cheap Black & Decker model, which was warmly endorsed by many readers. And, at about the same time, someone from Starbucks offered to send me this more expensive DeLonghi that Starbucks sells. I’ve tried ‘em both out for a few days, and even had some blind taste-testing at the Mother’s Day bash here on Sunday.

Both are good. The Black & Decker wins hands-down for price and for its easy and uncomplicated user interface. (Yes, it’s the 21st Century and coffee pots have user interfaces.) It’s easy to program and use, and the “Perfect Pour” carafe doesn’t spill or dribble. It keeps the coffee hot enough, but doesn’t burn it.

The DeLonghi has a thermal carafe. It’s not hard to program it or set the clock, but it’s not as easy as the Black & Decker. Any idiot can figure out the Black & Decker, while some folks might need to look at the manual to figure out the DeLonghi. It has a thermal carafe, which also doesn’t dribble or spill. It keeps the coffee hot enough for two or three hours; after that it’s a bit cool for my taste, though it takes a while longer to get down to lukewarm. It’s easy to fill with water and coffee, too.

So how’s the coffee? It’s good from both. The Black & Decker — as seems common with the coffeemakers that use basket-type filters — tends to come out a bit on the weak side. You can make up for that by adding more coffee, but if you do that you may find that the savings on the pot is offset by the expense of extra coffee.

The DeLonghi makes excellent coffee, stronger and more full-bodied on the same amount of coffee than the Black & Decker. In our blind taste tests, everybody — including my brother-in-law Joe Smith, a former coffeehouse mogul here in Knoxville — pronounced coffee from both pots good, but the coffee from the DeLonghi richer and fuller-bodied, with more coffee flavor. (I used identical amounts of Starbucks Sumatra for the test).

Conclusion: You can’t go wrong, really, between these two. The Black & Decker is good, and cheap. The DeLonghi is better, but more expensive, though you might make that back via using less coffee, especially if you like expensive beans. And neither one dribbles or leaks, something that you ought to be able to take for granted in a coffeemaker but, alas, can’t.

WITH THE MOUSSAOUI TRIAL OVER, the Pentagon has released video footage of Flight 77 striking, er, the Pentagon. I doubt that this will do much to quite the conspiracy theorists, but it’s worth pointing to this piece from Popular Mechanics on “Debunking the 9/11 Myths.”

GOOGLE AS MOVEON’S BIGGEST DONOR?

There’s been a lot of Google-paranoia on the right, but this is only going to make things worse.

HOWARD KURTZ ON TONY SNOW: “He showed more emotion in 60 seconds than Scott McClellan did in three years.”

DIAGRAMMING THE NEW FRONTIER’S IMPLOSION: I think I’m pretty much a New Frontiers liberal, which today, I guess, puts me on the libertarian right?

THE PARENT TRAP: As people talk about demographics, birth dearths, and the like, my TCS Daily column offers one explanation for why people aren’t having more children.

MARK TAPSCOTT has more on conservative battle fatigue

THINGS CAN’T BE THAT BAD FOR THE REPUBLICANS: Traditional barbershops are making a comeback. Well, sort of traditional. Except for the wi-fi and stuff.

Better than this, anyway.

UPDATE: Reader Peter Ingemi emails:

As that fellow who works mostly from home (and some unusual places) laptop in hand I want to second that barber shop story.

Here in Fitchburg we still have old barber shops. I went to Bob’s a couple of weeks ago. Bob has been at his shop since before I was born. He knew my grandfather whose barber shop was a block or two from his and was cutting hair when he was (He died in 1967). Bob will still give you a haircut for under $10 and is not likely to retire.

4 Blocks away on Day street Ideal hair is the only place in town that give the old fashioned barber shop shaves. (Bob did it for me on request but I think I was the only guy he shaved in 3 decades). They do the whole 10 yards with the hot towels, lather and the straight razor.

You have not lived unless you have had one. It is a lost art. The Barber’s father died a few years ago and the son is in his late 50′s early 60′s.

Between that and the Romano’s Butcher shop down the road we can be mighty retro around here, but people don’t know what they’re missing.

Now if I could only find somebody to block and steam my Fedoras.

Find that and Lileks will move in next door.