“I’M REALLY MORE OF AN ART BLOGGER THAN A LAW BLOGGER:” But, we’re told, art and law are just two different ways of manipulating people.

REAL SCANDAL, fake blog.

This was foreseen.

THE 9/11 BLUE DRESS: Well, it does give the lie to the “blame Bush” theorists.

UPDATE: Check out the video here.

A MASSIVE PROTEST AGAINST ETA TERRORISTS IN SEVILLE: Gateway Pundit has a roundup.

IN BRAZIL, Lula da Silva has failed to win a majority.

UPDATE: Lots of coverage at Publius, of course.

MIKE RAPPAPORT: “I remember being in Germany in the 1980s, when Irish kids would go there to try to get jobs. Now the travel goes in the opposite direction. Every Democrat (and many Republicans including President Bush) should be asked about the Irish miracle and how their own policies compare with these.”

HERE’S VIDEO from the Artificial General Intelligence conference in Palo Alto.

TIM BLAIR notes a double standard regarding the Michelle Malkin photoshop on Wonkette.

But a commenter notes the problem that transcends the faux-tography issue: “What’s hypocritical about being photographed in swimwear? Is she an advocate for Sharia law?”

Plus, remedial education for urbanites. What, the answer isn’t “the store?”

UPDATE: More troubling Malkin photos. Plus, from a commenter, the most important observation of all: “At least she didn’t cat blog.”

KAUS ON FOLEY:

The only clearly guilty party, as far as I can see–aside from Foley–is the New York Times, which hyped the anti-Hastert angle by conflating the earlier, suggestive emails and the later damning ones.

I’m not sure I’m ready to cut Hastert that much slack, though the NYT certainly doesn’t get much either. And Ann Althouse thinks that blaming the closet is letting Foley off too easy: “But many heterosexuals also pursue young subordinates. They are fully open about their sexual orientation, but somehow they do bad things too.”

Meanwhile, Tom Maguire smells a rat — er, besides the obvious one, I mean: “Apparently the Mark Foley story first broke on this new blog, StopSexPredators.blogspot.com, which started in July and brought down the Congressional leadership with its sixth, seventh and eighth posts. Color me skeptical. . . . The story was evidently not quite good enough for the D Kos, but ABC found enough to run with it.”

UPDATE: Apparently, staffers were warning pages about Foley in 2001. And I should note that I’m no relation to Tom Reynolds, in case anyone wonders. Meanwhile, RedState is questioning the timing.

MORE: “If I were one of those sickos. . .”

MORE STILL: Bill Quick has read the IM traffic.

And Eric Scheie comments: “It’s inappropriate behavior by a high-ranking congressman, and no more. . . . So why is the left acting like it’s Watergate?”

EVEN MORE: Reader C.J. Burch offers a prediction:

Once the FBI starts investigating, and they will, all sorts of lurid things are going to come out about the use and abuse of pages on both sides of the aisle. And with Representative Jefferson getting indicted soon… great fun ahead for comedians. I’m beginning to suspect that the Republicans and the Democrats both secretly hate the two party system and are working hard to destroy it. The alternative explanation, that they are both this incompetent, corrupt and sleazy is just too depressing to contemplate.

As I noted below, the response to the Jefferson search makes me wonder what else they’re hiding.

WAITING IT OUT: Some hospi-blogging from neo-neocon.

SIMPLICITY CAN BE COMPLEX: I review John Maeda’s The Laws of Simplicity, in The New York Post.

TOO FAT FOR JIHAD? Perhaps it’s a cunning plan: “Only in America would you find authorities trying to cope with terrorist detainees by over-feeding them. . . . Guantanamo officers say that while most of the detainees upon arrival at Gitmo ranged from underweight to normal, today the 460 or so held on the base range from normal to overweight to mildly obese.” One inmate, reportedly, is up to 410 pounds.

PORK BECOMES A CAMPAIGN ISSUE, as Ned Lamont attacks earmarks:

Lamont also said Congress should end the practice of anonymously inserting appropriations known as “earmarks” into the budget, saying it invites mischief – such as favors for contributors.

He pledged he would use earmarks for legitimate projects in Connecticut until the rules are changed and the practice is banned.

Well, that second bit robs his promise of some of its punch. But still, I’m glad to see the issue raised in campaigns.

AN 18-SECOND GAP. Now where have I heard that before?

GOOD NEWS: Iraqis hate al Qaeda, too.

And Saudi comedians are mocking them during Ramadan.

GAS AT $1.99 a gallon.

IN THE MAIL: Nancy French’s A Red State of Mind: How a Catfish Queen Reject Became a Liberty Belle. It came Friday, but Helen immediately grabbed it. She says it’s good so far.

RICK LEE: Photoblogging from the operating room.

Michael Totten is an independent blog-journalist who has covered the Middle East with support from his blog readers. He’s reported from Libya, Tunisia, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, and Egypt — and he’s now planning another trip.

We talk to Michael about what he’s observed, and what it’s like to make a career-change from blogger to professional blog-journalist. Plus, reviews of Libyan restaurants!

You can listen directly, with no downloading needed, by going here and clicking on the gray Flash player. You can download the file by clicking right here, and you can get a lo-fi version for dialup by going here and clicking on “lo fi.” You can subscribe via iTunes by clicking here. And you can visit our show archives for previous episodes at GlennandHelenShow.com.

Podcasts brought to you by VolvoCars.us.

UPDATE: INDCJournal picks up some highlights. And I should have mentioned that my lovely and talented cohost is taking comments at her place.

A SCHWARZENEGGER TSUNAMI in California.

MICKEY KAUS: “Obama would be less susceptible to the flip-flop charge if he stopped flip-flopping (for example, his vote against the border fence before he was for it).”

LONDON’S SUNDAY TIMES looks at Kofi Annan:

Srebrenica is rarely mentioned nowadays in Annan’s offices on the 38th floor of the UN secretariat building in New York. He steps down in December after a decade as secretary-general. His retirement will be marked by plaudits. But behind the honorifics and the accolades lies a darker story: of incompetence, mismanagement and worse. Annan was the head of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) between March 1993 and December 1996. The Srebrenica massacre of up to 8,000 men and boys and the slaughter of 800,000 people in Rwanda happened on his watch. In Bosnia and Rwanda, UN officials directed peacekeepers to stand back from the killing, their concern apparently to guard the UN’s status as a neutral observer. This was a shock to those who believed the UN was there to help them.

Annan’s term has also been marked by scandal: from the sexual abuse of women and children in the Congo by UN peacekeepers to the greatest financial scam in history, the UN-administered oil-for-food programme. Arguably, a trial of the UN would be more apt than a leaving party.

Read the whole thing.

“CUT OFF THE HEAD OF THE PIG who says our religion exalts violence and hate.”

RESPECTFUL photoshopping.

CAPTAIN ED: “I cannot tell CQ readers how disgusted I am with Speaker Hastert.” He’s referring to reports that Hastert knew of Rep. Foley’s behavior but did nothing.

I have been no fan of Hastert all along, of course. I wonder if this story ties in somehow with his over-the-top outrage regarding searches of Congressional offices in the William Jefferson case.

UPDATE: One of Capt. Ed’s commenters is citing TV reports that Hastert asked Foley to resign as soon as he saw the IMs. I haven’t seen those, but stay tuned. Lots of discussion, some of it informed, here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: John Hinderaker weighs in.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: TigerHawk is absolutely right, which means that — in a phenomenon as regular as the sunrise but more frequent — Glenn Greenwald is wrong again.

JOHN WIXTED ON BOB WOODWARD and “secret” levels of violence in Iraq:

A shocking fact the administration has kept secret? Please. As I noted, information about the number of attacks on American troops — including this particular statistic of one attack every 15 minutes — is not secret. Instead, it is very publicly available in the form of a big graph on page 22 of the Iraq Index (published by the Brookings Institution). In fact, that’s probably where Woodward himself got the information. Some secret. The Iraq Index has been publishing attack statistics for a long, long time for anyone who is interested. . . .

But this talk of withdrawing troops is made with reference to the anti-American insurgency only, with no mention at all of sectarian violence when that is the real problem. In other words, like Bob Woodward, they gloss over the most important detail — the one that undermines their position. The insurgency is not getting worse, but sectarian violence has gotten worse. If we leave, it will get worse still, and the Iraqi experiment in democracy could easily fail. And that’s why calls for a timetable for withdrawal reflect a strategically unwise, anti-humanitarian attitude.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Read this item, too.

156 to 1: “Yes, if only there was some sort of media outlet — I don’t know, a newspaper or something — who could tell us about the important issues.”

DEAN BARNETT: “It may have escaped you, but ’24′ is not a documentary, nor is it a scholarly inquiry on effective interrogation techniques.”

TOM MAGUIRE has thoughts on torture. He’s a bit hard on Andrew Sullivan, but not as hard as Sullivan is being on me — Sullivan has brought out the waterboard of blogging, reprinting emails from readers of his who say they’ll never read me again, only Sullivan, from now on. Okay, it’s actually more like the endless-replaying-of-Barry-Manilow of blogging.

I’ve gotten some emails from readers wondering why Sullivan seems to think that my blog is the most important aspect of the torture debate, especially as — once the Bush-bashing and posturing is set aside — my position and Sullivan’s aren’t really very different. (As I wrote a while back, “What would I do? Ban anything that causes injury or outright pain. I’m not so sure about sleep deprivation and things like that. I’d permit playing Barry Manilow, too.” Okay, so now I’m rethinking the Barry Manilow part.) I’ll spare you the text of those emails; I used to wonder about that, but I’ve pretty much given up. Andrew will blog about what he wants to blog about, and I will blog about what I want to blog about. And that state of affairs will bother, well, at most one of us.

Meanwhile, note this comment by Tom Holsinger.

UPDATE: Reader Steven Jens demonstrates that the email thing works both ways:

I’d just like to say that I will never read Andrew Sullivan again. I have been increasingly put off by his hysteria, his double standards, and his rumored habit of squeezing the toothpaste from the middle of the tube. Time Magazine has given him a bully pulpit, and it’s a shame that he can’t be as wise, reasoned, or downright handsome as you are.

Heh. I think we’ve just seen the future of the blogosphere. And it scares me.

UPDATE: Uh oh. Manilow-blogging is spreading.

ANOTHER UPDATE: It’s an out of control blog phenomenon!

CHARLES DUNLAP WARNS about military involvement in law enforcement:

Converting the war-fighting mind-set of the professional military to one that readily accepts the risks — and delays — inherent in policing under our Constitution can be extremely challenging and confusing to those wielding the guns and attempting to establish order.

Nonetheless, some military officers welcome domestic law enforcement roles. In a world where hijacked airliners, anthrax-infested envelopes and other serious threats arise close to home, there is a certain appeal to their thinking. And praise for the better-late-than-never Katrina effort has created an attitude friendly to domestic security duties among many in uniform.

What are they missing? Appreciation for the erosion that law enforcement duties could cause in the public affection and admiration the military wants — and needs — to sustain itself as an all-volunteer force. Americans in the end do not like heavy-handed security efforts, regardless of how well-intended they are, and typically react quite negatively to them. Think Kent State, Waco and Ruby Ridge.

He’s right. Typically soldiers make bad police, and using soldiers as police for very long tends to make them bad soldiers, too.

UPDATE: More thoughts from Prof. Kenneth Anderson.

FOLEYGATE: “The perfect blogstorm.”

RECHARGING the cars of the future.

PROF. KENNETH ANDERSON: “Are academic bloggers prepared to be quoted in the MSM?”

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON DOESN’T LIKE JIMMY CARTER MUCH: “In his dotage, Carter is proving once again that he is as malicious and mean-spirited a public figure as he is historically ignorant. And for all his sanctimonious Christian veneer, and fly-fishing, ‘aw shucks blue-jeans image, he can’t hide an essentially ungracious and unkind soul. . . . Carter’s Waterloo, of course was the Iranian hostage crisis. It was not just that his gutting of the military helped to explain the rescue disaster. Far more importantly, we can chart the rise of radical political Islam with the storming of the American embassy in Teheran and the impotent response of Jimmy Carter.”

WELL, YES: “Al Qaeda increasingly reliant on media.”

GEORGE ALLEN AND JAMES WEBB: “A Confederacy of Dunces.”

Heh. It’s not a campaign to inspire admiration.

ILYA SOMIN: “California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently signed into law five almost completely ineffectual post-Kelo eminent domain reform laws. . . . the enactment of post-Kelo reform laws that look impressive to the public, but actually achieve nothing, is all too common.”

MICKEY KAUS ENGAGES IN A BORDER-FENCE GLOATFEST at the expense of a lot of people — including the New York Times, about which he writes: “Readers who wanted to know what was actually happening would have been much better off reading Captain Ed.” Isn’t that always the case?

Meanwhile (via Kaus) Tom Maguire notes many other media errors and misrepresentations. Michael Duffy of Time is singled out.

UPDATE: Don Surber doesn’t think the media problems are helping the Democrats.

LARRY KUDLOW SAYS WE’RE ENJOYING “A GOLDILOCKS ECONOMY:”

“We are enjoying a goldilocks economy, not too hot and not too cold.” In other words, there’s no economic bubble out there that’s about to go “pop.”

Recent economic reports confirm this: Factory production is strong. Core inflation has settled down. Excluding energy, consumer prices haven’t moved all that much in the last three years. In the third quarter, real consumer spending is running 3.2 percent at an annual rate, ahead of the second quarter average. Non-defense capital-goods shipments (excluding aircraft) are 7.6 percent ahead of the second quarter. After-tax real disposable income is 5.4 percent higher than last year. And tax revenues are rolling in, with both states and the U.S. Treasury reporting record revenue collections.

Rising stocks, falling gas prices, low tax rates and the Goldilocks economy are powerful pluses for election-year Republicans. With so many indicators leaning positive, the Democrats aren’t even talking about the economy anymore.

That last is the revealing bit. Just remember that, even in the Goldilocks story, the bears do eventually come home.

MICHAEL BARONE looks at poll numbers on Iraq, and finds they’re not what you might expect given the tenor of media coverage.

HERE’S A ROUNDUP ON EVENTS IN BAGHDAD, from PJ Media.

UPDATE: Omar reports from Baghdad that things have calmed down:

The situation in Baghdad calmed down soon after we made the previous post. Saturday has been so quiet so far, never a single explosion happened as far as I know and there was hardly any sound of gunfire in or around our district in Baghdad.

What can be noticed about this particular curfew is that it’s being strictly enforced by Iraqi and US forces in Baghdad. During most previous days of curfew, vehicles and pedestrians were occasionally seen on the streets but this is not the case today.

Apparently the authorities got the idea that something bad was about to happen, and moved to scotch it.

YES, BLOGGING’S BEEN LIGHT: Michael Totten is passing through town, and we hung out, had dinner, visited a brewpub, and recorded a podcast interview that will be up later. It was nice to see him.

FENCE BILL PASSES SENATE: “The U.S. Senate on Friday overwhelmingly agreed to authorize construction of a fence along the U.S. border with Mexico, sending to President George W. Bush before the November 7 elections a bill that Republicans hope will showcase their efforts to stop illegal immigration. The Republican-written bill authorizing construction of about 700 miles of fence was one of the last bills to clear Congress as lawmakers prepared to leave Washington to campaign for the congressional elections. On a vote of 80-19 the Senate approved the bill already passed by the House of Representatives and it now goes to Bush for his signature.”

Advantage: Kaus.

REP. MARK FOLEY (R-FL) resigns from Congress. This should make things a bit easier for the Dems.

WELL, photoshopping me into a bikini is the traditional way to beg for a pointless link, but okay.

GAY MARRIAGE UPDATE:

A gay couple from Rhode Island has the right to marry in Massachusetts because laws in their home state do not expressly prohibit same-sex marriage, a judge ruled Friday.

Wendy Becker and Mary Norton of Providence argued that a 1913 law that forbids out-of-state residents from marrying in Massachusetts if their marriage would not be permitted in their home state did not apply to them because Rhode Island does not specifically ban gay marriage.

Superior Court Judge Thomas Connolly agreed.

Sounds like clever lawyering. And it worked.

THE LAST-MINUTE FLURRY OF LEGISLATIVE ACTIVITY CONTINUES:

The House approved a bill Thursday that would grant legal status to President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program with new restrictions. Republicans called it a test before the election of whether Democrats want to fight or coddle terrorists. . . .

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., that give legal status under certain conditions to Bush’s warrantless wiretapping of calls and e-mails between people on U.S. soil making calls or sending e-mails and those in other countries.

Under the measure, the president would be authorized to conduct such wiretaps if he:

_ Notifies the House and Senate intelligence committees and congressional leaders.

_ Believes an attack is imminent and later explains the reason and names the individuals and groups involved.

_ Renews his certification every 90 days.

The Senate also could vote on a similar bill before Congress recesses at the end of the week. Leaders concede that differences between the versions are so significant they cannot reconcile them into a final bill that can be delivered to Bush before the Nov. 7 congressional elections.

It’s almost as if they’re more interested in forcing Democrats to vote on this before the elections than they are in actually getting the bill out.

AMANDA CONGDON, having left Rocketboom, is now videoblogging from the road at Amanda Across America.

GUNTER GRASS HYPOCRISY UPDATE:

First there is a new revelation about Günter Grass. The writer who has only recently admitted to having been a member of the Waffen SS (more here), wrote two letters to SPD politician Karl Schiller in 1969 and 1970, calling on Schiller to admit he’d been an SA member (storm trooper): “Dear Karl Schiller, once more I would like to remind you of our discussion and ask you outright to speak openly at the next opportunity – and I mean publicly – about your political past during the Nazi era. The postwar generation knows nothing but placation, and inadmissible playing down of the Federal Chancellor’s past, for instance, with all the talk that he was a member of the NSDAP neither out of personal conviction nor as an opportunist. I would hope you would openly admit your mistake. That would be a relief for you, and at the same time it would have the beneficial effect of a cleansing rain.”

Wigbert Löer tells how the FAZ came across the letters. The young Freiburg political scientist Torben Lütjen discovered them as he was “carrying out research on his biography of Karl Schiller. He had already finished the manuscript when Grass acknowledged his own ‘mistake’. Lütjen had no way of knowing that he had discovered in the federal archives in Koblenz an extraordinarily intimate example of Grass’ talent for suppression.”

Lame.

JOE LIEBERMAN: THE PAJAMAS MEDIA INTERVIEW — video and transcript are available here. Excerpt: “The fastest growing political party in America is no party, which is to say, that the fastest growing group of voters are unaffiliated with either party. That’s a market statement on the two major parties.”

IN THE MAIL: Mark Halperin and John Harris’s new book, The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008. I think the subject will be near and dear to a lot of people’s hearts.

REP. JIM OBERSTAR fails the pork test.

UPDATE: Here’s more on Oberstar, including video.

A REPORT ON THE NANOTECHNOLOGY DISCUSSION at the MIT Emerging Tech Conference:

The question put before the panel of five esteemed scientists speaking here is, essentially, “How much should we be worrying about the health consequences of the new nanosubstances we are rushing to develop.” And this question isn’t just academic. As Dr. Vicki Colvin, a Chemist from Rice University points out, the carbon nanomaterial c60 is already used in over-the-counter cosmetics, and is an important component in many fuel cells.

But what do such materials do to our cells? The answer is that no one is quite sure. Studies are showing that the basic physical properties of certain substances can change when you get to the nanoscale. The questions still outweigh the answers. Are we even dealing with new materials? Should they be reclassified? After all is engineered nano c60 a new material, or is it just plain old soot? It turns out that how you manufacture your materials—and how you treat and dispose of them, can dramatically change their effect on the human body and the environment.

As I mentioned, the presentation shows that at this point, there is a lot of research to be done, but it is also encouraging to see these concerns raised early in the life cycle of nanotechnology. After all, as one of the speakers here pointed out, it took years after mass production and deployment of technologies such as DDT and chlorofluorocarbons before we realized their detrimental side effects—side effects that ended up overshadowing the scientific benefits that those technologies provided. One of the panelists, Andrew Maynard, chief science advisor for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, sees this as a unique time when we can build in toxicity research and oversight into the development process. And when you think about it, doing the responsible research early on will ensure the long-term viability of the entire nanotech field. All it takes is one health scare to turn the term “nano” from a new-economy buzz word into a technological pariah.

That’s right. I have some further thoughts on the topic here.

DARFUR UPDATE: Austin Bay writes that the sword is mightier than the pen:

The mounting death toll in Darfur tests Annan’s stirring words. But when it comes to ending genocide, words require swords. Fine words cannot protect the vulnerable from dedicated killers — that job demands soldiers. . . . Despite Annan’s fine words, outside of London and Washington such leadership is not in evidence. Until it appears, ‘the international community’ deserves to be shamed.

Read the whole thing.

OVER AT PUBLIUS, a look at Russia’s meddling in Georgia.

UNNECESSARY DIVISIONS OVER UNNECESSARY DIVISIONS: Eric Scheie — whose picture appears in the dictionary next to the word “decent” — writes: “The ‘blogostorm’ between Dean Esmay and Michelle Malkin has little to do with me personally, but everything to do with the national debate this country has been having since 9/11 when we were attacked by suicidal Saudi Salafists.”

SOME NICE WORDS FROM MICHAEL MALONE OF ABC NEWS:

Pajamas got off to a shaky start — stumbling just enough to satisfy those who had predicted it to fail but eventually finding its legs.

Now that the mainstream media have moved on to other stories, Pajamas is pulling in hundreds of thousands of readers each day, all drawn to its attractive mix of stories, viewpoints and, increasingly, videos.

Right now, especially on the big international stories, nobody covers events from more perspectives and with greater nuance than PJ Media.

I do think that the site has gotten much better, and it’s now doing the kinds of things I hoped for at its inception. Malone has also found “a vision for what a true, Web-based global news network should look like.”

A POLICE ACADEMY DEBACLE in Iraq. Kim Catrall and Steve Guttenberg were not involved, but the Army Corps of Engineers was.

ANOTHER “I TOLD YOU SO” on Lieberman.

MICKEY KAUS: “An old controversy, I know–but that’s why it’s so astonishing to find this casual, loaded distortion in the lede of an important story. Hernandez–or whatever anonymous Times editor decided to goose up his second graf–had to have known that the sentence was deceptive, no? Or if they didn’t know they didn’t care. … We’re a month away from an election! They’re manning the battle stations at the NYT. …”

DARFUR UPDATE: “The U.N. chief in Sudan said Thursday the government is unlikely to let U.N. peacekeepers in the country anytime soon, and the international community should instead push for the African Union force to remain in the war-torn region indefinitely. . . . A U.N. Security Council resolution calls for 20,000 peacekeepers to replace the ill-equipped and underfunded AU force that has done little to prevent escalating violence in Darfur. But Sudan’s president fiercely rejects the U.N. mission, and it can’t deploy without his consent.”

It seems a bit rich to ask permission of the genocidaires before sending in troops to stop a genocide.

SUDDENLY, CONGRESS IS DOING A LOT: “just moments ago, the Senate invoked cloture on the Secure Fence Act of 2006 by a vote of 71-28. Tomorrow the Senate will pass this legislation and send it to the President’s desk for his signature.”

THE DETAINEE TRIAL BILL has passed, in a form that seems to be pretty close to what the White House wanted, though I haven’t read the actual bill:

Earlier, the Senate narrowly rejected an amendment, sponsored by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), that would have allowed suspected terrorists to challenge their detention in federal court. Senators voted 51 to 48 against the amendment, which called for deleting from the bill a provision that rules out habeas corpus petitions for foreigners held in the war on terrorism. The writ of habeas corpus, which is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, allows people to challenge in court the legality of their detention, essentially meaning that they cannot be held indefinitely without charge or trial.

The issue was one of the most contentious in the bill, which authorizes the president “to establish military commissions for the trial of alien unlawful enemy combatants engaged in hostilities against the United States for violations of the law of war and other offenses. . . .” Under the rules in the bill, statements obtained from a detainee by torture would not be admissible as evidence, but information extracted using harsh interrogation methods that violate a ban on “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” would be allowed if they were obtained before the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 went into effect on Dec. 30 and if a judge found them to be reliable and in the interests of justice.

The proposed legislation would also set the parameters for interrogating terrorism suspects. It bars the president from authorizing any interrogation techniques that amount to war crimes, which it says include torture, murder, mutilation or maiming, rape, sexual abuse, serious bodily injury, hostage-taking, biological experiments and cruel or inhuman treatment. However, the president could “interpret the meaning and application” of Geneva Convention standards regarding less severe interrogation methods, the Associated Press reported.

Under a compromise reached last week with three recalcitrant Republican senators, the bill omits a provision sought by Bush that interpreted U.S. obligations under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. Critics said that provision amounted to redefining a key part of the conventions and would put captured U.S. troops at risk if an enemy decided to do the same.

The last argument is silly, as we haven’t had an enemy that respected the Geneva Conventions in my lifetime, and aren’t likely to have one any time soon. And if our enemies’ disregard for the laws of war doesn’t justify us acting similarly, then it’s not clear why any behavior on our part would justify a departure from the Conventions on the part of some hypothetical future enemy.

As for the rest, I don’t understand the admissibility of evidence before December 30. It seems to me that it’s either wrong or it’s not, and that an arbitrary date doesn’t make wrong conduct right, or right conduct wrong.

I’ve seen some people calling this an abolition of habeas corpus, but as I understand it, habeas is suspended only with regard to non-citizens. This removes a key danger of abuse, since the potential politically-motivated abuses that are most worrisome involve U.S. citizens, not aliens. And Congress quite explicitly has the Constitutional power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, though whether this counts as a “suspension” of the writ is open for debate. Like Orin Kerr, I’m not an expert on habeas and thus don’t have a lot more to say about it.

At any rate, I can’t say I’m surprised that it worked out this way, as this is pretty consistent with polls I’ve seen on public attitudes. Congress has acted, and the political system seems pretty much in agreement, both between the legislative and executive branches, and between those branches and the electorate.

Meanwhile, the locus of criticism of the legislation, the Democratic opposition, and more can be found at Balkinization. Go there for lots of critiques and complaints.

UPDATE: Via TVC, I found this column by Jonathan Rauch. It’s a few days old, but I believe this analysis remains on-point:

The differences between the proposals were fairly important, but what was really momentous was their similarity. On several fundamental points, a consensus has taken shape.

First, torture should be legally off-limits, period, regardless of circumstances. Hardly anyone says otherwise.

Second, some kind of special and secret system for detaining and interrogating high-value terrorism suspects is justifiable and necessary. In a statement on September 6, Sen. Jay Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the Democratic vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, “I support the continuation of a CIA detention and interrogation program, but it must be operated in a lawful manner.” No prominent Democrat, or Republican, was heard to disagree.

Finally, general agreement exists that the central purpose of a detention and interrogation system is to prevent terrorism, not to prevent torture. That point may sound trivial, but it is not: Many human-rights advocates believe that the foremost responsibility of any detention system is to treat detainees humanely. On Capitol Hill, both parties reject that view. In its way, this is a seminal decision.

Read the whole thing, which — as with all of Rauch’s work — is worth reading.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A.J. Strata thinks it’s a disaster for the Democrats. He’s not the only one. Read this, too.

MORE: According to an email published by Jonah Goldberg, the bill doesn’t just apply to aliens. That conflicts with the report above, and with my understanding, and with a piece I heard on NPR this morning. But if it’s true, it’s a major problem with the bill, one that increases the likelihood ofits being found unconstitutional, and one that would make me much more unhappy with the bill.

MORE STILL: Jonah has a followup indicating that the above is in error, and that the bill applies only to aliens.

That kind of yanks the rug out from under this post by Andrew Sullivan, too. But I think that we’re seeing the instantiation of what I warned him about nearly two years ago. (“I think the effort to turn this into an anti-Bush political issue is a serious mistake, and the most likely outcome will be, in essence, the ratification of torture (with today’s hype becoming tomorrow’s reality) and a political defeat for the Democrats.”) Meanwhile, his gratuitious slap at PorkBusters seems more peevishly jealous than anything else. But PorkBusters has worked because it is bipartisan, focuses on the goal rather than the bloggers pushing it, and tries to treat people (except, perhaps, occasionally Trent Lott) with some minimal courtesy, an approach that Andrew might consider emulating in his next crusade.

And here’s a post by Jack Balkin saying that the habeas-stripping procedures only apply to aliens, but that other provisions regarding unlawful combatants may apply to U.S. citizens. I tend to agree that to the extent this is true it is probably unconstitutional, though I haven’t studied this issue to nearly the extent that Jack has.

Plus, some useful thoughts from Eugene Volokh.

THE MORAL TESTIMONY OF THE IMMUNE SYSTEM: Eugene Volokh comments on remarks by former Bush bioethics advisor Leon Kass: “This is poetry, it seems to me, not argument.”

And we’re not talking Yeats, either.

A.C. KLEINHEIDER thinks that I’m overly positive on Harold Ford, Jr.’s chances, and that the Ford family will cause him problems.

He may be right. I haven’t written about the Jake Ford / Steve Cohen race because Steve Cohen gave me great tickets to see John Fogerty’s first “comeback” concert when he opened the Centerfield tour in Memphis, and thus earned my undying loyalty. Hence, a conflict of interest.

Plus, the WSJ shows Corker up 5% now. It’s a close race, and it’ll probably stay one.

JOE LIEBERMAN ON AL GORE: “I can forgive, but I probably won’t forget.”

Meanwhile, Lieberman leads Lamont by ten points.

4000 AL QAEDA KILLED IN IRAQ. Good riddance.

MICHELLE MALKIN responds to Dean Esmay.

INDEED: “When you spend nine to 10 months calling each other names, and when the person best at that wins, you get a Congress just as we have — addicted to the kind of wedge-issue, name-calling politics that has people so fed up with the Congress.”

See this post from Tigerhawk, on the role of gerrymandering and safe seats in promoting nastiness, too.

“POLL SMOKING.”

MICHAEL SILENCE REMINDS THE NEW YORK TIMES that Tennessee is not actually a red state: “Polls and surveys have shown for 12 years now that independents outnumber both Republicans and Democrats. . . . Harold Ford Jr. knows all this, and he’s playing it like a virtuoso violinist.”

IN THE MAIL: John Fund’s book, Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy.

My thoughts on the subject can be found here.

COOL STUFF BEING MADE: The folks at the National Association of Manufacturers have a series of posts on how things are made, along with video and photos from the shop floor. Given how divorced most people are from the process of actually making things these days, I think this is very cool. It should be a TV series! Er, I mean . . .

THOUGHTS ON ART, OPERA, AND ISLAMISTS:

Now that some Muslims have made it painfully obvious that religion-taunting is not an easy game anymore, abandoning it expresses fear, not respect for religion. And continuing to disrespect the religions that don’t lash back only highlights that cowardice. Poor transgressive rebel artists! How are they to shock the middle class anymore?

They may have to go back to actually doing work that’s, you know, good.

HAROLD FORD, JR. voted for the detainee bill.

HOW PARTISAN IS TOO PARTISAN? David Adesnik has some further thoughts.

IT’S A ROUGH YEAR FOR REPUBLICANS, with Tennessee in play and George Allen barely holding on. But there’s some good news. First, the economy:

A wave of positive economic news, capped by this week’s run-up in the stock market and a continuing drop in gasoline prices, seems to be coming at an ideal time for Republicans worried about the November elections.

And New Jersey is looking bad for the Democrats:

U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez’s closest political adviser was secretly recorded seven years ago boasting of political power and urging a Hudson county contractor to hire somone as a favor to Menendez, according to a transcript obtained by The Star-Ledger.

Tonight Menendez’s campaign says he has severed his ties with the adviser, Donald Scarinci, after learning of the taped conversation. . . . Menendez, locked in a tight U.S. Senate election race against Republican Tom Kean Jr., is already facing political fallout from a federal investigation into a rental deal he had with a non-profit organization in Union City years ago.

A GOP pickup in New Jersey would make Democrats’ chances of retaking the Senate look much worse.

JEFF BEZOS TALKS ON HOW AMAZON is going all Army of Davids:

It is, in short, open source business strategy. Amazon has spent years building up a technological and physical infrastructure to their business, and instead of keeping it proprietary, they are selling their unused capacity to others. The Web services I mentioned here are only a few of what the company is now offering (you can check out the rest at aws.amazon.com), but it seems either a very brave or very stupid way of doing business. Give the tools of the big guy to the little guy, and you may just empower the little company that will one day bring you down. But then again, (to abuse a metaphor) if you’re the one facilitating the rising tide, it’s probably not your boat that’s going to sink.

I think it’s a smart approach.

GEORGE ALLEN’S CAMPAIGN looks to be floundering, but they’re up by five percent in the latest poll.

CATHY SEIPP: “An anti-STD vaccine no more encourages promiscuity than locking your doors at night encourages burglars.”

DEAN ESMAY disputes suggestions that Muslims are incapable of democracy.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: “Throughout these last crazy weeks, I have been struck by Western tolerance and benevolence. Can you imagine, as Pakistan’s Musharref does, a President Bush publishing his book in Pakistan and then touring the Hindu Kush, hawking its message of criticism of his host to local tribes?”

When Pakistan has its own version of The Daily Show, we will have won.

BACK TO THE FUTURE: The Mudville Gazette looks at the NIE, Iraq, and 1998.

UPDATE: Some further thoughts on the NIE: “nowhere does this report mention the Israel/Palestine conflict as a source of tension, a motivation for jihadists, or a factor in global anti-American sentiment.”

SOCK-PUPPETRY, AGAIN: “A top aide to U.S. Rep. Charles Bass resigned Tuesday after disclosures that he posed as a supporter of the Republican’s opponent in blog messages intended to convince people that the race was not competitive.”

JEFF COOPER HAS DIED. Johnathan Pearce remembers him.

I recommend his many writings, particularly Principles of Personal Defense and his memoir, To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth. My favorite bit in the latter was his reminscence of travel by ocean liner in the 1930s, which sounded pretty nice.

UPDATE: Here’s a lengthier tribute by Marc “Armed Liberal” Danziger.

AL QAEDA IS POLLING BADLY IN IRAQ: I guess that whole bombing-mosques thing isn’t working out for them.

TENNESSEE SENATE UPDATE: One thing that everyone in Washington asked me about was the Tennessee Senate race between Bob Corker (R) and Harold Ford, Jr. (D). Here’s what I told them. I think that Ford’s got an excellent, and probably better-than-even chance at winning. That’s because he’s a very strong candidate with an excellent campaign operation.

There’s nothing wrong with Corker, but he’s not as impressive on TV, and his campaign seems to be much less of a well-oiled machine. The conventional wisdom was that Ford might pull even during the summer, but that once Corker started spending money and running ads, he’d pull into the lead and stay there. That hasn’t happened. In fact, if you look at the polls at Pollster.com, it seems that the race shifted in Ford’s favor about the time (mid-August) that Corker started really running his ads. This suggests that Corker needs new ads.

The race could still go either way, but the momentum is very much in Ford’s favor at the moment. Ford’s biggest weakness: The Ford family, an old West Tennessee dynasty which has a lot of skeletons. Nobody’s tied Harold Ford, Jr. to the scandals that have afflicted many other members of his family, and Corker would be a fool to run commercials based on that issue (attacking someone via his/her family looks tacky), but if one of them says or does something dumb between now and the election it might hurt him. I imagine they’ll be trying to keep them quiet. People wonder if race is an issue for Ford, but I don’t think it’s hurting him, and in fact it may well be helping him.

If Corker wants to win, he’s going to need better ads, and a better-organized staff. Right now, I’d give the edge to Ford, who’s already got both. Follow the links for our interviews with Bob Corker and Harold Ford, Jr.

DEAN BARNETT on the Webb / Allen race: “At this rate, the Allen-Webb race should easily surpass 1984’s Jesse Helms – Jim Hunt Senate race as the most dispiriting political exercise of the modern era. I know Allen and Webb both really wanted to make history, each in his own way. But I bet this isn’t what either one of them had in mind.”

DICK MORRIS promising new Clinton scandals.

Janet Jackson in the news.

The Dow approaching record territory.

It’s like the 1990s all over again.

UPDATE: Dick Morris links isn’t working for some reason. It’s at Gateway Pundit — just scroll down.

TODAY’S FLIGHT was better than last time’s — actually arrived a few minutes early after a no-hassle departure.

Plus, this heartwarming review from my trip to DC:

Glenn Reynolds displayed no visible antennae, wires or other electronic components. His grip was warm and remarkably flesh-like, and his optics tracked movement with reptilian smoothness. Remarkable.

It doesn’t get any better than that. No, really, for me it pretty much doesn’t.

HEADING HOME: And hoping my flight is better this time. I stopped by the Capitol briefly to meet with Bill Frist (we talked about podcasting, PorkBusters followups, etc.), and on the way through security saw some Cynthia McKinney fallout: An officer of the Capitol Police was telling some of his troops that they should check ID on everyone, and not worry if members of Congress complained; I got the impression that this is still a contentious issue, as they seemed pretty unhappy. Jeez. There are 535 members of Congress, most of whose constituents probably couldn’t pick them out of a lineup, and every officer of the Capitol Police is supposed to know them on sight? The rest of the country has had to make adjustments to security. So should Congress.

MIKE TREDER IS LIVEBLOGGING from MIT’s Emerging Technologies conference.

SPLIT AN ATOM, SAVE THE WORLD? My TCS Daily column is up.

THREE WOMEN, THREE RELIGIONS, ONE GOAL: It’s easy to make fun of this kind of earnest, can’t-we-all-get-along stuff, but in fact it’s exactly what we need.

I haven’t read The Faith Club, but it looks pretty interesting.

HAMID KARZAI on the press and terrorism.

LAST NIGHT’S NATIONAL PRESS CLUB EVENT went quite well, with an over-capacity crowd and a spirited discussion that went on until they ran us out. I was too tired to blog about it last night, but Paul Mirengoff managed.

UPDATE: Some followup thoughts by Tom Bevan.

A NEW WATERSHED IN HUMAN RIGHTS LAW:

George Blake, who spied for the Soviet Union, won a human rights claim against the British Government yesterday, 40 years after he escaped from prison in London and fled to Moscow.

Britain was ordered by judges in Strasbourg to pay 84-year-old Blake £3,350 in damages and £1,340 costs for breaching his right to a fair hearing within a reasonable time.

It took the European Court of Human Rights five years and eight months to decide Blake’s case.

Blake, a double agent, had complained that legal action brought by the Attorney General in the English courts to stop him profiting from his autobiography had taken more than nine years to resolve.

Nice to see that they’re on the job in Strasbourg.

MATT DRUDGE: The Walter Cronkite of our times? That could be so, which says a lot about Drudge, our times . . . and Walter Cronkite.

STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS are beginning to take a hand in immigration law enforcement.

RAMADAN RIOTING in Brussels. Just in time for the elections.