IN TODAY’S NEW YORK TIMES, Mark Helprin argues for perpetual copyright. I don’t think his analogy to real estate works, though, unless copyright holders are put at risk of losing their copyrights unless they pay an annual tax on their property, or face easements by prescription, or, well, you get the idea.

At any rate, Rob Merges and I wrote an article a few years ago on why perpetual copyright — and in particular Congressional action to extend existing copyrights and patents — runs afoul of the Constitution. I should note that the Supreme Court didn’t agree with us, but I see that as the Court’s error, not ours, and hope that it will be corrected in time.

Anyway, you can read the article, which draws on both common-law notions of monopoly and intellectual property, and enumerated-powers Constitutional theory, by clicking right here.

EARLIER I LINKED TO AN ITEM ABOUT INCOMPETENCE AT THE CPA, and “hidden” information from a Word file. Here’s a post saying that there’s less to that story than advertised.

RANDY NEAL got 65.9 miles per gallon in his Prius, and he’s pretty happy about it.

“F*** YOU: The inside story.”

TO FACILITATE DISCUSSION, N.Z. Bear has put the immigration bill online in an annotatable, linkable form. More background on what he’s done, and how to use it, here.

IN RESPONSE TO OUR PODCAST ON THE DANGEROUS BOOK FOR BOYS, quite a few readers have emailed to suggest that this is the real article. I think that Conn Iggulden would agree, actually.

Meanwhile, various people want to know if there are similar books for girls. I’ll see what I can find. It’s not the same kind of thing, but this book worked out pretty well for the Insta-Daughter.

AN INTERESTING STORY AT USA TODAY on a swath of misery in newly liberated Europe:

A bleak picture springs with stark immediacy from typewritten reports by the Allied officers, found in the massive archive of the International Tracing Service in the central German town of Bad Arolsen. The Associated Press has been given extensive access to the archive on condition that identities of victims and refugees are protected.

Far from scenes of joyful liberation that should have greeted the end of Nazi oppression, the files reveal desperation, loss and confusion, and overwhelmed and often insensitive military authorities.

Many had nowhere to go, their families among the 6 million Jews consumed in the Holocaust, their homes destroyed or handed out to new occupants. Those who wanted to get to Palestine were shut out by a British ban on Jewish immigration to the Israeli state-in-waiting.

“Owing to ill treatment by the Germans, most DPs have a distrust and fear of the Allied authorities,” said a September 1945 report signed by British Lt. Col. C.C. Allan. “Many DPs have sunk into complete apathy regarding their future.”

Read the whole thing. (Via Bruce Webster).

BRINGING BACK “traditional play” for children.

RON PAUL LEADS IN INTERNET POLL: Heh. I keep getting emails from Ron Paul supporters asking why I’ve taken him off my poll, which is odd because he was in my poll. He’s dropped out of the PJ Media poll, because he’s at less than one percent in Gallup and that’s the cutoff they use. I also note that nasty emails and spamming don’t help his cause, but seem popular among some of his supporters. (Though given the spamming, I suppose it could be just one of his supporters, really . . . . ) To be fair, there was some Tommy Thompson spamming, too, which somehow strikes me as even sadder.

PAUL GEARY THINKS THAT PEOPLE ON THE RIGHT are getting unhinged over the immigration bill.

There’s definitely some of that. On the other hand, there’s also a lot of rational dismay about the GOP leadership’s efforts here, which have produced yet another self-inflicted wound.

UPDATE: Reader John Lynch emails: “So many people in the Republican party are coming unhinged because they are being ignored.” I think that’s right. He continues: “I favor massively increasing legal immigration (my wife and mother are immigrants.) Illegal immigration simply can’t continue like this- people will freak out. That’s happening before our eyes. What’s amazing is that the political class is so deaf to the concerns of their constituents.” Yes, they seem to regard the law on the books as a sort of opening bid, which I’m afraid accurately reflects the way it guides their own conduct, but which is infuriating to people who have a somewhat less . . . flexible attitude.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt has read the entire bill and put up a series of posts. Here’s one with links to all the others.

MORE PROBLEMS WITH TAINTED CHINESE IMPORTS:

Dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical.

Frozen catfish laden with banned antibiotics.Scallops and sardines coated with putrefying bacteria.

Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides.

These were among the 107 food imports from China that the Food and Drug Administration detained at U.S. ports just last month, agency documents reveal, along with more than 1,000 shipments of tainted Chinese dietary supplements, toxic Chinese cosmetics and counterfeit Chinese medicines.

For years, U.S. inspection records show, China has flooded the United States with foods unfit for human consumption. And for years, FDA inspectors have simply returned to Chinese importers the small portion of those products they caught — many of which turned up at U.S. borders again, making a second or third attempt at entry. Now the confluence of two events — the highly publicized contamination of U.S. chicken, pork and fish with tainted Chinese pet food ingredients and this week’s resumption of high-level economic and trade talks with China — has activists and members of Congress demanding that the United States tell China it is fed up.

This has potentially dramatic economic ramifications.

UPDATE: Reader Brian Gates writes — actually, I think, in relation to an earlier post on this topic: “I’ve heard for years that the best thing that could be done to end developing world poverty is free trade, especially in agriculture. I’m not sure what ag interests in the US and EU have done to argue for protectionism in the past, but I’m pretty sure what they do in the future will mention Chinese food exports killing people.” Yes.

A SUGGESTED POLL QUESTION from Mickey Kaus.

LASHAWN BARBER WAS ON RELIABLE SOURCES TODAY talking about milblogging. Report and video clip here.

IN THE MAIL: Stephan Talty’s new book, Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan’s Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe That Ended the Outlaws’ Bloody Reign. Looks very cool.

MICHAEL YON sends another email about how boring things are for him in Iraq:

Boring day today, Sunday. Very quiet. But I see the news and it looks pretty bad. Did long meeting with USMC and Iraqi Police Chiefs today. Was about the most tedious meeting I’ve been to in Iraq — and that means it was glacial. I hope we can make the rest of Iraq like this.

Indeed. If you missed Michael’s email from Anbar yesterday, it’s here.

HAVE YOU SEEN YOUR MOTHER, BABY, STANDING IN THE SHADOWS? Mark Steyn looks at the no-back-taxes provision in the immigration bill and observes:

Whenever folks use this “living in the shadows” line, they assume that these 12-20-30 million people all have a burning desire to move out of the shadows and live under the klieg lights of officialdom. But, in fact, if you wanted to construct the perfect arrangement for modern life, it would be to acquire:

a) just enough of an official identity to be able to function – open bank accounts, etc – and to access free education and health care; but

b) not enough of an official identity to attract the attentions of the IRS and the other less bountiful agencies of the state.

The present “undocumented” network structures provide this. For these Z visas to “work” (in Washington terms), they have to be attractive enough to draw sufficient numbers out of “the shadows”. Right now, “living in the shadows” is a pretty good deal. Somerset Maugham famously called Monte Carlo a sunny place full of shady people. Undocumented America is a shady place full of sunny people.

Instead of attempting to draw the undocumented out of the shadows, it might be fairer to allow the rest of us to “live in the shadows”, too. My suggestion is that, on the day this bill comes into effect, all 300 million US citizens and legal residents should apply for a Z visa.

At a more serious level, however, this captures the disconnect between Washington officialdom’s view of citizenship, and the view held by actual citizens, something that I think is at the core of the immigration debate. More than hostility to illegal immigrants, I think a lot of the backlash is driven by the sense that Washington insiders don’t really value what ordinary law-abiding people do by way of living their lives and, you know, abiding by the law. A voter scorned, and all that . . . .

NIGERIA UPDATE: “The newly elected government is generally considered illegitimate, because of the rigged recent elections. No one expects the corruption and weak economic growth to go away. But the corrupt leaders believe they can keep the game going, by buying the support of some, and using violence to keep everyone else in line. This works in Africa, except in places where the opposition get enough money to buy lots of guns. The Niger delta bandits, however, are piling up lots of cash from kidnapping and theft (mainly of oil). A lot of that money goes into buying guns, cars and speed boats. That might seem scary for the politicians, except that the oil producing region only contains fifteen percent of the nations population. The rest of the country would meet violence with violence is it came to a fight over the oil. This is not speculation. There have been civil wars in Nigeria before, and the outnumbered rebels lost.”

They were exceptionally ugly wars.

ILLEGAL GUN CONFISCATIONS IN KANSAS? I don’t know the guy making this report about the aftermath of the Greensburg, Kansas tornado, but he gives FEMA generally bad marks. I can believe that, but there’s also this:

In the immediate recovery after the storm, FEMA and local police not only worked to find survivors and the dead, but also any firearms in the city. As you pass by houses in Greensburg, you notice that some are spraypainted with how many weapons were recovered from the home. This is central Kansas, a region with extremely high legal gun ownership. Of the over 350 firearms confiscated by police immediately after the storm, only a third have been returned to their owners. FEMA and the police have systematically disarmed the local population, leaving the firepower squarely in control of the state.

If this is true, it violates federal law, which provides:

“SEC. 706. <> FIREARMS POLICIES.

“(a) Prohibition on Confiscation of Firearms.–No officer or employee of the United States (including any member of the uniformed services), or person operating pursuant to or under color of Federal
law, or receiving Federal funds, or under control of any Federal official, or providing services to such an officer, employee, or other person, while acting in support of relief from a major disaster or
emergency, may–

“(1) temporarily or permanently seize, or authorize seizure
of, any firearm the possession of which is not prohibited under

[[Page 120 STAT. 1392]]

Federal, State, or local law, other than for forfeiture in
compliance with Federal law or as evidence in a criminal
investigation;
“(2) require registration of any firearm for which
registration is not required by Federal, State, or local law;
“(3) prohibit possession of any firearm, or promulgate any
rule, regulation, or order prohibiting possession of any
firearm, in any place or by any person where such possession is
not otherwise prohibited by Federal, State, or local law; or
“(4) prohibit the carrying of firearms by any person
otherwise authorized to carry firearms under Federal, State, or
local law, solely because such person is operating under the
direction, control, or supervision of a Federal agency in
support of relief from the major disaster or emergency.

I hope that the firearms rights community will look into this, because if the report is correct both FEMA and the police are in violation of federal law. While the law is relatively new, it was signed six months ago, and there’s no excuse for FEMA, etc. not knowing about it. What’s more, the local police are covered by the law as working with FEMA, and, presumably, receiving some sort of federal funding. Note that the statute provides for a private right of action, and an award of attorney’s fees to an aggrieved party.

I’ve emailed FEMA’s public affairs office to ask about this account.

UPDATE: Wow, that was fast. Reader Eric Wilner points to this post that I had somehow missed saying that these reports are basically bogus — guns were collected, but they were unattended guns found in damaged homes and they’re now being returned to their owners.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Steve Granzow emails:

I just returned from Greensburg and just read your gun confiscation post and update. Guns are being returned to their rightful owners. They have an emergency broadcast AM station that even advises residents on how to reclaim their firearms from the local sheriff’s office. That is not to say that the ATF is not “very interested” in a few of the firearms recovered.

Thanks.

IT’S USUALLY A BAD IDEA TO MESS WITH BLOGGERS: Here’s another case: “A Tennessee State Trooper is on paid leave after allegations surface about sex at a traffic stop. The woman involved is apparently an adult video actress who lives in Knoxville. She has posted a vivid description of the incident on her personal website and blog.”

PROGRESS IN PARIS: Nidra Poller reports on Sarkozy’s start.

A LOOK AT THE DOMESTIC OIL INDUSTRY:

The American oil patch, once left to languish during an extended period of low oil prices, is on the rebound. Wildcatters like Mr. Bryant are ready to pounce. With oil prices now hovering around $60 a barrel — three times higher than they were throughout the 1990s — the industry is expanding at a pace last seen decades ago.

“The oil industry has changed dramatically in the last 20 years,” Mr. Bryant says. “Barriers to entry have dropped significantly. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been in the business 100 years or 100 days.”

Easily available capital and technology, once the preserve of traditional oil companies, are reordering the business. Investors are lining up to finance energy projects while leaps in computing power, imaging technology and collaborative online networks now allow the smallest entities to compete on an equal footing with the biggest players.

What an interesting phenomenon. Someone should write a book about it! But seriously, read the whole thing. I’ll just note that with corrupt and incompetent governments likely to seriously damage the oil production of Venezuela, Iran, and Nigeria, it’s probably a good time to be in the domestic-oil business.

IS IT FRED’S WATERSHED?

PHIL BOWERMASTER HAS THOUGHTS on goals for friendly Artificial Intelligence.

We need progress fast, especially as natural intelligence appears to be in diminishing supply.

JEEZ, ANDREW’S AT IT AGAIN.

I never understand what sends him off on these tears. I kind of think he actually wants me to be pro-torture, though he certainly knows better. Sullivan’s certainly not above torturing the record to get the answers he wants, though to be fair he more often simply ignores it.

But while Sullivan is calling me a “traitor” and a “torture-monger,” I think that Tom Maguire was right to note that McCain is not, in fact, against torture in all circumstances. He’s merely against a rule allowing torture, assuming that if circumstances are exigent enough — the infamous “ticking bomb” scenario, for example — people will engage in torture anyway. (This is also Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton’s position. I said something similar once, but as a descriptive, not a prescriptive statement — I didn’t say I was ready to authorize it, but then, I’m not running for President. Anyway the worst you can say about me is that I agree with Sullivan’s hero, McCain, who as Maguire notes, doesn’t live up to Andrew’s expectations. But then, who does, for long? And, in the update, see Tom Maguire’s response to Sullivan.) If Sullivan thinks it’s an injustice to point this out about McCain, then what kind of injustice is Sullivan doing to me?

A sad and predictable one, I guess, made sadder by Sullivan’s failure even link my post, allowing him to put a rather dishonest spin on my alleged beliefs. I’ve tried, honestly, not to get in these pissing matches with Andrew, but apparently he can’t help himself with this stuff. But to be clear: I’m against torture. I’m also against moralistic, dishonest, self-righteous preening about torture. Andrew is a repeat offender in the latter category, and it’s gone beyond embarrassing to pathetic.

Various people in and out of the blogosphere have wondered exactly when, how, and why Andrew lost it. But lost it he has.

MARK STEYN: “A true Flight 93 memorial would honor courage, action and improvisation, but reflection, healing and wetlands are the best we can manage. Go to any Civil War memorial on any New England common, and marvel at how they managed to honor their dead without wetlands and wind chimes.”

DISAPPEARING BEES FOUND: Well, some, anyway:

Danny Peters is a hobby bee keeper and told the family they had a potential disaster on their hands.

“He told me within a matter of weeks they could create 500 pounds of honey up there. It could sour and drip into the house,” says Erickson.

Peters says that’s exactly what the bees were doing.

“They’ve probably been there since early spring. There are probably 50,000 bees,” says Peters. “There’s a couple quarts of honey in there now.”

They’re moving them out safely.

A LOOK AT NARCISSISM AND THE SUMMER OF LOVE: I was 6. I remember things somewhat differently than those who were a decade or two older.

JOHN HINDERAKER: “I think it’s fair to say that the bureaucracy’s war against the Bush administration is more or less over, and the bureaucracy won.” It was a pretty one-sided war.

A “DATA STORM” shut down a nuclear power plant. It may have originated outside the plant.

UPDATE: Skepticism about this report.

A CONTRACTOR COMPARES Iraq and Afghanistan. (Via The American Thinker).

Meanwhile, relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan are ruffled.

MICKEY KAUS:

On the heels of his triumphant announcement of a breakthrough “comprehensive” immigration deal, President Bush’s support has … “fallen to the lowest level ever recorded”! Pollster Scott Rassmussen notes:

The president’s ratings have tumbled each time immigration reform dominates the news.

Using advanced, high-tech tools, Karl Rove has found the last pocket of support for Bush and destroyed it with laser-like efficiency.

Remember what I was saying about a Republican “death wish?”

THIS SOUNDS KIND OF INTERESTING:

Many respected engineers have been trying for years to bring a compressed air car to market, believing strongly that compressed air can power a viable “zero pollution” car. Now the first commercial compressed air car is on the verge of production and beginning to attract a lot of attention, and with a recently signed partnership with Tata, India’s largest automotive manufacturer, the prospects of very cost-effective mass production are now a distinct possibility. The MiniC.A.T is a simple, light urban car, with a tubular chassis that is glued not welded and a body of fibreglass. . . .

Most importantly, it is incredibly cost-efficient to run – according to the designers, it costs less than one Euro per 100Km (about a tenth that of a petrol car). Its mileage is about double that of the most advanced electric car (200 to 300 km or 10 hours of driving), a factor which makes a perfect choice in cities where the 80% of motorists drive at less than 60Km. The car has a top speed of 68 mph.

Refilling the car will, once the market develops, take place at adapted petrol stations to administer compressed air. In two or three minutes, and at a cost of approximately 1.5 Euros, the car will be ready to go another 200-300 kilometres.

As a viable alternative, the car carries a small compressor which can be connected to the mains (220V or 380V) and refill the tank in 3-4 hours.

Due to the absence of combustion and, consequently, of residues, changing the oil (1 litre of vegetable oil) is necessary only every 50,000 Km.

The temperature of the clean air expelled by the exhaust pipe is between 0 – 15 degrees below zero, which makes it suitable for use by the internal air conditioning system with no need for gases or loss of power.

Adiabatic air conditioning. Cool! Er, literally . . .

If this catches on first in India and China, that’s okay — that’s where the growth of auto sales is likely to be fastest in the coming decades. I wouldn’t mind having one for commuting, though.

AUSTIN BAY LOOKS AT NICHOLAS SARKOZY and likes what he sees so far.

DOUG WEINSTEIN is mad about gas prices.

Tim Haab is mad about gas price legislation.

CRYING WOLFOWITZ.

BARACK OBAMA’S advice to graduates.

A LOOK AT European energy politics.

UPDATE: Further thoughts from T.M. Lutas, who looks at the Caspian route:

Russia has an interest in making the safest, most moral route for that energy westward to be through Russia’s pipeline network. Russia has an interest in instability and odious governments arising in Georgia (or separatist region’s thereof) and Azerbaijan. It has an interest in Turkey’s romance with the EU ending in failure. Most intriguing of all, it has an interest in keeping the mullah regime staggering along in Iran.

It’s the southern route that is most threatening to Russia because unlike the Caucuses, Iran is not historically “bandit country” where grievances are relatively easy to stir up and profound instability is just a few strategic tribal/clan murders away. Iran is historically its own creature, a regional and sometimes world class power that is difficult to disrupt. It’s also the swiftest route for Caspian energy to hit the sea at which point it can go all over the world, including the EU. Russia’s strategy of political impunity through energy dominance of Europe is history if a stable post-mullah regime emerges in Iran.

Read the whole thing.

MAU-MAUING THE MULTICULTURALISTS: Roger Simon reviews the New Criterion’s anthology, Counterpoints.

MCCAIN’S TOUGH TALK, not okay with Beldar.

WAITING FOR IT TO HAPPEN, in Spain.

LOTS OF ATTENTION FOR FRED THOMPSON in tomorrow’s Washington Post. “Thompson also tends to catch some slack because, at 6 feet 6 inches and with a charm and sense of humor that can crack even the most tightly clenched among us, he’s someone men want to be and women want to be with. He’s the John Wayne to Gore’s professor. Gore was the prep-school son of a U.S. senator from Carthage, Tenn., spending most of his formative years not in the green hills of the Volunteer State but in the monument-dotted confines of Washington. Thompson was the son of a used-car salesman from Lawrenceburg, Tenn., who, like Thompson’s mother, never graduated from high school.”

HAPPY ARMED FORCES DAY!

MICHAEL YON SENDS ANOTHER EMAIL FROM ANBAR:

Am still in Anbar and just went another day without hearing a single shot fired. Am out with a small group of Marines who live with a much larger group of Iraqis. I enjoy the Iraqi food more than the food at the dining facilities. Some of the Marines out here live in shipping containers. Their “toilet” is WAG bag. (Waste Alleviation and Gelling.) It’s every bit as exciting as it sounds. Basically it’s a little ziplock baggie — one-time use only.

I was told that a chemical munition (artillery shell) was found within the last few days.

Today, went on a patrol with Iraqis and a couple of Marines and we talked with Iraqi villagers for a couple of hours. I got to talk with a man who was about 81. His hearing was not good, so I had to sit close. He said he worked for the British RAF here in about 1945-46. I asked him if the British treated him well and he said they treated him very well. Said he made the equivalent of about 25 cents per day but that was good money back then. There is, in fact, a British-Polish-Indian-Aussie-Kiwi cemetery nearby. (I visited and photographed many of the headstones some days ago.)

All the villagers we got to talk with were very friendly. Kids wanted their photos taken, that sort of thing. They were not asking for candy and that was nice. There was a train track nearby (looked to be in very good condition), and a locomotive turned over on its side, derailed. I asked a man what happened, and he said that about four years ago, during the war, an “Ali Baba” (thief) tried to steal the train but ran head-on into another train! He said the police caught the Ali Baba and he has no idea what happened after that.

Marines are getting along well with the locals. They wave a lot, and stop to talk. If the rest of Iraq looked like this, we could all come home!

Let’s hope this continues to spread.

A CYBER-ASSAULT ON ESTONIA:

This small Baltic country, one of the most wired societies in Europe, has been subject in recent weeks to massive and coordinated cyber attacks on Web sites of the government, banks, telecommunications companies, Internet service providers and news organizations, according to Estonian and foreign officials here.

Computer security specialists here call it an unprecedented assault on the public and private electronic infrastructure of a state. They say it is originating in Russia, which is angry over Estonia’s recent relocation of a Soviet war memorial. Russian officials deny any government involvement. . . .

“These attacks were massive, well targeted and well organized,” Jaak Aaviksoo, Estonia’s minister of defense, said in an interview. They can’t be viewed, he said, “as the spontaneous response of public discontent worldwide with the actions of the Estonian authorities” concerning the memorial. “Rather, we have to speak of organized attacks on basic modern infrastructures.”

The Estonian government stops short of accusing the Russian government of orchestrating the assaults, but alleges that authorities in Moscow have shown no interest in helping to end them or investigating evidence that Russian state employees have taken part. One Estonian citizen has been arrested, and officials here say they also have identified Russians involved in the attacks.

“They won’t even pick up the phone,” Rein Lang, Estonia’s minister of justice, said in an interview.

If Russia doesn’t watch out, they’re going to find people quarantining them, electronically and otherwise.

SAXBY CHAMBLISS was booed at a GOP convention over the immigration bill. The big problem for the GOP leadership is that they’ve lost their credibility. And they still don’t understand it. This was clear a year ago when we talked to then-GOP chair Ken Mehlman, and it’s much, much truer now. As a reader emails: “No credibility to fall back on. No reserve of good will to fall back on. No record to fall back on. No successes to fall back on.”

And as Dan Riehl said earlier this week, Republicans were given a wakeup call with the 2006 elections, and they opted to hit snooze.

I still don’t know enough to know if the bill is good or bad. But if the bill is actually a good bill that the GOP base would accept if they read it . . . then that’s an even bigger indictment of the GOP leadership for failing to sell it. At this point, they’ve either mis-sold a good bill, or produced a bad one.

UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt is reading the bill.

A READER SUGGESTS that this is an effort to lock up the crucial InstaPundit podcast endorsement: “We need to note that Mrs. Fred Thompson does not drive a Bentley or a Bentley look-alike, contrary to our previous report of a sighting. . . . Mrs. Fred Thompson in fact, drives a Volvo.”

STRATEGYPAGE looks at Muslim terrorism in the south of Thailand:

The violence in the south is increasingly directed more at Moslems, as the terrorists try to eliminate government informers, and non-Moslems increasingly organize death squads to carry out reprisal attacks. Most of the Moslem population wants all the violence to stop, as this sort of thing has happened before. Since the Moslem Sultanate was taken over by Thailand a century ago, there have been uprisings every few generations. In the past, these rebellions were put down with much violence by the Thai government. It’s not for nothing that Thailand is one of the few nations in the region to never be colonized. The Thais are tough, determined, and vicious if provoked. However, times have changed, and “vicious” doesn’t play as well as it used to. So the Thai government is telling the southerners to cool it, and is sending money and other economic aid as peace offerings. In times past, this might have worked. But this time around, it’s not just ethnic (the southerners are Malays) and religious (some 95 percent of Thais are Buddhists) differences, but the presence of Islamic radicals who want to convert all Thais to Islam, and establish an Islamic religious dictatorship throughout the region.

This will never work, and if the Islamic militants are able to keep it up long enough, the Thais will toss political correctness and go old school on the Moslem minority. That may help the world-wide Islamic radical movement (by providing lots of “martyrs”), but it will be a disaster for the Moslems in southern Thailand. And it will probably work. Islamic terrorists have been stamped out several times in the last twenty years, using similar methods. Most Moslems are caught in the middle. If they oppose the Islamic militants, they are attacked for disloyalty. If the Moslems support the terrorists, they are subject to attack by death squads or security forces.

The Islamists bring joy wherever they appear, don’t they?

SCOTTY HAS BEEN FOUND.

IS IT JUST ME, OR DOES THIS SOUND TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE? The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich.

Other than a few tenured faculty members near retirement, I don’t know anyone who’s actually pulled this off. But maybe I’m missing something . . . .

UPDATE: Summary in this blog post, and lots of discussion pro- and con in the comments, including a response by the author. A somewhat more critical take can be found here. (Thanks to Bill Peschel for the links.)

BILL QUICK IS DEPRESSED at this evidence of Congressional out-of-touchness:

Hannity was telling some caller to his talker today that his contacts in Washington were “astounded” and “shocked” by the firestorm backlash they’re getting over the supposedly “done deal” immigration bill.

Just as with Harriet Miers and the Dubai Ports deal, the backlash was entirely predictable to anyone who read blogs. Or in this case, even listened to talk radio. Don’t these people pay any attention?

SEN. BOB CORKER (R-TN) will vote against cloture on the immigration bill.

WHAT’S WRONG with HDMI?

ROGER DALTREY: “The last thing the planet needs is a rock concert.”

TENNESSEE IS AWASH IN REVENUE, and Frank Cagle doesn’t like what it’s doing about taxes.

POISONED TOOTHPASTE IN PANAMA: It seems to have come from China, natch. If China’s economic bubble bursts, it may be because things like this hurt its export markets. And they should. As Carole Borges at Knoxviews writes: “What’s up with China?” An economy that’s growing so fast nobody can keep track, plus rampant official corruption. I’m not sure that will last. In his book, Brave New War, John Robb predicts the fragmentation of China as corruption destroys governmental legitimacy. If that’s coupled with an economic slide as exports fall off, it could happen, and it could be extraordinarily ugly. I suspect that the Chinese government is keenly aware of this risk, but it’s not in a position to do much, I’m afraid.

LOSS OF CREDIBILITY:

Prosecutors across the country are seeing fallout from the Duke case, as defense attorneys use it to discredit other criminal cases and paint them as overzealous prosecutors with something to prove.

In Texas, one defense attorney recently cited the case during voir dire, and again in closing argument, in an assault case involving a teacher accused of pinning down a female student while other students beat her. The lawyer reminded jurors about what happened at Duke. The defendant was found not guilty in three minutes.

“Prosecutors should be worried,” said defense attorney Edmund “Skip” Davis, the Texas attorney who cited the Duke case in the recent assault trial and plans to cite it in a rape trial next week.

In the teacher assault case, Davis asked jurors during voir dire if they were familiar with the “tragedy” that happened in the Duke case and whether they thought it was a shoddy investigation. At closing, he reminded jurors not to rush to judgement to avoid “that tragedy that nearly fell upon those kids at Duke.”

“I told them, ‘Just because someone hollers out that a crime has been committed just does not make it so,’” Davis said. “And the Duke case made a perfect example of that.”

Read the whole thing.

I MENTIONED that I sent my 8-year-old nephew a copy of The Dangerous Book for Boys, and my sister emailed that he loves it. “He and Wilson even put off playing xbox to look it over.”

Put off playing XBox? This thing is huge! Actually, it really is huge, as it’s currently #2 on Amazon. I wonder if it will break into the New York Times bestseller list? I don’t know how much bookstore display space it’s getting.

UPDATE: Oh, I looked in the wrong place — it’s #2 on the New York Times advice list.

A LOOK AT ROMANIA’S REFERENDUM, over at Transatlantic Politics.

MUMS WITH GUNS:

The mother of an 18-year-old son, she keeps a Springfield semiautomatic in her purse and a Beretta pistol at home or in her glove box.

“I think it’s more important for women with small children to own a gun because you can’t run when you have children,” she says.

Two years ago, one in 10 of Shoot Straight’s students was a woman. Now, ladies make up about 40 per cent of its gun classes, says Larry Anderson, manager of the Shoot Straight in Apopka.

Read the whole thing.

FRANK TIPLER has worries about the way physics is taught.

UPDATE: They’ve been talking about this over at Rand Simberg’s place.

DANIEL GLOVER LOOKS Inside the Blogway.

TOM MAGUIRE LOOKS AT JOHN MCCAIN and the truth about torture.

HERE’S ANOTHER POSITIVE REVIEW of Evan Coyne Maloney’s film on higher education, Indoctrinate U.

MCCAIN TALKS TOUGH, and that’s okay:

I want a President who says “f*ck you” and calls things that are chickenshit “chickenshit.” Not where the kids can hear him, of course. But this was a closed meeting and Cornyn was apparently trying to disqualify his opinion because he dares to go off and run for President. McCain was entitled to push back. I say it’s nothing.

On the other hand, it confirms some worries that McCain has too short a fuse.

UPDATE: Reader Dart Montgomery thinks I’m wrong: “The real point – once again, it shows that McCain regards the real enemy as his fellow Republicans.”

I think that this will hurt him more.

MAX BOOT POSTS AN EMAIL from a soldier in Baghdad.

BRINK LINDSEY TALKS ABOUT HIS NEW BOOK, on The Daily Show. Video here.

I have to say that I enjoyed Brink’s book very much.

THE E.U. VS. PUTIN:

European Union leaders criticized Russia’s human rights record—and were faulted in return—at the end of a summit Friday that produced no formal agreements but helped illustrate the widening political chasm between Moscow and the West.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel complained that opposition activists were being prevented from traveling to a planned protest in the Volga River city of Samara, near the site of the EU-Russia summit.

“I’m concerned about some people having problems in traveling here,” Merkel told reporters. “I hope they will be given an opportunity to express their opinion.”

Among the activists kept from boarding flights was former chess champion Garry Kasparov, now a leading political foe of President Vladimir Putin. Officials confiscated activists’ passports and tickets at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, and held them for about five hours. Activists in Samara also said they were harassed.

Russia’s democratic freedoms and its treatment of critics are two of the most sensitive issues haunting Russia-EU relations. Merkel’s remark came during a sometimes fractious exchange over the topics between Putin and EU leaders at a news conference.

Given that his critics have a way of being assassinated, that shows some degree of courage. Don Surber thinks this may indicate that there’s still hope for Europe. Let it be so.

TWO BIRDS, ONE STONE: Nominate Alberto Gonzales to head the World Bank!

MORE ON MURTHA:

Republicans will seek a House vote next week admonishing a senior Democrat who they say threatened a GOP member’s spending projects in a noisy exchange in the House chamber, Minority Leader John Boehner said Friday.

Their target is Rep. John P. Murtha, D-Pa., a 35-year House veteran who chairs the appropriations subcommittee on military spending. Murtha, 74, is known for his gruff manner and fondness for earmarks _ carefully targeted spending items placed in appropriations bills to benefit a specific lawmaker or favorite constituent group. . . .

According to Rogers’ account, which Murtha did not dispute, the Democrat angrily told Rogers he should never seek earmarks of his own because “you’re not going to get any, now or forever.”

“This was clearly designed to try to intimidate me,” Rogers said in an interview Friday. “He said it loud enough for other people to hear.”

House rules prohibit lawmakers from placing conditions on earmarks or targeted tax benefits that are based on another member’s votes.

Goading Murtha into doing stupid things seems like a winning — and eminently achievable — strategy.

UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch emails: “The people that oppose porkbusters tacitly empower people like Murtha.”

Indeed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More on Murtha here.

EDITED BY JOHN LEO, Minding the Campus is a new site dedicated to monitoring what’s going on in academia.

HERE’S AN ARGUMENT that claims the Christian/Newsom murder should have gotten more press are wrong. Meanwhile, Knoxville’s Channel 10 is shutting off reader comments on the murders. Apparently people got a bit overheated.

UPDATE: More thoughts here.

MORE BIG MARKET NEWS: “The Dow Jones industrial average registered its 24th record close this year and the Standard & Poor’s 500 index came within striking distance of its record high.” I think it’s because the Democrats are back in power.

YEAH, THIS’LL WORK: Requiring ISPs to block Internet pharmacies?

A QUAGMIRE IN BALTIMORE:

A city council leader, alarmed by Baltimore’s rising homicide rate, wants to give the mayor the power to put troubled neighborhoods under virtual lockdown.

“Desperate measures are needed when we’re in desperate situations,” City Council Vice President Robert W. Curran told The (Baltimore) Sun. He said he would introduce the legislation next week.

Under Curran’s plan, the mayor could declare “public safety act zones,” which would allow police to close liquor stores and bars, limit the number of people on city sidewalks, and halt traffic during two-week intervals.

Police would be encouraged to aggressively stop and frisk individuals in those zones to search for weapons and drugs.

This “surge” approach sounds novel. Perhaps if it works we can try it elsewhere. . . .

UPDATE: Reader Charles Rutt emails: “Obviously, we need to just leave Baltimore. We’ve been there for almost 200 years and still don’t have it under control. I think we should cut off funding to the city to teach them that we mean business and be out of there by the end of summer. I’ve got 29 Senators who agree with me…. ”

Only 29?

Meanwhile, Brian Noggle notices something missing from the story. Okay, he’s being sarcastic. But sadly it echoes a lot of the kind of stuff we’ve been hearing from the left.

IS IT A CIVIL WAR?

Fighting between rival Palestinian factions continued in Gaza today, and Israeli troops and fighters of the Hamas faction again exchanged rocket fire across the Israel-Gaza border.

The two main Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, fought in Gaza City, where witnesses said that three rocket-propelled grenades were fired at the Islamic University campus, Reuters reported.

A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Presidential Guard accused Hamas of using the university as a fire base for attacks on nearby police stations, according to the news service. The university is pro-Hamas, while the Palestinian police force is under Fatah control.

The factional fighting continued today despite a cease-fire agreement between the two factions earlier this week.

They don’t keep ceasefires with each other any more than they do with Israel, apparently.

BACK IN 2004, I ran an email on incompetence at the CPA. Here’s more evidence for that proposition, from the same time frame.

GET YOUR PHOTOS STOLEN, COMPLAIN ABOUT IT, and have your complaint censored by Yahoo! Nice.

SECRETS OF GETTING RICH: “Staying married, not getting divorced, thinking about savings.”

Who knew it was so easy?

DAVE KOPEL:

The “Hate Crimes” bill currently moving through Congress involves an unwise, and arguably unconstitutional expansion of federal criminal jurisdiction. But even at the state or local level, hate crimes are a bad idea. The whole debate of whether homosexuals should be included in hate crimes statutes is but one example of how hate crimes statutes undermine the principle of equal protection of the laws, by encouraging fights over whether some groups are or are not deserving of unequal, special protection.

The best argument for hate crimes laws is that a hate crime causes more harm than an ordinary crime, because it causes many other people to fear being victimized. This is true for some hate crimes (e.g., public vandalism of a synagogue), but certainly not all of them (e.g., a dispute between neighbors in which an epithet is used). Moreover, there are plenty of ordinary crimes (such as highly-publicized serial attacks on random victims), which also cause fear in many people besides the immediate victims. I suggest that judicial sentencing discretion allows for appropriate punishment for crimes which have unusually large secondary impacts.

As long as hate crimes statutes stay on the books, every hate crime statute should include a provision providing for extra punishment for hate crime hoaxes. (Above the level of punishment for ordinary hoaxes about non-existent crimes.) Just as a hate crime may cause heightened community fear, so does a hate crime hoax.

He has further thoughts here.

J.D. JOHANNES POSTS A REPORT FROM BAGHDAD, with pictures and lots of interesting information. It’s a must-read, but here’s an excerpt:

Is there hope for Baghdad? Yes. The additional U.S. forces from the surge are already showing limited signs of success. They are not the signs quantified by London or D.C. think tanks.

Every Battalion Commander I talked with gave me the same metrics to measure success–Commerce, people returning to their homes, essential services, kids playing soccer in fields they haven’t played on in 2 years, professionalization of the police and security services.

Those are things that do not fit well in an index and things a person can only see on the ground by going back to the same areas of operation every few months.

Which is why I will be back in Dora and West Rasheed in a few months.

Really, read the whole thing.

FIJI’S MILITARY GOVERNMENT cracks down on political blogs.

WELL, NO: “This is not to say that J. K. Rowling is a plagiarist.”

GREEN ISN’T CLEAN: How the government ruined washing machines. Though we have a “high efficiency” machine that cleans very well — but it wasn’t cheap.

MORE UNHAPPINESS ON IMMIGRATION: What’s interesting to me is that — with the exception of Larry Kudlow and Steve Moore — I’m not hearing a lot of pro-immigration support for this bill.

A HYDROGEN-POWERED CAR with water in the tank? I’m skeptical of this claim, though I’d like it to be true.

MAKING THE MCLAUGHLIN GROUP LOOK LAME: The latest Corn & Miniter Show is up!

TOWARD A CULTURE OF self-defense. Better than a culture of passivity.

ANOTHER EMAIL FROM MICHAEL YON:

I cannot believe my eyes and ears in Anbar. Very quiet where I am. Did a foot patrol today with Iraqi Army and a couple of Marines. Local population was friendly. Have not heard a shot fired in anger in days. (Whereas before the sounds of war were nearly always in the air.)

Sounds good to me.

I’VE HAD POSTS ON DISASTER PREPAREDNESS BEFORE, but here’s a whole list on how to survive a nuclear war and thrive in the aftermath.

ADVICE ON WHAT MEN LIKE, from Ann Althouse.

A LOOK AT THE LATEST BUDGET FICTION in Washington:

Under their “Pay-Go” rules, congressional Democrats promised not to raise spending unless there was specific federal revenue available to pay for it. The Reserve Fund is their way of guaranteeing a funding increase when — wink, wink — at a later date they will have found the needed revenues. Call it the “Spend Now, Maybe Pay Later” approach to federal budgeting.

Today’s congressional Democrats aren’t unique in using a sleight of hand like the Reserve Fund to mask the fact they are spending more of our hard-earned tax dollars on another of their favored special interests.

When the Republicans were in the majority, they used fictions like counting projected budget savings in future years to make this year’s budget appear to be balanced or at least getting closer to being balanced.

The problem is that like all lies, Washington’s spending fictions are meant to obscure the truth about irresponsible budgets, bureaucratic waste, fraud and rampant conflicts of interest.

Meet the new boss, yada yada.

USING BLOGS for political test marketing.

THE BRITISH ARMY: Defeated by a press release. This kind of thing really can’t be allowed to continue.

And read this, too.

And these comments by Noah Pollak. Pattern?

AS I WATCH THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, I’m reminded of Robert Conquest’s third law: “The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.”

MEGAN MCARDLE’S SITE IS DOWN, and she’s blogging here temporarily.

BLOGGER THREATENED over Islamberg. I think the authorities need to look into this.

WOLFOWITZ, sans horns.

IN THE MAIL: Bryan Caplan’s new book, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies. I haven’t read it yet, but the InstaWife picked it up and liked it. So does Ilya Somin.

I’ll just note that voter irrationality can have its upsides as well as downsides.

MORE ON CARBON OFFSETS: I used to think they were dumb, until I got 100,000 lbs. of CO₂ offsets at a very reasonable price. Now I party with petrochemicals like it’s 1999!

A PACK, NOT A HERD: “Law officers have praised a bank customer who pulled his gun and helped deputies capture a gunman who opened fire during a robbery of a Wachovia branch, killing two tellers and wounding two.”

Nice to see the praise from law enforcement, too. Sometimes professional jealousy gets in the way of that sort of thing.