SOMETHING ON THE COLORADO SHOOTINGS that I hadn’t heard. The gunman was stopped by an armed woman.

Remember: People don’t stop killers. People with guns do.

BLU-RAY PRICES start to plummet.

But of course!

CAUGHT YOUTHENING: Maureen Dowd’s latest column begins:

When I was a kid, we used to drive on the Beltway past the big Mormon temple outside Washington. The spires rose up like a white Oz, and some wag had spray-painted the message on a bridge beneath: “Surrender Dorothy!”

But if you’re imagining Dowd as a pigtailed six-year-old in the back of the family station wagon, think again. The temple was finished in 1974. Maureen Dowd was born in 1952. So she was a “kid” who was old enough to vote and drink. (According to this source, the graffiti first appeared in 1973, when Dowd would have been 21.) Thanks to reader Conrad Kiechel for the tip. I remember the graffiti, too, though, which was still there in the 1980s when I was a “kid” practicing law in Washington. By then Dowd was pushing 40.

UPDATE: Patrick Carroll emails:

Oh, I don’t know. In some circles our troops in Iraq are called “children”.

Besides, is there anything in her writing that suggests she ever grew up? All I ever see is teenage condescension and snark.

Good point.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A very weak defense of Dowd. Yes, the Temple was started in 1968. The graffiti wasn’t there until 1973. Then again, factchecking isn’t the strongpoint of this blogger, who can’t even spell my name right: It’s “Glenn,” not “Glen.” It’s right there next to every post . . . .

I GUESS THEY DO CARRY PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING: Reader Paul Music sends a link to Amazon’s page listing Bestselling Items in Game and Exotic Meat. The wild boar tenderloin looks pretty tasty.

I’M BLOGGING from the Nokia 810 that I mentioned the other day. Not bad.

CRASHING THE GATES: Iranian students demonstrate for freedom. Catchy slogan: “Live free or die!”

YOU CAN SUPPORT NANOTECHNOLOGY PROGRESS and have your donation matched through the Foresight Institute challenge grant. I’m not on their Board of Directors any more, but they’re still an excellent organization. Maybe better, now that I’m not on their Board of Directors any more . . . .

REMEMBERING Evel Knievel.

BIOSHOCK takes the Game of the Year award at the Video Game Awards. Full report at the link. What’s not to love about a game that lets you “Biologically mod your body with plasmids – genetic augmentations that empower you with dozens of fantastic abilities.”

IS THE N.I.E. ACTUALLY A BUSH GAMBIT? I don’t think the Administration is that smart. But maybe that’s what they want me to think . . . .

MORE PROBLEMS FOR THE BBC: Nobody seems to know what “findability” means, but a reader suggests that it probably has something to do with paintballing . . . .

HOW TO SUPPORT MARK STEYN vs. the Canadian censors.

HERE’S MORE on the disappointing box office performance of The Golden Compass, but what’s really interesting is this:

Finally, another Iraq War-themed movie has crashed and burned. Grace is Gone (MGM/Weinstein) starring John Cusack, with an original score by Clint Eastwood, mustered only a $1,089 PTA on Friday at four locations with a projected weekend PTA of $3,594. It will be very difficult for the Weinsteins to pick this film up from the mat, and that will make an Eastwood Oscar nomination for Best Original Score an uphill climb.

I hadn’t even heard of this one, but it seems not to have impressed the reviewers. Reader Jacob Allen, who sent the link, adds: “That’s a cumulative total of $14,000 over the weekend. At $9 a pop, that means a total national audience of 1,550 or thereabouts. In NY and LA. Put it this way, ‘Grace is Gone’ may have thrown under New Line’s ‘Rendition’ at the box office. And that’s saying something. “

SOME RECOMMENDED gifts for Dads.

Plus, the perfect stocking stuffer! (Via Dave Price.)

ROAD-TEST IMPRESSIONS re Honda’s new fuel-cell car, from reader Shawn Church. And he emails some further thoughts — click “read more” to read them.

SUBURBAN SEX PARTIES DRAW COMPLAINTS: Two thoughts. (1) If my neighbors were bringing in over 100 people for canasta on a weekly basis I’d probably mind the traffic and noise; and (2) Who says middle America is stodgy?

MORE ON HIGHER EDUCATION’S DIVERSITY PROBLEM:

At a Harvard symposium in October, former Harvard president and Clinton Treasury secretary Larry Summers argued that among liberal arts and social science professors at elite graduate universities, Republicans are “the third group,” far behind Democrats and even Ralph Nader supporters. Summers mused that in Washington he was “the right half of the left,” while at Harvard he found himself “on the right half of the right.”

I know how he feels. I spent four years in the 1990s working at the centrist Brookings Institution and for the Clinton administration and felt right at home ideologically. Yet during much of my two decades in academia, I’ve been on the “far right” as one who thinks that welfare reform helped the poor, that the United States was right to fight and win the Cold War, and that environmental regulations should be balanced against property rights.

All these views — commonplace in American society and among the political class — are practically verboten in much of academia. At many of the colleges I’ve taught at or consulted for, a perusal of the speakers list and the required readings in the campus bookstore convinced me that a student could probably go through four years without ever encountering a right-of-center view portrayed in a positive light.

A sociologist I know recalls that his decision to become a registered Republican caused “a sensation” at his university. “It was as if I had become a child molester,” he said. He eventually quit academia to join a think tank because “you don’t want to be in a department where everyone hates your guts.”

Follow the link for some hard data. (Via NewsAlert.)

UPDATE: Related thoughts here.

BEWARE OF FLIRTING ROBOTS: “A program that can mimic online flirtation and then extract personal information from its unsuspecting conversation partners is making the rounds in Russian chat forums, according to security software firm PC Tools. The artificial intelligence of CyberLover’s automated chats is good enough that victims have a tough time distinguishing the ‘bot’ from a real potential suitor, PC Tools said. The software can work quickly too, establishing up to 10 relationships in 30 minutes, PC Tools said. It compiles a report on every person it meets complete with name, contact information, and photos.” More and more, we’re living in a William Gibson world.

UPDATE: Reader John Baker emails: “Professor: as much as I enjoy Gibson, ever heard of the Turing Test?”

Yeah, and it sounds like these robots are passing it in the real world on a regular basis. Though to be fair, I doubt Alan Turing envisioned administering the test with an audience of drunk, horny Russian guys.

ED DRISCOLL HAS VIDEO from the Arlington Guitar Show.

BRENDAN LOY REVIEWS The Golden Compass. Okay, but not great. “In any event, it’s not a bad movie — I mean, it’s no Eragon, certainly — but I don’t think it’s terribly good, either”

IN THE MAIL: Murdered by Mumia: A Life Sentence of Loss, Pain, and Injustice. By Maureen Faulkner, the widow of the cop Mumia Abu-Jamal killed, with Michael Smerconish.

NBC UPDATE: “NBC reversed course Saturday and decided to air a conservative group’s television ad thanking U.S. troops.”

For NBC, a PR disaster. For Freedom’s Watch, a PR coup, getting far more publicity than they would have gotten if NBC had just aired the — rather innocuous — ads.

WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN THE INTERNET to A.P. reporter Naoki Schwartz? Because this headline — Blogger Threatens LA Campus Shooting — is misleading. The site in question, JuicyCampus.com, is a chatboard, not a blog. It’s almost as if somebody wanted to make bloggers look bad, though it’s probably just the result of appalling ignorance.

UPDATE: Give ‘em credit for swift corrections — reader Anthony Sanchez emails to note that the headline has been changed to read “Student Threatens LA Campus Shooting.” And a note at the end of the story points out: “This version CORRECTS description of Web site as chat board instead of blog.”

Nice job.

CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS’ flip-flop on waterboarding:

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said. . . .

“In fairness, the environment was different then because we were closer to Sept. 11 and people were still in a panic,” said one U.S. official present during the early briefings. “But there was no objecting, no hand-wringing. The attitude was, ‘We don’t care what you do to those guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people.’ “

Lots of people who were talking tough back then subsequently changed their tunes — out of either a sudden flowering of scruples or an unprincipled desire to go after the Bush Administration with any weapon that came to hand. But, you know, if you’re going to say “it was different back then,” it really has to be more than just an all-purpose excuse for politicians. It’s also a reason not to hang people out to dry for doing what politicians, and the public, wanted back then, when things were so “different.” Your call, but Jules Crittenden notes: “Next thing you know, someone’s going to say the Clinton co-presidency thought Saddam had a nuclear program and backed regime change.”

Yeah, and start showing videos like this. Unfair!

UPDATE: Reader Joseph Beaulieu has a difficult question for Pelosi, et al., on waterboarding: “If it was an acceptable practice five years ago, when the world was a more dangerous place, then what has happened in the past five years to make the world a less dangerous place where such harsh methods are no longer necessary?”

MORE: Dean Esmay: “Not a word of this surprises me.”

KEYSTONE KOPS IN INDONESIA: “Indonesian police mistakenly fire on Australian anti-terror chief in ambush mix up.” Er, or something worse.

(Via Rantburg.)

UPDATE: The Jakarta Post link above keeps changing. But this link to a report in the International Herald Tribune should be stable. Thanks to reader Hector Owen for the tip.

HYDROGEN CARS, YES: Hydrogen economy, not so much.

IT’S A DANGEROUS WORLD out there.

LOOKING AT HUMAN ENDOGENOUS RETROVIRUSES: These played the key role in Greg Bear’s rather good science fiction chiller, Darwin’s Radio. In this context, things are more benign.

“PUSH PRESENTS?” Er, okaaay.

THE GOOGLE MOON RACE IS ON.

MORE ON NBC.

THIS IS COOL: Nanorobot for drug delivery and diagnosis. Bring it on!

Plus, making nanotubes with bacteria.

HOLLYWOOD SCORES AGAIN: Golden Compass disappoints at box office. I’ve heard it’s okay, but nothing special.

IT’S PRETEND TO BE A TIME TRAVELER DAY. I like this tip: “Stand in front of a statue (any statue, really), fall to your knees, and yell ‘NOOOOOOOOO!’”

ED MORRISSEY IS even more unhappy with the CIA.

BANGALORE nanotechnology.

THE AUDACITY OF OPRAH.

FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH: I don’t know this blogger, but here’s a post containing what’s said to be a firsthand report from the Omaha mall shootings by someone who saw the shooter but escaped.

A LOOK AT ESPRESSO-DRINKING AND HEART HEALTH: It’s good news. (Via Frank Wilson).

CAN YOU AFFORD TO BE a stay at home mom?

AVIAN FLU UPDATE: Worries about potential human-to-human transmission in China.

CLOSER INSPECTION reveals more Huckabee problems. I liked him when we talked to him, but I don’t think he’s ready to be a frontrunner.

JESSE WALKER READS THE NATION and declares Marxism dead.

WE’RE EMBARRASSINGLY BEHIND NIGERIA on the cellphone front:

OK, I’m something of a tech junkie. As such, I’ve been particularly pleased to see the communications revolution taking hold in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa. Back in the early ’90′s when I was doing my fieldwork, calling home to the US was a big deal. I had to schedule a call a day or two in advance with NITEL (Nigerian Telephone and Telegraph, the State Monopoly), and then I would pay $6 a minute for the call.

Now, however, cell phones have smashed NITEL’s monopoly, and in many ways, Nigerians have access to better communications technology than most Americans, since their phones are all “unlocked.” One of my Nigerian brother-in-laws was shocked to hear that I didn’t have wi-fi internet access on my cell phone. “Hot spots are everywhere here now… so I never pay for international calls anymore.” As a result, I get calls from Nigeria all the time (occasionally even during class… always a hoot for my students here in Kentucky).

Plus, how this is impacting academia.

EXPLAINING THE FUNCTION OF QUOTATION MARKS.

SOME RECOMMENDED gifts for moms.

A LOOK AT CHINA’S “suffocating” air pollution.

ANOTHER PRO-SURGE CONVERT:

There are two stories here: 1) A formerly anti-war general flips on supporting the war, and now believes Petraeus has the right strategy; and 2) Batiste has left VoteVets.org, and the antiwar movement, and joined up with the pro-troop, pro-surge, pro-victory Vets for Freedom.

I wonder if this will get the attention it deserves.

MARK HALPERIN: The McCain scenario.

COMING SOON TO A JURISDICTION NEAR YOU: More on libel tourism, from Roger Kimball.

NEWT GINGRICH: Boycott NBC.

SAVE YOUR KNEES with an underwater treadmill. No, really.

CAFE AND MORE, at the Carnival of Cars.

MORE PROBLEMS for Eliot Spitzer.

ARNOLD KLING ROUNDS UP the best economics books of 2007.

IN THE MAIL: A copy of Mark Levin’s Rescuing Sprite, with a very nice inscription from the author. Thanks!

PROFESSIONAL WOMEN OF A CERTAIN AGE who don’t support Hillary. “Hillary is not just another professional woman of my generation, who ought to inspire sisterly empathy. She is a throwback to an earlier era, when women found their place through their husbands.”

Perhaps they see her as more Lurleen Wallace than Amelia Earhart.

UPDATE: The Insta-Mom emails: “I remember Lurleen Wallace. I was a citizen in Wallace’s Alabama. And Hillary Clinton is NO Lurleen Wallace!”

THE TEDDY BEAR THAT embarrassed Sudan.

I MENTIONED THE CHINESE AGE OF EXPLORATION the other day, and a reader informed me of this not-yet-published alt-history novel on that topic: 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance. It could easily have worked out that way, and if you’d been watching things in, say, 1400 it probably would have looked like the way to bet.

UPDATE: A somewhat related item from Rand Simberg.

ANOTHER UPDATE: S.M. Stirling emails:

Noticed the bit on your blog about the Chinese “exploration” fleets of the 1400′s. In point of fact they didn’t do any exploration at all; they were prestige projects ‘showing the flag’ along trade routes that had been in operation for centuries, if not millennia.

Experienced pilots were available for every single mile. The Chinese did no exploration and had no interest in going anywhere they didn’t already know about; they were about as likely to find the Americas or sail around the Cape to Europe as they were to fly to the moon by putting their heads between their knees and spitting hard.

Furthermore, the reason they built very big ships was to impress the locals, not because of any technological superiority. Wooden sailing ships of more than about 2000 tons burden have severe technical problems and are less seaworthy than those of more moderate size; that’s why a 2000-ton ship remained “very large” well into the 19th century, when iron and then steel frames and hulls became available. The finest of the China tea-clippers, the Cutty Sark, was around 900 tons displacement.

Even in the late 1400′s, European ships were more efficient and the advantage increased over time. Eg., the ‘water-tight compartments’ of Chinese junks were of value only when the ship hit a rock. In between, they meant that the vessel couldn’t have a gun deck, and that moving cargo around was much more cumbersome.

The Chinese were an inventive people but not technologically inclined as a society. When the British stormed the Taku forts in the course of the Opium War, they found that the Chinese cannon were all fixed to baulks of timber (in a manner obsolete in Europe in 1400) and that the only models that could be aimed properly had been made under the direction of Jesuit missionaries in the 1600′s. And this in the country that invented gunpowder, and probably first used it as a propellant!

The Chinese were perfectly capable of casting cannon equal to those of the Europeans in the 1600′s, or for that matter the 1840′s — they had fine craftsmen who made large, intricate castings and had been using cast iron several hundred years before Europeans got around to developing the blast furnace. They just weren’t interested enough to do so, not until the gwailo marched into Beijing and molested their womenfolk and used the graves of their ancestors for an Aunt Sally.

The wages of isolationism.

THE “INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY” apparently enjoys limited respect with the American public:

Just 18% of American voters believe that Iran has halted its nuclear weapons program. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 66% disagree and say Iran has not stopped its nuclear weapons program. Twenty-one percent (21%) of men believe Iran has stopped the weapons development along with 16% of women.

Interesting that women are less persuaded than men.

FROM ILYA SOMIN: More on how foreign libel and hate-speech laws threaten the free speech of Americans. “As a tentative proposal, I suggest that Congress consider the possibility of creating a federal cause of action for US citizens who have been victimized by a foreign libel or hate speech lawsuit attacking speech that would be legal in the United States under the First Amendment. The US writer should be able to recover any damages that the foreign court forced him or her to pay, plus legal fees, plus perhaps some amount of punitive damages in order to promote the goal of deterrence.”

CAPT. ED SAYS don’t dismiss the CIA tape-destruction scandal.

I don’t know a lot about this, but it’s possible further evidence that I was right to oppose Harriet Miers’ nomination. Well, that’s probably unfair — she opposed destroying the tapes, according to ABC. On the other hand, she’d be a Supreme Court justice now, which would be ticklish. As I argued, the path from White House Counsel to Supreme Court is not one that should be too short.

Should we abolish the CIA? Well, it’s probably too early to draw that conclusion.

UPDATE: A different view from reader Thom Wilder:

I think I preferred the cold war days when congress and the press, and the general public for that matter, had far less knowledge/scrutiny of what the CIA does. Secrecy is the only way an intelligence agency can do its job. If it’s actions are public, as now, then they become a mere political pawn. Can you imagine how the cold war might have turned out without the CIA or SAS having had the ability to perform it’s operations almost entirely out of view and out of scrutiny?

Gitmo and terror interrogation tapes are small potatoes in the larger scheme of things, and they are better off kept secret, as they once were. Just as I don’t trust Congress to run a war via legislated, politically-motivated surrender dates and withholding of troop funding, I don’t trust them to run an intelligence agency via politically-motivated reports and knee-jerks to things like destroyed interrogation tapes. (I’ll take my chances entrusting the Military, and yes the CIA.) I don’t even trust Congress to have a single worthwhile thing to say about it one way or the other.

An intelligence agency by definition must operate in secret, otherwise there is little point to it’s existence, and little hope of actually gathering good intelligence. The CIA is perhaps now just another role-player in the daily political soap-opera that is our two-party travesty of a government has become, written and executive-produced by the left-biased MSM.

The old system rested on a degree of patriotism and self-control that is no longer present in our political class, including the media. It also depended on a willingness to discipline those who departed from the norms. That, too, is absent.

CONGRESS! WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? An amusing parody.

AMAZON’S ‘BOTS DELIVER gift recommendations for girlfriends and wives.

DON’T TELL JONAH GOLDBERG: The Flying, Screaming Monkey Toy.

JAMES LILEKS:

Said the concerned public official: “This is not an ‘oops.’ I hate to differ, but yes, this is the technical definition of “oops.” This is the equivalent of thinking you won the Powerball and running up every credit card you have

“Lundgren said the trouble began in August when a clerk went into Mattson’s file to change the designation of the property, at 233 Lake St. E., from homestead to non-homestead to reflect its change in status after its sale.

“The clerk filled in the $18,900 proposed valuation, but then mistakenly hit the key to exit the program. The computer added four zeros to fill out the nine numerical spaces required by the software, thus indicating the value was $189,000,000.”

This generated new estimates of increased property tax revenues.

“Those three entities — which were counting on the $2.5 million in increased property tax collections — now face the daunting task of raising taxes or cutting budgets to make up for the shortfall.”

Good grief.

URBAN COUGARS IN THE DALLAS AREA:

Flyers now warn of the danger: A mountain lion sighting on the Allen-Lucas border that’s putting families on edge.

“We moved out here for the space and for our daughter so she can have a place to play and go hunt frogs, but now I can’t let her out,” said resident Jana Zettl.

It’s another David Baron moment. I’ve written about this before.

UPDATE: A different kind of cougar is roaming Dallas, as well. Rrrowr!

A CHRISTMAS TIP SUGGESTION FROM MY BROTHER: Tip your garbage collectors. “If anybody deserves a little extra credit for toiling in the cold, I think it’s them.” They certainly work harder this time of year, too.

My brother’s band, 46 Long, has a cool new website, too.

PRAISE FOR SELF-DEFENSE as incitement to violence. Sigh.

MIKE ALLEN: Why the New 35-MPG Fuel Economy Standard Is a Bad Idea. He thinks high gas prices will do a better job of encouraging economy. He may be right. Already sales of light trucks and SUVs are plummeting.

THIS SEEMS KIND OF UNFAIR: Last year, we interviewed Gordon Crovitz, and he described himself as “the last person in the country with ‘newspaper publisher’ in his title who nonetheless is an optimist.”

Now this: “People briefed on the matter said that both Mr. Zannino and L. Gordon Crovitz, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, would be succeeded by trusted lieutenants of Rupert Murdoch soon after the takeover was complete.” Though to be fair, he was optimistic about the Wall Street Journal as a newspaper. Still . . ..

BETTER ALL THE TIME: Phil Bowermaster rounds up all sorts of news you probably missed. Brighten up your weekend by reading it!

HEH: An objective look at Mitt Romney’s speech.

VIDEO: Voices from Anbar.

THOUGHTS ON “STEYNOPHOBIA” AND LIBEL TOURISM: “I think ultimately we are going to need some legislation — a federal cause of action against those who intentionally use foreign courts to attempt to suppress American free expression rights. We also need diplomatic pressure to be brought to bear against the countries that are the practitioners of this anti-democratic extortion racket and the countries that allow their courts and other official institutions to serve the purpose.”

PREDICTION: The N.I.E. release will cause Iran to go full steam ahead. Thanks, “intelligence community!”

I understand that Israeli representatives will be meeting with the Joint chiefs in a couple of days, to present evidence that the NIE is wrong.

AYAAN HIRSI ALI: “In the last few weeks, in three widely publicized episodes, we have seen Islamic justice enacted in ways that should make Muslim moderates rise up in horror. . . . But where are the moderates?” Scared, or tacitly approving, I guess.

UPDATE: Here are some: 6,000 Iranians Attend Funeral of Executed Gay Youth.

Too bad so many in the West are ready to betray them. Otherwise, one might be forced to take a stand . . . .

Meanwhile, C.J. Burch emails: “If the MSM made a hundredth of the effort on behalf of moderate mulsims that they made on African-American rights in the sixties (and they were right in doing that and God Bless them for it) we would have a much better world, and a much more noble MSM. Today I would argue they are doing the opposite of what they did in the sixties… empowering powerful jihadis at the expense of weak moderates all over the world.”

But see the link just above . . . .

DON SURBER is celebrating the new media age. Not bad for a guy who can say: “not only do I work for a newspaper but for an afternoon newspaper in a 2-newspaper town.”

MICKEY KAUS:

Reminder: Back in January, the courageously incoherent Sen. Chuck Hagel called the “surge”

“the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam, if it’s carried out.”

He got lots of glowing coverage. But whatever the surge is, it isn’t that. … Why mention this? In case anyone feels an urge to draft MSM favorite Hagel for president on the Unity’08 ticket.

I’m guessing that urge is pretty weak, except in a few newsrooms. And even there, it’s probably resistable.

THAT TIVO makes you look younger. Some people will want to buy two!

LEE HARRIS thinks Romney bombed. But this editorial from The Examiner is fairly positive.

OUCH: “Hollywood gets shown up by pro-war YouTube videos and a didactic antiwar cat.”

MY EARLIER POST ON liability for places that ban guns led to some objections: Malls are private property, so why can’t the owners exclude guns if they like?

Well, malls are only sort of private property. You can, for example, exclude people from your home because you don’t like their race or religion; mall owners can’t do that because it’s against public policy, and a mall is a place of public accommodation. In addition, business owners generally take on a higher duty of care for customers on their premises, including a duty to protect them from the violent acts of third parties if those acts are reasonably foreseeable. The question is, given the tendency of mass shootings to occur in places where guns are banned, and given that gun bans take away customers’ ability to defend themselves — and other customers — does this result in liability of shopping malls when such shootings occur? Or, at least, produce a duty to have more armed security than they otherwise would have (the Omaha mall appears to have had very little) in order to make up for the increased insecurity created by the gun ban? The question isn’t open and shut, but it seems to me to be ripe for litigation.

MOJAVE SPACEPORT UPDATE: Earlier I noted a report noted by Rand Simberg and several other space bloggers that the Mojave Space Port was in danger of closure by the FAA. I also emailed Patricia Smith, the FAA’s Associate Adminstrator for Commercial Space Transportation. She responds: “The report is totally inaccurate.”

I’m very happy to hear that, and very grateful for the swift reply.

SNAPPY ANSWERS TO SILLY QUESTIONS ABOUT GUNS: (1) We don’t allow felons or the mentally ill to carry guns. Iran seems to fit in to this category . . .

(2) Suits against gun manufacturers are an attempt by government officials to circumvent the political process, using tort law to do what they can’t do via legislation because the voters oppose it. I don’t think that applies to my example at all.

I’ll add that I’m pretty sure that nobody in the Omaha mall was thinking, “Good thing the crazy guy is the only one here with a gun.”

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT: They told me that if George W. Bush were reelected, religious zealots, with cooperation from the state, would be crushing the speech of freethinkers. And they were right!

NBC IS REFUSING TO RUN PRO-TROOPS ADS from Freedom’s Watch, but you can see them at the link. They told me that if George W. Bush were reelected we’d see a sort of soft fascism in which corporate media would freeze out views that were politically uncongenial. And they were right! “Freedom of speech: at some of our networks, you can’t even buy it!”

UPDATE: Indeed: “Watch the ads on the Powerline blog linked to. Are they perhaps offensive in their very innocuousness? Do they paper over the complexities by using such simple phrases as ‘Thank you’? Perhaps it is too controversial to say ‘We think you’re heros!’ Is NBC’s position that they support our troops, but they find anybody saying ‘thank you’ to them offensive?” The ads seem completely unobjectionable to me.

PERRY DE HAVILLAND REPORTS from the Golden Umbrella Awards.

HOW TO BE A ROLE MODEL: “Betty Friedan ruined a Super Bowl party in my very own home by wearing a black leather miniskirt and swinging her (not bad) legs clad in fishnet stockings back and forth in front of the TV screen so that nobody could see the plays. She radicalized a sizable bunch of neutral men into committed anti-feminists that day.”

POSTGLOBAL: “Does Hugo Chavez’s defeat in Venezuela’s constitutional referendum mean the beginning of the end for Latin American leftism?”

THIS SEEMS LIKE GOOD NEWS: Iraq Bonds Rally on U.S. Troop Surge, Oil Earnings.

IN THE MAIL: John Kao’s Innovation Nation: How America Is Losing Its Innovation Edge, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do to Get It Back.

IN TEACHING, IT’S CALLED “DOING A FADE” when you step back and let the students deal with a problem mostly on their own. This story from the New York Times had me thinking of that in connection with Iran:

The leaders of France and Germany said Thursday that Iran remained a danger and that other nations needed to keep up the pressure over its nuclear program despite a United States intelligence report’s conclusion that Tehran was no longer building a bomb.

Speaking at a joint news conference at the Élysée Palace, President Nicolas Sarkozy and Chancellor Angela Merkel said they had not changed their minds despite the findings of the American intelligence estimate released Monday, which some believed would have eroded support for tougher new sanctions.

I don’t believe that the Administration, or the “intelligence community,” is smart enough to be doing this on purpose, but it may have the same effect. And now that France and Germany are led by non-idiots, it may even work out.

THOUGHTS ON THE FAILURE OF GUN CONTROL, from Roger Kimball.

REMEMBERING PEARL HARBOR with five survivors.

ANOTHER DEMOCRAT ON IRAQ: “The security situation in Iraq has improved dramatically in the past few months. That’s the assessment of North Dakota Congressman Earl Pomeroy, who just returned from a visit to Iraq. . . . The congressman says his visit proved to him that General David Patraeus, who is in charge of American forces in Iraq, has done an extraordinary job.” First Murtha, now this. This will make the troop-defunding effort a bit more difficult, I imagine.

UPDATE: Similar thoughts.

DON’T TELL ANN ALTHOUSE: Squirrel armor.

FORGET WAR OR POLITICS — if you want lots of reader email, blog about free shipping!

CONGRESS — creating a legal obligation to report your horny kids?

TONY KRONMAN’S NEW BOOK on values and higher education gets a thoughtful review over at Gay Patriot.