MELISSA SCHWARTZ IS SHOWING OFF HER TATTOOS. And they’re just what I would have expected!

And would somebody please get her a whiteboard?

MORE ON THE LEFT’S POST-SIXTIES PRIGGISHNESS: Nelson Ascher writes:

Sorry for disturbing you once more, but there is something I would like to add to the discussion about the left’s humorlessness. The first person whose brilliant comments I have read about this subject was none other than the recently deceased Pauline Kael. (By the way, the last article I wrote for my Brazilian newspaper before 911 was precisely her obituary). According to Kael, in her youth the left for instance used to be open and free about sexual matters. It was also highly critical of the bourgeoisie’s hypocrisy and puritanism. But, as soon as its attitudes won the day and were adopted wholesale by the middle classes (the so called sexual revolution of the 60’s), the left itself began to reject them, accusing the bourgeois, petit or not, of a lack of seriousness, promiscuity and of turning sex in one more object to be used and discarded by the consumer society.

What is more striking, however, is how much Kael’s best observations prefigured the best anti-idiotarian tone and views of the blogosphere. Even more to the point were her ironic commentaries on the patronising way European intellectuals criticized America from the standpoint of the pseudo Kultur Volk. For instance, she was devastating when writing about Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, a film, according to her, through which someone who knew close to nothing about the USA tried arrogantly to show the Americans what their country is all about. She also identified the same kind of dismissive arrogance among the intellectuals who went from Europe to the USA as refugees before and during the war. These people also shared with the Old World’s intelligentsia a supreme disdain for American mass culture.

Maybe it is none of my business, being neither a blogger nor an American (well, not a North American anyway), but the blogosphere could well, one year after her death, honour and pay hommage to someone who spent her life exposing the European anti-Americanism for what it is and fighting for the best in the modern and democratic mass culture and society. I personally would very much have liked to know what would have been her thoughts about all that happened during this last year.

Interesting points all. (And why aren’t you a blogger, Nelson? Brazil’s the second-bloggingest country in the world, after the United States, according to Pyra.) Yes, if there’s a single lodestar to the Left it’s that if most Americans favor something — even if it’s something the Left formerly favored — then it’s time to take a new position. This is, of course, the formula for a minority party that feels isolated within its own country, and that is incapable of enjoying even its victories. Which sounds about right.

UPDATE: Pejman Yousefzadeh offers his diagnosis.

SINCE PEOPLE SEEM TO LIKE LAW REVIEW ARTICLES, and articles about guns, and especially law review articles about guns, here’s one by Dave Kopel on what state constitutions can teach us about the Second Amendment, and one by Eugene Volokh that also looks at state right-to-arms provisions (and other state constitutional provisions) as a means of understanding the Second Amendment. Finally, here’s one by me on the Tennessee Constitution’s right-to-arms provision, which turns out to be important because the Supreme Court in United States v. Miller (more about that case here) cited an important Tennessee case on the kinds of weapons protected by the right.

Maybe this post will even help answer Aimee’s question.

THE INTERNATIONAL CONFEDERATION OF FREE TRADE UNIONS, which claims over 156 million members, is protesting Sharia law in Nigeria. Excerpt:

In an address this week at the University of Bayero in Kano, Adams Oshiomhole, the President of the Nigerian Labour Congress, firmly denounced the application of the Sharia (religious law) in certain northern states. He argued that its victims, who were almost always women and mostly poor, were increasingly being discriminated against. His statement specifically refers to the ruling of 8 August by the Islamic Court of Appeal at Funtua, in the State of Katsina, which sentenced Amina Lawal Kurami to death by stoning for bearing her third child after a divorce.

In a letter to the Nigerian ambassador in Brussels, the ICFTU also stressed its indignation and deep concern at the fate reserved for Amina Lawal Kurami by the Nigerian justice system. . . .

Moreover, the international trade union movement is deeply concerned at the growing number of countries introducing and applying the principles of the Sharia in not just civil, but also criminal proceedings.

This could lead to some interesting alliances.

JACK SHAFER WONDERS WHAT’S HAPPENED TO THE LEFT? I think he’s right about this, and he does a good job of capturing why I no longer consider myself a leftist, even though not many of my actual positions have changed:

While the right seeks converts, trying both to persuade and entertain, the left spends its journalistic energy policing the movement.

And here’s a quote from the John Powers article that Shafer’s writing about:

Back in the ’60s, the left was the home of humor, iconoclasm, pleasure. But over the last two decades, the joy has gone out of the left — it now feels hedged in by shibboleths and defeatism — while the right has been having a gas. . . .

And so, rather than rethink the possibilities of a “progressive left” (to use one of its prize terms), the editors [of The Nation] have remained content to belabor what its readers already know (e.g., Bush is a bum) while avoiding tough-minded journalistic coverage of the left. It settles for easy analysis, like suggesting that Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney lost her renomination bid simply because of the Jewish money sent to defeat her. Is this really true? The left would be better served if the magazine investigated such claims rather than merely assuming their truth, although this would involve actually going to Georgia.

Powers is ostensibly writing about the difference between the Weekly Standard and The Nation, but it’s really the whole Left that went wrong, shifting its focus from Abbie Hoffman’s pranks to Andrea Dworkin’s prudery over the course of a decade — a decade in which, surprise, the Left lost its popular support.

DON’T DIANA-FY 9/11, writes Mark Steyn. Boy, is he on-target with this one. I was watching Diana-schmaltz coverage on morning TV today, and, well, boy is he on-target with this one. I don’t want it to be an occasion for “healing,” or “coping” or getting in touch with feelings — I want it to be an occasion for sentiments not generally associated with Connie Chung and Barbara Walters.

HESIOD THEOGENY says the war in Iraq has already started. He’s right, of course.

THE SILENCE OF THE CROWS: TAPPED responds to overwrought concerns about missing crows in the appropriate fashion. I wonder what Croooow Blog would say. . . .

IT’S 1990 ALL OVER AGAIN, writes James Robbins.

LESSONS FROM CYNTHIA MCKINNEY’S DEFEAT: Michael Barone is on target, as usual.

UPDATE: This piece by Earl Ofari Hutchinson in The Black World Today sounds a similar theme:

Majette did not beat McKinney by a razor thin margin. She trounced her. Blacks make up nearly half of the voters in her district. If McKinney had captured the solid black vote that her supporters claimed she would get, it would have pushed her over the top, or at the very least, made the election much closer than it was.

McKinney’s bombast on the Middle-East, her assault on Bush’s war on terrorism, and grandstand offer to take Saudi money was yet another troubling sign of the penchant of many black elected officials to grab at showy, chic issues to get attention rather than presenting, quiet, and thoughtful solutions to the problems of poverty, failing public schools, crime, gang and drug violence, and the near pandemic of HIV/AIDS that has taken a massive toll on middle-class and poor blacks. . . .

The political disconnect of black politicians such as McKinney from black voters has caused their free fall from important state and national offices. In the past two years they have lost mayoral races to whites in the majority or near majority black cities of Baltimore and Oakland. The number of black state legislators has plummeted in the California legislature in the past decade. They have lost dozens of local and municipal offices nationwide. But they haven’t learned very much from their slide.

Yes. Reading some of the coverage, you’d almost forget that Cynthia McKinney was beaten by another black woman.

THERE WILL BE PROTESTS against Joe Biden’s dumb “RAVE Act” in D.C. and Los Angeles on September 6. There’s more background over at BlogCritics.

NICK SCHULZ REPORTS ON THE PRO-GLOBALIZATION MARCHES IN JOHANNESBURG. It sounds like this conference is disappointing its organizers. It might actually lead to something useful:

“We want the freedom to grow what we want, when we want, with what technology we want, and without trade-distorting subsidies or tariffs,” said Barun Mitra, a farm activist from New Delhi who brought two-dozen farmers from India.

The WSSD has for several days been abuzz with talk of possible trade agreements among participating nations. To that end, these farmers were hoping to let Europe and the rest of the developed world know that biotech crops are not to be feared, but instead will “help them do more with less,” said Mitra. The European Union currently props up its farmers with billions in agricultural subsidies and, more perniciously, keeps out foreign goods with restrictions on genetically modified foods — all to the detriment of Africans and others in developing countries.

But the United States is currently leading a charge here in Johannesburg to phase out all agricultural supports over five years. Meanwhile, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick is entering a complaint to the World Trade Organization against the European Union. Zoellick says the EU’s moratorium on genetically modified imports is a restraint to trade and a violation of WTO agreements, a position supported by the farmers who marched on Wednesday.

Personally, I credit James Lileks, though I suppose it’s barely possible that I’m overstating his role.

AIMEE DEEP is endorsing an electronic right to bear arms. In fact, she’s working to make it a reality.

GMA IS RUNNING A RETROSPECTIVE on the Munich Olympic massacre. It’s obvious now that in 1972 the Palestinian “liberation” movement was already all about murder rather than liberation. It was obvious then, too, to anyone who paid attention. And now Peter Jennings — who either hasn’t figured that out, or just doesn’t care — is on the screen talking how smart he was at the time about the ineptitude of the German police.

If Charlie Gibson had any balls, which he doesn’t, he’d ask Jennings how he can sympathize with terrorists, having seen their work up close.

EVERYBODY IS GLOATING about Donahue’s lousy ratings, though this story from the Washington Times suggests that he’s not doing quite as badly as people say.

I caught a few minutes of his show in rerun this morning (it’ll appear as a bump in his ratings) and it wasn’t so bad. He was interviewing an airline security specialist who was explaining that the inconvenience and stupidity of airline security were causing business travellers to stay home. No points for originality there, but you can’t argue with the choice of topic.

WEST NILE VIRUS is the Richard Reid of plagues, says Jim Henley.

LOOKS LIKE THE ADMINISTRATION’S DIPLOMATIC STRATEGY is bearing fruit.

The new center-right French government has decided to stop criticizing American war planning against Saddam Hussein and instead maximize its leverage with the United States by stressing areas of agreement, according to senior French officials.

Under the previous center-left government, French-American relations were often poisonous, characterized by repeated spats over issues ranging from perceived American unilateralism to policy in the Middle East. . . .

The move may also help protect France’s national interests in Iraq, including its oil trade, should the United States wage war and win, the officials said.

This sounds as if we’ve convinced them that we’re going to do it, and they’re convinced that we’ll win, and relatively quickly.

GEITNER SIMMONS replies to Akhil and Vik Amar.

UPDATE: Rand Simberg says the Brothers Amar are in serious error:

There are two constitutional fallacies here. The first is that a state is just a “mini-me” of the federal government. It is not.

It doesn’t strike coins. It doesn’t raise armies. It doesn’t declare and wage war. If it does any of these things, it is put down, brutally, as we saw a hundred forty years ago. To compare the election of a governor to that of a president is to betray a fundamental ignorance of the nature of the federal system.

Ouch. Simberg also proposes the following SAT-style analogy question: “The Federal government is to a state as a state is to a…?”

LATEST FROM NIELSEN: Donahue’s viewer loves the show.

THE HORSE’S MOUTH: Porphyrogenitus points out that the Guardian called the case for going after Saddam “unanswerable.” Back in November.

THE POWER OF THE BLOGOSPHERE: Some of Howard Berman’s (D-Disney) constituents discover just how much clout a blog confers.

NOT INSTAPUNDIT. IsraPundit. With advice for Palestinian journalists.

HENRY HANKS RESPONDS TO TAPPED’S RESPONSE to yours truly regarding Coulter and Bellesiles.

I’m just happy to see The American Prospect join the ranks of those who believe Bellesiles’ Arming America is fatally flawed.

JOHANNESBURG UPDATE: Greenpeace has won an award, but I don’t think they’ll be parading it back home:

Johannesburg – African and Asian farmers, and hawkers from across South Africa handed over a “Bullshit Trophy” (yes, that is the trophy’s real name) to Greenpeace, the Third World Network and BioWatch for their contribution to the “preservation of poverty” in developing countries.

The trophy comprises of a piece of wood on which two heaps of dried cow-dung – “unfortunately not elephant dung” – are mounted.

Barun Mitra of the Sustainable Development Network (SDN), a coalition of non-governmental organisations which believes, among other things, that sustainable development is attainable only through free trade, officiated at the symbolic handing-over in Johannesburg on Wednesday.

Mitra denounced the three NGOs as parasites which “prey on the blood of the poor” and did not help to improve agricultural productivity in the Third World.

“They are not interested in famine or poverty. This lot is concerned only about their own interests.

“They sit here at the World Summit for Sustainable Development in their rich man’s hotels and romanticise everything,” he said.

Bet this doesn’t get a lot of Big Media attention. But Kenya’s James Shikwati has noticed.

THE PROGRESSIVE has laid out its case against war in Iraq.

I’m not very persuaded by the invocation of Christian “just war” doctrine. That’s because (1) I don’t agree that an invasion would violate it; and (2) I don’t believe foreign (or domestic) policy should be driven by religious dogma. And I don’t really think The Progressive does either, most of the time.

UPDATE: Zach Barbera responds at length.