HOW SAD HAVE THINGS GOTTEN? The New York Post cries enough. Robert George writes on hate mail and death threats on both sides of the Schiavo business, and says it’s the worst acrimony he’s ever experienced in decades of dealing with controversial issues. Meanwhile, Bryan Preston of Junkyard Blog emailed me the text of this post with the observation: “I obviously expect that the JYB has enjoyed its last instalanche, so this email isn’t a troll for a link.”

Well, JYB has been a bit mean to me, and doesn’t seem to grasp the point of my argument — which has been that passing Congressional legislation designed to influence the outcome of a particular case doesn’t fit well with notions of federalism. Mickey Kaus can airily say “federalism, schmederalism” and note that if it were up to him he’d get rid of states and divide the country into ten convenient administrative districts, but one doesn’t expect to hear similar sentiments from conservatives. Bryan sees this as libertarians telling conservatives what to believe, but I think it’s more a case of libertarians being disappointed to see that what they thought of as common ground wasn’t so common after all. It’s not hypocritical for liberals like Kaus, or Bill Clinton, to ignore federalism, because they’ve never cared about it. I thought that conservatives did.

As for the rest of the personal attacks in the earlier post, well, they’re not worthy of Bryan, but this is one of those episodes that seems to bring out the worst in people. That’s why I didn’t really want to weigh in to begin with — I knew that I was unlikely to persuade anyone, because very few people seem to care about the facts, or about arguments.

That Bryan thinks that he’s somehow now under some sort of lifetime link-ban simply illustrates how inflamed this has become. But I’ve tried to keep my head, even as those around me are, all too often, losing theirs. How well I’ve succeeded is for readers to judge.

UPDATE: Nice observations here and here from Soxblog.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I have more thoughts in this column — though I’m labelled a “conservative,” which is a misnomer, and more obviously so these days.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Patterico emails to ask if I’m saying that people who disagree with me can’t handle facts or logic. No — though if you read the incredibly nasty emails I’ve gotten the last few days, hoping for the InstaWife to suffer Terri Schiavo’s fate, etc. — you might forgive me for taking that position. But I know that emailers aren’t a representative sample: The best may not lack all conviction, but the worst are always full of passionate intensity.

However, the fact that so few have bothered to read what I’ve actually written is disturbing. I’ve been accused of wanting to see Terri Schiavo die out of some twisted love for death, when I actually wrote that if it was up to me I might well put the tube in and turn her over to the family. But what I’ve been writing about isn’t outcomes, it’s about process — and contempt for the Constitution and the responsibilities of different branches of government — and I’m absolutely appalled at the people who posit deeply implausible judicial conspiracies, or say that they don’t care about the Constitution if it stands in the way of getting what they want. I’m not prone to hold grudges of the sort that Bryan fears, but I’m deeply disappointed to hear a lot of folks acting like the lefties they usually complain about.

Among those I’d include Jonathan Last, who accuses me of a campaign for Terri’s death, and of agreeing with Andrew Sullivan about the threat of “theocrats” even though I explicitly posted my disagreement with Andrew on that point. Hugh Hewitt, whom Last quotes, seems to understand the concept of “cordial disagreements among friends.” But to some others, any disagreement on any part of the party line makes you one of the enemy, it seems. As I say, a lot of people are acting like the worst of the Left on this one. I think that Jonah Goldberg, et al., are whistling in the dark when they say there’s no crackup here. Will it last? That depends on how people act afterward, I guess. [LATER: How off-base is Last? Far enough that Bryan Preston is defending me against Last’s charges.]

FINALLY: Heh. This seems about right:

DON’T MISS this week’s Carnival of Education.

MORE LEAKAGE FROM THE VOLCKER COMMITTEE: The case of the Main Mentor.

IT’S BLOGGERRIFFIC! This week’s Carnival of the Vanities is up!

NORM GERAS has a firsthand report from inside Zimbabwe. Things aren’t pretty.

And I’ve got more on Zimbabwe’s upcoming elections over at GlennReynolds.com.

RAND SIMBERG has thoughts on arms control in outer space. I wrote something on that topic myself, a while back.

KIM DU TOIT is a proud winner. But, really, it’s an honor just to be nominated. After that it’s just a popularity contest. . . .

BLOGGING LEGISLATOR UPSETS LEADERSHIP: I’m guessing, though, that overall the leadership has more to lose here.

ONE OF THE SIDE EFFECTS OF THE RAZORBLOGGING is that lots of purists have been telling me that I absolutely must get one of these for my lawn. It’s safer than a straight razor!

RUMORS OF CIVIL WAR IN VENEZUELA:

The army is unhappy about the cozy relationship between Chavez and leftist rebel groups in neighboring Colombia. Venezuelan troops have been operating more aggressively along the Colombian border. This is officially a crackdown on the smugglers who always have operated there. But the Venezuelan troops are accused to really going after the Colombian rebels, or supporting them. Take your pick. No one is sure exactly what is going on.

To top it all off, Chavez is now organizing a new army, one loyal to him personally. This is part of his plan create “Bolivarian Circles of Venezuela Frontline Defense for National Democratic Revolution.” These are political clubs all over the country, particularly in poor areas, where Chavez has the most support. Chavez expects to have 2.2 million members, who will be the backbone of the “democratic revolution unfolding in Venezuela.” What upsets the armed forces is Chavezs decision to pass out infantry weapons to these political clubs, so that his new political clubs can use force to “defend the revolution.” There are believed to be Cuban advisors involved in this effort. This sort of mass organization has been used before in Latin America, by both leftist and rightist dictators (pro-fascist Juan Peron of Argentina, and communist Fidel Castro of Cuba.) But by passing out guns to his most dedicated followers, Chavez is angering the military, making the middle class even more nervous, and setting the stage for a bloody civil war.

We’ve heard this story before, and it never ends well.

DEMOCRACY IN BHUTAN: Everybody Wangchuk tonight!

GREG SCOBLETE does a New York Times compare-and-contrast exercise, looking at the treatment of Enron vs. Oil-for-Food.

VERIZON WIRELESS UPDATE: I like the go-anywhere quality of the Verizon EVDO data card. But when I signed up in November, the salesman told me that we’d go from the 122kbps “National Access” service to the 512kbps “Broadband Access” service by the end of the first quarter of 2005. They’ve got one day left, and there’s no sign of it happening. That’s a bit irritating.

OXBLOG looks at media-approved police brutality.

NASA PODCASTS: Cool. (Via Space Law Probe).

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: “I had sincerely intended to be the only scribbler in America who stayed out of this most stupid and degrading argument. . . . But, once you engage for even an instant, you are drawn into a vortex of irrationality and nastiness that generates its own energy.”

Indeed.

On the other hand, John Hawkins has put together a Terry Schiavo FAQ that is neither nasty nor irrational.

DON’T RAGE AGAINST THE BLOG: Embrace the blog! Advice for Big Media folks, over at GlennReynolds.com.

IS THERE HOPE FOR NASA? My TechCentralStation column is up.

MORE PROTESTS FOR DEMOCRACY in the Arab world:

In this roiling political spring of protest and debate about democracy in repressive Arab countries, cell phone text messaging has become a powerful underground channel of free and often impolite speech, especially in the oil-rich Persian Gulf monarchies, where mobile phones are common but candid public talk about politics is not.

Demonstrators use text messaging to mobilize followers, dodge authorities and swarm quickly to protest sites. Candidates organizing for the region’s limited elections use text services to call supporters to the polls or slyly circulate candidate slates in countries that supposedly ban political groupings. And through it all, anonymous activists blast their adversaries with thousands of jokes, insults and political limericks.

Ah yes: “There once was a man from Yemen . . .”

VARIOUS PEOPLE have been demanding spring-weather pictures from Knoxville, but I’ve been — alas — too busy to take any. I managed to take a few on the way across campus today, though, so here you are.

UPDATE: Moved to the “extended entry” area to speed page loads.

(more…)

AN ITEM I LINKED TO EARLIER, suggesting that the WSJ should have credited Roger Simon, was in error, as was I. As Roger notes, the WSJ says they got the same information independently.

SOME THOUGHTS on military nanotechnology.

SHOCKWAVES AND ECHOES:

The shock waves from Kyrgyzstan’s lightning revolution are spreading around the former Soviet Union – and into the heart of Russia – leading analysts to wonder which regimes might be next to face the peoples’ wrath.
Recent days have seen a spate of copycat protests launched by opposition groups that were perhaps hoping their own local authorities might fold and flee under pressure, as did Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev when demonstrators stormed his Bishkek complex last week. . . .

Two Russian ethnic republics, Ingushetia and Bashkortostan, have seen mass street demonstrations this week directed against Kremlin-installed leaders. Even in remote Mongolia, the former USSR’s Asian satellite, hundreds of protesters gathered last week to “congratulate our Kyrgyz brothers” and demand a rerun of last June’s disputed parliamentary polls.

Some experts see a common thread among these upheavals that began 17 months ago when Georgians overthrew Eduard Shevardnadze in a peaceful revolt and continued with Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution” late last year.

“Every situation is different, but a single process is unfolding,” says Valentin Bogatyrov, a former Akayev adviser and director of the International Institute of Strategic Studies in Bishkek. “Kyrgyzstan is a kind of trigger that will spread this unrest to our neighbors, and beyond. We are witnessing the second breakup of the Soviet Union.”

Putin can’t like this. Here’s more on Ingushetia, including the observation that it’s “on the brink of revolution.” I don’t know if that’s true, but clearly there are a lot of people interested in democracy.

MORE ON THE U.N.’S AMBITION TO REGULATE THE INTERNET:

In a series of speeches over the last year, Zhao has suggested that the ITU could become involved in everything from security and spam to managing how Internet Protocol addresses are assigned. The ITU also is looking into some aspects of voice over Internet Protocol–VoIP–communications, another potential area for expansion.

“Countering spam is just one of many elements of protecting the Internet that include availability during emergencies and supporting public safety and law enforcement officials,” Zhao wrote in December. Also, he wrote, the ITU “would take care of other work, such as work on Internet exchange points, Internet interconnection charging regimes, and methods to provide authenticated directories that meet national privacy regimes.”

Gee, do you think any of that stuff could be used for censorship or something?

LOTS MORE NEWS FROM LEBANON: Heads are (figuratively) rolling. And they’re the right heads.