A BIG MARCH IN KNOXVILLE:

Up to 20,000 people turned out Saturday for a parade to welcome home the National Guard’s 278th Regimental Combat Team, providing a big-city atmosphere powered by small-town values. The rains that had been pelting the region ceased and the clouds gave way to bright sunshine for the two-hour Celebrate Freedom Parade 2006 through downtown Knoxville.

“What a great sight this is on the street today,” said Gov. Phil Bredesen as he reviewed the 2,500 members of the 278th standing in parade formation wearing their camouflage uniforms. As governor, Bredesen is commander of the Tennessee National Guard.

Bredesen said the men and women of the 278th who were deployed to Iraq for a year represent “what is the very best of our state and the very best of our nation.”

Nice to see something positive like this going on.

UPDATE: Praise for Phil Bredesen, and questions about why stuff like this gets so little attention.

MCCARTHY ON MCCARTHY: “Why isn’t she in handcuffs?”

CATHY SEIPP ON BLUE CROSS: “To decide after a therapy has proved beneficial that it’s merely ‘investigational’ and therefore should not be covered — that, actually, seems the definition of bad faith. . . . What I didn’t realize at the time was that I’d turn out to be my insurance company’s worst nightmare — the cancer patient who keeps responding to extremely expensive treatments. I only hope that Blue Cross doesn’t turn out to be mine.”

TOM MAGUIRE is looking into McCarthyism in the media.

DARFUR UPDATE: The trouble has spread to Chad, and StrategyPage has the latest:

While Sudan insists it did not support the Chad rebels, people who have traveled through the border area contradict this. The U.S. also says Sudan is involved (without revealing its sources, which probably include satellite surveillance and agents on the ground.) Sudan apparently believes that, if the faction it backed got control of Chad, the Darfur rebels would have one less place to hide out in. But some of the Darfur rebels belong to tribes that have branches in both Sudan and Chad. That said, Sudan’s brutal policy in Darfur doesn’t make sense either, but there it is. The Sudanese leadership are ruthless, and don’t much care how much mess and misery they create.

Indeed. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden — who was already mad about the end to genocide in East Timor — is now declaring war against the world over efforts to end the genocide in Darfur. I agree that this is, if genuine, an agitprop error. But it’s hard to stay in touch with the currents of popular opinion when you live in a cave.

UPDATE: TigerHawk notes something that this dog isn’t barking about: “Apart from the list’s comic aspects, it is fascinating for its omissions. Why didn’t bin Laden talk about Iraq? Less than 2 1/2 years ago, al Qaeda broke the news to the Taliban that it was diverting resources to Iraq so as to humiliate the American ‘Crusaders.'”

I guess that didn’t work out so well.

ANOTHER UPDATE: In TigerHawk’s comments, Kai Carver says that Osama did talk about Iraq. I guess it just wasn’t seen as newsworthy. Hmm.

WE ARE HERE TO SAVE THE ERF! E. . . R. . . F!

BRENDAN LOY: “Proving once again that Australia is the new Florida, Cyclone Monica is threatening to make a second landfall — this time as a Category 5 cyclone.”

It’s now stronger than Katrina and Rita ever were.

SCOTT JOHNSON TO TIM RUTTEN: “I appreciate Rutten’s drawing attention to my condemnation of the Times and the Pulitzer Prize committee.”

THE WASHINGTON POST ASKS: “Who are the overlooked autocrats we should be paying attention to but aren’t?” It’s not a bad list, though Robert Mugabe should probably be on it. I guess he gets more attention than the folks listed, but he still doesn’t get nearly enough.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: This is pretty cool. In the Philadelphia Inquirer PorkBusters gets called “the most effective citizen-journalist watchdog movement in a generation.”

I don’t know about that — it sounds like a bit of an exaggeration — but it’s nice to hear. There’s no question that PorkBusters has gotten a fair amount of attention, and that politicians are at least embarrassed about pork.

PorkBusters has certainly irritated Trent Lott, which is some evidence of success, and there’s a report that earmarks are down 37% presumably as the result of public pressure.

That’s not bad for a project only a few months old, run by a couple of bloggers without a budget with help from other folks in the blogosphere. But it’s going to take more than this to make a real difference. Changing the psychology is the first step, and that’s happened. And, perhaps, we’ve even started to change behavior. But we need a lot more of that, and I suspect that structural changes will be needed, too.

Still, it’s always nice to be noticed.

MICKEY KAUS: New York Times Scammed by Clinton-Burkle Spin?

It’s a bad weekend for the Times.

IRAQ’S PARLIAMENT MEETS: Iraq the Model has it covered.

On the Pajamas Podcast, Eric Umansky and I agreed that this was the big story of the weekend, and it is — notwithstanding the CIA leak story, which is also big.

MARY MCCARTHY / CIA LEAK UPDATE:

There is no mention by the Post — none — that Mary McCarthy is a big Kerry campaign and Democratic Party contributor.

How can the WPost justify reporting one friend’s mere impression that McCarthy is not biased and that it is very difficult even for those who know her well to understand why she would leak sensitive information, and yet not report the objective fact that — after a meteoric professional rise in intelligence circles during a Democratic administration — McCarthy, while a government official on a government salary, gave at least $7700 of her own money in a single year to Democratic political campaigns?

Given the Post’s delicate posture in this case — having been the recipient of at least one highly sensitive leak on a subject about which it chose to publish a story damaging to national security — you would think they might perceive a special obligation to play it down the middle here. But apparently not.

This morning’s story is said to have had no fewer than eight contributors — it was written by R. Jeffrey Smith and Dafna Linzer, and lists as contributors Walter Pincus, Al Kamen, Howard Kurtz and Dan Morse, and research editor Lucy Shackelford and researcher Magda Jean-Louis.

Since campaign contribution information is available on-line — you don’t even need to draft star reporters and research editors to dig it out — is it too much to suppose that at least one of these eight folks might have mentioned, at least in passing, that this purported non-ideologue of a leaker was giving lots of money to the effort to unseat the present administration?

I’m pretty sure that similar evidence tying a leaker to the GOP under similar circumstances would get a lot of play.

Lots more at The Belmont Club — just keep scrolling.

I’M WATCHING ANYA KAMENETZ ON CNN, going on about how bad Generation X has it. Of course, CNN’s tear-jerking vignette was about a woman who ran up huge credit-card bills in college, which isn’t terribly heartbreaking. Seems like they’re going out of their way to paint a grim economic picture. More on this story here and here.

“IT WAS MY UNDERSTANDING that there would be no math.”

BILL HOBBS is blogging again.

BILL FRIST HAS A “GET TOUGH” COLUMN ON IMMIGRATION that more or less parallels what he said in our podcast interview. I suspect, however, that he’ll have trouble delivering legislation that’s equally tough.

AN ABSTINENCE-ONLY bait-and-switch from the Bush Administration? Jeez. Not that the “official” version wasn’t lame enough to begin with.

A PACK, NOT A HERD: “A passenger who claimed to have a bomb aboard a United Airlines flight was subdued by passengers as the California-bound plane was diverted to Denver International Airport, airport officials said.” Nice to see that people haven’t gotten slack since 9/11.

UPDATE: In a related development, Mary Katharine Ham reviews the Flight 93 movie.

GATEWAY PUNDIT has a roundup of the latest Iraqi political developments.

AN ARGUMENT FOR INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY: “Mobbing” in academia. Fortunately, the Internet seems to serve as an effective antidote.

TIM WU ON REASONS TO SUPPORT NET NEUTRALITY: “The Network Neutrality debate is really a debate about what are, in effect, crown corporations, AT&T and Verizon, whose plans would distort private competition among internet service providers. Companies like AT&T are infrastructure providers, almost like the roads — and their plans are very much simple tollbooths placed on a utility necessary for the operation of the private market. That’s why I think even libertarians have reason to resist the incursions of a company like AT&T on the internet and its design.” Plus, you’re likely to see indirect — and hence less accountable — government regulation using monopolists as intermediaries. At least, that’s how it worked last time we had that kind of arrangement.

TOM MAGUIRE: “The NY Times seems to think the political contributions of the sacked CIA officer are significant, but their investigative skills are apparently a bit rusty, since they are about $7,500 light in their reporting.”

UPDATE: Lots of bloggers are jumping on this story: More here, here, and a big roundup here.

I’m pretty sure I know what the talk-radio folks will be talking about next week.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Still more here.

MORE: The coverage seems a bit warped:

If you want a good sense of where the media’s mind is in the wake of the Mary McCarthy story, check this out. . It’s an AP story about McCarthy’s firing. Guess whose picture is at the top? Not McCarthy. Not Dana Priest. Not anybody involved in the story at all, actually. It’s a picture of Scooter Libby — who’s not even mentioned in the article.

I won’t be surprised if they end up fixing it soon. But it’s there now.

So does that mean AP thinks McCarthy is the Plame source? . . .

MORE: A rather negative review of the New York Times’ defense of Mary McCarthy. [Defense? Aren’t they a neutral news source? — ed. No.]

STILL MORE: Chester invokes some literary cliches.

MORE ON PORK: “Earmark reform is now a hot topic: The online Porkbusters movement has raised awareness of it; the Senate has passed a version of earmark reform; President Bush even addressed the issue in his State of the Union. Boehner is turning up the pressure at exactly the right time. But he and Speaker Dennis Hastert need to do more if they want to revive this budget. They need to use their power on the House GOP Steering Committee — which hands out committee assignments — as leverage against Lewis: He needs to know that his chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee is at stake.”

UPDATE: Much more here.

WELL, DUH: The “culture of corruption” issue turns out to be bipartisan: “Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (W.Va.) stepped down temporarily from his post as ranking Democrat on the House ethics committee, amid accusations that he used his congressional position to funnel money to his own home-state foundations, possibly enriching himself in the process.”

Stuff like this just makes a third-party run more likely, I suspect.

HERE’S HOW TO PARTICIPATE ONLINE in today’s Milbloggers’ Conference in Washington, DC.

UPDATE: LaShawn Barber is liveblogging, and links to some others who are, too.

SCOTT OLIN SCHMIDT is pondering the Pelosi Revolution and seems pretty comfortable with the idea. Republicans beware! On the other hand, The Commissar sketches a darker vision of the future. With ugly t-shirts, to boot.

UPDATE: Questions for Republicans, here.

MORE ON THE CIA LEAKER: I suspect that we’ll see some other folks in the intelligence community losing their jobs, and possibly facing prosecution, over leaks as well, before this is all over.

UPDATE: A big roundup here, and a Scrappleface take here. And was the whole thing a sting operation?

We interview blogger Michael Totten, who spent the last six months covering Lebanon, Egypt, and Iraq for his blog, with support from his blog readers. He talks about what he saw, how well the reader-support model works, and what he sees in the region’s future.

We also talk to StrategyPage publisher Jim Dunnigan, author of numerous books on military matters, and columnist/blogger Austin Bay, who’s also the author of The Wrong Side of Brightness, a novel, and who has another novel coming out soon. They talk about China’s military and political ambitions, the progress of events in Iraq, and what to do — and what, apparently, we’re already doing rather quietly — about Iran. (There’s also some discussion of the much-touted Iranian “EMP bomb” threat.)

As always, it’s a must-listen. You can click right here to listen to it directly, or you can get it via iTunes here.

There’s an archive of previous podcasts here, and lo-fi versions for dialup are available here.

Hope you like it. My lovely and talented co-host is, as always, taking comments and suggestions for future episodes.

MORE TO COME, I EXPECT: A CIA employee fired for leaking classified information.

PUBLIUS HAS THE LATEST on political developments within Iraq. I agree that this is probably more positioning before a final resolution — at least, that’s how it looks like to my inexpert eyes. (Though more and more Iraqi politics are looking like faculty politics with the addition of AK-47s and IEDs — which is not a good thing!)

Also, read this interesting dispatch from National Guardsman Arik Catron.

MY PAPER FOR THE HARVARD BLOG/SCHOLARSHIP CONFERENCE is now online. It’s called Libel in the Blogosphere: Some Preliminary Thoughts. It’s a preliminary draft, so comments and suggestions are welcome.

Other papers are also available, here.

MICHAEL TOTTEN has posted his final report from Iraq. Don’t miss the postscript!

REBECCA MACKINNON: “I am a big fan of Skype in general, and I use it heavily. But the way Skype chooses to treat its Chinese users will ultimately impact the extent to which I as a user can trust Skype anywhere, in general.”

Read the whole thing.

SAVETHEINTERNET.COM is a site dedicated to opposing a two-tiered Internet. I’m certainly against that, though I haven’t followed the twists and turns of this debate too closely.

UPDATE: A survey of the issue, from Dale Franks.

IN THE MAIL: Matthew Continetti’s The K Street Gang : The Rise and Fall of the Republican Machine.

I understand the logic of the “K Street strategy,” but I don’t see much in the way of actual results in passing Bush’s domestic agenda. Not positive results, anyway.

MUCH MORE ON THE HILTZIK STORY, from Howard Kurtz.

UPDATE: More from Cathy Seipp. And Hugh Hewitt is noting the contrast between L.A. Times editor John Carroll’s dismissive comments about the lower standards of the blogosphere, and, well, this. And Ace writes: “I’m going to pretend that this is the MOST IMPORTANT STORY OF THE ENTIRE YEAR, as the left did with Gannongate and l’affaire ‘The Nech.'”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Roger Simon is playing Freud with Hiltzik.

MARK TAPSCOTT has been writing editorials for the DC Examiner and posts links here.

Plus, he posts the Carnival of Cars. He’s been awfully busy for a guy who’s about to have tendon surgery.

BLOG WEEK IN REVIEW: Me, Eric Umansky, Tammy Bruce, and Austin Bay on the events of the week in a new podcast from PJ Media. Please give it a listen — and, when you’re done, fill out the survey.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER:

The Defense Department waves away the protesting generals as just a handful out of more than 8,000 now serving or retired. That seems to me too dismissive. These generals are no doubt correct in asserting that they have spoken to and speak on behalf of some retired and, even more important, some active-duty members of the military.

But that makes the generals’ revolt all the more egregious. The civilian leadership of the Pentagon is decided on Election Day, not by the secret whispering of generals.

We’ve always had discontented officers in every war and in every period of our history. But they rarely coalesce into factions. That happens in places such as Hussein’s Iraq, Pinochet’s Chile or your run-of-the-mill banana republic. And when it does, outsiders (including the United States) do their best to exploit it, seeking out the dissident factions to either stage a coup or force the government to change policy.

That kind of dissident party within the military is alien to America. Some other retired generals have found it necessary to rise to the defense of the administration. Will the rest of the generals, retired or serving, now have to declare which camp they belong to?

It is precisely this kind of division that our tradition of military deference to democratically elected civilian superiors was meant to prevent. Today it suits the antiwar left to applaud the rupture of that tradition. But it is a disturbing and very dangerous precedent that even the left will one day regret.

“Even?” I’d say “especially.” They’ve been pushing the idea that generals should run things, not their civilian superiors, and (with Kerry) the idea that only a combat veteran should be President. Yes, those are opportunistic slogans of the moment. But they’re still slogans. Do they really want that kind of a country?

UPDATE: Reader Rachel Walker emails:

I understand the right to dissent. Heck, it’s been my side’s rallying cry since it lost to Bush in the Supreme Court in 2000. But the logic of this dissent puts their train of thought far into the (dare I say it) fascist line of behavior, since they are basically calling for the military to control all things.

This is what contrarian arguing can end up doing – leading one into exactly what they did not intend to be. I had to learn the lesson that not every action equals a proper reaction.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Fred Schoeneman disagrees: “The precedent was already set, back when all those retired (and active duty) generals were bitching about ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ And before that it was set by a General on active duty. His name was MacArthur, and he was a pro-war Republican.”

MacArthur was fired. And neither he, nor the generals who bitched about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” were treated kindly by the media. Indeed, they were treated as threats to Democracy and the American Way. Why is this different?

MICKEY KAUS: “Are you as suspicious as I am about the current well-publicized crackdown on employers of illegal immigrants?”

JONAH GOLDBERG accuses Al Gore of perpetrating a “green scare.”

THE NINTH CIRCUIT BLOWS IT ON THE FIRST AMENDMENT, according to this post by Eugene Volokh.

I’VE BEEN COMPLAINING ABOUT AIRPORT SECURITY for a long time. But it seems to still stink:

Increased airport security in the United States has been an expensive disaster that is turning a lot of otherwise law-abiding people into outlaws. But it’s worse than that. International travelers have noticed that airport security outside the United States, especially in Europe (the home of twenty million Moslems, and thousands of openly enthusiastic Islamic radicals), is much less grueling. Yet there have been no attempts to “take advantage” of this seemingly lax European airport security to hijack aircraft.

Many frequent flyers in the United States have found, by trial and error, ways to sneak forbidden materials (cigar clippers, knives, lighters) past the gate security. And the airport security people know that all their aggressive searches aren’t working. In the last two years, tests of airport security have shown that 60 percent of fake bombs get through. This was largely due to the fact that bombs can be taken apart, the pieces smuggled aboard, and then reassembled for use.

I don’t know why the Democrats haven’t made a political issue of this, since it’s got a ready-made constituency (everyone who travels by air). Are they just unwilling to attack a big, expensive government program?

HARDBALL, HILTZIK AND REUTERS: Lots of bad news for the media today, over at the Media Blog. But NBC’s embedded Baghdad blog gets a good review.

Plus, this: “As the famous saying goes, on the internet, no one knows you’re a dog. However – they will probably figure it out if you are a horse’s ass.”

UPDATE: Thoughts on Hiltzik from Patterico. And more here from Captain Ed.

HERE’S A NICE PIECE ON MILITARY BLOGGERS by Bryan Bender in The Boston Globe.

And don’t forget this week’s Milblog Conference in Washington D.C. on Saturday.

Related item here.

MARK STEYN ON HUGH HEWITT: Talking about the Hiltzik affair, Iran, and more. Transcript and audio here.

MORGAN SPURLOCK’S FILM, SUPER SIZE ME, may have saved McDonald’s! It’s like what Michael Moore did for George W. Bush . . . .

IRANIANS IN ADHAMIYA? Zeyad has a report. Whether or not Iranians were behind the gunfire, it’s interesting that so many Iraqis are saying so.

UPDATE: Though in Zeyad’s post someone says that the gunmen “came from Iran” (which seemed to me to go beyond the usual Shia=Iranian line often heard from Sunnis in Iraq), this post from Michael Yon says that the Iranian role is overstated. Of course, he’s still enroute back there, so this reflects his experience from earlier in the year. You should read the whole post anyway, though.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Tim Chapman writes:

You’ve got to hand it to some Republican appropriators. Despite swirling political winds that threaten to blow the GOP majority right out of town, they keep on keeping on.

Never mind the fact that the pungent stench from the Abramoff scandal still permeates the corridors of K Street and Capitol Hill. Never mind the fact that this scandal revealed the questionable practice of Congressional earmarking run amok. And never mind that it was only months ago that the Senate debate over the poster child of bad earmarking – the Alaskan Bridge to Nowhere – ignited a firestorm of criticism over the way Congress spends American tax dollars.

No, these considerations are a mere after thought – an annoyance – to many congressional appropriators who remain intent on bringing home the bacon, no matter what the cost. . . .

Now, the “emergency” spending issue is set to come before the Senate. Next week, when the Senate returns from its Easter recess, the chamber will debate an emergency supplemental bill. Aside from the above mentioned Rail Road to Nowhere, the supplemental contains over $82 million in “emergency” funds for disasters that happened prior to 2005 and going back all the way to 1999.

Nowhere in the text of the bill or in any committee reports are the projects that this money would fund listed. Instead, curious parties are referred to a table maintained by the Federal Highways Administration that lists the projects.

So now, not only are appropriators content to designate questionable projects as “emergency” funding, but they do so without even listing where the money will go in the text of the legislation.

So much for transparency.

Plus there’s this, from the Christian Science Monitor:

Remember Alaska’s “bridge to nowhere”? It’s about to be topped by what critics call Mississippi’s “railroad to nowhere,” which is quickly becoming the poster child for excessive spending by the Republican-controlled Congress.

The project, which was added to a $106.5 billion emergency defense spending bill in the Senate, would relocate a Gulf Coast rail line inland, to higher ground. Never mind that the hurricane-battered line was just repaired at a cost of at least $250 million. Or that at $700 million, the project championed by Mississippi’s two US senators is being called the largest “earmark” ever.

The controversy points to a deepening split in the GOP over whether to rein in spending in the face of wartime commitments and record deficits – and whether failing to do so threatens their majority in this fall’s midterm elections.

Yes they should — and yes, it does.

By the way, Trent Lott’s railroad to nowhere now has a dedicated website. I don’t think he’ll like that.

Much more at the Heritage Policy Weblog.

A SMALL BUT PLEASANT CIVIL RIGHTS VICTORY: “Under pressure from the National Rifle Association, police this week began returning guns confiscated after Hurricane Katrina.”

PLAME UPDATE: “Robert Novak said Wednesday that special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald knows who outed a CIA agent to the Chicago Sun-Times columnist but hasn’t acted on the information because Novak’s source committed no crime.”

UPDATE: Tom Maguire already knew this.

HERE’S A REPORT that China censored CNN’s coverage of the Falun Gong protester.

FRAN O’BRIEN’S UPDATE: Scott Koenig is looking for a change of venue.

ANN ALTHOUSE: “I’ve had spontaneous discussions with women on the precise subject: Larry David is sexy.”

So what about An Army of Larry Davids, then?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG GETS RESULTS:

Well I marched my unregistered guns out and gave them a good talking to. It seems that most of them knew they should not go out after dark or let themselves be found on the street.

Except my Mossberg. He smelled of cheap booze and refused to look me in the eye. His “Whatever dude!” comments started to get on my nerves.

I’m so worried he will end up in a life of crime and other sorry deeds. What is a dad to do?

I’m sure Mayor Bloomberg will have additional helpful advice.

HEH: “Tax Court: Couple Must Report as Income $25k Paid by Wife’s Paramour.” Should have followed the blackmailee’s tax advice!

FROM MEDIA TO “WE-DIA” — some interesting developments.

ACCORDING TO THE FOLKS AT AMAZON, An Army of Davids has some strange bedfellows:

What do customers ultimately buy after viewing items like this?
49% buy the item featured on this page:An Army of Davids : How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths by Glenn Reynolds $15.74

36% buy The Ghost Brigades (Sci Fi Essential Books) by John Scalzi $15.57

4% buy How to Be a Domestic Goddess : Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking by Nigella Lawson $12.97

3% buy Dog Days by Ana Marie Cox $16.29

2% buy Size Matters : How Big Government Puts the Squeeze on America’s Families, Finances, and Freedom by Joel Miller $14.94

Er, shelf-fellows?

UPDATE: Various readers email that they wouldn’t mind “sharing a shelf” with Nigella Lawson. What, no Joel Miller fans out there?

INTERESTING STUFF ON LEGAL BLOGS at 3L Epiphany, including a list of law review articles citing blogs and one of courts citing blogs.

SOME INTERESTING POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS IN IRAQ: Gateway Pundit has a roundup.

DANIEL DREZNER HAS AN OPEN THREAD ON IRAN: I’m not sure what to do. I tend to agree with Jim Dunnigan that military action right now would be a mistake, and that we should be working for regime change, and supporting anti-Mullah activities in Iran. (Perhaps we are, but I don’t see much sign of it). I think some of the fears are overstated — I’ve heard people talk about the Iranians developing an EMP weapon, but I think they’re a long way from that. I think you need a thermonuclear (hydrogen), not simply a nuclear weapon to get a crippling EMP pulse (this says that you need at least a megaton device) and that’s much harder than a simple atomic bomb. On the other hand, claims that the U.S. can’t do anything militarily to Iran are silly — there are lots of things we could do, I’m just not convinced they’re a good idea.

Congressional Democrats aren’t offering many suggestions, though. (Via Billmon, who hasn’t stopped blogging yet!) I don’t really blame them for that — I don’t have any good ones myself — but I do hope that their silence now will be remembered when they pop up to criticize whatever the Administration does, or doesn’t, do.

We had Jim Dunnigan and Austin Bay talking about Iranian nukes and what to do in this podcast a few weeks back. We’re going to try to get them on again soon.

UPDATE: This is interesting:

Recent developments regarding the possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapons program have struck a nerve in India. As a result, India has greatly increased its intelligence efforts directed against Iran, and is looking for ways to cooperate with the United States and the European Union. This at the same time India is developing economic and military deals with Iran. The commercial and military people in Iran, that India works with, seem sane enough. But the senior Iranian officials, calling for the destruction of Israel, death to America and converting everyone on the planet to Islam, are worrisome. To put it mildly. So the Indians are taking a close look at their neighbor Iran, with the aid of anyone who will help.

Good.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More thoughts here.

BLOGGER BURNOUT: “Why I shut down my blog.” Plus an interview with Billmon, who’s feeling tired, too. I notice, though, that most people who burn out on blogging wind up coming back to it.

IMMIGRATION GROUPS are pulling away from ANSWER. That seems wise to me.

THIS WEEK SAW the 25th anniversary of The Boomer Bible.

HITCHENS ON HEWITT: Transcript and audio here.

MICHAEL SILENCE of the Knoxville News-Sentinel has more on the Bill Hobbs story.

WITH HU JINTAO VISITING THE WHITE HOUSE, I hope somebody leaves a copy of today’s Washington Post lying around open to this oped by Rebecca MacKinnon:

Another victim of Chinese state kidnapping — with whom I am personally connected — is Wu Hao, an independent filmmaker, blogger and U.S. permanent resident. It is unclear why state agents abducted him on Feb. 22, but his friends think it may be related to his work on a documentary about China’s underground Christians. He continues to be held — this is the 58th day of his detention — despite the fact that Chinese law limits the maximum detention without charge to 37 days.

About a month before his abduction, Hao (his first name) also took up the part-time role of Northeast Asia editor for an international bloggers’ network that I co-founded, Global Voices Online ( http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/ ). He was excited about introducing the perspectives of Chinese bloggers to an English-speaking audience. He also kept an English-language blog at http://beijingorbust.blogspot.com/ . While his writings were considerably more honest and edgy than those in the China Daily, he was by no means a dissident and often defended his government against Western criticism.

Hao turned 34 this week. He personifies a generation of urban Chinese who have flourished thanks to the Communist Party’s embrace of market-style capitalism and greater cultural openness. He got his MBA from the University of Michigan and worked for EarthLink before returning to China to pursue his dream of becoming a documentary filmmaker. He and his sister, Nina Wu, who works in finance and lives a comfortable middle-class life in Shanghai, have enjoyed freedoms of expression, travel, lifestyle and career choice that their parents could never have dreamed of. They are proof of how U.S. economic engagement with China has been overwhelmingly good for many Chinese.

Problem is, the Chinese Dream can be shattered quickly if you step over a line that is not clearly drawn — a line that is kept deliberately vague and that shifts frequently with the political tides. Those who were told by the Chinese media that they have constitutional and legal rights are painfully disabused of such fantasies when they seek to shed light on social and religious issues the state prefers to keep in the dark. . . . But we have a serious problem that won’t go away: How can Americans respect or trust a regime that kidnaps our friends?

The Chinese Embassy’s website is here.

UPDATE: At least Bush raised the subject:

As the relationship between our two nations grows and matures, we can be candid about our disagreements. I’ll continue to discuss with President Hu the importance of respecting human rights and freedoms of the Chinese people. China has become successful because the Chinese people are experience the freedom to buy, and to sell, and to produce — and China can grow even more successful by allowing the Chinese people the freedom to assemble, to speak freely, and to worship.

Indeed.

THE AGE-ADJUSTED DEATH RATE in America is plummeting, and life expectancies are at a record.

VIA RANDY NEAL a very interesting report on online journalism and the future of newspapers.

HOWARD BASHMAN’S “How Appealing” blog is now hosted by Law.com. Its new URL is http://howappealing.law.com/.

SOCK PUPPETS at the L.A. Times?

UPDATE: More here.

THOMAS DOLBY reports on Freakonomics in action.

JEFF JARVIS: What’s wrong with the Pulitzers.

RAND SIMBERG: I didn’t leave the Libertarians. The Libertarians left me.

AN “ATTRACTIVE” DEMOCRAT for 2008.

BAD NEWS at Iraq the Model.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON HAS MORE on the New York Times shareholder revolt.

YEAH, BLOGGING’S BEEN LIGHT TODAY — I’ve been busy with family and work stuff. Sorry.

AT THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (free link), a debate on whether bloggers can make money.

THE MAN WHO WAS MISTAKEN FOR A VAGINA: Sounds like an Oliver Sacks book, but no.

RUMSFELD-O-RAMA: Max Boot writes:

As it happens, I agree with their advice. As I first said on this page two years ago, I too think that Rumsfeld should go. But I am nevertheless troubled by the Revolt of the Generals, which calls into question civilian control of the armed forces. In our system, defense secretaries are supposed to fire generals, not vice versa.

The retired generals, who claim to speak for their active-duty brethren, premise their uprising on two complaints. First, many (though not all) say we should not have gone into Iraq in the first place. Former Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold calls it “the unnecessary war,” and former Gen. Anthony Zinni claims that “containment worked remarkably well.”

That is a highly questionable judgment, and one that is not for generals to make. They are experts in how to wage war, not when to wage it. If we had listened to their advice, we would not have gone into Kuwait or Bosnia or Kosovo.

Read the whole thing, which is not very encouraging for reasons that have little to do with Rumsfeld or the generals. Ralph Peters, on the other hand, is defending the generals: “If serving officers can’t criticize public figures, neither should they offer endorsements. Secretary Rumsfeld notoriously cracks down on internal dissent, but he hasn’t chided Gen. Pace for his on-camera flattery. If you’re looking for the politicization of the officer corps, look no further.” There’s much more.

Richard Brookhiser, meanwhile, is defending Rumsfeld:

In the soft days before 9/11, Mr. Rumsfeld came to the Pentagon intent on transformation—making the military more high-tech, breaking down the barriers to inter-service cooperation. This is an old fight, for the Pentagon, like any corporation, must evolve to live; if it doesn’t, it becomes General Motors. Tail-kickers like Mr. Rumsfeld naturally acquire enemies, for reasons bad (people don’t like rocking the boat) and good (maybe the boat sails well as it is).

The transformed military toppled the Taliban government in quick time, using Special Forces on horseback and pilotless drones. Point to Mr. Rumsfeld. In Iraq, Baghdad fell in three weeks, but the war against the insurgency has lasted three years. Point to his critics? Mr. Rumsfeld’s great failing, in their eyes, was not sending in enough troops. If we had had more boots on the ground, so the indictment runs, the insurgency either would not have blossomed or could have been crushed. But this too is an issue with two sides. More boots can mean more firepower. But they can also mean more targets. More boots would also have meant a draft, which would mean more neophyte troops.

Our goal was always not to add Iraq to the American Raj, but to turn the country over to a stable, non-monstrous government. This required, first, forming such a government, and second, seeing that it could defend itself.

Read the whole thing here, too.

UPDATE: A reader sends this defense of Rumsfeld:

The only thing that matters to me is that the generals–be they retired or active, Iraq veterans or not–claiming that more troops in Iraq would solve all the problems are dead wrong. Rumsfeld is right. More troops would have inflamed Islamic passions, created a disincentive among the Iraqi Security Forces to improve, cost the U.S. much more money, and–most importantly–cost us many more casualties.

Rumsfeld knew this, and he knew it by studying the last time a great western power fought a protracted Islamic insurgency, which was the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962).

The French had 500,000 troops in Algeria, which at that time had a population of 9 million. If you scale the troop-to-citizen ratio up to match Iraq’s population, that would mean we’d need 1.5 million troops in Iraq. We currently have 138,000.

The French lost 18,000 troops killed over an eight-year period, or 2250 a year. Again, if you scale it up to Iraq ratios, it would be 6750 a year. We’re losing about 700 a year, and that figure is falling.

Between 350,000 and 1.5 million Algerians were killed. To scale those figures up to Iraq, multiply them by three. So far in Iraq, about 32,000 have died, including terrorists.

The French used a policy of collective punishment in Algeria: If a village harbored insurgents, the village was bombed from the air or hit with artillery strikes. The French also tortured suspects to death, rounded people up by the thousands and shot them without trial, and put about 2 million in concentration camps. And they still lost the war.

With less than 10% of the troops (proportionally) that France had in Algeria, and with a policy not of conquest but of partnership, look what we’ve accomplished. More importantly, look at the slaughter we’ve avoided.

Something to thank Rumsfeld–not the generals–for.

I’ve been skeptical of the “more boots on the ground” argument myself, but I’m a law professor, not a general. Or a Secretary of Defense.

GRAND ROUNDS is up! So is the Carnival of the Feminists and the Carnival of Education. More carnivals at BlogCarnival.com.

HEART DISEASE: More common in women, and more often misdiagnosed, than most people realize according to this report in the New York Times.

We had a podcast on this a while back.

AN ANTI-TERRORISM VICTORY for the Justice Department:

Seven Los Angeles area residents indicted on accusations of raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for a terror organization lost a federal court challenge in a bid to prove their innocence.

The seven wanted to challenge a determination by the State Department that a group they funded was a terror organization.

The seven allegedly provided money to the Mujahedin-e Khalq, which “participated in various terrorist activities against the Iranian regime” and “carried out terrorist activities with the support of Saddam Hussein’s regime,” according to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The San Francisco-based appeals court in 2004 first ruled against the seven and on Monday let the decision stand without a rehearing.

I’d be interested in seeing a list of U.S. terror convictions since 9/11. I haven’t seen anything like that lately.

BAD TIMING for Michael Wolff. Wolff’s splashy anti-McClellan piece is now kind of obsolete, as McClellan steps down.

People are already suggesting replacements.

LAWPROF ALAN HIRSCH has a website on false confessions. These happen more often than you might think, especially where the defendants are young or not very bright.

WHEN HU JINTAO COMES TO AMERICA, I hope that various media folks covering the visit will pay a little attention to the plight of imprisoned Chinese blogger Hao Wu.

MY TCS DAILY COLUMN IS UP: “Bionic humanity is coming, not with the bang of a huge, secret government program of the Steve Austin variety, but on the little cat-feet of a collection of new developments.”

IT WAS INEVITABLE, I GUESS: U.S. Generals Call For Resignation of Media Leaders.

UPDATE: Related post here.

WHAT WOULD ROBERT HEINLEIN DO? Cory Doctorow reviews John Varley’s Red Lightning and calls it “The book Robert Heinlein would have written about GW Bush’s America.”

Tensor, on the other hand, looks at Heinlein’s actual wartime correspondence and thinks Doctorow is wrong: “I’m not sure whether the law Heinlein wrote about is still on the books (I hope not), and my purpose is not to accuse Doctorow of somehow damaging the morale of active-duty military personnel. I mean only to point out that Heinlein circa 1942 seemed perfectly comfortable with a law ‘specifically intended…to restrict the freedom of speech of civilians in wartime,’ a law far more directly restrictive of civil liberties than any part of the Patriot Act. What’s more, Heinlein apparently supported this law strongly enough to admonish a friend in private correspondence not to break it.”

He concludes: “Trying to posthumously enlist Heinlein (or any dead author for that matter) in some modern political cause strikes me as a dubious enterprise.”

I think that’s right, though it’s often an almost irresistibly tempting one. At any rate, I’ve read Red Lightning, and regardless of the Bush point (which is strained, but at least somewhat plausible) it is an excellent Heinlein-style junior novel, the sort of “entry-level science fiction” that John Scalzi is always calling for more of.

MR. HU, TEAR DOWN THIS FIREWALL:

The visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to the United States this week is an ideal moment for a message to be delivered to the Chinese leadership class – that if the Chinese nation wishes to take its place in the international community, it must allow the Chinese people to participate in the global internet community. Currently the Chinese government is trying to operate a national intranet, monitoring and filtering the links between China and the rest of the world with what has been dubbed the “Great Firewall of China”, and also monitoring internal content with a force of 30,000 thought-police.

Excellent point.

CARTOON JIHAD, meet cash flow jihad.

MERYL YOURISH on Palestinian bombs:

Shrapnel is what killed Phillip Balhasan, who stayed alive long enough to realize his children had survived, and to hug them tightly before he collapsed.

But even this is not enough for the terrorists. They also soak the shrapnel in rat poison, because it causes hemorrhaging — victims may bleed to death before they can get to the hospital.

Remember all of this, when you hear the world tell Israel to “use restraint” in responding to this attack. Remember all of this, when you read about the innocent metal shop owners who insist their shops were only making nails and screws for construction purposes.

Remember all of this, when Israel is the nation that is demonized by the blind, hateful people who wear checked kaffiyehs at anti-war protests, and call Israel an “apartheid state” for building a separation barrier — to keep out the monsters who would use bombs like I have just described.

Remember this, when you look at the pictures of the results of the bombing, and notice the thousands of dents in the metal surrounding the bombing area — the mark of the ball-bearings and other metal shrapnel.

And remember that these are the people that Sami Al-Arian has admitted supporting.

UPDATE: There’s a discussion in the comments as to whether the rat poison claim is true. This Slate article says it’s not.

WHEN MINDLESS SNARK SUBSTITUTES FOR THOUGHT: Jesse Walker quotes something I wrote in 1999 about how “wars initiated essentially on presidential whim” would have horrified the Framers, and it’s supposed, I guess, to indicate some change in my views.

Er, except that war on Al Qaeda, and the invasion of Iraq, were explicitly authorized by Congress, in declarations of war and everything. After, you know, an actual attack on the United States.

A pretty lame effort on Jesse’s part — really, a cheap shot — but typical of what passes for antiwar analysis, even among libertarians today, I’m afraid. As are the comments that follow. Jeez.

UPDATE: Kjell Hagen emails:

I understand the Kosovo military action in 1999 was not so popular in the US, I don´t know what you thought about it. However, those 35 days of bombing from the air saved a people, the Kosovo Albanians. Kosovo would have been Darfur or Rwanda without this military action. Although it is a UN-chaos today, it is a lot better than the alternative. USA and NATO did the right thing, and the Kosovo Albanians are very grateful for it.

And I supported that bombing, though I had doubts as to whether it would work. (It was Wesley Clark, not me, who called it illegal.) I did — and do — favor getting Congressional declarations of war whenever possible, though one reason I have done so, that it would discourage sniping later in the conflict by forcing people to go on the record, has been only imperfectly borne out by recent events.

I love the term “UN-chaos,” too, as its meaning is, alas, immediately clear. Meanwhile, reader B. de Galvez emails:

Speaking of old quotes, it never hurts to be reminded of the railing about Clinton’s “genocide”, claiming sanctions killed 1.5 million Iraqis (500,000 to 700,000 of them little tykes).

Indymedia produced this video at the time of the 2000 Democratic Convention. The Iraq section starts at about 36:36.

Link

As so many repeatedly have asked, why aren’t these people rejoicing over the countless lives that have been spared by Saddam’s involuntary retirement?

The video wouldn’t play for me, but the point certainly holds.

MORE: Walker responds that I have so changed my views. Er, no. He also says that the Congressional declarations were not declarations of war. Actually, they were. But even if one were to accept what I think is his argument — that they were authorizations to use military force against a named enemy, but not technically declarations of war — they surely undercut any claim that we went to war on President Bush’s “whim.”

I’m not really sure what point Walker was trying to make in his post anyway. That — as some of his commenters libellously suggest — I’m on the White House payroll? (Er, no again). That I hated Clinton back then, but love Bush now? No, in fact I co-wrote a book generally regarded as a Clinton defense, though I was pretty disappointed in him by the end. But I didn’t let my disappointment with Clinton turn into a hatred of all his policies, the way that some people seem to have let their dislike of Bush turn into a belief that all of Bush’s policies — and anyone who defends any of them — have become evil. Indeed, regular readers of InstaPundit will see that my references to Bush and the Republicans are not exactly uniformly positive. (And I have managed to praise Clinton when I thought he deserved it, too.) One would think that libertarians, as Walker claims to be, would be less anxious to divide the world up into teams, but that seems not to be the case, alas.

And, yes, rather than responding to this I probably should have read the post below again, and taken it to heart. . . .

MORE STILL: A reader emails that the Iraq and Al Qaeda declarations were “informal” rather than “formal” declarations of war. This distinction, which has to do with the (fictional) notion that we don’t go to war since the U.N. Charter was adopted, isn’t really relevant for U.S. constitutional law. If you have an identified enemy, a casus belli, and an authorization for the President to go after them with the military, you’ve got a declaration of war. The Hamdan opinion responds to the claim of no formal declaration in essentially these terms. (And, lest I be accused of changing my views on this topic, I remember having this very discussion with John Hart Ely back when we were both visiting professors at U.Va, over ten years ago. As I recall, he agreed.)

Since people seem interested, click “read more” for an excerpt from an article by Ely with which I was, and am, in substantial agreement. It’s “KUWAIT, THE CONSTITUTION, AND THE COURTS: TWO CHEERS FOR JUDGE GREENE,” 8 Constitutional Commentary 1, 1991. But here’s the gist:

Judge Harold Greene’s decision in Dellums et al. v. Bush was plainly right in its central proposition, that (except in the event of a “sudden attack” upon the United States) the Constitution places unambiguously in Congress the authority to decide whether the nation goes to war. (Once war is congressionally authorized–note that there has never been a requirement that such authorization actually be labeled a “declaration of war,” only that it be clear–authority to manage it then passes to the President in his role as “Commander in Chief.”)

(emphasis added) Click “read more” for a couple of other bits, but it should be clear that Walker is without basis saying that the notion that the Iraq and Al Qaeda resolutions were declarations of war is bizarre. (Downside to my position: I agree with Joe Biden — upside, I agree not only with Ely but with Eugene Volokh. I hope Walker’s writings on pirate radio are better researched.)

Some comments here and here.

Continue reading ‘WHEN MINDLESS SNARK SUBSTITUTES FOR THOUGHT: Jesse Walker quotes something I wrote in 1999 about ho…’ »

WHY READING NASTY BLOG COMMENTS (and blogs) can be bad for you.

EUROPE AND TERRORISM: Victor Davis Hanson predicted that Europe would crack down quietly, and now it’s coming true:

Four and a half years after the Sept. 11 attacks, and after deadly bombings in Madrid and London since then, the troubled debate within Western democracies over how to weigh security against basic freedoms has only grown and spread, as the legal tools for dealing with terrorism suspects multiply.

The clashing of priorities has been clear in the United States, in the domestic debates preceding the renewal of the Patriot Act, and in the international uproar over prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib and the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay.

But many European governments, including some that had criticized the United States for its antiterrorism measures, have been extending their own surveillance and prosecution powers. Officials, lawyers and human rights experts say that Europe, too, is experiencing a slow erosion of civil liberties as governments increasingly put the prevention of possible terrorist actions ahead of concerns to protect the rights of people suspected, but not convicted, of a crime.

As I’ve suggested before, perhaps Bush should mollify his critics by promising to take a “more European” approach.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Blogger LawHawk offers a defense of Trent Lott’s railroad-to-nowhere project. I’m not sure I’m convinced, but given that I’ve just come to dislike Trent Lott in general, I feel that I should go out of my way to link suggestions that I’m wrong about this project.

What do you think?

UPDATE: Mark Hessey emails: “Hmm, before I clicked thru I was skeptical as well, but I came away thinking LawHawk makes a pretty good argument.” Reader Christian Lane thinks that LawHawk’s argument underscores Trent Lott’s problems:

I think what this shows is that Trent Lott has become an ineffective advocate for his constituents’ needs. The relocation of the railway may be a good idea or even necessary, but Mr. Lott’s support for it obscures the merits. If his first priority were serving the needs of the citizens of Mississippi, he would either (i) take a strong stand against pork, including specific pork for Mississippi, to (hopefully) demonstrate that he is against pork, but the railway project isn’t pork or (ii) step aside. I doubt that will happen and I think the failure to do so implies that Mr. Lott’s real motivations as a Senator are not necessarily in line with the needs of the citizens of Mississippi.

Ouch!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Brent Ramsey emails:

Have to give you some input on the CSX railroad project supported by Senators Lott and Cochran. I lived in Long Beach, MS for 23 years. That project has been on the books at least that long and longer. The way that railway crosses the towns of Ocean Springs, Biloxi, Gulfport, Long Beach, and Pass Christian with literally dozens of road crossing many of which have no physical barriers, just a warning sign for a railroad crossing kills dozens of Mississipians each year. It is a worthwhile project to protect lives and to improve rail transportation across the MS gulf coast. I retired and left MS in 2002 and now live in western NC so I have no vested interest just an opinion that it is a worthwhile project and really is not correctly described as pork.

Hmm. Well, it may be worthwhile, though that still leaves open the question of whether federal taxpayers should pay for it. And, even if that’s true, a project that Mississippi has been trying to get for so long shouldn’t be funded as Katrina relief, much less snuck into a war appropriations bill. It should stand, or fall, on its own merits. One characteristic of “pork” is that it avoids the normal budgetary scrutiny. That seems to be what Lott has been trying to do here.

Mississippi reader Lisa (last name withheld on request) writes:

If I did not know the local history of this project, I might think differently than I do. I just think it stinks to use the worst disaster in American history to get funding for a local pet project, when so many people are still so devastated.

I live on the Ms. Gulf Coast . . . Gulfport has wanted a new east west corridor for decades and could not come up with the money to fund it.

Relocating the CSX railroad and using the right of way for a new road will not take all of the traffic off of Hwy 90, the casino’s are located there.

So Hwy 90 will still be a vital road, you are just adding another road to be rebuilt in case of another Katrina.

And I could mention that the railroad acted as a dam preventing the devastating storm surge from going even further inland.

The project has enough merit that Gulfport has been looking into it for years. They have just come up with a clever way for you (the federal taxpayers) to pay for it.

Sounds like pork to me.

Me too.

MICHAEL FUMENTO is blogging from Iraq.

A SHAREHOLDERS’ REVOLT at The New York Times:

That seems at least as much of a revolt as six retired generals calling for Rumsfeld’s resignation, no? Except that Morgan Stanley is still on active duty. It’s a mutiny! … P.S.: Morgan Stanley noted that “[D]espite significant underperformance, management’s total compensation is substantial and has increased considerably over this period.”

Heh.

UPDATE: Here’s much more on the subject from corporate-governance expert Professor Bainbridge, who observes in passing: “Sulzberger’s management has not been particularly beneficial for the company’s other shareholders.”

And another reader thinks it’s gutsy of Morgan Stanley to go public, since it’s at risk for negative coverage from the Times. Surely the NYT wouldn’t stoop to something like that.