May 19, 2007

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

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

UPDATE: Skepticism about this report.

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

Meanwhile, relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan are ruffled.

MICKEY KAUS:

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

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

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

Remember what I was saying about a Republican "death wish?"

THIS SOUNDS KIND OF INTERESTING:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DOUG WEINSTEIN is mad about gas prices.

Tim Haab is mad about gas price legislation.

CRYING WOLFOWITZ.

BARACK OBAMA'S advice to graduates.

A LOOK AT European energy politics.

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

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

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

Read the whole thing.

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

MCCAIN'S TOUGH TALK, not okay with Beldar.

WAITING FOR IT TO HAPPEN, in Spain.

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

HAPPY ARMED FORCES DAY!

MICHAEL YON SENDS ANOTHER EMAIL FROM ANBAR:

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

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

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

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

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

Let's hope this continues to spread.

A CYBER-ASSAULT ON ESTONIA:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt is reading the bill.

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

STRATEGYPAGE looks at Muslim terrorism in the south of Thailand:

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

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

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

SCOTTY HAS BEEN FOUND.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHAT'S WRONG with HDMI?

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

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

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

LOSS OF CREDIBILITY:

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

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

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

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

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

Read the whole thing.

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

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

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

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

MUMS WITH GUNS:

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

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

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

Read the whole thing.

FRANK TIPLER has worries about the way physics is taught.

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

DANIEL GLOVER LOOKS Inside the Blogway.

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

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

May 18, 2007

MCCAIN TALKS TOUGH, and that's okay:

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

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

UPDATE: Reader Dart Montgomery thinks I'm wrong: "The real point - once again, it shows that McCain regards the real enemy as his fellow Republicans."

I think that this will hurt him more.

MAX BOOT POSTS AN EMAIL from a soldier in Baghdad.

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

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

THE E.U. VS. PUTIN:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MORE ON MURTHA:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indeed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More on Murtha here.

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

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

UPDATE: More thoughts here.

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

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

A QUAGMIRE IN BALTIMORE:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Only 29?

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

IS IT A CIVIL WAR?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who knew it was so easy?

DAVE KOPEL:

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

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

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

He has further thoughts here.

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

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

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

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

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

Really, read the whole thing.

FIJI'S MILITARY GOVERNMENT cracks down on political blogs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

ANOTHER EMAIL FROM MICHAEL YON:

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

Sounds good to me.

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

ADVICE ON WHAT MEN LIKE, from Ann Althouse.

A LOOK AT THE LATEST BUDGET FICTION in Washington:

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

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

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

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

Meet the new boss, yada yada.

USING BLOGS for political test marketing.

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

And read this, too.

And these comments by Noah Pollak. Pattern?

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

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

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

WOLFOWITZ, sans horns.

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

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

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

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

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

DOUG KMIEC on the Comey testimony.

UPDATE: Oops, link was wrong before. Fixed now. Sorry!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Marty Lederman responds. And Orin Kerr comments:

In my view, Kmiec is plainly right that nothing in Comey's testimony suggests anything like another Watergate. Consider how little we know about the facts. We don't know what the program was that Comey and Ashcroft wouldn't authorize, or why they wouldn't authorize it. And as far as I can tell, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the President intentionally violated a known legal duty or participated in some kind of cover-up. (Note that when Comey met with the President one-on-one, according to his testimony, the President backed him.)

At the same time, the test for whether the Comey story deserves attention surely can't be whether it's as bad as Watergate. I'm sure there's room in there for political news that doesn't quite hit Watergate break-in and Nixonian cover-up levels. And just as we don't know the facts to make the Watergate comparison stick, we also don't know the facts to suggest, as Kmiec does, that this was just some sort of routine disagreement within the Executive branch.

In fact, we don't know much at all, though that certainly hasn't kept it from becoming a big story.

DEFINING "PERSECUTION" DOWN.

GREG POLLOWITZ: "So, why exactly was Mayor Villaraigosa in town anyway? Would you believe he was actually in town meeting with Clinton and other mayors to discuss ways to lower carbon emissions? Hmm. What can we do as individuals to lower our carbon emissions? How about eating cows from the United States and not ones flown in from Tokyo? Would that help?"

HERE'S MORE ON THE CHANNON CHRISTIAN / CHRISTOPHER NEWSOME KILLING, from the Associated Press. Trial has been set for later this month. next year.

UPDATE: More coverage here.

A LOOK AT what's newsworthy today.

JENNIFER RUBIN writes that Rudy is already running against the Democrats, rather than his Republican primary opponents. That seems right.

IOWA VOICE: "This is what I hate about politics. What average man just 'isn’t aware' he happens to have some 'holdings' in Sudan? Oh, really, I do? I had no idea! Where else do I have 'holdings'? Then, of course, we see that they (the candidates) are all kagillionaires (naturally)."

UPDATE: Reader Chris Arfaa points out that these were 401k and mutual fund investments, meaning that actually lots of Americans might have similar holdings.

MAYOR BLOOMBERG INSPIRES A gun giveaway in Virginia.

A MEMO TO PAJAMAS MEDIA, from Fred Thompson.

UPDATE: No wonder Thompson's paying attention to the Internet: "As of Wednesday afternoon, Thompson’s video, in which he suggests that Moore might look into a mental institution, drew 598,600 viewers on Vimeo, YouTube and Google Video. That dwarfs the most views from any moment during the debate."

It was easier, too. It probably took a half hour or less to make that video. People sometimes say that Thompson's lazy, but I'm put in mind of the Robert Heinlein short story, The Man Who Was Too Lazy to Fail.

And it's quite impressive. Heck, he's beaten my Cayman dive video and almost caught up to my Saturn video!

ANOTHER UPDATE: More thoughts on Thompson from Peggy Noonan.

DAVE HARDY:

50 heavily armed men abduct 7 police: four them of them found dead, three missing, gun battles leave 20 dead. About a thousand people so far this year shot or decapitated.

Iraq? No, northern Mexico, about a hundred miles south of here. Betting is that the gang was a drug lord's entourage.

And yet Mexico has strict gun laws.

May 17, 2007

"'YOU CAN'T FIGHT CITY HALL.' Unless you have a blog."

THE POLITICO: "Democrats are wielding a heavy hand on the House Rules Committee, committing many of the procedural sins for which they condemned Republicans during their 12 years in power. . . . If this sounds familiar, it is. Republicans made similar promises in 1994, only to renege when they took control of the Congress in 1995." Meet the new boss, yada yada.

UPDATE: More:

Powerful Democrat Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania threatened to deny any further spending projects to a Republican who challenged him over an earmark, his antagonist has charged -- a potential violation of House rules.

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) had challenged money Murtha inserted into an intelligence bill last week.

Rogers turned the tables later that night by saying he would propose a reprimand of Murtha for violating House rules.

Read the whole thing.

AN INSURGENT VICTORY at Dartmouth:

University of Virginia Law Professor Stephen Smith has been elected by alumni to the Dartmouth board of trustees. Professor Smith is the fourth petition candidate in a row to be elected to the board.

Here's a column I wrote about Smith's candidacy.

HOWARD LOVY: A mashup is not a survey.

WOLFOWITZ RESIGNS.

This should just be the start of a cleanup at the World Bank.

UPDATE: More thoughts from Professor Kenneth Anderson:

One of the many ironies in the Wolfowitz affair, however, is that in many respects, the target of the Bank staff seems to be as much Riza as Wolfowitz - she is a true believer in feminism, and as a true believer, she seems to believe that so many, many things can be traced back to misogyny - and, as a true believer in misogyny, was more than willing to throw fits to get her way by playing the gender card. She deserved, in my view, her raises as compensation for the ending of her career at the Bank, but it is clear that she played the gender card even there - everyone, starting with the Ethics Committee and the human resources department, caved rather than face a scene, and in some respects it was the unwillingness even to face, even to have a meeting with, an angry Muslim feminist whose career, after all, was being sacrificed on the altar of her paramour that is a central reason why that political hack (now hacking away at UNDP, but then the two deserve each other) Ad Melkert would not meet with her and dumped the whole thing back on Wolfowitz. . . . So the rest of the world may talk the gender talk, but it doesn't mean it, at least not in the way that Americans, following conditions laid down by a combination of Mackinnon and the US Supreme Court, understand it. Maybe they're right and the Americans are wrong - I'm not a feminist and see many problems with how the United States has evolved on these things. But in any case, in an international organization these rules seem on a collision course with the fact, among other things, of the acceptability of extramarital and other affairs at the Bank and the UN and all sorts of places - unless the institution reconciles them with a large, large dollop of hypocrisy and double standards. That is the usual attitude I have found at international organizations.

Read the whole thing.

FRED THOMPSON on the immigration bill. Plus, a roundup from Mickey Kaus.

And I take no comfort in this report, which suggests that nobody has an actual bill yet, and that the text won't be available until after it's voted on.

UPDATE: Dadvocate is invoking Al Gore.

A LOOK AT WIND POWER from Tyghe Trimble.

OUR PODCAST on The Dangerous Book for Boys led people to suggest some other books along the same lines. I haven't read them, but you might check out The American Boy's Handy Book, 211 Things a Bright Boy Can Do, and The Boy Mechanic.

I've given The Dangerous Book for Boys to my 8-year-old nephew. I think he'll like it. Meanwhile, reader Tom Royce emails:

After reading your initial post on "The Dangerous Book for Boys" I promptly ordered it for my 5th grade son.

I have to say it has been most interesting. The book is never far from him and Mom is getting driven crazy for the requests for parts and tools every afternoon.

I must say that it is very refreshing to see him diving into the book and projects with such relish. The world is not set up for little boys to be little boys anymore and it is gratifying to see him have the right tool to help him.

Oh, and Dad is loving the book also.

That's nice to hear.

UPDATE: Reader John Surratt emails:

Glenn you got me fired up. I found my uncle's old copies of The Boy Mechanics vol's 1 through 4 (copyrighted 1913,1915,1919,1925). I have 10 and 8 year old boys and now that cub scouts are over for the year I know how we will spend the summer. Speaking of dangerous I liked the baseball game with a pocket knife for rainy days and the 1925 Land Yacht for cruising in the summer - with a bathtub! I also noticed the sail powered motor for powering a work shop which seemed especially current now.

Sounds like fun. Let me know if the sail-power thing works.

WHILE EVERYONE'S TALKING IMMIGRATION, this passed: "Congress gave final approval on Thursday to a $2.9 trillion budget plan that promises big spending increases for education and health care and a federal surplus in five years." It lets the tax cuts expire, too.

A DIVERSITY PROBLEM at the Associated Press.

BILL FRIST ON THE IMMIGRATION DEAL.

UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt is not happy. Just keep scrolling. Whether or not this is a good bill -- which I'm not sure of one way or another -- it's likely to be political disaster for the GOP. Can you say "death wish?"

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ed Morrissey counsels calm: "As I wrote yesterday, this is about as good as we will get in this Congress. In fact, the Democrats probably had enough votes to pass something much more like a wide-open amnesty, given a few Republican votes in support of that and the relaxed attitude of the White House on immigration reform. The GOP did a pretty good job of holding the line and forcing the Democrats to include the border-first triggers, the reduction of the family interest, and the rest of what Kyl managed to retain. It's not great, and it's not even very good. It's not bad, though."

The big problem is the GOP leadership's loss of credibility on this subject in recent years. As reader C.J. Burch emails: "Various boosters would have been better off explaining to the boostees that the fence should have come first. Would a fence have been merely a symbolic gesture? Probably, but its construction would have been a sign that Repubs weren't cynically saying one thing and doing another...like they're doing now. Like they did on the judges. Like they did on spending. Like they did on pork. Like they did on ethics reform. Like they're doing with Iran. Like some of them are hoping to do with their support for the troops. Etc., Etc. ad infinitum. " Indeed.

And Ace seems a bit upset.

CASSANDRA HAS THOUGHTS on democracy.

POSTURING AT THE PUMPS: George Will on gas prices.

A LOOK AT THE SITUATION IN IRAQ, from StrategyPage.

A SKEPTICAL LOOK at Barack Obama's energy policy.

SURGERY WITH A WARRANTY: Seems like a good idea to me, and probably better at improving the quality of care than malpractice suits, or regulation.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Ramesh Ponnuru criticizes PorkBusters. Meanwhile, Sen. Tom Coburn offers a defense:

Porkbusters represent what is arguably the only grassroots movement since 1994 to gain traction and build momentum on the core American principle of limited government. The Porkbusters movement is not particularly concerned with the electoral fate of Republicans or Democrats, but they are concerned with the fate of the Republic and their own tax dollars. Quite simply, Porkbusters is a movement comprised of individuals who are just plain sick of their money being wasted, quite often in secret, by self-serving politicians.

Establishment Republicans loathe the Porkbusters because they are effective. They are so effective, in fact, that one powerful politician said of them in 2006, “I’ll just say this about the so-called Porkbusters. I’m getting damn tired of hearing from them. They have been nothing but trouble ever since Katrina.” Recall that in October 2005, the Senate voted to protect the “Bridge to Nowhere” by a vote of 82-15. Today, thanks to unrelenting pressure, both parties are clamoring to out-reform the other. Rather than belittling this movement, the Republican establishment should embrace and learn from it.

One of the most troubling aspects of the establishment’s hostility toward Porkbusters are not necessarily the arguments marshaled in defense of pork but the degree to which apologists are out of touch and unaware of their own condescension toward the movement.

Which unawareness is itself evidence of why the GOP lost in 2006. As Coburn notes: "The results of the last election, however, suggest that pork projects really are both bad policy and bad politics. Among the nine Republican appropriators (members who have the greatest ability to bring home the bacon) who were vulnerable in the last election, only three won."

More here.

AN AGREEMENT on immigration.

UPDATE: A poll.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Deja Vu.

Pro-immigration writer Nick Gillespie isn't that happy: "Anything that brings people into the official economy is a good thing. It's not clear that this reform will do that, especially given the touchback provisions."

Is a bill that makes everyone unhappy a good compromise? Possibly, but not necessarily.

THEY WERE FOR PREWAR PLANNING before they were against it.

ANOTHER ITEM THAT HAROLD FORD WILL BE GLAD TO HAVE OUT OF THE WAY before he runs for office again. You can't blame him for his family, but if this had happened before the election, well, it wouldn't have helped.

ED MORRISSEY is liveblogging from the Online News Association conference. Just keep scrolling.

LYNNE KIESLING looks at turning coal to gasoline.

The Glenn and Helen Show: Conn Iggulden on Boys and Danger

Are we turning into a nation of wimps? Do boys need to be boys? Is there something parents and schools should be doing differently? We talk with British author Conn Iggulden, whose new book, The Dangerous Book for Boys, takes an old-fashioned positive look at boyhood, bravery, and the nature of risk, about those subjects and others -- including the effect of modern parenting and education on military recruitment and the future of Western civilization. Is being optimistic old-fashioned? Plus, revelations about Helen's misspent youth!

Iggulden thinks that the pendulum is swinging back, and I suspect that the strong reaction to his book is evidence that people want to help -- and check out the enthusiasm in the reader reviews.

You can listen to the show directly -- no downloading needed -- by going here and clicking on the gray Flash player. You can get the file directly for listening via Windows Media, Realplayer, Quicktime, etc., by clicking right here. And you can get a lo-fi version suitable for dialup, cellphones, etc. by going here and selecting lo-fi. And, of course, you can always get a free subscrption via iTunes -- as we say in radio podcasting, "Wow! What a deal!" And you can visit our show archives here.

Music is "Status No" and "IWDWIST" by Todd Steed and the Suns of Phere. This podcast sponsored by Volvo Motors USA. Plus, comments and discussion over at my lovely and talented cohost's place.

UPDATE: Reader Rick Sawyer emails:

I bought this book a few weeks ago when I saw it at a bookstore. I bought it b/c of your mention, actually! It was a great read. What I'm going to do, is add some of the interesting stuff I did as a boy, give it to the older men in my family for their ideas, and then give it to my brother in law who has three boys under the age of five. I thought it would be a great male bonding exercise for my family…

I think it would. Iggulden said the book is in part a "refresher course for dads."

HERE'S MORE ON THE CITY OF POMONA / FOOTHILLS CITIES BLOG STORY: The Pomona city officials come off quite badly. I don't think they're used to having their activities noticed.

COURT'S DECISION strengthens aggregators.

DODD HARRIS is back in the blogosphere.

SANDY BERGER UPDATE: "Samuel R. Berger, the Clinton White House national security adviser who was caught taking highly classified documents from the National Archives, has agreed to forfeit his license to practice law."

This would seem to be the key bit, though: "In giving up his license, Mr. Berger avoids being cross-examined by the Board on Bar Counsel, where he risked further disclosure of specific details of his theft."

Hmm. That would seem to confirm suspicions that we haven't gotten the full story. And why has the Justice Department seemed so uninterested in following through here? Theft of classified documents in a politically-charged setting would seem worthy of their attention.

XM ADVERTISER BACKLASH over the Opie and Anthony suspension. More here.

FREE WILL FOR FRUIT FLIES: Does this mean it's okay to blame mosquitoes for biting me? Probably not, if you read the article. But I still will.

IN THE POLITICO: "'Fairness Doctrine:' Anything But Fair."

A SPOT OF GOOD NEWS: "The first crude oil pumped by a foreign company in Iraq in decades will flow into the global market next month." The amount is small, but it's coming from Kurdistan. The Kurds -- who have kept order and freedom in their part of Iraq -- deserve to be the place where this gets going. Peace and order should be rewarded.

THE SECRET TO Charlie Gibson's success.

A U.S. ATTORNEY ROUNDUP, at the Wall Street Journal.

EARMARKS in Tennessee.

SCIENTOLOGY: A uniter, not a divider! At least, they managed to get Johnathan Pearce to sympathize with a BBC reporter. No small feat, that. And an amusing line from the comments: It seemed to me that on one side you had representatives of a fanatical cult trying to foist its views on the rest of the world and on the other... the Church of Scientology.

IS IMMIGRATION A HOT ISSUE? I don't know, but it got this guy both the Republican and the Democratic nomination in the same election. (Via RWN).

FOR THE SURGE, before he was against it.

MASS GRAVES DAY.

A LOOK AT SIMPLE SHARED BELIEFS as a means of producing group solidarity. And, perhaps, a reflection in practice.

HISTORIC PRESERVATION UPDATE: They're revamping the famous Airplane gas station that amused tourists en route to the Smokies for decades.

OUCH.

THE MAGIC JOHNSON PARADOX: "He is very much alive and healthy, even though he has lived for well into his second decade with HIV. But because he has devoted his life to AIDS prevention (especially among blacks) his health and longevity present a slight problem."

I'm sure it's a problem he's happy to live with.

May 16, 2007

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Veterans need care, politicians want money -- can't somebody cut a deal?

The dedication of the West Virginia Veterans Nursing Facility in Clarksburg took place last November with Sen. Jay Rockefeller, Congressman Alan Mollohan and Gov. Joe Manchin in attendance, but the home has yet to house any patients.

Okay, it's because the approval process isn't done yet. But why is it taking so long? Basically "ordinary construction delays." Um, okay.

Don Surber comments: "Notice the lack of any sense of urgency? . . . Meanwhile, 30 Clarksburg area vets are waiting for someone to get off his can, inspect the joint and open it up. But no one cares. The politicians got their photo op out of the deal."

How about this rule: Politicians don't get their photo-op until the thing's actually operating. Just a thought.

PETER LATTMAN: Is it okay for lawyers to copy complaints?

WELL, THEY'RE SAYING IT NOW: "Gaza was on the brink of civil war last night as violent clashes between Palestinian factions spiralled out of control."

Question: Do you need a civil society to have a civil war? However, this doesn't sound bad:

Some Palestinian analysts predict that a collapse of the Palestinian Authority would pave the way for Jordanian custodial rule in the West Bank and a similar arrangement for Egypt in Gaza.

“The message is the Palestinians cannot rule themselves. This fighting will only end if a third party takes over,” said Ibrahim Abrash, a political analyst in Gaza.

Well, not bad except maybe for Jordan and Egypt. Why they would want custody of those areas, given the Palestinians' behavior, is hard to fathom.

UPDATE: Rick Richman points out that Wretchard of The Belmont Club predicted this in 2005: "The Gaza withdrawal may turn out to be far more dangerous to the Palestinian Authority than to Israel because it unleashed powerful forces which Abbas has been unable to control. It now threatens to drag him like a man whose foot has been caught in the traces of runaway horses.":

BOB LEVY WRITES IN THE HILL on the Second Amendment and Parker v. District of Columbia.

NAME HILLARY'S CAMPAIGN SONG: Skippy is running a contest.

UPDATE: More fun with candidate songs.

DARFUR UPDATE: FROM AUSTIN BAY, thoughts on ending Darfur's genocide.

READER MARIO FANTE WRITES:

Given all your excellent posts on disaster preparedness and emergency kits, you might be interested to know that the only show on television that dealt realistically with the problems of Americans recovering from a massive disaster in the U.S. – Jericho – has been cancelled after only one very promising season.

Every episode was not only better than any given installment of 24 (from any season), but each week it showed what challenges Americans would have to overcome if the country fell apart overnight (with 24 major cities being nuked at once). No sensationalism, just clearly showing what stresses and problems they’d have to face (in addition to a compelling backstory and subplot mystery about who attacked us and why), and how this particular Kansas town tried to survive in the aftermath and rebuild.

I was hooked on this show from the start. It had some of the best writing on TV, great actors, and memorable, fully-developed characters, and a Firefly-like devoted following. I loved it, and am sad to see it go. All the episodes are still online last I checked, in case you’ve never seen it.

Maybe it’s not your thing, but there’s an online petition to save it that went up just a few hours ago, and already has north of 17,000 signatures. CBS’ website went down for a while, possibly under the burden of distraught fans, and they’ve been getting calls all day about it.

Thanks and best regards.

I'm afraid I never saw it, but that's no evidence of its viability -- I don't watch much TV, really. At a guess, that's the show's weakness -- the kind of people who might have been its biggest fans are all busy online. . . .

A REPORT ON THE FAIR TAX RALLY in South Carolina last night, with photos.

QUESTION OF THE DAY, at The Hotline Blog: "Why did John Edwards not disclose his Fortress salary until today? That's three weeks of bad Iowa stories, a George S. grilling, and lots of other unnecessary guff? Just for $479K?" The Edwards campaign seems to have a lot of these kinds of problems, which is odd given that he didn't seem to have nearly as many last time around.

FRED THOMPSON CRITIC A.C. KLEINHEIDER offers some reluctant praise. "Okay, maybe the guy is Reagan." (Via FredBuzz).

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON looks at the benefits of $4 gasoline.

BUT DON'T CALL IT CIVIL WAR: "At least 19 Palestinians were killed on Wednesday — more than 40 have been killed over the past four days — in fighting between Fatah and Hamas as their unity government fractures and rage rises on both sides."

MICKEY KAUS PREDICTS DISASTER on immigration.

UPDATE: Dan Riehl says it best: "Republicans were given a wake up call in 2006; they've opted to hit snooze."

You snooze, you lose.

THE FOOTHILLS CITIES BLOG responds to Pomona's City Attorney, with a letter from its own lawyer that will not make the city happy.

JUST FINISHED JOHN ROBB'S BRAVE NEW WAR, which I've mentioned before. I'm supposed to be reviewing it, so I won't give too much away, but it's a sort of dark-side of An Army of Davids -- though when he gets past describing the open-source terrorism threats, and starts talking about solutions in terms of distributed capacity, resilience, horizontal knowledge, and small-scale approaches, it sounds a lot more like Army of Davids in general. He's certainly right to note the disturbing vulnerability of all sorts of systems to sabotage designed to produce network disruption. He's perhaps a bit unwilling to emphasize, though, how much of the success of terrorist operations depends on ideological/public opinion constraints on national responses, constraints that could evaporate overnight and that show some signs of weakening already. That said, I think the book's very much worth your attention.

Some earlier thoughts of mine in a related vein can be found here, here, here, and here. And, on a more individual level, here.

Most current systems are designed to be cheap. We need to think harder about making them robust, even if that's more expensive.

HOT AIR looks at a murder in Knoxville.

TOM MAGUIRE ON RON PAUL: "Ron Paul twice went to the moral equivalence argument with his ruminations about what the US might do if China were putting bases in the Gulf of Mexico. And what a great question! Does anyone else remember Jack Kennedy blowing up some buildings in Moscow as a response to the Cuban missile crisis? Maybe Ron Paul could expound on that."

Well, there was Bill Clinton and that Chinese Embassy, but I don't think that counts. Plus, the obligatory Jack Bauer reference! And I do mean obligatory.

MY EARLIER POST on criminal justice in Japan inspires some thoughts from Doug Weinstein.

TROUBLE in the House of Representatives. And rumors of a different kind of trouble in the Senate.

UPDATE: More here on what seems to be an interesting switcheroo.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt says that GOP Senators are about to cave on immigration.

I've written before about the Republicans' apparent death wish. Seems as if it's still there.

MORE: Rep. Eric Cantor talks about what's going on in an NRO podcast.

PROTECTING COLLEGE STUDENTS IN SOUTH CAROLINA:

To prevent school shootings, some South Carolina legislators want more guns on campuses.

A House subcommittee approved a measure Wednesday that would allow concealed weapon permit holders to carry guns onto public school campuses, from elementary schools to universities. Supporters say having trained and armed gun owners in schools could prevent massacres like the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech, where one armed student killed 32 people.

Only Utah currently has a law allowing concealed weapons on campuses.

"We're not talking about kids. We're talking about responsible adults," said Republican Rep. Jeff Duncan, who sponsored the bill. . . . To obtain a concealed weapon permit in South Carolina, a resident must be at least 21, undergo at least eight hours of handgun training, and pass criminal and mental background checks.

Objectors say that right now, "we know the person with the weapon is the bad guy." But isn't that, you know, the problem?

UPDATE: Some related thoughts from David Hogberg.

DAVE HARDY will be on Glenn Beck's CNN Headline News show tonight at 7 & 9 Eastern.

STATE ATTORNEYS GENERAL, SEX OFFENDERS, MySpace, and the law.

HDTV QUESTIONS ANSWERED!

UPDATE: