September 22, 2007

TAKING IT HSU THE NEXT LEVEL: A special prosecutor for the Norman Hsu case?

THIS SEEMS LIKE NEWS: "Israeli commandos seized nuclear material of North Korean origin during a daring raid on a secret military site in Syria before Israel bombed it this month, according to informed sources in Washington and Jerusalem. The attack was launched with American approval on September 6 after Washington was shown evidence the material was nuclear related, the well-placed sources say."

FRANK J.: "I agree; it's a huge failure of the conservative movement someone hasn't thrown fame and fortune at me by now."

MEGAN MCARDLE: Armed and dangerous.

TELLING THE SAME ANECDOTE TWICE, with different quotes. "I think it's fair to suspect that Toobin assembles material into quotes that are not really quotes."

"WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED IN JENA?"

The reporting on this story is atrocious. It's all updates with no background. So, I'm wondering not only what happened in Jena, but why is the press reporting it this way?

Sullivan links to Megan McCardle's summary of the Wikipedia article on the subject, which she understands is "pretty authoritative." It's pathetic that we're reduced to going to Wikipedia because the mainstream news of a current event is too skimpy.

Indeed. But here's much more on the case from Patterico.

UPDATE: Further thoughs here.

ATLAS MUGGED.

ED CONE: Make Yom Kippur a national holiday.

Not until we get "whacking day" approved. Meanwhile, a foiled Yom Kippur terror attack in Tel Aviv.

"GENERAL JAMESON?" Now that's funny.

DAN RATHER'S Revenge.

HOW TO SABOTAGE AHMADINEJAD: Have some scantily-clad coed run up and give him a kiss. Make sure photos are distributed in Iran.

UPDATE: Yes, this is tongue-in-cheek, as some of our dimmer lefty blogger friends seem to have missed. (Hey, I thought they were in favor of "make love, not war." But maybe this is "fake love, not war.") It was, however based on a real incident. Had they been paying attention to the news, they might have remembered that.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Okay, this would be better: Dan Riehl suggests a Jewish Lesbian Kos diarist. Plus, her admiration is already on record.

THERE'S A BLOG AIMED AT DRAFTING ALASKA GOV. Sarah Palin for Vice President. I don't see that as terribly likely, but I certainly like her action on the Bridge to Nowhere, and I wouldn't mind seeing her fill Ted Stevens' seat.

A BRIGHT FUTURE for large-scale solar farms?

IS IT JUST ME? Or is Brian Wilson channeling Johnny Cash in this photo?

MORE LIBEL-LAW BASED CENSORSHIP, in Britain.

DANIEL DREZNER: "What the f@#% is going on with the University of California Regents?"

THE MAN, THE MIND, AND THE MONEY behind MoveOn.org.

THE JORDANIAN BLOGOSPHERE comes of age.

EUGENE VOLOKH POINTS OUT SOME ERRORS in Jeffrey Toobin's new book. Mickey Kaus thinks that Eugene is excessively "hesitant and mild-mannered."

MORE ON Google and privacy. "I'd be a helluva lot happier of they had started with the basic principles and mechanisms for ensuring privacy and announced those first - before releasing working code modules."

SO I SAW THIS Waring wine chiller at Williams-Sonoma the other day, and it looked cool. But when I checked the product reviews on Amazon, they were pretty lukewarm. That's too bad, as I like the idea.

SO HSU ME:

A Laguna Beach investment firm filed a lawsuit against Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu on Friday, claiming he defrauded investors out of at least $23 million and required them to donate to Democratic candidates.

According to the lawsuit filed by Briar Wood Investments, Hsu persuaded the company's operator to do business with him by taking him to star-studded Democratic Party events. There, the 56-year-old Hong Kong native was praised by New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown and others, the lawsuit said.

As a condition of doing business with the fundraiser, Hsu directed investors to make contributions to certain Democratic candidates, the lawsuit said. The investors turned over tens of thousands of dollars, including $30,000 worth of checks to Clinton's campaign on a single day.

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal troubles that continue to mount for Hsu.

Last week, New York investors filed a similar suit against Hsu. On Thursday, federal prosecutors unsealed a criminal complaint accusing Hsu of operating a national Ponzi scheme and reimbursing investors for donations made in their names. And on Friday, a San Mateo County judge ordered Hsu held without bail in a 1991 theft case. . . . According to the lawsuit, Waters invested with Hsu in part because "prominent persons, including Sen. Hillary Clinton, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, national Democratic political adviser James Carville, film director Steven Spielberg, actor (Tobey) Maguire, grocery store magnate/billionaire Ron Burkle and others introduced and/or endorsed Hsu as a friend, colleague and trusted associate."

Read the whole thing. When you do, you'll see that these people are finding it increasingly difficult to remember ever knowing Hsu. By next November they won't even recognize his name.

"Hsu gave you this money." "Who?" "Hsu!" "That's what I'm asking you!"

HOW TO OBSERVE Ramadan in space.

A VINTAGE PHOTOBLOG that's worth your time.

JEFF SOYER ROUNDS UP candidate speeches to the NRA.

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE.

DISCOVERING cave entrances on Mars.

JAMES CAAN: "Nobody should give a shit about an actor's opinion on politics."

September 21, 2007

STEPHEN GREEN: "It's somehow with a straight face that the AP reports that Jimmy Carter is as gullible as ever."

GEE, DO YOU THINK? "UC Irvine chancellor says he 'bungled' Chemerinsky firing."

THE DELUSION OF dialogue.

ANOTHER CALIFORNIA NEWSPAPER editorializes on Larry Summers:

Small but vocal minorities should not be allowed to halt the free trade of ideas that is so critical to higher education.

And what was Larry Summers going to talk about? Competitiveness.

Plus, the San Jose Mercury News on Stanford's McCarthyism. "Universities should be paragons for the open exchange of ideas, even if they're controversial or unpopular. And all connected with private and public university communities should protect that ideal."

RUDY GIULIANI goes after Hillary for her MoveOn support.

BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW! "A 25-year quagmire."

U.S. AND FRANCE agree on new sanctions against Iran.

FRANK J.: "In the Fred Thompson administration, there will be no need for the leaders of terrorist states to visit Ground Zero; Ground Zero will be wherever they live."

Hey, do you think Frank J. fits the job description below? Only he has his own taser. . . .

UPDATE: Also, if you do tase Frank J., he just laughs maniacally and says "Beauty! Turn it up to 90 next time!"

ARE ALL RENTAL CARS BAD?

WHAT THE CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT NEEDS: Its own Andrew Meyers! Also, lower standards. But I repeat myself.

The scary thing is that he may well be right.

UPDATE: A "Preditor."

THELMA AND LOUISE, the Tim Blair / Iowahawk version.

TIM BERNERS-LEE SLAMS "Stupid male geek culture." Though this turn of phrase might win over lonely geeks: "If there were more women involved we could move towards interoperability."

HENRY WAXMAN'S TARNISHED WITNESS. Apparently he got a Norman Hsu-level background check . . . .

IN INSIDE HIGHER ED., a bad review for the AAUP:

In any event, on purely intellectual grounds, “Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure” would have been better advised to seek a broader preliminary review. That’s because, regardless of one’s views about the propriety of bringing political opinions to the college classroom, the report is ill-executed. It takes aim at arguments that the critics haven’t made; it caricatures other criticisms; and it insists on strange premises — the most singular of which is the idea that “truth” is whatever the members of a discipline say it is.

Besides enunciating the AAUP’s dismal view of conservative scholars, the report makes one other theme abundantly clear. If we take the corporate authorship of the report at face value, the nation’s largest association of faculty members cares far more about the freedom of professors than it does the education of students. In the AAUP’s view, the freedom of faculty members is as broad and open-ended as a circus tent. The freedom of students to be taught in classes that focus on the subject at hand, unadorned by their instructors’ opinings on President Bush, global warming, or immigration — that freedom — hardly exists.

It wasn’t always so. The AAUP was founded in 1915 by Arthur Lovejoy and John Dewey, who had been moved by the firing of a Stanford University faculty member because of his political views. The AAUP made its first mark with its publication of a “Statement of Principles” that laid out a compelling account of what academic freedom should be. First sentence: “The term ‘academic freedom’ has traditionally had two applications — to the freedom of the teacher and to that of the student.” The AAUP’s founding document is primarily concerned with the freedom of the teacher, but it includes a powerful set of caveats. As this paragraph does not appear in more recent AAUP statements or as far as I can tell elsewhere on the Internet, I offer it here in its entirety . . . .

The AAUP in 1915 saw the potential for faculty members to abuse academic freedom, and it warned that for the profession to protect itself it would have to “purge its ranks of the incompetent and the unworthy” who included those who engage in “uncritical and intemperate partisanship.”

Nowadays that's not a bug, it's a feature!

AT PRAWFSBLAWG, some thoughts on originalism and its failings. I've written a lengthier treatment here.

A LOOK AT creeping antisemitism. Heck, in some quarters it's not even bothering to creep any more.

HEH: "Here's a sign of changing times: lawyers are picking up luxury real estate holdings that hedge fund guys can't afford to keep."

BRINGING NEW MEANING TO "PAJAMAHADEEN": "Once her son is off to school, Laura Mansfield settles in at her dining room table with her laptop and begins trolling Arabic-language message boards and chat rooms popular with jihadists. Fluent in Arabic, the self-employed terror analyst often hacks into the sites, translates the material, puts it together and sends her analysis via a subscription service to intelligence agencies, law enforcement and academics."

And read this, too.

ANOTHER IMMIGRATION VOTE next week?

This is the last thing the Republicans need.

BLOGOMETER: "The netroots are hopping mad over the Senate's vote to condemn MoveOn's 'Gen. Betray Us' ad."

BAD MEDICINE: John Stossel on health care:

America's health-care problem is not that some people lack insurance, it is that 250 million Americans do have it.

You have to understand something right from the start. We Americans got hooked on health insurance because the government did the insurance companies a favor during World War II. Wartime wage controls prohibited cash raises, so employers started giving noncash benefits like health insurance to attract workers. The tax code helped this along by treating employer-based health insurance more favorably than coverage you buy yourself. And state governments have made things worse by mandating coverage many people would never buy for themselves.

Competition also pushed companies to offer ever-more attractive policies, such as first-dollar coverage for routine ailments like ear infections and colds, and coverage for things that are not even illnesses, like pregnancy. We came to expect insurance to cover everything.

Read the whole thing.

WHEN GEORGE BUSH'S METAPHORS ARE TOO COMPLEX FOR YOU TO UNDERSTAND, a career in journalism may be beyond your capacities. But not beyond your reach!

PAUL CASSELL IS RESIGNING THE BENCH. Among other reasons, he cites problems with judicial pay.

WHY IS MOVEON MAKING LIFE TOUGHER FOR DEMOCRATS?

Yesterday, an organization so small its 17 employees don't even have a central office, found itself under attack by not only President Bush, who said the ad was "disgusting," but also by the Democratic-controlled Senate, which passed a resolution 72 to 25 expressing its own outrage. Many Democrats blamed the group for giving moderate Republicans a ready excuse for staying with Bush and for giving Bush and his supporters a way to divert attention away from the war. . . .

Many Democratic strategists were privately furious at the group for launching an attack on a member of the military rather than Bush, arguing that it gave Republicans a point on which to attack the Democrats and to rally around the administration's war policy. The displeasure underscores the uneasy alliance between MoveOn and the party.

If one assumes that MoveOn was out to help MoveOn, rather than the Democratic Party, this all makes sense. It has, I gather, been a fundraising boon to them, and it's raised MoveOn's profile within the party. Their capacity to mess things up only means that people have to pay more attention to them.

Public choice theory explains things once again!

UPDATE: A similar dynamic in a different organization.

HMM: "I'm not saying it's a deliberate setup, but the last thing Obama needed in his presidential candidacy was the 'Jena 6' flap. No matter how he chooses to treat the case, he will fare the worse for it. . . . The saddest part of Obama's Hobson's choice is what it says about that aging black power structure. In forcing his hand this way, they seem to be saying that they don't really want a black President of the United States."

ERIC SCHEIE: "So many things are illegal now that it's almost like a gigantic prosecutorial dartboard."

REMEMBERING CLASSIC CARS: The 1979 AMC AMX. IowaHawk probably has seven. Or maybe none. . . .

Nice Farrah hairdo on the accompanying model, too.

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY'S WAR AGAINST ITSELF? "Is there a Civil War still going on in Iraq? Perhaps. But there is another Civil War brewing... within the Democratic party."

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Well, I think that this counts as a win:

The state of Alaska on Friday officially abandoned the "bridge to nowhere" project that became a nationwide symbol of federal pork-barrel spending.

The $398 million bridge would have connected Ketchikan, on one island in southeastern Alaska, to its airport on another nearby island.

"Ketchikan desires a better way to reach the airport, but the $398 million bridge is not the answer," Gov. Sarah Palin said in a statement.

She directed the state transportation department to find the most "fiscally responsible" alternative for access to the airport.

Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young championed the project through Congress two years ago, securing more than $200 million for the bridge between Ketchikan, on Revillagigedo Island, and Gravina Island.

You don't see this kind of thing very often. But let's hope that's changing.

"AMONG THE BELIEVERS:" Jeff Goldstein stirs the pot.

AUTOBLOGGREEN: Autoblog reports from a plug-in hybrid show in D.C., and on other alternative automotive technologies.

HSOCKING HSU HSECRETS? Presumably, we'll learn what's going on as the investigation proceeds.

MORE ACADEMIC OPEN-MINDEDNESS on free speech. Are we talking universities? Or 527s?

DAVID BELLAVIA'S FALLUJAH MEMOIR, House to House, gets a very positive review.

CORY DOCTOROW on the information economy.

JOHN MCCAIN TO CODE PINK PROTESTORS: "We beat you yesterday, we beat you today, and we'll beat you tomorrow. We don't choose to lose." Video, including a standing ovation from the audience, at the link.

THOUGHTS ON Dan Rather, O.J., and the culture of the delusional celebrity.

CAN'T TURN HSU LOOSE: "Hsu Still 'Hillraiser,' At Least For Now."

WELL, THIS SUCKS: Virginia Postrel mentions, in an oh-by-the-way fashion: "I have breast cancer and start chemotherapy next Friday." Please send her your best wishes.

DESPITE THEIR DIFFERENCES, GETTING ALONG BETTER THAN JAMES CARVILLE AND MARY MATALIN: The latest Corn & Miniter Show is up!

IN THE MAIL: Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson's Beyond the Body Farm: A Legendary Bone Detective Explores Murders, Mysteries, and the Revolution in Forensic Science.

Our podcast interview with Bass & Jefferson can be heard here.

THOUGHTS ON THELMA & LOUISE and the 1990s.

UPDATE: I like the idea in the comments, for a sequel starring IowaHawk.

HARRY REID: "Frustrated Dems will keep pushing for end to Iraq war." But not hard enough to actually succeed in ending it, because then they might be held responsible.

HOW WOULD THINGS LOOK, if moms ran the world?

JONAH GOLDBERG LOOKS AT DAN RATHER'S LAWSUIT against CBS. And finds it hard not to giggle.

Maybe Rather could get a job as a New Republic Diarist?

DO DO THAT VOODOO THAT HSU DO SO WELL:

Hsu admitted coercing political donors, indictment says

Norman Hsu, the Democratic fund-raiser with a habit of fleeing the law, confessed to FBI agents last week that he pressured investors in what he now admits were phony business deals to contribute to political campaigns, prosecutors said in an indictment.

The plot keeps thickening.

COASE, CLOTHESLINES, AND CLIMATE CHANGE: That would be a cool title for a law review article, too.

LESSONS FROM JENA.

UPDATE: More thoughts here. And read this post, too.

ANOTHER DEMOCRATIC DEBATE LAST NIGHT: Somehow I missed it entirely. Luckily, Jim Geraghty gets paid to keep track.

THE TOUGHEST GUY WITH NO ARMS I've ever heard of. "Snelville, Georgia police are investigating whether William Russell Redfern, who has no arms, may have caused the death of his neighbor after head-butting and kicking him in a fight."

MORE TALK OF A BREAKUP in Belgium. "With the headquarters of both NATO and the European Union in Brussels, the crisis is not limited to this country because it could embolden other European separatist movements, among them the Basques, the Lombards and the Catalans."

ASK AND YE SHALL RECEIVE: Alan Greenspan was saying that he wished the Bush Administration had been more like the Ford Administration economically, and now we get this: Canadian Dollar Trades Equal to U.S. for First Time Since 1976.

U.S. RESUMES Blackwater convoys in Iraq.

NORMAN HSU VS. OPRAH WINFREY: Maybe one big difference is that one was a fugitive felon with no visible means of support? The Los Angeles Times editorial kind of underplays the significance of that distinction.

GOOD QUESTION: "I have a question for the Columbia crowd, since Holocaust deniers are welcome, would you allow a speaker in favor of a return to black slavery? I hope not. Well, that's how I feel about Holocaust deniers. What are the speaker rules at Columbia? Does anybody know? How far can you go?"

As far as you want, but only so long as the message is sufficiently anti-Bush.

UPDATE: Columbia won't cancel Ahmadinejad speech. Their concern for the free exchange of ideas seems a bit . . . selective.

SECRETLY TAPING TED: "The FBI, working with an Alaska oil contractor, secretly taped telephone calls with Sen. Ted Stevens as part of a public corruption sting, according to people close to the investigation. The secret recordings suggest the Justice Department was eyeing Stevens long before June, when the Republican senator first publicly acknowledged he was under scrutiny. At that time, it appeared Stevens was a new focus in a case that had already ensnared several state lawmakers."

The GOP really needs to encourage him to take early retirement, but I doubt it has the will.

A LAPTOP WITH 640GB of storage.

MORE ON MURTHA and the Marines.

REALCLEARPOLITICS now has its own political futures market.

BLAUPUNKT: Too hip for CDs?

KATHLEEN PARKER: "The latest smack-down of former Harvard President Lawrence Summers should extinguish any remaining doubt that political correctness is the new McCarthyism."

MARC AMBINDER: Obama's campaign brings in a consigliere.

AL QAEDA'S SECRET WAR with itself.

September 20, 2007

A NORMAN HSUPDATE: "U.S. Attorney Outlines Hsu's Alleged Fraud Scheme; Sen. Clinton Distancing Herself From Sticky Situation."

OUCH.

HUGH HEWITT INTERVIEWS ROBERT KAPLAN about his new book, Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts: The American Military in the Air, at Sea, and on the Ground.

BOB OWENS: "Today is the two-month anniversary of Franklin Foer claiming that he and The New Republic would run an honest investigation into the claims made in a story written by Scott Thomas Beauchamp. . . . Since that time, a few things have happened." Yeah, but not that honest investigation.

TOM GOLDSTEIN LOOKS AT the next Supreme Court term.

Paul Mirengoff is unhappy.

LUNAR PARKING PERMITS: A pretty decent little space law summary, from Slate.

THOUGHTS ON mandatory attendance in law school classes.

PROTECTING AHMADINEJAD -- a novel angle:

Here's a weird scenario: presumably, the American security agents have to liaise with their Iranian counterparts, most of whom are probably connected in some way or another with the Iranian central intelligence and security agency.

So how does the Service [prevent] the Iranians from gaining detailed knowledge of protective methods and coded radio frequencies?

Good question.

UPDATE: I'm sure that nothing like this will be permitted, much less a bunch of "students" taking Ahmadinejad hostage.

MEL WEISS INDICTED: "A federal grand jury has indicted Mel Weiss for his involvement in an alleged class-action kickback scheme that has led to the indictment of the firm he co-founded in 1972. If convicted of the four counts in the second superseding indictment, Weiss faces up to 40 years in prison." Indictment and press release at the link.

COLUMBIA: Cancelling, then un-cancelling, Ahmadinejad?

UPDATE: Related thoughts here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here.

FINALLY: Michael Barone emails:

Just a random thought on Ahmedinejad speaking at Columbia.

Columbia doesn't host ROTC or (I think) military recruiters on campus, because it would be just too offensive to do so, because the military obeys the law passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by Bill Clinton which bars open homosexuals from serving in the military. OK.

But Columbia does host Ahmedinejad who heads a government which executes homosexuals for the crime of being homosexuals.

So it's obnoxious beyond belief to exclude homosexuals from military service, but it's not obnoxious beyond belief to hang them from the neck until dead.

I'm inclined to think that Congress and the military should rethink their policy of barring homosexuals from military service. It's a long argument, which I'll omit from this post. But I don't have any trouble joining the 99.99% of Americans who oppose execution of homosexuals for homosexual acts. And who think it's a barbaric act, incapable of being supported by any decent argument.

Why does Lee Bollinger think a man who heads a regime that executes homosexuals--not just excludes them from military service, but hangs them by the neck until dead, in public ceremony-- should be honored with an invitation to speak at Columbia?

Because Ahmadinejad doesn't like Bush, and that covers all sins?

JAMES LILEKS: "They can make me take a vacation, but let’s see them try to enforce it." Yeah, James. Stick it to The Man!

A LOOK AT SOME unlikely environmental heroes.

THE DAM BURSTS at the Al Dura trial.

JOE LIEBERMAN SLAMS AHMADINEJAD: Ian Schwartz has the video.

MICHELLE RHEE on education in D.C.

STEPHEN GREEN LOVES HIS IPHONE: I mean, a lot.

AT PAM'S HOUSE BLEND, a complaint about a lack of attention from "progressive" bloggers to the Jena 6.

Far be it from me to speak for the progressive blogosphere, but -- as I was discussing with a colleague whose work on the "school-to-jail pipeline" has had him following the case closely -- one big problem is that the facts have trickled out, and it was hard to get a clear narrative that made sense of what was going on. The signal-to-noise ratio wasn't that good. Contrast this to the Cory Maye case, where Radley Balko made things quite clear early on. We've seen this in cases involving foreign bloggers in trouble, too, where people wonder why some get a lot more attention than others. Almost always it involves whether there's a clear story online that someone can link to, and people who can get the story out to bloggers with an explanation of why it's important. My Jena 6 email all seemed to be in media res, which is why I consulted Radley Balko. The email conveyed that people were upset, but that's not enough -- in the blogosphere, people are always upset!

UPDATE: Related thoughts from Orin Kerr.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Unconvinced.

BRAD DELONG, ALAN GREENSPAN, AND PERICLEAN ATHENS: I think, actually, that the Clinton economic-policy shop was a good one. And don't forget Gene Sperling's role, while you're at it.

RUDY GIULIANI with Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, and Margaret Thatcher.

I DON'T WANT TO HEAR THEM BITCHING ABOUT "EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE," EITHER:

All 13 members of Congress subpoenaed in the Duke Cunningham investigation have refused to turn over documents and testimony, citing congressional privilege. This was under advice from the House general counsel.

Keep in mind, this is the same Congress that, when questioned by Major League Baseball over its constitutional authority to investigate the steroid scandal, replied that its jurisdiction extended to "any time" and "on any matter."

So while they seem to think their subpoena power is universal, don't expect them to be held accountable themselves.

Pretty brave talk from an institution whose approval ratings are where they are.

ARNOLD KLING LOOKS AT AUBREY DE GREY'S NEW BOOK, ENDING AGING: "Too often, academics use their credentials to spit out biased polemics dressed up as science. Ending Aging is the opposite. It is a crash course in state-of-the-art science dressed up as a polemic. De Grey wears his passion for undertaking a war on aging on his sleeve, yet most of the book consists of scientific analysis that, although simplified to enable a layman to follow, is conscientious in reporting doubts and objections to the author's point of view."

Kling is more optimistic about a scientific revolution, though, than about a paradigm-shift in government institutions, which seems right to me.

HOW TO eat sushi.

GOOD NEWS FOR FRED THOMPSON: James Dobson doesn't like him. That's gotta be worth, what, five percent?

INFLUENCE-BUYING: Well, that's what they'd call it if the NRA did it, anyway.

SENATE CONDEMNS THE "BETRAYUS" AD, 72-25: Hillary Clinton voted against condemning the ad. More here including this observation: "Some of the senators who won the greatest support from the netroots in the last election, like McCaskill, Tester, Klobuchar, and Webb, voted to condemn the ad."

WILL THE HSUTH COME OUT AT LAST? "Lawsuit may show where Hsu got his money for campaign contributions." (Via NewsAlert).

Plus this: "Justice Department officials in New York will announce criminal charges against Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu today for allegedly orchestrating a $60 million fraud scheme and committing related federal campaign finance crimes."

OUCH: "In other news from the world of academia, it seems that while Larry Summers isn't welcome to be a dinner speaker at the University of California, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an honored guest at Columbia."

DISSING DAN RATHER, at Slashdot. From the comments: "I heard he has an email from Pres. Bush that he sent Boeing in 1945 proving that they knew the plane was unsafe."

SOME FURTHER THOUGHTS on politics, law school hiring, and the Chemerinsky affair.

MICHAEL MALONE WRITES FROM LONDON:

I remember as a kid, my parents, both children of the Great Depression, telling me of bank runs. And, of course, like everyone else, I've seen a run on a bank dramatized in "It's a Wonderful Life," but I never expected to see one in the 21st century, and especially just a few blocks away from my apartment.

According to the BBC, the bank run is all America's fault. Plus, banks as cybercriminals?

PINUPS FOR VETS: Seems like a worthy cause.

THE "JENA SIX:" Okay, the fact that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are involved doesn't prove that there's no actual injustice, but it was enough to make me email Radley Balko -- I've gotten a lot of email on the case, but most of it seems to assume that I already know what's going on. Radley's lengthy reply is below: click "read more" to read it. As always, it's constructive to ask how people would act if the races were reversed.

UPDATE: An update and a minor correction at Radley's blog.

Read More �

IN THE MAIL: John Bowe's Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy.

THE KNOXVILLE POLICE OFFICER WHO BODY-SLAMMED A MAN who was legally carrying a firearm has been disciplined.

The official action(s) taken are:

- A written reprimand for the officer, “which reprimand carries with it certain inter-departmental consequences beyond just a notation in their personnel file.”

- Remedial training in TN Handgun Carry Permit law, and in dealing with the public.

- All KPD officers will be undergoing refresher training on Tennessee Handgun Carry Permit law during the next in-service training session.

- An apology from the Chief of Police, Sterling Owen.

This seems to have been well-handled.

ONLY FROM THE BRITISH PRESS: "I Spent a Week Living Like a Woman."

I'VE SAID BEFORE that the Bush Administration's best strategy is to get Democratic members of Congress on TV and let them talk as long as they want. Thomas Edsall seems to agree. "Questioning Petraeus: Squandered Opportunities, Longwinded Monologues."

A PROFESSOR'S last lecture. For real, alas.

TENS OF THOUSANDS OF GOVERNMENT SPYCAMS, but 80% of London crime is unsolved. That's because spycams aren't about solving crime, just as red-light cameras aren't about traffic safety.

THE HARVARD CRIMSON: "The protest against former President Summers is a disgrace to academia. . . . the UC’s regents have sent an altogether different message—the University of California has ceased to value academic freedom."

BREAKING UP AN AL QAEDA CELL IN SAMARRA: The big news is that it was done by the Iraqi National Police, who have been considerably less effective than the Iraqi army overall.

EVERYTHING OLD IS HSU AGAIN: "A list of the donors who have 'bundled' large sums from dozens of individuals to give to Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign includes several figures who were involved in the 1990s Democratic Party fundraising scandal that tarnished her husband's record."

What, you thought I was running out of Hsu puns?

MORE CRITICISM OF THE U.C. REGENTS in the Larry Summers affair, at The New Republic. U.C. Davis history professor Eric Rauchway writes:

By succumbing to a demand that they reject a controversial, though--as a former treasury secretary, university administrator, and respected economist--obviously relevant speaker, the Regents have suddenly made life much more difficult for those of us in the business of presenting controversial, if relevant, ideas and guest speakers on UC campuses. Casting someone as utterly outside the university's conversation is the severest penalty we as scholars can impose--appropriate perhaps to Holocaust deniers and such ilk as exhibit a chronic impenetrability to reason. Lawrence Summers, though he said some things well worth objecting to, falls well short of that standard. By applying this ban to him, the Regents suggest an impossibly low tolerance for controversy at the University of California.

Indeed. Though rather than "suggest," I'd say the appropriate word is "demonstrate."

SPYWARE IN THE WORKPLACE: A big look at how businesses are spying on their workers. "More stealthy and prevalent than ever before, corporate security software is monitoring your every move inside and out of the office, whether it’s with your corporate computer, e-mail, phone or BlackBerry. . . . your employer has more powerful tools to watch over you than the cops—and there’s nothing you can do about it."

MAHMOUD DOES MANHATTAN: "On the same day that the Iranian air force commander announced that Iran has drawn plans to bomb Israel, NY Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly revealed that the Bloomberg administration was in discussions to escort Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Ground Zero. Mahmoud won’t get to Ground Zero, but he will talk at Columbia University after addressing the UN on Monday." Follow the link for an extensive roundup.

UPDATE: Organizing an Ahmadinejad welcoming party.

RON ROSENBAUM ON Mearsheimer & Walt and the fear of a second Holocaust. "The world's willingness to permit one Holocaust gives cause for concern that it will stand by, if not enable, another." There are a lot of enablers out there.

MUSLIMS AGAINST SHARIA offer a bounty on Al Qaeda leader. Heh.

IN AN UPDATE TO HIS POST LINKED BELOW, Beldar has a link to Dan Rather's complaint and some choice comments on the lawsuit.

THE TIP OF THE HSUBERG? IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, more questions about "bundling."

When Hillary Rodham Clinton held an intimate fund-raising event at her Washington home in late March, Pamela Layton donated $4,600, the maximum allowed by law, to Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign.

But the 37-year-old Ms. Layton says she and her husband were reimbursed by her husband's boss for the donations. "It wasn't personal money. It was all corporate money," Mrs. Layton said outside her home here. "I don't even like Hillary. I'm a Republican." The boss is William Danielczyk, founder of a Washington-area private-equity firm and a major fund-raising "bundler" for Mrs. Clinton. Mrs. Layton's gift was one of more than a dozen donations that night from people with Republican ties or no history of political giving. Mr. Danielczyk and his family, employees and friends donated a total of $120,000 to Mrs. Clinton in the days around the fund-raiser.

In an interview, Mr. Danielczyk said he "did not and would not" reimburse employees or others for their political donations. Such reimbursement would be illegal. Mr. Danielczyk said he was a co-host for the event at Mrs. Clinton's home. "Everybody was asked to contribute," he said, "some said yes and some said no." He added, "No arm was twisted."

The episode adds to growing questions about the practice of "bundling" donations, in which ambitious fund-raisers collect money from friends, colleagues and sometimes employees to send to a campaign. Every major presidential campaign now relies on the practice to raise large sums. It is an especially important strategy for Mrs. Clinton. She has formed a group of "HillRaisers" who get special recognition for sweeping in more than $100,000 for her campaign. . . .

One person at the event was a Washington-area investor who was considering putting some money in one of Mr. Danielczyk's ventures. The investor, a registered Republican, said he was invited by Mr. Danielczyk and a colleague who were wooing him to invest at least $125,000 in one of their companies.

The investor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, says he didn't donate any money to Mrs. Clinton. Campaign-finance records show that the investor contributed $4,600 on March 30 to Mrs. Clinton. The reason for the discrepancy isn't clear.

Read the whole thing. We'd be better off with unlimited individual donations, so that people wouldn't be encouraged to engage in these kinds of hsunanigans.

THE COURT HAS MOVED RIGHT SINCE I980. SO WHAT?

Seriously: why on earth would the definition of a "conservative" court in 1980 be some sort of lodestar by which all future courts should be judged. By the standards of 1880, the current court would be a bunch of wild-eyed socialist libertine radicals bent on undermining everything that made America great. Does that entitle me to re-nominate Oliver Wendell Holmes, or his modern day equivalent?

Cass Sunstein (who graduated from law school in 1978) seems to be under the delusion that the conditions of his youth are the golden mean by which all future events are to be judged and found wanting. I mean, we all feel the same way, but most of us don't expect anyone younger to take us seriously when we drone on about how much better The Pogues were than any of this modern noise. . . .

The court is to the right of the average law professor, not to mention the average Cass Sunstein. But that's because the average law professor is to the left of the average American, and any reasonably democratic system is going to produce a Supreme Court whose mean opinion hews more closely to that of the voters than to that of any larger group from which the appointees are drawn.

It's better that we don't let law professors pick Supreme Court justices.

COMMENTARIES ON the Gallic War.

COLLEGES failing history?

DON'T LET THE DOOR HIT HSU ON THE WAY OUT:

Disgraced Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu is to return to California today under armed guard after waiving extradition, concluding the Colorado chapter of his strange legal saga.

"I'll be very surprised if he's here at the close of business" (today), Mesa County District Attorney Pete Hautzinger said. "It's my understanding California authorities will be here, and it's my understanding he'll be transported by air."

Mesa County District Judge Brian Flynn ordered Hsu to be held without bond pending the arrival of deputies from San Mateo, Calif. . . .

"It'll be very relieving to have him gone,'' Hautzinger said Wednesday.

I imagine a lot of people feel that way.

ANOTHER REVIEW OF UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT, this time from The Economist.

A striking number of professors were willing to trample all over legal process in their rush to declare the lacrosse players guilty before charge, let along trial. And they did so solely on the basis of the players' race and gender. One professor, Houston Baker, denounced the lacrosse players as “young white, violent, drunken men veritably given licence to rape, maraud, deploy hate speech”. Duke's politically-correct faculty thus produced a mirror image of the worst racism of the South in the 1950s, when people were pronounced guilty—and denied their legal rights—solely because they were black. While all this was going on Duke's president, Richard Brodhead, did little, if anything, to defend the lacrosse players or to criticise the faculty for its lynch-mob mentality. A university that charges students over $40,000 per year essentially abandoned three of them to the bullying of an out-of-control prosecutor.

Indeed.

September 19, 2007

MORE ON REBOUND HEADACHES: Reader Ann Scher emails:

I am longtime reader of your web site and was inspired to comment on your link to the NYT article on rebound headache.

I am a headache researcher (epidemiologist) and have an interest in this particular topic. There is some debate on the degree to which medication "overuse" aggravates headache and, in my opinion, much of the published data purporting to support this concept suffers from various methodological flaws.

Regarding rebound headache (the preferred term is now "medication overuse headache") - to my knowledge, the only substance shown to cause an actual rebound headache in a blinded placebo-controlled trail is caffeine. However, rebound headache is a presumably short-lived phenomenon and it is not obvious, at least to me, how caffeine withdrawal headache would lead to chronic daily headache lasting for months or years on end as it does in some people.

My concern is the following: If medication overuse is not really an aggravating factor for chronic daily headache or is an aggravating factor in only a minority of people, the advice to limit treatment to a few days a week is leading to the undertreatment of pain.

Good point. Earlier post here.

STUART TAYLOR ON THE Duke rape case press coverage: "By late March, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, and Fox TV trucks were filling the parking lots, grabbing random students for interviews, turning the campus into a freak show set. The team’s 46 white members had been branded as depraved racists from coast to coast." Read the whole thing.

NOTHIN' BREWIN' in the tropics.

Well, that's good news.

OUCH: "57% of French children under five have never brushed their teeth."

MORE FUMBLING FROM FRED.

PROBABLY OVER-OPTIMISTIC: "Cancer sufferers could be cured with injections of immune cells from other people within two years, scientists say." But I'd certainly like it to be true.

WHY STOP AT 50 STARS? (Via TigerHawk).

UPDATE: In the comments, a devastating counterargument: "Aren't 100 senators more than enough?"

ANOTHER CALIFORNIA NEWSPAPER is unhappy with the University of California Regents: "Even while on the verge of naming a new chancellor, UC Regents this week rescinded a speaking invitation from former Harvard President Lawrence Summers after a group of UC professors signed a petition protesting his appearance. This is what higher education comes down to here in 2007 . . . A week ago, we defended UC Santa Cruz from an online diatribe calling, essentially, for the silencing of leftists like Angela Davis. Now, we're hearing the same nonsense, unbelievably, from the very people that we were defending last week."

THOUGHTS ON facts and politics.

ERIC SCHEIE on erotophobia. "I think that the anti-sex wing of the GOP is colluding with the Democrats to make other Republicans afraid. Not merely afraid of sex, but afraid to talk about sex unless they condemn it."

REPORTS FROM THE LATEST BEIRUT BOMBING: Syria would appear to be behind it. Both Syria and Iran seem to be trying to launch spoiling attacks, suggesting that they're worried about something.

UPDATE: Related thoughts here.

YALE LAW GIVES IN: "Yale Law School will end its policy of not working with military recruiters following a court ruling this week that jeopardized about $300 million in federal funding, school officials said Wednesday. . . . Jan Conroy, a Yale Law spokeswoman, said the school would waive the requirement that military recruiters sign the nondiscrimination pledge. The Air Force already has asked to participate in a job interview program that starts Monday, she said."

MICHAEL TOTTEN ON the next Iranian revolution.

OBAMA WAS "DAZZLING" but John Dickerson wonders if he's doomed.

UPDATE: Jesse Jackson says Obama is "too white." Here's a roundup of reactions.

JAMES WEBB'S TROOP-WITHDRAWAL PROPOSAL FAILS IN THE SENATE. Yeah, it was advertised as a troop "rest" proposal, but it's really about making it impossible to continue the surge. This is likely to produce more frustration among war critics.

UPDATE: A possible explanation for that frustration.

I READ THE NEWS TODAY, Oh, boy.

OHIO: Court may wipe out stoplight spycams.

IT'S TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY, so it's a good day to learn all about pirates.

SCHADENFREUDE ALERT: "Dan Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit Wednesday against CBS, alleging that the network made him a 'scapegoat' for a discredited story about President Bush's National Guard service."

UPDATE: Beldar writes: "Usually in a good juicy family court spat, you find yourself in sympathy with at least one litigant. But here's a case in which I can just cut loose and enjoy the misery and embarrassment of all concerned!"

"UGLY ALLIANCE:" Peter Wehner connects the dots.

HARVARD COOP BOOKSTORE: Our prices are our "property" -- so if you write them down, you're stealing!

LATER: Link was busted before -- fixed now. Sorry!

MARC DANZIGER: "We’re fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and debating them in Washington. Yesterday my oldest son left to join the Army. . . . Our kids are supposed to go to East Coast colleges and then to graduate or professional school, not join the military as enlisted men. In this circle, I count only one other family whose son went into the military. That’s two children out of maybe 50 or 60 families. That’s too bad; I think the elites in our society and our military would both do better if each was more closely tied to the other. In writing about U.S. politics, I talk a lot about the increasing and frightening isolation of U.S. policy, information and economic elites."

Photo here.

THE BIG QUESTION: Who's to blame for the anti-war movement's failures?

MICKEY KAUS:

Joe Klein says Matt Drudge is a "disgrace" because Drudge used the headline

HEALTH INSURANCE PROOF REQUIRED FOR WORK

for a link to a piece on Hillary's health plan. And if you read the AP story in question, it's clear that ... well, it's clear that Hillary is thinking about requiring health insurance for work! She says it could be "part of the job interview--like when your kid goes to school and has to show proof of vaccination." If your kid doesn't show the proof, he can't go to school, right? So what, exactly, is wrong with the headline? Am I missing something?

Howard Kurtz notes a general love for Hillary in the press, which is shown in all sorts of ways . . .

DOGS IN SPACE: A look at Laika.

CONGRESS FOCUSES LIKE A LASER BEAM on ancient NFL legends who aren’t feeling well. As John Kerry said: “Most Americans would look at this and say, ‘Wow, what is Congress doing getting into this?’"

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Some suspicious correlations on Murtha's earmarks, according to Roll Call:

Every private entity that Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) favored with an earmark in this year’s defense bill recently has given political money to the lawmaker, according to an analysis of House Appropriations and federal elections records by Roll Call and Taxpayers for Common Sense.

PACs and employees of those 26 groups together have contributed $413,250 to Murtha since the beginning of 2005. He collected nearly a quarter of the sum — $100,750 — in the two weeks leading up to March 16, the original deadline for lawmakers to file their earmark requests. . . .

Murtha’s record of receiving at least some campaign cash from every one of his private earmark beneficiaries makes him a rare, but not unique, case on the Defense Subcommittee. Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) also got some political money from each one of the private entities he helped to win federal dollars, the analysis found.

I'm sure it's all just a coincidence. But I'll bet the return on investment is excellent. More here.

NEW DEVELOPMENTS in the Al Dura trial.

JOHN LEO on the University of California Regents and Larry Summers.

TASER COPS GONE WILD: But you can see Erik Sofge getting tasered here. He didn't like it. Perhaps cops could be discouraged from overly macho behavior by being forced to carry pink tasers.

MICHAEL YON POSTS