November 17, 2007

ADRIANA LUKAS remembers the Velvet Revolution. "A couple of weeks ago I was visiting Eastern Europe and despite the trickle of bandwidth available where I was staying, I found myself watching old clips from the communist era on YouTube. The most surreal was not the absurdity of their content, the ridiculous gravitas of the communist propaganda but the memory of this rubbish being taken seriously and accepted as the norm."

Some of the things she links remind me of a song I used to listen to a lot: "Czech This Out," by Frequency X. (Real names: Nicolai Vorkapich & Ray Castoldi). It takes a phrase from Moscow radio in 1968, "The defense of socialism in Czechoslovakia is more than the concern of the Czechoslovak people," and gradually remixes it to "The defense of Czechoslovakia, the defense of people, the defense of the Czechoslovak people." Subversive. And you can dance to it!

MICKEY KAUS NOTES a Sid Blumenthal-related coincidence.

TAYLOR OWEN: "Why is it that flying is seen as a license to drink at truly disturbing hours of the day?"

(Had this as David Adesnik earlier, but it was just the dreaded co-blogger confusion.)

THOUGHTS ON GUNS AND CIVILIZATION. I understand that Neal Boortz read this essay on the air yesterday.

IT'S A QUAGMIRE: Troops have kept the violence down, but the political solution is still a mess. In Kosovo.

SEARCHING FOR GUNS IN BOSTON: "Boston police are launching a program that will call upon parents in high-crime neighborhoods to allow detectives into their homes, without a warrant, to search for guns in their children's bedrooms. . . . In the next two weeks, Boston police officers who are assigned to schools will begin going to homes where they believe teenagers might have guns. The officers will travel in groups of three, dress in plainclothes to avoid attracting negative attention, and ask the teenager's parent or legal guardian for permission to search. If the parents say no, police said, the officers will leave."

BUSH NOT A COMPLETE FAILURE IN IRAQ! Reuters ladles out the praise!

WHO IS CNN KIDDING?

Themselves, mostly.

UPDATE: They're certainly getting attention.

DEBATING Hillary Clinton's datability.

THOUGHTS ON MEDIA BIAS, from Oliver Kamm.

TOAD LICKING: Seems like a crime that is its own punishment.

SOME THOUGHTS ON VETERANS AND PTSD, at Blackfive.

MAJOR STEM CELL PROGRESS? Bring it on!

MEGAN MCARDLE reports on Cambodia: "Even the older generation seems to think that what we did wrong was not invading, but leaving after we had."

MARK AMBINDER ON free trade flipflops.

JEEZ, THIS SUCKS: Bangladesh cyclone toll tops 1600. If you'd like to help, you can probably find some charities that are responding here.

INTERESTING PROPOSAL: A constitutional amendment barring courts from relying on foreign law.

OUCH: "Even The New York Times and Daily Kos are reporting on the CNN imbalance in the post debate analysis."

VIDEO UPDATE: Following up on my earlier video post, I was at the mall this afternoon and picked up a copy of Final Cut Express 4 HD, and installed it on my Macbook Pro. Once I figured out that the files came in via "log and transfer" rather than "import" or "capture" it was fine -- brought over a couple of clips from the camera and fiddled with them a bit. I'm not as fluent in Final Cut as in Vegas or Premiere, but it seems to work well. Helen thought the video looked better in Final Cut than in Vegas, though that may just be a function of the different monitors.

Note, by the way, that you must have an Intel-based Mac to handle AVCHD in Final Cut. Don't ask me why.

AN INTERVIEW WITH Roger Daltrey.

HILL SHILLS HINT AT 'BAM SLAM.

ANNOUNCING Lawyers for Fred Thompson. They've picked up some big names, including a few folks I'm surprised to see.

IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, Don't turn on Ethiopia:

A new war in the Horn of Africa would destabilize the region and bolster radical Islam’s push to build a Muslim caliphate.

Sadly, Congress is poised to fuel the march toward war by passing a bill that threatens to cut off technical assistance to Ethiopia, one of our closest allies, if it does not, among other things, release political prisoners, ensure that the judiciary operates independently and permit the news media to operate freely. Ethiopia has already freed opposition leaders, reformed parliamentary rules to give opposition parties greater legislative responsibility and approved a new media law that meets international standards. By singling out Ethiopia for public embarrassment, the bill puts Congress unwittingly on the side of Islamic jihadists and insurgents.

The new Congress seems to be putting itself unwittingly on these guys' sides pretty often.

ARTISTS CREATE CD TO THANK THE TROOPS:

America Supports You is a Defense Department program connecting citizens and corporations with military personnel serving at home and abroad.

Getting this project, which combined the music of Billy Joel, Brooks & Dunn, the Goo Goo Dolls, Jewel, Josh Groban, Los Lonely Boys, Melissa Ethridge, the Neville Brothers, Sarah McLachlan, the Lt. Dan Band, Montgomery Gentry, The Fray, and Five For Fighting, to troops’ ears took true teamwork. John Ondrasik, the singer-songwriter who performs under the stage name “Five For Fighting,” was intimately involved with making sure that happened.

Good for him, and read the whole thing. Our podcast interview with Ondrasik -- who seems like a great guy -- can be heard here. (Via Michelle Malkin, who has much more). Also see Blackfive's post, John Ondrasik and his CD for the troops.

DID NSA PUT A SECRET BACKDOOR in the new encryption standard? Is it "Clipper Chip" without the chip?

Then again, private encryption services have their own issues.

IN THE MAIL: Aaron Klein's Schmoozing With Terrorists: From Hollywood to the Holy Land, Jihadists Reveal Their Global Plans to a Jew!

SPITZER UPDATE: "Not that the moribund New York State GOP has had much to celebrate, but the recent foibles of the inept Eliot Spitzer have sure provided an opening for them."

BILL ROGGIO on what's going on in the wilds of Pakistan. More here.

MY EARLIER POST ON VIDEO SOFTWARE prompted some questions -- what did I get? My problem is that although I've got an old version of the pro Vegas Video, and Adobe Premiere Professional, neither will edit the AVCHD files from the new Sony HD camera. So I ordered Vegas Movie Studio 8, which is under a hundred bucks. It's likely to do everything I need -- Helen isn't planning to make any documentaries in the near future -- and the interface is the same as the big-brother version of Vegas so it's familiar. In the unlikely event I need to work on Adobe, I can always save the files in some other format and reopen them there. Note that neither Final Cut Pro HD nor Final Cut Express HD will handle AVCHD files yet, so if you use those platforms you might want to hold off on buying an AVCHD camera. (iMovie '08 will handle AVCHD, I'm told, but only after a fairly laborious transcoding process. My version of iMovie, which is still '06, doesn't recognize the files.)

I haven't done much with it yet, but it opens the AVCHD files fine, and working with them is quite familiar to me, since I've used Vegas before. Some people don't like Vegas, but I find it quite intuitive -- the first thing I ever did with it was this trailer for Helen's film, and I found it easy and fun.

Although I'm pretty happy with the camera, and the software is familiar, my advice to people looking for a camera for the holidays is to go with something a bit farther back from the cutting edge. Looking around at the message boards, etc., I'm finding that there are still a lot of teething problems with the AVCHD format. This isn't an issue for me, really, but it might be for you.

UPDATE: Reader John Gibson emails: "Apple just released Final Cut Express 4. It handles DV, HDV, or AVCHD,
with the ability to edit all three formats in a single timeline. Price is $179.99 at Amazon."

Huh. I just asked at the Apple store last week and they didn't know anything about it. But you're right, here it is. Says it doesn't ship until next week, though.

A "STUNNING MOVE" in financial sanctions against terrorism. My guess is that deals are being made, sub rosa, and this is payoff for one of them. But that's just a guess.

MICKEY KAUS: "I have seen the new nose ("front clip") for the Pontiac Solstice. It's ugly! They've styled it along the tongue-thrusting lines of the G6 GXP. If I had a cell phone camera I'd be rich." That's too bad. As Kaus notes, the current version of the Solstice, while unreliable, is gorgeous.

ED DRISCOLL ON the most busted name in news.

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY: Progress that "progressives" ignore:

There's an eery silence out there about what's going on in Iraq. It's almost as if the silence is, well, intentional.

Read the whole thing, which includes praise for Michael Yon. (Via Newsbeat1).

SOME ADVICE FROM YOUR public defender.

GENE SIMMONS' ADVICE TO RECORD COMPANIES: Sue more customers!

November 16, 2007

THE CNN PLOT THICKENS: “Random” questioner at debate was Arkansas Democratic Party officer in 2003?

A NEW TWIST ON PRETRIAL PUBLICITY: Lawyer cites bloggers, media in bid to move trial tied to murders.

SALMA HAYEK VS. HARRY REID: A SUGGESTION THAT MY PRIORITIES are misplaced.

SOME THINGS never change.

GOT MILK? They're lining up for it in Maracaibo. More here.

UPDATE: "Why don't you shut up?"

MORE ON CNN'S planted questions. "It makes me wonder what else CNN is not saying."

UPDATE: It just gets worse. And more here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Josh Marshall: "Can we just close down CNN?"

SHOWING YOU CARE ABOUT WORKERS by hanging out with celebrities. Isn't that kind of like understanding poverty by working at a hedge fund?

HDTV AND the female candidate.

WHY THE F-15S ARE STANDING DOWN.

ARE WE ADDICTED TO GADGETS? I can quit any time! Gotta go -- about to install my new video editing software. . . .

FROM GOURMET MAGAZINE, the ultimate Thanksgiving dinner. I'll be cooking the usual leg of lamb, but this sounds yummy.

THE JUGGERNAUT IS GATHERING STEAM: "Lou Dobbs for President? Don't laugh."

THOUGHTS ON PEAK OIL, from Chevron's CTO.

A QUESTION: Did CNN plant questions for Republicans, too?

UPDATE: Related item here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Further thoughts on CNN.

MORE: Ouch: "From what I've seen, the Clinton campaign successfully neutered the Wolf last night."

THE NEW YORK TIMES REPORTS ON FEMALE CONDOMS, but Michael Petrelis says something's been left out: "Whether you're a woman or a man who engages in sodomy, the pouch can also stop diseases from spreading through the back door."

QUESTION FOR HARRY REID: "As the situation on the ground in Iraq continues to brighten, and a light begins to appear at the end of the war tunnel, is it the brightest thing in the world to starve the military at this juncture?" If, as seems likely, Iraq succeeds, Republicans will be able to say it was in spite of the Democrats' efforts. If, as remains possible, it fails, Republicans will be able to say it was because of the Democrats' efforts.

UPDATE: A clueless lefty reader emails to complain, so let me be clear: I don't think this is a good thing. I think it's a bad thing. I just think it's evidence of Reid's ineptitude, which passeth my understanding.

MORE PLANTED QUESTIONS FOR HILLARY? Really, this is another sad episode for CNN.

ARE YOU NOW, OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN, a member of the Republican Party?

A BIG WIN FOR THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION on the "state secrets" privilege.

EUGENE VOLOKH IS disappointed with Columbia's faculty.

HOLD TIGHT, LONDON: Skinheads peeing into teacups. And something that sounds like a call to revolution.

UPDATE: More here.

FUND THE WAR by cutting pork. Sounds like a twofer to me.

RON SILVER, on politics and labels.

NATALIE PORTMAN IS all grown up.

FRED THOMPSON ON who should control the Internet. "My hunch is that we’d see the same level of management of the Internet from the U.N. that we’ve seen when it came to peacekeeping operations in Africa. Or its management of Saddam Hussein’s 'Oil for Food' program. Or its monitoring of Iran’s nuclear program."

FROM GARRETT LISI, a simple theory of everything. Paper here. Will it pan out? Stay tuned.

POPULAR SCIENCE looks at the top innovations of 2007.

A COLUMBIA BUYOFF: "Five students drinking Gatorade and water for a week are apparently all it takes to bring a major university to its knees. Columbia has had more than its share of lunatic events this year - the noose, the cancellation of the Minuteman speakers for the second time, inviting and then abusing the Iranian madman, and last week another controversy over a biased comment someone had scrawled into a library book. But the collapse of the university in the face of five student hunger strikers - the number was reduced to two students before the university folded - makes all the previous lunacies seem sane." I don't think Columbia really minded.

NIGELLA LAWSON has a new cookbook out, focusing on quick recipes. I'm a big fan of her laid-back cooking philosophy -- er, and of her -- and I'll probably order it. I'm watching her on TV now, and I wish we could snag her for a podcast interview.

UPDATE: I'm bumping this to the top again, in light of the email below from reader Sarah Wells:

I picked up this cookbook lately, and made several of the dishes, which are so lusciously presented and easy to make that I can see dangerous curves ahead for my wardrobe.

Another danger: I already find all sorts of gorgeous, juicy "Nigella-isms" melding into my speech, and things in general are oozing welcomingly; offering succor. Indeed, my husband approves.

One note - the baking recipes, simple as they are, I find are more consistenly and satisfactorily prepared when the UK gram and ml measurements are used. So I got online and transcribed some measurements straight into my cookbook along side the converted-for-US measurements printed on the page. ( A UK version of the book is available on Amazon, too.)

I have a chill that's going around, and last night retreated to my bedroom, closed the door, and gave myself succor from a spoon with a roly-poly pudding from the book. A step up from Nyquil, I think, and is the best rescue I've ever had from the glottal wodge.

P.S. The ginger pear muffins were all that was promised.

Sounds yummy.

ANN ALTHOUSE WONDERS what Joe Biden has got against Justice Ginsburg and Justice Breyer.

I THINK THAT THIS OVERSTATES MY ROLE in promoting science fiction and fantasy -- but I'm happy to get the free books!

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Jews and Wasps.

ELLIOT SPITZER, political genius!

IN THE MAIL: 211 Things a Bright Boy Can Do. Looks like fun, but judging from the reviews it's not really for kids in the same way as The Dangerous Book for Boys or The Daring Book for Girls.

LOCAL WOMEN -- including the Insta-Wife -- share their lives one post at a time. Video at the link.

"KNOCK IT OFF:" Has King Juan Carlos started a trend?

SCOTT JOHNSON: "If my friend Rachel Paulose were a liberal Democrat, she would be a celebrity. Serving as the United States attorney for Minnesota, she is the first woman, the first immigrant (Indian), the first Asian, and, at age 34, the youngest attorney ever to hold the position. A graduate of Yale Law School, she has compiled an impressive academic record and stellar professional credentials. She’s not a liberal Democrat, however, she is a conservative Republican, and she has been the subject of an old-fashioned, low-tech media lynching."

HOW THINGS HAVE CHANGED: A report from Ramadi.

IF YOU MISSED IT ON XM SATELLITE RADIO, the latest edition of PJM Political is now online for your listening pleasure.

AUSTIN BAY: "Today, I put a note on a bomb. To be specific, I took a jet black marking pen and inscribed a 500-pound Joint Direct Attack Munition — JDAM, in the jargon."

MICHAEL YON POSTS another dispatch from Iraq. He emails: "This must have been the best day I have had in Iraq. Our soldiers were happy, Iraqi soldiers were very happy, and the Iraqi civilians were happiest. Truly this was a great day." May there be many more like it.

NUMBERS: "The Congressional Research Service, which compiled war casualty statistics from the Revolutionary War to present day conflicts, reported that 4,699 members of the U.S. military died in 1981 and '82 — a period when the U.S. had only limited troop deployments to conflicts in the Mideast. That number of deaths is nearly 900 more than the 3,800 deaths during 2005 and '06, when the U.S. was fully committed to large-scale military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan."

A U.S. COMMANDER RESPONDS TO inaccurate reporting in The Guardian.

I CALL THIS PROGRESS: "A U.N.-sponsored Internet conference ended Thursday with little to show in closing the issue of U.S. control over how people around the world access e-mail and Web sites."

International resentment about U.S. control of the domain name system is sure to grow, and I can understand that. But on the other hand, while my trust in the U.S. government is not extensive, it's infinitely greater than my trust of the Russians, the Chinese, or the United Nations. And the longer that the internet remains relatively open and uncensored, the harder it will be for them to put the genie back in the bottle later. Some related thoughts can be found here.

PAPERS FROM THE HARVARD BLOGGERSHIP CONFERENCE have now been published in the Washington University Law Review.

OBAMA FALTERS over illegal immigrants.

UPDATE: Roger Simon thinks that Obama doesn't really want the job.

FEDERAL AGENTS RAID LIBERTY DOLLARS. Exact reason unclear.

MICKEY KAUS: Triangulation vs. bridge-building.

A ROUNDUP on last night's Democratic debate.

November 15, 2007

CONGRATULATIONS! Four years of blogging for Omar and Mohammed Fadhil.

NINETEEN thwarted terrorist attacks against the U.S.

THE NETROOTS ARE STILL going after Rahm Emanuel on immigration.

USING AND ABUSING THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE: Jennifer Hendricks has thoughts on the "Agreement Among the States," in which states pledge their electoral votes to whoever wins the national popular vote.

HEY, I WROTE A SONG ABOUT THAT: "Back up your brain."

STEPHEN GREEN IS liveblogging the Democratic debate. ("Three out of four undecided voters on CNN are pear-shaped middle-aged women with a tendency to ramble, and who want things from the government. Don't blame me if you think that's cruel--I'm just reporting what I see.")

UPDATE: More here. I'll just add that the lighting seems awfully unflattering. Who was in charge of that?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Winner unclear, loser identified.

Big comment thread here.

More from Dave Weigel.

MORE: Spotting a planted question?

STILL MORE: Video of Obama on driver's licenses for illegal aliens.

Last word goes to Stephen Green: "Lots of fireworks, yet still the worst debate I've seen all season. The blame rests squarely with CNN. They ran a bad debate on a bad stage with stupid questions from insipid people in a format that was neither fish nor fowl but spoiled meat nonetheless. Horrible, even by the low standards set by Fox News and MSNBC. Horrible, horrible." Yeah, that's pretty much what I thought. I haven't seen all the debates, but of the ones I've seen this was far and away the worst.

THOUGHTS ON inequality and prosperity, from Josh Hendrickson.

ED MORRISSEY: "Has anti-Americanism gone out of vogue on the Continent?"

BLOGS THAT AREN'T, at The Washington Post.

HOW TO save the space station from disaster.

A RECIPE FOR turkey breast with oyster stuffing.

ER, YES: Music boss: we were wrong to go to war with consumers.

Some of us even warned them.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The new debate over Iraq.

PUTTING AN END TO BUDGET TRANSPARENCY? We need much more transparency, not less. This is shameful.

A $1 BILLION CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT against TurboTax, TaxCut, and the Free File Alliance.

UPDATE: Link was broken before. Fixed now. Sorry!

BOSTON GLOBE: On TV, Men Are The New Weaker Sex. (Via Ed Driscoll).

BOY SCOUT DONATION BOXES TAKEN DOWN for "implied pro-war message." Jeez.

UPDATE: More here. But they support the troops!

ABC: "Hillary Clinton Takes Cash From Recipients of Husband's Controversial Pardons."

Plus, new Clinton questions at The Nation.

UPDATE: Mickey Kaus flips the emphasis on the pardon story: "Out of 177 recipients of Bill Clinton's last-minute pardons, Jake Tapper could find only 3 who've contributed to Hillary's campaign? Ingrates! "

THE POLITICO: Immigration is the new affirmative action.

SOME THOUGHTS ON HUMANITARIANISM, from Alvaro Vargas Llosa.

IN THE MAIL: America, An Illustrated History, from the folks at Time. A lovely coffee-table book with pretty pictures, though the text is a bit vapid.

REP. WILLIAM "FREEZER CASH" JEFFERSON'S creative bribery defense. Hmm. Can Congress's approval go to single digits?

WOLF BLITZER'S BIND: If he doesn't pound on Hillary tonight, it'll look like he's given in to intimidation. If he does, of course, Clinton fans will call him names, or say that he should be shot.

DREW CAREY ON Eminent Domain gone wild:

CHINA'S ANIME-BASED online porn police.

THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE IN IOWA is heating up.

MEGAN MCARDLE is blogging from Vietnam, where Americans are beloved and capitalism is in the air.

A REPORT ON the world's most powerful railgun:

The lab version doesn’t look particularly menacing—more like a long, belt-fed airport screening device than like a futuristic cannon—but the system will fire rounds at up to Mach 8, drawing on tremendous amounts of electricity to generate the current for each test shot. That, of course, is the problem with rail guns: Like lasers, they’re out of step with modern-day generators and capacitors. Eight and 9-megajoule rail guns have been fired before, but providing 3 million amps of power per shot has been a limitation. At 32 megajoules, this new system appears to be the most powerful rail gun ever built, and the Office of Naval Research is installing additional capacitors at the Dahlgren facility to support it. The planned 64-megajoule weapon, if it’s ever built, could require even more power—a staggering 6 million amps.

According to Dr. Amir Chaboki, the program manager for Electro-Magnetic Rail Guns at BAE Systems, “The power is available. The challenge is how you use it.” The Navy’s electrically-propelled DDG 100 Destroyer, Chaboki says, is a prime candidate for the final 64-megajoule system. Around 72 megawatts (MW) of the vessel’s power can be used for propulsion. But during combat, the destroyer’s speed could be brought down, freeing up energy for a rail gun. Chaboki calculates that firing the 64-megajoule weapon six times per minute would require 16 MW of power, which would be supplied by either onboard capacitors or pulsed alternators. The more daunting challenge is the force of the rail gun itself: A few shots can dislodge the conducting rails—or even damage the barrel of the gun.

It's the future.

FAKE JOURNALISM, CONT'D; More on the Al-Dura trial, from Nidra Poller.

MORE BAD NEWS FOR CONGRESS from the latest Gallup poll. Plus, why Republicans shouldn't get cocky.

INDOCTRINATE U. will be showing in Cleveland this Sunday at 4 p.m. at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

EARTH FROM LUNAR ORBIT, in high-definition.

LARRY LESSIG endorses Barack Obama.

ANOTHER CLIMBDOWN: Spitzer abandons Amazon tax: "In a second major policy reversal in less than a day, Governor Spitzer is backing down from a plan to require Amazon.com and other online retailers to charge state and local sales taxes on all purchases from New York." Jeez, it's just one stumble-and-reverse after another for this guy.

UPDATE: "Spitzer's Latest Flop."

ANOTHER UPDATE: Indeed: "What the hell is it with Elliot Spitzer? Every time I turn around, he's trying to implement another insanely stupid idea."

YOU MUST BE A LEGAL RESIDENT TO GET A DRIVER'S LICENSE, in Mexico.

Maybe we should just cut a deal for strict reciprocity. . . .

MARY KATHARINE HAM interviews your favorite bloggers.

CUTTING AND RUNNING on cutting and running. Well, some of 'em, anyway. More here.

JOHN LEO wonders why the media aren't so anxious to report on campus PC problems.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNERS announced.

November 14, 2007

HAVE AN AL GORE CHRISTMAS, with this greenhouse-friendly virtual fireplace. It's carbon-free!

REPORTING VIOLENCE ON THE BORDER.

THOUGHTS ON the meaning of life.

OUCH: "It is like Augustine’s Confessions, if Augustine’s Confessions had been written by a combination of Helen Gurley Brown and Britney Spears."

Well, Britney did confess: "I'm not that innocent." But could you get away with this on a sports website?

PATRICK RUFFINI: "I need 1,165 people before midnight."

LOOKING AT Hillary's various positions on driver's licenses for illegals.

Related item here.

HEH: "Students have complained on blogs about the secrecy, noting the irony of a journalism school asking its students to refrain from asking questions."

A LOOK AT the Al-Durah blood libel.

OH NOOO! Weak Dollar Equals Expensive Canadian Weed.

TWO VIEWS OF Thanksgiving.

WELL, THIS IS ENCOURAGING: "The U.S. military is examining different contingencies for supplying American troops in Afghanistan if supplies can no longer be shipped through Pakistan, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said today." More at the link.

UPDATE: A.J. Strata is expecting big things. I hope he's right.

PULLING UP TERRORISM'S economic roots.

NOVEMBER 19TH IS NATIONAL AMMO DAY: Pick up a box or two. Hey, get some Chinese-made ammo and at least it'll be something that's supposed to contain lead!

AT HOT AIR, AN INTERVIEW: CPT Aaron Kaufman, US Army, on the surge and whether we’re winning the war in Iraq.

ROBBER MEETS MATCH IN WEST VIRGINIA:

A guy tried to rob the place around 9 p.m.

A lawyer from D.C. and a few cooks and waitresses stopped him. Cold.

Huntington Police Lt. B.J. Wamsley told the Herald-Dispatch: “When we got there, waitresses, cooks and managers were piled on top of him near the front sidewalk. It was amazing because the man is 6-foot-2-inches and about 200 pounds — that’s pretty big for those small waitresses.”

Heh.

JOHN DICKERSON ON Hillary's planted questions. "And it's an anecdote that involves a real, live Iowa voter. A lot of media firestorms take place in Washington green rooms and cable chat shows, but this event took place in their state and to one of their own."

VIDEO UPDATE: So I tried out the bluetooth wireless microphone that goes with my new HD video camera and it's great. Very simple setup -- just turn both units, the microphone and the one that goes on the camera, on. Even from across a large room the sound was excellent. My only complaint is that you can't easily stick-mount the microphone, which would be handy. But I'm sure I'll figure out a way.

JAMES LILEKS ON Outsourcing Holiday Chores - er, Joys.

HOUSE DEMOCRATS and Saudi money.

I SUGGEST "HEH, HEH, HEH," instead: "THERE'LL be no ho, ho, ho this Christmas. Aspiring Santas have been told not to use the term 'ho' because it could be seen as derogatory to women."

PRAISE FOR THE GUARDIAN'S IRAQ REPORTING, but not for its photo editing.

OUR POPULAR POLITICAL CLASS:

We have a president with a near record-low job performance rating – 24 percent. (The record lows were Harry Truman after he fired Douglas MacArthur, and Richard Nixon the day before he resigned. Both were at 23 percent. )

But the Democrats who run Congress have an 11 percent job approval rating. Let’s just note that in my polling in 1995, O.J. Simpson was at 16 percent.

Ouch.

BROTHERLY LOVE, at the State Department. I haven't really been following this particular scandal, but this is odd.

RON PAUL: Jews love him! Nazis love him! He's a uniter, not a divider!

A BIOFUELS SCAM? "The government has picked the winner--even as senior policy makers issue bland pronouncements about finding new technologies to help break our energy dependence on foreign oil. Between now and 2012, biofuel subsidies will total more than $92 billion, according to a recent report conducted under the auspices of the Global Subsidiaries Initiative."

GOVERNOR BON JOVI? New Jersey is unlikely to do better. It's certainly done worse . . . .

CAMILLE PAGLIA shows the love for Hillary.

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: Was the Iraq war cheaper than doing nothing?

Factoring in all those contingencies, the authors find that a containment policy would cost anywhere from $350 billion to $700 billon. Now when you further factor in that 1) a containment policy might also have led to a higher risk premium in the oil markets if Iraq was seen to be gaining in military power despite our efforts to box it in, and 2) money not borrowed and spent on Iraq might well have been spent on something else given the White House's free-spending ways, it's easy to see that doing a cost-benefit analysis on "war vs. containment" might have left administration officials with no clear-cut economic answer.

Plus, the appeal of Canadian tar sands!

VIDEO: Richard Miniter interviews Vaclav Havel and Havel is talking pretty tough regarding Russia and Iran.

More reason to wish he had become Secretary General of the U.N.

FROM CHEVROLET, a full-size hybrid pickup.

THOUGHTS ON BUSH-HATRED from Peter Berkowitz.

ANOTHER AMUSING car commercial.

PATTERICO: "If we (and the Iraqi people) win the Iraq war, the next Democratic talking point will be that we didn’t win the war the right way."

That's one. Here's another. Meanwhile, Tony Blankley thinks it's victory.

ELLIOT SPITZER wants to collect taxes on Internet sales. "The policy, based on a novel legal theory, could hasten the end of the Internet's era as a duty-free marketplace if other states follow New York's lead." He's going to be Mr. Popularity at this rate! But, for reasons briefly spelled out in this article, it seems unlikely that Spitzer's "novel legal theory" will withstand Dormant Commerce Clause analysis.

A REVERSE-HUNGER -STRIKE AT COLUMBIA? Count me in!

AMY ALKON WRITES on the unfairness of forced fatherhood.

BUSINESS OWNER OPENS FIRE on armed robber.

STUDENTS BOYCOTT U. Wisconsin's bias reporting system. Or maybe -- and this has to hurt more -- the correct word is "ignore."

IN THE MAIL: Roberto Unger's new book, Free Trade Reimagined: The World Division of Labor and the Method of Economics. To me, time stopped for Roberto Unger when he received a memorandum from the Devil, but in reality, of course, his career has continued on.

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY on Fred Thompson's Social Security plan.

EUGENE VOLOKH LOOKS AT official Democratic Party theology.

DANNY GLOVER: Newsweek puts a big Democratic fundraiser on the payroll.

BRINGING BACK THE 1990s: John Hawkins has an interview with Kathleen Willey, who's got a new book out.

MARY JO WHITE, on Mukasey.

ROBERT LEVY: Unholster the Second Amendment.

VETERANS, SUICIDES, and math problems at CBS.

"It was my understanding that there would be no math."

AN AIRLINE "FAT TAX:" "A leading Australian nutritionist has urged airlines to charge obese passengers more for their seats."

RON BAILEY LOOKS AT alternative fuels.

A LOOK AT IRAN'S peaceful nuclear program.

STUART TAYLOR: "Academia's Pervasive PC Rot."

A LOOK AT income mobility.

USING A LASER-EQUIPPED HUMVEE as an IED hunter.

FOR LEE BOLLINGER, a budding faculty revolt at Columbia? Of course, what they're angry about is that he was too mean to Ahmadinejad.

ANOTHER ELECTION VICTORY for a pro-American leader in Europe.

BACTERIA-BASED hydrogen production. Cool.

A NUCLEAR POWER RENAISSANCE, fueled by global warming concerns:

This resurgence of commercial attention to nuclear power is coming about for several reasons. The increased attention on greenhouse gases and their effects on the global climate is spurring interest in carbon-neutral power-generation technologies, including nuclear power. Improved technologies make new nuclear plants safer and more reliable, supporters say. And federal tax credits and subsidies (.pdf) tucked into the Energy Policy Act of 2005 have kick-started a once-dormant industry.

"The performance record from an operational point of view is extraordinary," said David Crane, the CEO of NRG Energy, of the next-generation plants currently operating in other, more nuclear-friendly countries such as Japan, China and France. "The U.S. has missed two generations of design that's been carried out in other countries -- they're simpler to maintain."

Can someone sue the antinuclear movement for worsening global warming by imposing a decades-long moratorium on clean, greenhouse-friendly nuclear power? Surely there are some state AG's out there somewhere . . . .

ON politics and Kubler-Ross.

November 13, 2007

JOE KLEIN: Are we winning in Iraq?

Yes. "We are winning" isn't the same as "we have won." But it's a cruel blow to those who've had a lot invested in the notion that we've lost, something that's even been noted on the left. If things continue to play out as they are, Iraq will be stable, and its people will remain deeply unhappy with Al Qaeda, and those -- in Iran and Saudi Arabia -- who have backed its violence and the effort to keep Iraq chaotic and deadly. It'll be for the next President to take proper advantage of that, if he or she is smart enough to.

And Klein is surely right in saying that "A renewed campaign on the part of the hapless Democratic leadership to cut off the supplemental funds will only increase the public sense of Democratic futility. It will also play into the very real, and growing, public perception that Democrats are too busy wasting time on symbolic measures (like trying to cut off funds for the war) and shoveling pork (the water projects bill) to pass anything substantive for the public good."

UPDATE: Greyhawk on what it all means, at The Mudville Gazette.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here: "No one is declaring victory, but cautious optimists on the U.S.-led war in Iraq suddenly find themselves armed with a growing number of indicators that the fighting has taken a new, more hopeful turn." Iraqi internal politics are looking better, too, though that's less quantifiable.

SALON: On the fake campaign trail.

BOB OWENS says that the media is missing the point of Fred Thompson's speech at the Citadel.

AT THE NEW ATLANTIS, an excerpt from Bob Zubin's new book, Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil. Zubrin's a smart guy, and I read the book in manuscript (I provided a blurb). It's worth some time and attention.

A TROUBLING REBOUND IN STDs: Use a rubber, folks. Back when people were more worried about AIDS, they did.

A SPITZER CLIMBDOWN: "New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer has decided to abandon a plan to issue driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, officials familiar with the decision told The Associated Press Tuesday night."

SOME PEOPLE WHO HAVEN'T READ A LOT OF LAW REVIEW ARTICLES -- and some others who have -- were suprised at how short my Cheney piece was. It was shorter than a lot of law review articles, including a lot of mine, but not as short as all that. Shorter pieces are in now, with law reviews like Northwestern's, or Yale's, having special sections. But I was writing short articles long before that: My Chaos and the Court, applying chaos theory to the Supreme Court in the Columbia Law Review, was equally short; likewise Penumbral Reasoning on the Right, in Penn's law review, or the piece on judicial confirmation from the Southern California Law Review that I linked a bit ago. And I was hardly a pioneer -- my heroes Charles Black and Arthur Allen Leff were known for their interesting short pieces, but the world of law-review writing moved away to massive tomes for a while. I think it's shifting back, and I think that's a good thing. Short pieces aren't inherently superior to long ones -- and I've written plenty of long ones myself -- but a piece should be as long as it needs to be, and no longer. For a while, we lost sight of that.

PHIL BOWERMASTER: Three things cloning isn't. You can't produce an "Insta-Army"? Dang. I kind of liked the sound of that . . . .

NOT-SO-GRIM MILESTONES: Rand Simberg's ten thousandth post, and Ann Althouse's 11,111,111th pageview.

JAMES TARANTO criticizes an outbreak of gay-baiting in the current election. It's especially admirable that Taranto is willing to criticize a fellow conservative for bigotry.

COOKWARE UPDATE: So after my pressure-cooker post I decided to give it a try myself, and ordered this 6 quart pressure cooker from Presto (cheap!) bundled with this cookbook. So far, so good. I've made some of the standards (Chicken Cacciatore, anyone?) to good reviews from the Insta-Wife and Insta-Daughter. But what I like it for most is making fast sides -- I made new potatoes in a trice last night. It's not as fast as they claim -- "cook time" may be 5-6 minutes, but you have to let it cool for another 10 or 15 -- but it's still a lot faster than the old way. I don't think it will be my main cooking tool, but it's handy and it was worth the money. The cookbook is good, too, and has handy cooktime tables in the back.

CHARGES AGAINST ARMED REPORTER DROPPED: Would they have been dropped for somebody else? Probably.

HOMER SIMPSON'S UNILATERAL CONTRACT WITH GOD: Having spent some time with Boyce Martin back in the day, I suspect he authored this himself.

JOHN EDWARDS' IMPOSSIBLE PROMISE: "The Democrats often criticize Bush for having an overbroad theory of executive power, but at least when Bush grasps for power, it's for things the President can do."

Howard Kurtz comments: "John Edwards's new Iowa ad is very effective rhetorically--and based on a false premise. A president has absolutely no power to rescind federal health insurance for members of Congress, as the Edwards campaign admits."

UPDATE: Heh.

Meanwhile, Cass Sunstein weighs in: "'It’s a stunt,' Sunstein said. 'Congress isn’t going to enact legislation taking away its own health care.'" It's just not a very good stunt.

A BLOG DEVOTED TO REPORTING government harassment of photographers. My next Popular Mechanics column will be on a related topic. (Via Jesse Walker).

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, the morality police would be wielding a heavy hand. And they were right! "The Boston Globe reports that Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick is trying to sneak a provision to criminalize online gambling. The bill, if passed, would make online gambling punishable by up to 2 years in prison and $25k in fines."

But there's more: "Ironically, the provision is buried deep within a bill to allow the construction of three new casinos in Massachusetts to bring more gambling revenue into the state." As Rev. Lovejoy says, if the state does it, it's not immoral!

UPDATE: Reader Glenn Howe emails with the correct Lovejoy quote: "Once something has been approved by the Government, It's no longer immoral."

SOME Nifong/Spitzer questions.

A LOOK AT "EGO PORK" for members of Congress. "Name the pig after me!"

And the new Congress doesn't seem any better: "The newest member of Congress, Representative Niki Tsongas, a Democrat, took the oath of office on Oct. 18, but has already won an earmark, to provide $240,000 for a commun