November 24, 2007

IS THE DOLLAR TOO LOW? Or is the Euro too high?

Related thoughts here.

HMM: "Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has lost his lead eight days before a referendum on ending his term limit, an independent pollster said on Saturday, in a swing in voter sentiment against the Cuba ally." Not sure I trust the poll. But then, I'm not sure I'll trust the vote-counting in eight days, either.

UPDATE: Thoughts from Rand Simberg.

HERE'S MORE on the Kasparov arrest.

SORRY, Mary Katharine!

MICKEY KAUS: "L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former Telemundo anchor Mirthala Salinas have apparently 'ended their romantic relationship.' And here we all thought it was a great love!"

MCCLATCHY IN BAGHDAD: "It's like journalism's F Troop." Only without Forrest Tucker. I guess he was too real!

DON'T shoot the dog.

"HEY, HEY, HO, HO, Western Civ Has Got to Go!" So say its beneficiaries. So much of "progressive" politics looks like the behavior of spoiled adolescents.

MEGAN MCARDLE IS DEAD SERIOUS about Social Security.

"NAMED AND SHAMED:" Yes, they should be. But the political culture that produced them may well be beyond salvation, regardless. Watching the decline of Europe and Britain isn't pleasant. I certainly hope that the current trends are not irreversible. Related thoughts here.

UPDATE: Link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry! (bumped)

DEMOCRATS backpedaling on Iraq: "As violence declines in Baghdad, the leading Democratic presidential candidates are undertaking a new and challenging balancing act on Iraq: acknowledging that success, trying to shift the focus to the lack of political progress there, and highlighting more domestic concerns like health care and the economy."

UPDATE: I guess this is why. It's no good if you can't call it a defeat.

THOUGHTS ON COMBATING ANTI-AMERICANISM IN LATIN AMERICA: Despite media efforts in the other direction.

VIETNAM IN REVERSE: There was a time when I would have trusted this defense of a reporter more than the military's version. That time is past, and it's past because of the frequent dishonesty I've seen from A.P. and other media outlets in Iraq. That's too bad, but when you lose trust, you've lost it. And I just don't trust them like I used to. But then, perhaps my trust was too high all along.

UPDATE: It's not just me.

FAT, HAPPY, AND COWARDLY: The silence of the artistic lambs.

"THOSE CREATIONISTS, THOUGH -- they're way out there."

CARTOON ANTISEMITISM AT THE BRADY CAMPAIGN? It's certainly better-founded than some other cartoon accusations.

KNIGHTS IN RED SATIN: "In my own opinion, the only really dangerous government is an efficient, effective one. The best judgment of a particular democracy is how well it keeps the busybodies occupied while the rest of us get on with running things."

HILARIOUS NEW World of Warcraft commercials, featuring William Shatner and Mr. T. Well, they're pretty funny, anyway. And Shatner looks good as a shaman.

COMMENT-DELETION TRICKERY at the San Francisco Chronicle? If this is real and not some kind of bizarre caching problem, I'm torn between disgust and admiration for their cleverness . . .

Charles Johnson feels something similar, and has to resist temptation.

UPDATE: More here.

MORE ON THE Goose Creek terrorism case.

SOME FURTHER THOUGHTS ON PETRAEUS AND PROMOTIONS, from Abu Muqawama.

HOUSTON POLICE secretly test unmanned aircraft.

INTERESTED IN SOUND ENGINEERING AND EQUIPMENT? My brother recommends the GearSlutz discussion board.

ALLISON ALVAREZ on maiden names and married names.

WHAT THE ISRAELIS BOMBED IN SYRIA: Not a reactor, but something worse?

MARK STEYN on the new Shakers. Only the modern ones don't make nice Gomer Bolstrood-like furniture.

KASPAROV arrested in Russia.

FOR CHRISTMAS SHOPPERS, I recommend the new issue of Consumer Reports. I have my complaints about some of their priorities, but I generally find their recommendations quite good. They recommend this LCD HDTV and this 58" plasma TV. 58" -- wow. And they liked this cordless drill.

Or you can just head over to the American Digest home shopping guide, for some rather different priorities . . . .

DON SURBER: "We are winning in Iraq. Will someone please inform the Democrats?"

STILL MORE ON VIDEO: I got this direct-burning DVD recorder to go with the Sony HD camcorder, and yesterday I burned DVDs from the Thanksgiving videos. It works fine -- easy setup, simple menus, etc. You can direct-burn an AVCHD disk that will play on Blu-Ray players, or you can burn ordinary DVDs that will play on any player. But to do the latter, as best as I can tell, you have to go through the video out/in rather than a USB connection. My guess is that Sony didn't want to spring for the processor horsepower necessary to turn AVCHD files into MPEGs on the fly, since it's already in the camera. Not a major flaw, but a minor irritant. If anyone out there has one and I'm wrong about this, please let me know. I've scoured the not-especially-friendly manual.

THE RETAIL SUPPORT BRIGADE CONTINUES TO EXCEL: Despite Economy, Malls and Stores Jammed. I admire their courage and self-sacrifice. But will this continuous hard service produce a broken consumer army? There are already ominous signs of strain . . . .

MICKEY KAUS: "When you've got Nixon, make Nixonade!"

A LOOK AT THE INFLUENCE OF LIBERTARIANS IN AMERICAN POLITICS:

Card-carrying Libertarians are few and far between. Yet, seen as the guiding philosophy of a bloc of dissatisfied, independent-minded voters whose views align with Republicans on economics and Democrats on social issues, libertarianism is palpably gathering steam.

My favorite part is the reference to libertarians as "the Sith lords of American politics." That wouldn't be my first choice of Star Wars comparisons, but it's better than "the C3POs of American politics," which people would have probably said a few decades ago.

IT'S ROUGH OUT THERE, in the Iranian blogosphere.

IN AUSTRALIA, John Howard has conceded. Here's a big roundup.

UPDATE: An observation: "Bush is now a rare survivor of the pre-9/11 western leaders' club. Of his allies and opponents on the Iraq war, the latter have gone - Schroder, Chretien, Chirac - but so have the former - Aznar, Blair, Howard." Well, a lot of time has passed, and Howard, like Blair, was in office well before Bush.

IS REP. ALLAN MOLLOHAN GETTING WORRIED? He's certainly lawyered-up.

November 23, 2007

HEH: Of turkeys and pardons.

IN RESPONSE TO MY EARLIER POST on the Nokia tablet PC, various readers suggest this from Asus, but it's currently unavailable. Looks cool, though.

THE NEW SHAKERS: Jeez.

On the other hand, this explains why some people canonize Stalin, et al.

DAN SOLOVE: My impressions of Rachel Paulose.

NOW THAT'S JUST MEAN: "Eliot Spitzer of New York backpedaled like a Jets defensive back on his scheme to offer driver's licenses to illegals, and the NY Times almost covered it."

REPORTING ON black Friday shopping in New Jersey.

UPDATE: Reader Bill Adams complains:

That Amazon Black Friday sale looked great. I moved three items into my shopping cart. But when I returned to actually pay for them at 9pm, same day, sale still running -- I was informed that one item had been repriced 25% higher, the other 40% higher, while sitting in my cart.

Imagine going to a department store for a sale, picking three items, and then having them repriced by a guy with a sticker gun while you were in the checkout line (though assured the sale is still running, just not so good for the items you chose anymore.)

Since there was no physical guy with a sticker-gun I could fell to the ground in my rage, I just deleted all items in my cart. "Saved" items from past days too. But of course Amazon will never know or feel the slightest discomfort.

Unless you let people know this is going on.

Consider 'em informed -- er, assuming they read InstaPundit. I have had stuff in the cart go down before, but never up. But I seldom leave things there for longer than it takes to check out.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A bunch of shopping-disappointment complaints, involving Amazon and many other merchants. The "lightning deal" thing seems to be leaving some people unhappy -- not sure if that was Bill Adams' problem.

FRITZ SCHRANCK on air travel and congestion.

"HOW DARE YOU QUESTION HER!"

LAHOUD OUT in Lebanon.

BACK WHEN I REVIEWED THE NOKIA N800 INTERNET TABLET, I thought it was nice, but not quite there, adding: "This device is a generation or two away from being what it really wants to be. Give it a slide-out keyboard, more stable software, a slightly bigger screen, and WWAN capability and you'd have a go-anywhere Web device that would let me leave my laptop behind. The N800 isn't there yet."

Well, the Nokia N810 is looking a lot closer. More here. And a further review here. Still no EVDO, just wi-fi, but otherwise it's pretty much a go-anywhere surfing and blogging tool. And it has GPS.

The iPhone kind of meets my description, too, but with no actual keyboard. I haven't heard much about its use as a go-anywhere blogging tool -- I know when Brendan Loy tried that, he found it very awkward.

UPDATE: Stephen Green emails:

Don't worry about the keyboard on the iPhone. After a couple weeks of use it does what any well-designed input device does--it just disappears into a cloud of habit and muscle memory. But that doesn't make the iPhone a blogging tool. Until Apple figures out how to add cut'n'paste to the multi-touch screen, then the iPhone isn't for blogging. Period.

Not that you need new ways and places to blog, of course.

Well, no. Seems like adding cut and paste would be easy, though. And reader B.P. Monaco emails: "I own an iPhone (first version) and spend a lot of time blogging. It's a great tech device, wonderful if you're just surfing the net. However, when it comes to blogging on it, I found it to be an absolute nightmare."

And a customer review -- posted via the N810 -- says that the N810 is an "iPhone killer." Well, possibly. I think they're different devices, with some overlap.

D.C.'S HANDGUN BAN AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO ARMS: One hard question, and an answer.

WIRETAPPING UNIVERSITY NETWORKS for the MPAA.

TURNING THE TABLES ON AL QAEDA: Read the whole thing.

APPARENTLY, THEY SET THE BAR PRETTY LOW THESE DAYS, if these are supposed to be "blackmail photos." Good grief.

THE CANDIDATES AND THEIR FOOD ISSUES, plus the New York Times' photo editor's preferences.

ILYA SOMIN on Ron Paul, racism, and federalism.

RUMSFELD TORTURE CASE thrown out.

CENSURING DIANNE FEINSTEIN? Somehow I had missed this.

MARTY LEDERMAN:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Virginia Senator Jim Webb think they have found a solution to the problem of unconstitutional recess appointments: every three or so business days during the Thanksgiving break, they will convene "pro forma" sessions of the Senate, lasting only a minute or two. (The schedule was announced by Senator Webb on Monday.) They think this will prevent the President from appointing officers during this intra-session adjournment.

I'm not sure why they're so confident.

Read the whole thing.

YOU CAN SUBMIT QUESTIONS to the CNN YouTube Republican debate.

REMEMBERING THE Chevy Vega Cosworth: "Consider it the 1970s equivalent of dropping a Formula 1 V-8 into a Kia Rio." But with some problems.

UPDATE: Cheaper than the Pontiac Banshee!

REPORTS ON Black Friday so far. The Insta-Wife and I ventured out to the bank and the post office today; we didn't shop, but every retail parking-lot we passed was beyond full. Good retail season ahead? Looks that way from here. Me, I'm doing as much shopping online as possible -- I don't find the "bustling crowds" a holiday plus.

THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO SHOW UP -- which, apparently, won't include a lot of environmentalists.

Plus, "Mom and Dad, how could you have been so selfish?"

PRO-SPACE HILLARY? "The major presidential candidates pummel each other daily on issues ranging from the Iraq war to health care. But when it comes to President Bush's ambitious initiative to send humans back to the moon and on to Mars, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is all but alone in staking out a formal position -- and it's one that lends support to key aspects of the president's effort. . . . While the current moon-Mars mission was proposed by Bush, manned space exploration had its first great presidential champion in John F. Kennedy, a Democrat. Bush's plan for a new generation of spacecraft that can fly to the moon and perhaps to Mars got broad bipartisan support when it was approved by Congress in 2005."

HEH: "I can picture the phone call from George Bush late on a Saturday night - 'So, Perv, what are you wearing?'"

SEEING-EYE CONSTITUTIONAL SCHOLARS: A short-lived experiment.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: On Iraq, a state of denial. Read the whole thing.

Plus, a look at the Iraq issue in 2008.

IT'S A BIG BLACK FRIDAY DVD SALE at Amazon. Plus, an HDTV knowledge center.

Last night the outlet stores at Pigeon Forge were opening at midnight, and the local news showed people camped out. A couple of places here in town were opening at 4 a.m. Me, I'd rather shop online.

"I'M FEELING LUCKY" -- and losing $110 million a year in the process!

"IF WE CAN DO THIS, WE CAN DO ANYTHING:" Remembering the construction of the Empire State Building.

MICHIGAN'S ATTORNEY GENERAL MIKE COX encourages the Supreme Court to recognize an individual right under the Second Amendment. "Not only does history demonstrate that the Second Amendment is an individual right, but experience demonstrates that the broad ban on gun ownership in the District of Columbia has led to precisely the opposite effect from what was intended. For legal and historical reasons, and for the safety of the residents of our nation's capital, the Supreme Court should affirm an individual right to keep and bear arms."

FLYING GREEN with new technology Zeppelins.

WITH SOME PRODDING FROM EUGENE VOLOKH, the BBC has revised its bogus gun statistics.

VIDEO UPDATE: So yesterday I shot a good deal of video with the new HD camera, and then put it up on the big HDTV to see how it looked. It turned out very well. The video was good, and seemed to actually make people's skintones look better -- something not all HD cameras do, to put it mildly. It was much enhanced by this tiny and cheap video light (34 bucks is cheap, isn't it?). It fits in the accessory shoe and adds a bit of fill light. I shot with and without it and it made a considerable difference. The 5.1 surround sound was good, though honestly I'd rather have a shotgun option since when you're shooting video at a Thanksgiving get-together where everyone's talking at once, surround-sound doesn't really do much. Still, the performance was very good, the camera was easy to use -- the Insta-wife took it and did some shooting with no more familiarization than me pointing out where the on-off and zoom buttons were -- and the video was quite good.

I recommend -- pretty much no matter what camera you have -- that you get one of those little fill lights. We have one for the Canon, too, and it also makes a surprising difference in video quality, and in how people look.

SHIITES IN SOUTH IRAQ REBUKE TEHRAN: "More than 300,000 Shiite Muslims from southern Iraq have signed a petition condemning Iran for fomenting violence in Iraq, according to a group of sheiks leading the campaign."

MURDER PLOT TARGET shoots to kill: "He looked at me. And I shot him before he could shoot me."

FRANCE'S THATCHER, CONT'D: Collapse of Rail, Subway Strike Is a First Success for Sarkozy.

MULTIPLE BOMBINGS IN INDIA: Amit Varma reports.

INDEED: "Who is Chris Hedges? Not only was he a New York Times reporter for 15 years, he was its Middle East bureau chief in the 1990's. Yikes." Yeah, kind of makes you wonder what's going on with their current reporting staff that we won't find out for years.

THE IMPACT OF BRITAIN'S "DISKGATE:" "Suddenly, ID cards are looking truly scary, combining malevolence with incompetence – Soviet even - to Mr and Mrs Average." We've seen similar ineptitude with confidential private data in America, too. Related thoughts here. "You cannot trust any agency with people's personal data."

EQUIPPING THE TROOPS: "When I enlisted in 1985, I was issued Viet Nam era leftovers (steel pot helmet, an AR-15/M-16 with a very low serial number - heh). The past two days, I have received things that would have seemingly come from a Robert Heinlein novel. The equipment and clothing is lighter, modular, and higher quality - the first aid kit was a revelation (we even got the new clotting agent bandages)."

November 22, 2007

ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL THANKSGIVING: Turned out that we didn't have too much food -- there was a little bit of leftover turkey, and an even littler bit of leftover lamb, but it was a crowd of good eaters and the leftovers were pretty minor.

Helen and I realized today that this is the 14th time we've done the Thanksgiving dinner for both our families. We started when we'd just moved in together, and we've continued every year since. The crowd gets bigger, but it's a very nice thing to have. Hope your Thanksgiving was fun, too.

IT'S NICE TO SEE THAT TOY GUNS haven't gone completely out of style. "There’s even a fold-down bi-pod to help you steady your aim for important shots." Plus, modders explain how to get more range and power!

A TURKEY OF A HEADLINE in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

WELL, this is comforting: "The U.S. military is vulnerable to China's advanced war-fighting systems, including space weapons and computer attacks that would be used in a future conflict over Taiwan, according to a congressional commission"s report released yesterday." Maybe we should just give Taiwan some nukes and wash our hands of the situation. Kind of like China and Iran . . . .

MORE THINGS TO BE THANKFUL FOR, via Daniel Drezner.

A LIST OF long-awaited DVD releases.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING: Now let's shop!

FROM "WAR ON CHRISTMAS" to "war on Thanksgiving?"

A COLLECTION OF Thanksgiving proclamations thoughout the years.

SARKOZY PULLING A THATCHER? "If Sarkozy manages to face down the transport union, he'll have really accomplished something--and I'd expect the other public-service unions to fall into line. The real problem, as in 1968, will be the student protestors. But I've seen these kids, and they aren't the in the same league as their parents (grandparents!) from the Sixties. They'll cave, too."

ANN ALTHOUSE: "I don't want people to know what weapons I hold."

Plus, this: "Alan Greenspan has it together way more than Eric Clapton did."

IT'S A SPECIAL THANKSGIVING SURVIVAL EDITION of PJM Political. Listen online, or pick it up on XM Satellite Radio, channel 130, at 6 pm eastern today.

Among other things, advice from the Insta-Wife on holiday political arguments, and James Lileks talking about his new book.

U.N. GREENHOUSE CONFERENCE WILL overload Bali's airport with private jets:

Tempo Interaktif reports that Angkasa Pura - the management of Bali's Ngurah Rai International Airport are concerned that the large number of additional private charter flights expected in Bali during the UN Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC) December 3-15, 2007, will exceed the carrying capacity of apron areas. To meet the added demand for aircraft storage officials are allocating "parking space" at other airports in Indonesia.

I'll believe it's a crisis when the people who tell me it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis. That clearly hasn't happened yet.

AMY ALKON: How's that D.C. handgun ban working?

AMAZON'S KINDLE sold out in 5 1/2 hours. People seem to want 'em -- the Popular Mechanics folks were going to send me one, but apparently mine was intercepted by higher-ranking folks (er, that would be most of 'em) at Hearst.

HOW TO CARVE A TURKEY: With video.

UPDATE: Thanksgiving day food science! You gotta love this: "For perfect browning, McGee applies some final touches to the skin with a heat gun."

MY SISTER-IN-LAW BROUGHT HOME a book by my University of Tennessee colleague Marilyn Kallet, Jack the Healing Cat. Looks like a must for cat-lovers!

UPDATE: Also from Marilyn Kallet: One for Each Night: Chanukah Tales and Recipes.

I'LL BE COOKING A TURKEY (JUST PUT IT IN THE OVEN) AND MY USUAL LEG OF LAMB: Actually, two legs, which may turn out to be too much -- my brother has a sick kid and they won't be able to make it after all. But leftover lamb is okay, too, so I'll cook 'em both. Hope your Thanksgiving is similarly abundant, and that everyone is able to show up.

And if you need turkey-cooking advice, the Butterball folks are ready to help. Judging by their site's load-time, a lot of people are taking advantage of it.

UPDATE: From Jim Lindgren, some food history.

HOME ON A FOUR-DAY PASS, John Tammes is thankful. And we're thankful for him.

JAMES FALLOWS OFFERS constructive criticism to Andrew Sullivan.

HMM: Russian opposition election candidate shot.

MEGAN MCARDLE: "Anyone have any idea why both the third world countries I just visited offered excellent airport baggage service, while JFK took over an hour to offload my bag?"

UPDATE: More on the problems with baggage-handling. Airlines continue their war against carry-on luggage, but all it would take to fix the problem would be to make checked baggage something you can trust. People don't carry their own luggage because they like to carry their own bags. They do it out of (well-founded) fear.

JFK'S DEATH, re-framed.

GIVING THANKS: Noah Shachtman emails: "A few months back, you recommended Charles Stross' "The Atrocity Archive." I finally got around to reading it - sheer, unadulterated genius. I've ordered three more books by him, as a result. Thanks for the heads-up -- and Happy T-Day."

Thanks for the thanks! And The Jennifer Morgue is good, too. As I've noted before, it's kind of reminiscent of Tim Powers' Declare.

UPDATE: And reader Louis Gifford emails: "While people are thanking you for books you recommended, let me also thank you for The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter and A Farewell to Alms by Gregory Clark. Because of you, I know a little better about how human civilization works." Both excellent books. Thank the authors!

IN THE LONDON TIMES, Tim Montgomerie looks at different Bush foreign policy approaches toward Iran, Pakistan, and Iraq, and projects which will likely be seen as successful in ten years: "The bungled road to a democratic Iraq has been far too bloody but it's now perfectly sensible to believe that Bush's pre-emptive war may have sown the seeds for what could be the least troubled nation of the region in a decade's time. The multilateral approach to Iran may leave us with a nuclear-armed Tehran terrorising Israel and holding the world to ransom over oil supplies."

JAMES LILEKS ON what he's thankful for. Plus, Mozart-whistling turkeys!

THE YOUNGEST LAWYER in California: "This week, many 18-year-olds are celebrating their first Thanksgiving back home, taking a break from freshman year. Not Kathleen Holtz. She's celebrating passing the California bar exam and her first trial victory at a law firm."

BETTER ALL THE TIME: Phil Bowermaster on some things to be thankful for.

November 21, 2007

AMY ALKON on artists without courage. But with the pretense thereof.

REMEMBERING what they said and when they said it.

MICKEY KAUS: "The New York Times' value has been cut in half in less than three years. It's now worth a little more than $17 a share. In 2002, it traded above $50 a share. I wouldn't worry about Rupert Murdoch buying the Times at this point. I'd worry about Rupert Murdoch's nanny buying the Times."

STEPHEN GREEN on mismanaging the infowar.

Here's the question nobody is asking: Just how stupid is the Bush Administration? OK, well, really, everybody even half a step to the left of... no, wait... everybody asks that question, pretty much all the time. But in my case, I'm not trying to score points with it.

Look. The Surge™ is not about the extra troops. Oh, the extra boots on the ground were necessary to get things moving, and to show the enemy (and our Iraqi allies) just how serious we were about implementing a new strategy. But the real key was the change in tactics, not in the increased numbers.

But by allowing the press to label General Petraeus's change of strategy a "surge," without correction, gives the impression that our successes are all about the numbers.

Yeah, that's a point I've made here before, but it's one that the Administration hasn't done much to get out.

A "PHENOMENAL" DROP IN IRAQ VIOLENCE. Well, good.

CALLING FOR MORE GUNS ON CAMPUS:

Mike Guzman and thousands of other students say the best way to prevent campus bloodshed is more guns.

Guzman, an economics major at Texas State University-San Marcos, is among 8,000 students nationwide who have joined the nonpartisan Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, arguing that students and faculty already licensed to carry concealed weapons should be allowed to pack heat along with their textbooks.

"It's the basic right of self defense," said Guzman, a 23-year-old former Marine. "Here on campus, we don't have that right, that right of self defense."

Well, you know what they say: People don't stop killers. People with guns do.

ACADEMICS FOR THE SECOND AMENDMENT has been around for over ten years, but now there's a blog, and they're asking for donations to support an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in the D.C. gun ban case. I've supported them in the past, and I think they're a good outfit. Note the PayPal button at the upper right.

A NEW CAR? Or dessert?

MORE BOGUS STATISTICS ON GUNS AND CRIME, this time in an L.A. Times story by David Savage. Once again Eugene Volokh is on the job. Expect more bogus stats, though Eugene won't always be available to clear things up.

BOB KRUMM: Will the Supreme Court decide another election?

THE TRUE MEANING OF THANKSGIVING:

Every year around this time, schoolchildren are taught about that wonderful day when Pilgrims and Native Americans shared the fruits of the harvest. "Isn't sharing wonderful?" say the teachers.

They miss the point.

Because of sharing, the first Thanksgiving in 1623 almost didn't happen.

The failure of Soviet communism is only the latest demonstration that freedom and property rights, not sharing, are essential to prosperity. The earliest European settlers in America had a dramatic demonstration of that lesson, but few people today know it. . . . What Plymouth suffered under communalism was what economists today call the tragedy of the commons. But the problem has been known since ancient Greece. As Aristotle noted, "That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it."

Read the whole thing.

FROM MARK BLUMENTHAL, a Romney push-poll story reality-check.

A TRIBUTE TO AMERICA'S ABUNDANCE: Thanksgiving dinner for under ten bucks.

ERIC SCHEIE: "Yesterday was not a great day for the forces of gun control. Ed Rendell's extraordinary attempt to pressure the Pennsylvania legislature failed, and the Supreme Court voted to hear District of Columbia v. Heller."

EUGENE VOLOKH debunks bogus gun statistics:

"Handguns Are Used in Most US Assaults and Robberies," reports a BBC caption. Uh, no: According to the Justice Department's National Crime Victimization Survey (2005 data), table 66, handguns are used in 5.4% of U.S. assaults and 26.3% of robberies.

But expect to hear a lot of bogus gun statistics from the press in coming months.

LEGAL SUBSIDIES FOR NEWSPAPERS, at the expense of poor people.

ARTHUR ST. ANTOINE: Reports of GM's death are greatly exaggerated.

STEVE MARTIN on the elements of comedy.

UPDATE: More on Steve Martin, from Extreme Mortman.

SOME CONTEXT ON THE SURGE, from Damien Cave.

NEWSPAPERS: Online ad revenue is going up, but total ad revenue is still going down.

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE REELECTED, people would be imprisoned for political activism. And they were right! "Edmondson wants three taxpayers rights activists incarcerated for the dastardly crime of encouraging Oklahomans to sign a petition for a referendum on a proposed Taxpayers Bill of Rights."

PRAISE FOR HILLARY, from the Bushes.

OUCH: Wife Or Child -- Which One Has The Best Foreign-Policy Experience? "It's akin to watching two guys in a bar debate whether playing Pop Warner football gives more credibility than playing Madden 2007 when criticizing NFL head coaches. . . . Who gives these people advice? . . . The only person this debate helps is Bill Richardson."

LYLE DENNISTON suggests that it might become a political issue if the Justice Department enters the D.C. gun ban case in a way that strongly supports an individual right to arms. But I'm not sure why, other than the obvious media posturing that is likely to result. Denniston notes that the Justice Department changed its position on the Second Amendment during the Bush Administration, to support an individual right view. But in making this change the Administration was actually adopting the view repeatedly expressed by the Congress in recent decades, and so I don't see why that move should be especially controversial.

WHAT WENT WRONG with Fred Thompson's campaign? They seemed highly disorganized this summer; things are better now, I think, but they really lost momentum over several months.

A LOOK AT THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT'S rigorous approach to data security.

CALCULATING THE CARBON FOOTPRINT of the U.N. Climate Change Conference.

IN THE MAIL: Larry Niven and Edward Lerner's Fleet of Worlds.

A LOOK AT the Second Amendment as a teaching tool in Constitutional Law classes, with a link to an article by me, Eugene Volokh, Sandy Levinson, Bob Cottrol, and Scot Powe on the subject.

DAVID HARSANYI: Property right wrongly taken: "The story is so absurd, so unfair, so ludicrous, I had a difficult time believing that it could actually happen - even in Boulder."

JOHN MCWHORTER: "On Thanksgiving, while maybe a few holdouts make sure to muster up a sense of thanks for the season's harvest or a mental salute to the Pilgrims who originated the holiday, it's safe to say that for most of us what Thanksgiving is about is eating a large, starchy meal while taking advantage of the occasion to see family and friends." Not that there's anything wrong with that.

SUSANNAH BRESLIN on the Congo rape epidemic, and what you can do to help.

JACQUES CHIRAC faces a formal investigation for embezzlement.

LAWYERS, GUNS AND WASHINGTON: I've got a column in today's New York Post on the D.C. gun ban case.

The Glenn and Helen Show: Bob Levy on the Supreme Court and the D.C. Gun Ban Case

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the D.C. gun ban case, and we caught up with Bob Levy, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute and the moving force behind the case, on Tuesday morning just before the Court's announcement. We talk about the Second Amendment, the Supreme Court, and the case's likely influence on the 2008 elections, as well as why Levy bucked the advice of many to put this case in motion.

You can listen directly -- no downloading needed -- by going here and clicking on the gray Flash player. Or you can download the show and listen at your leisure by clicking right here. You can get a lo-fi version, suitable for dialup, by going here and selecting lo-fi. And you can always get a free subscription via iTunes -- and we'd like it if you did. Our show archives are at GlennandHelenShow.com.

This podcast was brought to you by Volvo Automobiles. Music is by Todd Steed and the Suns of Phere.

MORE ON CONGRESS'S NEW LUXURY JET: "One final thought: the delivery of a new 'junket jet' for Congress may infuriate a lot of taxpayers, but there's a method in Boeing's apparent madness. Winners of the KC-X and CSAR-X contracts will be announced early next year, and by delivering the C-40 now (just in time for Christmas holiday 'fact-finding' trips), the aircraft giant hopes that some of its Congressional friends will pressure the Air Force to steer those contracts toward Boeing."

UPDATE: Reader Al Reasin emails: "Since congress's new luxury jet is part of the military appropriations and with congress not funding the military as the president requested, the jet should be the first causalty of the reduction in spending required to maintain support for the troops in harm's way. While the jet has been delivered, so too late to cancel it, it should be grounded. Actually all congressional fights provided by the Air Force should be grounded. Let them all take to the airways with the regular folks and experience the problems we face. And since they are so concerned about global warming, it would reduce their carbon footprint." I'm on board!

ROSS DOUTHAT ON Stem Cells, Race, and the Future of the Science Wars.

A SECOND AMENDMENT PREDICTION, from Bill Quick: "I think Hillary will have a Sister Souljah moment and come out in support of an individual rights interpretation. In my leftist days, the New Left certainly felt that way. None of us supported disarming the Black Panthers. And, frankly, Kos isn’t exactly a hotbed of anti-gun fervor." Nope. That would be interesting.

ANOTHER HOLLYWOOD SUICIDE BOMB: Wagner James Au emails:

Not sure anyone's pointed this out yet, but *Redacted* was a giant bomb, I mean just disastrous in relation to profile, ranking *50th* place in last weekend's box office receipts.

Grossing $25,628 in 15 theaters, which means an audience of roughly 3000 people *in the entire country*. It's not even doing well for an indy movie; for example, note that a Joe Strummer documentary playing in less theaters still made more in its third week. This despite an A list director, a huge wave of publicity, high praise in the Times, the New Yorker, left-leaning sites like Salon, etc.etc.-- not even many people who presumably agree with the movie's anti-war movie thesis made the effort to see it.

Ouch. Lions for Lambs isn't exactly raking it in, either.

AN OIL-FOR-FOOD guilty plea.

IRAQIS returning home after exile. This seems like good news. Much more on the subject here.

A LOOK AT DEVELOPMENTS in northern Iraq.

November 20, 2007

MORE ON the flying imams.

MEGAN MCARDLE: "Why not nuclear? We asked. The World Bank doesn't support nuclear, though it's not clear why. Geopolitically, of course, there are proliferation concerns, and questions about whether developing countries can safely manage a nuclear plant. On the other side of the ledger, however, is the fact that without nuclear, all these developing countries are going to be dumping a gigantic load of carbon into the atmosphere. Shouldn't we at least be thinking hard about safer reactors for the developing world?"

HILLARY MOCKS OBAMA. "Hillary Rodham Clinton ridiculed Democratic rival Barack Obama on Tuesday for his contention that living in a foreign country as a child helped give him a better understanding of the foreign policy challenges facing the U.S." She's right. It's not like he's been First Lady or anything.

A HUGE ROUNDUP OF sources on the Second Amendment.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON on those Iraqi colonels.

WATCH TODAY'S ENTIRE SENATE SESSION, in this 46-second video. Which includes the pregame show. (Via Don Surber.)

MICKEY KAUS: "I'm willing to be convinced that the instinct to keep up Petraeus' 'surge' (as long as it's showing promising results) is wrong. But the recent Podesta/Korb/Katulis op-ed--'Strategic Drift: Where's the Pushback Against the Surge'--didn't come close to doing the trick."

MELISSA SCHWARTZ LOOKS BACK on seven years of blogging with thoughts of what came before: "How did anybody meet anybody and how did we learn things?"

LONG-ARMING the libel tourist.

I'M CRITICIZED FOR MY defeatist rhetoric. I say, pull out now.

HEH: A gunslinger pope?

I HAD MISSED THIS: 100 enlist at UT/Vanderbilt game.

AN ARMY OF RON JEREMIES: Porn industry losing out to amateurs. "They’re giving porn away. You can’t make money on this.”

TED KENNEDY IS unhappy with Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

EUGENE VOLOKH ON THE MEANING OF "necessary to the security of a free state."

UPDATE: Plus, the Second Amendment and the "living Constitution." And, from Dave Kopel, some background on the D.C. handgun and self-defense bans.

ILYA SOMIN: "Various people have asked me what I think of Ron Paul's presidential campaign, and whether it will be good for libertarianism. Here's my take."

IS THE IPHONE AN electronic snitch?

UPDATE: Or maybe it's a bogus rumor.

AN IGNORED EARLY WARNING ON THE HOLOCAUST: Probably wouldn't have mattered. As we've seen in more recent years, the world doesn't actually mind genocide all that much.

DENIAL.

THE SECOND AMENDMENT TERM? Read these comments from Prof. Mike O'Shea. They're from last summer, but they're totally on point.

And there are multiple posts at The Volokh Conspiracy that are worth your time.

UPDATE: Rudy Giuliani weighs in: "I strongly believe that Judge Silberman’s decision deserves to be upheld by the Supreme Court. The Parker decision is an excellent example of a judge looking to find the meaning of the words in the Constitution, not what he would like them to mean." This should help him with the gun-rights folks.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Fred Thompson comments: "The Second Amendment does more than guarantee to all Americans an unalienable right to defend one’s self. William Blackstone, the 18th century English legal commentator whose works were well-read and relied on by the Framers of our Constitution, observed that the right to keep and bear firearms arises from 'the natural right of resistance and self-preservation.' This view, reflected in the Second Amendment, promotes both self-defense and liberty."

MORE: David Hardy has thoughts on the question presented.

LOVING THE PORSCHE CAYMAN: I find it much more attractive than other Porsches, especially the rear end treatment.

GOOD QUESTION: "Why should the courts spare the government from the harsh effects of laws that are written at a high level of generality? Private citizens and business get stuck with the application of general laws, which they don't write."

"YES." That's Ron Bailey's answer to Arthur Caplan's question about whether it would be a good thing if stem cell breakthroughs let people live longer. I've written about the problem at more length here.

PARASITE VS. HOST: "In evolution, host and parasite can engage in a kind of arms race. One side adapts and evolves; the other side adapts and evolves to keep up. At the end of the day, neither side is necessarily better off than the other. . . . The phenomenon helps illustrate why sexual reproduction is important: by producing genetically varied offspring, a slower-evolving organism can defend itself against a faster-evolving one."

As I've suggested elsewhere, the same may be true in politics, though regarding that contest as a Red Queen's Race would, alas, be rather optimistic.

ANNIE JACOBSEN: Homeland security remains a joke. Just not a very funny one. More criticism here.

JAMES LILEKS ON the death of Mr. Whipple.

Also, he's got a new book coming out next week, just in time for Christmas. Lileks, that is. Not Mr. Whipple.

ERIC SCHEIE: "Pry what from my cold dead hands?"

BIG SECOND AMENDMENT NEWS: "The U.S. Supreme Court said on Tuesday it would decide whether handguns can be banned in the nation's capital, a case that could produce its first ruling in nearly 70 years on the right of Americans to bear arms."

Lots of background information on the Second Amendment here, and there's some discussion of this particular case here -- scroll down toward the end. (It starts at p. 347 in the journal, or p. 14 in your Adobe reader.)

Also, Helen and I interviewed Bob Levy, the brains behind the case, for The Glenn and Helen Show this morning; it'll be up tomorrow.

UPDATE: More at SCOTUSBlog. And here's a copy of the order. The question is phrased as follows: “Whether the following provisions — D.C. Code secs. 7-2502.02(a)(4), 22-4504(a), and 7-2507.02 — violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes?”

ARE SCIENTISTS PLAYING GOD? It depends on your religion. “Therapeutic cloning in particular jibes well with the Buddhist and Hindu ideas of reincarnation.”

Plus, anti-science religious fervor:

“Many Europeans, as well as leftists in America,” Dr. Silver says, “have rejected the traditional Christian God and replaced it with a post-Christian goddess of Mother Nature and a modified Christian eschatology. It isn’t a coherent belief system. It might or might not incorporate New Age thinking. But deep down, there’s a view that humans shouldn’t be tampering with the natural world.”

Hence the opposition to genetically modified food.

I say, tell the theocrats to shut up and let science remain free. Luckily, the stem-cell debate, at least, may turn out to be obsolete.

OUCH! "With exquisite timing, Boeing choos