WHO IS TAPPED KIDDING? It thinks that Ann Coulter’s publisher should make major changes because of errors that bloggers have found in her book.

But last I heard, Knopf was still defending Michael Bellesiles’ utterly discredited book Arming America. The errors people are pointing out in Coulter’s book are chickenfeed compared to the pattern of ineptitude and/or fraud identified in Bellesiles’ book. Yet neither Knopf nor major book review publications like the New York Times Book Review and the New York Review of Books have acknowledged that their reviews of Bellesiles’ book giving the erroneous impression that it is a useful scholarly work that can be trusted are — to put it mildly — wrong, wrong, wrong.

Am I suggesting there’s a double standard, when a “pop” book comes in for more general criticism than an allegedly scholarly book — and that it’s no coincidence that the criticized book is right-wing while the allegedly scholarly book is PC? Yes, I am. Thanks for asking.

TUNEAGE: I’ve been meaning to pick up Apollo 440’s Electro Glide in Blue for quite a while, and I finally did today. So far, it rocks.

ENVIRONMENTALISTS AGAINST CLEAN POWER: Here’s a story to add to the Johannesburg coverage. There’s just no satisfying some people.

UPDATE: Of course, maybe there’s a reason for the strangely amnesiac quality of a lot of reporting on these issues. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Wow, here’s more Green kvetching:

The newest manifestation of Nimby, or not in my backyard, requires a different acronym: not in my viewshed. Wind-farm opponents contend that, like a watershed, a viewshed, or public view, is the common property of those who share it, and must not be degraded unilaterally by any one property owner.

So when wind power is held out as an environmentally friendly alternative to, say, nuclear power, just remember that people will bitch about it, too, if it should ever happen to actually materialize.

And all those solar collectors? Ugly. Must be banned.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tony Hooker says that he’s got the explanation.

SKIRMISHES AND BORDER INCURSIONS between Chad and the Central African Republic. Two places that have enough problems already.

UPDATE: A reader asks:

So where’s the outrage over the unilateralist action and failure to build a

coalition and make the case to the international community, eh?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER and Brendan Nyhan both have interesting thoughts on Iraq. This item by Eugene Volokh is worth reading, too, as it capsulizes part of the debate very nicely. Eric Alterman, meanwhile, serves up a bunch of links on the anti-war side.

THE NEW CALIFORNIA STATE QUARTER is out. The L.A. Examiner has the scoop.

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON REPORTS that Missouri’s Jean Carnahan is in electoral trouble, and is trying to ingratiate herself to gunowners.

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Check out this photo from Neal Boortz’s page and this photo from Lucianne.Com.

Given the availability of cheap digital cameras and the nature of the airport screening system, we’ll probably be seeing a lot of pictures like this. Watch for the TSA to forbid such picture-taking on “security” grounds. That would be job security grounds, I believe.

LINDA SEEBACH WRITES that a lot of people are suddenly embracing academic freedom who never bothered to do so when it was conservative views under attack. I agree with her position: “Well, the more recruits for liberty the better, no matter how late they decide to join the party.” But read the whole column to see just how late.

JEFF COOPER discusses what happens when you mention your weblog in a wired classroom. Pretty amusing.

At UT we have what is allegedly the world’s largest wireless network, covering the whole campus and some nearby non-campus areas. (It’s probably going to be extended to the Convention Center area, too.) The bandwidth consumption is huge and getting steadily huger. I’m sure it’s all course-related, though.

AIMEE DEEP IS CONTEMPLATING LAW SCHOOL, because of the stellar example of Sarah Deutsch of Verizon, who spoke out against the DMCA, Rep. Berman’s Hollywood Home Hacking Bill, and other Big Media legal initiatives.

THANKS TO EVERYONE who sent birthday wishes yesterday, including Ted Barlow, whose bouncing midget British weatherman was, er, unique, and the Rev. Tony Pierce, who complimented my looks — though I can’t help remembering that the motto of his blog is “nothing in here is true.”

PERSONALLY, I THINK THIS GUY has a good chance of being elected.

RICHARD POSNER REVIEWS Alan Dershowitz’s new book on terrorism in The New Republic. Although Posner is appropriately critical of Dershowitz’s general tendency toward showboating (the opening paragraph is delightful on this subject), he’s surprisingly positive of the book, concluding:

Dershowitz’s book will anger unreconstructed civil libertarians, the government-phobes on the extreme right, and Arafat’s European apologists. That is a considerable merit; but more important is that he has shown that international terrorism does not present an insoluble contradiction between the Constitution and American security.

I agree that there’s no “insoluble contradiction” there and I think it’s unfortunate that both advocates of law enforcement power and civil libertarians often act as if there is an inevitable tradeoff between freedom and security. But many things that enhance security (like killing Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, or in any other country where they may be found) pose no risk to freedom. And many things that intrude on freedom (like airport tweezer-confiscation policies) do nothing to enhance security. We forget this at our peril.

STILL MORE ON SUSTAINABILITY: My TechCentralStation column for this week says that Johannesburg is a test for the environmental movement: will it surrender to Luddism and redistributionist blather, or actually propose things that will make things better?

UPDATE: Oops. Looks like they’re failing already.

SUSTAINABILITY UPDATE: James Lileks has a Screed responding to the latest wealth-is-bad blather from George Monbiot. It’s too good to excerpt, but here’s Lileks’ response to Monbiot’s claim that the world’s poor are happier than rich Westerners:

Is it just me, or does this smack of the old Happy-Darky myth they used to peddle in the South? Look at them down there stampin’ their feet in the mud as they dance – why, they’re happier than most of the belles you see at a cotillion.

Read the whole thing. Some enterprising free-marketeer in Johannesburg ought to print it out, copy it, and leave copies on the room-service trays of the press.

Personally, I don’t know anyone — and I mean anyone — as fiercely determined to become rich as the Nigerians in my extended family. That’s because they understand what it means not to be rich in a way that overpaid Western hand-wringers never will.

Oh, okay, one more excerpt — but you still have to read the whole thing, or you’ll hate yourself later:

The percentage of Mr. Monbiot’s salary that he spends on Thai restaurants, and the percentage that he sends to Thailand, is not disclosed.

There’s a lot of that going around this week.

MICKEY KAUS FACT-CHECKS PAUL KRUGMAN, and picks up the ball on the RNC-fraud story initially reported by N.Z. Bear.

ARE HUMANS A PLAGUE ON THE EARTH? John Gray says yes. (Not the Mars and Venus John Gray, but the increasingly-oxymoronic Professor of European Thought John Gray). Helene Guldberg says that John Gray is an idiot.

MATT DRUDGE REPORTS (yes, this is an actual report, not just a link) that Donahue has the lowest Nielsen rating possible. Having caught a bit of the show, that doesn’t come as a complete surprise. What’s really shocking is that the whole MSNBC network isn’t doing much better. They’re not that bad. But I guess they don’t have to be that bad — just bad enough that you switch to Fox or CNN.