A NERD’S TALE OF REVENGE, as told by Josh Trevino.

THE SECRET BRINK LINDSEY / ADAM WEST CONNECTION has gone public at last.

PUNDITWATCH is up!

EUGENE VOLOKH HAS an oped on the Second Amendment and on the Bush Administration’s position thereon. He also has this accompanying timeline of Second Amendment analysis that suggests that the Bush/Ashcroft position represents the norm, and the prior position a departure from the norm, as against the previous two centuries or so.

BY THE WAY, I’m in the process of moving to a new server. My hosting difficulties seem to be solved. The InstaPundit.Com URL will take you there once everything’s up and running, but I’ll post further notices.

THAT’S IT FOR A WHILE. I’m continuing the new policy of limited blogging on weekends.

THE BLAME GAME: Eric Olsen has a pretty long post on Al Qaeda activities through the 1990s, and how they were ignored. He concludes: “There is plenty of blame to go around. Let’s learn from our mistakes and not repeat them.”

CBS UPDATE: Pejman Yousefzadeh has preserved a screenshot of the original story for posterity’s sake.

NADERISM OF THE WEEK: “Fast food restaurants are weapons of mass destruction,” according to Nader speaking in France. (Via Matt Welch).

READER HAMISH CAMPBELL also opposes a boycott of France:

Like many Scotsmen, I find myself rather conflicted with regard to France. The ties of ‘Auld Alliance’ go back to 1295 and strange as it might sound to some, that actually does count for something even now to people like me. Yet contrary to what others might think, England too is not an enemy… a rival at times yes, but in the final analysis, our customs are more akin to our brothers in London and our even cousins in New York than our mistress in Paris.

I see the Franco-German dominated EU as not just harmful and misguided an endeavour, but indicative of how the truth of the matter is that what I hear called the Anglosphere more and more in various blogs really does exist and France is not in any real way a part of that. Our old liberties, hard won yet hanging in the balance this very day across BOTH the United Kingdom and the United States, can be better secured by cutting the ties of government to socialist Brussels for Britain and a closer association between both the United Kingdom and the United States. Not union, mind you, for whilst the USA has much to admire, it has other things to abominate, such as its over-mighty taxation ‘service’ which makes our Inland Revenue seem like kittens, a legal system seemingly designed to maximize the revenues of the legal profession and the fact un-enumerated rights are in reality in the USA second class rights compared to those in the written constitution.

Yet regardless of gibes about ‘cheese eating surrender monkeys’ so beloved of many blogs, the French, rather than the corrupt French Republic, have much to commend them. To dismiss a people such as they as all hopelessly anti-Semitic and mindlessly anti-American is, as the good folks on Libertarian Samizdata have pointed out, to paint a people with a grotesque broad brush. A French reader wrote to Instapundit telling Glenn Reynolds he would be happy to see France become the next US state! Obviously this will never happen…hell, I am usually said to be an Atlanticist and I would not actually want to see the UK actually join the USA… but it does show that
there are French people who do not take the racist Le Pen or ‘little France’ Chirac world view.

Boycotting France to ‘punish’ the French people for the views of some would be rather like boycotting the USA because of the existence of the KKK, the Aryan nation and Susan Sontag. It will be ineffective at best and harmful at worst to the very causes the boycott seeks to further. I shall continue to take my holidays in the Loire valley, I shall continue to argue for British withdrawal from the EU and I shall continue to argue for the tolerant ‘small c’ conservative values that I belive underpins any civilised
society and allow it to resist the siren call of irrational racist or ethnic hatreds.

Boycotts have their time and place but I cannot see the value of trying to boycott all of France other than allowing some loud mouthed pressure groups to try and gain some attention for themselves.

Hmm. That “mistress in Paris” sounded pretty good until I figured out what Campbell meant. I still think that the French will come around. They have perhaps the worst political class in Europe (which is saying something — and it’s not like I think the American political class is any great prize) but Campbell is right that the real problem is there, not among the populace, for the most part.

PERRY DE HAVILLAND weighs in against the “boycott France” movement.

FREUDIAN SLIP? Better visit this CBS story fast because they’ll probably fix this:

The Washington Post said Saturday that a top-secret briefing memo presented to President Bush in 1998 focused on efforts by Osama bin Laden to strike at targets in the U.S.

Um, President who in 1998? I’ve been pretty hard on the Bush Administration over this — and especially on the lame spin the Administration is offering — but this just might suggest that some other people have a bit of an agenda.

UPDATE: Reader Billy Hollis (along with a host of others) writes:

The story with the “Freudian slip” now reads:

***************
The Washington Post reported Saturday that a 1998 top-secret briefing memo to the president was entitled, “Bin Laden Determined To Strike In U.S” and focused mainly on past efforts by the alleged terrorist mastermind to infiltrate the U.S. and hit targets here.
***************

Notice that the memo is just “to the president” and refrains from mentioning Clinton.

And to think there are still folks who claim the media is not biased….

Yep.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader writes:

Not only does the CBS “correction” not mention Clinton by name, but it also further excuses him by emphasizing that the report focused on the past efforts of Osama Bin Laden. Clinton, defensive about his own responsibility (as always) and how his lapses may have contributed to September 11th, is surely thankful that CBS so graciously makes the effort here to deny him psychic abilities. Get the picture: Clinton is the quintessential victim blind-sided by the bad guys. Bush is a man of questionable motives, willing to sacrifice what he knows will be thousands of American lives to push forward his agenda–a war that will ensure his popularity. Only a nutcase like Cynthia McKinney is dumb enough to spout such theories publicly. But such ideas are bound to be intoxicating for those who are squeamish with how new realities threaten the old orthodoxies that have served as the bedrock of leftist thought for the past 35 years. And such notions inform the not-so-subtle spins of CBS reporting.

HEADS ROLLING: Josh Marshall says the 9/11 intelligence problems were more likely systemic than the result of dereliction of duty. Michael Ledeen says that letting Congress investigate is like letting the Madam investigate a brothel and John Ellis more or less agrees, calling for an independent inquiry. Robert Musil has has questions for Sens. Daschle and Clinton about next time. And The Bear says we should focus on the bottom line:

Should Tenet or Rice or Mueller get fired for their respective failures to prevent 9/11? Maybe. I don’t have enough information yet to form a judgment. But the criteria I’ll apply in making that judgment will not be whether they “deserve” it, or whether a Clinton appointee in their place would be fired — it will be whether removing them from office will improve, or harm, this country’s ability to defend itself.

Yes, that’s true. (UPDATE: Rand Simberg emails to point out that Tenet was a Clinton appointee.) On the other hand, defense/intelligence establishments where no one suffers for mistakes don’t generally improve a country’s ability to defend itself.

CRANKY PROFESSOR MICHAEL TINKLER spots what looks to be another lie by Michael Bellesiles:

What’s driving this post is that one of my friends worked as his graduate assistant in 1988-89 (we think). He was good to work for – he had reasonable ideas about how much time a second-year graduate student should devote to someone else?s research, and the work was not too horrible (by the standards of humanities research). She spent all year in the microforms area the basement of the library reading probate records. She was counting guns and entering the numbers into a spreadsheet. . . .

Professor Bellesiles had, like all professors in the history department, access to graduate assistants in (almost) any term he decided he needed one. Emory, like many graduate schools in the humanities, lets students take their first year to become accustomed to graduate work – nothing required of the students in exchange for the fellowship but course work. Then in the second year most departments require an assistantship or internship. My friend was Bellesiles’ graduate assistant in 1988.

I emailed her late last month to ask about this – and to point out that he claimed to have done it all alone. She agreed that she had been counting guns. Her instructions were to count anything that might be a misspelled gun as a gun, which she feels this tends to prove that Professor Bellesiles was not intentionally understating the count. She then entered this data on a Lotus spreadsheet.

Crash go two of his claims – no help, and all his work was on yellow legal pads

This is pretty damning stuff, and from a fellow professor of history, no less. Be sure you read the entire post, as the excerpt above telescopes some imporant aspects. Cranky Professor Michael Tinkler promises more, too.

JEFF GOLDSTEIN identifies a serious problem with today’s young people. At least, he thinks it’s a problem.

ANANDA GUPTA says the Empire could kick Starfleet’s ass!

CRIME IN EUROPE: More support for Matt Welch’s theory that it’s like New York in the 1980s. Or was that Matthew Yglesias’s theory?

THIS POST BY VAARA makes a big deal of my saying that “Ashcroft is definitely to blame.” It’s accurate, and I said it, and I meant it. But, uh, it would have been nice if Vaara had linked to the post where I said it so as to provide a bit of context as to what Ashcroft is to blame for.

HERE’S AN AMUSING REPORT on journalists talking about journalism. The names have been changed to protect the guilty:

A message they endeavored to convey was how hard they work, which they did with the insistent tone of someone who, being acquainted with no other type of employment, has deluded himself into thinking that his work is somehow more taxing than that of other professions. Interestingly, the allusions to difficult work were always adjacent to an anecdote that suggested the opposite. Smug Susan, for example, explained that she came upon a story of which she is proud when an environmentalist called and gave her the information: “So I made a couple of phone calls, and found out it was true. You really have to dig.”

Hey, I do that kind of digging.

HEADS ROLLING? Reader Peter Stanley writes: “The CIA’s counter-terrorism chief Cofer Black was fired today. Just thought you’d like to know.”

Well, the Washington Post didn’t put it quite that way. In its report today it says: “In other developments yesterday, CIA officials said Cofer Black, head of the agency’s Counterterrorism Center for the past three years, has been assigned to another position. They described the move as part of normal turnover at the agency.” Now this might be a punitive transfer with obligatory mealy-mouthedness (though why, exactly, is it obligatory?) but I don’t think it counts as a “firing.”

UPDATE: Stanley writes: “That’s what I get for reading DEBKA.” Yeah. Maybe there’s a backstory to this that would make Debka right — but they don’t have it on their site. It doesn’t look like a firing to me. And if it is a firing, it’s one that’s being handled so quietly (perhaps with Black being eased out after a decent interval) that it barely counts as one at all. Heads must not merely roll, but must be seen to roll.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Bill Clinton is now discounting the importance of warnings about Al Qaeda planning hijackings that we received during the ’90s.

GENA LEWIS thinks Jonathan Last is all wet about the superiority of The Empire over The Republic. She also discloses that she’s a fox-hunting liberal. We need more of those.

THE GUARDIAN is defending its Jenin coverage, which it feels is fair and unbiased. But that it’s even noticed that its coverage needs defending is progress.

BOYCOTTING FRANCE: Reader Dominique Petitmengin writes:

Hi Glenn! I don’t mind you boycotting France so long you let us not boycotting the United States. If I can shop at Lands’End and Amazon, if I can receive the last Dick’s pick from Grateful Dead Records, if you let me visit Bryce Canyon and Monument Valley with my nefews next winter, you can write everything and more about France, I really don’t care. I hope one day that France can become the 51st state of the Union, but I don’t think you would be really pleased….The United States own many places in France: graveyards. Could we never forget that.

How utterly disarming!

WHAT IS SPAM, that thou art mindful of it? asks Brendan O’Neill. Well, actually he tells the story of some blogger who sent him a nasty email saying “stop spamming” because he sent that person (I don’t know who it was) emails about his new postings.

I’m pretty mellow about this — which is a good thing, since I get a lot of those. I don’t want to get an email every time somebody posts something new, unless they post pretty infrequently, but I’ve never sent anyone a nasty reply. I just kinda quit reading. I like to hear from people who have interesting posts, or new weblogs. There are so many blogs that I can’t possibly notice them all anymore, and if someone has something particularly up my alley I like to hear about it. (Two amusing things I find occasionally in visiting weblogs for the first time — “that bastard Reynolds is ignoring me,” from people who’ve never contacted me, and “so-and-so posted this story 5 minutes after me so they must have stolen my idea,” when the link is to a story on Slashdot or in The New York Times or some other obvious source; some people have a rather high opinion of their own originality).

On the other hand, if you’re sending me multiple emails a day, well, that’s kind of a lot. I get about 300+ a day. And nobody is as impressed with what’s obviously a mass self-promotional mailing as with something targeted to them personally that obviously takes account of their interests.

I HAVE A RATHER DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE FROM ATRIOS — and I think the “Bush Knew” graphic at the top of the page is sleaze worthy of Cynthia McKinney. But he/she is spot on (well, except for a couple of nasty en passant swipes) with this observation:

Since 9/11 I have always wondered why not a single person lost their job over that catastrophe, other than some illegal alien airport workers. I realize that following such a tragedy standing around pointing fingers is not helpful (though someone forgot to tell that to our patriots, and ex-patriates, on the Right.) However, that is not what I’m referring to. I’m talking about someone fairly high up in the leadership choosing to step forward and say “Hey, this happened on my watch. It was my job to prevent this kind of thing, and I failed, and I cannot in good conscience remain in this position. I Will remain around long enough to ensure a smooth transition, and then leave.”

Such an act would be largely symbolic, and we could expect to find the noble soul popping up somewhere else [in] government in the not too distant future, but I nonetheless always thought it should have happened. It’s called taking responsibility, and it is something people at the top should do more often.

These latest revelations speak volumes about this administration and the media who cover for them. Their inability to admit to a single mistake (at least domestically — they had little problem apologizing over the spy plane incident) causes them to spin ludicrously and yes, to lie, when it would be oh so easy to say yes, we messed up a little bit. The psychological damage this must be doing to the real victims of 9/11, and yes, to our “Homeland Security” cannot be exaggerated.

Back last fall I said heads should roll, and I got a lot of emails saying that, well, it was a crisis, we were invading Afghanistan, there were lots of Al Qaeda loose, and we couldn’t afford the disruption that a proper investigation (and punishment) would entail. Okay, fair enough. But not only have we passed the crisis phase, but there’s still no evidence that anyone is going to pay any price for screwing up. Indeed, there’s not any evidence that anyone is looking at why the right information wasn’t brought to the right people at the right time. Instead, we’re getting insultingly false remarks about how utterly unimaginable the attacks were. And I agree: it’s important that people take responsibility. Unlike Atrios, I’m not cackling with glee at seeing the Bush Administration look bad here. But should they be acting in a way that lets Atrios cackle with glee?

UPDATE: For a contrary view, see Iain Murray’s thoughts.