WILLIAM GALSTON wrote in the Post about downsides of going to war against Iraq. But Glen Johnstone responds that some of Galston’s “bugs” are really “features.”

I MEANT TO LINK TO this collection of stuff on Hoover-era FBI abuses a while back, but I lost the link and didn’t get to it. I have some personal knowledge of this sort of thing: my father’s antiwar protest career involved some rather dirty governmental tricks, and when I was in law school I did a radio program (with NPR bigshots-to-be Andy Bowers and David Baron) on the New Haven May Day riots, the research for which made it seem pretty likely that FBI-sponsored provocateurs were behind a lot of what went on, including the hockey-rink bombing.

On the other hand, the real question is what lesson this past misconduct teaches us today. One is a theme upon which InstaPundit constantly harps: big, unscrutinized organizations inevitably become corrupt, dishonest, and often dangerous. The other is that much of what Hoover did was illegal then; this suggests that oversight is more important than the precise parameters of the applicable law.

But while I believe in prosecuting the current war against Islamist terrorists to the utmost, I feel absolutely sure that if the U.S. government is given power to act in ways for which it is unaccountable, it will act badly. Our entire Constitution is based on the notion that unaccountable power cannot be trusted. That’s more than a notion, really: it’s a certainty, on a par with the law of gravity.

I MEANT TO LINK TO THIS oped by Larry Tribe on terrorists, trials, and judicial review. It’s pretty good.

A TOUCHING FATHER’S DAY STORY, from Cold Fury.

I CAN’T REACH FOXNEWS AGAIN — it doesn’t respond to pings, and a traceroute shows it as unreachable after an awful lot of weird hops. I assume it’s under some sort of DNS attack again.

UPDATE: Now it’s working. And I notice this defense of George Stephanopoulos’ hosting “This Week.”

COLORADO’S HAYMAN FIRE LOOKS TO HAVE BEEN STARTED BY A FOREST SERVICE EMPLOYEE. Juan Gato comments: “You know, this kind of stuff wouldn’t happen if we federalized the U.S. Forest Service.”

BILL QUICK REPORTS on a growing movement to protect “fathers” from paying child support for children who aren’t actually theirs. “But the children need somone to support them,” is the response, “and if these unlucky guys don’t do it, who will?”

This reminds me of Judith Jarvis Thomson’s unconscious-violinist example. And we all know where that leads. So why is it different when it’s men?

THE WAR BETWEEN CIVILIZATION AND BARBARISM: Some interesting thoughts on the nature of the enemy, or enemies.

PYRA IS A COOL COMPANY OF 2002 according to Fortune. It’s well-deserved. Blogger has its issues, but it almost singlehandedly created the contemporary Blogosphere. Not many companies can produce such a major social change with a single product, especially one that’s essentially in beta.

BO COWGILL has first-hand reportage and pictures from Condi Rice’s commencement address at Stanford (and the accompanying dumb protest). Who says bloggers can’t do original reporting?

UPDATE: Hey, and don’t miss the page with the pictures! Bo knows digital photos.

CIVIL RIGHTS LAWYER DON B. KATES has a good oped on the Second Amendment in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer today. Key quotes:

The Founding Fathers’ ideas would group them today with the National Rifle Association’s most militant members. “One loves to possess arms,” Thomas Jefferson wrote George Washington on June 19, 1796. James Madison assured his fellow countrymen they need not fear their government “because [you have] the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.”

All other founders who discussed guns agreed. If any disagreed, writes professor William Van Alstyne, former member of the national board of the American Civil Liberties Union and one of the great figures in modern American constitutional law, “it remains one of the most closely guarded secrets of the eighteenth century, for no known writing from the period” says so.

Before the modern gun-control debate, no one denied that the amendment guarantees an individual right. In a 183-page review of all 19th-century references, criminologist David Kopel found not one denial. A typical explanation was that which a great Supreme Court justice offered in an 1834 book on the Constitution: “One of the ordinary modes by which tyrants accomplish their purpose without resistance is by disarming the people and making it an offense to keep arms.”

Our founders were steeped in the belief of classical political philosophy that only an armed people could maintain their liberty.

Indeed. And with the growth of the Homeland Security apparatus, this lesson becomes more important, both as a source of security against tyranny, and as a way for the federal government to reassure people that it has no intention of becoming tyrannical.

GEORGIE ANN GEYER WEASELS: Reader Bill Rudersdorf notes that Georgie Ann Geyer’s latest column has a disclaimer at the bottom:

EDITOR’S NOTE: In Georgie Anne Geyer’s column dated for release May 9, 2002, she included a quote from Ariel Sharon, “I control America.” This quote was widely reported in the Palestinian press but cannot be confirmed in independent sources. Miss Geyer and Universal Press Syndicate regret not having attributed the quote more specifically. — UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE

“I thought she was smarter than that,” writes Rudersdorf. Yes, relying on the famously unreliable Palestinian newspapers for a Sharon quote certainly counts as not-smart. In fact, didn’t Holger Jensen do something similar? And didn’t he make a far more handsome apology than this? And didn’t he lose his column anyway?

Just asking.

YOU MAY WANT TO VOTE in this poll on the official Taliban website, which is still in business.

UPDATE: Reader John Beckwith writes:

I followed your link and tried to vote in the Taliban poll. I submitted my vote, but the poll results page informed me that my vote would not be tallied because I had already voted.

I am not sure, but they may have set things up to allow only one person who linked in from Instapundit to vote. If so, the Taliban are smarter than CAIR.

I will be curious to know if other voters have a similar experience.

Hmm. Tricky. You can always type the address into your browser:

http://www.talibanonline.net/index.asp

Of course, this is an admission of their cause’s unpopularity. They can’t even stuff their own internet poll

UPDATE: Several readers report that votes don’t seem to be changing the totals. It’s probably a fake poll.

IT’S BEEN A WHILE since the Blogosphere has had a really good Fisking. It’s just gotten too easy.

But this is a good one.

BIZARRO WORLD: Rebecca Blood defends Andrew Card and the Bush management style. Meanwhile Rod Dreher is lambasting Bush over at The Corner.

FATHER’S DAY CELEBRATIONS AND OBSERVANCES are ongoing today, so blogging will be rather light. Meanwhile, you may want to read this piece from the Los Angeles Times about “deadbeat dads,” (a term that I believe persists largely because of a combination of alliteration and general anti-male bias). Of the obligatory stories of its type running in most papers today, it seems to be the best.

RADIOFREETEXAS is a new blog by a frequent InstaPundit emailer. Check it out.

THE “SMALLPOX” OUTBREAK reported by Pakistan’s The Dawn turns out to be a chickenpox outbreak. Good.

HOMOPHOBIA isn’t actually a phobia. That seems about right to me.

JOSH MARSHALL has a post on the origins of the creepy term “homeland defense”.

I’m certainly among the large number who regard it as creepy. But perhaps it’s a good thing: given the ineffective-yet-intrusive nature of the domestic-security approach to date, why give it a popular name? One that sounds creepy and slightly unAmerican may, in fact, be perfectly appropriate.

ISTANBLOG is, well, what it sounds like: a blog from Turkey. (By an American living there). I don’t pay enough attention to Turkey because. . . well, because I’m a guy who does this as a hobby, and there are only so many hours available for blogging and reading. So I’m glad somebody else is.

JIM BENNETT EXPLAINS why he’s not an Anglophile.

MORE STRANGE GOINGS-ON on the Mexican border.

CHARLES JOHNSON identifies bribery as the reason that we’re going so easy on Saudi Arabia.

I think this is an issue for the Democrats, if they want one. But will they?

READ THIS POST from Dan Hanson on the Hollings bill. Then get mad.