THIS STORY IS ABSOLUTELY AMAZING TO ME:

White House aides were taken aback last week when Henry Kissinger, seeking to avoid further controversy about his consulting business, abruptly stepped down as chair of the independent commission to investigate the 9-11 terrorist attacks. But some administration sources say they may have only themselves to blame. Unlike other high-profile presidential appointments, NEWSWEEK has learned, Kissinger was never “vetted” for conflicts of interest by White House lawyers.

I served on a very low-profile White House advisory panel some years ago. I had to fill out rather a lot of conflict-of-interest paperwork, and what I did was the streamlined version that people who don’t matter and aren’t likely to have conflicts filled out. Nonetheless, I had to disclose where all my money comes from, who I owed money to, where I had lived over an extended period, etc., etc., etc. But Kissinger, well. . . . it’s just absurd. The only excuse I can think of is that everyone knows that Kissinger is a walking, talking conflict of interest, so that there’s no need for disclosure — a view that, strangely, almost makes sense.

Still, this is another example of dreadful tone-deafness. If the Afghan War and the midterm elections showed that the White House can run a taut, effective operation, this (together with the fact that Trent Lott’s problems continue to ramify) shows that “can” isn’t the same as “always will.”

I GOT A ROUGH-CUT VIDEO from the folks producing the PBS “Media Matters” program on weblogs, which will air in January. It’s pretty cool, though the radical Max-Headroom-like lighting they used on me in one segment is not entirely flattering. Er, unless you’re a really big Max Headroom fan.

But I have to say, the biggest surprise is what a babe Megan McArdle turns out to be. We taped on different days, and I didn’t meet her, and I guess I’ve been foolish enough to let my mental picture be colored by her various self-deprecating remarks on her blog. Silly me. (Anil Dash looked better than the picture on his weblog, too, but somehow it wasn’t as striking.)

I also think that Oliver Willis should have his own TV show. Soon.

TRANSPARENCY works both ways. Heh.

SO I’VE BEEN GONE and missed the chance to post much on how justice has caught up with Michael Bellesiles, but not yet with Trent Lott.

I think that there are parallels. Oh, not in the underlying offenses. But what puzzles many about the Bellesiles affair is that Bellesiles could have put paid to it early by simply admitting error. Instead, he kept issuing inconsistent statements and whining about persecution. Lott has done something similar. If he had issued Friday’s apology (except perhaps for the self-justification and self-pity) a week earlier, the whole thing would have been over. But he didn’t.

Everybody has a blind spot, or a tin ear, about something. When that happens, you hope that your friends will point it out. Bellesiles, instead, had a bunch of scholars who saw themselves as members of his team rally around. By the time their defenses (which weren’t based on studying the issue) petered out, Bellesiles’ opportunity to confess error had passed. I think something similar probably happened with Lott — a bunch of his friends told him it was no big deal, and that he didn’t need to worry. By the time he realized they were wrong, it was too late.

I don’t know if it’s true, but some people say that the Bush Administration treats internal critics as disloyal. If it is true, then the Administration needs to recognize that if you surround yourselves with people who tell you you’re right, then they’d better be right, too. Because you’re a lot less likely to realize that you’re wrong until it’s too late.

WELL, WE’RE BACK, though regular blogging won’t resume until later. We went up to attend my brother’s girlfriend’s fiancee’s graduation ceremony. She actually got her degree last summer (summa cum laude), and is already hard at work in a Master’s Program in Robotics, but there was no summer graduation ceremony, so she donned cap and gown and marched with the graduates yesterday.

We then had a lovely dinner and watched a Nigerian movie, To Rise Again, on DVD. Nigeria’s film industry is booming, and this production was pretty polished — a rather odd mixture of Scarface, Sliding Doors, and It’s a Wonderful Life. Like most Nigerian films, (even the far-less-polished Demon Boy of Lagos) it had a strong Christian theme. As I believe I posted a while back, Nigeria’s film industry is taking over Africa, beating out the rival Ghanaians and even cutting into the Bollywood market share. That the industry is located in the South, and strongly Christian in its interests, is likely to have impacts throughout Africa, where there’s something of a religious Cold War underway. But more on that kind of stuff later.

We’re very proud of Victoria, who arrived in America at the age of 18 with nothing but a green card acquired via the State Department’s lottery, a suitcase, and $150. She’s accomplished quite a lot since, and we’re looking forward to having her as part of the family.

More later.

FOR THE MANY WHO EMAILED: Yeah, I took the day off. Posting will resume as normal late Sunday.

LOTT: Pathetic. Andrew Sullivan has it covered.

But don’t miss this Josh Chafetz Fisking of a misinterpretation of the Lott problem.

That’s all for tonight. I’ve driven a long way in rain, snow and sleet, and I’m going to bed.

OKAY, ONE MORE: Jules Witcover writes about receiving critical mail from gun-rights supporters. He should talk.

Several years ago, in response to one of his columns on the Second Amendment, I sent Witcover a couple of law review articles with an innocuous cover letter. I got back a rather nasty handwritten note saying no thanks for my “gratuitous” offering of information, and suggesting that only gun nuts believed that stuff.

I don’t think that it was my cover letter — I sent the same one to Herb Mitgang and got a very nice response, from which we discovered that he had double-dated with my secretary back in the 1940s. Witcover must have had a bad day.

On another gun-related news item, Melissa Seckora is reporting in The Corner that Michael Bellesiles’ Bancroft Prize may be revoked.

DRUDGE SAYS that Lott will apologize again. Josh Chafetz has a source who says Lott will probably step down as Majority Leader. Reading David Frum’s take this morning, I think a Lott step-down announcement this afternoon continues to look likely. Here’s what Frum says:

1. The president has never much liked Trent Lott.

2. Bush sees himself as the first Republican president in a generation to campaign explictly for black votes – a campaign compromised by Lott’s indiscretion.

3. The White House fully expects further damaging disclosures about him.

4. In the White House’s view, these disclosures will probably embolden senators to challenge Lott’s leadership.

It couldn’t be clearer if the president actually pulled the lever on the trap door himself, could it?

I’ll miss it — I’m about to leave town for the weekend, and probably won’t post again until late this evening if at all. But stay tuned.

I wonder if Lott has read Michelle Malkin’s column today?

A READER WRITES: “It has begun. Read Krugman’s column today and let’s see how long it takes for the Lott story to become, in the hands of the media, the racial equivalent of the ‘southern gun culture’ stories that ran after the pre-Columbine round of school shootings.”

Perhaps Krugman will take on the race-baiting that has marked recent Democratic politicking in his next column.

UPDATE: It’s not just Krugman — and not just America.

THE TIME TO START BOMBING HAS ARRIVED.

GEORGE TENET reports success against Al Qaeda:

“More than one-third of the top leadership identified before the war has been killed or captured,” Mr. Tenet said in a speech Wednesday. “Almost half our successes against senior al Qaeda members has come in recent months.”

A transcript of his remarks at the Nixon Center was made public yesterday.

“We are still in the ‘hunt phase’ of this war — the painstaking pursuit of individual al Qaeda members and their cells,” Mr. Tenet said. “This phase is paying off, but is manpower intensive and will take a long time. There are no set battles against units of any size. We are tracking our enemies down, one by one.”

It’s hard to evaluate statements like this, but it’s clear that the battle against subject-verb disagreement isn’t going as well.

HERE, VIA VIRGINIA POSTREL, is a great piece on Norman Borlaug, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who actually did something admirable. And, while you’re at it, you should read this Gregg Easterbrook story from The Atlantic, which observes:

Perhaps more than anyone else, Borlaug is responsible for the fact that throughout the postwar era, except in sub-Saharan Africa, global food production has expanded faster than the human population, averting the mass starvations that were widely predicted — for example, in the 1967 best seller Famine — 1975! The form of agriculture that Borlaug preaches may have prevented a billion deaths.

Yet although he has led one of the century’s most accomplished lives, and done so in a meritorious cause, Borlaug has never received much public recognition in the United States, where it is often said that the young lack heroes to look up to. One reason is that Borlaug’s deeds are done in nations remote from the media spotlight: the Western press covers tragedy and strife in poor countries, but has little to say about progress there. Another reason is that Borlaug’s mission — to cause the environment to produce significantly more food — has come to be seen, at least by some securely affluent commentators, as perhaps better left undone. More food sustains human population growth, which they see as antithetical to the natural world.

Borlaug deserves more attention, and praise, than he’s gotten. But his achievements — which serve as proof that science saves lives — are a rebuke to the notion that political activism is what matters. You can hardly expect the activists to forgive that.

ALERT TO GEORGE TENET: Steven Chapman has seen through the plan, and identified all your agents of influence (except Harold Pinter — how’d he miss him?). Have Chapman, er, dealt with.

THERE’S SO MUCH GOOD STUFF OVER AT LAWMEME that I couldn’t decide which post to link to. So go read ’em all.

OLIVER WILLIS: “I’m for equal rights, but not at the expense of Frank and Joe.”

SKBUBBA’S PHYSIC EXPERIMENT turned out, well, about the way you’d expect. I’ve gotten the same results myself.

THIS MEANS SOMETHING — but I’m not sure exactly what:

Iraq abruptly canceled a contract with Russia’s largest oil company and two other Russian companies to develop a major Iraqi oil field.

Iraq’s decision — announced in a letter to the company, Lukoil, on Monday — amounted to a rebuff to Russia, one of Baghdad’s strongest supporters at a time when the United States is threatening to go to war over what the Bush administration says is President Saddam Hussein’s pursuit of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

I suppose it’s a signal that Iraq is unhappy with the Russians, which seems like good news to me. But I suspect there’s more here than meets the eye.

CARDINAL LAW HAS resigned.

SASHA VOLOKH IS FACT-CHECKING ED LAZARUS in a major way. And scroll down for a recipe for chopped liver!

DUELING QUOTATIONS ON EQUALITY, courtesy of Mickey Kaus and Andrew Sullivan. I’m not sure which is my favorite. But I promise to heed Kaus’s warnings about “blogger triumphalism.”

UPDATE: But apparently John Podhoretz didn’t make that promise. Atrios should be pleased with this praise.

WALTER SHAPIRO writes that Lott should step down. But he has a few choice words for Lott’s “enablers” in the press and the Senate, too.

WHITE HOUSE REMAINS SILENT AS PRESSURE MOUNTS against the term “Homeland.”

HERE’S A FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT OF AN ANTIWAR PROTEST from Steve at HappyFunPundit. He was unimpressed.

TIM BLAIR HAS HIS FILM CAREER all planned out. I predict he’ll make a bundle.