BRENDAN O’NEILL has looked at the various anti-Israel petitions and has some interesting insight into what’s driving the anti-Israel movement today:

In the past, people tended to define themselves as anti-Israel as part of a broader anti-imperialism – in opposition to US and Western intervention abroad, whatever form intervention happened to take.

What could Western academics, anti-capitalists and Islamicists possibly have in common, to make them all so vocal about Israel? Could it possibly be a loathing – or a self-loathing on the part of some academics – for Western values? Could it be, not so much an anti-imperialist stance against foreign intervention, but a reaction against aggression that is just too unapologetic and unabashed in an era where intervention abroad has to be dressed in the language of humanitarianism and human rights?

Whatever it is, there is something about today’s ‘anti-Israel’ stance that makes even me – who always sympathised with the Palestinian cause in the past – feel distinctly uncomfortable.

Yes, and I think that this is what makes so many of us (particularly Americans)who aren’t Jewish or evangelical Christians feel more than “uncomfortable.” This is really a movement inspired by rejection of the Enlightenment, of reason, and of modernity. Which is why I view it with such deep contempt.

UPDATE: David Carr refers to it as the “great convergence of the world’s idiots,” and has some firsthand observations.

TEEN SEX UPDATE! TAPPED has ridden to my defense on the teen-sex debate: “Reynolds has it just right when he writes, ‘you won’t teach teens to wait until they’re ready by launching unaimed broadsides against the assumed evil of teen sex, and by acting as if teen sex is unnatural or aberrant. It’s not.'”

UPDATE: Orchid has more. So does Eugene Volokh, who may or may not help his credibility by also observing that his opinion of male sexual ethics causes him to look with favor on the idea of having a lesbian daughter.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Brian Sinclair has the whole debate summarized (with links) on his Daily Babble site. The real question is, have we inadvertently google-bombed the term “teen sex?”

STILL ANOTHER UPDATE: Nope, not even close on the Google thing. Surprisingly, however, some actual non-porn sites do show up on the first page.

HEY, CHARLES OLIVER is posting today, too, with comments on Southern Hemisphere Christianity, Japanese fecundity, and midwestern teachers’ ethics.

WOBBLY WATCH UPDATE: Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan say Bush has gone wobbly.

Me, I still lean toward “rope-a-dope,” but reasonable minds may disagree. Either way, it wouldn’t hurt Bush, and a lot of other folks in the Administration, to read this regularly. Or perhaps they should just go here now and then.

UPDATE: Oliver Willis says the Administration isn’t serious, either. Hmm. We’re hearing a lot on this from a lot of different quarters this week: Steyn, Kristol, Willis, Sullivan, et al.

“THAT’S A BLOODY SHOCK!” Tim Blair reports on a bizarre twist to last week’s big euthanasia story.

ERIC RAYMOND INFORMS ME that he’s posting today, and on one of my favorite subjects. Hmm. He didn’t link to a specific post or say what he was referring to, so you’ll just have to read today’s items and try to figure out which he meant. I’m still not sure, but that’s okay. I’m a man of varied interests.

A HACKER broke into California state computers and stole data on 200,000 employees, UPI reports. Craig Schamp observes that this makes a National ID database, and Larry Ellison’s promises that it will be safe, even less credible than before.

I’M POSTING LESS, but as far as I can tell, most people aren’t posting at all today. Though Andrew Stuttaford has some keen observations on Generic Marmite, cufflinks, and random gunfire over at The Corner. Start here and scroll up.

And Adriana Cronin has a long post on public/private law enforcement that also features her looking quite fetching astride her old (now stolen) motorcycle, and a non-astride photo of her new motorcycle, a Ducati Monster Dark 900. She likes the old one better, but I think the Ducati’s got the edge in the name department. I mean who wouldn’t want a Monster Dark 900? Even if that were the name of, say, a spatula? “Honey, I’m flipping the pancakes now [dropping voice into manly tones] with my new Monster Dark 900 — the teflon coated one!”

I’m hoping that Dale Amon, who’s attending the International Space Development Conference in Denver, will find time to post a report on the wacky enviro-types who are going to be there agitating to keep the Moon “pristine.”

MORE AMERICANS are answering questions about their race or ethnicity by simply saying “American,” according to this report from the Washington Post. (Via Joanne Jacobs).

HERE’S ANOTHER anti-Israel petition, this one from Canada. The signatures here aren’t as amusing as the ones on the Aussie petition.

AN ANTI-ISRAEL HARVARD PROFESSOR is unmasked by Jeff Goldstein. I’ll never listen to that album the same way. . . .

UNILATERALISM, INTERNATIONAL LAW, AND TERRORISM: Some lessons from the French, courtesy of Banana Counting Monkey.

SOME SEX ADVICE from Eve Kayden can be found here.

I WILL BE POSTING, but at a reduced rate, over the Memorial Day Weekend. In the meantime, you may want to check out this page by Andrew Olmsted and this page by David Merchant, a University of Tennessee alumnus. (Olmstead site via Lawrence Haws.

THE UNITED STATES is warning citizens against travel to India and Pakistan, and is suggesting that citizens who are there get out.

In more cheerful news, I’m uploading very cool songs from Michele Newton. When they’re available for listening, I’ll link to them.

TEEN SEX UPDATE: Rishawn Biddle weighs in.

TEEN SEX UPDATE UPDATE! Robert George, over at The Corner, observes:

“Teen” sex is a relatively recent phenomenon because the “teenager” is a recent phenomenon. For all intents and purposes, teenagers are a 20th century creation, maybe even second half of the 20th century at that. Consider Teddy Roosevelt and George H.W. Bush were men doing manly things (like going off to war and such) well before their 20th birthdays. “Teendom” is a conceit of the post-war suburban leisure class. Furthermore, there is an interesting tension in society’s where we insist that teenagers be treated as children when it comes to sex, but as adults when it comes to murder.

Yes, I had meant to point out that contradiction myself.

JUSTIN WEITZ reports that Norwegian grocery stores are labelling Israeli products so that pro-Palestinian shoppers can avoid them. Weitz responds with some labelling suggestions of his own.

JOSH CHAFETZ doesn’t like my title of “free speech on the left” below, referring to the student protest threats that led to the cancellation of an appearance by Chief Justice William Rehnquist. He says it’s rudeness, but not censorship.

Well, he’s sort of right. But while the First Amendment, which protects free speech, bars government censorship but not rudeness, that does not mean that things that don’t involve the First Amendment don’t involve free speech. And you can bet that the rude students were high-fiving at their success in getting the appearance cancelled via a mere threat.

Shorewood High alumnus Ann Haker says that Shorewood is in fact a haven of censorship, too, which puts a somewhat different complexion on things:

Shorewood High is my alma mater too (class of ’85). I’m embarrassed by the Rehnquist disinvite. Thought you might like this link:

SHS has a speech code banning specific words, and any others that a teacher deems “disruptive”, and the penalty can be getting arrested by the police.

Nice liberal place, isn’t it?

Hmm. I wonder if that speech code would have been used had students threatened to disrupt a speech by Janet Reno, or Michael Moore?

By claiming the authority to censor student speech, and then not exercising it in instances where they may agree, the authorities — in my opinion — become complicit in the behavior, which turns rudeness into censorship.

UPDATE: This post by Justin Adams says it better than I did.

THE CALIFORNIA APARTMENT EXPLOSION looks to have been caused by a gas leak, according to this report.

PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH has a nice piece on the Second Amendment over at FoxNews.

ALL THIS ON TEEN SEX, and I get not one word of support from TAPPED. I mean, if the Democrats aren’t good for defending teen sex, what are they good for?

WOBBLY WATCH: Steven Den Beste has some thoughts.

READER TRENT TELENKO sends this somewhat more comforting take on Indian / Pakistani nuclear war from StrategyPage.Com. However, while I’m a big StrategyPage fan, this piece is rather sketchy. It says that most deaths would come from economic disruption rather than weapon effects, which is almost certainly true. It also says that economic collapse would bring an Indian/Pakistani war to a rapid halt, but doesn’t make clear just how that is to be. (Didn’t people say that before World War I, too?) Here’s the most interesting part, though:

So it is likely that the United States will put great pressure on India not to attack Pakistan until we’ve conquered Iraq. India is not dependent on the US for anything so our major influence comes from incentives, not punitive disincentives. There is one coin which can truly buy India’s short-term inaction – promised American support for India’s later conquest of Pakistan. Such conquest would permanently protect India from Pakistan’s growing nuclear arsenal, and from Pakistani state-supported terrorism.

I wonder what promises are being made.

STANLEY FISH DOESN’T LIKE REPORTERS: Apparently some come with an agenda, some are grad-school washouts who are just jealous, and all are idiots. So why has he spent so much time talking with them anyway? Because, he says, he wants to be “understood and admired and celebrated.”

A THREE-STORY APARTMENT BUILDING in Los Angeles has been leveled by an unexplained explosion. Probably nothing, but still. . . .

UPDATE: This FoxNews story has a picture. My take: If this is terrorist-related (a big if) this explosion was likely an accident in an apartment used for bomb-making rather than a planned one.