EUROWEENIE ANTISEMITISM UPDATE: Reader Jason Rush writes:

Do you notice that bad guy introduced in Episode 1? He’s a Jewish caricature!!! How perfect for a European comic strip.

He’s a “ruthless speculator” with a great hook nose!

That’s not anti-Semitism, Jason. It’s just opposition to Israel’s policies. . . . Though to be honest, I fell asleep before making it that far. If an antisemitic stereotype is deployed, but no one is awake to see it, is it antisemitism?

Also, reader Joe Stocker sent the suggestion that I google the words “captain euro” and “racist” and see what I find. The answer is a lot of complaints about Captain Euro as Nordic propaganda.

RECYCLING ALERT: Charles Rich says a recent CNN story on the environmental impact of cellphones came straight from an enviro-group’s press release — even retaining an obvious arithmetic howler.

As I’ve written before, this sort of thing is common. And agree with Rich that it’s far less likely that CNN would have taken a press release from, say, the NRA or the Heritage Foundation and given it such an uncritical regurgitation.

CHARLES JOHNSON has words of support for Lou Dobbs — not only from Charles but from scads of commenters. Dobbs apparently was on an L.A. talk radio station this morning saying “to hell with political correctness.” One commenter is recommending an email campaign to CNN in support of Dobbs.

Two chapters of Harry Potter were read, Commerce Clause manuscript is now revised and in envelope to go out tomorrow. I’m going to bed.

EUROWEENIE ANTISEMITISM ALERT: This time it’s — surprise — the French, specifically their Ambassador to the United States:

“The ambassador agreed to speak on the issue of anti-Semitism in Europe and suggested four separate dates,” said an organizer of the forum. “He was later notified who was coming and got cold feet. He bailed out.”

A large number of groups that signed up were Jewish, including the Anti-Defamation League, B’nai B’rith, the Zionist Organization of America, and the American Jewish Committee.

Jeez. It’s a shame that these simplistic Europeans have such a poor grasp of diplomacy, and thus have to alienate so many of the Americans whose good wishes they need.

MARY ROBINSON NEEDS TO LOOK TO ZIMBABWE rather than focusing on condemning the United States.

HAS MARY ROBINSON EVER SEEN FRENCH IMMIGRATION CONTROLS? It’s time for her to go, to coin a phrase.

NORWEGIAN BLOGGER Vegard Valberg has the first of what’s promised to be a series of deeply critical posts on “Captain Euro.”

BILL HOBBS HAS MORE ON THE TRUMMEL CASE, including links to the Free Paul Trummel website, etc. It’s blogtivism at its finest!

AHA! Someone unpronounceable has identified an intergalactic right-wing conspiracy. Of course, now they must be silenced. . . .

ANOTHER UN-CHEERFUL ASSESSMENT OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY:

So — the problem of turf wars between the FBI and CIA is dealt with by giving them both a new agency to fight with, the problem of information hoarding at headquarters is dealt with by establishing a new hoard of information at headquarters, and we also improve matters by imposing a new layer of centralized bureaucracy on agencies which (with the possible exception of INS) didn’t have much to do with the problem.

But it does have strong bipartisan support in Congress.

What could possibly go wrong?

(Via Electrolite).

MICHAEL LEDEEN has this comment on the new Department of Homeland Security:

But what worries me — what has worried me from September 12 — is that he has yet to call anyone to account. It would be nice for him to announce a compassionate purge of the failed agencies as he folds them into Homeland Security. Without that, the bureaucrats will not believe that anything serious has happened.

And they’ll be right.

Absolutely.

TWO IN ONE DAY! Now Jonah Goldberg is writing Get your ass to Mars!

CAPTAIN EURO IS RACIST! Here’s the evidence.

WOBBLY WATCH: Patrick Ruffini says the Bush Administration is doing just fine, thank you, and people should just settle down and stop whining.

EUGENE VOLOKH has some nice observations on the futility of long-range demographic prediction. And a special bonus item for nitpickers!

MATTHEW YGLESIAS ON HOMELAND SECURITY:

It seems to me that no matter what we do, some people somewhere will still be able to pull off a devastating attack sooner or later. The answer to the terrorist problem isn’t trying to devise foolproof counterterrorism measures, it’s defeating the Islamist ideology that inspires the attackers. Going on the offense, (a) kills terrorists, thereby making it harder for them to attack us (b) deters states and other powerful figures from sponsoring terrorism, and most importantly (c) shows that hijacking planes and crashing them into buildings doesn’t make America give in — it makes America topple your regime. Going on defense, on the other hand, makes us look weak. It makes it look like if the terrorists can foil our new, better, homeland security that maybe then we’d give in. That means they’ll try to foil our new, better, homeland security. And you know what? They’ll be able to. There’s only so much security an open society can provide. We need to go out into the world, into the regimes that sponsor this sort of garbage — Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority — and find newer, better, governments over there. They definitely cannnot defeat the United States’ military power, especially when you take into account our ability to vastly expand that power if we see fit. Playing terrorist vs. counterterrorist is their game, though, and they’ve shown us that they can play pretty damn well.

Well said.

NEW NASA ADMINISTRATOR SEAN O’KEEFE is assessed in this piece by Beth Dickey. (Via Rand Simberg).

THE EUROWEENIE ANTISEMITES AT IT AGAIN: Note the combination of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism:

The wife of the European Central Bank chief has left Amsterdam for her holiday home in France after outraging her Jewish neighbours by draping a Palestinian flag over her balcony and blaming Palestinian’s woes on an “elite club of rich American Jews”.

She lives near Anne Frank’s house.

SFSU UPDATE: California Governor Gray Davis has issued a statement condemning antisemitism on California campuses.

UPDATE: Meryl Yourish notes the refreshing absence of “on both sides” weasel-wording.

LAWMEME says that myriads of small media like weblogs are coming to matter more than Big Media.

PEGGY NOONAN says that “underperformin’ Norman” Mineta needs to grow up:

We are in the middle of another systems failure.

We are busy for instance debating absurdities. Such as: In an era in which certain Arab and Muslim males roughly 18 to 40 years old are taking active steps to severely damage the United States and kill Americans, is it wrong to give added scrutiny to Arab and Muslim males 18 to 40 years old as they attempt to enter America, board planes, rent charter planes and ask for maps to the nearest nuclear power plant?

How absurd and clueless do you have to be to be having this debate? You have to have surrendered all common sense. . . .

Norm Mineta, our transportation secretary, has a searing memory, and that memory determines U.S. airport security policy in 2002. When he was a little boy at the start of World War II, Mr. Mineta and his Japanese-American family were sent to an interment camp. It was unjust and wrong. The Japanese of America in 1942 were American citizens, not illegal aliens or visitors newly arrived; moreover, they had never, not one of them, launched an attack on the United States. What FDR did to them was wrong.

But the facts of Japanese-Americans in 1942 do not parallel the facts of our enemies today. Our enemies has already killed civilians and announced they will kill more. We know who the enemy is–we know many names, and we certainly know the general profile–and we have every right, or rather duty, to give those who fit the profile extra scrutiny. Instead we play games and waste time wanding people we know to be innocent, and searching their tired old shoes. We do this to show we’re being fair. But we really know otherwise, all of us.

We are being irresponsible and careless in the hope that history will call us tolerant and compassionate. It is vanity that drives us, not the thirst for justice and a safer world. Mr. Mineta has received many awards for his sensitivity to ethnic profiling. Good for him, but I’d personally give him an award if he’d begin to act like a grownup and recognize that his childhood trauma shouldn’t determine modern American security policy.

Yeah, the plastic-knife ban was asinine in September and it’s even more asinine now. And the unrealistic response from the powers-that-be makes me doubt that a new Cabinet department will do any good — unless it’s a lot less asinine. I don’t see that in any part of the President’s proposal.

JOHN HILER SAYS THAT LAST YEAR WAS THE YEAR OF THE BLOG, and this year is the year of the Blogosphere. I think that’s about right.

HERE’S A BLOG DEVOTED TO (well, mostly) church website design. It even includes cruel reviews,, though they’re more, um, clean than the “this sucks like a bilge-pump” reviews in Websites That Suck, which I believe the same guy had a hand in.

PULCHRITUDE, REAL AND IMAGINARY: Steven Den Beste has had an interesting series of reflections. Here’s the latest.

KENNEDY COUSIN MICHALE SKAKEL has been found guilty, if anyone cares.