SFSU UPDATE: Karen Alexander writes in The New Republic about the growth of antisemitism at SFSU and Berkeley. Excerpt:

ProPalestinian activism certainly isn’t confined to SFSU and UC Berkeley. But on most campuses the protesters–while often hyperbolic–have been careful to avoid explicit anti-Semitism and threats of violence. When students at Harvard and MIT circulated a petition calling on their universities to divest from companies doing business with Israel, for instance, they were careful to call “the recent attacks on Israeli citizens unacceptable and abhorrent.” But in the Bay Area anti-Israel activism has a far more militant and far less liberal flavor. That’s not because UC Berkeley and SFSU have unusually large or radical Arab populations; it’s because they are home to a deep wellspring of free-floating, hard-left authoritarianism. And unfortunately for Goldstein, today’s left-wing authoritarians have set their sights on Israel.

I have hopes that this will lead to closer scrutiny about what’s going on at SFSU and Berkeley. Despite the attention generated by the Blogosphere, there’s a real tendency among mainstream media to ignore this sort of thing. Compare the relative lack of attention to posters claiming that Jews eat gentile children (mentioned again in this article) to the New York Times reporting of anti-Muslim remarks by a Baptist preacher.

UPDATE: On the Baptist preacher angle, reader Bill Sommerfeld writes:

So one thing the NY Times article conveniently omitted is that Vines is making hay from a traditional (but apparently controversial) Muslim belief that Muhammed married his youngest wife when she was six and consummated the marriage when she was 9. (This was one of many aspects of Muhammed’s life which was parodied in “The Satanic Verses”).

A Google search for “muhammed aisha wife age” turns up a fair number of polemics on the subject, as well as other references where it’s mentioned in passing as context for other Muslim practices.

link

another link

Um, okay.

ANOTHER UPDATE: InstaPundit intern Kevin Deenihan, whose own blog has been covering these Bay Area shenanigans for some time, blogs some corrections to Alexander’s piece.

STILL ANOTHER UPDATE: Gary Farber has comments. So does Meryl Yourish, who got the ball rolling on this story to begin with.

OKAY, I’M OFF TO THE POOL: But have no fear: Gary Farber is back after a hiatus, and posting up a storm.

PHONY VIRUS THREATS: From antivirus software companies! Who’d’ve thought it possible?

NATIONAL MALAISE? Bush political operatives can’t like it that this Reuters piece uses that particular word. But the Carter-era version of “malaise” occurred in no small part because Americans knew that we should have been responding vigorously to the Iranian embassy attack and hostage-holding, but that the powers-that-be were too committed to a Colin-Powell-like strategy of talking rather than doing to mount such a response.

Hmm. Maybe there is a lesson here for Bush, after all.

UPDATE: A few people have written to say that Carter gave his “national malaise” speech some months before the hostage taking. Yeah, but he didn’t even use the words. I’m referring to the era, not the speech.

BACK FROM THE LAKE: We took the boat to Calhoun’s at the marina, where we took my dad out for an early Father’s Day dinner. We cruised around the lake for a while, played several games of “Sorry!” with my daughter, and generally had a lovely evening. We drove back a little while ago. This afternoon I’m taking her to a little-girls’ pool party while my wife goes downtown to do some editing on her documentary.

Much happened in my absence. Over 50 comments appeared — quite good ones for the most part — on the post regarding the Al-Muhajir confinement. And Eric Alterman ran a letter from one of my former students, Ken Berry (not the guy from “F Troop,” I note in response to a reader inquiry that strangely appeared to be entirely serious). Berry says he’s a big fan of Chomsky, which only proves (along, sadly, with the quality of grammar and punctuation in his email) that I didn’t teach him much. (Actually, I remember Berry as a pretty nice guy; an older student — though not as old as the actor Ken Berry — who was something of a lefty, though his enthusiasm for Chomsky was news to me).

Berry wonders if I’m neglecting my teaching and writing to do InstaPundit. Well, my scholarly output hasn’t fallen off yet (I have 2 pieces in the pipeline and another one in progress) and my student evaluations — for whatever that’s worth — were up by a statistically insignificant margin last year. It’s mostly a question of efficient use of time, especially small increments of available time (like this one) during the day. That’s something that I have to say my years in law practice, where I managed to squeeze in a book and a couple of law review articles on the side, taught me a lot about.

Also, Eugene Volokh has a very interesting post about an important but little-noticed Supreme Court case that’s soon to be argued, and Kathryn Lopez emailed to thank me for taking weekend time off, thus lowering pressure on The Corner to keep up. Puhleez.

Mac Frazier has some interesting observations on weblog traffic, and Bill Quick has inaugurated a new feature on “stupid security tricks.” Finally, reader Micael O’Ronain sent a review of the Postrel appearance on John Stossel’s program last night, which I missed and was too stupid to tape. Micael says Virginia did extremely well, and that the whole show was quite interesting and well done. Maybe this will get Virginia a slot on the revamped “This Week” program — which I expect would benefit greatly from her presence.

IT’S OFF TO THE LAKE FOR ME AND MINE. Blogging will be limited for the next 24 hours or so. Have a nice weekend!

EUGENE VOLOKH HAS A LENGTHY POST on military versus civilian interrogation and confinement of suspected terrorists.

MICKEY KAUS EXPLAINS why “Homeland Security” sounds creepy and notes that Peggy Noonan invites nominations for a better term. Excellent piece.

UPDATE: Also, it’s Kaus vs. Kuttner in this story on the American Prospect’s finances. I say: let the print magazine go if you must, but keep the online version! And if you can’t do that, at least keep the blog!

BRENDAN O’NEILL says (scroll down) that I’m not negative enough about hate-speech laws. Well, there’s a first.

SECRET SERVICE UPDATE: A reader writes:

Thanks for highlighting the cover story about the Secret Service. I’ve had a number of interactions with them, and although many of them are clearly very professional, there are a few bad apples who are compromising the security of the President.

A friend of mine has done some advance work when Bush travels to his state. He’s encountered similar serious lapses — classified itineraries just lying around detailing the President’s every move. At least once, he’s received an e-mail update from the website Democrats.com detailing the President’s minute-by-minute schedule days before any of the people who were supposed to be in the loop knew anything (and these schedules are NOT supposed to be released to the public). On one trip, he encountered a rather belligerent agent who repeatedly referred to the “fucking White House,” and had to be reprimanded by the higher-ups in D.C. for trying to screw with the order of the motorcade in such a way as to delay the whole trip.

Now, flash back to September 11, and the leak of the code name for Air Force 1. I don’t think this is an isolated problem.

Here’s the disturbing conclusion: “If you choose to highlight this, you can attribute it to an anonymous correspondent. I don’t think I need a knock on my door at 3 AM.” Hmmph. I’m tempted to invoke G. Gordon Liddy, but I won’t.

TAPPED says that Washington, DC should be able to field a team in the World Cup.

I agree. Of course, I also think that Tennessee should get a seat at the U.N.

After all, if the E.U. is now a nation, it’s no sillier than letting, say, France have a seat. In fact. . . .

UPDATE: Interesting response here.

BRINK LINDSEY honors Flag Day by exhuming the British drinking song (“To Anacreon in Heaven”) that supplied the tune to “The Star Spangled Banner.” His conclusion:

Is this a great country or what? Our national anthem is a patriotic parody of a party song that’s all about entwining “the Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s Vine” — or, in other words, getting drunk and doing the nasty. Take that, Osama!

Hmm. Think I’ll make a special effort to, ahem, demonstrate my patriotism this weekend.

DAVE TROWBRIDGE EXPOSES another Fisk error, in answer to a question posed by Chris Bertram. I think, though, that Bertram’s right on the sentiments even if Trowbridge is right on the facts: I’d give every Saudi visitor an Al Gore-level going-over on general principles. After all, that’s where most of the terrorists come from — and it’s where all the terrorists get their ideology.

I JUST NOTICED this writeup of the coming National Press Club weblog panel, by Jennifer Harper. Cool.

THIS STORY FROM USA TODAY describes how Americans studied in madrassas schools that taught their students that Islam requires the destruction of America. They apparently went off to join Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

These guys should be locked up, if they’re still alive. I also wonder: Padilla/Al Muhajir picked up Islam in prison. This should make us reconsider who we lock up, and how much religious freedom prisoners are granted. The prison system has been a slow-motion disaster for two or three decades, and here’s yet another reason to address it.

HOW TO BE A CEO SUPERVILLAIN: Chris Suellentrop explains, in a piece that’s about the press more than it’s about the business world.

I HAVE MY DOUBTS about the genuineness of this purportedly autobiographical piece in Salon that Charles Murtaugh pointed out. But I liked it. Especially the ending.

JOHN STOSSEL will have uber-blogger Virginia Postrel on his ABC special tonight at 9 eastern. The topic is “tampering with Nature,” and I’ll bet that cloning will be discussed.

WOW. The “Al-Mujahir confinement” post below has garnered 65 comments, most of which are very thoughtful. Feel free to add your own.

Hmm. The Al-Mujahir Confinement. Sounds like a Ludlum title, doesn’t it?

TAPPED explains why posting has been so light. It’s not as good an excuse as Asparagirl’s, though.

OUCH! Check out this zinger on Romenesko’s letters page:

From GEORGE R. ZACHAR: Michael McFadden says: “… data would suggest that Jews are not at particularly high risk. Vandalism at synagogues in Europe — where hate crimes against Arabs — like crime generally are also rising — does not foretell a Holocaust. It is insultingly simplistic to suggest otherwise.” While it is true that crime against Jewish property in Europe has ramped up dramatically, Mr. McFadden is quite correct in saying such action “does not foretell a Holocaust”. And the reason is, indeed, “insultingly simplistic”. There aren’t enough Jews remaining in Europe for there to *be* a Holocaust.

Yeah, and what’s worse is that there are a lot of Europeans who are happy about that.

BRIAN LINSE emailed me looking for a response to his gun-show loophole post, but I was kind of busy with the wireless network (laptop now works fine; upstairs computer — which runs Win98v.1 — doesn’t and probably needs an operating system upgrade) and I’m kind of tired of the whole subject for the moment.

But Jeff Goldstein rose to the bait, and has a good post that I’ll incorporate by reference. That’s a legal term meaning “I’m too lazy to do it — read it over there and pretend I did it here.”

MORE ON MARS: Leonard David has a cool piece on an experimental Mars aircraft.

UPDATE: Reader John Allison sends this link with more information on similar work being done by hobbyists. Yep, hobbyists. And in a (sort of) related development, here’s a fairly cool Los Angeles Times article on Micro-Aircraft. But catch this rather dumb subhead: “The laws of aerodynamics are a big obstacle for designers.” Uh, yeah. Why, without having to worry about those pesky laws of aerodynamics, we could design flying bricks powered by thistledown. . . . Do these guys even read what they write?

THIS RICH GALEN item on small businesses sounds a bit hokey, but — like many things that sound hokey — is also very true.

MICKEY KAUS fact-checks Robert Reich, a Kaus specialty.