VEGARD VALBERG has figured out the problem where U.S. / European disputes over things like Kyoto and the ICC are concerned. He also has some helpful advice for Americans.

WAS 1776 A MISTAKE? Jim Bennett asks the question, and tries to answer it.

U.S. TO AL QAEDA: You coulda been somebody. You coulda been a contender. Instead of a bum, which is what you are.. That miserable shooting at LAX was the best you could pull off for July 4th? Jeez, in America Junior High students can do better than that!

Perhaps Americans have been making too much of these guys. If we had done something like the 9/11 attacks, there would have been a bunch of follow-ons already in place, timed and targeted to create maximum disruption, and part of an overall strategy. And, like Americans, we would have been embarrassed to make big threats and not deliver on them.

We’ve forgotten the long and well-established Arab tradition of impotent blowhardism. Maybe that’s all they’re about.

Oops. Too bad guys. The six-pack of whupass is already out of the fridge.

STILL MORE ON WEBLOGS: Rebecca Blood‘s new book on weblogs showed up while I was gone. It looks very good. I’ll have more to report after I’ve, you know, actually read it.

MORE ON WEBLOGS: The Economist has a pretty good weblog article, which unfortunately isn’t available on their website. Here’s the conclusion, featuring my soundbite:

For all the costly and failed efforts by media companies to create and charge for online material, blogging suggests that the web works best as a link to other people – and a way of finding and raiding their content. As InstaPundit’s Glenn Reynolds says, “the threat to big media is not to its pocketbook but to its self-importance.”

If you read German, there’s also an article in the Neue Zurcher Zeitung, which I found out about courtesy of Swiss InstaPundit reader Catrine Sutter.

CONGRATULATIONS to the Ipse Dixit caption contest, which is now one year old. That’s 62 in Blog Years!

OKAY, I KNOW I’M LATE TO THIS — but what’s all this FBI ducking-and-covering on the motives of the LAX shooter? This excerpt from the New York Times story illustrates the absurdity nicely:

At present, Mr. Garcia said, officials are exploring three possible motives. The first is that it may have been a hate crime, although investigators said they had yet to find evidence that Mr. Hadayet held any animus toward Israelis.

But a former driver for Mr. Hadayet, Abdul Zahab, 36, said in an interview this afternoon that he often heard his boss express virulent anti-Israeli sentiments.

“He had hate for Israel, for sure,” said Mr. Zahab, who was born in Syria and worked a month for Mr. Hadayet about two years ago. “He told me that the Israelis tried to destroy the Egyptian nation and the Egyptian population by sending prostitutes with AIDS to Egypt. He said that the two biggest drug dealers in New York are Israeli.”

So the FBI “had yet to find any evidence” but the Times managed to do so by the unprecedented investigative technique of interviewing someone who knew him! Advantage: New York Times!

It’s true, of course, that just because an Egyptian guy who says he hates Israel and America shoots up an El Al terminal, that doesn’t prove that it’s a hate crime, or terrorism. Even though it comes after threats against U.S. interests by Arafat’s organization, and even though, frankly, only an idiot wouldn’t put hate crime or terrorism at the top of the list.

And I’m not sure that’s a valid distinction, anyway. Hadayet may or may not have links to organized groups. It’s possible that we’ll see the Louis Beam “leaderless resistance” approach applied to Arab terrorism. But it’ll still be terrorism; just terrorism of a different kind.

The unwillingness of government spokesmen to apply Occam’s Razor here, even with appropriate caveats, is embarrassing, and suggests that they still don’t get it.

UPDATE: Reader Fritz Anderson says I’m too hard on the FBI:

It’s a crime. Its nature obviously puts the FBI on inquiry. The inquiry is being made. But because the FBI is an agency of a government that is using “war on terrorism” as a euphemism for “war on jihadist islamism,” it can’t use the word “terrorism.” Or, at least, it can’t use it until it meets the requirements of what is now a term of art, and only then when security permits them to discuss it.

Well, that’s true in a way. But a similar dynamic of euphemisms and terms of art prevailed during the Vietnam war, and the costs of allowing that bureaucratic imperative to rule were very high indeed.

JONATHAN ADLER takes on fair-weather federalists in the GOP, arguing in the National Review Online that a federal partial-birth abortion ban is beyond Congress’s enumerated powers. I agree, and I’m glad to see Adler making this point.

If you only believe in limited government as applied to laws you dislike, you don’t really believe in limited government at all. Adler deserves credit for reminding Republicans of this point. I think a lot more reminding is in order.

TRAFFIC: The American Prospect has released revised traffic figures, and Andrew Sullivan is giving them hell for it. For comparison’s sake, InstaPundit’s figure (which you can see for yourself by clicking on the Extreme Tracking icon at the bottom of this page — a degree of transparency that commercial websites should consider providing) is 440,062 unique visitors for June.

MICKEY KAUS points up an appalling case of left-wing political violence — seemingly sanctioned by “respectable” communists — in Italy. He wonders if such violence could move to the United States.

To some degree it already has. I have friends on the Berkeley faculty, and I’ve heard stories of professors having their cars vandalized and being threatened with personal violence. As the authoritarian hard-left becomes more and more marginalized in America, it wouldn’t be surprising if some of its more desperate members turned to violence. (Indeed, with things like the SFSU assaults — and for that matter, the Unabomber — it already has).

The targets, likely enough, will be moderate-left people rather than right-wing people. That’s always been the tendency in such things. And in America, the right-wing faculty might be distressingly likely to shoot back.

Kaus’s warning should be taken to heart by campus administrators who have traditionally gone easy on lesser offenses. By doing so, they’ve contributed to a climate of impunity on some campuses that is likely to breed worse offenses. They should stop, before it’s too late.

I’M BAACK! The scuba trip to Grand Cayman was delightful, and I’m much refreshed. The reefs there took a bit of a pounding during last fall’s hurricane, but the diving was still extraordinary. Did several wall dives (Orange Canyon, Trinity Cave, Tarpon Alley), a night dive at Turtle Reef, and a visit to what remains of the wreck of the Oro Verde, among other things. Judging by the crowds, the tourism industry is no longer suffering.

Security was much tighter in the Caymans than on previous visits — especially on the return to the States, where they were handsearching not only carryon luggage but also checked bags. All in all, a swell trip.

The bad news: Stately InstaPundit Manor was struck by lightning in my absence, knocking out the upstairs air conditioner (the control board looks like somebody took a blowtorch to it) several TVs, and my DSL connection. The computer’s OK, but the router and modem are dead, dead, dead. I’m on a backup dial connection (we take a lickin’ and keep on bloggin’ here at InstaPundit!) but I haven’t even looked at email yet. I’ll start — but whether I’ll read it, or just delete huge chunks unread, just depends on how much there is.

Regular blogging will resume shortly. Hope you had a good week!

I’M OFF. I’ll see you this weekend. In the meantime, don’t miss this Den Beste wrapup of reactions to last Monday’s Bush speech on the mideast, and this post on Bush’s rope-a-dope by Stephen Green. Have a great week!