‘WE ARE ASKING GOD FOR THE U.S. TO ATTACK SADDAM:” Some prayers do come true.

AFTER A LONG HIATUS DURING WHICH SHE WAS SORELY MISSED, Virginia Postrel is back with a lot of new posts. Woohoo!

THERE’S NOW A “CHRISTIAN BLOGGER MANIFESTO.” Josh Claybourn doesn’t like it.

THE RICH GET RICHER AND THE POOR GET . . . RICHER, TOO! That’s what Virginia Postrel says in this New York Times column on global capitalism that’s getting a lot of attention today. The exception is found in places like Nigeria, where bad government makes sure that the poor stay poor. The Nigerian members of my extended family would agree, I think.

BRAD DE LONG OFFERS advice that you should follow.

BELLESILES UPDATE: Disgraced Emory Historian Michael Bellesiles has said for some time that his life was threatened by rabid gun nuts after the publication of his now-discredited book Arming America. This article on History News Network expresses skepticism at that claim:

Threats of violence are indeed despicable. Moreover, such threats are felonies in themselves, each punishable by a substantial fine, imprisonment, or both, as prescribed by the codes of Georgia (16-11-37)1 and the United States (see for example 18 U.S.C. Part 1 Ch. 41 Sec 875b). As a first step toward an investigation, credible threats must be reported to local authorities.

Bellesiles did not do this. Such complaints are in the public record. The police departments of Emory University, the city of Atlanta, DeKalb County, and Fulton County report no complaints from Bellesiles about harassment or threats. Of course, that doesn’t mean he received no abusive messages, but it does suggest that he didn’t really feel very threatened by them if he did — not even enough to seek help from law enforcement. It seems too that he was right in this judgment: I know of no mention of actual attempts to physically harm him or his family, and I think he would have mentioned it, if any such attempt had been made. So, we are left wondering if he really did move his family out of their home over something he openly talked about but didn’t feel a need to report. Based on his record so far, I’m not ready to take his word on this.

It is a fact, and not a new one, that in America, public discourse about strongly held opinions often leads to strong language. When the continuing attention given to these alleged threats and abusive messages is set alongside the almost nonexistent coverage of similar threats made against John Lott Jr., author of More Guns, Less Crime (1998, 2000), we can see that it is threats presumably made by ‘gun-nuts’ that are deemed newsworthy.

Indeed. There’s more discussion in the comments, after the article.

And when are we going to hear from Emory about the results of its Bellesiles investigation? It’s safe to say, I think, that if there were evidence exonerating Bellesiles (though it’s hard to imagine what that could be at this point) the report would have been released. Emory’s slow response on this scandal makes a mockery of its press release about business ethics issued last week.

Bad scholarship is as corrupt as bad accounting. Emory — and the profession of history generally — are in no position to point fingers. Perhaps they need to listen to these words from an Emory business ethicist:

“One of the messages I convey in class is how strong corporate culture is; the culture either reinforces or doesn’t reinforce the company’s formal messages on ethical conduct,” says Robertson. In the case of Enron and Arthur Andersen, for example, the pressure to serve the client overcame any kind of formal ethics program. “If the culture doesn’t support ethics, you can throw policies out the window,” she says.

What sort of culture is Emory reinforcing?

H.D. MILLER SAYS NOT TO GET TOO EXCITED: The House of Saud isn’t going anywhere. I’m not convinced, but he argues the point well.

STARTING LAW SCHOOL THIS FALL? Dahlia Lithwick offers helpful advice, “pre-outlined for your convenience.”

ANDREW SULLIVAN IS STILL ON VACATION — but he’s brought Camille Paglia in as a special guest blogger.

SECOND AMENDMENT UPDATE: There’s a nice, clear primer on the Second Amendment from George Mason University law professor Nelson Lund available at the link just above.

SOMEBODY NEEDS TO DO SOMETHING about the E.U.’s bullying unilateralism. Russia seems to be getting a pass too. What if the United States wanted to do this with Mexico?

NICK DENTON says we should really humiliate Iraq with an all-female invasion force. Matthew Yglesias thinks that idea is “cool.”

CARLA PASSINO AT POYNTER.ORG WRITES about InstaPundit’s traffic: “Call it the revenge of editorial over marketing.”

Yeah, the InstaPundit Marketing Department is running on a pretty lean budget. Uh, do T-shirts and such count as “marketing?” If so, the Marketing Department is actually running at a (tiny) profit. And the InstaPundit Lunchbox (“what all the cool blogger kids carry their lunches in!”) is even on sale for back-to-school!

STILL MORE BAD NEWS FOR THE SAUDIS, courtesy of George Will:

The House of Saud almost certainly is a dead regime walking. Saudi Arabia’s male unemployment rate is 30 percent. Its population growth — birth control is disapproved — is among the most rapid in the world (3 percent per year). Eric Rouleau, a French diplomat, writing in Foreign Affairs (“Trouble in the Kingdom”), says that since the overthrow of the Taliban, Saudi Arabia is the Islamic world’s most rigorous theocracy: “Universities require male professors teaching women’s classes to give their lectures through a closed-circuit one-way television system . . . 30 to 40 percent of the course hours in schools are devoted to studying scripture.” Furthermore, the marriage rate is dropping sharply:

“Unable to afford the traditional dowry, many young Saudi men are now doomed to a prolonged celibacy. At the same time, growing numbers of young women are refusing to marry men chosen for them by their families, men whom their would-be brides are not allowed to meet before their wedding night. As a result, an estimated two-thirds of Saudi women now between 16 and 30 years of age cannot, or will not, marry.”

As Will notes, “Sooner or later, and probably sooner, all this will meet its match in modernity.”

The most dangerous thing to the House of Saud is the notion that its continued existence is something short of inevitable. And that notion is widespread.

MORE UNWELCOME NEWS FOR THE SAUDIS:

LONDON — The United States has warned Arab leaders to prepare public opinion for a change in the Iraqi regime.

Diplomatic sources said the Bush administration has sent letters to the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states in the Middle East. The letters, said to be nearly identical, assert that Washington is determined to topple the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

U.S. officials did not confirm the message, Middle East Newsline reported. But in Washington, U.S. National Security Council Adviser Condoleezza Rice stressed in an interview on Thursday with the British Broadcasting Corp. that the Bush administration has presented a powerful case for toppling Saddam.

“We certainly do not have the luxury of doing nothing,” Ms. Rice said. “We believe the case for regime change is very powerful.”

The Saudis don’t like talk of regimes changing.

LAWYERS, GUNS AND MONEY:

Relatives of victims of the 11 September attacks have filed a trillion dollar lawsuit against various parties accusing them of financing Osama Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terror network and Afghanistan’s former Taleban regime. . . .

Those accused include the country of Sudan, three members of the Saudi royal family – including the Saudi foreign minister – and various Islamic charities, in addition to seven financial institutions and the Bin Laden family’s Saudi construction firm.

More than 600 family members, firefighters and rescue workers, calling themselves the 9/11 Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism, are seeking the money “to force the sponsors of terror into the light and subject them to the rule of law”, according to the suit. . . .

Lawyer Allan Gerson, who also worked on a lawsuit for families of victims of the 1988 Pan Am airline Lockerbie bombing, said that the suit was aimed at uncovering the complicated financial transactions which funded the 11 September attacks.

“We’re trying to expose the extent, the depth, the orchestration, the financial support that terrorist organisations have received for perhaps a decade from various Saudi interests.”

Mao used the term “paper tiger” to refer to things that need not be feared. But Mao never got hit with a discovery request. And the Saudis are the ultimate “deep pocket” defendants.

ONE OF THE ARGUMENTS against the right to keep and bear arms is that it is absurd to believe that the Constitution is meant to protect people’s ability to revolt against a tyrannical government. Eugene Volokh responds to this. David Williams has also done so, in an excellent article on what he calls “conservative revolution” — which means not revolution by conservatives, but rather revolution in the name of constitutional principles against those who would violate them. Unfortunately, the piece isn’t on the web as far as I can tell.

You may also want to see this article, coauthored by Volokh, me, and some other folks, on teaching the Second Amendment as part of a constitutional law class.

HERE’S THE LATEST on flooding in Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. My sympathies to the victims of what looks to be a pretty major catastrophe. I hope that the U.S. military forces in the region are offering assistance.

MUTANTS ARE TAKING OVER THE WORLD, using a weird ability to communicate thoughts to coordinate their actions. Okay, so it’s old news now. . . .

LAST WEEK, I wrote about a group of American intellectuals administering a sort of “heavyweight group-Fisking” to a group of German intellectuals who accused the United States of mass murder in Afghanistan, etc. Now the Weekly Standard’s Claudia Winkler reports that it’s made quite a splash in Germany.

NORM MINETA IMPEACHMENT UPDATE: Here’s more grist for the mill:

For years, the government touted federal air marshals as the best of the best — an “elite corps” of undercover officers trained to stop hijackings on commercial flights.

But today, after rushing to hire thousands of new marshals, the program is so beset with problems that sources say at least 80 marshals have quit, and other marshals say they are considering a class-action lawsuit over working conditions that they fear put travelers at risk.

Documents obtained by USA TODAY and interviews with more than a dozen current and former marshals from around the nation suggest many have grown disillusioned with a program that one says has become “like security-guard training for the mall.”

Hiring standards for marshals added since Sept. 11 have been lowered dramatically, sources say. No longer must applicants pass a difficult marksmanship course that used to be the make-or-break test for the program. In addition, many new hires were given guns and badges and put aboard flights before extensive background checks were completed.

Yeah, but arming pilots would be too risky. Read the whole thing: it actually gets even worse.

TERRORISM’S TARGETS: Here’s one.

WHY THEY HATE US: Because, notes Steven Den Beste, we’re the chief obstacle to their plans for world domination. And no, I’m not talking about the Arabs. This piece by Steven Chapman is worth reading, too, along with this one. And so is this.

CATS AND DOGS LIVING TOGETHER: Hesiod Theogeny praises the Bush Administration. And rightly so.

LEFTY SURVIVALISM? Rebecca Blood links to an article predicting the end of global civilization in 2030. The article looks rather crackpottish to me (and its invocation of Joseph Tainter is so out of context as to be deceptive), but I’ll leave its merits to others. It’s Rebecca’s comments about sustainability that interest me. Yes, an “agrarian” society is “sustainable.” But for the world to shift to a non-industrial mode, several billion people would have to die off.

The resulting mass of traumatized survivors, perhaps a billion or two people, would then, after this unparalleled catastrophe, be “sustainable” in the sense that human society was “sustainable” at the time of the Pharaohs, with most people living hand-to-mouth existences with most of their time spent at backbreaking drudgery. Another word for this kind of sustainability is “stagnation,” and the biggest risk of such an event would be that we would return to the metastable state that marked most of settled human history: barbarous despotisms run by a thin layer of exploitive priests, soldiers, etc., above a huge mass of near-starving peasantry and slaves.

I prefer the “sustainability” of the high-technology path, in which nanotechnology, biotechnology, and space resources permit an environmentally friendly life that doesn’t involve reducing humanity to the kind of misery that prevailed in preindustrial society. People find the idea of self-reliance in a post-apocalyptic world romantic (and if I find myself in a post-apocalyptic world, I’ll certainly do my best to be self-reliant) but the truth is, it would suck. Big time.

While the “Olduvai Theory” that Rebecca links to seems dubious, it’s certainly true that our current global economy is unsustainable. Like being halfway up a ladder, it makes sense only as a step toward something else. And “lifestyle management” approaches like traveling less, or using less electricity at home, won’t make any real difference beyond stretching things out a bit. Human society is probably “sustainable” only in a very low-tech mode, or a very high-tech mode. Anything in between is necessarily transitional, in one direction or the other. We must either move forward, or die in large numbers, and face miserable stagnation afterward. Personally, I’m against the latter.