SADDAMA BIN LADEN: The Indepundit continues his link-rich series on the danger posed by Saddam, with this installment on Iraq/Al Qaeda connections.

SPINSANITY AGREES with Cathy Young and others that the NEA is getting a bum rap. I’m persuaded now, but I can’t help observing that the NEA hurt its case by acting guilty. As SpinSanity itself says:

After repeated attempts to contain the controversy, the NEA issued an indirectly worded statement on Aug. 27. Rather than directly refuting the charges, it vaguely asserts that critics “have taken the material out of context” and are “using this national tragedy to attempt to score political points,” giving little indication that the entire controversy has essentially been fabricated. It also at some point apparently removed links to Lippincott’s lesson.

Now that doesn’t make misrepresentations of its views any less misleading, but on the other hand, people watch an organization’s behavior for cues as to whether to take charges against it seriously. If NEA had said “this is a made-up controversy” and “we never said that” people would have been less inclined to believe the critics. So why didn’t it?

UPDATE: Porphyrogenitus says “I told you so.” And, indeed, as I noted here on August 19, he did. He also has some cautionary advice.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Robert Holmgren writes over in Romenesko’s letters section that Nyhan is spinning too:

Brendan Nyhan’s Spinsanity piece concerning a Washington Times story on NEA suggested lesson plans blames Ellen Sorokin for misleading readers into thinking that the NEA wished to avoid blaming Al-Qaeda for the attacks on 9/11. Since the Washington Times article never mentions Al-Qaeda we may want to consider the ways in which Nyhan is spinning this story as well. It suggests that what Nyhan preceives is equal to what is written.

The blogosphere (and yes, I think Romenesko is a blog) chugs on.

MICHAEL MOORE says his movie “Bowling for Columbine” is being censored:

It challenges the traditional kind of New York liberals in their attitudes towards guns and violence and terrorism. The exclusion of our film probably says more about what’s happened to the NYFF than it does about anything else.

Yeah, you know those New York liberals and their gun-loving ways. The response is a gem:

The gun lobby is not a major supporter of Lincoln Center, so I don’t know whose politics we’re supposed to be worried about.

Moore says it’s about Bush, not guns. I haven’t seen the movie, but, um, didn’t Columbine happen when, ahem, someone else was President?

GO READ LILEKS. Today’s. Now. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

HEY, MAYBE ALTERMAN’S ONTO SOMETHING with his suggestion of Holland as a role model:

The Dutch cabinet has backed a possible United States attack on Iraq, even without a mandate from the UN Security Council. Parliament convened in emergency session on Thursday night to discuss the matter.

Gotta love those Dutch.

UPDATE: Hmm. This story isn’t on that site anymore, and I can’t find it elsewhere. Given the lame nature of the Radio Netherlands site, which just features a few brief “news highlight” items, that may not mean anything, but it’s odd.

TALKLEFT has a lot of new information about efforts to protest Joe Biden’s dumb “RAVE Act,” including a call-your-Senator campaign that’s going on today.

ERIC ALTERMAN is unhappy with my Wednesday post in which I disagreed with his characterization of Sweden as a “beacon of light” after which the United States should model itself. I made three points: (1) Sweden collaborated with the Nazis in World War Two, and with various unsavory types afterward; (2) Sweden has more crime than America; and (3) Sweden is poorer than Mississippi.

There was no response to (1), which I’ll regard as a concession of the point, and rightly so. Similarly, point (2) is pretty much conceded as well (as one of Eric’s readers says: “Sweden has way more murders than I thought it would!”). So that leaves the Mississippi point. I had posted on this a while back, with a link to a Swedish study that said exactly that. The link doesn’t work any more, but Alterman points to this “debunking” in The American Prospect, which doesn’t actually say the study’s wrong, but says that its methodology is flawed because it should include the value of government services that Swedes get. Well, okay, but if you’re taking such extrinsic factors into account, you should probably also take into account that it’s a lot cheaper to live in Mississippi. However, Stephen Green, using different — and probably better — methodology says that Sweden is actually slightly richer than Mississippi, but still poorer than Alabama. And he notes that Mississippians are more likely to have jobs. (Note, too, that the gap between Sweden and the U.S. as a whole, as opposed to just a couple of its poorest states, is colossal. As for the comparision of poverty rates invoked by one of Alterman’s readers, that’s not a comparison of wealth, but of income distribution.)

But, okay: In a spirit of generosity I’ll concede the Mississippi point, though I do think I’m being generous to do so. That still leaves me with the high ground on two out of three, which seems to me to undercut the notion that Sweden is or should be a “beacon of light” to the world.

However, the intensity of Alterman’s response, and of some of his readers’ letters on the subject, suggests that Sweden does remain a beacon of light to the American left. But then, we knew that already.

As for Alterman’s invocation of Amsterdam, with its legalized prostitution and hash bars, all I can say is: I’ve got no problem with that. Why would I?

UPDATE: Here’s someone who wants Sweden to be more of a beacon.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Eric emails that he concedes on the Nazi issue, but that he’s going to have another go at the crime issue on Monday. Fine with me — I’m happy to keep this volley going — but remember: it’s not enough to quibble about numbers, the results have to support the original statement that Sweden is a “beacon of light.” And I’m not sure that any crime stats will help that. We’ve already done the “somewhat better than Mississippi” thing on money. If you’re just somewhat better than Mississippi on crime and money, but still have the Nazi thing hanging around your neck, well, the “beacon of light” award is going to elude you. In the meantime, Floyd McWilliams says the wealth question is still open.

STILL ANOTHER UPDATE: Hey, above I blame an Alterman reader for subsituting “poverty rate” for “wealth.” But actually Alterman pulled this switcheroo yesterday, which I hadn’t noticed. Poverty rates aren’t a measure of wealth, but of wealth distribution: the United States could be a lot poorer, and still have less poverty (in which case it would look like, well, Sweden). But it would be poorer, and per-capita income would be lower. I haven’t heard a lot of lefties saying that they want to make America 30% poorer in order to achieve a halving of poverty rates, but that’s what emulating Sweden would involve. And, heck, maybe that’s what they do want, but if so you don’t hear it advertised much. Thanks to reader Kevin Hurst, who pointed out the error and added a few observations:

For some reason Eric Alterman misquoted you as claiming that the poverty rate in Sweden is higher than in Mississippi when you claimed that Sweden as a whole is poorer than Mississippi. Sweden is clearly poorer than the United States by a very wide margin, as is every other country save maybe Luxembourg. Sweden may be ever so slightly more wealthy, as a whole, than Mississippi, but so what?

As for the flaw identified by TAP, the value of government spending is already included in GDP per capita, so I find their objection to the study unpersuasive. As a matter of fact, GDP, in my opinion tends to overstate the wealth of high tax, high government spending countries because I think GDP measures overstate the value of government services relative to the private sector. Sweden has been an economic basket case for two decades and it’s is a testament to the delusional nature of many on the left that they still cling to illusions of the “Third Way” so popular in the 1970’s and early ’80’s. Sweden will continue to fall farther behind the US in terms of material wealth in the future, but they have their righteousness to keep them warm. But one should never forget how “wealthy” the USSR was according to GDP statistics and I will never forget John Kenneth Galbraith praising the Soviet economic performance as late as 1984. Some will believe anything.

Interesting. Stay tuned.

THE VIOLENCE POLICY CENTER continues its ongoing effort to shred what little credibility it has left, with its “Alexander Hamilton essay contest,” in which students are invited to write essays explaining why the Second Amendment doesn’t actually give people any rights. But while there is — to me at least — something inherently suspect in an essay contest that’s explicitly anti-constitutional-rights, that’s not the credibility shredder. It’s the name: VPC says it named the contest after Alexander Hamilton because (by dying in a duel with Aaron Burr) he was a “victim of handgun violence.”

Eugene Volokh observes:

Wow, a victim of handgun violence. In some sense, I suppose, it’s true — he was killed in a violent act with a handgun. But surely if the NRA wanted to have a poster child for its “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” campaign, Hamilton would be top of the list! First, what Hamilton did was already illegal — dueling was and is attempted murder (or, in Burr’s case, actual murder). Can you imagine the scenario? “Mr. Burr, I would fight a duel with you, notwithstanding that dueling is a crime — but because handguns are illegal, I cannot.”

Second, surely dueling (especially in the early 1800s) was one situation where if people didn’t have guns, they’d use something else instead, and pretty much as effectively. I haven’t seen the statistics, but my sense is that a wound from a sword in 1804 would have been about as deadly as a wound from a pistol. (Pistols may be more lethal than bladed weapons, then as well as today, because it’s easier to run away from a bladed weapon — but that factor, which might be relevant to modern gun control debates, is surely completely irrelevant to a duel.)

Whatever one may say about Hamilton’s death, it most assuredly provides zero support for gun control proposals. Blaming the gun — as opposed to blaming Hamilton himself, blaming Burr, blaming social attitudes that tolerated or encouraged dueling, or whatever else — in this case is almost self-parody. If the NRA were trying to mock the anti-gun forces by putting ridiculous words in their mouths, it would be hard for them to beat “Hamilton was himself a victim of handgun violence.”

Yes, but the VPC’s descent into self-parody (there’s no “almost” about it) has become so steep that it has undoubtedly gone beyond anything the NRA could think up.

VIA EMAIL FROM U.C. BERKELEY CHANCELLOR ROBERT BERDAHL’S OFFICE:

Statement of Chancellor Robert M. Berdahl

Press Conference

September 5, 2002

I have called this press conference to set the record straight in response to the outrageous allegations published by The California Patriot, a student journal, and picked up by the wire services around the country. The central allegation of The California Patriot is that the University of California, Berkeley is unpatriotic in commemorating the events of September 11. This allegation is wrong. This allegation is an insult to everyone at this University. More importantly, this allegation is disrespectful to the thousands who lost their lives and disrespectful to the countless heroes who worked valiantly to save lives on that day. These American heroes inspired all of us and renewed our faith in the American spirit.

We planned next week’s memorial service to be consistent with the spirit and substance of the memorial service we organized last year on September 17. At that service 15,000 people joined in thoughtful reflection. No one suggested that that event was unpatriotic or un-American. In fact, quite the opposite was true.

The noon events planned for this September 11 are to be a memorial, also marked by contemplative music and prayerful thought to honor those murdered a year ago. We believe it would be a disservice to those who died to allow this memorial to become a political rally of any kind, for any purpose. This is where we differ with The California Patriot. The California Patriot, not the University, is trying to turn this into a political event.

I will not allow the quiet moments from noon until 12:30 PM — moments of prayer, grief, mourning, and reflection — I will not allow these sacred moments to be misused for political purposes. And I deeply resent the implication that by planning this service in this way, we are unpatriotic. There is nothing more patriotic and American than honoring those lost in this horror.

After the memorial service is completed, at 12:30 PM, the microphone on Sproul Plaza will be open to people who wish to express their thoughts. An open microphone will also be available on Sproul Plaza for two hours later that afternoon. There will be ample opportunity for all to express their grief, their mourning, or their political sentiments, as was the case on Sproul Plaza a year ago.

So, does this mean that flags and the national anthem are no longer considered “offensive?” He doesn’t say that, nor does he actually say that any facts in the earlier reports are wrong.

Is waving an American flag “political?” At Berkeley, it’s a statement.

UPDATE: Here is the Cal Patriot’s response, and here’s a link to Chancellor Berdahl’s statement on the Web. I responded to him to ask if (1) flags and the national anthem counted as “political,” and (2) what facts, exactly the Patriot got wrong, since none are mentioned in the statement. If I get a response, I’ll post it. (Here is the original Cal Patriot story). Oh, and here’s a story from today’s San Francisco Examiner.

DOUG BANDOW writes about arming pilots and, er, shoots down a number of lame objections. My favorite:

Another contention is that pilots need to concentrate on their job. John Magaw said pilots were to maintain “positive control of that aircraft … get it on the ground as quickly as you can, regardless of what’s happening back there.” But doing so might be tough if armed terrorists smash down the door, roust the pilots from their seats, and murder them.

Yeah. As I said earlier, I think Magaw was a scapegoat for a lot of air security issues, but comments like this are a reminder that he was a deserving scapegoat.

IF YOU’RE NOT CHECKING IN at Geitner Simmons’ weblog on a daily basis, well, you should be.

BRAD DE LONG has some delightful reflections on democracy inspired by the game Civilization II. The lessons it imparts are not accidental — in fact, I remember reading an essay by a wargame writer back in the 1970s (I think it may even have been one of the creators of Civilization) about the teaching role that wargames (and “peacegames”) could play. As Dave Kopel and I wrote last year, the teaching role of wargames is a fascinating example of non-academic, private-sector education, and of a way in which knowledge and cultural values scorned by the academy were preserved elsewhere. There’s a good book (or at least an article in the Atlantic Monthly) in this for somebody.

VIRGINIA POSTREL has more observations on GSWBs, small-town intellectuals, and more. I’m so glad that she’s back. Andrew Sullivan has more, including this comment on the ultimate guilty southern white boy, Jimmy Carter, and his views on the war: “The great thing about Carter is his consistency. He may well be an admirable man, but he’s also been consistently wrong about everything since the day he took office.”

AIMEE DEEP UNCOVERS Big Media’s plan for an assault on its customers.

Oh, yeah, that’s really smart.

If this stuff irritates you like it does me, go to MP3.Com, or IUMA, or Vitaminic or PeopleSound, browse around the different genres, listen to stuff you like, and download it or order the CDs. There’s a lot of great music out there by independent artists, and there’s no reason to go to big record companies to hear good music.

ADVICE ON RECEIVING A DIVINE VISITATION: I don’t care what he says, I’m asking for the lawn thing.

EUGENE VOLOKH says that Robert Wright is wrong about the value of popularity in preventing terrorism. In fact, he suggests, the harder you try to be popular, the worse things will become.

TIM BLAIR REPORTS ON AN anti-Muslim hate crime in California.

MORE EVIDENCE in support of the popular “the war has already started” theory.

WINNING “AMERICAN IDOL” ISN’T THE SAME as selling yourself into slavery. Slaves don’t have to sign this contract.

THE RIAA’S NIGHTMARE: Now people have figured out how to extract digital audio from vinyl, using a scanner.

SAVING ISLAM FROM BIN LADEN: Christopher Hitchens writes:

I repeat what I said at the beginning: the objective of al Qaeda is not the emancipation of the Palestinians but the establishment of tyranny in the Muslim world by means of indiscriminate violence in the non-Muslim world, and those who confuse the two issues are idiots who don’t always have the excuse of stupidity.

A LAW STUDENT READER ASKS:

My Corporations prof. informed us that she might show the class Moore’s “Roger and Me” as a springboard for our discussion on “social responsibilty of corporations.” Can you recommend any materials that dissect the movie or Moore generally.

I don’t have any especially good suggestions, not having seen the movie. Anybody else?

UPDATE: Here’s a Lileks Screed on Moore.

DAHLIA LITHWICK has an interesting, if somewhat depressing take on civil liberties and the terror war. Here’s the “money graf” as Welch and the other journos call it:

In a recent Gallup Poll, 60 percent of Americans said that the president is “about right” in restricting our civil liberties to fight terrorism, and 25 percent say he hasn’t gone far enough. Why is the public willing to accept this secrecy and arrogation of power? Well, because we’re terrified, for one thing, but also because we have come to believe that increased security usually requires sacrificing civil liberties. While this is true, the converse is not. Giving up civil liberties—any and all of them, indiscriminately—does not necessarily bring security. We will not be safer from terrorism if the government restricts our right to vote. And we are not necessarily safer because the state has done away with the right to judicial review.

This is absolutely right, as far as it goes, but it’s not clear that Lithwick is being hard enough on the authorities. Dumb press coverage on the “tradeoffs” between security and civil liberties has given the impression that somehow civil liberties are the coin with which you purchase security. But it doesn’t work that way. Some security measures may limit civil liberties. (Most effective ones — such as killing terrorists overseas — won’t.) But most sacrifices of civil liberties won’t produce security — they’ll just represent bureaucratic opportunism that does nothing to make us safer. I said this in a column on September 14 and subsequent events have proven it true.

GENOCIDE IN ZIMBABWE: This press release on Mugabe’s “selective starvation” policy seems not to have gotten much attention. I wonder why? Excerpt:

The ZANU-PF government of President Robert Mugabe is carrying out a policy of selective starvation against its political enemies. The denial of food to opposition strongholds has replaced overt violence as the government’s principal tool of repression in Zimbabwe. Mortality and morbidity rates will continue to accelerate if this policy is not reversed.

The most vulnerable sub-group is Zimbabwe’s black farm workers, who have been displaced by ZANU-PF land-grabs. The media, especially in the UK, has concentrated on the plight of hundreds of white farmers forced off the land, but more than 1.5 million black farm workers and family members are at risk of acute hunger. . . .

Deliberately creating food shortages in opposition areas not only punishes MDC supporters but also provides ruling party officials with further opportunities for profitable food re-sale rackets, said Prendergast. The system is controlled and corrupted from the top by key ZANU-PF and military officials straight down to the local retailers at the village level. When people die of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition, it is as a result of this political control and corruption.

But Mbeki will support him.

READER JOE HRUTKA EMAILS TO ASK “How come nobody’s trying to appease the United States?”

It’s because they know that we won’t do anything awful to them. If the United States were more like the old Soviet Union, we’d have plenty of supporters in Europe, hoping to buy us off. Just like the Soviets did.

Holly Watson, meanwhile, sends this V.S. Naipaul quote, which seems to go nicely with this topic:

…the people who substitute doctrine for knowledge and irritation for concern, the revolutionaries who visit centers of revolution with return air tickets, the hippies, the people who wish themselves on societies more fragile than their own, all those people who in the end do no more than celebrate their own security.

Indeed. It should have been printed on every nametag in Johannesburg.