MY PAPER ON NANOTECHNOLOGY is now available from the Pacific Research Institute. You want nano, I got nano.

JAMES KOPP has confessed to killing abortion doctor Bernard Slepian. Another terrorist identified — but was he really a “lone gunman” or does he have connections to sympathizers and supporters as yet unidentified? I’d guess the latter.

THIS IS INTERESTING:

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraq’s Ministry of Information suspended publication Wednesday of a newspaper owned by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s eldest son, accusing it of breaching publication laws.

“The paper was ordered shut down for 30 days for violating the regulations,” an Iraqi official said on condition of anonymity. He declined to give further details.

Reader Zachary Barbera, who sent the link, wonders what it means. Beats me, though it’s hard to see how it can reflect anything good for Saddam.

I’M SURPRISED THAT THIS STORY ISN’T GETTING MORE PLAY:

Seattle terrorism suspect James Ujaama envisioned a perfect Islamic state, where believers could live separately from Christians and Jews, attend military training camps, and where homosexuality and pornography would be outlawed.

The place: Afghanistan.

“There are many Muslims who have forgotten that the Jews and Christians are our enemies,” Ujaama says in a 2-½-hour video obtained by The Seattle Times, small portions of which were recently revealed on the Internet.

The video, shot sometime before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, gives the first public glimpse into Ujaama’s beliefs as told in his own words, and tells of at least one of his trips to Afghanistan. It also provides a look at his association with Abu Hamza, whom federal prosecutors in the United States have targeted for indictment on terrorism charges.

Very interesting.

A GRAND JURY IS CONSIDERING WHETHER TO INDICT POLICE FOR FALSE ARRESTS during the notorious Houston “K-Mart sweep.”

A Harris County grand jury today will begin considering whether police handling of a mass arrest — which already has led to lawsuits against the city of Houston and the suspension of 13 police supervisors — also deserves criminal indictments.

Public outcry was swift and furious after more than 270 people were arrested Aug. 18 in a Kmart parking lot in the 8400 block of Westheimer on the west side. Many who were caught in the roundup said they were customers at the Kmart or a nearby Sonic drive-in restaurant.

City officials later dropped all trespassing and curfew charges resulting from the arrests.

The city still faces millions of dollars in potential damages from the incident, however. To date, two lawsuits and 89 claims for damages have been filed by people caught up in the raid, said Robert Cambrice, a senior assistant city attorney. . . .

The grand jury probe may take two to three weeks, Rosenthal estimated. He declined to say whether his office is recommending any charges.

“I have not seen all the evidence,” he said, “but from what I’ve seen, I would not be surprised if a grand jury indicted some people.”

Hmm. Maybe the police in Racine, Wisconsin, where something similar happened, should be worried.

TODAY IS REBECCA BLOOD’S BIRTHDAY! And there’s not any mention of it on her blog. I think she’s too busy packing.

OLD MEDIA TO BLOGOSPHERE: “THANKS!” The Asia Times sent a note of appreciation to Little Green Footballs for helping to expose that it had been hoaxed. Pretty classy of Asia Times.

SOMEBODY TELL FISK AND CHOMSKY ABOUT THIS SITE — QUICK! Except that they’ve seen, and believed, a thousand like it.

(Via Porphyrogenitus).

THE PRESS REPORTS ON BUSH’S PRAGUE SPEECH this morning seem to be focusing on what he said about Saddam. I caught most of it, and what struck me wasn’t that part — nothing new there, really — but rather the repeated subtle digs at Germany. “U-boats couldn’t keep us apart,” said Bush, going on to talk about the “young Americans” whose “well-tended graves” littered the Continent, and their successors stationed “from the Balkans to Bavaria.” (Interesting pairing). There was more, and none of it was there by accident.

UPDATE: And it’s not just Bush who’s dissing Schroeder.

ANOTHER UPDATE: There’s a transcript up, now. The interesting stuff is mostly toward the end.

THE UNITED STATES WON’T SUPPORT A BAN on “hate speech” on the Internet.

Want to bet that the Bush Administration won’t get much credit for this move from the people who claim it’s “stifling dissent”?

HARLAN ELLISON, the new Hans Blix logo, Michael Jackson, and a beachball in an inappropriate place: James Lileks is chock-full of tasty pundit goodness today. With a hazelnut note, and a hint of chicory.

GENUINE FEISTY-TEXAS-WOMAN RACHEL LUCAS delivers a sound Fisking to faux-feisty-Texas-woman Molly Ivins. Excerpt:

First of all, Molly, if he’s alive, he’s just alive. Not “back.” Unless they cryogenically froze him and have now revived him.

Hmm. Did anyone think of looking for Osama here?

UPDATE: Kirk Larsen says he has Osama spotted.

A PACK, NOT A HERD: My TechCentralStation column for today offers some thoughts on what you can do, given that everyone is on the front lines in today’s war.

UPDATE: Tom Holsinger writes that the Bush Administration’s “conspicuous homeland security failures” may lead to vigilantism if there is another major attack. Then, worrisomely, Mark Riebling warns that the Bush Administration’s conspicuous homeland security failures are likely to lead to another major attack. To the extent is true, I think that my homeland security recommendations (which were inspired by Jim Henley) would tend to mitigate those problems, both by helping to prevent another major attack and by providing some structure to the popular response. That may be even more important in light of Brink Lindsey’s points on terrorism and trust.

BELLESILES UPDATE: Based on this story from The Chicago Tribune, it sounds like Michael Bellesiles has lost touch with reality:

But Bellesiles’ situation is unique: He was charged not with plagiarism, but with making up his sources and the data backing his assertion that gun ownership was rare on the early American frontier. Also, while the others confessed and apologized, he steadfastly maintains his scholarship is sound.

“I was absolutely shocked!” he said of the committee’s report. “Obviously, they were very angry at me.”

He was sitting in a coffee shop across town from Emory. Since resigning his professorship last month, Bellesiles has avoided the university’s Atlanta campus. He doesn’t want to present former colleagues with the embarrassing choice of either lowering their eyes or saying hello to a pariah, he explained. He has also avoided the media.

Bellesiles said he decided to resign after hearing rumblings the university planned to demote him in rank.

“That would have been an affront to my honor,” said Bellesiles, 48.

Then there’s this: “By his account, it is not he but the members of Emory’s investigative committee who were the poor historians. He says he wrote a book with 1,347 footnotes and the panel found fault with material in five of them.”

The truth, of course, is that Bellesiles’ work is riddled with problems and fakery. As the article points out, people aren’t buying his story:

In retrospect, even some of his supporters wonder why they weren’t more critical of his thesis that Americans living on the frontier in the 1800s could have survived without guns while facing armed Native Americans. Could they have found meat by simply trapping wild animals rather than hunting with guns? . . .

Since then, the circle of his supporters has shrunk dramatically. Jack Rakove, a Stanford University professor who was on Bellesiles’ side, said “Arming America” remains on the reading list for his classes, though for a new reason.

“It’s clear now that his scholarship is less than acceptable,” Rakove said. “There are cautionary lessons for historians here.”

Yes. But Bellesiles, quite obviously, hasn’t learned them.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “Also the Tribune repeats the claim that criticisms of his book drove Bellesiles to move out of Atlanta. In fact, Bellesiles moved BEFORE the book came out, telling friends and colleagues at the time that it was because he couldn’t find any Atlanta schools he liked.” I believe that there has also been some doubt cast on the veracity of the death-threat stories. But at this point, I suppose there’s cause to doubt the veracity of pretty much anything Bellesiles says.

MERDE IN FRANCE is campaigning to make sure that Jose Bove doesn’t get a pardon. There’s a link you can follow if you’d like to help.

THE KENNEDY MYTH: David Frum says that it’s stronger than the truth, because it’s more appealing than the truth.

FREEMAN DYSON’S ESSAY on J.D. Bernal’s The World, The Flesh and The Devil is posted in full on Impearl. I had never read this.

HELL, CAESAR: Here’s an article repeating the same dumb fake Caesar quote that was shown to be false ages ago. (And was obviously false anyway). And it’s a pro-war article, too (well, sort of), which just proves that once these bogus items get into circulation they’re awfully hard to get rid of.

FREE SPEECH AT HARVARD: Erin O’Connor has more, including this quote from Alan Dershowitz:

These are people with extraordinarily thin skins who want to be treated as adults but insist that Mommy, Daddy, and the dean come to their rescue instead of debating in the market of free ideas.

Sounds about right to me.

STEFAN SHARKANSKY was the victim of a hate crime in Berkeley while covering a speech there. But it appears the perpetrator, who is now in jail on felony charges, got the worst of it. Here’s Stefan’s conclusion:

The biggest lesson that came out of this episode for me was the nature of the demonstrators. It was clear from their puerile signs and vapid slogans, their hostile attitudes, the yelling, the disruption, the theft and destruction of my camera, the various multi-cultis who have no connection to the conflict, not even by ties of ethnicity. Few, if any of them know anything or really care about Palestinians. They simply require something to hate and to attack, and Israel just happens to be the fashionable target du jour. Which is why “Berlin Campus” (from decades past) was so interesting a slip.

One piece of good news: “I was impressed with the cool professionalism of both the Berkeley city police as well as the campus police.” Read the whole thing.

HAS HARVARD FLIP-FLOPPED on the Tom Paulin invitation? That’s what The Crimson is reporting:

Concerned about the message it was sending on free speech, the English department yesterday renewed the invitation it cancelled just one week ago to Tom Paulin, an award-winning Irish poet who has expressed violently anti-Israeli views.

Next, in another stirring endorsement of free speech, Harvard will be inviting Randall Terry and Neal Horsley to lecture on abortion.

UPDATE: Reader Andy Freeman writes:

It’s not surprising that Harvard’s English department has changed their mind about the invitation. Recall what they wrote when they cancelled it: “The English Department sincerely regret the widespread consternation that has arisen as a result of this invitation, which had been originally decided on last winter solely on the basis of Mr. Paulin’s lifetime accomplishments as a poet.”

They didn’t cancel because they felt that that invitation was a mistake. They cancelled because they were getting criticized.

I don’t see any reason to believe that they’re interested in free speech or intellectual inquiry. They’re just jumping for praise.

I don’t think they’ll get much of that.

MORE ON THE BROOKLYN COLLEGE TENURE FIASCO: I haven’t followed it closely enough to have an opinion — er, except perhaps that it’s pretty obviously some sort of a fiasco. Here’s a Harvard Crimson article, and Eugene Volokh has more. I think this is likely to get a lot more press shortly.

My sentiments, such as they are, are along the lines of Volokh’s. I think that “collegiality” is important, but we normally look at that at hiring time, and it would take an awfully major failure of collegiality — something nearly actionable — to be the deal-breaker on a tenure case, especially where, as here, the candidate is otherwise very strong, and apparently there’s widespread agreement that he’s a strong scholar. The whole affair seems quite odd, and I can’t help but feel that there’s more to the story than we’ve heard so far.

UPDATE: Edward Barrera reports rumors that Nat Hentoff will have a column on this.

GEITNER SIMMONS on The Wizard of Oz and L. Frank Baum.

AN INTERESTING COLLOQUY ON ANGRY WHITE MALES AND FEMALES between Kevin Drum and Charles Murtaugh. Looks like they’re reinventing anti-idiotarianism.

SALON has a new ad program that’s well, innovative.