MAX POWER RESPONDS ON THE CAIR POLL: He says that it’s mathematically impossible for what CAIR’s webmaster says below to be true.

JONAH GOLDBERG SAYS Baghdad delenda est!.

SIDE-BY-SIDE on Drudge at the moment: “Democrats see Bush slipping” and “Five planets line up in rare celestial array.” Sometimes I wonder if he does stuff like this on purpose.

TIM BLAIR finds out who’s really profiteering from war this time around.

HEY, THE InstaPundit Online Store is booming! I’ve sold, like, several t-shirts and coffee mugs, earning several dollars in the process! Now if I can just get President Bush photographed in an InstaPundit hat — or better still, get Condi Rice photographed with an InstaPundit tote bag! I’ll bet that would earn me, hell, dozens of dollars.

This “war profiteering” thing is pretty cool. Thanks to the guys who suggested it.

KENT STATE PROFESSOR JULIO CESAR PINO pens this nauseating tribute to a suicide bomber:

You are not a terrorist, Ayat. The real terrorists are those who some 100 years ago hijacked a beautiful religion and transformed it into a real estate venture. Glancing around the world, they saw in Palestine “a land without a people, for a people without a land,” as their spokesmen and women chant ad nauseaum. The Zion of the concertina wire, F-16 bomber death planes and tank crews collecting skulls and shedding martyrs’ blood. The birthplace of your ancestor, and mine, the Palestinian pacifist Joshua ben Josef, is now a battle zone — with Christians, Muslims and peace-loving Jews trapped inside Bethlehem.

Your last cry, by gesture rather than the spoken word, was “Stop, thief! This is not your land and we are a people.” I can assure you, Ayat, that the whole world stopped to listen. Even the numbskull who parades as president of the United States heard you, and, following the text written for him by his handlers, expressed astonishment at how a teenager could perpetrate such an act. Simply, it is pronounced “justice” and spelled C-O-U-R-A-G-E.

I don’t think that he should be fired, as another professor (whom the local paper is careful to characterize as Jewish) does. But I think he should be denounced as an idiot and a moral leper. Which he is. And perhaps even — if you agree with the analysis in the Slate item I linked to yesterday — an unwitting accomplice to the genocide of the Palestinian people.

UPDATE: Kent State alumnus and neighbor Eric Olsen weighs in on this.

POWELL’S TRIP WAS A SUCCESS: Just look at who’s unhappy with it. And the last paragraph is a beaut.

WILL WILKINSON takes on Leon Kass’s “moral repugnance” argument against cloning and genetic engineering.

READERS RESPOND to the CAIR webmaster’s message posted below:

Jonathan Guest writes:

The CAIR webmaster misses an important point. He, by CAIR’s silence, implicitly endorses insane propaganda from the Arab world (Jews exsanguinate Palestinian children for beverages, etc.) and then expects to have some credibility on other things. The same effect is in play on the issue of “atrocities” in the West Bank. If they actively or passively support such lies, who would believe a word they say?

James Groat writes:

Omar’s explanation might be a bit more believable if it weren’t for the assertion that their IT department is suffering from “squiting (sic) eyes and paper cuts.” Webserver log files would be much easier to examine while they are still files on the server’s hard drive, rather than printing them; and using a computer program to count duplicate poll postings rather than trying to count “exactly 8,056” duplicates by hand.

I’m not entirely sure that’s what he meant, but the “paper cut” remark was a bit odd.

FREDRIK NORMAN has some more background on who’s behind the anti-Israeli statements and actions in Norway. Are there any anti-Israeli leaders in Norway who aren’t former Communists, or Nazi sympathizers, or both?

UPDATE: By the way, the contact page at the Norwegian Embassy is back online after disappearing for a while last week.

MORE ON THE U.N. from a reader in Britain:

We had a goof from one of those aid agencies — I’m pretty sure it was something to do with the damned UN — on “Newsnight” (UK version of “Nightline”) last Friday.

The moderator asked Beardie about Israel’s charge that they transported weapons and ammunition for the Palestinians in their vehicles.

No! he snorked, That never happened! And anyway, the Israelis planted the stuff on them.

Says it all, really.

Yep. This is why I think that proposals for an “international peacekeeping force” won’t work. Er, unless it’s nonpartisan Hindu troops from India.

NASTY GIRLS AND LONG DONG SILVER: It’s a porn-o-rama over at Kausfiles!

DECONSTRUCTING FISK’S LATEST: Now it’s Bill Herbert doing it. Herbert also weighs in on the Meryl Yourish / Andrew Sullivan / Jason Kenney debate over the Wolfowitz-booing incident:

No, Jason. As Meryl was trying to point out – and I certainly got it, was that the crowd was not booing the deaths of Palestinian innocents. They were booing at the presumption that they didn’t care about those innocents, which was what they were hearing from Wolfowitz’ lecture.

I was not at the rally Monday, but I know the feeling. It is a common assumption among Israel’s critics on both the Left and Right that those of us who support Israel – and it’s current military operation – don’t care about innocent Palestinian lives. Frankly, it’s insulting. We do care about them, and I would argue that we care more than the Palestinian terrorists themselves, and certainly more than those who make excuses for people who send their children to “martyrdom.”

It was the condescension they were booing, not the idea that Palestinians could be innocent.

U.N. SUPPORTING TERROR? That’s the gist of this piece, which recites some damning facts:

Unfortunately, UNRWA is not alone in reinforcing the U.N.’s reputation as an organization incapable of fighting terror. On May 24, 2000, Israel unilaterally pulled back from southern Lebanon, a withdrawal the U.N. certified to be complete. Terror did not end, though. On Oct. 7, 2000, Hezbollah guerrillas crossed the border and kidnapped three Israeli soldiers (including one Israeli Arab), all of whom they subsequently killed. Observers from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon videotaped the scene of the kidnapping, including the getaway cars, and some guerrillas.

Inexplicably, they then hid the videotape. Questioned by Israeli officials, Terje Roed-Larsen, the U.N. Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, chided Israel for “questioning the good faith of senior United Nations officials.” When after eight months the U.N. finally admitted to possessing the tape, officials balked at showing it to the Israeli government since that might “undermine U.N. neutrality.” That U.N. observers protected and defended guerrillas who crossed a U.N.-certified border, using cars with U.N. license plates while under the cover of U.N. flags, was apparently of no consequence to UNIFIL. Pronouncements aside, U.N. moral equivalency in practice dictates that terrorists are equal to states. Fighting terror compromises U.N. neutrality.

The U.N. has turned a blind eye to terror in Iraq as well. Throughout the spring and summer of 2001, a series of bomb explosions wracked the safe haven of northern Iraq. Kurdish authorities long suspected the complicity of certain U.N. drivers who crossed freely between the safe haven and Iraq proper. On July 19, 2001, Kurdish security arrested a Tunisian U.N. driver found in possession of explosives. A Yemeni national serving as deputy director of the U.N. mission in northern Iraq demanded that the driver be released before any investigation could be completed; he was. The U.N.’s reputation, in other words, trumps protecting innocents from Saddam Hussein’s bombs.

Remind me again: what, exactly, is the U.N. good for?

DAVE COPELAND has some disturbing thoughts, mostly on journalism.

SOMALIA provides some good news in the terror war, according to this report.

MAGIC FOO-FOO DUST: This story from the Star Tribune reports a breakthrough in coal-emissions scrubbing that could make coal-fired power plants pretty damned clean. I’m not entirely persuaded yet: two of the three main sources are the company that created it and the utility that tested it (but is also the main investor). But if coal could be burned cleanly with an inexpensive addon technology, it would substantially reduce dependence on foreign oil.

PRESIDENTIAL-RACE handicapping is well under way, and there’s a nice survey over at The American Prowler, which even gives the Condi Rice bandwagon a bit of a boost, though one potential stumbling-block may be Rice’s own ambitions for higher office — as NFL Commissioner.

MATT LABASH’S series on traffic-cams was much praised here. So I should note that Eugene Volokh (and perhaps others) found some mistakes, which have now been corrected. There’s an explanation over at Eugene’s blog.

EUGENE VOLOKH has a graphic illustration of how things get out of hand quickly.

SUMAN PALIT offers a bracing endorsement of globalization.

MICHAEL BELLESILES UPDATE: The Christian Science Monitor hasn’t retracted its review of Bellesiles’ Arming America yet, but in response to my FoxNews column from a couple of weeks ago, they did run this piece on the whole controversy. The piece quotes a book review editor as saying that the case against Bellesiles hasn’t been proved beyond a reasonable doubt. I’m not so sure about that, but I would suggest that when a controversy of this magnitude erupts it would be fair to ask the reviewers if they’d like to add (or subtract) anything where their reviews are concerned. I suspect that a lot of Bellesiles’ reviewers would. There’s also a discussion of this issue on the Monitor’s Monitor Talk message board.

FROM THE CAIR WEBMASTER:

Dear Sir:

As the CAIR webmaster, I’m pretty used to *interesting* emails sent by visitors who like to speak their mind on a number of issues – from the “I hate you” to the “go back home” to the “you’re behind the disappearance of Hoffa”. However, I wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of emails from the “poll fiasco” – as one email put it.

The dust is finally settling here at the CAIR IT department as we finish looking over two days worth of web site logs – which add up to a lot squiting eyes and paper cuts. I understand that when someone hates you or the work you do no matter the amount of explanation – there’s always going to be a “yeah but …” at the end. So, knowing that – here’s is the summary –

User (I can provide you with the IP address) logs in to the CAIR website. They disable their browser cookies (allowing them to vote multiple times). They voted exactly (as per the logs) exactly 8,056 times. We purged the poll of 8,055 duplicate polls. We also purged a number of other multiple votes (including YES answers). The number of “NO” answers go down drastically. CAIR is seen as manipulating the votes to their advantage. To avoid such confrontation – the poll is taken down. And now, the Onslaught of “You can’t handle the truth emails”.

So, I say this in conclusion. Our integrity was questioned – now question the integrity of the user who caused this. Despite everything – I’m impressed at your persistence at ‘following’ all this :)

All the best to you,
Omar T.
CAIR Webmaster

BLOGGER PERMALINKS: Virginia Postrel is complaining about Blogger permalinks. If she doesn’t know this, it’s a safe bet that others don’t either: If you right-click on the heading (the part that says “Posted 4/17/2002 at ____” and select “copy shortcut” or “copy link location” you’ll get a permalink that will take you directly to the post, so long as you’re using a reasonably up-to-date (i.e., not Netscape 4.7) browser. But if you simply left-click on that, it’ll take you to the archive page for the week, and if you cut-and-paste the URL that appears in the address window at the top of the page then it’s just the address for the weekly (or in a few cases, monthly) archive. So right-click and “copy shortcut.”

If you’ve got one of those funky Apple one-button mice you’re on your own, but I’m sure there’s a way to do it.

BETTER THAN BLOGGING: My daughter, who is now sleeping the sleep of the justly tired 6-year-old, and I went to a carnival tonight. We ate pizza, rode rides, ate caramel apples (well, she did; I passed on that one) and generally had a wonderful time. Then home to read several chapters from Prince Caspian (having done the Harry Potter series together twice, we’ve moved on to Narnia) until she fell asleep.

Now I’m curling up with Max Boot’s new book on small wars, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power. I ordered it from Amazon Monday, and it arrived today. The book looks good, and Amazon rules: I had tried to order it from Borders but they were saying it would take two weeks.