“THE BIGGEST REORGANIZATION SINCE HARRY TRUMAN:” That’s what the White House is promising. That could be good or bad. We really need a massive reorganization in the defense/intelligence/antiterror area. But reorganizations are also what managements that aren’t sure what else to do tend to focus on. We’ll see about this one.

UPDATE: Taegan Goddard is skeptical too, and offers a link to this book excerpt on the usual fate of government reorganizations.

As I said, we need a reorganization here. It’s just hard to do these things well, so we need to pay close attention to what Bush is doing. Reorganization is a means to an end, but such efforts all too often become ends in themselves.

UPDATE: Charles Austin is more hopeful. I hope he’s right.

DAN HANSON has an amusing Music industry suckage report. He asks if readers can name a single member of the Starland Vocal Band, which had the smash hit “Afternoon Delight.” Actually, yes. Her name is Margot, and she was a friend of mine’s secretary (at Skadden, Arps) about 10 years ago.

RYAN ZEMPEL AT C-LOG has responded to my comments on geezer-sex issues. It’s a nice response.

My own feeling is that people are entitled to hold opinions on how others should act, but only entitled to enact those opinions into law when some discrete harm to others may result.

JEREMY LOTT has some interesting, and worried, thoughts about how the Catholic Church’s sex scandals will affect its ability to fend off state intrusion generally.

DAMIEN CAVE compares the annoying and limited music-sharing systems allowed by record companies (which are failing) with the Netflix model, which is succeeding, and notes that consumers like freedom. I agree, natch.

NORAH VINCENT has some thoughts on media sensitivity that are worth reading.

HMM. MAYBE ZOMBIES DON’T RULE BELGIUM: The head of national security in Belgium has resigned over charges that Belgium is serving as a sanctuary and training ground for Al Qaeda and other fundamentalist Islamic terrorists.

Imagine: someone resigning because of failure in their agency’s zone of responsibility. Now there’s a European custom I wouldn’t mind seeing at home.

JIHAD: This transcript from Nightline is worth reading. Here’s what Daniel Pipes said about the Jihad-as-meaning-spiritual-struggle argument:

What’s wrong, Chris, is that it’s a fabrication. Jihad has historically meant, almost always one thing-which is expanding the territories ruled by Muslims through armed warfare. That’s what it’s meant. Now I’m happy to see a development occur whereby it means something more spiritual. But we have to start by acknowledging that that’s the real meaning of the word, the historic meaning of the word, the traditional meaning of the word, and we can’t ignore it. And this young man is ignoring it.

What’s funny is that all the people who were after Bush for using the word “crusade” seem to think that it’s simplistic to criticize the use of the word “jihad.” In truth, the peaceful meaning of “crusade” is more well-established.

And I know other people have already noted this, but what if we had a fundamentalist Christian speaking at a Harvard commencement on the importance of the “crusade” concept? You know, like someone from “Campus Crusade for Christ.” Well, forget the “what if.” It’s basically unimaginable. Religious diversity and acceptance can only go so far, after all.

ROBERT MUELLER says the FBI needs more money. This is conceivably true, though if they quit acting as hired goons for the MPAA and RIAA it might free up a few agents.

But Congress should demand serious accountability — including firings, demotions and reorganization — before it gives the FBI any more money. Massive failure followed by a big boost in funding has been an FBI pattern of late. It needs to stop.

UPDATE: More evidence that the FBI isn’t ready for more money yet. Its demonstrated big problems are in data-analysis and management. What does it want money for? More data-gathering! No, no, no. Show you can manage the data you’re already getting and we’ll talk, guys.

THE BRITISH FOREIGN MINISTRY has refused to allow ammunition to be shipped to Israel for an Israeli sharpshooters’ club.

Humph. When another small country I can think of was fighting off crazed fascistic enemies, the United States certainly didn’t take that line. For which the British should be glad.

Meanwhile, of course, the EU is sending money to Palestinians that winds up being spent on bombs and guns. But that’s just development assistance.

IN LIGHT OF MY JOURNALISM-AND-COWARDICE POST, below, readers may want to check out these real-life stories by Dave Winer.

Journalists say that blogs can’t be trusted because there’s no oversight. Read, and see what oversight means.

Bloggers have biases — but they’re usually right out in the open. And bloggers don’t pretend to be objective professionals.

POLITICS MAY DRIVE PEOPLE APART, but Bourbon can bring them back together. Though the superiority of Jack Daniel’s products remains incontestable.

UPDATE: Any mention of Bourbon seems to generate a lot of email. Yes, I know that Jack Daniel’s is “sour mash whiskey.” Duh. And yes, I know that they also make superb “sour mash” in Kentucky — in fact, I have a fine bottle of Old Weller 107 proof in my liquor cabinet.

HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL student Pat Collins writes about the “Jihad on campus” incident, and several other recent war-related embarrassments for Harvard, and says that Harvard has a governance problem. I think that Larry Summers is trying to fix that. But he’ll need outside pressure to accomplish anything.

ARE ALL JOURNALISTS WUSSES? I ask this because of the top three stories on Jim Romenesko’s page:

“Andy Rooney says Ashcroft ‘has put the fear of God into reporters’ “ — saying that everyone’s afraid to write anything critical for fear that Ashcroft will say they’re helping terrorists;

“Why it took so long for the media to expose the clergy sex scandal

National Catholic Reporter Publisher Tom Fox’s view: ‘The secular press wouldn’t touch it because they didn’t want to be seen as anti-Catholic, and the Catholic [press] wouldn’t touch it because they weren’t independent;'” and

“Alt-weekly editors are scared, less idealistic, and more ad-conscious”

Grow some balls, guys and gals. That’s what press freedom is all about. So someone might call you names. Big deal.

The Ashcroft thing is the most startling. Why are people so intimidated by his public pronouncements? Of course, it’s not just the press. People denounced Ashcroft for lighting into a panel of Senators last fall — but not one of those tribunes of the people had to guts to say “You dropped the ball, Mr. Ashcroft — don’t blame us for your organization’s failures.” Now that it’s safer they may come back after him, but by not standing up then, they’ll look like opportunistic jackals now. Screw the poll numbers — if you stand up for what’s right, you’ll probably do okay. And if not, well, isn’t that your job anyway, both in the press and in the Senate?

As Robert Heinlein said, it may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it’s better still to be a live lion. And usually easier — unless, that is, you’re a jackal to start with.

HARVARD DIVESTMENT PETITION: There’s a new call for divestment — saying that Harvard should divest itself of binLaden family gifts and interests. Yeah, I found this via a Katzman post, too. What can I say? The guy’s on a roll.

JOE KATZMAN has a linkfest of resources on the impact of an India/Pakistan nuclear war. He also has an extended analysis of Al Qaeda’s likely reasons for actually wanting a nuclear war between the two. Sadly, he’s pretty persuasive. Of course, if there are nukes flying around, an extra nuke or two in the right place might go unnoticed. . . . And a high-altitude EMP weapon over the wild regions where Al Qaeda has its holdouts, which would blow out anything electronic, would cripple Al Qaeda’s ability to operate anywhere else. These guys are actually far more dependent on sophisticated communications technology than people realize.

PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH says forget this wobbly stuff: we’re getting ready for war with Iraq.

EUGENE VOLOKH explains why making foreigners from some Arab countries register isn’t, in fact, racial profiling. I would say “duh,” but it appears to have escaped the New York Times, along with many other media organizations. My objection to this plan is that it leaves out the Saudis, who are terror central.

If Bush craters politically over this war, it will be because he’s been too deferential to the Saudis. Which he has been.

UPDATE: Neal Boortz isn’t impressed with Arab complaints about this policy.

THE WEBLOG AS AN EXTENDED BRAIN: Cory Doctorow has this absolutely right. I feel the same way.

ORRIN JUDD seems to think that my article talking about the greater danger posed by neuroscience relative to cloning means that I have something in common with Francis Fukuyama. Well, at an appropriate level of abstraction, I do. We’re both carbon-based bipeds.

Okay, not quite that high a level of abstraction, but still pretty high. But Judd seems to (1) misunderstand my position; and (2) miss my point.

Judd seems to think that it’s a big deal for me to admit that there are dangers in bioscience, or science in general. But I’ve never doubted that — I’ve been writing about it for over a decade. (Here is a recent example). I don’t think that there are any significant dangers involved in cloning: the objections to cloning make sense mostly in terms of a particular religious frame of reference that I don’t share. Neuroscience is somewhat more dangerous.

But in both cases — let’s pick the standard reference here and mention Brave New World — the danger is stuff being done without people’s consent. That’s where I differ from Judd. He looks at Brave New World and is unhappy to see cloning and psychoactive drugs. I look at Brave New World and am unhappy to see cloning and psychoactive drugs forced on people by a totalitarian world government. For me, it’s the force part that’s upsetting. If people want to clone themselves, or become “Happy Harrys” with psychoactive medication, that’s okay with me. I just don’t want them forced to do so. Fukuyama, by contrast, wants to stop science because he knows what’s best for everyone. That’s a position that’s closer to the totalitarian-world-government model than to my own.

Judd also misses my main point, which was that all the scrutiny that the Medical Ethics Establishment has directed at cloning — and hasn’t directed at neuroscience — hasn’t made much difference. Neuroscience abuses, despite the lack of Ethics Establishment scrutiny, are largely nonexistent unless you reach back to the 1950s or so for lobotomies and CIA drug experiments, neither of which have much to do with modern neuroscience. My mention of neuroscience wasn’t so much to trumpet its dangers as to illustrate that the Ethics Establishment, a group of nattering nabobs of which Fukuyama seems determined to become natterer-in-chief, has been precisely useless. What’s worse, that may be the most anyone can say in its favor.

SPOONS TELLS ME that if I don’t buy an MR2 convertible the terrorists will have won. Actually, he’s pretty persuasive.

WHAT THEY KNEW AND WHAT THEY DIDN’T DO: This post from Electrolite has an excellent quote.

ERIC ALTERMAN has a reference to me on his blog today. I think he’s referring to this post with its link to some technical/style comments from Dr. Weevil.

I TALKED WITH DAVE WINER ON THE PHONE a little while ago, and I notice he’s already blogged the conversation! Things move fast in the blogosphere. I don’t have much to add. We’ve both been interviewed by an Old Media organ that we suspect may, just may, have more of an agenda than just writing a story. I may post a bit more on this later, but I want to at least note that I’m in complete agreement with Dave on both the absence of any “feuding” and the importance of amateurism.

UPDATE: Ken Layne weighs in. It’s a blogger lovefest!

DOWD WATCH: Josh Chafetz is on the case.