STILL MORE EVIDENCE that the bureaucracy isn’t up to its purported Homeland Security role. There’s not much to argue with here:

We talk about government “intelligence failure” as if it’s something to do with misreading satellite intercepts between Peshawar and Aden. But the “intelligence failure” of September 11th is more basic than that, a failure of intelligence in the moderately-competent grade-school sense. And nothing we’ve learned in the last 10 months — from Mohammed Atta’s posthumous flight-school visa to last week’s belated termination of the Saudi fast-track — suggests that Federal officialdom has changed or is even willing to change.

There is, sadly, no reason to think that the “Homeland Security” bill will do anything to make this better, and considerable reason to think it will make it worse.

UPDATE: Will Allen writes:

The fact that not a single bureaucrat has lost their job in the past 11 months is proof of the ineffectiveness of the govenment response, and the fact that the Democrats are having to be dragged kicking screaming to a bill that might result in a few people getting fired is yet more evidence that a large percentage of people just don’t get it. I guess the body count isn’t high enough yet. Compare the current actions by our political leadership to what George Marshall did in the early stages of WWII, in which he sacked scores of incompetents. This is another example of how Bush went wrong by not seeking a formal declaration of war. Such a declaration puts everyone on notice that business will not be done as usual, the normal rules of government employment are suspended, and that incompetence will no longer be tolerated. If this is a war, then the political leadership of the nation should damn well behave like it is one.

Yes, and as the interview with Jon David below demonstrates, the FBI still hasn’t gotten the point, either.

JOHN HAWKINS scored a coup, managing an interview with Al Qaeda-website hacker Jon David. Guess which country produced 90% of the traffic?

SUPERHERO SEX LIFE UPDATE: Jim Treacher informs me that the Elongated Man is happily married, suggesting that Meryl Yourish should keep her filthy thoughts to herself.

Meryl, meanwhile, apparently not having gotten the word, says she can’t believe I left Triplicate Girl out of my list of hot superheroines. She notes the possibilities, which. . . No, I’m stopping right there. This is a family blog.

HOWARD KURTZ’S COLUMN TODAY is about how bloggers are keeping Big Media honest. Excerpt:

Bloggers are busting chops, big time.

The latest evidence: Some big media organizations are now quoting their criticism of other big media organizations.

It’s called influencing the debate, in real time. . . .

Some media critics dismiss bloggers as self-indulgent cranks. That’s a mistake. They now provide a kind of instant feedback loop for media corporations that came of age in an era of one-way communications.

Yep. If I were, say, Howell Raines, I’d be reading blogs a lot to see how I was doing.

THE PARANOID LIBERTARIAN’S TO-DO LIST: Some concrete recommendations for avoiding totalitarian dystopias.

If the Homeland Security stuff continues to get dumber and more intrusive, you’ll start hearing more stuff like this.

FOLLOWING THE LEAD OF HESIOD THEOGENY, Claudia Winkler of the Weekly Standard is coming down hard on Egypt’s conviction of dissident Saad Eddin Ibrahim and others on what she calls “trumped up charges.” Excerpt:

Egypt’s government, like all despotisms, was pleased to able to point to a respected liberal, and to his Ibn Khaldun Center for Development at the American University of Cairo, as proof of its tolerance. Ibrahim advised Mubarak’s top aides and hosted a weekly TV show on issues relating to development. It suited the regime to have him travel to international conferences on civil society to show how enlightened Egypt was.

Some observers say that what finally provoked the authorities–more than Ibrahim’s exposure of fraud in the 1995 legislative elections, or his monitoring of government treatment of the Coptic minority, or his denunciation of official corruption, or the short film he made encouraging Egypt’s young to seek freedom through elections–was his observation that Mubarak’s son Jamal was being groomed to succeed the president, just as if Egypt were some backward dictatorship like Libya or Syria or Iraq. This apparently was too close to the bone.

Now, Ibrahim, 63 and in poor health, faces the prospect of rapid decline in an Egyptian jail, unless one remaining appeal should succeed or President Mubarak exercise clemency. The United States should use its abundant leverage with Egypt to secure that end.

The only problem, says Winkler, is that “Apparently Mubarak and company don’t fear Washington.”

We need to change that.

BATTLE OF THE ALS: Mickey Kaus says Al Gore was intentionally slighting Al From by pleading a “scheduling conflict” that turned out to be, well, pretty obviously nonexistent.

TRAFFIC: Extreme Tracker is reporting 477,885 unique visitors to the main page for July. If tomorrow’s a good day, we might break a half million for the month. Not bad considering I was on vacation for two weeks. Maybe I should take more time off!

MY DREAM JOB, if only I could draw.

SORRY GOOGLERS: This isn’t me. I’ve had their Shiraz and Merlot, though, and both were excellent. You’d think I’d get a family discount, or something. . . .

MERYL YOURISH SAYS IT’S ALL MY FAULT, as she rates the superheroes for, ahem, action-adventure appeal. True to my prediction, the Elongated Man does very, very well.

Maybe I should rate the female superheroes (superheroines?), but, really, it’s such a short list, with only one answer: Supergirl, as played by Helen Slater. ‘Nuff said. (Though it may raise issues akin to these. Ouch.)

Wonder Woman? She doesn’t like men, does she? She might be a good pick for, say, Norah Vincent, (though somehow I don’t see them as a couple), but I figure anyone who yells “Sufferin’ Sappho” doesn’t belong on my list. Besides, I used to see Lynda Carter all the time at the late, lamented “21 Federal” in Washington, back when I was a rich lawyer who went to places like that. She was more of a babe without the costume, which surely cuts against it.

Now Saturn Girl was kinda hot. Hot enough that I don’t really remember her super power. Telepathy? Precognition? Something like that. (UPDATE: It’s telepathy and mind control. I love Google! Oh, and Umbra, who I don’t remember at all even under the old name of “Shadow Lass,” isn’t bad, either).

SO I WANTED TO WATCH STOSSEL, but the local ABC affiliate is off the air because of tonight’s thunderstorm. Damned lightning.

CHARLES DODGSON agrees that the War On Drugs raises serious doubts about homeland security.

IF I HADN’T ALREADY DECIDED to post more law review articles on the Web, this would have convinced me: How often do law professors get to see people debating their 10-year-old writings? (Much less people with names like “Oberon Lord of Avalon”).

The thread’s too long for me to respond to in any detail at the moment, but it was quite interesting to read.

ERIC OLSEN has a whole lot on the Fort Bragg spouse-killing incidents. Apparently a big story will break shortly.

I’m guessing we’ll find overlapping instances of infidelity here, but that’s just that: a guess. I haven’t followed this very closely.

UPDATE: Reader Anne Salisbury seems to think that the above pot implies that I think infidelity is a justification for murder. Nope — just a motive, and one of the oldest. But I guess we’ll know soon.

I WASN’T GOING TO WRITE ABOUT this New Yorker piece by Rik Hertzberg on Robert Dahl’s new book. That’s because I don’t think the Hertzberg piece is that good, and I rather doubt that the Dahl book is, either. (I haven’t read it, but it doesn’t sound as if he’s changed his views from previous works.)

But then I noticed that Patrick Nielsen Hayden was citing it approvingly, so I thought I’d add this word of warning: What Dahl is talking about turns out in practice to be what Robert Bork wants. Bork’s idea of the Framers’ intent, and the problems with judicial review, comes from confusing the thinking of the Framers with the political science that Bork studied in college, which was very Dahlian. (William Jennings Bryan had similar thoughts, too.)

It’s tempting for liberals to look at the Rehnquist Court and find that sort of thing attractive, just as it was tempting for conservatives of Bork’s generation to look at the Warren Court (and even the Burger Court) and find that sort of thing attractive. But the Framers weren’t about democracy; they were interested in a democratic republic. And subsequent history, pace Dahl, suggests that they were pretty damned smart to think that way.

Since World War II the United States has made a big deal about democracy, as opposed to democratic republicanism, because it was simpler to explain, and hence an easier idea to sell than separation of powers, checks and balances, etc., etc. Interestingly, Americans have been more swayed by that propaganda than anyone else, and the importance of the Constitution’s built-in countermajoritarianism has been largely ignored — except where issues like school prayer or flag-burning come up.

But there’s a lot more to the Constitution’s countermajoritarianism than the Bill of Rights, and there’s good reason to believe that the structural protections against tyranny have done more to protect freedom than the Bill of Rights — which the Supreme Court didn’t really do much with until the mid-20th Century anyway.

IT DIDN’T HAPPEN THIS WAY.

But there are people who wish it had.

DELLWATCH UPDATE: Well, hotdamn, it works. The Dell tech showed up on time and quickly got the desktop up and running again. Despite the yeoman service my laptop provided, I’m happy to have it back. Now I just have to get the wireless network going again. Ugh.

I SURE HOPE THAT this turns out to be true. If I’m ever going to get the aircar I expected when I was 8, something like this has to work out.

I LIKE P.J. O’ROURKE, but Spoons has him dead to rights here. Bill Lockyer would probably disagree.

DON’T FORGET TO WATCH John Stossel’s program tonight on why the Drug War is a miserable failure that threatens us all.

WELL, WHY THE HELL NOT? It’s a Dan Savage / National Review Online lovefest!

HOMELAND SECURITY UPDATE: Juan Gato suggests Bud Selig as Secretary for Homeland Defense.

Why not? It’s the only thing they could do that would make me even less confident in the whole program. So it just makes sense!

IS THERE AN AQUAMAN COMEBACK IN THE WORKS? Here’s a report that he’s getting his own series. Of course, there’s the inevitable line about “bringing new depth to the character.”

Me, I say that the days of disrespect for Aquaman are over. Yep. . . . The tide is turning!

THE TED WILLIAMS STORY has died down for the moment, but Rand Simberg has a long and thoughtful defense of cryonics at TechCentralStation.