JOHN HAWKINS PUTS IT WELL:

Rarely a day passes on the internet without another article being written that claims America is a “hegemon”, that we’re like “like Rome,” or that we want to “create an empire.” Take it from a Conservative, ultra-nationalistic, America-first hawk; Americans on the whole would rather drive bamboo shoots under their fingernails than “rule the world.” . . .

Hell, if we took twenty years off it wouldn’t surprise me to look at a map and see nothing but a giant swath of China red covering all of Europe, skulls & crossbones covering all of Africa, and nothing but a green patch with the words ‘Forbidden Zone’ where the Middle East used to be. We’re the only thing keeping the planet from reverting back to an early 1800’s style plunder, war, and rampage philosophy.

If you want to put it in perspective, it’s like we’re the guy who ended up being the designated driver for the planet. Sure we’d love to sit back and drink ourselves into a stupor with the rest of the globe but we’re responsible for getting as many people home safe and sound as possible. Every so often while we’re sitting around wishing we could kill a few beers like the rest of the planet, a sloppy drunk, drooling, Europe comes over to where we’re sitting. Then they take another swig of Vodka straight out of the bottle and tell us not to worry about a thing because they’ll drive everyone home in their ‘international law’ van. But we know if we go ahead and drink up that we’ll just get a call at 4 am asking us to bring our tow truck and the ‘jaws of life’ to clean up the bloody mess on dead man’s curve. That’s the burden of being an American.

Yep. And I wonder if the fact that we really don’t want to conquer other countries irritates them? It’s an insult, in a way, that we’d rather stay home in American than be the overlords of elsewhere. But it’s true.

UPDATE: Reader Zach Barbera writes: “I wish they would make up their minds. Are we a lazy self absorbed decadent culture who knows nothing about the world? Or are we a globe-trotting imperialistic power out to rule everything?”

Yeah, I’ve been confused about that, too.

POSTWATCH HAS THE LATEST on the Washington Post / Josh Marshall standoff.

UPDATE: Bill Quick has all the emails, which were apparently (and rather discourteously) sent by the Post to anyone who emailed in support of Marshall. Quick’s take on it is still the best: “Josh is right. Can’t you guys find something else to call that file?”

The Post’s position is that they’re not going to do anything a court doesn’t order them to do. Uh, okay, but they should realize this isn’t making anybody think better of them. And I note that in the comments Will Vehrs suggests that this is a crime that carries its own punishment: Terry Neal’s column will now always be compared with Marshall’s superior work, making Neal look bad.

UPDATE: And the Post was still dodging public questions earlier this week.

MATT WELCH is disappointed, but not surprised at NPR’s coverage of Cynthia McKinney’s defeat.

MORE BACKGROUND ON THE “PEACE ABBEY:” And, I have to say, it’s no big surprise.

I keep trying to remind myself that just because the opposition to the war is for the most part stupid, doesn’t in itself argue in favor of war. But it’s hard.

MINETA IMPEACHMENT UPDATE: More grist for the mill.

NICK DANGER ASKS: “If the Jews control the media, why don’t we give ourselves better press?”

AT THE FACULTY MEETING TODAY we discussed rankings (not this one, but the U.S. News rankings of law schools). Naturally everyone thinks two things: (1) the rankings are dumb and arbitary; and (2) it’s important to do as well as possible in them. In this, our views resemble our students’ views about grades, with the difference that the students’ views are, of course, ill-considered.

Anyway, for those who don’t like the way that U.S. News ranks, there’s this wonderful alternative ranker that lets you weight the data differently, and even include other data (such as Tibetan restaurants within 600m of the school) and then do your own ranking. I like it.

STAT-O-RAMA: Jim Lindgren’s Bellesiles deconstruction has received an amazing 55,853 downloads since I posted it on Friday afternoon.

I’m guessing we’ll hear what Emory plans by the end of the week — probably Friday afternoon, as others have speculated, in order to keep the story from getting any more attention than absolutely necessary. Unless they wait until Labor Day.

BREAKING NEWS: Bill Clinton has a new TV show! This sounds frighteningly plausible to me.

ATRIOS IS COMPLAINING that the “impeach Norm Mineta” campaign doesn’t go far enough and lets Bush off the hook. Gee, I thought I’d been pretty clear about the opportunities this presents for the Democrats, or would present if they didn’t have an instinct for the capillary. Jay Caruso isn’t impressed with Atrios’ critique, but I did respond to it in Atrios’ comments section (which has now disappeared) (UPDATE: It’s back again.).

Yeah, Mineta works for Bush, and yeah, Bush should fire him. But as I said earlier, “impeach Norm Mineta” makes a better slogan, and does a better job getting the message across.

If the Dems had sense they’d attack air security the way then-challenger Malcolm Wallop did OSHA: he had a commercial in 1976 in which an announcer read from an OSHA reg about toilet facilities at outdoor worksites, then cut to a shot of a cowboy with a portajohn strapped to his horse’s back. He beat a three-term incumbent with that approach, and I feel sure that airport security is more vulnerable to this sort of thing than OSHA.

There’ll be more on this in tomorrow’s FoxNews column.

HERE’S AN AMUSING RESPONSE to my TechCentralStation column. Who’s right? You be the judge.

UPDATE: And you should read this, in response to the response. There are also some interesting comments from readers posted at the bottom of my piece.

THINK THE BLOGOSPHERE’S BEEN TOO HARD ON SUSAN SONTAG? Then read this.

THERE’S DISAGREEMENT AT CATO! Stop the presses. . . . Seriously, Brink Lindsey responds to the recent antiwar sentiments of some Cato folks in a post entitled “There’s No Invisible Hand in Foreign Affairs.”

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: A mother is in jail and faces a possible fifteen year sentence for letting her kids get sunburned at the fair. She needs a stiff lecture and a bottle of sunscreen. Steubenville, Ohio sheriff Fred Abdala needs a clue.

UPDATE: Several readers email to say that the CNN story doesn’t capture the extent of the problem Here’s one from reader Debbie Eberts:

Fred Abdala was interviewed via telephone on Fox News by Brigette Quinn this morning. The first words out of his mouth were that the county was NOT

seeking 15 years for this mother & that he had no idea where that rumor started (we all know). She’s been in jail for about 7 days, is being released today and will be given probation and placed under the “watchful eyes” of CPS (his words, not mine). Apparently, this mom is “familiar” with CPS and the end goal is to train her to properly care for her children. So, tax dollars are at work here and Sheriff Abdala seems pretty reasonable.

Of course, she’ll probably turn around and sue the Jefferson County Fair for not issuing sunburn warnings.

CNN: “It’s the Jews’ fault!” Read this:

In her loss, McKinney joined Rep. Earl Hilliard, Democrat of Alabama, as the second black lawmaker targeted by Jewish groups to lose a re-election bid in the post-September 11 era. Fueled by contributions from the Jewish community, Majette raised more money than the incumbent.

Well, I think there were a lot of non-Jews (like, well, me) pulling for Majette. Had McKinney won, would CNN have credited her victory to Arab money?

TIMOTHY LYNCH observes the tenth anniversary of Ruby Ridge.

What’s unfortunate is that despite demonstrated incompetence and probable criminality on the part of the federal law enforcement officials involved, not much has really been done to address the problems that incident revealed. This is a serious issue as homeland security is (allegedly) being ramped up. The FBI, ATF, and U.S. Marshal’s service aren’t ready for a war on terrorism, and there’s no sign that anyone is getting them ready. (And don’t even get me started on the INS). The free excerpt that Amazon provides is worth reading, for a start.

This — like the idiocy of airline security — would be a campaign issue for the Democrats. Except that they can’t bring themselves to criticize federal agencies.

UPDATE: In light of a couple of emails I got on this, it’s worth pointing out that this happened under the Bush Administration, not under the Clinton Administration. Waco was a Clinton foulup. The problems involved are bureaucratic ones, and transcend changes of administration. For more on those, see No More Wacos: What’s Wrong with Federal Law Enforcement and How to Fix It, by Dave Kopel and Paul Blackman.

YESTERDAY, I predicted that today’s post-election wrapups would focus on the disappearance of colorful personalities. All I can say is . . . “Advantage: InstaPundit!”

HOW ELVIS KILLED COMMUNISM: My TechCentralStation column is up.

MORE ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT: In discussion of whether the Second Amendment protects an individual right to arms, the case of United States v. Miller is often invoked by gun-control advocates, who tend to claim that Miller supports the theory that the Second Amendment protects only a states’ right. Sometimes we are even told that Miller held that the Second Amendment protects only the National Guard.

These statements aren’t true. Brannon Denning and I have an article on Miller in the latest issue of Law and Contemporary Problems, which you can read by following the link. While Miller deserves no prizes for clarity, on close reading — especially in light of what the government argued — it’s extremely difficult to interpret it as providing any support for the states’-right theory of the Second Amendment, and it seems entirely consistent with the individual right approach.

GOODBYE, CYNTHIA. Howard Owens calls this a “victory for the Blogosphere.”

I think it’s a victory for all America. The only losers here (besides McKinney) are Republican operatives who could have made hay out of McKinney’s anti-Americanism for the next two years. Reid Stott has the wrapup. And Rod Dreher has a prediction about McKinney’s future.

MCKINNEY UPDATE: At the moment, with 46% of the vote in, McKinney is behind Majette, 34% to 66%, which isn’t a sure-thing loss yet but is looking pretty close. (But Insider Advantage says McKinney will roar back at the end and make it a cliffhanger).

Hmm. Assuming she loses, what (or who) will she blame it on tomorrow?

John Linder has been declared the winner over Bob Barr by a hefty margin. Guess Barr, er, shot himself in the foot in this race.

UPDATE: Looks like a bad night for Cynthia’s father, State Rep. Billy McKinney, too. Only 33% of the vote is in (and none from Fulton County) — but at the moment he’s taking a beating with 11.2% of the vote. I’m going to bed, though, so if you want more updates go on over to Reid Stott’s for up-to-the-minute information and local color. In the meantime, I’m projecting that tomorrow’s political commentary will bemoan the loss of colorful characters like Barr and McKinney as politics gets more serious. But that’s just a guess.

JURY NULLIFICATION UPDATE: Clay Conrad, who wrote the book I referred to in my earlier discussion of the subject, has responded to comments from Eugene Volokh and others over at TalkLeft.

WANT A JOB IN HUMAN RESOURCES, but can’t master the lingo? I’ve gotcha covered.

IS IT SOMETHING IN THE WATER? An alert reader emails this link to a Washington Post story that mentions that Bob Barr’s opponent John Linder has a bogus-endorsement problem, too. (Scroll past the McKinney news). To the limited extent that I care about that race, I (like so many) prefer Linder, who I understand has video of Barr staffers stealing his signs. This isn’t sleaze of the same caliber as Cynthia McKinney’s voter-intimidation campaign, but it’s nothing to be proud of.

Politics ain’t a clean business anywhere, but these Georgia primary races seem to be bringing out the worst in people.

UPDATE: Here’s more on the voter-intimidation story.

ANOTHER UPDATE: HERE is a link to the results. At the moment, McKinney and Barr are both way behind, but only a few precincts have reported in in McKinney’s district – though, oddly, most of Barr’s have.

THE ANTI-MCKINNEY CONSPIRACY HAS BEEN EXPOSED! And it’s all because of some vigilant folks at BartCop who were willing to look beyond appearances — but not too far beyond.

UPDATE: Dang, and my secret identity has been discovered, too. I’d have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for you meddling kids!

ANOTHER UPDATE: One clever reader has figured out that the above is a fake secret identity, and says that this is the real one. Or is it? Bwahahahahaaaa!