STEPHEN GREEN IS BACK, AND OBSERVES: “Most civil libertarians fear what will happen to us if we attack Saddam. I fear what will happen if we don’t.” I think his analysis on this point is exactly right.

RON ROSENBAUM has explicitly joined the anti-Idiotarian cause. And he’s done it, of course, in response to what he’s heard from the anti-war movement, such as it is:

The point is, all empires commit crimes; in the past century, ours were by far the lesser of evils. But this sedulous denial of even the possibility of misjudgment in the hierarchy of evils protects and insulates this wing of the Left from an inconvenient reconsideration of whether America actually is the worst force on the planet. This blind spot, this stunning lack of historical perspective, robs much of the American Left of intellectual credibility. And makes it easy for idiocies large and small to be uttered reflexively. (Perhaps the suggestion I recently saw on the Instapundit.com Web site calling for an “Anti-Idiotarian” party might be appropriate.)

Being anti-War, as I’ve said repeatedly, doesn’t make you an idiot. But the antiwar movement certainly has taken a strong position in the idiocy market, as Rosenbaum’s report makes clear.

UPDATE: Read this report too. And Donald Sensing has some observations.

I DIDN’T GET A CHANCE to write much about Eldred v. Ashcroft. Here’s a firsthand account of the oral argument from Erik Jaffe at the ever-expanding Volokh Conspiracy. (Soon to be renamed “A Volokh Conspiracy So Vast. . .”).

I was sorry to hear that he felt the notion of internal limits on the patent and copyright power got little play. Obviously the Supremes didn’t find the article that I coauthored with Berkeley law professor and intellectual property god Rob Merges, arguing that the Court should police Congressional intellectual property power just as it does the commerce power, dispositive. Dang.

UPDATE: Slashdot has more.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s a roundup of other blogospheric commentary from the Jurist site. And, of course, there’s lots of good stuff at CopyFight.

ONE MORE: Check out Freeside and scroll freely for more.

I’M BACK. We took a family trip to Nashville. My wife is on a state psychological board, and while she attended her meeting this morning my daughter and I went to the Cumberland Science Museum (very disappointing — many of the exhibits were lame, and PC-preachy — and many more were either broken or closed) and the Parthenon (great!). For those who don’t know, Nashville has an exactly (un-blown-up-by-the-Turks) replica of the Parthenon. My daughter really liked that, and we also spent some enjoyable time feeding the ducks at the pond outside and discussing the Greeks. She read a kids’ version of Bulfinch in the car on the way home.

I’LL BE ON TRAVEL this evening, so blogging will be limited if it happens at all. Back later. Enjoy the many fine links on the left in my absence. And you can even amuse yourself with Eugene Volokh’s song of consolation for a poor, put-upon planet. (This musical item is heartening, too.) Find out that Get Smart predicted everything at ParaPundit. And, as always, there’s lots of interesting news here.

Also, my TechCentralStation column should be up Wednesday morning as usual. Have fun!

CORRECTION UPDATE: Best of the Web reports that the Buzzcocks story, linked above as “heartening,” isn’t true. Dang.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Weisblogg has more on the Buzzcocks, and scroll down for interesting, though largely unrelated, comments on many other entertainment-type stories.

THE INDEPUNDIT has continuing updates on the Maryland sniper situation. He also links to this report suggesting terrorism was behind the French tanker explosion. Meanwhile, the attack on U.S. Marines in Kuwait by a pair of gunmen is now being called terrorism. I’m sure that Iraq had nothing to do with it. . . .

ANDREA HARRIS has found someone who worships Oliver North. He’s not a warblogger, though.

As for the mention of G. Gordon Liddy in her comments, well, all I can say is that it’s better to light a single candle. . . .

I always wanted to write that about Liddy.

MORE REPORTS that Saddam’s inner circle is defecting. I don’t know how reliable they are, but their simple existence makes defections more likely in the future.

Then there’s this report of a recent assassination attempt aimed at Saddam. I don’t vouch for these stories being true. But I hope they are.

UPDATE: Reader Gary Haubold writes:

The Instapundit just observes that:

MORE REPORTS that Saddam’s inner circle is defecting. I don’t know how reliable they are, but their simple existence makes defections more likely in the future . . . . . . .

. . . . . but that’s only half the story. In terms of game theory: (1) it’s certain that IF the United States goes after Saddam that he’s finished, but (2) given the problems with the United Nations and anti-war Democrats, it’s not certain that the United States will go after Saddam full-bore. If (2) did not exist and everyone knew for certain the United States was going after Saddam full-bore, then odds are WE WOULDN’T ACTUALLY HAVE TO DO ANYTHING because it would be so much likelier that either Saddam would run for his life or else one of his closest friends would kill him.

I’m all for open debate and intellectual honesty and I wouldn’t question the patriotism of anyone opposing the war – but I do think that we should all recognize the damage that war protestors are doing to the war effort simply by protesting – they’re not operating in a vacuum, and the more that the Iraqi government appreciates and fears our seriousness of purpose, the less likely we are to have to actually have to engage in hard-core fighting.

That’s my thought for the day.

Yes, it’s this sort of calculation that adds irony to Vegetius’ statement that “If you want peace, prepare for war.” Or maybe it’s not irony at all.

UPDATE: Reader Matt Sitar disagrees:

I think the war effort has actually benefitted from much of the balking from Congress and the UN. Had the US been given free rein from the outset, there still would have been a period of time where the US and its allies would have prepared for the war. This would have given Saddam a similar amount of time, during which he could move whatever biological and chemical (and perhaps even nuclear) weaponry he has to strategic locations.

As it is, though, with the possibility of resumed inspections, any biological or chemical weapons need to stay hidden. Meanwhile, the US is free to continue preparations for war. So when the time comes, the US will be ready.

The outcome of all the debating, in the UN, in Congress, in the US, is uncertain. This can be a good thing. If Saddam knows he is a dead man, he will try to inflict as much damage as possible, both to the US and to Iraq (he strikes me as the “if I can’t have it, no one can” sort of person). Uncertainty forces him to consider many other options and many other outcomes.

This is an interesting theory, and I’d like to believe it, not least because it meshes with a theory I’ve written on, that the unpredictability of democratic decision-making is inherently advantageous. But I’m not sure I’m convinced. Since Vietnam, every adversary of the United States has felt that it could neutralize American military power so long as it could get people marching against the war in America. That has led them to do things they wouldn’t have tried otherwise.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Austin Bay agrees with Gary Haubold’s approach, more or less. So, pretty much, does Tom Friedman, though his final paragraph proves that he doesn’t understand his own argument fully.

WILLIAM BURTON has a rather long post on guns and the Maryland shootings.

THE MISSING GUANTANAMO GUARD is still missing. They’ve quit looking for him. The report says that “Detainee involvement was not suspected in his disappearance.”

Maybe he went for a swim and got a cramp?

JOHN LEO WRITES ABOUT CAMPUS ANTISEMITISM:

An op-ed writer at the Detroit News asked, “When did antisemitism lose its seat on the bus of political correctness?” He meant, why doesn’t the PC culture protect Jews? The answer is that seats on the PC bus are reserved for certified victim groups, but Jews don’t count. They have been historic victims for centuries but are doing too well in America to qualify as officially aggrieved. And as Muslims have been welcomed into the grievance culture, the status of Jews on campus, the stronghold of PC, has become problematic.

Israel itself is often seen as an intolerable colonial outpost, planted in the historically victimized Third World by the West. The thing that most Americans admire about Israel, that it has many of the same features as the United States–free speech, an open society, democratic institutions–makes it a natural target of America-hating campus sentiment. Hostility to Israel was a strong feature of the New Left in the Sixties as it is of the campus left today. And as Boston Globe columnist Cathy Young pointed out last week, sympathy for the Palestinians, even when they are blowing up Israel’s women and children, “stems largely from the knee- jerk instinct to romanticize the ‘wretched of the Earth.’ ”

Anti-Israel activism on campus is mostly the work of Muslim students and the far left. Some of the ugliest incidents have occurred in the San Francisco Bay area, where the left is unusually strong. At Berkeley, Silver says, “Instead of rallying behind Iraq, the hard left here tends to keep focusing on Israel.”

Well, they do some of the rallying-behind-Iraq stuff, too. Leo has some comments on the University of Michigan’s upcoming conference on Israel, but readers should be aware that some some statements attributed to the organizers of that conference seem to be a hoax. I don’t think that the passages that Leo quotes are from the faked email announcement (which I haven’t seen in its entirety, but only in excerpted form in news stories), but in reading coverage of that conference it’s worth keeping in mind that some false statements may still be in circulation.

PLAY MST3K FOR ME: VEGARD VALBERG DOES IT AGAIN, this time to a dumb article from CounterPunch entitled Diagnosing Dubya.

I guess “Misting” is a sort of kinder and gentler “Fisking.” Meanwhile Steven Chapman emails to tell me that what he did to Chris Patten is actually a sort of “post-Fisking.”

Sociologists of the blogosphere, take note of this date.

THE THIRD CIRCUIT HAS RULED that deportation hearings need not be open, thus creating a conflict with the Sixth Circuit. (Via Howard Bashman).

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR IS CALLING FOR MORE FACULTY DIVERSITY:

Perhaps Democrats are just naturally drawn to teaching, and colleges can’t do much about it. But if political diversity is as important to higher education as ethnic or racial diversity, colleges should look at their criteria for hiring teachers beyond just academic qualifications. Once teachers are hired, their freedom of speech must be defended. But colleges can also defend the need of students to hear a diversity of views from teachers.

In the meantime, U.S. News magazine might consider adding a new category – faculty political diversity – to its yearly college rankings.

Interesting piece.

DICK MORRIS says that the New York Times’ recent poll on attitudes about the war and the economy is irredeemably slanted. Excerpt:

But take a close look at the poll: The phrasing of the questions is so slanted and biased that it amounts to journalistic “push polling” – the use of “objective” polling to generate a predetermined result, and so vindicate a specific point of view.

It was just such polling that led the Democratic Party astray over the summer and played an important role in catalyzing their (politically suicidal) criticism of Bush over Iraq. Now the Times returns with another poll, on the verge of Congress’ vote on a use-of-force resolution, to suggest that voters see the economy as a bigger issue than Iraq. . . .

For decades, responsible journalists refused even to cover public-opinion polls. Then, in a turnaround, they began to conduct them and treat their findings as hard news. Now the process has come full circle: Journalists appear to be using polls to generate the conclusions they want and to validate their own pre-existing theses and hypotheses.

I don’t think this phenomenon is as new as Morris makes it sound.

UPDATE: Here’s another piece on the same topic, putting it in the context of The Times’ more general problem of “editorial creep.” (“. And those numbers, it turns out, say the New York Times has . . . well, lied about its own public opinion research. Three particular subsets of data make this harsh verdict especially hard to avoid.”) There’s a link to the actual survey data, too. And Joshua Trevino has more.

MEDPUNDIT SYDNEY SMITH has a piece in TechCentralStation arguing that bioterrorism preparedness is being undermined by bureaucratic opportunism.

I think there are some real opportunities for investigative journalism here.

TIM BLAIR HAS DISCOVERED MY SECRET.

P.E.T.A.B. is People for the Ethical Treatment of Alec Baldwin.

I AM NOT WORTHY. But I’m flattered.

LINDGREN / BELLESILES UPDATE: Just checked the stats for the first time in a while and James Lindgren’s Yale Law Journal article on problems with Michael Bellesiles’ Arming America has now passed the 100,000-download mark. The total at the moment is 100,585.

Especially given that it’s also available elsewhere, this surely has to be the most widely read law review article of all time.

You’d think that book publishers would be interested in this story. Heck, maybe they are.

A READER WRITES:

As a servicemember, I’m continually amazed by the lengths that some will go to “use me” as a prop for their point of view. To wit, the quote from Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, commenting on the President’s speech last night:

“If the quality of his evidence matched the quality of his oratory, I’d be ‘ready to roll.’ But his repeated references to 9/11, despite his advisers’ admission that no such link to this terrorism exists, show how very weak the case for war now really is. My concern is that a near-unilateral land invasion of Iraq will endanger thousands of young Americans now while exposing our families to terrorism for years to come in what will be perceived by too many as a new crusade against Islam.”

My primary beef, aside from the usual “weak case” rhetoric, is with this rather shameless use of the “young Americans” scare tactic. It pains me to be seen as a pawn in this game, especially since the servicemembers that I know are not really interested in how much danger we might face — as long as we can go in with the right tools, support and mission, we don’t mind danger. After all, isn’t that what we’re trained for?

However, Rep. Scaremonger has no interest whatsoever in my well-being, or else he’d have complained more vociferously about the last president’s little escapades. The rhetoric is not matched by any sign of real concern, such as seeing to it that my ships get the gear they need or my men get the support they need. Guess that wasn’t on his “to do” list.

Bottom line: The Armed Forces of the United States are ready, willing and able to take out the targets directed by the President. No amount of armchair QB’ing by the donks will change that, nor will their shameless use of the “danger” that I may face affect my readiness.

I get a fair amount of email from military people along these lines. I don’t usually reprint it, but I think this makes an important point. I should also note that I have yet to get a single letter from a serving military reader using the term “chickenhawk.”

[Note: Another reader with JAG experience advised me to remove the name from this email, so I have done so even though the author did not request anonymity.]

UPDATE: Reader Dick Aubrey writes:

As a general rule, it is probably easier for people to make a decision in this case than in other cases. For, now, we are in horrible danger if we do nothing. So the decision is not whether American soldiers die or nobody dies. Soldiers will die if we move. But if we do nothing, American soldiers will die, as will a great many civilians One need not be a veteran to make a choice there.

The “chickenhawk” argument has as its basis a planted axiom that to choose to go to war means American soldiers die while to choose to refrain means nobody dies. This does not describe the present situation.

Well said.

STERLING’S JOURNAL points out that the DC/Maryland shootings may have started earlier than originally realized — there’s a suspicious shooting from September 14 that’s being re-examined. He has a link to video, though it wouldn’t play for me.

SOMETHING INTERESTING: The recently released national strategy paper has been treated like some sort of Protocols of American Imperialism, prepared under cover of darkness by power-hungry neocons. But here’s what Leon Fuerth, Al Gore’s former national security adviser, says:

I was rereading the newly issued statement of national strategy. In many ways, it reads as if we had written it.

Fuerth goes on to say: “And in a way, it’s a pity that this whole question of pre-emption has been allowed to distort the reception of it.” Fuerth is skeptical about an Iraq invasion but because he’s not an idiot (in fact, based on having known him somewhat for many years, I’d say he’s pretty damned smart), he’s skeptical for actual reasons — not simply because it represents an exercise of American power.

I think he’s wrong about the risks of invading Iraq — or, more accurately, I think he’s wrong in the way he weighs the risks of acting against the risks of not acting. But if you read his comments in this transcript, they show that (1) he’s not that far from the Administration, really; and (2) he’s living in the world of reality, not fantasy. Here’s another excerpt, discussing preemption — which, you’ll notice, Fuerth is against as a doctrine, but not necessarily as an occasional practice:

In many ways, I think Dick and I are agreed about this. The point is that it is a commonsense matter, for the most part, and, therefore, regrettable that somebody has decided to make it into a doctrine for the administration. And specifically where Iraq is concerned, they are exactly where you say they are. They are in breach. But what they’re in breach of is a resolution that also said something about restoring security to the area.

We could do anything we like about resuming combat against Iraq underneath that resolution. We don’t need this new wrinkle. Where this new wrinkle gets really interesting is after Iraq, how about Iran? What about Iran’s ballistic missile program? What about their nuclear weapons program? Would a president decide that he’s not going to wait until there is a ballistic missile rolled out with a nuclear warhead on it, but is going instead to attack the first surface elements of this thing years before anything really hard materializes? That’s pre-emption. Where do we stand on this matter? Does the president trigger an attack against another country on suspicion of where it’s going or on imminent display of threat?

(Richard Perle answers “probably not,” by the way.) So why am I mentioning this? Because it’s a useful example of actual, substantive discussion on the merits of going to war, in which someone — for rational and expressed reasons — is against it. There aren’t a lot of those.

JAMES LILEKS has this observation:

News: the sniper is still at large. It reminds me of the serial slayer at work in the early 90s, when I lived in DC; he was known as the Shotgun Slayer, because he would roll up, point a shotgun out the window, and kaboom. How this happened in a city where shotguns were banned we never did figure out.

His comments on Jerry Brown’s “warmongering” are amusing, too.

HERE’S A REPORT of a First Monday program at UCLA Law School. Eugene Volokh plays a major role.