EUGENE VOLOKH, WHO EXCELS AT POLL-DEBUNKING, is at it again. Looking at a Los Angeles Times poll that was touted as showing opposition to war, Volokh notes that that’s not really true. Volokh also finds a gender gap, but it’s not the one some people would expect:

If no evidence of weapons of mass destruction were found, men would oppose the war 55-37, but women would be evenly split (45-43 in favor, but the gap is statistically insignificant). Surely runs against the conventional wisdom of belligerent men / peaceful women. On the other hand, on many other questions, women seem less supportive of Bush’s foreign policy, and more pessimistic about the outcome of a possible war; what’s more, on Q 63, which asks “Suppose President George W. Bush decides to order U.S. troops into a ground attack against Iraqi forces. Would you support or oppose that decision?,” men say “support” by 64-33, and women only by 52-37. Mighty odd — does this mix of data carry some deep hidden insight, is this a reflection of the possibility that many voters’ views are rather ill-formed and may thus yield seemingly inconsistent results, or is there an error in the polltakers’ reporting of the data?

This Washington Post poll story has an interesting bellicose-woman quote:

“We need to get Saddam Hussein out of power, even if it means using nuclear weapons, particularly if they attack us with dirty weapons,” said Rebecca Wingo, 35, a trucking dispatcher who lives in Johnstown, Ohio. “When you’re dealing with people like him, the only thing they understand is brute force.”

I can’t find a gender breakdown, but the poll in question does indicate considerable support for using nuclear weapons under the right circumstances. And there’s this:

Democrats hold more modest advantages over the GOP on domestic issues such as health care, education, Social Security and prescription drugs, issues that only a third or fewer Americans now rate as top priorities for Bush and Congress.

The Republican Party, by 44 to 41 percent, continues to be viewed by the public as the party best able to deal with the country’s biggest problems.

Bush’s overall job approval rating stood at 66 percent. Even larger percentages of Americans said they approved of the way the president is handling the anti-terrorism campaign (79 percent), while two-thirds approved of the way he is dealing with homeland security concerns. Nearly six in 10 — 58 percent — approved of the way he is handling the confrontation with Iraq.

So far, it appears, the Lott affair isn’t doing irreparable damage. All the more reason for the Republicans to get rid of him quick.

SMALLPOX MARTYRS, AMERICAN STYLE: My TechCentralStation column, on the moral case for wide-scale smallpox vaccinations in spite of the risks, is up.

THE FACE of the anti-war movement.

(Via Damian Penny.)

UPDATE: This says it well:

But what is the antiwar movement actually saying?

Most of the new antiwar groups express an entirely personal opposition to war, one based more on moral revulsion than effective political opposition. Protesters voice a personal distaste for violent conflict, rather than organizing a collective stand against it. And when opposing war is about making pompous moral statements about me, myself, and I, you can count me out. . . .

Protesting wars today seems to be a way to cleanse one’s private conscience rather than effecting public change – a case of opting out instead of getting stuck in and having the hard arguments. Going on an antiwar demonstration has become a way to declare your whiter-than-white credentials, and demonstrating to onlookers that you have cleared your own conscience.

Has it really come to this – where being antiwar is more about saving ourselves than anyone else? If so, then it’s not in my name.

Indeed. David Corn has a different criticism:

The October 26 protest–one of the more prominent antiwar actions so far–had been organized by International ANSWER, a group dominated by the Workers World Party, a small revolutionary-socialist outfit with a fancy for North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il and the goal of abolishing private property. So it was no surprise that the antiwar message–which, according to polls, resonates with at least one-third of Americans–was accessorized with the demands of the fringe far-left. Nor was it a shocker that many speakers did not adopt a give-inspections-a-chance position. The WWP, which hails world leaders that stand against US hegemony (such as Slobodan Milosevic), opposes weapons inspections in Iraq and has assumed the task of trying to steer the antiwar movement away from endorsing them. ANSWER eschews criticism of Saddam Hussein.

Corn notes that there are efforts to put together an anti-war movement that’s (1) not stupidly solipsistic; and (2) not just anti-Americanism disguised as opposition to war. Good luck.

MY TRANSLATION: “I’m holding out for a better deal.”

Lott’s going out like a bum. People won’t forget this.

THE E.U. DOES SOMETHING RIGHT:

BRUSSELS, Belgium – (AP) — The European Union awarded Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya its top human rights prize Tuesday and pledged to support his efforts to bring democracy to his home country.

The 2002 Sakharov Award honored his human rights activism, which dates back to the 1960s when he was condemned to forced labor by the regime of President Fidel Castro.

Despite fearing for the safety of his family back home, Paya traveled to Strasbourg, France, to receive the award at the headquarters of the European Parliament.

”The day before I left, they broke down my door, they have threatened me and my family with death. I was afraid, but you don’t get paralyzed by fear, you go on,” he said.

San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, however, was making nice with Castro recently:

“To Alcalde Willie Brown,” the bearded one wrote on a crisp C-note suitable for framing, at a party at the presidential palace thrown for a state- sponsored agricultural delegation.

There weren’t a lot of hayseeds in this group. In addition to Brown, the delegation included Gov. Gray Davis’ appointment secretary, Michael Yamaki; top Davis aide Susan Kennedy; and millionaire lobbyist/developer/fund-raiser Darius Anderson.

The one face that really caught our attention, however, was former Central Valley Rep.-turned-lobbyist and businessman Tony Coelho.

That’s admirable.

UPDATE: Then there’s this.

THE COUNTRYSIDE IS REVOLTING in England. Reports here, here and here.

MICKEY KAUS IS DOING SOME AUTOMOTIVE JOURNALISM AGAIN. About time! I actually like the way the Z3 looks, though. But I haven’t seen a Z4 in the flesh, and most cars look good in the promo pix.

GUNS, FREEDOM, AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT: Rachel Lucas has a post that’s worth reading.

MICHAEL BARONE WRITES that the war on terrorism is not just a war on evil people, but on evil ideas. And Saudi money seems to be behind both:

Our officials haven’t wanted to acknowledge this, but evidence is coming out anyway. Newsweek reported November 22 that Princess Haifa, the wife of the Saudi ambassador to the United States, was sending money regularly to the Jordanian wife of a Saudi man who was signing it over to the wife of one of the two Saudis who befriended and supported two of the September 11 hijackers. U.S. News reported last week that government sources said FBI higher-ups seemed reluctant to follow up an agent’s lead indicating that the money trail to the hijackers could be traced back to the Saudi Embassy.

Complex web. Princess Haifa’s money, if it reached the hijackers, was only a tiny part of the flow of Saudi money to fund terrorism and propagate totalitarian Wahhabi Islam. Through phony “charities,” huge sums are sent to terrorists–$1 million to $2 million a month for al Qaeda, according to a Royal Canadian Mounted Police report. Some of the money flows have been cut off by U.S. authorities. But sometimes the Saudis have refused to cooperate: In September they refused to freeze the funds of Wael Hamza Julaidan, of the Saudis’ World Muslim League. Why? Former Rand analyst Alex Alexiev writes, “Any genuine help by Riyadh in untangling the complex web financing extremism will inevitably implicate both the Saudi government and countless prominent Saudis.”

Kind of like those German weapons sales to Iraq. You know, some people say that we have to be careful not to be too assertive or the world will turn against us. I’m beginning to wonder if that didn’t happen long before September 11.

UPDATE: Patrick Ruffini notes:

[T]he Cold War was unique in that nobody lost it. In the end, everybody won. The scope of human liberty was expanded, and the former Eastern Bloc is now happily ensconced in the West — moreso, it seems, than France.

The notion that everybody can win from a sustained ideological struggle should profoundly alter our calculations about waging such a war in the Middle East. When applied to the current situation, it is a transformative assumption to count the people of Iraq as winners under regime change — but this also happens to be the truest and likeliest outcome of military action.

Well, some of the apparatchiks lost. But overall, the point is valid, and it’s likely to be valid for Iraq, too. As even the Iraqis seem to realize.

LOTT WILL BE GONE BY THE WEEKEND, according to U.S. News. Of course, he should have been gone by last weekend.

MATTHEW YGLESIAS WRITES:

Seems to me that “[t]he Internet commentator Atrios” is becoming quite the influential figure in liberal journalism circles. Isn’t it going to be embarrassing if it turns out that he is Bob Shrum after all? Or even worse, some annoying college student?

If you read Kausfiles today, you might wonder if Atrios is really Sid Blumenthal, but I’m still going with Shrum.

More seriously, I wonder if Krugman knows who Atrios is? Citing an anonymous Internet commentator on the Times oped page is a bit unusual. (Maybe Atrios is Krugman! Reynolds’ Assignment Desk says “find out who –” oh, hell, never mind.)

But though I think Atrios’ anonymity is a barrier to his/her influence, it’s obviously not that big a barrier. (S)he was posting a lot of solid stuff on Lott, and, ultimately, that’s what matters. Which is the beauty of the blogosphere.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: This passage from the New York Times article on black Republicans makes me think that Kaus is giving Blumenthal too much credit:

“It was like a rifle going off,” said Peter N. Kirsanow, the only black Republican on the United States Commission on Civil Rights, who was at home reading a book and watching C-Span when Mr. Lott’s comments stopped him cold.

Angry and shaken, Mr. Kirsanow called another Republican on the commission and said plainly, “Something has to be done.”

Armstrong Williams, a conservative black columnist who was in the room when Mr. Lott made his comments, had a similar visceral reaction. “It was like being cut with a chain saw,” he said.

The next day, Mr. Williams called Mr. Lott’s office, expressing his outrage with a terse warning: “There’s a storm brewing.”

He then called Harold E. Doley Jr., president of Doley Securities, a prominent Republican donor and the only black now with a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, to take his pulse on the Lott situation.

Mr. Doley’s response was firm and quick: “Lott has to go.”

Bloggers (and Blumenthal’s emails) may have sped this along, but it was going to come out. Lott could have stopped it with a prompt, forthright statement no later than the following Saturday. But he ducked and covered, and — as is often the case when people duck and cover — he purchased ruin for himself and trouble for his party. As I wrote earlier, Lott laid the foundation for his own ruin, and then stood aside so that others could build on it.

MORE DEVELOPMENTS RE THE BUFFALO / LACKAWANNA SIX:

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — The uncle of one of the six western New York men accused of belonging to an al-Qaida terror cell was arrested by federal agents Tuesday after raids on buildings in Buffalo and suburban Lackawanna.

A published report had said the man being sought would be charged with illegally sending $3 million to Yemen.

Mohammed Albanna, a leader in the area’s Yemeni community, was arrested by Customs and Drug Enforcement Administration agents in the doorway of his Buffalo store, the Queen City Cigarettes and Candy Co.

Asked if he was guilty of anything, Albanna said: “Not at all.” He said he would issue a statement later.

Several men in a passing car shouted abuse at police as Albanna was put in a patrol car and driven off.

Albanna is the uncle of Shafal Mosed, 24, one of the so-called Lackawanna Six, the Yemeni-American men indicted in October on federal charges of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

Interesting. We also learn this:

The warehouse where Mohamed Albanna was arrested today has been in the news before… and has a connection to a member of Lackawanna’s Muslim community. Carol Kaplan reports.

The telephone number of the Clinton Street warehouse being searched this morning traces to Mohamed Albanna. And if that name is familiar, it should be.

Mr. Albanna is vice-president of the American Muslim council — and related to three members of the alleged Lackawanna terror cell.

Mr. Albanna — and his Queen City Candy Company — have a history of being in the news.

A search of Channel 2 news archives shows he was arrested on arson charges for allegedly torching his warehouse exactly 10 years ago this month. Losses were put at over a million dollars.

Albanna was acquitted — ironically, his alibi at the time is another name we’re familiar with — his nephew, Jaber Elbaneh. Jaber is believed to be one of the missing Lackawanna co-conspirators currently at large in Yemen.

I think there’s more to this story.

RADLEY BALKO WRITES ON FOXNEWS.COM THAT LOTT MUST GO:

Let me be clear. I do think that Trent Lott is a bigot. In a perfect world, he’d have been ousted in the late 1990s when revelations surfaced about his unseemly involvement with the neo-Confederate Council of Conservative Citizens.

But Trent Lott serves in the U.S. Senate, an exclusive club where the collegial atmosphere causes otherwise smart people to give one another benefits of doubts to a fault. And so it’s taken yet another ugly public dustup for the incestuous Beltway media/politico/pundit circle to finally sit up and take notice of Trent Lott’s uglier, prejudiced inclinations (I’m still waiting for them to take notice of Sen. Robert Byrd’s).

There’s more.

LIBERAL OVERRREACH ALERT: Tom Maguire notes that Spike Lee called Trent Lott a “card-carrying Klansman.”

BY POPULAR DEMAND (well, by the demand of quite a few people who emailed, anyway) the PayPal donation button now allows you to make donations in any amount you choose. It’s the button on the left that says “Make a Donation” — it doesn’t say PayPal anymore.

THE SANTA BLOG is, well, it’s, uh, er, — oh hell, it defies description. Just go read it.

TRENT LOTT’S TO-DO LIST, revealed.

NOT GUILTY in the Elcomsoft/ Sklyarov case.

IRAQI REPORT COULD BE BAD NEWS FOR GERMANY:

Iraq’s declaration of its weapons programs contains explosive news for Germany, a Berlin paper has reported. The dossier is said to detail covert arms deals between German defense firms and Iraq.

Just as the heated debates within the German government over the role of German troops and equipment in a possible war against Iraq seem to be cooling down, another potential bombshell threatens to reignite the fires.

On Tuesday, the Berlin-based left-wing paper, Tageszeitung reported that aspects of the 12,000-page Iraqi report on Iraq’s weapons programs, submitted to the U.N last week, could prove highly embarrassing for Germany.

The newspaper – believed to be the first to have access to the top-secret dossier – has written that the Iraqi declaration contains the names of 80 German firms, research laboratories and people, who are said to have helped Iraq develop its weapons program.

The most contentious piece of news for Germany is that the report names it as the number one supplier of weapons supplies to Iraq. German firms are supposed to easily outnumber the firms from other countries who have been exporting to Iraq. . . .

Another real fear is that Schröder’s image as a staunch pacifist might now be sullied if it emerges that Germany has all along been helping the very leader who it has been unwilling to topple, to stockpile his weapons.

Gee, do you think?

UPDATE: Reader John Schuchard emails:

Hmm… It’s too bad they could’nt have sold them any food or medicine to help all those many thousands of dying Iraqi children. That was the fault of the US and our mean old embargo, wasn’t it? One would think with all the carping we heard about it, that would be the Sophisticated rationale for breaking the embargo. (And what happened to all those dying kids anyway? Did they evaporate?)

And here I thought WE were the Profit-Driven War Machine that undermines diplomacy… Well have no fear, for I’m sure The Guardian will explain it all tomorrow about how it’s STILL our fault.

Yes, there are still some certainties in life.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Eric Bainter writes:

Seems to me that selling weapons and otherwise breaking the embargo against Iraq, and then loudly opposing the US’s plan to thump Saddam (didn’t they even threaten to deny use of bases at one point?) doesn’t make Germany a pacifist – more like an enemy.

Yeah. There are real pacifists of course. But there are also a lot of people who call themselves pacifists but who are actually just rooting for the other side.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Apparently, there were some U.S. firms involved, too, though the information is sketchy. I’ll bet they’re not pretending to be pacifists, though. Which isn’t a reason not to go after them.

ALGERIANS PLANNING A CHEMICAL ATTACK?

Three alleged Islamic radicals arrested by French counterintelligence agents had possession of unidentified chemicals they were planning to use in an attack, according to judicial officials and media reports Tuesday.

The men, reportedly Algerians, were taken into custody on Monday in suburban Paris. They also had $5,000 in cash, a computer and Islamic propaganda documents, judicial officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The officials did not disclose the identity of the suspects but said it was believed they had spent time in training camps in Afghanistan and Chechnya.

Glad they caught ’em.

RACKED BY BLOGGER PROBLEMS AT THE OLD SITE, Letter From Gotham is now at this new URL.

(THE LAST?) BELLESILES UPDATE: Melissa Seckora has a report on the revocation of Michael Bellesiles’ Bancroft Prize, and debunks claims of the Bancroft Committtee that it couldn’t have known of the problems with Bellesiles’ work when the prize was awarded. There were plenty of warning signs, Seckora notes, but the Bancroft committee ignored them.

Meanwhile, Prof. Jerome Sternstein writes on Bellesiles’ publisher Knopf over at the History News Network. Why, he asks, isn’t Knopf admitting the problems with Bellesiles’ book?

Last Spring, when I spoke to a representative of Knopf at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians in Washington, D.C., he said that a new edition of Arming America was in the works and they were only awaiting the report promised by Emory University before they went ahead with it. But since the issuance of the Emory Report and Columbia’s announcement revoking the Bancroft Prize, little has been heard from Knopf other than a statement that despite Columbia’s decision, the Vintage paperback edition of Arming America, “which already includes corrections, will remain in print.”

Sternstein says the “corrections” are mostly bogus and don’t address Bellesiles’ major problems. If a big corporation in any other business sold such a flawed product without disclosing its problems, it would be sued out of existence. Sternstein concludes:

If Knopf continues to stand “behind” Arming America and fails to confront the fact that it is not simply a slightly flawed book that can be tinkered with and fixed with a few “corrections” here and there but it is rather a deeply dishonest book, one that is racked by invented, falsified, and grossly distorted renderings of the historical record, then Knopf will be doing itself and its great publishing tradition a monumental disservice. More importantly, however, by keeping Arming America in print and not recalling it Knopf will be doing an even greater disservice to the reading public. It will be saying to those who care about history that even America’s leading publisher is more concerned with profits than integrity, and is more interested in selling deceitful, though politically correct books than works of enduring merit. The editors at Knopf need to rethink their position, just as Emory University and Columbia University reconsidered their positions.

He’s right.

MORE PROOF THAT PAUL KRUGMAN READS BLOGS, and a feather in Atrios’ cap:

The Internet commentator Atrios, who played a key role in bringing Mr. Lott’s past to light, now urges us to look into the secretive Council for National Policy. This blandly named organization was founded by Tim LaHaye, co-author of the apocalyptic “Left Behind” novels, and is in effect a fundamentalist pressure group. As of 1998 the organization’s membership contained many leading Congressional figures in the Republican Party, though none of the party’s neoconservative intellectuals.

I would have thought, though, that “fundamentalists” — even though their agenda differs from mine, or from Paul Krugman’s — have as much right to form “pressure groups” as anyone else. Does Krugman disagree? It appears that he does. Or am I wrong here?

UPDATE: Rand Simberg emails to note another fundamentalist pressure group with a troubling degree of influence over some members of Congress — several members of Congress, he says, actually belong to the group and one runs under its banner. Meanwhile Tom Maguire emails that Atrios’ weekend mention of the topic is called (with a nod to Mickey Kaus) “Assignment Desk.” Krugman’s not just reading weblogs — he’s getting his marching orders from them! All power to the blogosphere!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Marc Ambinder of The Note wrote this article on the CNP last year. Turns out that “the council doesn’t really control the world.” Of course not. Everyone knows that the world is controlled by The Power Of The Blogosphere.

HEALTHBLOGGER THE BLOVIATOR writes about suggestions that the White House would like to see Bill Frist as Majority Leader:

Frist truly embodies the “compassionate conservative” philosophy, going the last five years to Africa as a medical missionary to work with AIDS patients. He, along with Doug Badger at the White House, Tom Scully (head of Medicare and Medicaid), and Mark McClellan (head of the Food and Drug Administration) would form the core of the White House’s policy team to develop a prescription drug benefit for seniors and overhaul the whole Medicare system. I don’t support the largely market-based tack the White House has taken with prescription drug coverage and Medicare reform; however, on first blush, it sounds like in Frist they have a good person in mind to lead the Republican charge on these issues.

Ross is mostly interested in health issues, and hence evaluates Frist largely on that basis. But given that that’s where most of Frist’s record is to be found, it’s a worthwhile assessment.

DANIEL DREZNER OFFERS A running translation of Lott’s B.E.T. appearance. Meanwhile, Nick Gillespie offers a link to streaming video of the appearance, and observes “As humorous as it was to see a self-styled conservative chalk up his character failings to root causes (the ‘wicked’ society in which he was raised), it was sobering to see a politician so at sea that he resembled Ted Kennedy at Chappaquidick.”

UPDATE: A reader emails:

From the coverage I saw on CNN, Lott’s performance last night brought to mind the line Shakespeare gave to Julius Caesar:

“Cowards die many times before their deaths, the valiant never taste of death but once.”

Someone make a note: In looking for a new Majority Leader, put “character” and “courage” on the list (along with “intelligence” and “judgment”).

Indeed.