SUMAN PALIT says that Musharraf is morphing into Saddam. I’m not so sure about that, but read the post, and then scroll on down.

ERIC OLSEN surveys the pathology of suicide bombing.

TODAY’S CLONING HEARINGS are addressed in The New Republic.

SPEAKING OF ANDREW SULLIVAN, here’s more proof that he can generate buzz at will. I said in a post quite some time ago that weblogs change the balance of power between authors and editors. I think this is proof. Howell Raines gets bad press all the time — it goes with the job –but he’s gotten more in the past week than in any month I can remember. All because of a couple of things Sullivan put in his weblog.

A BUMMER: InstaPundit got its start with Slate’s “The Fray.” That’s where I first posted stuff like this. (In fact, here’s a link to the first Fray post as “InstaPundit” from about a year ago).

Now Fraymistress Moira Redmond is leaving Slate to go back to Britain. “The Fray” gave rise to an awful lot of the Blogosphere (including both halves of the Quasipundit duo) and one reason is that Moira set the tone. She’ll be missed.

Note to Bill Gates: It’s not too late to offer her a raise big enough to keep her around!

OKAY, ORDINARILY I’D LEAVE IT TO ANDREW SULLIVAN to point up the viciousness of this column on Pim Fortuyn by Michaelangelo Signorile. But I want to point out this sentence:

In much of Northern Europe, where homosexuality has been far more accepted for far longer and has been met with little political resistance, you can even be gay and be a right-wing fascist (just like Ernst Rohm, Hitler’s SA chief in the Nazi Party, was).

So Pim Fortuyn, you see, is just like Ernst Rohm — just another murdered Nazi, no loss to anyone. And you know those Nazis — famously tolerant of homosexuality. Why they gave gay people special symbols to wear, to show how treasured they were.

Signorile says that the Wall Street Journal and the National Review are only talking about Fortuyn because they want to stage mass deportations of Muslims. Yeah, that must be it. It couldn’t be that they were upset at seeing him tarred as a virtual Nazi, by people who couldn’t bear a threat to the hermetic little political universe they had created and who thus decreed that anyone who fails to toe the line must be caricatured as the extremist. It couldn’t be that.

UPDATE: Apparently the Dutch voters don’t think Fortuyn was a Nazi.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Media Minded administers a thorough Fisking of Signorile’s piece.

OCCIDENTAL INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING, a blog devoted to how Arabs think of the West, has found a pre-9/11 publication saying that the twin towers of the World Trade Center symbolize the global failure of Islam.

INSTA, ER, SOMETHING: My post on water shutoff valves got me an email from Bob Gordon, President of the Gordon Tool Company, which makes The Gordon Wrench, asking if that was the tool I meant. Nope. Never heard of it before. Sounds handy, though. It doesn’t look like it would fit my outside shutoff valve, though — looks more like it’s made for those behind toilets and under sinks.

UPDATE: Reader Eric Rapp writes:

I have one of those. It was left behind by the previous owners of my house (along with a leaky roof, terrible plastering, and a nearly fire-inducing wiring fault in the doorbell, not that I’M BITTER!). It was very handy for turning off the toilet valve, but I don’t see how it could be used for an
outside water line. On the subject of wrenches, though…

As a public service announcement for your LA readers, you may want to mention that a gas valve wrench is absolutely essential and could be a lifesaver whenever we have our serious earthquake. I’m sure they can be bought somewhere for less than 9 dollars, but even if not, 9 bucks isn’t too much to pay to keep one’s house from exploding, is it? (This is a serious, no foolin’ danger after earthquakes. Broken gas lines pump out a lot of gas and even a tiny spark can make everything go boom fall down.)

Yes. And even in areas outside earthquake-prone California, things like floods, landslides, etc. can cause similar problems.

Several readers emailed that I seem to know a lot about tools for a law professor. Well, as with many of my talents “for a law professor” is the operative phrase there. My younger brother nursed a Sunbeam Rapier with serious fuel-system problems across the Sahara desert. I’m not in his league. (For that matter, my youngest brother has a successful metal band and a girlfriend who has posed in Playboy. I’m not in his league, either). UPDATE: Reader Bill Long writes: “I hope the post about not being in the same league as your brother whose girlfriend posed for Playboy doesn’t get you into trouble with your wife. :-)” No, she’s more the Penthouse type.

UPDATE: Reader John Bruce warns not to be too quick to shut off the gas:

Your reader Eric Rapp’s comment on the need for a gas valve wrench in Los Angeles needs a caveat. If you turn off your gas as a result of an earthquake tremblor (and fairly minor ones can be frightening), you may put yourself in the position of doing without hot water or a stove for an extended period, assuming your hot water heater and appliances run on gas and have old-style pilots.

Based on experience in the 1971 and 1994 quakes, actual breaks in home gas lines are pretty rare, and you can tell if you have one by hissing and a bad smell. If that’s the case, definitely turn off the gas outside. But if you panic like many folks in a quake, turn it off unnecessarily, and don’t know how to relight your pilots (often takes a very long match or a special dohickey), you may have to wait a week or more for the gas man to make it to your place and do the relight — as you reflect on the virtues of hot water and hot food.

One problem in the 1994 quake was local “heroes” who quickly ran up and down the block turning off folks’ gas FOR them. Dumb guys come in all shapes, sizes, and circumstances.

Yeah, it’s a mistake to turn it off unless you have good reason to suspect a leak.

UPDATE: Still more plumbing tales of woe from my Spoonerist alter-ego. And there’s even a Gray Davis corruption scandal angle.

WALTER SHAPIRO says we’re way too complacent about the possiblity of terrorist attacks in the United States.

I think he’s right. But I also think that most Americans think, as I do, that the best way to protect against terrorism is to kill or (where possible) neutralize terrorists and their supporters before they leave home. And we’ve made a good start on that road, though we have much more work to do.

UNREMITTING VERSE deserves more links, according to Bill Quick.

BINGE HYSTERIA: Dave Kopel points out that today’s Senate hearings on college binge drinking are a waste of time and money. Well, he says it better than that:

Not that Congress has any legitimate constitutional power over the subject — as the Twenty-first Amendment (repealing the grant of Congressional power over alcohol) makes clear. The witnesses consist exclusively of supporters and instigators of the current moral panic about college drinking. The hearing is obviously a platform for expanding federal pork to pay for more “counselors” and other neo-prohibitionist busybodies on college campuses. The alleged statistics about “college binge drinking” are, as I detailed, in a Rocky Mountain News column, utterly bogus. Among other flaws, these statistics define “binge drinking” in such an absurdly broad way as to encompass people who aren’t legally intoxicated or impaired. By the neo-prohibitionist definition, a woman who attends a three-hour Passover Seder and drinks the ritual Four Cups of wine is a “binge drinker.” The real binging problem involves power-intoxicated bureaucrats and politicians who can’t resist the temptation to intrude themselves into matters which, for federal officials, are none of their business.

I wish I could buy Dave a beer.

BRENDAN O’NEILL says it’s not a war for oil.

He’s right. His reasoning, however, reminds me of when some reporter asked Grant Gilmore if the Yale Law School faculty was factionalized. Oh, not at all, he said. We’re not nearly well-organized enough to form factions.

STEVE CHAPMAN — AKA DADDY WARBLOGS is pretty ticked off at the Blogosphere (including me) for not rising to Robert Fisk’s defense. (No, there’s no irony here — read his post and scroll up to read a followup).

I certainly agree with Chapman that it’s bad to threaten people for their speech. Perhaps it’s because I don’t take actors seriously, but I didn’t take John Malkovich’s statement any more seriously as a threat than I took Alec Baldwin’s comments about leaving the United States if Bush were elected seriously as a promise. I’d certainly oppose Fisk’s being silenced, but — leaving aside Malkovich’s comments — he’s mostly being ridiculed. It’s true, as Chapman says, that my commentary on Fisk’s piece didn’t go into much detail. But, honestly, can you really accuse the blogosphere of not dissecting Fisk’s statements thoroughly enough? At some point, it ceases being worth the trouble. What struck me about Fisk’s piece was the whining self-pity, and that’s what I was responding to. And I think it’s a bit over the top to say that having my family killed would be trivial by comparison to 9/11, so it’s wrong for me to suggest that nasty email is trivial. I’m sure that Chapman doesn’t mean his language as a threat to silence me. And I don’t think the blogosphere’s comments about Fisk fall into that category either. Nor, for that matter, do I think that Malkovich’s comments qualify as a threat, any more than Jane Fonda’s remarks about wishing that she had a B-52 in her sights mean that she planned to come back to America and murder servicemen. He’s an actor, for chrissake and they tend to be overdramatic.

UPDATE: Reader Ross Fitzgibbon provides some context on the Malkovich threat:

On a Station in Britain called Five Live, [Fisk] was basically repeating what he said in that column you linked to the other day, ie poor him, nasty John Malkovich, nasty Americans, Brave little Fisky. Anyhow after one of the studio guests whose name escapes me accused malkovich of inciting racial hatred, (Robert Fisk counts as a race?!), and Fisk had left, a student who was at the Cambridge Union address where J.M. made his comments called in with the true story.

Apparently in a Q&A session after [Malkovich’s] talk an audience member asked whom he would most like to fight to the death, to which JM replied Fisk or George alloway. This is the death threat that Fisk was blubbing about. The presenters sounded suprised by this as they had only heard the version that Fisk has been pumping out. Still something struck me, [Fisk] made the point that the “Afghan refugees whose families had been killed by US bombing” who attacked him were justified because they thought he was American. Um is that not inciting violence against Americans?

Sounds like it to me, but I don’t pretend to be objective where Fisk is concerned. Or at least, my judgment of any statement he makes is colored by my knowledge of the others he’s made.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Bill Quick responds to some comments Chapman made about his post. I should stress that I think Chapman’s a smart, decent guy. Which is what makes him worth responding to.

H.D. MILLER compares David Duke’s statements about the mideast, etc., with those of Noam Chomsky and Ted Rall. Hmm. You know, you never see those guys photographed together. . . .

DAVID POLAND suggests that the solution to Rolling Stone’s malaise is to quit working so hard to put T&A on the cover and get some great writers like Andrew Sullivan. Not a bad idea. I’d add my faves Welch & Layne to the list of suggestions. Any other modern gonzo journalism types that RS should hire? Send me your suggestions. Note: Don’t bother sending Fisk & Pilger.

YOU DON’T HEAR MUCH about the fact that Pim Fortuyn’s successor is black. I wonder why?

UPDATE: Oops. They replaced him with someone else last week. In The Prowler’s defense, and mine, Valera still shows as the number 2 guy on the party website. Thanks to Atrios for emailing the correction. Hey, I don’t guarantee not to make mistakes — just to fix ’em when I discover ’em.

I DON’T WANT JAMES LILEKS TO FEEL BAD. SO HERE. But I have to say that I think people are making too much of this stuff. I mean, if Lileks can succumb, who among us is safe?

COLONIZING MARS: What about the environmental impact statement? My TechCentralStation column for this week is up.

DANIEL SILLIMAN SAYS that Howell Raines’ embargo on Andrew Sullivan is really a tribute to the power of the Blogosphere:

Anybody can take on the Times, many have done it in all sorts of media, the significance is in the violent reaction. The New York Times actually cares what Andrew Sullivan says about it. Sullivan—little Sullivan with his daily ramblings on his funny media and his beagle and his personal life on the page and his strange diversions into circumcision and just weird topics—is a player with enough weight to concern the New York Times.

Interesting point.

FISKING OF THE DAY: Howard Owens identifies another silly, anti-American British journalist. No car companies left in Britain, but they’ve got a very strong position in the anti-American Twit market.

INSTA-POWER EXTENDS TO HARDWARE: Well, sort of. Reader Mark Cridland writes:

This evening I purchased an emergency gas/water valve shutoff “tool.” It’s not a $3.99 wrench, but a T-shaped metallic and rubber-encrusted piece with several mysterious extrusions. Here in LA, it cost nine dollars at a Home Depot outlet. Did you ever describe the crisis that compelled you to suggest this? I’m a new homeowner and I trust your judgment about many things, but the triggering anecdote might have been missed in your daily flurry of postings.

You know, I posted the advice to buy one of those but I don’t think I ever followed it up. I guess I was just trying to forget.

Well, Mark, as a new homeowner you should know that water where there shouldn’t be water is one of the homeowner’s bigger nightmares. In my case, it started dripping out of the breakfast nook’s ceiling, rather suddenly and accompanied by an ominous bulge in the paint and sheetrock. Because of the location, I was pretty sure it was a leaking supply pipe. So I shut off the water to the house and called Advance Plumbing (yeah, like that helps all of you — but they’re honest and good and fast).

It turned out to be a leaking toilet. The water was running down the back of the tank and into the floor, where you wouldn’t see it unless you got a flashlight and looked closely. It then apparently followed the line of the supply pipe for several feet before emerging into (and from) the ceiling above the breakfast nook. So I could have solved the problem by just shutting off the valves at the toilet. But there was wet carpet on the 2d floor directly above the leaky ceiling, which made me assume the leak was in the pipe. I should have known better — water leaks often appear at some remove from the actual source of the water. Had I checked more thoroughly, I wouldn’t have needed to turn off the water to the house.

But on the other hand, there’s something to be said for turning off the water fast when it’s emerging from your ceiling, rather than poking around in an effort to solve the mystery while it’s still flowing.

But if you’ve got a burst pipe (and a really bad one can collapse a ceiling, or blow out a wall, and do considerable damage in very short order) you’ll want to turn off the water to your house yourself, and you won’t want to wait an hour for a plumber or some guy from the water company to do it. And that goes triple for gas. Take a few minutes to find out where you do the shutoff, and to be sure your tool fits where you’ll actually have to use it. Sooner or later, sad to say, you’ll probably need to know this.

Oh, and Home Depot is fine, but that price difference between them and Harbor Freight is pretty much standard. There’s a several-acre (and I don’t exaggerate) Harbor Freight place here, but they’re mostly mail-order. (I think the only other one is in Camarillo). Warning: If you get their catalog, you’ll find all sorts of tools you need. And they’re so cheap it’s easy to convince yourself to buy them.

POOR AL GORE. He’s getting savaged by both Andrew Sullivan and TAPPED for his remarks about George Bush’s use of a presidential photo in fundraising.

Well, actually, “savaged,” isn’t really the right word. How about “called even lamer than usual.” Gore just tries too hard. I mean, too hard.

I THINK THAT JOSH MARSHALL is wrong about this. After all, I’m not Jewish.

THE MAN FROM HOPE: William Sulik has some thoughts on judicial confirmations, racism (well, that’s what some people would call it), and the Senate Judiciary Committee.

HOW RECORDS FLOP: even when they’re great.