TELFORD WORK (who is a professor of Religious Studies) has a lengthy and thoughtful commentary on Stanley Hauerwas’ antiwar remarks. Excerpt:

In the form bloggers are reading them, Stanley’s remarks are just going to make it harder than ever for both Christians and non-Christians to see that. He went and pulled a Jerry Falwell, a Barbara Kingsolver. Now liberals, conservatives, and libertarians alike will be all the more likely to confuse Church pacifism (which Stanley champions) with sixties-style new left national pacifism (which he doesn’t). Reinhold and H. Richard Niebuhr will look even more like the sober, responsible public theologians, and their detractors will look even more like wackos. First Things will feel all the more vindicated. . . .

But explanations are not excuses. It is irresponsible to lob rhetorical grenades into a social discourse already this volatile. I know Stanley, O’Neill, and the NCR are just trying to get people to examine their commitments in light of the unqualified lordship of Jesus Christ. That is already essential – and all the more essential in times of emergency. There are better ways to do it. People are now listening who weren’t listening before. If speakers don’t show them extra consideration, they are going to stop listening.

There’s much more to this than my excerpt captures. Read the whole thing.

DAVE TEPPER REPORTS that spammers are using blog domains. So if you get an email from my domain offering to enlarge your penis or sell you discount toner cartridges, you can disregard it. It’s not from me.

He’s also tracked down at least one of the offenders, and is promising vengeance. It’s happened to Avedon Carol and Mac Thomason as well, apparently.

UPDATE: Reader Steven Skubinna writes:

All I gotta say is, thanks for the heads up. Because I would have trusted you. A guaranteed Instapundit enhanced penis would have got my credit card number, for sure. Good thing you were proactive in safeguarding your credibility.

I suppose you aren’t going to be recommending barnyard sex sites as well, huh? And if your wife e-mails me about Nigerian bank accounts I can disregard that too?

Well, the size of my penis is a major topic of discussion on certain websites, but I’m not into peddling products. As for my wife — I advise you to do whatever she says, without any backtalk. It’s safer that way.

IS A COMPANY SCREWING YOU OVER ON YOUR BILL? Could mean it’s on the verge of bankruptcy!

STRATFOR agrees that Bush is throwing down the gauntlet with the Saudis:

Bush in effect is washing his hands of trying to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Washington’s challenge, however, is not aimed at the Palestinians but at the country that pushed for greater U.S. involvement in the peace process: Saudi Arabia. Riyadh tried to shift U.S. attention from its war against al Qaeda by making resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a key prerequisite for Saudi cooperation on hunting Osama bin Laden’s associates and financiers. Bush’s speech warns the Saudis that Israel and the Palestinians will no longer serve as a distraction.

This means that a Saudi-U.S. confrontation may be on the horizon. By no longer taking responsibility for the Palestinians, Washington is affirming its goal of destroying al Qaeda. To do this, it must strike at the network’s center of gravity: Saudi Arabia. In response, the oil-rich kingdom will now seek to create alliances to resist American pressure. Worried about U.S. military deployments in Yemen and the surrounding Gulf states and unable to trust U.S. ally Jordan, Riyadh likely will move to strengthen ties with the two countries bent on resisting U.S. dominance: Iran and Iraq.

That seems like a loser’s game, but since the Sauds are constitutionally unable to quit backing Islamist terror, they don’t have any other cards to play.

Also, if you believe (as many bloggers do) that the Administration was using the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation as a distraction tool while the military buildup took place, this probably means that the buildup is more or less over and that more serious action is imminent.

JIM HENLEY WRITES that he’d rather see the occasional American city nuked than give up on freedom and establish a police state.

I agree with this, actually: if you’re willing to make sacrifices for freedom, then it follows logically once you set up the choice. But I don’t really see this as the choice. (Henley also quotes another writer as saying that democracy won’t last out the century — but that’s a pretty presumptuous statement to make in the year ’02). If you buy the whole unstoppable-slippery-slope-to-tyranny worldview then, sure, you’ve got a problem. But if that worldview were true, the Alien and Sedition Acts would never have been repealed, slavery never would have ended — and for that matter, neither would Prohibition, or the draft.

That doesn’t mean that Henley’s worries are entirely misplaced, only that I don’t see things as being quite that grim. My nightmare scenario, in fact, is one in which the “war on terror” starts looking like the “war on drugs.” Which is why I’m in favor of invading Iraq, giving the al-Sauds the boot, and in general fighting a genuine war rather than settling into long-term chronic-illness mode. The bureaucrats naturally favor the latter, as it involves less accountability (you can’t really “lose” a “war on” as opposed to a “war” — you just need more money!) and long-term funding. But in opposing honest-to-goodness war in favor of law-enforcement techniques, you make the police-state aspects of a “war on” (like the War On Drugs) far more likely to materialize.

MY TECHCENTRALSTATION COLUMN is up. I swear I didn’t know about Microsoft’s “Palladium” initiative when I wrote it, but Palladium seems to be pretty close to what I was warning about. The Register seems to agree.

TODAY’S JIM DOERTY AWARD FOR CONSTITUTIONALLY CLUELESS JUDGING GOES TO Denver municipal judge Robert L. Patterson for this statement to a lawyer in a civil rights case:

You are not to reference the Constitution in these proceedings. You will not address it in voir dire, you will not address it in your opening remarks, you will not ask any questions about the Constitution when you summon your witnesses, and you will not talk about the Constitution when you give your closing arguments.

Jeez.

UPDATE: NZ Bear emails that he’s not sure the quote from the judge is accurate: he says he seems to recall the judge denies saying this, but he can’t find the source. I’ll look into it, but until then you should regard this as unverified.

TRIFECTA UPDATE: RonK has the explanation. At least, I think he’s right here.

SYRIA IS FEELING THE PRESSURE and launching a new diplomatic initiative.

EURO-WEENIE UPDATE: Academics fired for being Israeli.

ANDREW SULLIVAN has his reader survey results so far online, continuously updated. Pretty interesting. As I suspected, blog readers have pretty impressive demographics.

ACCORDING TO THIS REPORT, a Palestinian suicide attack on Israeli nuclear-weapons facilities was thwarted.

MORE BAD NEWS FROM ALGERIA. The reader who sent it notes: “If this was Atlanta this would be huge. but its Algeria, and nobody cares.

Maybe Algeria, Sudan, and Yemen can form the ‘axis of I-dont-care’.”

SOUTER / BELLESILES UPDATE: The Tom Davies article on Souter’s historical dishonesty that I mentioned yesterday is now available on the web in PDF form.

SORRY: The post on women, men and college will have to wait until tomorrow. I’ve just sent my Fox column off, and my RSI is acting up. I’m giving my tendons a break. See you tomorrow.

SOME NICE PERSPECTIVE from Justin Sodano:

Yes, blogging’s more popular than ever. Yes, some of you are getting lots and lots of attention (even me, for a brief period).

But everyone needs to calm down, take a step back, and realize that we are all just typing words into a computer. We’re not saving the world. We’re not fighting off the Middle Eastern scum. We’re not even donning gear and protecting our families. We’re just writing. I’m sorry, it’s no more than that, whether you’re getting 30 hits per day or 30,000.

Yep. Don’t get me wrong — I love the Blogosphere, and I love writing. But that’s what it is, for better and for worse. Writing. Not even words on paper. Pixels on a screen.

UPDATE: Reader Barnaby Pape says I’m being overly reductionist: “Yep, just words. And ideas are just millions of electro-chemical reactions navigating synapses. Yep, can’t much come of those, nothin’ significant there….wonder what’s in the fridge?” Heh. But I think my meaning was clear.

NOT GRASSROOTS, BUT ASTROTURF: Bill Quick has identified some near-identical letters to the editor opposing an invasion of Iraq. So who’s behind this? Some sleazeball PR firm in the pay of Saddam Hussein? Or a domestic political outfit?

UPDATE: As the comments below Bill’s post show, the source seems to be a Usenet posting sent to a lot of green and Democratic groups, from someone named Eli Pariser at Moveon.org.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Now Quick has more information on his page, including a list of Moveon.org donors.

Who says bloggers don’t do original reporting?

MATT WELCH takes on another lame newspaper piece on blogging, this one by Mike Cassidy of the Mercury News. Be sure to read the comments, too. Summary: “This type of column — the ‘I turned my back on a not-very-new trend of specific interest to my readers, so now, instead of catching up, I’m going to make fun of it’ piece — is a sub-category just dominated by monopolist daily newspapers.”

HERE’S A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR story on the Nigerian video industry, which is going great guns. (Actually, a member of my extended family, which includes Nigerians in Lagos, is working in that industry now). Best quote:

“In the old days, traveling theaters used to put on shows about the God of Thunder, Ogun – that was nice,” says Iyabo Olowokande, head of the Lagos branch of the Nigerian Film Cooperation. “But then we discovered the movies.”

The story says that Nigeria is nipping at Hollywood’s heels. It would be more accurate, though, would to say that it’s nipping at Bollywood’s heels. Indian films, which — by volume at least — ruled the Nigerian market are now facing a lot of domestic competition.

WILLIAM JEFFERSON ASHCROFT: Eugene Volokh says that what Ashcroft told Congress about dissent aiding terrorists isn’t that different from what Clinton said in 1996 — but the reaction is.

YES, I know I’ve just linked to IsntaPundit, InstaPandit, and IndePundit. I’m just as bemused by this as you are.

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll says I should also mention PoohPundit here. I think I already did a month or so ago, but okay. It is an InstaPundit parody site, though the name isn’t as close as those others. On the other hand, it does claim to be “The New York Times of the Bearbloggers,” which is pretty cool.

INSTAPANDIT says I’m wrong about colleges being unfriendly to males. His comments appear to have been posted before I added the comments from reader Jennifer Fuller, below.

UPDATE: Oh, and I just noticed this post by Kevin Deenihan criticizing those who stereotype Greeks. (He means frat-Greeks, not Greece-Greeks).

ISNTAPUNDIT isn’t happy with WTC replacement plans.

THE INDEPUNDIT says we’re winning and Al Qaeda is losing.

AARON BERGMAN has been sending me email telling me I’m wrong for months. Now he’s got his own blog so he can do it wholesale instead of retail.