MAYBE JONATHAN CHAIT IS RIGHT: It looks like Delaware really is the root of all evil. At least, the notion of making people get out of their cars to be photographed because they might someday be criminals strikes me as evil.

JOEL MOWBRAY COMPARES STEVEN HATFILL to Richard Jewell.

I’m an agnostic on the merits. Jewell was innocent. Hatfill might be, but he might not be. There certainly seems to be enough evidence to justify interest in him. But why all the leaks? There seem to be just two explanations, both bad:

(1) The folks at Justice are deliberately leaking stuff to try to put pressure on Hatfill. (This seems to be a pattern, though not a very successful one judging by some other recent high-profile cases). Or,

(2) The leaks aren’t deliberate, the Justice Department is just full of people who can’t keep their mouths shut, even on major case with national-security implications.

Note that even if Hatfill turns out to be guilty, these things still reflect badly on Justice. The problem predates Ashcroft, of course, but he certainly hasn’t done anything to make it go away.

UPDATE: Rand Simberg emails with these comments:

There’s a third explanation. It is deliberate, and it’s grandstanding (including by Ashcroft) to make it look like they’ve got a suspect in their sights, to dispel criticism that they aren’t on the case (and the fact that they seem to be going out of their way to avoid coming to the conclusion that it might have middle eastern connections, kind of like the OKC investigation).

This is the same kind of chest-thumping stupidity that caused Waco. I bitched about it yesterday, calling (certainly futilely) for Bush to disband the FBI in its present form, and to can Ashcroft, Tenet, Mueller and Mineta, because it’s totally keystone cops at the agencies that are supposed to be protecting us.

Well, maybe not totally, but their response has been pretty unimpressive overall.

HEY, I’M OFFICIALLY A CYBERJOURNALIST! It says so right on CyberJournalist.Net, and I don’t see how you could get more official than that.

IT’S AN ALTERMAN VS. COCKBURN SMACKDOWN — and Joe Stalin takes some lumps, too.

IT’S NO FUN TO BE AN Arab fashion designer. This sounds like it’s leading to a joke, but it’s not really funny.

THE VATICAN IS CRITICIZED for a policy of waffling appeasement. There’s a nice painting by Raphael, too.

JUSTIN WEITZ HAS POSTED an open letter to human rights organizations about Ikhlas Khouli, the Palestinian mother who was “executed” for alleged collaboration with Israel.

UPDATE: Look at the pictures here, too.

MCAFRICA UPDATE: Al Barger is lobbying McDonald’s to bring the McAfrica to America. And he wants you to help.

RON BAILEY says that the road to Johannesburg is paved with good intentions, but I think he’s being too charitable.

JUST HAD THE FIRST MEETING of my National Security Law seminar. I’m using this casebook as my main text; the bad news is I just got my copy a week ago, the good news is that it’s very up to date, since it just came out. The first session — which in a seminar is as much about getting acquainted and establishing the chemistry as about substance — featured a nice discussion about distinguishing terrorism from war in general, and about ways in which the law might have to change to accommodate more decentralized approaches to war. (One student, with a special-forces background, is interested in applying letters of marque and reprisal as a model, which should be interesting).

I’ve never taught this course before, though I touch on some of the issues in other courses I teach, and I have some small amount of practical experience in the area. It should be fun.

SEKIMORI STRIKES AGAIN!

Their hegemony over the Blogosphere is causing EU representatives to mutter about the need for countervailing power in the area of design.

MELISSA SCHWARTZ loves the new Wilco movie. Visit her site and she’ll tell you why.

LOTS OF PAKISTAN OBSERVATIONS, most of them depressing, at StrategyPage. Excerpt:

Having lost four wars with India, Pakistan shifted to irregular warfare over 20 years ago. Pakistan never admitted this, but the evidence has built up over the years. ISI (Interservice Intelligence, sort of a military CIA) organized and supervised this effort. The US got to know ISI during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. ISI organized the Afghan irregular fighters in northwest Pakistan and got along just fine with the CIA. But ISI already had networks of agents in India, where they inspired and supported several separatist groups (India contains dozens of ethnic groups that would rather not be part of India.) Except for radical Sikhs, and a few other lesser efforts, none of this came to much. The exception was Kashmir, where the local Moslems were eager, but vastly outnumbered by police and soldiers. So ISI took to training non-Kashmiris in camps in Pakistani Kashmir for irregular warfare and terrorism in Indian Kashmir.

I still think that Musharraf is probably acting in good faith. The question is whether he’s really in charge of his own country.

JUST NOTICED THAT TCS HAS A SPECIAL JOHANNESBURG PAGE with links to resources, etc.

THE MODERN UNIVERSITY: A ONE-PARTY STATE?

WELL, HERE’S A SUCCESS STORY FOR HOMELAND SECURITY.

I’m still waiting for someone to write that we need to understand the hopelessness and desperation that lead people to contemplate such horrific acts, though.

NEW YORK TIMES- BASHING is becoming an international sport, as Barbara Amiel takes the Times to task over its misrepresentation of Henry Kissinger’s views and its distortions on a wide variety of other subjects. Meanwhile, Mickey Kaus asks if the Times would be facing these embarrassments had Bill Keller gotten the top job in place of the embattled Howell Raines, while TAPPED does a little Times-bashing of its own — all while protesting, Marc Antony-like, its love for the paper.

Well, at least Raines has people talking about the Times!

THIS “GLOBAL POLL” on the environment seems pretty lame to me. Not only is it slanted, but there’s no security, meaning that people can vote repeatedly and falsify their origins.

UPDATE: A reader writes:

Did you notice that the question near the end, asking the poll-taker’s religion, listed in order:

Muslim

Christian

Hindu

Buddhist

And most significantly, what is missing? Jewish.

And it’s affiliated with the UN crowd. Go figure.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Several readers write with comments echoing this one:

I agree that the poll is pretty lame — several of the questions asked you to make choices that were each too extreme.

However, your comment on the religion question is misleading. The fifth choice is “other”. Given the small percentage of the global population that is Jewish, I don’t believe that this is an unusual option. Otherwise, why not include Sikhs, which I believe has almost twice as many adherents as Judaism.

Actually the largest group that is left out are those who are secular or have no particular religious affiliation. I wonder what that means?

Fair enough.

STATS: Friday’s anticlimax on the Bellesiles affair has slowed the rate of increase, but Jim Lindgren’s article on the errors in Michael Bellesiles’ Arming America has now racked up an impressive 82,843 downloads. That’s up from 74,584 on Friday morning. By way of comparison, the dead-tree circulation of the Yale Law Journal, where Lindgren’s piece appears, is just over 3,300.

OKAY, BUT WHAT IF THE FIRST TIME IS FARCE? Cynthia McKinney is now considering a Senate run, according to Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO TODD STEED, whose work with such bands as Apelife, Smokin’ Dave and the Premo Dopes, and The Opposable Thumbs hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. (Though he has been mentioned in the same sentence as Chet Atkins, the Everly Brothers, and R.B. Morris.)

Plus, is there a cooler name for a record label than “Disgraceland Records?”

SORRY ABOUT THE BRIEF OUTAGE: The server had to go down for a RAM upgrade. In a possibly-unrelated development, this month’s traffic has already surpassed the entire month of July.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE GURU RAY KURZWEIL has a review of the movie Simone. He doesn’t like it much, either as cinema or as a foretaste of coming technology (though he found it “enjoyable” on a superficial level).

Since Kurzweil has done more or less what the movie purports to describe, creating a female AI personality, his perspectives are rather interesting. And you have to love the term “synthespian.”

SURPRISE: Delegates at the Earth Summit don’t want the Mugabe protests to overshadow its main purpose, which is, apparently, criticizing the United States:

The head of the British delegation, the Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett, yesterday showed growing frustration with American intransigence, which could derail the summit. . . .

Mrs Beckett also insisted that it would be a disaster if the delegates let the growing row with Zimbabwe’s President, Robert Mugabe, to overshadow the summit.

Feh. Here’s a more constructive take.

SADDAM AND PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY: Some sobering thoughts.