THE TWO-CULTURES SPLIT IS HEALING: My TechCentralStation column is up.

SPOONS DECODES THE HEADLINES. I think he’s got it.

TONY BLAIR has it right:

“Some of what I read — I mean, let’s not beat around the bush — a lot of it is just straightforward anti-Americanism.”

Bravo to Blair for knowing what his opposition is all about.

MORE FBI RECRUITMENT PROBLEMS: I mentioned below that the FBI is having problems recruiting people with foreign-language skills. It’s also having trouble recruiting people with computer skills, for somewhat similar reasons. This has troubling implications for the FBI’s future as a lead antiterrorism agency.

Either the FBI needs to address its hiring and retention problems, or we need to find (or create) another agency to handle antiterrorism.

UPDATE: In response to this post and the earlier one, a reader from the intelligence community writes:

Agree that the minor drug usage you and others cite is a silly reason to dismiss an FBI applicant during a national emergency.

Their narrow-mindedness may not, however, totally explain the shortage. I’d think the largest source of language-trained young (under 37) for the FBI (and other govt agencies) is former military linguists. With the intelligence organizations (biggest users) having been largely pared down to about half their former size since 1991, we don’t produce near the number of linguists that we once did therefore the pool of available trained linguists (with security background checks) for the FBI would also be smaller. Even those who got out during the draw-down would have been out long enough now that they’d need new security checks to get back to work in the classified world if the FBI comes calling. That’s forced them to go public with recruiting but with their moral standards, are coming up short on numbers.

A solution, however, would be to language train existing FBI agents. When I attended Defense Language Institute (DLI) in Monterey, CA, I went through Russian with 5 FBI officers (concern then was Russian mafia). If the FBI is really interested in getting more agents up to speed linguistically, they could increase the flow of already-hired (and security-cleared) agents through DLI. If counter-terrorism is indeed their #1 priority and arab-speakers are the #1 threat, shouldn’t we be able to pull some trained agents away from former #1 efforts to focus on Middle East language study?

Yes, that’s a bit of a long pipeline (12-13 months for arabic) but if they had gotten started in Oct 01, they’d almost be there by now!

Excellent point. And maybe they’re doing that, but if they are it hasn’t gotten any coverage that I’ve seen.

HUMAN SHIELDS FOR SADDAM? I rather doubt that’s how the Iraq Peace Team would view itself, but . . . .

HENRY COPELAND IS evangelizing for professional blogging at Blogads.Org. Bill Quick is the pioneer, which is fitting since he’s the guy who coined the term “Blogosphere” to begin with.

THERE’S AN INTERESTING DISCUSSION GOING ON at Slate concerning weblogs.

TAPPED SAYS that Bush may be better off without control of Congress:

And even worse, unless the GOP won a working majority in the Senate (about 55 votes), he would have the expectations accompanying a unified government without a real ability to move legislation through the Senate. Smart Republicans remember the lesson of Bill Clinton’s first two years in office — the worst years of his presidency, despite his party’s control of Congress.

Here, meanwhile, is InstaPundit in May of 2001 (before the Blog, in Slate’s “The Fray”):

With Jeffords a Dem, Bush will be able to blame any legislative failures on the Democratic Senate. Also, the partisan atmosphere that results will — if the White House spins it right — look like it’s the Democrats’ fault. Since Americans (at the moment) hate partisan rancor, that will be to Bush’s advantage.

On the other hand, failing to produce lots of big wins with control of the House and Senate would have been unforgivable for Bush, even though his control of the Senate was always notional.

Advantage: InstaPundit!

SUMAN PALIT HAS SOME THOUGHTS on the causes and cures of government corruption in India.

ARGENTINA: A steady stream of bad news.

SOUNDS LIKE Nicholas Kristof has been listening to the Militia again.

THE ISLAMISTS ARE HOLDING SEMINARS to figure out why we hate them, and what to do about it, according to Bill Herbert. No, really.

EUGENE VOLOKH IS DEBUNKING GARRY WILLS’ rather odd view of the Second Amendment. Eugene says that he hasn’t read Wills’ entire book A Necessary Evil, just the Second Amendment section.

I have read the entire thing, and I have to say that Wills could have dedicated his book as Le Corbusier once did: “To Authority.” As Volokh puts it, with masterful understatement: “Quite remarkable.”

ANOTHER ONE BACK FROM HIATUS: Best of the Web has returned, tanned, rested, and, well, blogging up a storm. And Virginia Postrel says she’ll be back tonight or tomorrow. Pretty much the whole gang’s back in the saddle now, so I guess it’s okay to start the war. . . .

TALKLEFT NOTES FBI PROBLEMS operating overseas and adds:

But we also wonder what is taking the FBI so long to hire and train new multi-lingual agents. Surely there is a pool of young men and women in this country with these skills. We’d bet large numbers of them have applied. We wonder how many of their applications are being held up in red tape and why it takes so long for applications to be approved. Does anyone have a good answer?

Well, here’s one answer, anyway.

STRATEGYPAGE HAS A ROUNDUP of published scuttlebutt concerning U.S. war (and post-war) plans in Iraq. Interesting stuff, though its reliability is, er, uncertain.

FAREED ZAKARIA argues that Islamic fundamentalism is on the ropes:

The youth of the 1970s and 1980s, who came from villages into cities and took up Islam as a security blanket, are passing into middle age. The new generation is just as angry, rebellious and bitter. But today’s youth grew up in cities and towns, watch Western television shows, buy consumer products and have relatives living in the West. The Taliban holds no allure for them. Most ordinary people have realized that Islamic fundamentalism has no real answers to the problems of the modern world; it has only fantasies. They don’t want to replace Western modernity; they want to combine it with Islam.

It sounds like what the Islamic world needs is someone who can present the scary new stuff in a way that’s not too threatening — sort of the function served by Norman Vincent Peale-style Christianity in the mid-20th Century. Or, heck, maybe what we need is an Arab Elvis.

UPDATE: More support for the Elvis theory can be found here:

Not that many young Iranians were there to hear the Ayatollah’s words. Less than 1.4 % of the population ever bothers to attend Friday prayers, according to Iran’s ministry of culture and guidance.

“No one wants the mullahs, not even Khatami, who no longer seems to have any power,” said Farideh, a medical student at the university, as she tottered down Val-i-Asr street in a pair of platform heels.

Clearly taking delicious delight in displaying as much hair as possible from beneath her headscarf, she added: “A lot of us dream of moving to the USA”. . . .

“In Iran,” said one British-educated businessmen, as we sipped cocktails and danced to Hotel California at his home, “we do everything – sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. It’s just that we do it behind closed doors.” . . .

“No one is saying it out loud, but the secret hope of many Iranians is that if the US army takes neighbouring Iraq, it will come and straighten out this place as well.” For young Iranians, he said, the prospect of a US invasion was “nothing short of liberating”.

More support for the theory that the cure for fundamentalism is to put the fundamentalists in charge. It’s a case of how are you going to keep ’em on the farm — after they’ve seen the farm.

AIMEE DEEP SAYS DRUDGE HAS BEEN DUPED by reports that the next Lord of the Rings movie is being traded online.

PROBLEMS WITH THE SECRET SERVICE have been a long-term InstaPundit theme. More recently, U.S. News has been on this story, too, with a series of reports outlining various failings of personnel and management. Here’s the latest. Excerpt:

Morale in the service is plummeting, many agents say, in part because of a widely perceived double standard. Agents who enjoy close relationships with Secret Service executives in Washington are given more favorable assignments and other treatment than those who don’t, many in the service say. In the sometimes arcane parlance of the Secret Service, these agents have what is known as a “hook” with headquarters. The Secret Service has also had long-standing management difficulties with its Uniformed Division, the officers and technicians who are at the front line of defense at the White House and at foreign missions. They include members of the elite Counter Sniper teams, the Emergency Response Team, and the K-9 bomb squad units. Many of these officers complain of being treated as second-class citizens. . . .

The story is sobering. Question: If the Secret Service can’t protect the White House adequately, why should we think a Department of Homeland Security can protect the whole nation? And if, as earlier incidents suggest, the Secret Service can’t do its job with a proper attitude regarding individual rights, how can we trust less-elite entities?

A WEBSITE BROUGHT DOWN by a DOS attack brings a plea for help, and some good advice for bloggers about bandwidth limits and charges from MeanDean.

NORWEGIAN BLOGGER VEGARD VALBERG is “>bearish on the European Union’s future.

THIS WASHINGTON POST PIECE on the Transportation Security Administration lays most of the blame for its problems on departed head John Magaw. I’m no fan of Magaw’s, but blaming him seems awfully, well, convenient. Gary Leff agrees, and has a lot more to say on the subject.

THIS AMERICAN LAWYER profile of yours truly is pretty good. But — and this isn’t the fault of Jeffery Knight, who wrote it — it also shows how journalistic conventions can give the wrong impression.

The piece says that I’m “blogger royalty.” That’s an obvious takeoff from the term “rock royalty,” but, um, there are differences. My youngest brother, who is only a part of the rock minor nobility (his band, Copper, just opened for Blues Traveler in D.C.) gets rather a lot more perks than I do. Heck, he even makes more money at it.

Nobody surpasses me in thinking that weblogs are cool, but they’re a pretty small part of the world, all things considered. When bloggers can turn out thousands of screaming fans in a strange town, well, that’ll be . . . . never, probably.

ANDREW SULLIVAN is back from hiatus, with posts on everything from Administration disarray to an extensive list of new bloggers he likes (he’s praising Alterman — no, really!). Yeah, I know this is two Sullivan posts in a row — but the other one’s a column and it occurred to me that people might not notice his blog’s being updated.

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg says that Sullivan is overly blogophilic. Or is it not blogophilic enough? Speaking as a true “maverick blogger,” with absolutely no big-bucks big-media affiliation, I guess I have to endorse Jonah’s distinction between blogging and maverickdom. Maverickhood?

ANDREW SULLIVAN writes that The New York Times has taken over the Democrats’ role as the organized opposition.