ERIC S. RAYMOND now has a weblog of his own. I’ll be he didn’t hear about Blogger on Vatican radio, though.

THE COLLAPSE OF FREE TRADE: Brink Lindsey is damned unhappy. And he should be.

MICKEY KAUS says that Andrew Sullivan is winning the PR war with Howell Raines. He then shows his Sullivan-like independence from his employer by dissing Windows XP.

“THE TYRANNY OF THE TWIT,” sets out some universal rules for Web interaction. Is the blog world heading that way, too? Maybe. But the good thing about blogs is, you don’t have to read the ones by twits.

SOME INTERESTING COMMENTS ON FUKUYAMA from my Libby-the-Kid alter ego. Or something like that.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER: Dawson, whose site used to do weird stuff to my browser but doesn’t anymore, has a lovely juxtaposition of photos. Well, maybe “lovely” isn’t quite the right word.

HERE’S A NEW BLOG by a Catholic priest in Boston who’s sharing his experiences in the middle of a godawful mess. The best thing (scroll all the way down) — he started it after hearing about Blogger on Vatican radio the night before. (Via Katie Granju).

JOSH TREVINO joins the blogger chorus Fisking Matthew Engel’s Second Amendment piece in The Guardian.

UPDATE: Emily Jones joins in too, and pens a mock-American Journo treatment of Britain, a la Engel, to boot.

LYNN KIESLING WRITES that gas prices are rising, and that’s ok: it’s just the market at work. She’s right, of course, but it’s a good thing she’s not running for office.

RICH HAILEY observes that Bill Clinton isn’t paying his legal bills.

GO VISIT Dr. Frank or Gary Farber and give ’em some money if you’re so inclined. Word is that they’re kinda short. On cash, I mean. I don’t know how tall they are.

TED BARLOW recalls a delightful Larry Niven essay on Superman’s sex life, the aptly-titled Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex.

CATHY YOUNG says the tide is turning on bogus campus sex codes. Personally, I think the Clinton presidency destroyed the credibility of anti-sex feminism — all that talk about the “inherently coercive nature” of relationships featuring “power imbalances” dried up real fast once the Lewinsky story broke.

This poll by Gena Lewis over at Spinsters certainly supports that. Er, at least it would, if Internet polls meant anything.

JUDGE JAILS WEBSITE PUBLISHER: Judge should be impeached.

UPDATE: And the anti-deep-linking thugs at Rodale Press‘s Runner’s World should, er, trip over their shoelaces or something.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Bill Hobbs writes:

Being that I’m a journalist and my father-in-law is a Pulitzer-winning editor who now is chairman of the Freedom Forum, a leading First Amendment/free press foundation, you’d think I’d have a good grasp of the First Amendment. But apparently I missed the day in my Communications Law class where they discussed the little-known “Seattle Clause” hidden in the Bill of Rights that says the First Amendment’s free press rights are only for people who got paid for their writings. Naively, I thought the First Amendment was for everyone, even cantankerous Brits living in Seattle.

So, I have a solution we bloggers can give Mr. Trummel. As soon is his lawyer springs him, he should put a donations box on his website, and we can all donate a buck or two and then he will be a “paid” journalist, covered by even the Seattle version of the First Amendment.

Sounds good to me. Hobbs has the judge’s email, too, if you’d like to pass on your thoughts about the First Amendment.

TONY PIERCE REVIEWS the new Weezer album. You won’t hear a bad word from me, since Brian Bell’s my neighbor. Well, only technically. Actually, it’s his mom.

ORDINARY PALESTINIANS may finally be catching on:

In a bid to re-establish his leadership along the war-ravaged West Bank, Mr. Arafat set out to tour three of the areas hardest-hit by a six-week Israeli military offensive.

But instead of adoring crowds, he found people grumbling with discontent and some openly criticizing his leadership. . . .

“Those who count the strokes are different from those who are being beaten,” scoffed Abdullah Issaid, a 34-year-old businessman. “All the Arab leaders have abandoned us and now it seems he too is abandoning us.”

Karina Bakleezey, a 64-year-old grandmother whose house was demolished last month in the Israeli invasion, wept in frustration.

“Our homes have been destroyed and we have lost our men,” she cried. “I want to tell him about my house and how my life has been destroyed. Now, only God can deliver us. I rely only on God.

“I am angry at the whole world,” she continued bitterly. “I am angry at the Arab countries more than the Jews. They just watched us while we tried to defend our land.”

Abdulla Nasharate, 34, pushed his way through the crowd, demanding to be heard.

“This is absurd,” he fumed. “He [Arafat] is responsible. A government that can’t protect its own people should not stay in power. Arafat should have come and stayed with us here, when he first got out. But he doesn’t come. I think he doesn’t care.”

I like the spin from an Arafat spokesthug, though:

“Many people came here and there was chaos,” Mr. Al Shati said. “If you love somebody, sometimes you can love him to death.”

Hmm. Puts a whole new slant on “Love thy enemy,” doesn’t it?

UPDATE: Hey, and look who’s backing Arafat now! Feel the love!

IN RESPONSE TO READER REQUESTS, there’s now an email button at the bottom of the new Kausfiles. Hey, maybe Mickey will add his old links back, too.

THE UNBIASED MEDIA: Not hardly. This is likely to give a boost to the Los Angeles Times boycott.

STRATEGYPAGE has a bit of history that should give America’s enemies pause.

MORE SECOND AMENDMENT NEWS: Eugene Volokh dissects a rather dumb piece on the Second Amendment from The Guardian. Volokh deals with the doctrine. I also note that The Guardian puts a (sic) after antigun law professor Carl Bogus’s name (which really is “Bogus”) and gets his law school wrong to boot. Do these Brit journalists check anything? Virginia Postrel says no, and I’m beginning to believe her.

UPDATE: A couple of readers say I’m wrong about the “sic” — which is used in an unusual, but correct fashion — and they’re absolutely right. As one reader notes:

“Sic” only means that the passage preceding it correctly reproduces the original. Usually “sic” is used to say “That was his error, not mine.” In this
case it was used to say, “That looks funny, but it’s correct.” Ironically, the point is that the journalist claims to have checked, despite getting the law school wrong.

Yep. My bad.

PHILADELPHIA MAILBOMB UPDATE: Reader Thomas Manning writes:

Here is a report of a second mailbox bomb found in Philadelphia this morning. Also, people seem to have forgotten about the plastic explosives and detonation cord recovered from a bus station in Philadelphia last October. The explosives were apparently abandoned in a locker on September 29. How much more of this stuff, which is far more dangerous than the mailbox bomb, is out there?

NEW YORK TIMES SNOOKERED over Chechnya. Well, anybody could have been fooled. But they should have been quicker to admit the error.

THE SAUDIS ARE BUYING POPUP ADS via Doubleclick. Oh yeah, that’ll make people like ’em. Next: telemarketers calling you at dinner time to tell you why you should love the House of Saud. John Malay has a screenshot on his blog.

WHAT TO DO about SFSU’s riot by palestinian supporters against peaceful pro-Israel demonstrators? Joe Katzman has a plan of action, which he says is aimed not so much at Jews as at campus conservatives. “This incident is now a test case. That case will either establish real deterrence nationwide… or it won’t, and we’ll see more incidents like this. That’s what’s at stake. The question is whether Laurie et. al. will rise to the challenge, and respond effectively. With a little help from their friends, of course, in the Blogosphere and beyond.”

UPDATE: Perhaps SFSU should emulate Virginia Tech.

TAPPED IS picking on Debbie Schlussel’s punditry credentials because they consist mostly of being on TV. What, you need credentials to be a pundit? Oh, but it’s okay: “‘O’Reilly’ is gold, baby, gold!” Well, thank goodness — I’ve been on O’Relly!

But isn’t it a bit much to follow that up with an item that basically picks on Rishawn Biddle for not being on TV? Don’t worry, Rishawn: your day on O’Reilly will come. Just don’t feel bad if you can’t get a word in edgewise.