PORPHYROGENITUS SAYS that the NEA is getting a bum rap.

DO I REALLY WANT TO IMPEACH NORMAN MINETA? Some people have emailed with that question. And the answer is — Hell, yes!

But what they really mean, I think, is: do I really think that impeaching Norman Mineta is the way to do something about the idiocy of air security? That’s a bit more complicated.

It’s certainly possible to impeach a cabinet official — they’re “officers of the United States,” and hence subject to impeachment. But it never happens, because a cabinet official who’s that unpopular will be fired by the President first.

Mineta isn’t the whole problem, of course. He’s a symptom as much as a cause, a symptom of a bureaucratic mindset in which — it must be said — he participates fully. (And according to Gary Leff, who is all over this story, James Loy, the new TSA chief, is no better).

But since everyone knows that Mineta personifies the very mindset that is causing the problem, and since “Impeach Norm Mineta” makes that point nicely, it’s not a bad slogan. And judging by the glee with which a colleague of mine grabbed one of those bumperstickers, it reflects a widely shared sentiment.

Mineta will probably withstand the blogosphere-generated juggernaut, of course — especially as Republicans won’t want to attack a member of the Administration, and Democrats won’t want to attack one of their own. (Yeah, Mineta’s a Democrat, actually). But there’s nothing like bumperstickers calling for impeachment to bring home the unpopularity of a politician’s actions. So get one, and display it proudly!

DIRTY TRICKS: According to this report, Cynthia McKinney is using recorded messages that (falsely) tell Republican voters that it’s illegal for them to cross over and vote in the Democratic primary.

THIS is a masterpiece of brevity and wit.

JAMES LILEKS may think that the “Letter from a Canadian” referenced below is clever disinformation by the U.S. government’s dirty-tricks department — but if so, it’s so brilliant that the antiwar folks are claiming it for their own anyway: “Imagine my surprise to wake up this lovely Sunday morning, and find that someone has taken all the words and thoughts from my head and put them into such a flowing, cohesive thought. Well, that seems to be what W.R. McDougall has done in his ‘Open Letter to America.'”

MUGABE UPDATE: Cynthia Tucker is pulling no punches in this column on Mugabe:

Mugabe’s supporters are right about this much: He has earned a place in history — right alongside Stalin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-il, megalomaniacs who condemned millions of their own countrymen to starvation. As half of Zimbabwe’s population of 12 million hovers near famine, Mugabe has ordered the nation’s white farmers, who are responsible for most of its food supply, to stop planting and surrender their farms for redistribution. . . .

If a racist white dictator were creating conditions that starved millions of black Africans, the Congressional Black Caucus would have demanded severe sanctions, and a long line of African-American celebrities would be lining up to picket the nation’s embassy, taking turns getting arrested and handcuffed for the TV cameras. But Mugabe’s thuggery has barely roused America’s black elite.

The white elite hasn’t distinguished itself on this one either. But bravo to Cynthia Tucker for a great column.

(Via Cella’s Review).

UPDATE: Brian Carnell writes that, while Cynthia Tucker may be right on here, Cynthia McKinney is Mugabe’s number one fan. With luck, that won’t matter soon.

CAPTAIN SPAULDING informs us that today is the 25th anniversary of Groucho Marx’s death. And that’s the only kind of Marxism worth honoring.

IF YOU LIVE IN THE D.C. AREA, you might want to consider this invitation from Combustible Boy.

JIM BENNETT WRITES that Paul O’Neill needs to take John Ashcroft aside and give him a good talking-to.

SOUTH AFRICA UPDATE: A South African reader who prefers to remain unnamed sends this:

I am South African, as are many of my friends. I was surprised to see your comment about the guy that made sarcastic comments. I guess I forget that we have our idiots too.

My friends and I have similar opinions that can be broadly summarised like this:

1) We dont mind the american or european people much. We sometimes think you are a bit wussy though. :-)

2) We think your media sucks. We generally agree that ours is just as bad.

3) We would classify world media as “lefty” which implies a special kind of myopia:

3a) It doesn’t matter who you are, just what you are. You are only as good as your stereotype.

3b) There is no difference between being uncritical and being unbiased. Hence objective reporting means to simply spew whatever people tell you.

3c) Foreign events can always be expressed in terms of local prejudices and stereotypes.

3d) Whenever facts contradict preconceptions, reinforce the preconceptions.

4) We think Thabo is a retard. Worse than that, he is a racially motivated retard. He is a card carrying member of the “Black Presidents of Africa” Union. We want someone to fix things, not swap one set of stupidities for another.

5) We generally think old Mandela is a bonzer chap. He said things like he thought they should be, according to his personal system of morals, which we generally respect. None of the mealy mouthed politics crap. He told old Bob up in Zim where to put it, and we wish Thabo had his moral fortitude. Sometimes he was wrong, but at least he wasn’t a hypocrite.

6) We hate fact that Thabo has gone out with the begging bowl to the rest of the world. We reckon it’s because it’s much easier to appropriate foreign funds and donations for, er, extra-governmental use. SA is RICH. I mean REALLY RICH. Generally, the economies of Rhodesia and South Africa were strongest under sanctions. Generating another economic crack addict that leeches off the 1st world and gets poorer every year is not our idea of progress.

7) Thabo has a serious problem with white farmers being killed by the hundreds in _South Africa_. (Yes, I know some people being attacked – this isn’t rumour. They were still alive last time I spoke to them, but they may have emigrated by now). He doesn’t really care I think. If he doesn’t care about anything locally, then why care about the people next door?

As for your comment about Noam Chomsky and people starving people. We have our own theory, that seems to apply pretty broadly: He hasn’t said anything because Mugabe is black. Black people are victims of oppression. That is their assigned role. There is no place for monomaniacal genocides.

My brother has personally bumped into the handiwork of Mugabe’s Fifth Brigade whilst working in the National Parks. This last bout of food distribution is relatively minor compared to his usual rape, pillage, torture. burn, mass-grave methods.

What amazes us is that you even know about it. Perhaps the internet is making a difference.

Oh, and this would be the latest of many such episodes of selective starvation over the last 15 years. Amazing that nobody seems to pick that up. :-/ One mild difference is that he is starving more of his own tribe this time. That’s unusual.

(Oh, and please don’t use my name publicly if you publish any of this. I am in enough trouble with the SA government as it is, by daring to get a foreign temporary work visa. I’ve had deposits into my accounts frozen for “money laundering” once already. Plenty of SA politicians would have no problem calling me a “traitor”, and have done so in general terms when talking about “the brain drain” (which they are creating) )

EUGENE VOLOKH has a post on the practical difficulties he sees with giving juries more power not to convict. That expands on this earlier discussion.

HAVING TROUBLE UNDERSTANDING ANTIWAR ARGUMENTS? Mike Silverman has you covered.

His Vietnam / Iraq comparison table is pretty amusing, too.

JUST GOT MY IMPEACH NORM MINETA BUMPERSTICKERS in the mail. They look good, and a colleague who travels constantly and has just returned from “the trip from hell” snatched one up immediately.

I’m telling you, folks, there’s an issue here for somebody.

OCTOBER SURPRISE LITE: David Hogberg has some suggestions for Bush. And this piece by Dan Balz suggests he’s onto something.

UPDATE: And in a somewhat related development, Geitner Simmons looks at what may be coming from the other side. Read it in conjunction with this post to see the downside for war critics.

REID STOTT reports that Cynthia McKinney is faking it. Apparently, some endorsements she’s trumpeting (like the Robert Redford message I mentioned earlier, and another by Andrew Young) turn out not to be, you know, actual endorsements.

MATT LABASH REVIEWS THE ANNA NICOLE SMITH SHOW, and finds it wanting.

NORAH VINCENT HAS A BLOG NOW, and she’s opening it by dissing Maureen Dowd.

HERE’S AN ARTICLE from the New York Times on growing opposition to nanotechnology from, well, about the people you’d expect it to come from.

Eric Coe has weighed in on the subject. I spent part of my summer writing a fairly lengthy treatment that isn’t out yet, but you can read this piece that I published in the Environmental Law Reporter last year for some observations. It’s worth noting that Greens are quite split on nanotechnology: Terence McKenna called nanotechnology “the most radical of the green visions,” and of course it is, since it promises to make everyone rich without significant environmental harm. Why, if nanotechnology were widely available, there wouldn’t be starving people in the Third World, and there wouldn’t be environmental messes to complain about. A whole bunch of NGOs and public-interest groups would be out of business.

Say, you don’t think. . . ?

AL-AHRAM is worried about a resurgence of McCarthyism that might imperil democracy in America. We appreciate their concern.

DONAHUE’S SHOW ON MSNBC is apparently doing so badly that it’s calling the whole strategy into question. I’ve only seen a few minutes of it, so my opinion isn’t worth much (especially as I don’t like TV much anyway, and have never liked Phil much). But what I saw looked lame, and I can’t say I’m surprised that nobody’s watching. His numbers are dropping steadily (he’s getting his butt kicked by Connie Chung, for goodness sake), suggesting that most people who watch share my opinion and don’t come back. That’s bad news for the network strategy of having, well, more stuff like that. And bad news in general. First Alan Keyes, now this.

Can I get a show on MSNBC? It couldn’t do any worse.

BILL QUICK is looking for a new job. Somebody help him out.

THE BOSTON GLOBE has a piece about Joyce Malcolm’s book, Guns and Violence: The English Experience. (Here’s my FoxNews piece on the book from week before last). The Globe piece is surprisingly sympathetic, proving again that the tide seems to be turning on this issue.

I should note that Prof. Malcolm has said on an academic email list that she was misquoted, and never said that all guns are outlawed in England (though in my opinion that wouldn’t be that much of an overstatement), and that she did not describe antigun law professor Carl Bogus as “just a lawyer.” Reading Bogus’s quote, however, a rather tart reply was called for. Bogus describes Malcolm’s work as “discredited,” an amazing statement given that he’s still defending the work of Michael Bellesiles. Then again, maybe it’s not an amazing statement, given that he’s still defending the work of Michael Bellesiles. (In a display of candor that sets a new standard for such coverage, the Globe even describes Bogus not only as a law professor but as “former director on the board of the advocacy group Handgun Control Inc.”)

I’d be interested in seeing Bogus provide some evidence to support his statement on Malcolm’s work.

CHARLES JOHNSON IS OUTRAGED that the N.E.A.’s teaching suggestions for 9/11’s anniversary tell teachers to be sure not to “suggest any group is responsible.”

I think it was that Family Circus character, Not Me, who did it.

Er, except that Osama bin Laden bragged about it, and Palestinians danced in the streets in celebration. And then there’s the matter of these videotapes. Perhaps teachers should show those in class, so that students have a clear idea of who isn’t responsible. And I suppose that showing this would be out of the question. It might make people angry or something.

UPDATE: Rand Simberg points out that “innocent until proven guilty” is applicable only in court, and that its application here is dubious.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Jeff Drummond points out:

Actually, a defendant is just “deemed” innocent until proven guilty; treated as if he were innocent, whether he’s guilty or not. Whether you are innocent or not is a fact, even if only God knows for sure. In fact, a jury never finds anyone “innocent,” just “not guilty,” which simply means that the prosecution didn’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was guilty.

There’s way too much misuse of the concept. Nobody is “innocent until proven guilty.” If you did the deed and got away with it, you are guilty of it. People may deserve to be “treated as innocent until proven guilty,” and certainly should be when the structure of the state is brought to bear on them. But if they did the deed, it doesn’t matter how many juries acquit them; they’re still guilty.

Indeed. And reader Eric Kolchinsky writes to note that this lesson plan was paid for by Johnson & Johnson. And reader G. Neal Mauldin notes that it’s CAIR-endorsed. Hmm. I wonder who makes Arafat’s baby wipes?

MONOPOLIES SUING MONOPOLIES, says Aimee Deep, with lawyers the only winners. Hey, at least there’s some good news. . . .

RADLEY BALKO SAYS HE’S SPOTTED A SIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE: A Massachussetts initiative to abolish the state income tax is polling at 37% despite hostile press coverage. Whether or not it goes anywhere, it says something about the supposed pent-up demand for bigger government among the electorate.