RONALD BAILEY IS COMPARING Wesley Clark to Chauncey Gardiner. But would he still say that if he had read this?

MICHAEL BARONE writes on zigs and zags.

MY SPACE-BLOGGING HAS BEEN SHAMEFULLY INADEQUATE lately, but here’s a good piece on the X-Prize competition, in which people are competing for a prize for a manned private space launch:

In a race to achieve the first privately funded manned spaceflight, two teams of rocket engineers are poised to compete for the $10 million X Prize by launching people to the edge of space and bringing them back safely twice within a two-week period. Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, said he expects that one of the two teams will launch within the next few months.

Good news, and I wish them success.

WHEN PANTS ATTACK: I’ve seen the Jimmy Neutron nanopants episode that Howard Lovy describes.

JOHN LEO has a column on how Internet fact-checking and bypassing demonstrated problems with media coverage of Iraq. “The Internet campaign is another example of the new media going around the old media, in this case to counter stories by quagmire-oriented reporters.”

We’ll see more of that, I expect.

FISKING GOES MAINSTREAM in this point/counterpoint column by James Pinkerton using colorcoded interjections to respond to a column by Yuval Levin.

WINDS OF CHANGE has a roundup of Iraq news and a separate roundup on the wider war. As always, both are full of interesting stuff that you’re likely to miss otherwise.

UPDATE: Here’s another roundup that’s worth checking out.

THIS IS INTERESTING:

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy yesterday split from the recent harsh criticism that his father, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, leveled against President Bush for attacking Iraq and said the country is better off without Saddam Hussein.

“I don’t agree with his stance,” the Rhode Island congressman said of his father. “I believe that the U.N. needs to be a viable international organization and the only way it is viable is if its proclamations and resolutions are enforced.”

The elder Kennedy stirred a storm of controversy recently by saying that the reasons for war were “made up in Texas” to help the GOP at election time and calling it “a fraud.”

But Patrick Kennedy, who voted to authorize Bush to use force against Iraq, said Saddam Hussein had “the worst track record of any international leader in the history of the U.N.” for violating human rights and inspections for weapons of mass destruction.

“If he didn’t have (the weapons), then how come he gassed all his people with them?” the younger Kennedy asked. “The fact is, he definitely had them. Whether he destroyed them or not is up for debate. But he had them and he’s got a propensity for invading neighboring countries and causing instability in a part of the world (where) we can’t afford to have a lot of instability.

Patrick Kennedy doesn’t agree with Bush’s approach, but this is a refreshing change from the mindless “Bush lied” agitprop we’re hearing from too many.

DEBORAH ORIN IS PRAISING TOM BROKAW in a story on media reportage and Iraq:

When NBC anchor Tom Brokaw went to Iraq, it was as if he was visiting a different country than that any other TV journalist had reported from, because he left Baghdad and many of his reports actually had an optimistic tone.

Why? Perhaps because Brokaw has chronicled the Greatest Generation and World War II, a time of patience instead of attention deficit disorder and a demand for overnight success. Nowadays, one can imagine critics instantly howling for Dwight D. Eisenhower’s head over the deaths on D-Day.

It’s worth remembering, as critics revive their Vietnam quagmire comparisons, that over 57,000 U.S. troops died in Vietnam and so far the U.S. death toll in Iraq is 308, fewer than the 343 firemen who were killed on 9/11.

Every death is a tragedy. But that doesn’t make the war a failure. In fact, it is a success.

Read the whole thing.

HERE’S A NEW YORK TIMES story on the Bee blogging brouhaha. It’s pretty good overall, and features Weintraub saying that his Bee editors have committed to being available whenever he wants to post. I suspect that they’ll find that a bit of a strain, but maybe not: the Bee is big enough, I suppose, to have someone on duty at all hours. Weintraub also says that this may detract somewhat from the immediacy and spontaneity of his writing, and I think that pretty much has to be the case.

JETBLUE PASSENGERS are unhappy about it sharing their personal data.

Interestingly, Wesley Clark is on the board of Acxiom, the company involved, according to this story in the Post. Clark didn’t have a specific role with JetBlue, it says, but he was behind the development of the passenger-information database involved.

Does this tell us anything about the privacy policies of a Clark Administration? I don’t know. Somebody should probably ask him. At the moment, he’s getting beaten on pretty badly:

“The privacy impact of anti-terrorism initiatives is certain to be a major issue in the presidential campaign,” said David L. Sobel, general counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group in the District.

“The public is extremely skeptical,” he said. “He owes the public an explanation as to how, if elected, he would limit the government’s expanding collection of personal information about citizens.”

Others believe that Clark faces skepticism about the money he took to represent Acxiom, even though many former military leaders have done the same thing.

“There’s something unseemly and, yes, mercenary, about a distinguished general lobbying for a company trying to get government contracts,” said Charles Lewis, executive director for the Center for Public Integrity.

Think Howard Dean might make an issue out of this?

UPDATE: There’s more on this at Cryptome, along with the question: “Will Wesley Clark do the right thing and disavow Acxiom?”

A PACK, NOT A HERD: An interesting lesson on disaster preparedness from Japan, via Virginia Postrel.

MICKEY KAUS has more on the California recall, which I haven’t been covering much. But, then, he actually understands California politics.

CHRISTOPHER LYDON is comparing Wesley Clark to Hadrian, and George Bush to Trajan. I’m not sure that this works (in fact, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t), but you can read it and decide for yourself.

A few angry readers have asked what I like about Howard Dean. I thought I was pretty clear about that. It’s that Dean recognizes (at least he says he does, and he seems sincere to me) that bailing out isn’t an option in Iraq — we have to succeed, or the backlash will be far more damaging than the backlash from our timidity in response to Beirut, Mogadishu, and Tehran.

UPDATE: Reader William Lemmon emails:

As a big ol’ Roman history geek and a fan of historical comparisons to current events, I was fascinated by the blog you linked to last night in which Christopher Lydon equates Wes Clark to Hadrian and President Bush to Hadrian’s predecessor, Trajan.

You write that the comparison doesn’t work, and I would agree that it doesn’t work in the sense that the author thinks it does. However, it may be apt in a way that Mr. Lydon doesn’t intend, and wouldn’t like.

Mr. Lydon seems to assert that Hadrian’s consolidation of the Empire’s borders and cessation of expansion was unquestionably beneficial. But this interpretation is far from unassailable.

The Roman Empire was always at its strongest when it was on the offensive, pushing its borders ever further into barbarian territory and carrying the benefits of civilization with them, just as President Bush asserts that America can only triumph in the war on terror by staying on the offensive and bringing the fight to the enemy’s heartland. There’s no reason to believe that the Democratic strategy of going on the defensive (by focusing on homeland security rather than regime change in hostile nations) will work any better for America than it did for Rome, which found it difficult to maintain static borders against the constant encroachments of barbarian tribes (again, just as our porous borders would be almost impossible to seal against terrorist infiltration).

In fact, it’s arguable that Hadrian’s reforms contributed to the eventual fall of the empire by sapping Rome of its drive and ambition for expansion, leading inevitably to decadence and decline. It’s hard to avoid drawing unfavorable parallels to Democratic pacifism and provinicialism.

All in all, I think that Hadrian, with his passion for reform and centralization, his ivory-tower intellectualism and his weakness for sensual pleasure (for which he was widely mocked and derided in his own day) compares rather closely to too many of today’s Democrats. Perhaps more to Wes Clark’s patron, Bill Clinton, than to Clark himself – although, happily, Bill didn’t erect hundreds of statues of Monica, as Hadrian did of his (male) lover Antinous.

For that matter, Bush as Trajan – a man of action from a province considered somewhat backwater by the Roman elites – is a pleasing comparison as well.

Trifle with history geeks at your peril.

MORE ON MEDIA REPORTING AND IRAQ: Jay Rosen looks at the reporting on Ground Zero and observes:

There’s no script for what’s happening in Iraq; there was none for Ground Zero. “Did Bush and Rumsfeld have an adequate plan?” is good for point-scoring; but it’s a naive expectation for action and upheaval on this scale. I expect Americans to be good at problem-solving when there is no plan, when the bosses don’t know what to do, or aren’t around, when only an unscripted experiment can work.

So one thing I want to know from the press is: how have these virtues figured in the struggle to rebuild Iraq? That isn’t a negative story or a positive story; it’s just an interesting one… and “probably profound.” It’s not that there haven’t been such reports; there have. (See this, for example.) But in the master narrative for post-war Iraq, problem-solving could have a larger place, which might address some of the concerns about “negative” news.

I’ve seen a little reporting along those lines, but not much, and generally buried.

Rosen also offers this interesting observation:

On a speaking trip to The Netherlands two years ago, I noticed that every time I used the word “experiment,” my Dutch hosts would give me a blank look or reach for their beer. So I finally asked some Amsterdam friends about it. The Dutch think that if you start an experiment it means you don’t know what you’re doing, one of them said. The most likely outcome is to make things worse. “Oh,” I replied, “well, Americans have a different attitude.” “We know,” said my hosts, in unison and now laughing.

I think that ties in with the point noted by Scott Turow (quoted here) on the comparative fragility of European institutions and the political attitudes it produces. And I wonder if the attitude of many in the press — in which trying something that doesn’t work is a “failure” even if you learn from it, because it didn’t work the first time — isn’t something similiar.

Well, I’m not sure what the profound sociological point there is, though I think there is one. But I definitely think that there are a lot of good stories — not cheerleading, but interesting, and informative, and useful at getting things right in the future — that aren’t being reported because people are sticking to a tired Vietnam-era template.

UPDATE: Tim Blair has it all figured out.

MEDIENKRITIK offers an example of German pro-Americanism that wasn’t widely reported — but also notes that Der Spiegel managed to report on European blackouts without the “spiteful gloating” displayed in reporting the New York blackout.

MARK STEYN WRITES ANOTHER EULOGY FOR EDWARD SAID, whose death appears to have inspired new discussion of his scholarship.

UPDATE: And here’s one by Nelson Ascher.

HOW THEY TREAT WHISTLEBLOWERS AT THE E.U.:

Robert McCoy has brought to light fraud and corruption within the EU. Now, in a letter seen by David Wastell, he reveals how he was vilified by Brussels for his efforts

He has worked for the European Union for more than 30 years. His friends regard him as an upright and loyal bureaucrat, keen to uphold the EU’s name against its critics, whether in Brussels or back home in Britain.

Yet Robert McCoy must steel himself before he walks the corridors of his own EU institution. If he is lucky, senior colleagues at the glass and concrete headquarters of the Committee of the Regions – a Brussels talking-shop for local government representatives, set up under the Maastricht Treaty – merely ignore him, turning their heads ostentatiously as he passes.

If not, he may be on the receiving end of abuse. “Gestapo! Gestapo!” angry fellow workers once taunted him. One manager spat on the floor as he walked by, friends say. . . .

Mr McCoy’s offence – as it was apparently regarded by some EU staff and politicians – was to stumble upon, investigate and then seek to correct a series of financial irregularities within the Committee of the Regions (CoR), whose annual budget is €38 million (£27 million).

Last week the European Union was thrown into a frenzy when a trio of official reports confirmed the existence of secret bank accounts, bogus contracts and other accounting malpractices at Eurostat, the EU’s statistical office, over the past five years.

Shocking treatment. You’d almost think that sort of corruption was regarded as acceptable, and even defensible.