ERIN O’CONNOR REPORTS that the skeptical view of the Boalt Hall sexual-harassment case that has been championed by bloggers like, well, Erin O’Connor, is now breaking out into traditional media — starting with the Los Angeles Times.

She also has some observations on media ethics.

I MAY POST A FEW ITEMS ON THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN LAW SCHOOLS CONFERENCE, but I won’t match Brad DeLong for blurbs, especially this one:

“Well, we do have a strong system of faculty committee governance. But that isn’t a blessing: it’s a curse. You see, rule by faculty committees translates into rule by those who come to meetings and stay a long time. And thus it becomes rule by those who have nothing better to do–rule by those who place a very low valuation on their time. In most cases, those who place a very low valuation on their time are correct in doing so. It’s thus a form of rule by the incompetent.” “Your mission is to show up next year with a proper Greek-derived word for this.”

I don’t have a Greek-derived word, but I do have an observation: the same is true of condo- and neighborhood associations.

BILL QUICK SAYS I’M WRONG ABOUT TRIAL LAWYERS. But I think that he, and his commenters, are right about the past few weeks’ news drought.

MARK STEYN RIDICULES BRITAIN’S GUN POLICY:

Since the Government’s “total ban” five years ago, there are more and more guns being used by more and more criminals in more and more crimes. Now, in the wake of Birmingham’s New Year bloodbath, there are calls for the total ban to be made even more total: if the gangs refuse to obey the existing laws, we’ll just pass more laws for them not to obey. According to a UN survey from last month, England and Wales now have the highest crime rate of the world’s 20 leading nations. One can query the methodology of the survey while still recognising the peculiar genius by which British crime policy has wound up with every indicator going haywire – draconian gun control plus vastly increased gun violence plus stratospheric property crime.

American gun-rights folks could have predicted this outcome. In fact, I believe they did.

MADE IT BACK ALIVE, despite snow, and an amazing number of wrecks on I-81, aggravated by the usual absurd rubberneckers.

THIS CAT-BLOGGING TREND is out of control.

THE FIRST RECIPIENT OF THE “FISKIE AWARD” has been announced.

IN LIGHT OF THE PARIS RABBI-STABBING INCIDENT, Claire Berlinski emails this from Paris:

Another item to note from Paris: On 16 December 2002 the Conseil d’Administration of Université Paris VI passed a motion recommending the rupture of the European Union’s scientific cooperation agreement with Israel. A similar resolution is on the agenda of the meeting of the Université Paris VII Conseil d’Administration, which is to take place on January 7. This is in effect a call for boycott; the proposal would institutionalize the exclusion of Israeli researchers from scientific committees, conferences and scientific journals. It would kill international research projects involving Israeli scientists and academic hosting programs for university faculty. It would ban international student exchange programs. This has attracted surprisingly little attention from the press here, and none at all in the US, as far as I can tell. Is anyone going to stand up and point out that this is an absolute fucking outrage?

Note also that the rabbi who was stabbed was a prominent LEFT-WING PACIFIST. The French press has thus far been tactfully circumspect about the assailant’s probable ethnic origin, but earlier that morning, the synagogue received this communication: “Nous aurons la peau du rabbin Gabriel Farhi et vengerons le sang de nos frères palestiniens. -…- Nous lancerons contre lui le djihad, châtiment réservé aux ennemis de notre cause -…-. Après avoir mis feu à sa synagogue, nous nous vengerons directement sur lui.”*

*”We will have the skin of Rabbi Gabriel Farhi and we will venge the blood of our Palestinian brothers — we will hurl jihad against him, a punishment reserved for the enemies of our cause — after setting fire to his synagogue, we will venge ourselves upon him directly.”

I, for one, am inclined to view the two events as importantly connected.

Well, there you have it: a report from the scene.

EVE TUSHNET has been running a long series on race that I should have linked sooner. But here’s the latest installment and you can work backward from there.

GIZMODO ASKS if you’ve stayed in a hotel room that had a DVD player. Not me. VCR, yes, but not a DVD player.

IS SLASHDOT OVER? Here’s an interesting post that I discovered via Nick Denton. Nick wonders if online communities inevitably decline. It does seem that way, though I don’t actually think that Slashdot is going anywhere.

Does this mean the blogosphere will eventually collapse into a flamer-haven that everyone else avoids? I’m not sure. It’s possible, and it’s probably even the way to bet based on history.

On the other hand, online communities in the past have all shared the characteristic that it’s possible to inflict speech on other members of the community at a relatively low cost. Usenet flaming is the most obvious example. Dumb Slashdot posts are, somewhat, mitigated by moderation, but I have to say that the moderation system on Slashdot seems less effective lately.

With blogs on the other hand, you can avoid the flaming bloggers. Flaming in comments seems to follow the Usenet model to some degree, but since it’s easy to avoid reading blog comments I’m not sure it will be as alienating. Only time will tell.

UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis responds with some thoughts that I’m going to use in my talk tonight. I love the blogosphere!

DID A TV INTERVIEW EARLIER, which for obscure logistical reasons was in my hotel room. They set up a bunch of lights and then — because the lights get hot — taped paper cups over the sprinkler heads to keep them from being set off. “We always do it,” they explained.

I’d hate to have been the first guy to discover that you needed to do that. . . .

I WONDER IF THE PEOPLE WHO COMPLAINED ABOUT TIPS will complain about this use of snitch-on-your-neighbors data?

Montgomery County police said yesterday that they will use tens of thousands of tips from the October sniper hunt to track down those who violate Maryland gun laws.

“Our goal is to reduce illegal firearm possessions and violent crimes,” said Capt. Nancy Demme, spokeswoman for the Montgomery County Police Department. She also said the intensive crackdown would begin in the county in a few weeks.

The mission will be carried out by a task force of county and state police officers, as well as federal agents of the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

This is sure to produce less cooperation in the future. And it explains why so many gun owners don’t trust the authorities: They’ve seen things used as excuses for anti-gun sweeps in the past.

Couple this sort of thing with the abusive behavior exhibited by FBI agents toward gun owners when the sniper investigation was underway, and it seems evident that the ham-handed incompetence of the FBI is, once again, damaging the war on terror and creating a locus of opposition in the United States.

This is just pathetic. How stupid do you have to be to do this kind of stuff? Not too stupid to have a management position at the FBI or ATF, apparently.

JESSE VENTURA says he’ll be turning the tables on the media. Will he be signing with MSNBC? Apparently, we’ll know Monday.

MARTIN SIEFF WRITES that China will keep propping up North Korea. I’m not sure about his analysis here — is North Korea that valuable as a “buffer” against ideas of democracy and free markets?

UPDATE: Capitalism, it seems, has already slipped under the covers. . . .

THE MAYOR OF PHILADELPHIA “REGRETS” that the First Amendment is stopping him from shutting down a skit in the Mummer’s parade that made fun of the Catholic hierarchy’s cover-up in sex abuse cases.

Bill Hobbs says that the mayor should have different concerns:

So, the mayor of the nation’s fifth-largest city “regrets” the First Amendment. Amazing. And a terrible shame – because the real target of his regret should be that the Catholic Church – or any powerful institution – would so rapidly turn to ask the government to muzzle its critics.

Or that the Church hierarchs would be party to covering up acts that they — and he — would loudly condemn in any other institution.

GOOD / BAD: The in-room high-speed Internet access doesn’t work very well. That’s the bad. The toll-free tech support number, on the other hand, took me right to a helpful guy who solved the problem from their end. (Some sort of server issue, apparently). I give ’em a B+ for that.

ANOTHER IN THE NO-SURPRISE-HERE DEPARTMENT:

A Jewish rabbi needed treatment in hospital after being attacked as he left a synagogue in eastern Paris on Friday.

Rabbi Gabriel Farhi was stabbed in the stomach by an unknown assailant who then fled the scene.

Mr Farhi, 34, said his wound was “large but not deep”.

The rabbi told the French news agency AFP that he had earlier received a threatening letter referring to Jihad – the Muslim holy war – against enemies of the Palestinians. . . .

“Someone rang at the door, I opened and a man a bit shorter than me… wearing a motorbike helmet with its visor down said Allahu Akbar [God is Great] and then stabbed me,” Mr Farhi told AFP.

He said the stranger had a perfect French accent.

Somebody needs to explain to the guy that Islam is a religion of peace, and does not countenance such acts.

MADE IT HERE ALIVE EARLIER TODAY. Had a nice dinner, and saw Eugene Volokh in the hotel lobby. But the lure of a hotel room with the Insta-Wife and no kids exceeds the lure of blogging. More tomorrow, probably.

In the meantime, read this piece about Saudi Arabia and Islamist violence.

VIRGINIA POSTREL warns Republicans:

“[T]rial lawyer” is not a bad thing to call someone in a campaign. There’s a reason successful trial lawyers are successful: They’re good at persuading voters (a.k.a. jurors) to join their side.

Yes, there are a lot of people in conservative circles with a visceral dislike of trial lawyers. And it’s shared by some voters. But it’s not shared by all that many, and if you only read conservative publications it’s easy to forget that. Think of trial lawyers as like constituent-service from an incumbent. Most voters know somebody who was helped by one. That establishes a certain reservoir of gratitude.

ARCHITECTURE OR WELFARE REFORM? Mickey Kaus looks at which is better for poor people. Hint: he disagrees with The New York Times!

ANDREW SULLIVAN is endorsing John Edwards:

For the Democrats to nominate a Southerner for the fourth time in four election cycles may make electoral college sense, but it still slights the parts of the country that are more dependably Democratic. Still, I like his politics – they seem sanely to the right of, say, Al Gore. And he has a touch of the Tony Blair about him: the slick yet somehow earnest combination. Hard to pull off.

I really don’t have an opinion of Edwards yet. He doesn’t even trigger an irrational like or dislike in me when I see him on TV. Oh, well, I’m sure I’ll hear enough about him to form an opinion long before it will actually matter.

THEY DON’T CALL THEM “ISLAMO-FASCISTS” FOR NOTHING, YOU KNOW:

They are unlikely allies, but right-wing extremists and Islamic militants share a hatred for Israel and the United States that has drawn the attention of German authorities.

Since 2001, when Islamic extremists and neo-Nazis cheered the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., the two camps have echoed one another’s abhorrence of what they view as a world controlled by Jews and enforced by Washington’s military power. There are no links suggesting that right-wing and Islamic groups are collaborating on terrorism-related strategies, but law enforcement officials are concerned over the growing, and sometimes surreal, attraction between the two.

It reminds me of those Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup commercials: “Hey, you got anti-Americanism in my anti-Semitism!” “Oh, yeah? Well, you got anti-Semitism in my Anti-Americanism!” “Hmm. . . it’s pretty good though!”

THERE’S NOT REALLY ANY “MYSTERY” HERE: It seems pretty obvious that there are a lot of connections between the Saudi government and Al Qaeda. Whether you want to call it a “rogue” operation or not, it is, essentially, a Saudi operation.

BLOGGING WILL BE LIGHT as I’m on travel tomorrow. I may manage a post or two in the morning, but then I’m off on a (very brief) trip to speak at a panel on “Communitarian Approaches to Cyberspace” at the Association of American Law Schools conference. Sadly, it’s not open to the public, but here’s the description:

Panel will discuss the questions of whether or not one can justify creating a commons in cyberspace, and what purpose such a commons could serve.

Panel:

Jack Balkin, Yale Law School

Carol Rose, Yale Law School

Eugene Volokh, UCLA Law School

Glenn Reynolds, College of Law, University of Tennessee

Chair: Peter Levine, University of Maryland, Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement

What will I say? Ah, that would be telling. I’m taking the laptop, so I may post from the road as time permits. In the meantime, OxBlog seems to be on a roll. And read this piece by Marci Hamilton on why federalism is good for civil rights.