MARTIN LEE WRITES:

A constitutional convention to confirm Hong Kong people’s aspirations for democracy and allow for a truly democratic government is a necessary next step. With our inheritance from Britain of the rule of law, individual freedoms and tolerance for political differences, there is no society better prepared for and more deserving of democracy. And, as the world saw when our population took to the streets, there can no longer be any doubt about how strongly Hong Kong people value their liberties and desire a system that can protect them.

One day, of course, it would be nice to see liberties — and a system that can protect them — extended to the whole of China. Which, I suspect, is precisely what Beijing fears.

NAPOLEON IS CONQUERING AGAIN. Well, sort of.

Of course, so is Lance Armstrong, and in a bigger way.

READER S.E. BRENNER SENDS THESE COMMENTS ON COVERAGE OF THE HUSSEIN BROTHERS’ LIVES, as annotations to a story on their deaths:

(more…)

JUST NOTICED that quite a few people hit the PayPal and Amazon tipjars while I was on vacation. Thanks!

FOR IDI AMIN, COMEDY WAS EASY but dying is hard. Killing came easily to him, too.

Meanwhile a letter in the Washington Post notes:

The Hussein sons remind me that Idi Amin had a son much like them, swaggering around Kampala armed, raping and killing with viciousness and, of course, impunity. I wonder whether he has been living comfortably in Jiddah.

I wonder, too. As Mark Steyn notes, “At least in this instance, unlike their more recent subventions, the House of Saud began giving money to a mass murderer after he’d stopped killing. ”

CONGRESS HAS PASSED THE anti-prison-rape law that was discussed here a while back. I doubt it will solve the problem, but it may help. And at least it’s a sign that somebody’s taking the problem seriously. That’s good, given the past remarks of people like California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who clearly doesn’t.

IT’S TIME TO ACCESSORIZE YOUR EPISTEMOLOGY! All the cool kids are doing it.

MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS WITH THE SECRET SERVICE are a long-time InstaPundit staple. Now Michelle Malkin is all over them as well:

Shame on the Secret Service. This week, it investigated renowned editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez like he was some left-wing homeless crackpot who had sent President Bush an anthrax-laced death threat — all because Ramirez drew a provocative cartoon that was clearly intended to defend the president.

Meanwhile, the Secret Service can’t even keep a loony-tunes stowaway from conning his way onto a White House press charter plane in Africa or prevent a known wacko named the “Handshake Man” from slipping past security and personally delivering an unscreened letter to Bush at a public event in Washington, D.C.

The Secret Service’s response to “threats” aimed at the President sometimes looks more like an effort to reinstate the old English offense of “encompassing the death of the King” than serious effort to spot dangerous people. And the Secret Service’s proximity to the President has shielded it from the scrutiny that it deserves.

YES, I’M BEHIND ON EMAIL — and as this weekend’s light blogging illustrates, I’m not at the computer that much. My computer-savaged spine, shoulders, elbows, etc. have all recovered miraculously (as they always do) with a week’s vacation, and I’m not quite ready to start savaging them again. Meanwhile, Bigwig notes the nature of the problem:

I don’t get Lileks or Reynolds levels of mail. I don’t get anywhere near that much mail, it’s just that what I do get is already more than I can respond to, and if the email looks like my address was just one of many in a BCC line, then I’m almost certainly going to ignore it.

Half the mail that is addressed to me personally doesn’t get anything more than a once over. I just don’t have the time to write both emails and posts. Heck, the only way I can even write this one is to put Scotty M. on top of a pillow in my lap and type over him. He’s talking to my elbow at the moment, something about where his damn pacifier is. I’ve done this often enough that Ngnat has a term for it. She calls it the “Daddy Bed.”

So, my apologies for everything I’ve missed, and will miss. If you absolutely must make sure that I read and respond to your email, there is one way to guarantee that I will do so.

He’s right with his solution to the problem. . . . I just note this because occasionally people are personally affronted if I don’t make a timely response to their email. I do my best, but I get hundreds a day, and this is a hobby, not my job. Most people understand this, and have good manners. For the rest, well — there’s always Bigwig’s solution. Or another, less printable, one.

MCI IS ACCUSED OF DEFRAUDING OTHER PHONE COMPANIES to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars:

Federal prosecutors have opened an investigation in the United States and Canada into accusations that MCI, the nation’s second-largest long-distance carrier, defrauded other telephone companies of at least hundreds of millions of dollars over nearly a decade, people involved in the inquiry said.

The central element of MCI’s scheme, people involved in the inquiry said, consisted of disguising long-distance calls as local calls to avoid paying special access tariffs to local carriers across the country. Those tariffs are the largest single source of MCI’s costs for carrying calls and data transmissions.

Interesting story. I suspect that putting the case in front of a jury will prove a challenge, though.

CHIEF WIGGLES BLOGS FROM IRAQ — and he’s not very impressed with the efforts of Amnesty International and the Red Cross.

STEVEN DEN BESTE OFFERS A STRATEGIC OVERVIEW OF THE WAR TO DATE. It’s long, and thorough. But you probably figured that already. . . .

Why hasn’t the Bush Administration produced something like this? Probably because it contains statements that, while true, would have unfortunate diplomatic ramifications if made by Administration officials. But pundits and analysts of the war would be well-advised to read Den Beste’s post.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, here’s an interesting item pointing out that guerrilla resistance in Germany continued until 1947. How come we’re not hearing this comparison in mainstream media?

ANOTHER UPDATE: This was mentioned in a story I linked earlier, but here’s a Chuck Schumer press release attacking the Bush Administration for coddling Saudi Arabia. That’s a far cry from DNC commercials of the Niger-Uranium sort, but Schumer’s often an early indicator of what Democrats think will get them traction. Stay tuned.

SWISS RECALCITRANCE is producing a “buy American” push in Congress:

Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican, also said Switzerland, a neutral nation, blocked delivery of grenades to British military forces during the conflict because it opposed the war.

“The British went into battle in Iraq without a full grenade load,” Mr. Hunter said in an interview.

Regarding the JDAM parts, Mr. Hunter said Swatch Group AG, and its Micro Crystal division in Gretchen, Switzerland, refused to send key components used in the bomb guidance equipment used on the JDAM after the Iraq war began.

The Swiss company’s president blocked the parts to Honeywell, which was a subcontractor for Boeing Co. in making the tail kits for the satellite-guided bombs, 6,600 of which were dropped with great effect during the period of major conflict in Iraq.

If these stories are true, they should certainly cost these companies — and perhaps Switzerland as a whole — procurement business. But whether this should translate into “buy American” legislation isn’t so clear.

Then, of course, there’s the question of why we’re acquiring bomb parts from the “Swatch” folks. . . .

UPDATE: Reader Bob Pence emails:

By not providing parts, Swatch endangered many Iraqis. A given bomb, depending on the importance of the target and the degree of shortage, may have dropped with or without the JDAM tail for precision guidance. Without it, the bomb might miss its target by a few meters and destroy a mosque or an apartment block, but also we wouldn’t just drop one bomb – we would drop enough to guarantee the target was destroyed. Without precision guidance that’s a lot of extra bombs possibly aimed at the Ace of Spades but having a bad effect on people who were never even dealt into the game.

Fortunately we found a domestic supplier, probably at higher cost mostly because of the short turnaround needed. When it comes to display parts like that, there are also some likely Japanese and South Korean suppliers. I suspect that Boeing is even now processing an engineering change document for that assembly listing multiple vendors – none of them in driving distance of Lake Geneva.

This is the kind of thing that makes me want to go down to the nearby mall that has a Swatch Store and smash the display cases there. Or hand out protest fliers. The “neutral” Swiss have a shameful history of war profiteering, yet they have here stooped lower, conceivably denying us bullets and forcing us to use shotgun blasts in their place.

Moves Italy up another notch on European vacation destinations.

Lake Lucerne is lovely this time of year. But so is Lake Como.

BREATHING DOWN SADDAM’S NECK: This report is encouraging, if true.

MESSY, if likely ineffectual, doings in the Phillipines. We Americans don’t always realize just how unusually well-off we are to have a professional, and honorable, military. It’s very much the exception, around the world.

Of course, so is having an effectual military. I think there’s a connection.

TODAY IS “CUBAN LIBERATION DAY,” but the “liberation,” unfortunately, never actually took place.

HERE’S AN INTERESTING INTERVIEW with Christopher Hitchens, who’s just back from Iraq.

TACITUS POINTS OUT THAT scholars of Islam are facing death threats.

THIS CARTOON isn’t subtle, but it’s pretty much on the mark.

And speaking of cartoons, Day by Day will return on Monday.

UPDATE: A lightbulb joke I hadn’t heard.

SOME (PRETTY) GOOD NEWS from Sao Tome, over at Oxblog.

A FEW DAYS AGO I noted the Berkeley study that suggests that conservatism is a sort of mental disorder. Jonah Goldberg is busily making fun of it now. Meanwhile, Prof. James Lindgren suggests that the Berkeley data are likely to be unsound.

What’s most amazing to me is that the Berkeley PR office thought that trumpeting this study to the nationwide media would be a good idea, and that doing so would somehow enhance the school’s reputation.

UPDATE: Brian Carnell has some interesting information on some other theorizing by one of the study authors.

CHEMIST DEREK LOWE speculates about what Philip Larkin would have been like on Ritalin.

UPDATE: Jim Henley has some thoughts. And I like his fitness-blog posts.

MORE SHENANIGANS from the Nevada Supreme Court. This seems rather unjudicious to me.

HEY, I’VE GOT AN UNSTOPPABLE POLITICAL JUGGERNAUT rolling, and I didn’t even know about it until today!

I must say, I’m proud to share the ticket with Rachel Lucas. And I guess this Blogosphere political movement makes two things I have in common with Howard Dean, now. Or, come to think of it, three!

UPDATE: Heck, people have even got the cabinet mostly picked out for me.

Government-via-blogosphere? Why not? I mean, how much worse could it be? And it would figure that the whole thing was started by a self-described gay gun nut, wouldn’t it?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Gary Leff is angling for the Secretary of Transportation slot. Hey, he’d have to be better than “Underperformin’ Norman” Mineta!

ACCORDING TO THIS REPORT, Howard Dean can expect a massive wave of attacks from bloggers.

Personally, I doubt it. Who would resort to lame attacks just to boost traffic?

UPDATE: ScrappleFace forces life to imitate ScrappleFace.