JOE LIEBERMAN AND “LIES:” Some cogent thoughts on the difference between being wrong and being dishonest.

MURDER RATES ARE AT A RECORD LOW, dropping back to the levels of 40 years ago. The drop started about ten years ago.

This isn’t proof that the wave of liberalized handgun-carry laws over the same period has driven murder rates down, and I rather suspect that there are multiple factors involved, but it certainly disproves the promises of gun-control proponents that blood would run in the streets if such laws were adopted.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, interestingly, despite a near-complete handgun ban gun crime is climibing sharply in Britain:

Handgun crime has soared past levels last seen before the Dunblane massacre of 1996 and the ban on ownership of handguns introduced the year after Thomas Hamilton, an amateur shooting enthusiast, shot dead 16 schoolchildren, their teacher and himself in the Perthshire town.

It was hoped the measure would reduce the number of handguns available to criminals. Now handgun crime is at its highest since 1993.

One argument by anti-gun-control folks that I never found very persuasive was that if guns were banned people would simply manufacture illegal ones. But that’s exactly what’s happening in Britain, according to this story.

UPDATE: Andy Freeman is bemoaning my skepticism about illegal manufacture — click “More” to find out why.

ANOTHER UPDATE: “Gun Death” rates are down in Canada after stricter gun controls, though if you go all the way to the bottom of this story you’ll see that overall homicide has gone up.

(more…)

I’M PRETTY INTERESTED IN WI-FI, and I blog on it pretty often. But if you’re seriously interested you should be reading Glenn Fleishman’s blog, which covers nothing but wifi, and at a much higher level of sophistication than you’re likely to find here.

HERE’S MORE ON OUTSOURCING from the New York Times. More support for my prediction that this will be an election issue:

Now political groups are offering estimates. The Progressive Policy Institute, which is affiliated with the Democratic Party, will soon publish its calculation of manufacturing jobs shifted overseas since George W. Bush took office just before the recession began, said Rob Atkinson, a vice president. Not surprisingly, the estimate — imputed from trade data — is on the high side: 800,000 jobs lost to overseas production.

Not surprising at all.

THE BEST PART OF BLOGGERCON, for me, was last night when I was wireless-blogging at the hotel bar. Halley Suitt and Adam Curry showed up, declared that they were staging an intervention of the sort that Andrew Sullivan said I needed, and made me stop blogging and have a drink. Er, drinks. Dan Gillmor, Doc Searls, and a host of other bloggers showed up shortly thereafter, and an excellent time was had by all.

Who knew that this intervention stuff could be so much fun?

Thanks to Dave Winer for a terrific conference, in spite of the technical glitches.

UPDATE: Hmm. Judging by this post, Halley had more fun than I did that night. No wonder she left early!

I’M BACK, but won’t be blogging or responding to email for a while. But here’s a post by Steven Den Beste that’s disturbing.

UPDATE: Porphyrogenitus comments.

ONE MORE THOUGHT: One comment that I made in passing earlier, and that seems more and more relevant as I think about it, is that the White House has a lot to gain by subpoenaing reporters who know about the Plame leaks. Doing that serves several useful purposes. First, once the press clams up and starts going on about protecting sources, it becomes extremely hard for it to claim that the White House is covering things up. “Who’s stonewalling now?” can be the response.

Second, the press’s complaints will look like special pleading (which they are). “If you leak this you’re a traitor, but if we publish it, we’re being great Americans,” won’t wash.

Third, subpoenaing reporters will likely reduce the number of leaks in the future. And that’s a good thing, right? We keep hearing that these leaks were disastrous for national security. If that’s true, we certainly want people to think twice before leaking in this fashion again, or publishing the results of such leaks.

I’ve got more on this here, here, here, and here. Or just enter “Plame” in the search window to find the complete list of posts on the subject.

UPDATE: Howard Kurtz observes:

There are at least six people in Washington who know the answer to the city’s most politically charged mystery in years. And they’re not talking.

That’s because they’re journalists.

Whether they should maintain their silence — and whether they might be legally compelled to break it — lies at the heart of a burgeoning debate about media ethics and the whispered transactions with government officials that shape the daily flow of news and opinion. . . .

Some members of the public, if a torrent of e-mails is any indication, suggest Novak and the other journalists have a duty to come forward. If it is a federal crime for officials to intentionally make public the name of a covert operative, these critics ask, why do reporters who serve as a conduit for such information get a pass?

Why, indeed? Kurtz concludes with this observation:

All this puts journalists in the uncomfortable position of peppering administration officials with questions some of their colleagues, now in the media spotlight, could answer.

“It’s a tough question for journalists,” said Columbia’s Lemann. “I see why not revealing a source is very powerfully in your personal professional interest. But why is it also in the public interest?”

Again: why, indeed?

ANOTHER UPDATE: I’ve got more on this subject, here, in response to the rather bizarre claim that the above constitutes advice to the White House on how to cover things up.

BACK ONLINE, now using the wireless network in the hotel bar, which seems to be working fine. Bloggercon was extensively blogged elsewhere:

Dan Bricklin has pictures, one of which shows me frowning at the laptop.

Betsy Devine has notes — just start scrolling up.

Jeff Jarvis has quite a few pungent observations, of course.

And Dan Gillmor has pictures, and links to other people’s blogging.

Here are a few observations. First, on my journalism panel Ed Cone seemed especially anxious to hear what I think should be done on the Plame affair. My suggestion that the journalists should be subpoenaed was received rather coolly by the journalists, though my suggestion that anyone found to have illegally leaked should be fired, even if it was Dick Cheney, was better received. (Yes, I know — the Vice President can’t actually be “fired,” but he could be dropped from the ’04 ticket at the very least. Not that I really think that Cheney had anything to do with whatever happened, but quite a few people at the conference, noticeably more hostile to the Bush Administration, felt otherwise.)

My favorite panel was the final one, featuring representatives from the DNC and from the Graham, Dean, and Clark blogging campaigns. It was: Mathew Gross (Dean), Joe Jones (Graham), Eric Folley (Democratic National Committee), Cameron Barrett (Clark). A few points:

1. The Democratic candidates are kicking the ass of the Republicans in terms of Presidential campaign blogging, and use of the Internet generally. Dean especially. The Dean people have figured out that you can get power on the Internet by giving up control. The Bush people — partly because they’re incumbents, partly by philosophy — are still very big on control. So, in varying degrees, are the other Democratic candidates, and I heard quite a few stories of Edwards turning away offers of help from the likes of Oliver Willis. Foolish.

2. There was a fair amount of criticism of the Democratic Presidential blogs for being “inauthentic,” because the candidates aren’t the ones doing the blogging. Matthew Gross said that it’s impossible for a Presidential candidate to get elected while blogging in an “authentic” fashion. I think that’s true. I also think it’s too bad. We elect candidates out of a sense of what they’re made of. A blog gives you a better sense of the person than any conventional communication, especially TV spots. One suspects, though, that candidates like it that way.

3. In this cycle, and (perhaps) the next one, blogs will have more relevance in the run-up to the primary than in the general elections. Blogs aren’t tools of mass persuasion, and won’t be at least until there’s a “mass.” And maybe not even then. But they’re great at building buzz, and mobilizing interested people. That’s more relevant in the early stages than the late ones.

I’m sorry I’ll miss the rest of the conference — I have to go home tomorrow. It was excellent, except for the technical glitches.

UPDATE: Scott Rosenberg has more thoughts on the candidate-blog discussion.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Oliver Wills calls for perspective. And here’s more from Kaye Trammell. And still more from Dave Weinberger.

SOME FRIENDLY TECH JOURNALISTS tried to help me with my computer, and now it really isn’t working, and I’m too depressed to fiddle with it right now. (I’m borrowing Jeff Jarvis’s laptop for this post). Posting will resume later, but not for a while. Expect email responses to be slow, too.

WITH THE INTERMITTENT INTERNET HERE, I may not be posting a lot (or I may, if it starts working). But either way, check out this week’s Blog Mela, which is particularly well-stocked with interesting stuff today. Branch out in your blog-reading!

In an unrelated development — but I gotta post where and when I can, today — all I can say is Advantage: Maguire.

HERE’S A PRETTY HORRIFIC account of conditions in Korea from today’s Washington Post. How horrific? Horrific enough that I don’t have anything to say except “read it.”

I’M AT BLOGGERCON at Harvard Law School where I just did a panel on weblogs and journalism with Scott Rosenberg, Josh Marshall, and Ed Cone. There’s wi-fi in this classroom, but it doesn’t work very well: it’s intermittent and painfully slow, and my posts keep getting lost. People have to be individually logged in with MAC addresses, and then it still doesn’t work.

It’s the best argument for truly open wi-fi I’ve experienced — except for the wi-fi at my hotel, which is free but requires a login, and which kept dumping me back to the login screen every second or third time I would try to follow a link.

The access-control systems on wi-fi seem to cause most of the problems.

WEAPONS IN IRAQ — a smoking gun:

WARSAW (Reuters) – Polish troops in Iraq have found four French-built advanced anti-aircraft missiles which were built this year, a Polish Defense Ministry spokesman told Reuters Friday.

France strongly denied having sold any such missiles to Iraq for nearly two decades, and said it was impossible that its newest missiles should turn up in Iraq.

“Polish troops discovered an ammunition depot on Sept. 29 near the region of Hilla and there were four French-made Roland-type missiles,” Defense Ministry spokesman Eugeniusz Mleczak said.

“It is not the first time Polish troops found ammunition in Iraq but to our surprise these missiles were produced in 2003.” . . .

Under a strict trade embargo imposed by the United Nations, Iraq was barred from importing arms after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

It’s as if the French don’t care about international law.

UPDATE: Here’s a story saying that the Poles are wrong.

ANOTHER UPDATE: James Rummel smells a coverup: “The Poles were willing to stick to their guns until Chirac yelled at them. Then, all of a sudden, they say that they’re wrong. So why doesn’t one of our guys just drive on over to where the Poles have set up shop and take a look? Because the missiles were destroyed on Wednesday.”

It did sound a bit suspicous to me, but who knows?

THIS WILL UPSET THE L.A. TIMES:

In a boost for Mr Schwarzenegger, a report in an Austrian Jewish magazine said that as a young bodybuilder he helped break up a neo-Nazis demonstration in the Austrian city of Graz.

“There was a clash and Arnold along with some bodybuilders chased the Nazis down Herrengasse Street,” Alfred Gerstl, the father of one of Mr Schwarzenegger’s friends, recalled in the interview published in German last month.

But it’s from that notorious tool of Karl Rove, the BBC.

NO, NO, NO: InstaPundit is not a news service.

[How about doing one of those Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup things: “Hey, you got punditry in my news service!” Whaddya think? — Ed. I think that’s called The New York Times.]

JEFF JARVIS experiences the power of blogging.

WINDS OF CHANGE has interesting stuff on repudiating Saddam’s debts. Sounds good to me. And if it makes people less willing to loan money to dictators, well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it?

SYLVAIN GALINEAU WEIGHS IN on the subject of French declinism.

DODD HARRIS HAS MORE on Wesley Clark, Acxiom, and CAPPS II.

HACK THE VOTE: An, er, interesting suggestion to dealing with electronic voting-machine fraud.

BLUE-ON-BLUE: Susan Estrich is blasting the L.A. Times over the Schwarzenegger scandal-report: “What this story accomplishes is less an attack on Schwarzenegger than a smear on the press.”

UPDATE: Dan Drezner has more scorn for the L.A. Times, on a different issue.

ANDREW SULLIVAN has been reading the Kay report and finds that there’s more to it than the press accounts suggest, and that it makes the pre-war intelligence look better, not worse.

IAIN MURRAY WRITES that the World Climate Conference in Russia is the biggest story in the world at the moment, but that everyone is missing it. He makes a good case.

UPDATE: Here’s a related item.

NANOPANTS get a favorable review from Consumer Reports. Guess I’d better buy some.

OUTSOURCING AS AN ELECTION ISSUE? I keep predicting that it will be. Now Jim Hightower is raising it, and claims that the Republicans are using call centers in India, for fundraising. (Via SemiPundit).

Meanwhile, here’s an interesting bit on the growth in self-employment, with a striking graph. This seems to fit with what I wrote here. It also fits with what Dan Pink says in Free Agent Nation, about which I’ll be writing more at some point.

UPDATE: Here’s something else interesting on outsourcing.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Republican call-center story is apparently an urban legend.