SAMIZDATA IS BACK, having been blown offline by a “bandwidth spike” caused, sadly, by one of my links. According to the Samizdatistas, “Glenn Reynolds has blown up more servers than Al Qaeda.”

But I do it with love. And I’m not taking the rap for the Burning Annie site’s “bandwidth exceeded” problems without more evidence.

Speaking of blogosphere news, An Age Like This is back up, too — but its shutdown wasn’t my fault!

And Edward Boyd’s Zonitics blog is now a group-blog. Well, he’s added a coblogger anyway. Hmm. Maybe group blogs are the wave of the future.

Maybe I should add a co-blogger. Do you think Monica Bellucci would be interested?

BLAME CANADA: Tennessee’s first SARS case is a man who had travelled to Toronto.

JEFF JARVIS has more on the Iranian mullahs’ paranoid and doomed efforts at Internet censorship.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT? This time it’s Susan Estrich.

EUGENE VOLOKH POINTS OUT THAT SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER IS UTTERLY INCOHERENT on the Second Amendment:

So what exactly is Schumer’s position? That “the Second Amendment confers an individual right to own guns”? That it secures “just a collective right to a well-regulated militia”? Or that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to own guns, but that it’s wrong for Attorney General Ashcroft to agree with that?

Read the whole thing, and marvel. One possible explanation: Schumer has realized that it’s basically impossible for a straightforwardly anti-gun candidate to be elected President.

UPDATE: Tom Perry says that he has decoded Schumer’s stance.

ALGERIA UPDATE: Yep, it was Islamic extremists, all right:

Wintersteller, a 63-year-old retired technician, disappeared in late March, along with seven other tourists. One early theory was that they had fallen victim to smugglers who frequent the border region.

But Wintersteller described his abductors as Islamic extremists who “wanted to install an Islamic state in Algeria and overthrow the government.” He quoted the kidnappers as saying they were negotiating with the hostages’ governments.

I hope that this will get more attention.

A GREAT PIECE IN THE GUARDIAN:

Nobody felt safe in Iraq after Saddam became president in 1979, launching a relentless crackdown on his political opponents. I saw some of my secondary school peers murdered. On one occasion, five of them were led out of class and executed for no obvious reason other than that they disagreed with Saddam and his method of ruling the country by fear. They paid for what they believed in with their lives. . .

I had to leave my family, which was destroyed. My brother was killed while on duty in the army. My other two brothers were disabled during their compulsory military service.

Saddam was a disaster for the whole region, and removing him was a necessity. His regime was the cause of wars and instability. Peace and stability could not be established while it was in place. . .

Many questions came to mind: Why did the world allow him to cause so much devastation and suffering in Iraq? Why was the Arab world happy to support a mass murderer? What would have Iraq looked like if we had a government like the one in Kuwait, or even Jordan? Would it not have been a sought-after destination for historians, archaeologists, believers of all world religions, as well as ordinary holidaymakers?

Indeed.

THE LITTLEGREENFOOTBALLS CONSPIRACY has been revealed.

I wonder if this is what the French are worried about?

HOW TO LOOK LIKE A VICTIM: More evidence that crime policies in Britain are insane. And I mean that literally.

FREEDOM TO TINKER has a table showing the status of state “super-DMCA” bills. I don’t think they’re so super, though.

UPDATE: How desperate are the Big Entertainment folks to keep this under the radar? Desperate enough that even newspapers are finding out about it from blogs.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Earlier this said “Big Media folks” above, which was a slip on my part and suggested — wrongly — that I was blaming the Rocky Mountain News. I just meant that the legislation is being slipped through quietly, not that the Rocky was in any way wrong here.

FRANCE IS ACCUSING the United States of organizing a campaign of lies against it.

Lies? Why bother when the truth has been so damning? I think this is revealing, though, in that it suggests the French establishment can’t conceive of a media wave that isn’t government-directed.

UPDATE: Of course, this effort is only getting the French more negative attention. Steven Den Beste is slamming France for playing the victim card, and notes:

If France is a victim, then it’s a victim of its own delusions of grandeur and its own lack of honor. If the government of France truly thinks that it can paint over the events of the last year and try to pretend they never happened, then we will have to augment that description: The French are decadent, treacherous and incredibly stupid lying weasels.

And that’s not even the mean part. Then there’s this observation, from Porphyrogenitus:

What the French really want is for us to return to the status quo ante, where they worked to undercut America at every turn but “for the sake of good relations” we politely took no notice of it and pretended everything was copacetic. I predicted in several posts that they would try to lull us back into somnolence while continuing to pursue these hostile policies (such as warning the countries of Eastern Europe that they’ll have to choose EUrope and not side with America again). I just didn’t know they’d be so brazen about it.

Yes, we’re not talking Richelieu here, are we?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ouch. Heh.

DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE? “Perhaps in fifty years.”

HERE’S A FIRSTHAND BLOG REPORT from an Iraqi mass grave.

HASSAN FATTAH reports in The New Republic that various terrorist groups want to turn Iraq into a new Beirut.

I’m sure they do, and the Bush Administration had better take this very seriously. On the other hand, it’s worth noting that (1) Beirut became the way it did because of the action of outside governments — notably Syria and Iran — who are now staring at U.S. troops in large numbers, and who had better worry that they’re playing into Wolfowitz’s hands by providing an excuse for more regime change; and (2) Is there any clearer evidence of the difference between us and them? Our vision of Iraq’s future: peaceful, free, and prosperous. The Islamofascists’ vision: Beirut. A peaceful, free, and prosperous Iraq is, in fact, their worst nightmare.

If the terrorists succeed in this goal, which I doubt (how many Iraqis really want to live in Beirut: Reloaded?), it will certainly mark a failure for the Bush Administration. But it will mark a far, far greater failure for Arab culture and politics.

For more bad news, from a credible source, read this piece by Jonathan Foreman. Is this stuff getting enough attention at the top? And if not, why not?

JAMES LILEKS, a reasonable and gentle man, is now “21% funkier!”

BILL HOBBS HAS MORE on Tennessee’s anti-TiVO bill, and on why Tennessee’s legislators are so cozy with the cable companies.

UPDATE: Read this editorial from the Rocky Mountain News on why similar legislation in Colorado is a bad idea:

Did you get permission from your cable company before you bought your kids a new VCR? Did your telephone company say you could use a modem to log on to the Internet? Did your Internet service provider give written approval for your Webcam?

Do you think you should have to ask them?

No, I don’t. And I don’t think voters do, either.

THE POWER’S BACK! And thank goodness. I’ll be doing a phoner on C-SPAN in just a few minutes. They’re covering blogs. . . though I had to laugh when they said that MediaWhoresOnline “tends liberal.” That’s putting things rather, er, mildly.

But I love their division of callers into three categories: people who agree or disagree with Bush, and then “bloggers.” That seems about right.

One thing that has been wrong with public debate over the past year or two — and you saw this particularly in the case of the war — is that for the most part it has been all about Bush, regardless of the topic allegedly at hand. That’s something that bloggers have been pointing out pretty steadily.

OKAY, ONE MORE: No damn tornado’s gonna stop me from posting. Jeff Jarvis has some interesting thoughts on Salam Pax, and a translated interview. Excerpt: “It’s so utterly predictable these days: First, you become famous. Then they tear you down.” With regard to David Warren’s piece on Salam, Jarvis cautions, correctly, that we don’t know enough about Salam Pax to judge what his agenda, if any, has been.

And, in an unrelated (or maybe not, entirely) but interesting matter, Eric Alterman is defending John Fund from allegations that Alterman says he has investigated and is convinced are bogus:

It did not take a lot of investigation on my part to conclude that Pillsbury was not the kind of source one could legitimately use to hang a man in public. Why were so many so eager to use her that way? No principle was at stake. It was all about payback.

Back later. I think I’ve got a car adapter for the laptop, somewhere. . . .

STILL NO POWER. According to the radio nobody was hurt, but big trees went down in a lot of places. They’re saying 40,000 are without power. That includes us. The UPS is still running the wireless network and DSL, but I don’t know how much longer it’ll last. Back later.

TORNADOBLOGGING: We’ve had a tornado, the power’s out, and it’s hailing. But here at InstaPundit we can take a flogging and keep on blogging — I’m using the laptop, and the wireless network and DSL modem are on a UPS that’s good for hours. I don’t think I’ll spend all that time blogging, though. If the power doesn’t come on soon, I’ll fire up the gas grill and make dinner on that.

In the words of Calvin, describing his disappointment with how the 21st century was shaping up: “You mean we still have weather?”

UPDATE: Looks like the storm’s passed us by. Still no power. We’re listening to the radio reports over the Internet on the laptop. There may be more storms later, though, and I don’t think I’ll keep blogging — back later.

IT’S BOOK-BLOGGING over at GlennReynolds.com, with appearances by Jacob Sullum, James Miller, Ken Walsh, and blogosphere fave Roger Simon.

DID HOMELAND SECURITY FOLKS help track down fugitive Texas legislators? This story isn’t completely clear on that, but it sounds like it:

One federal agency that became involved early on was the Air and Marine Interdiction and Coordination Center, based in Riverside, Calif. — which now falls under the auspices of the Homeland Security Department.

The agency received a call to locate a specific Piper turboprop aircraft. It was determined that the plane belonged to former House Speaker Pete Laney, D-Hale Center.

The location of Laney’s plane proved to be a key piece of information because, Craddick said, it’s how he determined that the Democrats were in Ardmore.

“We called someone, and they said they were going to track it. I have no idea how they tracked it down,” Craddick said. “That’s how we found them.”

On the other hand, this seems like a more appropriate response:

Jorge Martinez, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, said the matter “falls squarely within the purview of state authority, and it would not warrant investigation by federal authorities.”

The State of Texas is entirely within its rights to use all of its resources to bring fugitive legislators to meet. Legislative rules allow for that sort of thing most places, and it’s reasonable. But it doesn’t seem like a federal matter to me.

UPDATE: Via Andrew Sullivan, I discover that Dr. Josh Marshall has been all over this. A reader asks, by the way, why this isn’t a federal matter since they crossed a state line to flee. The short answer is that if there were a valid federal statute proscribing interstate flight to avoid a quorum call, then it would be. But although I haven’t researched the question, I rather doubt that such a statute exists, and I’d have to think about whether it would be within the scope of Congress’s enumerated powers anyway.

Of course, none of this makes it actually illegal for federal officials to share information with state officials. It just means that when they do so, they’re not doing their jobs, and they’re getting involved in something that it’s probably best for them to stay out of. Meanwhile those legislators who don’t want Homeland Security information shared for non-Homeland Security purposes would be well-advised to make sure that the law imposes such a ban. Otherwise it will happen.

MARTIN DEVON HAS WHAT SHOULD BE (but surely won’t be) the last word on the Jayson Blair affair:

I really don’t think that this is about lefty bias or affirmative action. It is about poor leadership. Jack Shafer defends Howell Raines saying that any of us can be fooled. Fair enough, but Shafer (perhaps because he was fooled by a monkeyfisher) lets Raines off way too easily.

Any of us can be fooled by a brown-noser — I’ve been. The trick is to foster an open and honest atmosphere with your executive team so that your subordinates will tell you when you are being snowed. That’s what saved me.

When I hired a brown-nosing slick-talking dude that fooled me, I was lucky enough to have many people who felt comfortable enough to warn me that I had made the wroing choice. Different people, from my assistant to rival managers came to me and told me some uncomfortable truths that I (and my boss) had missed.

From the Times own accounts, the email warnings of Jayson Blair’s bosses show that there were credible people who could have (or tried to) blow the whistle on Blair, if only they felt like they could without screwing up their own careers. That was Raines’ failure.

Yep.

HOLLYWOOD HALFWITS reports that Disney is dropping its support for Michael Moore’s planned Bush-bashing documentary.

HERE’S A MOTION FROM THE SOCIALIST ALLIANCE FOR WORKERS’ LIBERTY disavowing Saddamite MP George Galloway. I don’t know much about the politics of these outfits (I’d have to be a Ken McLeod character to do so) but this can’t be good news for Galloway.