THE “DEAN FEDAYEEN?” Hmm. I’m surprised people aren’t objecting to that term. I wonder if they’ll “go clean for Dean” when the primaries roll around? But here’s what I found interesting:

One of the most important online vehicles for the Dean campaign is blogs. Just as President Bush has wooed conservative talk-show hosts, holding a special day for them at the White House, Dean is the first candidate to treat relatively unknown bloggers as a critical opinion-making constituency. “We understand the blogging community and have been active in it,” says Trippi. “A lot more people are seeing us on the blogs and other sites every day than on TV at this point in the campaign.” . . .

Anyone who writes critically about Dean can expect his copy to be chewed up by this army of zealous Dean Internet scribes. When I wrote a piece recently that contained a few paragraphs about Dean, a member of the Dean2004 blog team filed an almost 2,000-word entry slicing my article up into sections with labels such as “true,” “false,” “inadvertently true,” and “foolish.” Not content with this, the Dean blogosphere recently established a rapid-reaction team called the Dean Defense Forces (DDF)—an e-mail list of hard-core Dean supporters who swiftly push back with e-mails, letters to the editor, blog entries, and phone calls against anyone spreading anti-Dean sentiments. “When he gets attacked, we’ll respond,” pledges the DDF’s organizer, Matthew Singer, a 20-year-old college student in Montana who once blogged about Dean on his own site, Left in the West.

Very interesting. Read the whole thing. I suspect that this approach will help Dean punch above his weight in the primaries. I’m not sure it would translate well to a general-election campaign, though I could be wrong about that.

ARUNDHATI ROY on the horror of democracy: you have to listen to people who disagree with you!

VIA BURCHISMO, I found Butterflies and Wheels, a leftish site devoted to “fighting fashionable nonsense.” It’s well worth checking out.

FOUAD AJAMI WRITES ON THE ROADMAP:

It may be the proper thing for America to take up the matter of Israel and the Palestinians; it may be a debt owed the stalwart British Prime Minister Tony Blair. But we should know the Arab world for what it is today and entertain no grand illusions about the gratitude the road map would deliver in Palestinian and Arab streets. We buy no friendship in Arab lands with pro-Palestinian diplomacy; we ward off no anti-American terrorism. There is no possibility the rancid anti-Americanism of Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt would be assuaged with a big push for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. The highest religious authority of that land, Sheik al Azhar Muhammad Tantawi, recently called the American-led coalition’s effort against Saddam a “crusading war” and said that Muslims everywhere were obliged to take up arms against the “invaders.” This kind of sentiment can never be stilled with a diplomatic effort on behalf of the Palestinians.

The Palestinian issue has always been an excuse — or a tool — for distraction, not the real key to settling down the region. We may have to wait until the last dictator is strangled with the entrails of the last mullah for that.

THE MIGHTY WURLITZER: Maureen Dowd states an “outrageous falsehood” about President Bush. Other left-leaning media folks uncritically pick it up and repeat it. The error is never corrected by The New York Times — guess they were busy fixing Jayson Blair’s mistakes — and starts to gain currency. Spinsanity has the whole story, and concludes: “The rapid spread of this myth is yet another sad commentary on the state of American political journalism.”

Yet another.

TOMPAINE.COM’S BLOG waxes snarky about plans to disarm Iraqis. I’ll ignore their conflation of automatic and semi-automatic weapons, and just note that the Administration is treating Iraq like, well, a conquered nation. It’s funny that this is how gun-control folks want to treat America.

MIKE SILVERMAN HAS Robert Scheer mad-libs. Be sure to click all the boxes.

TORONTO: NOT FREE OF SARS YET. Bummer.

JUST FAXED IN MY GRADES. My conlaw exam was pretty fun this year. I had a question involving a nude dance club called “The House of Protest,” where the dancers had political slogans painted on their bodies a la the Dixie Chicks, and one where a “Senator Dick Saluspopuli” tried to ban gay sex under the Interstate Commerce Clause (best student line: “Although Chief Justice Marshall, in Gibbons v. Ogden, wrote that ‘commerce is intercourse,’ he did not write that intercourse is, therefore, commerce.”)

Grading is the worst part of my job by far. I’m glad to have it behind me for a few more months. Now comes Miller time. Well, actually I’m going to drink the last Redhook ESB, anyway.

BUSH’S BASE is getting restive. I guess Rove figures they can get the base fired up again in plenty of time for 2004, but I think he may be underestimating people’s memories, and the extent of their political alienation.

I WOULD FILE THIS STORY under the usual “homeland security is still a joke” heading, but, really, I think it belongs under an “immigration policy is still a joke.” Or maybe it’s some of both. As Matt Welch puts it:

This regulation and a host of others like it were in place long before Congressional fries were liberated from the Vichy regime; what’s new is the enforcement. Since late last fall, when the Department of Homeland Security installed a comprehensive immigration database (the jauntily named Consular Lookout and Support System, or CLASS), yesterday’s minor visa transgression is today’s “no-entry” stamp.

Apparently it’s even possible that if journalists come to the United States as tourists and then write something about it, they may be barred entry in the future on the ground that they’ve violated the visa rules. That’s just wrong.

THE YALE LAW BOMBING SOLVED: A reader sends this close analysis of the case:

Analysis

It’s pretty clear who did the bombing at Yale Law School — Steven Hatfill, the scientist under investigation for sending the anthrax letters.

Just ask yourself these questions:

Who would benefit by having the FBI distracted by another terrorist investigation?

Who is angry with the FBI and President Bush (a Yale alumnus)?

Who is upset with lawyers (government lawyers are among the people who hassle Mr. Hatfill)?

Who once used a Yale lock on his school locker?

Who once passed through Connecticut on his way to Boston?

Who once owned a backpack (the device at Yale Law could have been concealed in a backpack)?

Who once worked in a lab (sometimes bombs are made in labs)?

Who lives in a house with doors (doors also provided access to the classroom where the bomb went off)?

Coincidence?

I don’t think so.

But I’m sure the FBI got there first on this investigation, also.

Heh.

ERNIE THE ATTORNEY has some observations on law firm websites and lawyer weblogs.

IT’S ALL ABOUT PROMISCUOUS GAY SEX, over at The Volokh Conspiracy. You know, it was like a dam bursting after that first post on vibrators. . . .

BRUCE ROLSTON says he’s got a bunch of stuff that supports what he calls the revisionist version of the Jessica Lynch story. But no blanks. And without that, there’s no story, really — just a claim that things weren’t as dangerous as they might have been, and that the Pentagon got as much PR out of the event as it could, neither of which strikes me as earthshaking.

When the BBC put out its story, the selling point was that the Lynch rescue was a fraud, staged with fake guns and fake explosions (that mysteriously weren’t used in the video the Pentagon released). That’s been pretty thoroughly blown out of the water. What’s left is Monday-morning quarterbacking over military tactics and over PR strategy.

UPDATE: TAPPED, which is hard to paint as a water-carrier for Bush and Rumsfeld, agrees that Kampfner is ducking questions about the BBC’s story.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s more on a different Lynch-related issue:

The Washington Post reported that she staged a fierce fight before capture, emptying a gun and killing Iraqi attackers before being stabbed and shot herself.

But two Pentagon officials in interviews cast doubt on that report. The officials said all evidence suggests that Pfc. Lynch’s truck crashed in the chaos of the ambush in the central Iraqi town of Nasiriyah. She suffered several bone fractures and was in no position to put up a fight, the officials said.

But a final determination will await the commander’s inquiry, or “15-6,” which refers to the regulation authorizing such investigations

What’s interesting about this is that — contrary to the revisionists’ spin — this makes clear that a lot of the Lynch stories didn’t originate with the Pentagon to begin with.

ARE YOU A YALE LAW STUDENT UPSET BY THE BOMBING? Yale’s got you covered, regardless of your needs:

Counseling Resources Available for YLS Community Members
This is a stressful time for many of us, and we’d like to assure you that there are a variety of resources for you to use if you want or need to talk to someone.

The Yale Health Services Center Department of Mental Hygiene is available during weekday business hours for confidential consultation.

———-

A Yale Law School community happy hour will be held at 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 22, in the Ezra Stiles Dining Hall. It is open to all members of the Yale Law School community. Please stop by.

I know which one I would pick.

THE FBI HAS A SKETCH of a man they’re looking for in the Yale Law bombing. And they’ve been talking to the lovely Lily Malcolm.

DAVE KOPEL HAS SOME THOUGHTS on the new CBS Hitler miniseries.

GEITNER SIMMONS writes about the Chris Hedges scandal:

Sure, it’s a good thing, in one sense, that knee-jerk anti-American critics are being made aware of the breadth of opposition to their poorly constructed arguments in the post-9/11 era. But shouting down left-wing campus speakers today smacks too much of the campus left’s proto-PC actions of the ’80s. I had the same reaction when a New York Sun editorial unwisely equated the antiwar march in NYC a few months ago with treason. And when students at that Canadian university used violence last year to prevent Benjamin Netanyahu from speaking on their campus.

Yes, and there’s clearly a certain joy-in-payback aspect to all of this. But I think that Geitner’s right that this shouldn’t go too far. At the same time, it’s not fair to expect students to exercise self-restraint and show proper behavior if administrators and speakers are unwilling to do the same. It was a colossal mistake to book Hedges, and the speech he gave was insulting — not to mention self-indulgent, pompous, ignorant, and lame. We should expect the students to behave, but we should also expect the universities not to presume too much on their good behavior.

WILLIAM SAFIRE HAS A SKEPTICAL TAKE on FCC Chairman Michael Powell’s stance regarding media concentration:

Many artists, consumers, musicians and journalists know that such protestations of cable and Internet competition by the huge dominators of content and communication are malarkey. The overwhelming amount of news and entertainment comes via broadcast and print. Putting those outlets in fewer and bigger hands profits the few at the cost of the many.

Does that sound un-conservative? Not to me. The concentration of power — political, corporate, media, cultural — should be anathema to conservatives. The diffusion of power through local control, thereby encouraging individual participation, is the essence of federalism and the greatest expression of democracy.

I agree, of course, that the concentrated political power of Big Media is a threat. And I think that Bush should respond to Safire’s call to “go on the record” by opposing Powell’s initiative, and by encouraging Attorney General John Ashcroft to have the Antitrust Division take a close look at Big Media as it is today.

JOANNE JACOBS FINDS MORE DROPPED BALLS AT THE NEW YORK TIMES — to coin a phrase, don’t these people know how to use Google?

THE WAR IS OVER: France has surrendered.

JANET RENO AND OSAMA BIN LADEN — just one of the many topics over at Bill Hobbs’ site today. Now that he’s gone to a group-blog format, he’s as productive as three bloggers! Go figure.

THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SCHOLARS has a blog now. Topics include teaching grammar, tenure battles at Brooklyn, and the politics of the APA.

NOW I’M SITTING IN THE SUN (newsworthy in itself, given our crappy weather lately) blogging in front of the Student Center via the University’s wireless network, which reaches everywhere on campus. The screen really does look good in the sun. If the weather ever quits sucking, I’ll do more of this.