IS IT A VIOLATION OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM for a university to shut down a professor’s webpage because they disagree with his ideas? Yes.

It’s happened at Indiana University, though. I blame John Ashcroft. . . .

UPDATE: Indiana University has done the right thing, and reversed its position on the matter.

NOW HERE’S AN IDEA.

RADLEY BALKO doesn’t like the prison rape bill I was praising earlier:

So at risk at being tagged as a shill for prison rapists, I’m wondering: how is this a federal issue? If the law applies only to federal prisons, fine. But the summary from the Stop Prison Rape site clearly implies it’s much broader than that. . . .

If conventional, man-on-woman rape doesn’t sufficiently affect interstate commerce to invoke the Commerce Clause, how does man-on-man rape within the confines of a state prison?

The answer is that it’s not about commerce, but about Congress’s power to enforce rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. That’s not invoked by ordinary rape — but when states permit, or, in California Attorney General Bill Lockyer’s case, encourage prison rape as a tool of policy, and it’s quite clear that they do — then it becomes a federal issue.

HEY, I CAN’T GET A FLYING CAR, but here’s a floating one! (Via Gizmodo).

UPDATE: Phil Bowermaster has a flying-car roundup! Okay, actually it’s a roundup of reasons why we don’t have flying cars. But you have to admit, it sounds cooler the other way.

A GUY ATTACKS JAMES LILEKS ON METAFILTER, and discovers that he’s brought the proverbial knife to a gunfight. Or maybe a toothpick. Ouch.

Lileks is also dissing Sony products. I dunno. I’ve got a Sony VCR that’s neither the best nor the worst. (The best I ever owned was an RCA — really a Thomson, made in France, no less — that I bought in 1986 and that worked flawlessly until a few months ago). I have a Sony camcorder that’s not a patch on either the big Canon that the InstaWife used for her film, or my not-quite-so-big Canon that I use for various video projects of mine — but it’s been reliable, and it has a lot of nice features that the Canons lack. (My Canon GL2, by the way, actually produces better video, and especially more accurate color, than the XL1S — I thought that was just me, but apparently most people have found that to be the case.) And I like my Sony DVD player a lot better than the JVC one — among other things, if you stop a DVD it remembers the location and will automatically restart from that point, which is a nice feature. And the quality seems excellent, though if you follow that link to the Amazon page you’ll see that not everyone agrees.

I wonder, though, if Lileks isn’t noticing that Sony is getting worse mostly just because he’s bought a lot of Sony stuff. My impression is that consumer electronics in general are getting shoddier, and that the corner-cutting has gone a bit too far with a lot of them. You can read my Andy Rooney-like rantings on that subject here.

MY REFERENCE TO KEITH LAUMER’S CAR COLLECTION, below, caused several readers to exclaim in delight, and others in puzzlement. Laumer, for those who don’t know him, wrote all sorts of science fiction novels, but his best work (in my opinion) was a series of short stories about an interstellar diplomat, now conveniently collected into a paperback volume edited by Eric Flint. Laumer worked in the U.S. embassies in Burma and South Vietnam, and had a pretty good eye for, well, stuff that seems familiar today. Sample quote:

“Hardly the diplomatic approach,” Magnan sniffed. “For centuries now it’s been understood that if enough diplomats go to enough parties, everything will come right in the end.”

And this one:

Jame Retief, Vice-Consul and Third Secretary in the Corps Diplomatique and junior member of the Terrestrial Embassy to Yill stepped forward.

“Since we hold the prior claim to the system, why don’t we put all our cards on the table to start with? Perhaps if we dealt frankly with the Yill, it would pay us in the long run.”

Ambassador Straphanger blinked up at the younger man. . . . He assumed a fatherly expression. “Young man, you’re new to the service. You haven’t yet learned the team play, the give-and-take of diplomacy. I shall expect you to observe closely the work of the experienced negotiators of the mission, learn the importance of subtlety. Excessive reliance on direct methods might tend in time to attenuate the role of the professional diplomat. I shudder to contemplate the consequences.”

Highly recommended.

UPDATE: Reader Chris Pastel emails:

My favorite phrase from the Retief series was something to the effect that the function of diplomacy is to maintain tensions at a state just short of war.

Speaking from the vantage of 28 years (mixed active and reserve) in the Marines, I can tell you that that is just too true.

The language is “maintenance of a state of tension short of actual conflict.” I think this is a play on the McDougal & Lasswell line about “the indefinite postponement of unacceptably destructive violence.”

UPDATE: Several readers note that the book I link above is also available for free online courtesy of the very cool folks at Baen books. You can browse the chapters to your heart’s content there — and read the very nice introduction by David Drake.

ANOTHER UPDATE: And here are some other free books by Laumer. Sadly, none of his Bolo stories seem to be included.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Brian Erst says his favorite line is this one from Retief’s War:

“I is a great believer in peaceful settlements,” Jik-Jik assured him. “Ain’t nobody as peaceful as a dead troublemaker.”

Now that’s diplomacy.

ANOTHER ACADEMIC ITEM: So in my mailbox today was a just-published law review with my article Constitutional “Incidents”: Interpretation in Real Time. The article (coauthored with fast-rising conlaw star Brannon Denning) is about the application of the “incidents” methodology used by international law scholars to constitutional questions that come up under circumstances where a Supreme Court opinion isn’t possible.

I’m quite pleased with how it turned out — but the original manuscript was written two or three years ago, and the piece is only now winding up in print. It’s sort of the opposite extreme from blogging, on the instant-gratification scale.

I sent out two pieces (one of them quite short) this summer. It’ll be interesting to see how long it will be before they appear in print.

ARTHUR SILBER HAS NAILED MIKE KINSLEY in a hypocrisy slapdown.

Actually, it’s more than that: the old Kinsley column that Silber has dredged up is mindbogglingly embarrassing on its own — even before you notice the double standard.

UPDATE: Some people say that Silber is misreading Kinsley’s column, and missing his sarcasm. I followed the link from Silber’s post initially and it didn’t seem that way, but I went back and read it again, and I think they’re probably right. This quote is the tipoff, to me: “Is rape a worse crime than using drugs? Well, many might think so, but you wouldn’t know it from the way most politicians talk about drugs.”

It’s not entirely clear, though I should have assumed that any time Dan Quayle is quoted, Kinsley is being sarcastic. My fault.

WILL THE MCDONALD’S LAWSUITS MEAN THAT YOU CAN SUE RALPH NADER? I explore this question over at GlennReynolds.com.

UPDATE: In that post, I say that Nader is rich. How rich, some readers ask? This rich, according to a story by Josh Marshall:

Nader told the Post he believes he’s made between $13 million and $14 million over the course of his career; and according to his just-released financial disclosure statement he is worth at least $3.8 million.

Of course, that was in 2000 — and as the story goes on to note that “much of that wealth is invested in a small group of high-flying tech stocks such as Cisco Systems, Comcorp, Iomega and Ziff-Davis,” he may be worth somewhat less today. A millionaire, certainly, though.

TIP FOR PROSECUTORS: It’s probably better to be known as the guy who lost the case, than to be known as the inventor of the “unidentified co-ejaculator theory” — at least in terms of, you know, snickers and giggles.

MORE EVIDENCE OF AN AL JAZEERA / AL QAEDA LINK?

Al Jazeera said police detained Tayseer Alouni, who shot to fame in the Arab world covering the U.S.-led war on Afghanistan and then the Iraq war, at his home in Granada in southern Spain.

It said Alouni and his wife were Spanish citizens.

Spanish police sources confirmed they had arrested Alouni.

“Alouni had been arrested in Granada…in principle for connections with Islamic terrorist organizations,” one source told Reuters, but gave no further details.

The source said Alouni had been arrested on the orders of Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon, best known for an unsuccessful bid to put former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet on trial.

Alouni’s wife, who was not named, told al Jazeera in an interview that a Spanish police warrant had charged her husband with having links to an al Qaeda cell that was captured in the country.

I’d like to say that I’m shocked by this, but, well, I’m not.

UPDATE: Then there’s this:

NEW YORK (AP) – A second son of a former Iraqi diplomat was charged Friday with providing information to Iraqi agents about Iraqi dissidents living in the United States, prosecutors said.

Wisam Noman Al-Anbuge, 24, pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. He appeared before Judge Michael Mukasey along with his brother, Raed Rokan Al-Anbuge, who was arrested earlier this year on the same charge.

Both men are sons of Rokan Al-Anbuge, Iraq’s former liaison with United Nations weapons inspectors.

Hmm. At least we know where Raed is, now. . . . (Emphasis added.)

WHY DOES THE EUROPEAN UNION hate the world’s poor so much?

The European commission yesterday launched a ferocious attack on poor countries and development campaigners when it dismissed calls for big cuts in Europe’s farm protection regime as extreme demands couched in “cheap propaganda”.

In a move that threatens to shatter the fragile peace ahead of next week’s trade talks in Cancun, Mexico, Franz Fischler, the EU agriculture commissioner, said Brussels would strongly defend its farmers.

Shameful. And unsophisticated. The Guardian’s trade-subsidy blog is depressed, and says that Cancun is becoming “Cantcun:”

With the start of the talks less than a week away, and France – one of the biggest barriers to reform – digging its heels in, it is difficult to see where a breakthrough will come from – even though it is in the self-interest of rich countries to rid themselves of subsidies.

But not of special interest groups within those rich nations, or of the politicians they fund. Which are clearly the issue in France. Still, you’d think these people would have more respect for multilateral institutions and world opinion, wouldn’t you?

UPDATE: Samizdata comments: “Note the condescending tone of the EUnik leading the charge on this one. Is it something they actually screen for? Is it in the water in Brussels?”

KARL ROVE’S DREAM VOTER? Perhaps not just Karl Rove’s. . . .

JEFF JARVIS NOTES that the blackout revealed the utter inadequacy of evacuation plans in Manhattan, which you’d think people would have been working on after 9/11.

A good topic for anniversary followup stories would be things like this: the stuff that you’d assume someone would have thought about, but that hasn’t been addressed.

AS MY EARLIER POST SUGGESTED, I’m not entirely sure what I think of the Bush Administration’s turn to the UN. But Jonathan Foreman is unhappy and thinks it’s a case of going wobbly that will likely produce disaster:

The issue isn’t the further internationalization of the occupation. (Thousands of foreign troops are already patrolling vast stretches of Iraq.) It is symbolism and timing.

The hasty turn to the United Nations smells of panic, unwarranted panic at that, and even worse, the foolish subordination of Iraq policy to electoral concerns.

The administration may genuinely believe it isn’t engaged in a humiliating climbdown, but that is inevitably going to be the perception, here and abroad.

This may well be true. Of course, if the freed-up troops wind up invading North Korea or Iran, the perception may be different. . . .

He goes on to make some other important points:

How many people know that the 1st Marine Division, which administered the vast South Central region (until handing it over to the Polish-led multinational division Wednesday), suffered not a single combat death since April 12? (This remarkable fact has gone entirely unreported despite the Marines’ repeated attempts to get foreign journalists to make the two-hour journey from Baghdad to Babylon.)

Then there’s the little-known success story of the North (even outside Iraqi Kurdistan, which continues to be a beacon of stability and democratic hope). In Mosul and the area around it, the 101st Airborne has done a superb job (as reported by The New York Times’ Michael Gordon, one of the few reporters willing to do more than file carping stories from the capital) of winning hearts and minds and getting the country back to work.

This is not to say mistakes aren’t still being made. The Coalition Provisional Authority is apparently almost as slow-moving and bureaucratic as a U.N. administration would be, and it continues, almost suicidally, to fumble the task of communicating with the Iraqi people.

And new troops are still often being sent to Iraq without the kind of crowd-control, peacekeeping and policing training that was standard for GIs deployed to Kosovo and Bosnia. They’re also not getting the right equipment, including suffient numbers of armored Humvees.

Still, overall conditions don’t warrant the handing over of either military or even civilian tasks to the United Nations. Especially as there is little reason to assume that the U.N. will do a better job of administration, constitution-framing or even humanitarian relief.

After all, the last time the United Nations tried to set up a democracy in a devastated land — in Cambodia — the end result was the authoritarian Hun Sen regime. Iraqis neither want nor deserve such a government, but they rightly fear it could be the product of greater U.N. involvement in their country.

I have absolutely no confidence in the U.N., which can be counted on to either make things worse, or to cut and run when things get bad. (See what’s happening in Zimbabwe for example.) As for the Marines — I’ve gotten quite a few emails saying that the Marines’ rather different philosophy (bristle with guns, and shoot back massively whenever attacked) has resulted in much better performance, while the Army’s “non-provocative” approach has been much less successful. I haven’t seen anything published on that, though. Is there a story on that somewhere that I’m missing? The only “published” report I’m aware of is this one from Jeff Cooper:

We hear curious accounts from the front concerning the disarming of our own troops. Some people in authority seem to have got the idea that we must not let our people appear hostile to the local Arabs. This has caught on more with the Army than with the Marines. We hear from a couple of sources that the locals have discovered that while they may shoot safely at American soldiers, it is very dangerous to shoot at American Marines, who are inclined to shoot back, and they cannot tell the uniforms apart.

I’m hearing that, too.

UPDATE: More on the UN, here.

AS USUAL, I’M SURFING THE WAVE OF A TREND: Ralph Kinney Bennett notes that there are now more cars than drivers in America. That includes me: the InstaPundit household has three cars and two drivers.

Some people probably think that’s terrible. I think it’s great! I might not collect original-bodystyle Mercury Cougars by the scores like Keith Laumer (I think he had over 50, all from the 1967-68 model year) but I like cars, and I think that it’s a good thing that people can afford more of them. As Bennett says:

Americans, more than perhaps any other nation, have been free to fully embrace the use of a device unparalleled as an articulate, efficient, safe, comfortable, versatile mode of travel — the automobile.

“Light rail,” or whatever the latest public transit nostrum, doesn’t get you to the parking lot of that interesting restaurant you’ve heard about in some little town. Nor does it get you back home. Nothing else gets you door to door like a car.

You have to wonder why some people have such a visceral hatred of them. Of course, what I really want is a jetpack. And one of those Jetsons-style flying cars would be nice.

VIRGINIA POSTREL points to this engineering report on Iraqi infrastructure. Basically, a lot of stuff doesn’t work. And dictators aren’t big on routine maintenance.

QUITE SOME TIME AGO, I noted that Bush was in danger of losing his base. Now it looks to be happening. Libertarians are already iffy; now conservatives are, too.

Bush’s hole card is that the Democratic field looks weak. But, of course, it looked weak in 1991, too.

NELSON ASCHER WRITES on anti-semitism, and geostrategic diplomacy, in Europe.

TERRY OGLESBY has a nice post on traffic-cams, a technology that inspires me about as much as Electronic Voting.

I don’t like mold, either.

And, a warning to law students: you won’t really be drafting many of these when you’re in practice.

THE DAILY HOWLER is devoting another day to savaging the Washington Monthly piece on Bush.

THE TRUE MEANING OF “FIRST CLASS:” This is a must-read item.

LYNNE KIESLING EVALUATES CRUZ BUSTAMANTE’S GAS-PRICING PLAN and finds it unsound. Actually, she calls it “demagoguery.”

UPDATE: Meanwhile the Curmudgeonly Clerk looks at MEChA in its own words.

I LIKE THE SOUND OF THIS:

A spokesman for Mr Berlusconi said the prime minister had been telephoned recently by Col Gaddafi of Libya, who said: “I will do whatever the Americans want, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid.”

Good. Dictators who support terrorists are supposed to be afraid. That’s a major part of the plan. (Via Right-thinking).

MORE ACADEMIC BLOGGING: Eugene Volokh (who has just started teaching, the bum — I guess UCLA starts after Labor Day, as God intended) has a nice post on free speech during wartime, drawing on his materials for his Free Speech Law class.

My students are always surprised to discover that nearly all of First Amendment free speech law is a creation of the mid- to late-twentieth century. I suspect that Eugene’s are, too.

UPDATE: A reader reminds me that Eugene is at Harvard this semester. I had forgotten that.