WILLIAM SJOSTROM pronounces me vindicated. Indeed.

DID CARL REINER PULL A LIMBAUGH? Actually, it’s much worse than that, according to Steven Antler.

UPDATE: Charles Oliver wonders if it’s a fart joke. Volokh thinks it’s not even that.

WAR ISN’T POLICE WORK: Geitner Simmons has a post that’s worth reading.

In a (vaguely) related item, Howard Owens has a followup on the Kuwaiti WMD story. Curious.

NOW HERE’S A SCANDAL:

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is investigating whether FBI agents involved in espionage and terrorism cases may have moonlighted by forming private companies and using informants and subjects of inquiries to benefit their personal business.

The allegations, according to court documents, include charges that the private companies of agents and intelligence figures were involved in business deals in China and the Middle East about the same time the FBI was investigating Chinese efforts to acquire sensitive technology.

Between the Saudis and the Chinese, both of whom seem to enjoy excessive influence, I’m beginning to wonder whether we’ve got a serious corruption problem.

OUR FRIENDS THE SAUDIS:

A senior Saudi Arabian official, now minister for the holy places, stayed at the same hotel as three September 11 hijackers the night before the suicide attacks.

American investigators are trying to make sense of the disclosure that Saleh Ibn Abdul Rahman al-Hussayen, who returned to Saudi Arabia shortly after the attacks, stayed at the Marriott Residence Inn in Herndon, Virginia. . . .

FBI agents recommended that the Saudi should not be allowed to leave until he was questioned further, but as soon as flights resumed on Sept 19, Mr Hussayen and his wife flew home.

He is not now suspected of breaking any laws and there is no evidence that he met the hijackers at the Virginia hotel.

But investigators are pooling what they know about his trip to North America, during which he allegedly visited or contacted several Saudi-sponsored charities now accused of links to terrorist groups. There is no suggestion that he knew of any such links.

Could be a coincidence, of course, and it probably is. But there are too many coincidences like this where the Saudis are involved. There’s more on what this guy was up to here.

And I’d be interested in knowing who decided to let him leave over the recommendations of the agents who interviewed him.

UPDATE: Spoons thinks that I’m too easy on the Saudis. He could be right — I’m known for that. . . .

CLAYTON CRAMER IS criticizing John Lott’s critics now. No fancy number-crunching is involved.

UPDATE: Tim Lambert responds.

ANOTHER BLOW TO U.N. CREDIBILITY:

The United Nations broke its own anti-torture convention by allowing a Zimbabwean police officer accused of torture to leave its peace force in Kosovo and return to Zimbabwe where he will probably not face investigation.

Henry Dowa, a Zimbawe chief inspector, was named by several victims as having directed their torture, which included prolonged beatings on the soles of their feet and electric shocks causing convulsions. The victims’ allegations were backed by medical examinations.

Human rights groups urged the UN to arrest Chief Insp Dowa and put him on trial for torture. The UN declined, citing a lack of funds, and sent him back to Zimbabwe.

Not enough money to arrest a torturer? Funny, there’s plenty of money for SUVs and canapes.

JUST SENT THANK-YOUS to some folks who donated money to the site. Sorry to have fallen behind on that, and thanks for the donations!

BAD NEWS FOR GUN-CONTROLLERS:

ATLANTA (Reuters) – A report published by the Centers for Disease Control on Thursday found no conclusive evidence that gun control laws help to prevent violent crime, suicides and accidental injuries in the United States.

Critics of U.S. firearms laws, which are considered lax in comparison with most other Western nations, have long contended that easy access to guns helped to fuel comparatively high U.S. rates of murder and other violent crimes.

Gun control is a perennial hot political issue in the United States, which reported 28,663 gun-related deaths in 2000, the latest year for which complete data are available. Firearms were the second leading cause of injury-related death that year.

But a national task force of health-care and community experts found “insufficient evidence” that bans on specific guns, waiting periods for gun buyers and other such laws changed the incidence of murder, rape, suicide and other types of violence.

The findings were based on 51 studies, some partly funded by the CDC, of gun laws enacted in the mid-1970s and later.

That’s particularly striking given the CDC’s generally anti-gun attitude over the past several decades.

ACADEMIC-BLOGGING: I’ve mentioned reading resumes, and some people want to know what I’m talking about. It works like this.

We hire by committee (that’s the Appointments Committee, which I’m chairing this year), with the full faculty voting. The Association of American Law Schools operates a central hiring registry, and candidates fill out a standardized resume form (and can attach their longer CVs if they want to). This is made available to schools, meaning that we get hundreds (around 900 so far; there are multiple distributions and we’ll probably get a few hundred, or maybe several hundred, more) of those forms. We look at them all, though we pretty quickly eliminate the people who aren’t teaching in the areas we’re looking for. (Sometimes you’re looking for the best overall person, more often you’re looking to fill particular slots, which is what we’re doing this year). We discuss the ones we like best, pick 25 or so to meet, and then meet them at a big hiring conference (known in the trade as the “meat market”) where all the law schools and all the candidates get together.

We also read all the over-the-transom resumes that come in via the mail, sometimes from people who aren’t participating in the AALS process. There are a few hundred of those. There’s a lot of paper-flow to manage, and there are a lot of affirmative-action hoops it has to be managed through.

The conference interviews last 30 minutes. We’ll pick the best 3-5 candidates from those and bring them back to campus where they’ll make a presentation (a “job talk”) on some scholarly item, usually a work in progress, and meet faculty members for a day or two. We’ll also check references, and so on. Then the faculty will vote which candidates are acceptable, and rank them.

People who have done both tell me that this is a more streamlined and efficient system than is used in most of the humanities disciplines. It doesn’t always seem that way, but it does minimize travel and paperwork, and the influence of “old boy” networks. (Though “minimize” isn’t the same as “eliminate.”) We’re fortunate at Tennessee because the faculty is quite collegial, and not polarized about hiring, as it is some places.

What makes a good candidate? Good academic history — top rank at a good law school, or a really top rank at a not-as-good law school, for example. References are very important, and so generally is a history of publication. Not having published isn’t a deal-breaker, but the presumption is that people who have written serious scholarship before are likely to do it again, while people who haven’t are a largely unknown quantity. We also value — probably more than most schools — things that suggest the person will be a good teacher. And we tend to value practice experience in the area a person will be teaching more than many schools, I think, though that varies somewhat by subject area.

So there you are. That’s what’s been keeping me busy lately. I’m not generally fond of committee work (few professors are) but I don’t really mind this because it’s very important. A good hire can make a real difference, while a bad one can, well, make a real difference of another sort. But (as I warned it might) it does leave less time — and even less mental energy — for blogging than I’d otherwise have. Sorry. But there’s plenty of free ice cream, in lots of flavors, at the blogs linked on the left, and throughout the blogosphere.

DANIEL DREZNER says that his Plame outrage meter is rising slightly, and links a lot of disturbing stories, though the sourcing on them is, as some of his commenters point out, a bit dubious. I still don’t understand what’s behind this, and I still find it hard to believe that someone would knowingly out an undercover agent — I still don’t see the “why” in this.

But since people who don’t usually care what I think seem anxious to hear my opinion, I think that the Bush Administration needs to find the leaker (if there is one), fire ’em, and prosecute ’em if it’s warranted. [You keep saying this. But what if it’s Rove or Cheney? — Ed. I don’t think it is. But if it’s Rove, he’s too stupid to stay on in a job whose only justification is his being smart. If it’s Cheney, ditto — plus it opens the way for a Bush/Rice ticket!]

So how do you do that? Well, you could do the usual Washington scandal dance — investigations, hearings, special prosecutors, etc. This would produce a long, drawn-out embarrassment that would please the media folks, who have been getting antsy for a good scandal, and the Democrats. It would also be bad for national security, if you agree that this passage from Josh Marshall is on target:

The backdrop to this whole scandal is the war that’s been going on between the Bush administration and the CIA for two years. Another reporter who’s knowledgable about these issues and not at all averse to this perspective, told me a few days ago that “there are people in this administration who think that the CIA was criminally negligent for 9/11 and that the whole place should be shuttered.” That’s an accurate portrayal of what a number of those people think.

That war with the CIA centers on the vice president’s office. If it turns out that Plame’s exposure originated there too, it will inject this legal controversy — this criminal investigation — right into that broader policy controversy, the whole issue of the war against the CIA, the questions over politicized intelligence, all of it.

I don’t know if it’s true, but the CIA did drop the ball before 9/11 and its performance since then, except for the generally successful paramilitary operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, hasn’t seemed especially impressive either. It’s certainly the case that we shouldn’t have this sort of internal warfare going on at the same time that we’re fighting a real war. (Howard Fineman has more on the White House vs. CIA angle).

Which is why I think the smart thing to do is to subpoena all the principals in this scandal and find out who said what to whom, when. This will disappoint scandal-mongers, and it might hurt some people in the White House (or it might not). Howard Kurtz comments that “Politically, though, that would be a PR disaster.”

But would it? I’ve noticed a certain coolness from members of the professional press since I started suggesting this, but I don’t think this would be a PR disaster, except maybe for the press if it resisted. I think that the public would support such an action, and that the press — having played this up into a big national-security issue — would do very badly if it tried to claim persecution.

The New York Times is already sounding worried about this, with an editorial that Chris Kanis summarizes as follows:

As near as I can figure, the Times’ take is that Bush must do absolutely everything in his power to figure out who leaked, because his failure to do so will prove that he is Richard Nixon. However, Bush must absolutely not conduct any investigation of the journalists involved, nor try to compel them to reveal their sources, because doing so would prove that he is Richard Nixon.

But even that editorial, which Kanis correctly characterizes as muddled, says this:

As members of a profession that relies heavily on the willingness of government officials to defy their bosses and give the public vital information, we oppose “leak investigations” in principle. But that does not mean there can never be a circumstance in which leaks are wrong — the disclosure of troop movements in wartime is a clear example.

Well, if the most serious charges are true — which we don’t know yet, but that’s what investigations are for, right? — we have the outing of an undercover agent, which is pretty close. (Note to the NYT — it is wartime). The editorial says that the investigation should focus on the White House, not the press — but the members of the press are witnesses. If this is as important as we’re hearing, they shouldn’t stand on (largely bogus) First Amendment claims. (If it’s not as important as we’re hearing, then, well, we shouldn’t be hearing that it’s so important.)

This wouldn’t be a scandal, or a national security issue, without the involvement of the press. The press isn’t just reporting this story. It’s part of the story. To a large degree, it is the story.

Bush should lance this boil by finding out what happened, and, if the charges pan out, getting rid of who’s responsible. And he shouldn’t be afraid to put the press on the spot. That will prevent similar future events, from both ends.

So there’s what I think. What’s it worth? Every penny you paid to read it!

Meanwhile, at the same low, low price, Edward Boyd offers an intriguing question. And Tom Maguire puts it well: “The CIA battles on many fronts! Whether one of those fronts still includes the war on terror concerns us all.” Indeed.

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NICK GILLESPIE ON THE ARNOLD-GROPING SCANDAL:

Regardless of whether it helps him or hurts him come October 7, this latest development creates a golden opportunity for hypocrisy on the part of a) Republicans who attacked Bill Clinton as unfit for office due to such behavior and b) Democrats who supported Bill Clinton but think Arnold is unfit for office due to such behavior.

Yep. Meanwhile Winds of Change has a Jill Stewart story saying that Gray Davis isn’t much of a boss either. I doubt that actors and politicians make good bosses in general.

UPDATE: In bizarro-world (oh, wait, it’s our world — heyy. . ) Allen Barra is Defending Rush Limbaugh in Slate. And so is Bill Maher.

MOVEON.ORG IS CALLING FOR A SPECIAL PROSECUTOR, leading Marc Levitt to write:

Calling for a Special Prosecutor? Don’t those Moveon guys have Ken Starr’s face on a dartboard over there? I mean, I’m all for it, but these guys come from a position of zero credibility.

To be fair, a special prosecutor isn’t quite the same as an Independent Counsel, but I don’t think MoveOn is operating at that level of discrimination.

I’M COVERED UP TODAY, but Tom Maguire has lots of interesting Plame stuff. The Volokh Conspiracy is especially interesting today, too. I guess they aren’t chairing their appointment committees, and faced with big stacks of resumes. Or they’re still in the denial-and-procrastination phase, which I, sadly, have left behind.

And, no, I don’t have an opinion on the Limbaugh drug scandal. I just hope that criticism of Limbaugh isn’t motivated by prejudice against people with disabilities. . . .

Finally, don’t miss this piece on prison rape by Robert Weisberg and David Mills.

MORE ON FRANCE, from The Economist:

These failures were crystallised in President Jacques Chirac’s stubborn opposition to the American-led war in Iraq. The initial position was legitimate, Mr Baverez argues, but the manner in which it was carried through ended in ridicule. “France knows what it does not want—the hegemony of the United States in the democratic world, the leadership of the United Kingdom in Europe—but does not know what it wants,” he writes.

This paralysis exists because it suits the trio of political, bureaucratic and union interests to keep the system the way it is. No government has found the courage to persuade France of the need for shock-therapy. Instead, successive leaders, in particular François Mitterrand and Mr Chirac, have sought scapegoats—globalisation, immigration, the reunification of Germany—for French difficulties, instead of confronting them honestly. Worse, they have defended France’s refusal to change in the name of a “French exception”. This sham is dangerous, Mr Baverez says, because the deception of the electorate feeds the populist, anti-establishment message of the far-right National Front.

It’s nice to see that the French are beginning to think about these things.

Read this, too, if you’re interested. Given the outsized (and usually negative) role that France has played lately, I think that this is really important stuff for the future of Europe, America, and the world. (And, though it’s not as important, French wines are doing badly in the United States. This is significant only in that it may serve as an attention-getter. Thanks to reader Khaled Matar for the link.)

THE FIRST TOYS HAVE ARRIVED IN IRAQ, according to Chief Wiggles.

A LOT OF PEOPLE seem to suddenly miss the Independent Counsel law, just as Megan McArdle predicted. Funny, I remember when the very idea of this sort of thing was anathema to the Republic. You’d almost think that people’s views on these questions were driven entirely by political concerns.

In The Appearance of Impropriety, (now available in paperback! — and at an irresistible price! — makes a great birthday, wedding, or Bar Mitzvah gift!) Peter Morgan and I wrote about these dynamics. (And it was considered a largely pro-Clinton book at the time, which Lanny Davis used in a class he taught on political communication. How things change.) Of course, Ashcroft can appoint a Special Prosecutor, which is not quite the same thing as an Independent Counsel, even though the Independent Counsel law has expired. Should he? Perhaps, though I think the right way to investigate this is to get the journalists involved — and perhaps Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame, and George Tenet — under subpoena and just ask them who said what to whom. Then you can fire, or prosecute, the leaker if it’s warranted. You don’t need a Special Prosecutor to do that.

UPDATE: Here’s the model approach, right here:

James A. Wells, Assistant U.S. Attorney General: Tell you what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna sit right here and talk about it. Now if you get tired of talking here, Mr. Marshal Elving Patrick there will hand you one of them subpoenees he’s got stuck down in his pocket and we’ll go downstairs and talk in front of the grand jury. …Elliot? Jim? …Fine. All right, Elving, hand whichever one of these fellas you like a subpoenee and we’ll go on downstairs and talk in front of the grand jury.

District Attorney James A. Quinn: Gallagher’s a government witness.

James A. Wells, Assistant U.S. Attorney General: Wonderful thing, a subpoenee.

——————————————————————————–
James A. Wells, Assistant U.S. Attorney General: You had a leak? You call what’s goin’ on around here a leak?! Boy, the last time there was a leak like this, Noah built hisself a boat.

——————————————————————————–
James A. Wells, Assistant U.S. Attorney General: Now we’ll talk all day if you want to. But, come sundown, there’s gonna be two things true that ain’t true now. One is that the United States Department of Justice is goin’ to know what in the good Christ — e’scuse me, Angie — is goin’ on around here. And the other’s I’m gonna have somebody’s ass in muh briefcase.

Too bad Wilford Brimley isn’t available.

UPDATE: Click “more” below for a piece I wrote for Newsday on the expiration of the Independent Counsel Act, which has at least some relevance to today’s issues. And here — far more timely — is a lengthy post by Bill Dyer on the legal issues involved. He also suggests Rudy Giuliani as the special prosecutor, should one be appointed.

Sounds good to me. And here’s a call for Senate hearings. Just make the journalists testify under oath?

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WOMEN DJS AND KYLIE MINOGUE — on Afghan radio.

ANIMAL RIGHTS TERRORISM: Virginia Postrel notes that recent bombings haven’t gotten much attention, and wonders if allegedly mainstream animal-rights groups will step forward to condemn them:

I look forward to the vigorous condemnation–not “we do not condone” but “we unequivocally condemn”–of this terrorism not only from “respectable” animal rights groups but also from all the people who routinely (and rightly) condemn anti-abortion terror.

That’s different. These are overzealous activists. Those other bombers are menaces.

BILL WHITTLE HAS A NEW ESSAY UP, on power.

DECLINISM IN FRANCE:

PARIS A growing sense of France’s decline as a force in Europe has developed here.

The idea’s novelty is not the issue itself. Rather it is that for the first time in a half century that the notion of a rapid descent in France’s influence is receiving wide acknowledgment within the French establishment.

At its most hurtful and remarkable, and yet perhaps its most honest, there is the start of acceptance by segments of the French intellectual community that French leadership, as it is constituted now, is not something Europe wants – or France merits.

Read the whole thing, which is fascinating.

FROM IRAQ:

Having been in Basra for some months, I am convinced, as are most Iraqis, that it will be a rich and prosperous city somewhere around five to ten years from now. As long as Iraqis have security from Ba’athists and from the neighbouring states, they will achieve this themselves. But with the French manoeuvring to give the UN political primacy in Iraq, the question is not: will Iraq be rebuilt, but who will get the credit?

You can bet that the French will claim it, regardless.

BETTER BROADCASTING: A reader emails:

Did you happen to catch 60 Minutes tonight? Exactly the kind of coverage about Iraq you’ve been on about. Very balanced. They showed the problems but also showed things that were going right. Good stuff.

Sadly, I didn’t. But I’m glad to hear about it.

UPDATE: Which is not to say that there aren’t complaints. Once again, this goes to the disconnect between journalists’ view of the rules that apply to them, and others’ view of the same.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More on this latter point, here.

SINCE FEW THINGS INTEREST ME LESS than Rush Limbaugh’s ESPN gig, I missed the story about Limbaugh and black quarterbacks. How stupid is this?

Pretty stupid. Hey, it’s not the Excellence in Sportscasting Network.

UPDATE: Limbaugh has resigned from ESPN.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Want blogging on this from somebody who actually knows something? Gregg Easterbrook’s gotcha covered:

ESPN hired Rush Limbaugh to generate some buzz for the network’s NFL pregame shows, and by the standard of buzz, Limbaugh was a huge success. When was the last time half a dozen presidential candidates interrupted their campaigns to issue statements about ESPN? We can skip what it says about modern presidential politics that yesterday Howard Dean, Wesley Clark, and others thought a football analyst was the Great Issue Facing the Nation.

He says Limbaugh was wrong on the football, too.

More here.

MICKEY KAUS POINTS OUT the Arianna Huffington nanotech connection. It’s certainly nanoscale!