HERE’S A ROUNDUP OF BLOGGERS LEFT AND RIGHT who think that the Senate’s decision to turn Iraqi aid into loans is an asinine — and near-treasonously stupid and destructive — idea.

That means that a coalition of greens, socialists, liberals, center left Democrats, center right Republicans, little-l libertarians, and conservatives in the blogosphere all think this is a shitty idea. Can we all be wrong?

Nope. The Senators who voted for this ought to be ashamed, and they make me wish that there were a recall provision for Senators.

UPDATE: Spoons says we’re all wrong.

ANOTHER UPDATE: And Nitin Gopal Julka explains why Howard Dean isn’t as smart as Spoons.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Anna writes:

In Iraq, I think we’ve got as good a shot as you might expect in the Third World. It’s got natural resources, an extant infrastructure (a bit shabby, but a good start) and most importantly it’s got the right people. They’ve already got a respectable educated class, and lots of eager expatriates. From the polls, we see most Iraqis want to join the free world. Spending to help them is part of the American character.

Let’s not forget, Free Iraq is a big strategic goal in the war. In the future, it could be a model for the rest of the region. But right now, it’s our unsinkable aircraft carrier right where we’d want one. It’s the well from which we’ll draw the extra, Arabic-speaking divisions we’ll need the next time we cry havoc.

Rebuilding a Free Iraq ought to have an Apollo-level priority. It’s that important. Asking for our money back? That’s like recovering a load of moon rocks, and auctioning them on eBay: tacky.

There are people in Congress who’d do that, too.

VIRGINIA POSTREL and Roger Simon find themselves largely unmoved by Gregg Easterbrook’s apology.

I repeat what I said earlier — a simple blog update could have (mostly) taken care of this flap.

UPDATE: The ADL is unsatisfied, too. But since it’s their job to be offended by stuff like this, I’m not quite as interested as I am in Virginia and Roger’s reactions.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Josh Chafetz says that Easterbrook isn’t an anti-Semite, and that people should let it go.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Tim Rutten has a piece in Saturday’s L.A. Times that seems to blame blogging for Easterbrook’s remarks. I don’t know about that. Anyone can mangle a phrase, and with enough blogging, I suppose that it’s a statistical certainty that everyone will eventually say something unintentionally offensive. But (1) Easterbrook hasn’t been blogging very long; and (2) I don’t really think this falls into that category. (And blogging also lets you fix things quickly, which Easterbrook should have done.)

What troubles me about Easterbrook’s remarks isn’t that I think that Easterbrook is anti-Semitic in any deliberate or conscious fashion. It’s that I think they indicate the way in which anti-Semitic ideas have infiltrated popular discourse in recent years to the point that one needn’t be an anti-Semite to start parroting them without realizing it. I think that’s the import of Leon Wieseltier’s comments, quoted in the article, about Easterbrook not being an anti-Semite but his remarks being “objectively anti-Semitic.” (This further comment from Virginia Postrel underscores that point.) I’m afraid that some people want to make Easterbrook the issue here because it’s easier and more comfortable than thinking through the implications of that phenomenon.

I think Rutten also misemploys the “some of my best friends” line. Originally, as I’ve noted before, it meant something different:

The classic example was the white bigot who said he couldn’t be a racist because some of his best friends were black — only to have it turn out that those “friends” were his caddy and his shoeshine guy.

When some of your best friends really are black or Jewish, the import is different. People tend to lose this distinction, but I think that’s a combination of laziness and attempt to take unfair rhetorical advantage. As I said earlier, “it’s been morphed into an all-purpose way to ensure that white guys can’t bring up counterexamples when charged with racism.” That’s not fair.

JEFF JARVIS points to a new Iraqi blog called Healing Iraq that looks promising.

THE FBI SAYS THAT THE SAUDIS are buying off witnesses, according to this ABC report. Go figure.

UPDATE: Read this story, too — check out the final paragraph.

DANIEL DREZNER HAS A LONG AND THOUGHTFUL POST on the state of Islam in 2003. He’s not terribly optimistic.

UPDATE: Kim du Toit is worried about the reactions that Islamist extremism may produce.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Roger Simon is depressed, and his commenters are worried.

INSTAPUNDIT SHUT DOWN BY AL QAEDA? That’s the report — actually saying that the DoS attack that shut me down, along with some others, last night was aimed at someone else, but came from Al Qaeda-affiliated websites.

I agree with this comment: “If the best that Al Qaeda can do is mount a DoS attack, then things are looking up.”

UPDATE: Note this reply from the HostingMatters folks.

FREELANCE HOMELAND SECURITY? Sounds like it:

DALLAS, Oct. 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — While performing maintenance on an aircraft lavatory in New Orleans last evening, several items were discovered in a lavatory compartment. The items, inside a small plastic bag, included a small number of boxcutters and other items intended to simulate a threat.

A similar discovery was made in Houston last night on another aircraft during a scheduled maintenance inspection (C check).

A note in both packages indicated the items were intended to challenge the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint security procedures.

It’s not clear who left them.

UPDATE: It’s not clear, but that’s not stopping the conspiracy theorists! Michele Catalano has links.

ANOTHER UPDATE: There’s a suspect now.

MEDIA BIAS IN IRAQ: Josh Marshall isn’t happy that people are starting to complain about media reporting over Iraq:

CNN was in full grovel mode.

It’s revealing, isn’t it, that by the professional standards of American journalism, groveling to Saddam was widespread and seen as barely worth reporting, while even the possibility that someone might write something favorable about the United States is seen as an appalling breach of accepted practices.

But the reporting has been bad, and it has been biased. Independent reports from all sorts of people — touring musicians, federal judges (two of them!), various military bloggers, returning troops, Democratic members of Congress (here, too), and even journalists, have indicated that we’ve been getting an unbalanced picture. But it’s “groveling” to admit that?

Only to a press that believes that it has a monopoly on truth, and a position in society that places it above criticism.

It’s true, of course, that better reporting from Iraq might bring up negative news (in fact, it surely would) — but it might actually be, you know, news, not the same old stuff that even those Democrats are calling “police blotter” reporting.

The press has been very critical of the Administration’s postwar performance — and hey, maybe if there were some decent reporting, I’d know enough to agree, though it seems to me that things are going pretty well — but it’s obvious that the press didn’t plan properly for the postwar era, and hasn’t done a good job of dealing with the realities on the ground. And even as they accuse the Administration of ducking criticism, members of the press are doing the same thing.

UPDATE: Read this bit from NPR, too and say: “Oh, that liberal media!”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s more, from a New York police commissioner just back from Iraq:

The media reports, he said, have given some Iraqis, especially those hostile to the United States, a misperception of America’s resolve.

“They are watching the criticisms, they are watching the frustrations. They believe that the more they attack and the more they pound, the more they hurt the coalition, there’s a better chance they will pull out.”

Read the whole thing.

CALL ME CRAZY, but the new $20 bills seem a bit, well, unimpressive. . . .

SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE: And media negativity is one of them, apparently. This post from Jessica’s Well on 1946 coverage of Europe is priceless:

AMERICANS ARE LOSING THE VICTORY IN EUROPE
Destitute Nations Feel the U.S. Has Failed Them

Then there’s this: “We have swept away Hitlerism, but a great many Europeans feel that the cure has been worse than the disease.” Read the whole thing.

ZELL MILLER is unhappy with the Democratic Party’s direction, and says he’s trying to talk some sense into it. I wish him luck. Meanwhile (scroll up) the Republicans need some help, too.

READER PAUL SHELTON has an observation about the troop morale story that we’re hearing so much about:

an interesting little paragraph that I didn’t hear about:

Uncertainty about when they are returning home was a major factor in dampening morale, according to the newspaper. The interviews were conducted at a time when some reserve and regular Army units were learning that their tours had been extended. The Pentagon has since sought to provide a clearer rotation plan and has begun granting troops two-week home leaves.

Interesting. And if you took this “unscientific” poll AFTER they were told about their rotation, wouldn’t it be completely different?

Maybe. Who knows? That’s the problem with “unscientific” polls. It’s certainly true that troop rotation policies need to be clear — as clear as possible in the face of uncertain events, anyway — and it’s also clear, as was discussed on InstaPundit two years ago (here and here) that the Pentagon has paid attention to lessons from the past in this area. I hope that they’ll continue to refine their approach, as needed, and I expect that they will.

IT STARTED WITH MERYL YOURISH, but now the Easterbrook story is in the New York Times. And there’s an apology up on Easterbrook’s blog now.

What I don’t understand is why Easterbrook didn’t respond on his blog right away. That’s what blogs are for. (He could have at least linked to Tom Perry’s defense. . . . Or, not.) But really, a quick “that wasn’t what I meant at all” update would have solved this problem. Waiting until Friday and then apologizing, on the other hand, is still thinking like print journalism, and just leads to more problems. Like being in the New York Times.

MICKEY KAUS notes that the L.A. Times says it’s still looking for dirt on Arnold, and asks:

Do reporters usually say they are investigating damaging charges before they are proven? It seems permissible to me–but if a Times reporter announced that the paper was investigating unspecified ‘potentially damaging’ but unproven charges against, say, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, I suspect the editors of the Times might come down somewhat hard on him. …

Well, that’s because John Carroll isn’t obsessed with getting Pelosi the way he was, according to Jill Stewart, obsessed with Arnold. Apparently, though, it wasn’t just pre-election hysteria, as the spirit seems to continue. Such obsessiveness is likely to harm the L.A. Times more than Schwarzenegger, if recent experience is any guide. Carroll should remember where Howell Raines’s Ahab-like obsessions landed him.

Note to Carroll: When Susan Estrich is calling you a partisan hack for the Democrats, maybe you should think about whether you really are acting as a partisan hack for the Democrats. . . .

Meanwhile James Lileks is Fisking some L.A. Times sleight-of-hand on another topic. Apparently the LAT doesn’t understand that quotation marks are for, you know, things people actually said. Hmm. Is the LAT in the hands of Dr. Evil now?

UPDATE: Read this, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Gerard Van Der Leun has more thoughts.

IF YOU’RE WONDERING WHERE I WAS (along with a lot of other blogs) last night, HostingMatters experienced a massive Denial-of-Service attack (how massive? check out this graphic, which makes it pretty plain what was going on). I did put up a note on the InstaBackup site, but then I just went to bed early.

ARNOLD KLING applies Walter Russell Mead’s typology to economics.

DAN GILLMOR WRITES about why you should care about the “broadcast flag:”

The purpose, much more than preventing online trading, is to force us all into a pay-per-view world, where the copyright cartel banishes fair use and turns everything digital into something that someone owns outright.

Get ready for the end of time-shifting. Get ready for the era when you are not permitted to fast-forward through commercials, or skip them entirely, without paying extra.

Read the whole thing, and follow the link to let the FCC know what you think.

THE GOOD NEWS AND THE BAD NEWS:

Five undercover agents of the US Department of Homeland Security posing as passengers last week carried weapons through several security checkpoints at Logan International Airport without being detected, officials confirmed yesterday.

The bad news: screening still sucks. The good news: it sounds like they’re using realistic tests. The other good news is that someone has perspective:

TSA officials said there are several other layers of airport security to guard against a hijacking.

For example, air marshals now travel on certain flights, they said, and pilots carry guns.

Yes, and that helps, too.

CHIRAC TO SERVE AS GERMANY’S SPOKESMAN: Believe it or not, it isn’t a parody, according to Geitner Simmons.

BILL QUICK is back, and he’s, um, reinvigorated after his lengthy vacation.

DAHLIA LITHWICK wonders if the Ninth Circuit is trying to commit judicial suicide:

There must be some unwritten opinion-writing law for 9th Circuit judges that holds:

Where at all possible, decide close cases for the defendant, particularly if he is indisputably guilty. Take the most extreme possible position you can, then craft a holding that reaches far beyond the facts of this case. Under no circumstances shall you cite controlling authority from the Supreme Court, or contradictory cases from your own or other circuits. Strive to write the opinion as though you are God and you invented The Law yesterday.

I’m in the odd position of having witnessed two oral arguments in two consecutive weeks at which the party who prevailed in the 9th Circuit is unable to defend its reasoning. Increasingly, it feels as if there are always three parties at oral argument—both parties to the dispute and the 9th Circuit, lingering there, incomprehensible to all.

The Ninth Circuit does seem to have broken free of its moorings. I don’t always disagree with the result, but they seem to be going out of their way to provoke, which strikes me as a bad idea. How long before the Ninth Circuit is split?

IT’S NOT ONLINE (er, unless you subscribe) but the Tuesday, 10/14 issue of the Wall Street Journal has an interesting article entitled “France Feels a Wind of Change: Francophone Africa Starts to Turn Against Its Former Colonizer.” Best quote:

Many Ivorians in the nation’s Christian south are angry with France for refusing to fight against mostly Muslim norther rebels when a civil awr erupted here last year, and for imposing at peace talks near Paris a power-sharing deal with the guerrillas. So it’s not surprising that Ivorian nationalists like Mr. BleGoude are looking for an alliance with one superpower that has scores to settle with France — the U.S.

“The Americans are not hypocritical; if they want to harm you, they tell you, like in Iraq,” he says. “But the French will tell you we are friends, we are together, and then they attack you when you are asleep.”

I wish our diplomacy were in fact that straightforward, but the article is interesting. Reportedly the U.S. is not trying very hard to hurt French interests in West Africa. Too bad.

ARE ASIMOV’S LAWS OF ROBOTICS MORAL? There’s a discussion on this topic over at Heretical Ideas.

I’VE GOT AN INTERVIEW WITH BOB WALKENHORST, formerly of The Rainmakers, over at GlennReynolds.com. He’s always struck me as a guy whose head is screwed on straight (not to be taken for granted, especially among rock and roll singers. . . .) and that’s certainly how he came across.

DROVE IN THIS MORNING via Cherokee Boulevard again — I usually do when I’m not in a big hurry — and caught a couple of nice pictures as the Crew team breezed by on the lake.

It’s a beautiful day, and it’s Fall Break. Why am I in the office?

I’m asking, here. . . .