CANADIAN IMMIGRATION PREFERS TERRORISTS? Well, yes, apparently.

THIMEROSAL UPDATE:

WASHINGTON – Republicans said Friday they would reverse several favors to special interests in the Homeland Security law, including a much-criticized provision to limit lawsuits against vaccine makers.

House and Senate Republicans said they also would get rid of a loophole that would make it easier for companies that locate overseas to avoid paying taxes to compete for contracts in the new agency, and would revise language that gave one university, Texas A&M, special access to federal research money.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., who supported the original vaccine provision and said he still hopes to take up the issue later this year in more comprehensive legislation, said he would include the special interest eliminations in a fiscal 2003 spending bill the Senate will take up this month.

Is this an example of the power of the (lefty part of the) blogosphere?

UPDATE: Reader Jeff Drummond thinks this will be good for the G.O.P.:

I think what is more amazing is that Frist will bring the issue forward for a vote despite the fact that it will likely result in the reversal of something he favors. Give me an example of a Democrat doing that. Here in Priscilla Owen’s home state, I can give you a ton of examples of the opposite.

Could be.

WHY I LOVE KNOXVILLE, a continuing series: Got my hair cut. Shampoo, ten-minute scalp massage, haircut, rinse clean (more scalp massage), blow dry, complimentary glass of wine. $27. Take that, Christophe.

And it was not only good for my head, but for my heart.

LILEKS explains things for the benefit of Martin Scorsese. Somebody send Scorsese a copy. Best line: “Maybe directors like dictators because they understand the desire to have final cut.”

BEHIND THE CURVE AS USUAL: Hamas is giving Saddam Hussein military advice:

JABALYA REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip (Reuters) – A leader of the militant Palestinian group Hamas urged Iraq on Friday to use suicide bombers to confront any U.S. military offensive.

“I call on Iraq to prepare an army of would-be martyrs and prepare tens of thousands of explosive belts,” Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi told 3,000 Hamas supporters at a pro-Iraq rally in the Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip

“Blow yourselves up against the American army. Bomb them in Baghdad,” said Rantissi, whose Islamic fundamentalist organization has carried out dozens of suicide attacks in Israel before and during a Palestinian uprising for statehood.

Of course, if this guy weren’t so clueless, he’d know that Saddam has already made preparations for this sort of thing, without striking much fear into Americans’ hearts.

IT’S NOT AN AERON: One more law school-related announcement: I found out yesterday that I’ve gotten a chair. I’m now the “Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law.”

I don’t think that InstaPundit was a factor.

A WHILE BACK, I posted on law schools that don’t advertise conferences soon enough. So, in the spirit of advance notice, here’s a link to the page announcing the University of Tennessee College of Law’s program on the 200th anniversary of Marbury v. Madison, which will feature such bigshots as Bill Van Alstyne, Mark Tushnet, and William Nelson.

Marbury, for the non-lawyers out there, is the Supreme Court case generally regarded as establishing the principle of judicial review.

“WANT TO GET LUNCH?”

“No thanks. I already had a patch.”

JUSTIN KATZ OFFERS A BASIC VLOGGING HOW-TO GUIDE. It’s even easier than that if you use the Serious Magic program that Jeff Jarvis has used to make these video-blog items. I installed the program Wednesday, hooked it up to my camera, and produced a vlog in no time. No, I’m not posting it: the real issue, I quickly realized, is having decent lighting and a properly-hung V-screen if you want to do fancy backgrounds and effects like Jeff. (Oh, and the right cables).

One other tip — an earphone. It’s not necessary to have one of those, but if you’ve got other stuff with audio it’s useful so you can hear what’s going on.

There’s no way this will replace blogging, because it’s more work. But it’s cool, and I think we’ll see a lot more of it. I demonstrated Jeff’s stuff to my Dean the other day and he was very excited about what we might be able to do with it at the law school. I think the applications are going to be very broad.

NOW HERE’S THE REAL NEWS OF THE DAY:

London, Jan. 9 (Bloomberg) — Bloomsbury Publishing Plc said it hopes to publish “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” the fifth book of the series on the boy wizard, in July.

Mark your calendars.

JACK O’TOOLE raises interesting concerns regarding the Administration’s tax plan.

TONY ADRAGNA says that the “leave South Korea hanging” approach, while satisfying, is a bad idea.

PAUL KRUGMAN is a bit overwrought here. He seems a shade defensive about the response to his Spiegel interview. But he’s not comparing Bush to a dictator or anything — just calling him “Glorious Leader” and pointing out his resemblance to Ferdinand Marcos.

By the way, why doesn’t Krugman just get a blog, instead of posting these occasional items on his Princeton faculty website? Note to Paul: I’ll set one up for you on Blogger, no problem. Give me a call.

UPDATE: Steve Verdon and Eugene Volokh agree that Krugman seems to have lost it here.

BRINK LINDSEY writes on heroism and the national interest, seen through the lens of Peter Green’s The Greco-Persian Wars. I read that book last year, and recommend it.

ANTI-TERRORISM CATCH-AND-RELEASE?

I MEANT TO LINK TO THIS MICHAEL GOVE COLUMN on anti-Americanism earlier, but forgot. If you somehow missed it, go read it. Excerpt:

Which takes us to the myth of America the locust state, the predator on the poorest nations of the Earth. The truth, as the US writer Charles Krauthammer has pointed out, is that America’s influence for good in suffering states is directly measurable in three very different examples. After the Second World War three devastated nations were divided. In each case one part of a culturally unified nation fell under America’s political influence. And in each case — South Korea versus North, West Germany as against East, Taiwan as opposed to Communist China — the territory which took the American path enjoyed greater freedom and prosperity.

Why then do the myths of America the Hateful take such powerful hold? Because anti-Americanism provides a useful emotional function which goes beyond logic and reaches deep into the darker recesses of the European soul. In centuries past those on the Left who wished to personalise their hatred of capitalism, who sought to make it emotionally resonant by fastening an envious political passion on to a blameless scapegoat people, embraced anti-Semitism. It was the socialism of fools. Which is what anti-Americanism is now.

Of course, the overlap between anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism remains substantial.

CHINA VS. THE BLOGOSPHERE: I’ve gotten several emails to the effect that China is blocking all blogspot sites. Here’s one post on the subject, and here’s another. Apparently, since blogspot access is blocked, people in China with blogspot blogs can still post via Blogger (which isn’t blocked) but can’t see their own sites.

This gives you some idea of either (1) the unimpressive degree of Chinese technical competence; or (2) what the Chinese are actually afraid of.

UPDATE: Mark Kleiman has some thoughts.

MATT WELCH IS posting from France, where he’s soaking up wine, cheese, and culture while soaking the French national health system.

THE CIVIC-REPUBLICAN CASE for a sort-of-flat income tax. The author, Captain Indignant, is not, however, a fan of the Administration’s tax plan.

(Via The Kitchen Cabinet).

JIM HENLEY spots a hopeful sign for a non-stupid antiwar movement. But it’s a small sign, at present.

CUSTOMER-OWNED NETWORKS AND ZAPMAIL: Clay Shirky has some interesting thoughts on the future of telephony.

I actually used ZapMail once. Yep. I was the one. . . .

I’M NOT A PROFESSIONAL JOURNALIST, OR EDITOR: But this, from the New York Times’ current front page, was written by one:

Iraq Gave No New Evidence in Arms Report, Inspector Says

By SERGE SCHMEMANN

Hans Blix said today that Iraq’s report was “devoid of any new evidence” that the country had no banned weapons.

No new evidence of no weapons. Got that?

WHEN CAT-BLOGGING TURNS UGLY. Jeez.

PROFESSOR PETER KIRSTEIN, who apparently found out about InstaPundit via the Chicago Tribune article earlier this week, sent me an email responding to a post I had on his situation when the story broke last fall. (Here is a later one; and here is another). We corresponded, and I offered to publish his email, which is set out below. He didn’t demand that I do so — I offered. I think it’s always good to bring out the other side of the story. So here it is below, followed by some comments:

Dear Sir,

In your November 6, 2002 posting, you carelessly quoted me incorrectly in my e-mail to Air Force Academy Cadet Robert Kurpiel that in part may have led to your characterization of it as “barely literate.” It certainly was hastily written and overly personal for which I apologized and was quickly accepted by the cadet himself, his parents (see Chronicle of Higher Education, Dec. 6, 2002) and the Air Force Academy Assembly.

“No war, no air force cowards who bomb countries with AAA, without possibility of retaliation.” Actually I used the word “without” prior to AAA that was an effort to indicate the indiscriminate nature of high-altitude bombing and the lack of significant military assets on the part of those whom we engage in combat. We wage war on the weak and the helpless in large measure due to cultural and ideological bias that is not conducive to diplomatic means in resolving international disputes. This is my opinion and I have the right to express it.

You make another error in your careless and unsubstantiated fulminations against me. You state “that the identification of people like Kirstein with the Democratic Party…” I would be curious if you could produce one document of my many writings and public utterances where I make such a partisan claim. I believe the major political parties are indistinguishable from each other in most areas of public policy that is why I voted for Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate in the last so-called presidential election in the United States.

With regard to another person’s critique of my antiwar activism when I was a graduate student, I would only say this. Buffoonery comes in many forms. I don’t believe the Vietnam antiwar movement, which may have shortened the war and saved the deaths of many precious Americans, who were not able to escape the draft, was particularly humorous or symptomatic of a lack of determination and seriousness. It was an epochal event that was a defining moment in American history that represented a high tide of student idealism and commitment to peace and conflict resolution. I stand by my role as a university-student leader in that era.

My posting was cut-and-pasted from Neal Boortz’s page, to which it was linked — given the extent to which that email circulated the Internet, I suppose a typo from somewhere would be no surprise. As for the identification of Democrats with Mr. Kirstein, I was referring to the Democratic Party’s general identification with anti-war protesters by others — especially in the wake of things like the Bonior/McDermott trip to Baghdad — not Mr. Kirstein’s self-identification with the Democratic Party. The Democrats will, however, no doubt appreciate this clarification. Kirstein promises to speak out against the war in a number of fora, and I’ll do my best to keep you updated on his activities.

I dispute the characterization of Saddam Hussein as “weak and helpless,”and I think that “indiscriminate high-altitude bombing” is a shibboleth left over from, well, the days when we actually engaged in indiscriminate high-altitude bombing. But I certainly don’t want to engage in excessive filtering-out of antiwar opinions, and I thought readers would find this item instructive.

HOLLYWOOD AND MASS MURDER: Ed Driscoll suggests a connection.