GALLOWAY DOCUMENTS ARE FORGERIES — at least some of them, anyway, according to the Christian Science Monitor. Note, however, that the Monitor’s expert seems to regard different Galloway documents, found by The Telegraph, as authentic.

BLOGGERS RATE THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BLOGS: Hmm. I’m not sure that this chart is an accurate reflection, but you can decide for yourself.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Jeff Jarvis reports that Andrew Sullivan and I both send far more referrals than The New York Times. Whatever that means. NYT readers don’t follow links, I guess.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Meanwhile Bill Gates outlines the future of online newspapers, as he sees it.

SMART MOBS IN NEW YORK: This is interesting stuff.

MORE IRANIANS ARRESTED IN PARIS — though these, reportedly, were protesting peacefully.

JEFF JARVIS has more on Iran, and on the BBC’s anti-Americanism.

Meanwhile, here’s an Italian journalist who wants to hear from Iranians.

UPDATE: And here’s the war news roundup from Winds of Change — which also has an Iran news roundup because, well, they’re just all over this stuff.

STILL MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT: This time in France, where a book on the ELF scandal is being suppressed.

Amnesty International? Reporters Without Borders? Go to it.

THE MANY FACES OF JAMES LILEKS: It’s Farkerrific!

I’VE BEEN PRETTY HARD ON HOMELAND SECURITY — and with good reason — but this suggests that we’re doing something right somewhere:

WASHINGTON, June 19 — A suspected al-Qaida operative has pleaded guilty to two terrorism-related charges after he was identified by a top leader of Osama bin Laden’s terror network, NBC News has learned.

THE MAN, Iyman Faris, a U.S. citizen from Columbus, Ohio, also known as Mohammed Rauf, was personally identified by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is believed to have been al-Qaida’s top terrorist planner, U.S. officials told NBC News’ Pete Williams.

The officials said Mohammed, who was captured March 1 in Pakistan, told U.S. authorities that Faris, 34, had been assigned to look into ways to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge and derail trains, among other potential attacks.

What’s upsetting — and should be even more upsetting for American Muslims — is that he was a naturalized citizen of long residence in America.

UPDATE: Here’s a link-filled report on Al Qaeda in the USA, from Winds of Change — which is really on a roll today.

THE TRUE FATHER of neoconservatism — Jimmy Carter?

BEST OF THE WEB has picked up on the Hatch copyright-infringement story, but the best bit is the email from a reader, doing Hatch one better by advocating mattresses that burst into flame if you remove the tag. (Meanwhile Laurence Simon emails to say that the offending code has mysteriously vanished from Hatch’s site. It’s a coverup! Call in the press!) Ernie the Attorney isn’t very happy with Hatch, and suspects a bogus national-security angle to anti-filesharing legislation.

Okay, enough on Hatch and O’Reilly for a while.

UPDATE: Well, almost enough. Wired News has the scoop on Hatch’s unlicensed software:

On Wednesday, Hatch clarified his comments, but stuck by the original idea. “I do not favor extreme remedies — unless no moderate remedies can be found,” he said in a statement. “I asked the interested industries to help us find those moderate remedies.”

Just as well. Because if Hatch’s terminator system embraced software as well as music, his servers would be targeted for destruction.

Milonic Solutions’ JavaScript code used on Hatch’s website costs $900 for a site-wide license. It is free for personal or nonprofit use, which the senator likely qualifies for.

However, the software’s license stipulates that the user must register the software to receive a licensing code, and provide a link in the source code to Milonic’s website.

The senator’s site meets neither of Milonic’s licensing terms. The site’s source code (which can be seen by selecting “Source” under the “View” menu in Internet Explorer) has neither a link to Milonic’s site nor a registration code.

“They’re using our code,” said Woolley. “We’ve had no contact with them. They are in breach of our licensing terms.”

The source code on Hatch’s site contains the line: “* i am the license for the menu (duh) *”

Woolley said he had no idea where the line came from — it has nothing to do with him, and he hadn’t seen it on other websites that use his menu system.

“It looks like it’s trying to cover something up, as though they got a license,” he said.

Best bit:

A spokesman in Hatch’s office responded, “That’s ironic” before declining to put Wired News in contact with the site’s webmaster.

Why yes. Yes, it is.

STILL MORE ON BILL O’REILLY AND THE INTERNET, over at GlennReynolds.com. On the way to the gym this morning, I heard Neal Boortz talking about what he called O’Reilly’s “hissy fit” about blogs. Boortz announced that his program notes page is a blog and offered these rules reproduced there:

Make sure you spell my name right. It’s Neal, not Neil, and the letter “o” appears twice in my last name. Oh .. and I would appreciate it if you would tell people where they can go and listen to me. That’s it. That’s all I ask. Now get out there and knock yourselves out. I’m fair game, and I can take it.

Me, too — and I’ll bet nobody has accused O’Reilly of putting puppies in blenders. But, as I suggest in my post, he seems to have learned from his encounter with the Internet, and that speaks well of him.

RAND SIMBERG HAS RESPONDED TO BILL O’REILLY — and the response is in a column on the FoxNews site! He also apologizes to John Pike. See, Bill — the Internet is full of corrections . . .

WHY DOES ORRIN HATCH WANT TO BLOW UP YOUR COMPUTER? Juan Paxety has looked at the campaign contribution listings and says it’s pretty obvious — he’s being paid to.

No word about the charges of Hatch’s own copyright violations.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT: Eugene Volokh reports on efforts to silence a professor because his research is deemed politically unacceptable and contrary to national policy. It’s shocking, and I hope that the academic community will weigh in with its support.

Meanwhile this guy isn’t having any problems.

HERE’S MORE ON THAT MISSING 727: Interestingly, the name of the guy who stole it is Benjamin Padilla, and he’s from Florida. No indication that he’s any relation to accused “dirtybomber” Jose Padilla, who also had a Florida connection, and Padilla isn’t exactly an uncommon name, but it’s still something to wonder about. I will say that the photo of Benjamin Padilla isn’t calculated to inspire confidence in his piloting abilities.

NICK SCHULZ writes in the Los Angeles Times that the Internet is behind Gray Davis’s troubles, by making it easy for people to organize and promote the recall campaign. I think that’s probably right. A lot of the informational/organizational advantages of Industrial Age entities like political parties are now available on an ad hoc basis via the Internet. That’s changing things to a degree that still isn’t fully appreciated.

I HAVEN’T PAID ENOUGH ATTENTION TO THE INDIAN TRUST FUND SCANDAL. But neither has anyone else, except for Indian Country Today.

GORE TV? Time is excited about this, but Sofia Sideshow had ’em scooped with this story six months ago.

JEFF JARVIS has an Iran news roundup with lots of links to Iranian blog reports. And here’s a CBS story on Iranian National TV.

KERRY SAYS HE WAS BRAINWASHED ON THE WAR! Boy, Kaus knows how to slide in the knife. (For those of you who don’t get this reference, about a similar statement that ended the career of some guy named Romney, click here).

UPDATE: Hey, maybe Bush just believed the stuff Kerry wrote back when Clinton was President.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails:

The Money quote about
Romney, of course, came from Gene McCarthy. Why Romney said that he “must have been brainwashed” about Vietnam, McCarthy was said to have replied that a light rinse probably would have been sufficient.

Gene knew how to slide the knife in as well. ;-)

Yes, he was the Howard Dean of the ’68 election.

JAMES LILEKS on Hatch and computers:

As for Orrin Hatch and his remarks about blowing up the computers of people who download pirated files: I’ll just say that I think he’s made mostly of molded plastic, there’s a pullstring in his back, and the RIAA fingerprints are all over the big white ring. I won’t listen to any of these guys blather about computers or the Internet until they have demonstrated on film that they can install some RAM, burn a CD (“shiny side down, you say?”), tell me what HTTP and URL stand for, prove they know how to get the source code for a webpage, and know better than to click “Yes” when asked if the computer should always trust data from Gator Corporation.

His remarks about remotely destroying computers that download copyrighted material is just grampa blather. The computers are stealing music! The cars are frightening the horses! The Kaiser took my dog! It would be amusing if these people didn’t have the power to pass thick stupid laws crafted by aides, lobbyists and other gnomes hauling up heavy buckets from the deep sooty mines of legalese. Of course the people who vote them up or down don’t actually read them; they get the gist from the title.

“What’s this Copyright Enhancement Act of 2003 all about, young underpaid aide?”

“It’s about enhancing copyright, sir.”

“Very good then. . . .

I know, I know – he was just talking off the top of his head. But if someone is talking about, oh, women’s pay relative to men, and they say off the top of their head “can’t the girls just stay home and put up preserves?” – well, it shows what they really think. Off the top of one’s head means when I reach for an idea, this one is the closest. For a reason.

At least he’ll have Mary Bono pulling his string soon, instead of Hillary Rosen. That’s got to be more pleasant.

MORE SPACE TOURISM: Via Soyuz.

WOMEN FOR A FREE IRAN will be demonstrating in Washington Friday morning:

Friday June 20th
9:00 AM
In front of the State Department
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520

(Via Pejman Yousefzadeh, who’s all over this issue.)

PHIL CARTER REPORTS on some good things that France and Germany are doing.

A BIG DEVELOPMENT at The New York Times?