GWEILO DIARIES HAS news from Indonesia — there are several posts, so just keep scrolling.

ASHCROFT IS PUSHING THE “VICTORY ACT” NOW. Some of it sounds uncontroversial, or at least mostly so:

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) is expected to introduce the Victory Act next month. If passed, the feds would be allowed to:

Clamp down on Arab hawala transactions, where cash exchanged in an honor system has been funneled to terrorists.

Get business records without a court order in terrorism probes and delay notification.

Track wireless communications with a roving warrant.

Okay, the “business records” thing is something I’d like to know more about, but I can at least imagine that it’s okay. But then there’s this howler:

Increase sentences for drug kingpins to 40 years in prison and $4 million in fines.

Excuse me? What does this have to do with terrorism? (And isn’t “drug kingpin” just so very 1994?)

To be trusted with wartime powers, an Administration — and an Attorney General — needs to demonstrate trustworthiness and self-discipline. This effort to sneak in a pet DoJ issue that has nothing to do with terrorism fails the test.

TOM MAGUIRE HAS SOME INTERESTING QUOTATIONS ON IRAQ that kind of undercut a lot of Al Gore’s recent comments on the war.

“U.S. IS BEST EXAMPLE OF FREEDOM” — yeah, but look who’s saying it:

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The name is the same, but the words from the younger Ayatollah Khomeini’s mouth could hardly be more jolting for those who remember his grandfather’s explosive revolution in Iran with the chants of “Death to America!”

“America” says Ayatollah Seyed Hussein Khomeini, “is the symbol of freedom.”

Seated in the sprawling living room of his temporary Baghdad home, where he lives under armed guard, Khomeini says, “The best example of freedom in our life now is America, especially its Constitution.”

Khomeini, 45, the oldest grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, slipped out of Iran in early July and, he says, now lives under risk of assassination by Iranian security agents. His arrival in Iraq has caused a stir in the Shiite holy cities of Karbala and Najaf.

But the younger Khomeini is determined that Iraq does not relive Iran’s revolution.

“Religion has got to be separated from regimes, such as it is in America,” says the younger Khomeini, smoking cigarettes through the interview.

Indeed.

UPDATE: And here’s a call for political reform in Syria. (Via OxBlog). Hmm. Seems like the invasion of Iraq has affected attitudes in the region — you certainly wouldn’t have seen this sort of thing a year ago.

BEWARE THOSE ARDENT FRENCH PACIFISTS!

The actress, Marie Trintignant, died Friday in a Paris hospital, with severe head and face injuries. Her rock star companion, Bertrand Cantat, is confined to a prison hospital in Vilnius, Lithuania, where Ms. Trintignant was working on a film for television based on the life of Colette that is directed by her mother, Nadine Trintignant. . . .

As preparations were announced today for Ms. Trintignant’s funeral at the Père Lachaise Cemetery, many people said they were stunned that a love affair between performers who so publicly embraced pacifist causes could end so violently. Both were ardent opponents of the war in Iraq.

Irony abounds.

JEFF JARVIS IS RUBBING IT IN where Mike Hawash is concerned, and links to a column in the Oregonian calling on Hawash’s supporters to admit that they were wrong.

Hawash has said that he was guilty, very explicitly:

“You and the others in the group were prepared to take up arms, and die as martyrs if necessary, to defend the Taliban. Is this true?” U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones asked Hawash during the hearing.

“Yes, your honor,” Hawash replied.

Hawash has also agreed to provide testimony against accomplices. As someone who was skeptical of this case, I have to say that it looks as if they’ve got the goods on him. On the other hand, heavyhanded tactics in obtaining plea bargains in other cases do produce a bit of a shadow on other plea bargains, perhaps including this one.

UPDATE: Reader Richard Heddleson thinks I’m wrong:

To a devoted reader and fan, you are starting to sound a tad defensive:

“On the other hand, heavyhanded tactics in obtaining plea bargains in other cases do produce a bit of a shadow on other plea bargains, perhaps including this one. ”

In the Lackawana case, the Feds may have been a bit heavy handed but not wrong. In war, decisions on the bubble go against the guilty/stupid and the sooner everybody floating near that bubble figures that out the better. In peace, we can be a bit more charitable. I feel for these fellows and their families, but they should never have made the trip.

Unfortunately, getting over excited about these less than clear cut cases takes the winds out of one’s sails for when the really bad one goes down. Here I am referring to Padilla. I strongly suspect he is a bad man. He is an American citizen. If he is treated as a belligerent and denied habeus corpus (or has this already happened?), I believe we’ll have a real problem, especially as I expect this “state of war” to last for at least 10 and maybe 20 years. For the next two decades the President will be able to jail any American indefinitely and potentially secretly in Gitmo with no recourse? This is a problem.

Throwing the book too hard at people who broke the law and were stupid, and perhaps not in that order, is no where as big a problem. Consistent suspicion of wrongdoing/incompetence by DOJ produces a bit of a shadow on protests when true outrages do occur.

Well, I take the point, and I’ve tried not to cry wolf. But the Lackawanna defendants were threatened with detention without trial unless they pled guilty. Once you make that kind of a threat, it’s just no longer as easy to say “he pled guilty, so he must be guilty.”

I absolutely oppose holding any U.S. citizen without trial. If you can do that, you can — and, history suggests, will — abuse that power against political opponents. There is no sign that the Justice Department is doing that now. But I don’t want to see temptation placed in their path, because I don’t believe that they can be trusted to resist it.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Arthur Silber has more on the Padilla case.

LILEKS IS BACK, and he’s got some thoughts on the Schwarzenegger candidacy:

Will he win? Well, he’ll bring new voters to the polls – we saw this in Minnesota with Jesse. People who never voted will find it cool to vote for Arnie, and even though they might not be the most sophisticated participant in the process, they’ll probably intuit that a vote isn’t just a thumbs-up statement. It means something. Yelling “I bought your video” doesn’t really put an actor in your debt, but shouting “I voted for you” somehow does.

In any case, it’ll change a few minds about the possibilities of politics. All their life they saw politicians as nothing more than nerdy bloodless grinbots, and now here’s this guy: a giant with a gap-tooth smile smoking a Montecristo the size of Gray Davis’ shinbone. Heck yeah!

Only in America. And I say that as a good thing. Which reminds me: like all typical examples of American craziness, this will just horrify the Europeans.

I’m not saying that’s reason enough to vote for Arnold, or anything, but it’s certainly a plus.

Kaus and Beeblogger Daniel Weintraub have more on this. And early recall-booster PrestoPundit has a roundup of links relating to the announcement. Finally, Bill Hobbs leaves no doubts as to who he’s supporting:

So run, Arnold, run. Davis will smear you, tell lies about you, and try to bury you under a mountain of fear. You’ll be called every name in the book, and a few new ones Davis will invent, but you won’t recognize yourself in the portrait of lies Davis and his political thugs will paint of you. . . .

Davis can run a dirty campaign better than anyone. Californians already know that. But he can’t run the state, and Californians know that too. All the lies he’ll tell won’t matter much now. Ignore them. All the way to Sacramento.

Well, this will give people plenty to write about!

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan has broken his vacation to endorse Arnold: “Yay! A pro-gay, pro-choice, hard-ass Republican!”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tony Adragna has more — and Will Vehrs is back posting at Quasipundit! We missed you, Will.

I should also note that Arnold’s campaign is so far — as predicted first here, then in much more thorough fashion by Robert Tagorda — proceeding as predicted by his bodybuilding career. Wanna bet that used copies of Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder are to be found in Gray Davis headquarters already?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Begging to Differ has a roundup of blog reactions.

MIKE HAWASH HAS ENTERED A GUILTY PLEA. (Via Blaster’s Blog).

APPARENTLY, WE BLOGGERS ARE NO MATCH FOR RUSH LIMBAUGH, and never will be. And I’ll tell you, sonny boy, that people will still be riding horses long after those dang auto-MOH-beels of yours are just a memory!

UPDATE: The Punch Bowl notes:

It should be remembered that blogging has really only been a political force since September 11, while radio has been around for, you know, eight decades. Blogs have been much more influential for the short time they have existed. Just watch out, Rush.

I don’t actually think that blogging is a threat to talk radio. In fact, I think that the two are synergistic. (So, I suspect, does Limbaugh: I’m not a “Rush 24/7” subscriber, but it sounds a bit bloggy with its “stack of stuff,” etc.) But the article is rather dumb and clueless, and deserves to be mocked in the Grandpa-Lou voice.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ed Cone writes:

The premise is flawed, because it compares a broadcast model to the networked weblog model. It would be more accurate to compare the collective influence of talk radio with the collective influence of weblogs.

I also wonder how many of Limbaugh’s stories are found via weblogs.

Meanwhile, Jay Manifold wonders if this is a sign that some people on the right feel threatened by independent and libertarian bloggers.

UPDATE: I like this:

Add RSS to Rush — and to all the new bloggers he can recruit among his 15 million listeners (a nice business opportunity there) — and his already huge power will multiply overnight.

Good advice. And Lisa Dusseault says that Hill doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER IS RUNNING, and Brendan Loy has all the cliched headlines covered already.

I AGREE: It’s a disgrace that Skippy hasn’t been linked by TAPPED.

Maybe it’s the lack of capitals.

WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE A NURSE: A moving post from Code Blog.

CHRIS REGAN NOTES THAT THOSE BURIED IRAQI FIGHTERS may be evidence that the French and Russians violated the UN embargo.

That might explain why they were buried, since that’s not the sort of thing you usually do with an air force during wartime, and since the method of burial pretty much ensured that they’d be useless later.

HOWARD DEAN ON CIVIL LIBERTIES:

MONTPELIER — Gov. Howard Dean’s call for a “re-evaluation” of some of America’s civil liberties following this week’s terrorist attacks was criticised Thursday by a Vermont Law School professor.

“Good God,” Vermont Law School Professor Michael Mello said when read the remarks Dean made at a Wednesday news conference. “It’s terribly irresponsible for the leader of our state to be saying stuff like that right now.”

Benson Scotch, the head of the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said it was simply too soon after the attacks to engage in the sort of debates Dean called for.

Dean said Wednesday he believed that the attacks and their aftermath would “require a re-evaluation of the importance of some of our specific civil liberties. I think there are going to be debates about what can be said where, what can be printed where, what kind of freedom of movement people have and whether it’s OK for a policeman to ask for your ID just because you’re walking down the street.”

To be fair, the story is dated September 14, 2001, a time when a lot of people were saying stupid things about civil liberties. The refrain from too many of the talking heads was that we’d have to put away our freedoms, like the childish things they were, and put our fate in the hands of Big Brother. (Of course, Dean should have been reading this column.)

And he does waffle a bit in the piece, saying that he hasn’t made up his mind. But perhaps some reporters should ask him if he has made up his mind on these subjects in the intervening years.

UPDATE: Reader Tom Nord emails:

That post on Dean’s remarks — a mere three days after 9/11 — is a pretty thinly veiled piece of agitprop. Everyone was acting a little freaked out that week.

Well, I said that.

He was not the only person to suggest we might need to sacrifice some civil liberties.

I said that, too.

As I recall, it was Ari Fleischer who put it so succinctly, “People need to watch what they say.” If you are going to start dredging up stuff like Dean’s remarks, why not create a whole gallery of embarrassing things said by politicos — from both sides of the aisle — during those awful days?

Sounds like Ari was right. But, sure, people were freaked out, and I blasted ’em then. But Dean’s running for President. Surely it’s not too much to ask that a President’s first instinct not be anti-civil liberties, and that a President be able to avoid saying dumb things in the midst of tragedy. Dean’s no worse than a lot of people who were on TV then. But he’s running for President, while David McCullough, for example, isn’t.

If anyone else running for President said similar stuff, by all means send me the links.

ANOTHER UPDATE: C.D. Harris thinks I’m giving Dean the benefit of the doubt when he doesn’t deserve it: “my experience has been that, generally speaking, people’s gut reactions are pretty reliable indicators of their mindset about things. Apparently, Dean’s is pure authoritarianism.”

Well, I don’t know. But someone should at least, you know, ask him about this.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Hesiod emails that I’m being intellectually dishonest for linking to the above and not linking to this statement by Dean in a MoveOn.org interview:

Too many in my party voted for the Patriot Act. They believed that it was more important to show bipartisan support for President Bush during a moment of crisis than to stand up for the basic values of our constitution. They trusted this President, knowing full well that John Ashcroft was the Attorney General. Only one senator had the courage to vote against the Patriot Act— Senator Russ Feingold, and he deserves credit for doing so. We need more Democrats like Senator Feingold—Democrats who are willing to stand up for what is right, and stand against this President’s reckless disregard for our civil liberties. We don’t need John Ashcroft—or any other Attorney General—rifling through our library records. As Americans, we need to stand up—all of us—and ensure that our laws reflect our values. As President, I will repeal those parts of the Patriot Act that undermine our constitutional rights, and will stand against any further attempts to expand the government’s reach at the expense of our civil liberties.

Hesiod is somewhat overwrought here. I’m happy to hear that Dean opposes the Patriot Act, a bill that I also opposed. But it’s not a complete answer. Perhaps the language that Dean “will stand against any further attempts to expand the government’s reach at the expense of our civil liberties” is — except that I wonder if Dean really means it. Any further attempts? If he does mean it, I’m impressed.

MORE: Mitch Berg says I’m cutting Dean too much slack and adds: “Of course, had a Governor George (or Jeb) Bush said any such thing on 9/14/01, we’d be hearing about it.” From Hesiod!

MARTIN DEVON says that he’s fighting the summer slowdown in the blogosphere by, well, just go see for yourself.

But it is, as several people have reflected, a slow news day.

UPDATE: It’s not only so slow that people are showing Uruguayan volleyball players’ butts, as above, but people are also proclaiming free Coney week. It’s summer, all right!

TRADE VERSUS TERROR: Brink Lindsey argues that free trade can do a lot to rein in terrorism.

OUTRAGE ON BEHALF OF JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE? Yes.

UPDATE: Reader Gary Haubold says don’t blame Canada, blame enraged Britney Spears fans.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE VANITIES IS UP: If you need to branch out in your blog-reading, here’s your chance.

HERE’S A NEWSPAPER STORY ABOUT CHIEF WIGGLES: There’s even a picture. He looks younger, and thinner, than I had expected. Thanks to reader Scott Evanson for the tip.

IT’S TIME FOR THEM TO GO: Roger Simon proposes term limits for op-ed columnists.

UPDATE: Reader George Zachar offers a more subversive suggestion:

Big dailies like the NY Times and Washington Post should put hit counters on their on-line columnists’ pages, so everyone can see who’s hot and who’s not.

Safire vs. Herbert? Think they’d even be close?

I wonder how their traffic would compare to the bigger blogs?

PHIL CARTER REPORTS that Florida is testing out a state-level version of the Pentagon’s “Total Information Awareness” program.

WINDS OF CHANGE offers a South Asia regional briefing. Worth reading. Joe Katzman also offers some advice to the Democrats.

DANIEL DREZNER HAS MOVED to a spiffy new MT-powered blog and URL.

THE STAR TRIBUNE’S PAUL MCENROE, back from Iraq, says that the BBC’s bias was evident:

CP: What about the foreign coverage? Was it more objective?

McEnroe: I don’t know. I thought the BBC was completely biased. Three days into the war, they were calling everything a quagmire, and reporting that everything was bogged down. I thought, “Boy, you’re really jumping the gun here.” There hadn’t even been a week’s worth of war and they were already coming to a conclusion. That didn’t strike me as very professional.

He’s not crazy about Fox or CNN, either.

UPDATE: Here’s more on the BBC:

The BBC’s Andrew Gilligan quoted a source–who turned out to be the scientist David Kelly–as criticizing the government. Kelly later refuted how his comments had been portrayed by Mr. Gilligan to a parliamentary committee. Then Kelly committed suicide. Now the BBC has to either admit that it misquoted a mourned scientist or call him a liar.

That’s the scandal in a nutshell. What led to it is the BBC’s all-out campaign to validate its world view. Because the mass graves and accounts of torture by Saddam’s regime are too real, the BBC has grabbed onto the fact that WMDs have not yet been found to justify its animosity toward the liberation of Iraq. And this animus sprang from the consensus that the West is always wrong. . . .

This is not hyperbole. The BBC can be a formidable foe. It has, in its own words, “the most widely watched national news bulletins in the UK.” Thus when the BBC decides to manufacture a story, or ignore another, it forms reality for millions in Britain and world-wide.

Yes, and that’s why it matters, even to us Americans. Or, perhaps, especially to us Americans, given that anti-Americanism is the state religion of the BBC.

SPINSANITY ON THE TERMINALLY DISHONEST ROBERT SCHEER:

In his column last week, Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer, who created the myth that the Bush administration gave $43 million to the Taliban after misreading a New York Times story, spreads two more falsehoods now working their way through the media.

That’s my boy. Spinsanity concludes:

It is unacceptable for a major national columnist to repeatedly make factually inaccurate claims. Yet Robert Scheer continues to create and disseminate falsehoods by basing his columns on incomplete or untrue reports when accurate information is available. He needs to stop.

Or perhaps the Los Angeles Times should stop him. The much-vaunted superiority of Genuine Newspaper Columnists over amateur blogosphere pundits, after all, is supposed to be that they have editors.

So where are Scheer’s?

UPDATE: Blog Irish says that Scheer didn’t make up the Taliban story, but just parroted it after it was made up by an Irish journalist.