I’VE BEEN GONE — I’m back now, but cooking dinner. More blogging later, but in the meantime check out Operation Find Don, in which a woman seeks to find a man who helped her on 9/11/01 and buy him a beer. Drop by and see if you can help!

HAVING A POSTREL MOMENT: My TechCentralStation column is up. And speaking of Virginia, she has an interesting post on how regulators hassle small business.

UPDATE: Advantage, Drezner!

BRUCE ACKERMAN WRITES that the 9th Circuit panel decision on the recall should be reversed. I think it will be. He also says that comparisons to Bush v. Gore are misplaced.

CARNIVAL OF THE VANITIES is up, and full of rich, bloggy goodness from a lot of bloggers you may not have checked out yet. Why not check ’em out now?

MORE ON THE WAHHABI / TERROR CONNECTION, in this article from the Christian Science Monitor.

THANKS to the folks who donated, via Amazon and Paypal!

ANOTHER RECALL, AGAINST HUGO CHAVEZ IN VENEZUELA, but it might be blocked on a technicality.

LIVING THE BLOG LIFE: So I post this piece on Hurricane Isabel, which quotes Michele Catalano saying that the stores on Long Island are all out of flashlights. Then, at about 8:00 tonight we get a call from my sister-in-law in Maryland, saying that she can’t get flashlights or batteries. What do I do? I pack up a flashlight and batteries and take ’em to the last-ditch FedEx place, getting there by nine. (This surely makes me a better-than-average brother-in-law.)

Today I was reading Dan Pink’s Free Agent Nation, where he says that freelancers have a second home at FedEx, and often form pretty close relationships with their FedEx people. When I got there, there was one of my former students, who now has a solo food-and-drug law practice of some sort (he was a pharm rep before law school), fedexing some kind of document. Judging by his familiarity with the counter folks (“this is early for you!” one told him, “you still have 20 minutes!”), he does it a lot. It’s funny to see all that stuff come together in real life.

FedEx promised they’d deliver it tomorrow. Er, but next time I hope my sister-in-law will just keep extra flashlights and batteries around. Which she would, if she read my columns!

UPDATE: At least I’m not part of the Axis of Isabel.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s Dave Barry’s advice on hurricane preparedness, from his blog. Meanwhile Pat Robertson is trying to pray the Hurricane away. If it winds up hitting someone else, like the last time he tried this, should they sue him?

JUST ORDERED THE NEW NEAL STEPHENSON BOOK, Quicksilver, which will be out next week. I’m not counting the days like Eugene Volokh, but I’m pretty excited. Expect reduced productivity once it’s out. . . .

BEN, JERRY AND HOWARD: Gregg Easterbrook demands the butterfat version of equal time.

MICKEY KAUS ASKS:

Has the Ninth Circuit 3-judge panel inadvertently screwed Gray Davis the same way the Florida Supreme Court inadvertently screwed Al Gore? . . .

In California, the three-judge panel’s ruling has interrupted the Davis campaign just when it seemed to be getting some traction in its effort to overcome the recall’s lead.

Interesting take. He’s got lots more on the recall.

ROGER SIMON COMPARES Christiane Amanpour and John Burns.

UPDATE: And here’s a list of the top ten ways Fox News intimidated CNN. My favorite: “4. Laurie Dhue’s makeup tips caused Christiane Amanpour’s skin to break out.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Porphyrogenitus has more on Amanpour. “I once respected her as a reporter, but that has all drained away in the last year.” And this observation by Dan Drezner may explain why.

ANOTHER BUSH SUPPORTER is bailing over Homeland Security.

I HAVEN’T BEEN PAYING ENOUGH ATTENTION to space-related issues lately. Sorry — I can only keep so many balls in the air, even virtual ones. But check out Spacecraft, by a professor-blogger in the aerospace field.

VIRGINIA POSTREL thinks that Edward Teller’s death deserved more attention.

I WONDERED WHY I WAS GETTING MORE SPAM today. Apparently, it’s Verisign’s fault.

WINDS OF CHANGE has an extensive Korea briefing up.

QUITE A FEW PEOPLE HAVE EMAILED ME LINKS TO this speech by Judge Don Walter, one of the federal judges who was in Iraq this summer on a judicial-assistance mission. I wasn’t sure if I could rely on it, so I phoned his chambers and verified that it was genuine. It’s worth reading. Here’s an excerpt:

Despite my initial opposition to the war, I am now convinced, whether we find any weapons of mass destruction or prove Saddam sheltered and financed terrorists, absolutely, we should have overthrown the Baathists, indeed, we should have done it sooner.

What changed my mind?

When we left mid June, 57 mass graves had been found, one with the bodies of 1200 children. There have been credible reports of murder, brutality and torture of hundreds of thousands of ordinary Iraqi citizens. There is poverty on a monumental scale and fear on a larger one. That fear is still palpable.

I have seen the machines and places of torture. I will tell you one story told to me by the Chief of Pediatrics at the Medical College in Basra. It was one of the most shocking to me, but I heard worse. One of Saddam’s security agents was sent to question a Shiite in his home. The interrogation took place in the living room in the presence of the man’s wife, who held their three month old child. A question was asked and the thug did not like the answer; he asked it again, same answer. He grabbed the baby from its mother and plucked its eye out. And then repeated his question. Worse things happened with the knowledge, indeed with the participation, of Saddam, his family and the Baathist regime.

Thousands suffered while we were messing about with France and Russia and Germany and the UN. Every one of them knew what was going on there, but France and the UN were making millions administering the food for oil program. We cannot, I know, remake the world, nor do I believe we should. We cannot stamp out evil, I know. But this time we were morally right and our economic and strategic interests were involved. I submit that just because we can’t do everything doesn’t mean that we should do nothing. . . .

We must have the moral courage to see this through, to do whatever it takes to secure responsible government for the Iraqi people. Having decided to topple Saddam, we cannot abandon those who trust us. I fear we will quit as the horrors of war come into our living rooms. Look at the stories you are getting from the media today. The steady drip, drip, drip of bad news may destroy our will to fulfill the obligations we have assumed. WE ARE NOT GETTING THE WHOLE TRUTH FROM THE NEWS MEDIA. The news you watch, listen to and read is highly selective. Good news doesn’t sell.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Judge Walter’s secretary was kind enough to email me the prepared text of his speech, which differs in a few minor points from the transcription above. I’ve posted it here.

I’VE BEEN IGNORING THE YALE STRIKE, but if you’re interested, Josh Chafetz has a roundup.

VIA EMAIL I’ve just heard that the 9th Circuit has granted en banc review of the recall case. I’m predicting (as I did earlier) that the panel will be reversed. That prediction is, of course, of limited value, as such predictions generally are.

UPDATE: Hasen says it’s a request for briefs on whether to go en banc, not an order for en banc review. That’s not what the AP story I was mailed said, but I suppose it’s conceivable that a wire service would make a mistake.

SOME THOUGHTS INSPIRED BY HURRICANE ISABEL, over at GlennReynolds.com.

THE FINANCING OF TERROR:

We knew that the Saudis were funding bin Laden, that the Pakistanis had helped bin Laden and facilitated al Qaeda’s training camps; that the European community had — and continues to this day — funneled money to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad; and that Iran and Syria are behind the activities of Hezbollah.

Yet, we did little to stop the flow of money, and this willful blindness was interpreted by the terrorists as weakness, and only encouraged them to pursue their goal of destroying the U.S. . . .’

The next speaker, a high-ranking French official, began by saying: “I identify with bin Laden and understand his agenda!” He went on to say that, “the U.S. deserve this attack.” In fact, he declared: “the U.S. brought it upon herself with her unjust attitude towards the Palestinians.” But at that time bin Laden had not mentioned the Palestinians; instead, he had called for the killing of all Americans, Jews, and other infidels — including Christians — and for destroying the U.S. economy. Yet, the French official, who might have been expected to be an ally, repeated his statement while the audience encouraged him to go on. When he finished his diatribe against “America and the Jews,” they cheered him. The contempt towards my country only a few weeks after thousands of people lost their lives in terror attacks was so palpable that I left before the conclusion of the conference.

As I tried to understand this French enmity, it occurred to me that the speaker might have had a personal reason to be so openly venomous. It did not take long to discover that, indeed, this French official was seated on the board of a Saudi bank that the U.S. Treasury Department had listed as supporting terrorism.

But Bush doesn’t get off the hook here:

It was hard not to conclude that despite President Bush’s repeated demands to stop the funding of terrorists worldwide, we are far from identifying all the sources that fund terrorism and the methods employed in raising those funds. Even when we know that the Saudis, for example, have paid for schools, mosques, and Islamic centers that are used to recruit the foot soldiers for the global Islamist terror movement, it is really political — and possibly, oil — considerations that are preventing the administration from fully practicing what it is preaching.

The author, Rachel Ehrenfeld, has a book entitled Funding Evil; How Terrorism is Financed — and How to Stop It out today.

EXTREME MEASURES: Randall Parker and Phil Bowermaster have some interesting — if disturbing — thoughts on what future terrorism might lead to.

WENDY MCELROY HAS A COLUMN ON PRISON RAPE that’s worth reading. Excerpt:

According to Bureau of Justice Statistics, on Dec. 31, 2002, there were 2,033,331 people incarcerated in the United States. (Approximately 7 percent of those in state and federal prisons are female.) . . .

Estimates on the rate of prison rape vary. In 2001, Human Rights Watch released a comprehensive report that estimated between 250,000 to 600,000 prisoners, overwhelmingly male, are raped each year.

Prison rape seems to be rising as well. Several academic studies in the ’80s estimated that 7 to 15 percent of inmates were raped: a rate of 10 percent amounting to approximately 200,000 people. The apparent increase may be due to the current practice of double bunking and using dorm rooms to compensate for overcrowding.

Read the whole thing. There’s finally a bit of progress on this subject, but not so much that it should be back-burnered.

UPDATE: Via reader Robert Racansky, this bit from Popular Science’s piece on the worst jobs in science:

University of South Dakota psychologist Cindy Struckman- Johnson was one of the first to seek anonymous written narrative testimonies from prisoners about the realities of prison life, and she employed a handful of students to help process the returned surveys. What she got stunned them all: One in ten inmates in the survey had been the victim of a sexual assault, many repeatedly. But it wasn’t the numbers alone that made the impact, it was the vividness of the accounts and the desperation expressed. To read page after first- person page of sexual torture—”This happens every day. Please, please, can you do something about it”—well, says Struckman- Johnson, “some of my students almost couldn’t handle it.”

I can imagine.

KEVIN DRUM HAS AN INTERVIEW WITH PAUL KRUGMAN: And Daniel Drezner calls it a “must read” and offers some comments.

UPDATE: Tom Grey has some comments, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: And John Hawkins has an interview with Milton Friedman — is this a new blogosphere fad? Dibs on Ben Stein.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Pejman Yousefzadeh has comments.