MARK STEYN ON THE IDIOCY OF THE UNITED NATIONS:

Got that? Last month, the Russians were opposed to war on the grounds that there was no proof Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. This month, the Russians are opposed to lifting sanctions on the grounds that there’s no proof Iraq doesn’t have weapons of mass destruction. . . .

You don’t have to be a genius to see that, since September 11th, we have entered a transitional phase in world affairs. But reasonable people are prone to reasonableness and, as I mentioned the other day, they’re especially vulnerable to the seductive power of inertia in human affairs. The wish not to have to update one’s Rolodex burns fiercely in the political breast. Brent Scowcroft, George Bush Sr.’s National Security Advisor, wanted to stick with the Soviet Union even after the Politburo had given up on it. The European Union was committed to the preservation of Yugoslavia even when there had ceased to be a Yugoslavia to preserve. In the Middle East, clinging to the status quo even as it’s melting and dripping on to your shoes is one reason why the region is now a problem. . . .

Now another Middle Eastern war has come and gone, and the bien-pensants are anxious that once again an obsolescent institution be glued back together and propped in position. This time it’s the UN. The editors of Britain’s Spectator concede it has more than its share of “irritating do-gooders,” but surely even that’s a euphemism: The do-gooders are, in fact, do-badders. The “oil-for-palaces” program (as Tommy Franks calls it) is a grotesque boondoggle even by UN standards: It was good for bureaucrats, good for Saddam’s European bankers, good for his British stooge George Galloway, but bad for the Iraqi people. A humanitarian operation meant to help a dictator’s beleagured subjects has instead enriched the UN by over $1-billion (officially) in “administrative” costs. There’s no oversight, no auditing, nothing most businesses would recognize as a legitimate invoice, and, although non-essential items can only be approved by the Secretary-General himself, Kofi Annan (Mister Legitimacy) has personally signed off on practically anything Saddam requested, including “boats,” from France.

He’s right, of course. The United Nations is not a force for good in the world. To the very modest extent that it’s a force at all, it’s a force for corruption and the propping up of tyrants.

RANDY BARNETT HAS SOME THOUGHTS on ending the confirmation standoff

If the Democrats don’t think they like “stealth” candidates like Miguel Estrada, just wait until they experience the delights of judges Richard Epstein, Lillian Bevier, Bernard Siegan, Lino Gragia, and dozens more like them on the Courts of Appeals. Or how about Morris Arnold, Alex Kozinski, Richard Posner, Frank Easterbrook, Edith Jones, or even Robert Bork as recess appointments to the Supreme Court? For the White House, the point of the exercise would be to propose a list of bright and articulate judges who are far more ideologically objectionable to the Democrats and their activist support groups than the president’s current nominees.

Interesting.

UPDATE: Philippe De Croy has a response.

I CAN’T VOUCH FOR THIS SOURCE, which I’m unfamiliar with. And the email with the link came via a Russian anonymous-remailer service. So keep that in mind as you read this report:

Well placed sources tell Mineweb that sensitive records and correspondence related to the oil-for-food programme have been purged from the computer system at UN headquarters in New York. For detail of the sums involved, see the table at the end of this article.

Mineweb’s sources dismiss assurances by oil-for-food programme director, Benon Sevan, that current audits are sufficient. “These audits are sometimes used to cover-up real problems in programmes such as the UN’s Chief Resident Auditor in the Congo who was removed and his audit blocked when it alleged possible fraud involving communications equipment procured for that mission,” the source said.

Perhaps some other journalists will be inspired to take a look.

DEMOCRACY! WHISKY! SEXY! Well, so far we’ve got two out of three!

“The movie is much more beautiful now because there’s sex,” said a beaming Mohammed Taher, 18. Since Saturday, when the theater reopened with a freshly uncensored version of the low-budget flick, he has seen “Blue Chill” three times.

Baghdad has gone through a revolution in the past three weeks, casting off decades of censorship and state control. Banned books, satellite dishes and video CDs are now sold on the street – as are alcohol and women.

Nobody knows how long the permissiveness will last. Iraq’s American governors brought together Iraqi political leaders yesterday to discuss a new government, and many Baghdadis believe that once it’s in place, some of their freedoms will disappear.

Conservatives are counting on it. “Everything against Islam, everything we hate, has been imported by the Americans like a disease,” said Abbas Hamid, a 60-year-old merchant. “We’ll fight them. We’re tired now, but we’ll rest up and use our guns to drive the Americans out.”

For now, Hamid appears to be in the minority as Iraqis excitedly discover worlds of vice – and virtue, too – long forbidden by the repressive regime of Saddam Hussein.

Christina Aguilera’s belly button: irresistible force for freedom!

(Via Zach Barbera).

UPDATE: And Kylie Minogue is doing her part (er, parts?) for liberty, too!

IS FEDERALISM CONSERVATIVE? Robert Alt says not necessarily. I agree.

UPDATE: So does Juan — and he’s got good examples.

HERE’S A PIECE ON BLOGGING JOURNALISTS from the Online Journalism Review. I still like Ken Layne’s take best.

PERRY DE HAVILLAND thinks that Democrats’ efforts to win over libertarians are going to need more thought if they are to succeed.

Hey, it’s not just the Brits who can do understatement, you know.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, this is an interesting thought experiment.

OUCH. Those Gawker folks can be mean.

WHENEVER I POST PIX OR DESCRIPTIONS from Knoxville, I hear from homesick Knoxville expatriates around the world. For those folks, here’s a picture taken looking across the river from Cherokee Boulevard this morning.

TIM ROBBINS CENSORED? Media Minded is all over this nonstory. Excerpt:

What this means is that America was actually subjected to an EXTRAORDINARY 11 MINUTES of Robbins’ paranoid ramblings, not a longer-than-average nine minutes, as I posted last night. That also means Robbins was granted NEARLY FOUR MORE MINUTES of airtime than the longest recent celebrity interview currently available at the Today Show Web site. (See post below.)

Maybe this is a clever plan to swing American opinion in favor of censorship.

HOWARD KURTZ SAYS THAT bloggers are taking over the 2004 Presidential campaign. Well, yeah.

JACQUES CHIRAC NEEDS TO READ THESE WORDS from LT Smash. Note to journalists: call the French Embassy and see if you can get a comment in response!

UPDATE: Jim Treacher offers this comment.

IRAQIS ARE SOAKING UP FREE MEDIA now that Saddam’s censorship is over:

“Now I am a free man,” says Salih in halting English. “How could we have lived under this regime?”

How, indeed? But here’s the most amusing part:

His friend, Abbas Ali, concurs. “We used to go to sleep at 10 p.m. Now we stay up until 4 or 5 a.m. because we can’t get enough.” Still desperate for war news, they tune to CNN, BBC, and what appears to be a local favorite, Fox. They like it, people here say, because it has been the most supportive of the war.

For many here, the only foreign channels they can understand are in Arabic, and they are deeply resentful of the most prominent one, Qatar-based Al-Jazeera.

Abu Bakr Mohammed Amin, an elderly man in a red-checkered headdress visiting Salih’s television shop, gives them a dismissive flick of the wrist: “They only knew how to support Saddam,” he says.

Ouch.

SGTSTRYKER IS BACK!

DANG, I SLEPT THROUGH THE EARTHQUAKE last night. Fortunately, SKBubba was awake and has the scoop.

MISSING TOURIST UPDATE:

The tourists have been separated into two groups and are being held in canyons and gullies near the town of Illizi, which lies near the Libyan border some 900 miles south-east of Algiers, a senior security official told the French newspaper Le Monde yesterday.

The 15 Germans, 10 Austrians, four Swiss, a Dutchman and a Swede who, while travelling in seven different groups, have gone missing since mid-February, are being held by rebels led by local Islamist leader Emir Ammari.

Well, that doesn’t solve the problem, but it does dispel some of the mystery.

MINNESOTA JOINS THE GROWING NUMBER OF STATES with “shall-issue” hangun-carry laws, meaning that citizens who qualify must be issued permits, with no discretion (traditionally a source of corruption and cronyism) left to authorities.

JERRY POURNELLE thinks patience will be the key in reconstructing Iraq:

The central question in a democracy is, can you afford to lose the election? If you try and fail, is loss total? Will you be jailed, your property confiscated, your family jailed or killed? If the consequences of loss are enormous, then you don’t let the ballot box be the final decision. Nor should you.

The first thing we must do is assure the losers they can afford to lose, and that we will be there to protect them.

I think that Rumsfeld has figured this out. But how many others have?

THE SECRET OF WEALTH (no, really) — just start here and scroll up.

DON’T SNIFF THE MYSTERIOUS WHITE POWDER: Well, this story isn’t really that funny:

An Egyptian merchant-marine sailor met “someone” in Cairo and was given a suitcase. He traveled to Brazil to join his ship, which was loading bauxite intended for Canada. He was supposed to deliver the suitcase to “someone” in Canada, but being curious about the suitcase he opened it while in Brazil, and shortly thereafter died from anthrax. Like as not, having found the legendary white powder he suspected it was drugs, and took a sniff to see.

I don’t know if he really sniffed it — another account I saw suggested that he died of intestinal anthrax — but this is a rather serious worry.

UPDATE: Here’s more, suggesting that worry is appropriate.

GERHARD SCHROEDER’S POLITICAL STAR isn’t exactly rising:

Chancellor Gerhard Schröder issued a veiled threat yesterday to resign if his party refuses to back his “Agenda 2010” package of reforms, intended to slim down the welfare state and give desperately needed impetus to the German economy.

It doesn’t have anything to do with the war, but it indicates why Schroeder was desperate enough to try distracting people with anti-Americanism.

UPDATE: It’s not just Schroeder who’s making this threat. (Via Tim Blair).

HERE’S AN UPDATE ON arrested Iranian blogger Sina Motallebi.

JUST WATCHED A TAPE of the PBS Newshour piece on weblogs that I mentioned earlier. I thought it was pretty good, and certainly better than yet another InstaPundit piece would have been. They interviewed a number of bloggers, showed a number of blogs, and featured Joan Connell who was — until last week — my editor (only she was called a “producer”) at MSNBC. It was actually the first time I’d ever seen her, since we’ve interacted entirely by phone and email.

The focus was on the blogosphere, not on particular blogs, and that was good — because the blogosphere is smarter than any individual blog or blogger.

I taped the piece because the InstaWife, InstaDaughter, and I went to a carnival tonight. Bumper-cars, shooting galleries, and Ferris wheels. And caramel apples. It was lovely.

UPDATE: There’s RealAudio here.

KEVIN DRUM CASTS DOUBT ON MEDIA ORIGINALITY: But you have to see the photo to appreciate it.