THIS IS HOW IT’S DONE, FOLKS: James Lileks politely Fisks John LeCarre to within an inch of his life. Excerpt:

I’m pretty sure Stephen King is skeptical about the war, for example. I know his politics. But he hasn’t made the leap so common to others in the scribbling, warbling and gesturing arts – he doesn’t think we’re all dying to hear his prescriptions for Middle East foreign policy. Oh, interview him on the matter and he might pop off, but I can’t imagine him sitting down, firing up a Winston Light, and telling himself that this 1200 word essay will change the world, because people will think: hey, it’s Steven KING talking! He wrote “The Stand,” and his fictional account of the repercussions of biological weapons programs gives him a unique perspective. Let’s lend an ear!

But he’s just warming up at that point. Read the whole thing, especially the “ecology” discussion. And the statistics on Afghanistan. And — oh hell, just read the whole thing. It’s Lileks. You won’t mind.

THE SIEGE OF BLOGGERGRAD HAS BEEN LIFTED: John Ray reports that China has unblocked Blogspot. No doubt it was the many “Fiskings” they received via email that prompted the change.

THE NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE profiling InstaPundit (well, really me) is up. It’s pretty good.

They seem to think that I write a lot for a law professor, though. Of course, they didn’t know about Jack Balkin‘s amazing 4704-word day!

I was going to comment on one minor item, but Eugene Volokh — as usual — is ahead of me.

THIS is what I was talking about. When North Korea falls and the evidence of this sort of thing becomes undeniable — and, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn, evidence that South Korean politicians knew about it but kept quiet for years — the political ramifications in South Korea are likely to be dramatic.

THE KOOLAID TASTES GOOD, DOESN’T IT? Jack Balkin has blogged an amazing 4704 words today. Welcome to the Blog Collective, Jack. I told you resistance was futile.

“COASTISM?” A newly identified form of invidious discrimination.

IAIN MURRAY has been sacked for blogging — and with no notice, even though his previous boss approved. Shameful, and one that lowers my opinion of his employer. If they’re dumb enough to do something like this, why trust their judgment generally?

Anyhow, add your sympathies in the comments, and feel free to drop something in the tipjar while you’re there.

Here’s something new. Go over to Kausfiles for the exclusive.

TIM BLAIR IDENTIFIES THE Michael Moore / Kate Winslet connection? Could this be true?

He also points us to a picture of Sheryl Crow in a more appropriate t-shirt.

HERE BE DRAGONS. No, really.

JACK BALKIN isn’t very happy with the Supreme Court’s decision in Eldred either. I’ve just skimmed it — I’m very busy with something else, about which more later — but it seems that Stephen Breyer has a better understanding of what limited and enumerated Congressional power means, in this context, than do the alleged strict constructionists on the Court.

UPDATE: Still busy, but Donna Wentworth has the roundup.

HERE’S A STORY FROM PITTSBURGH about a woman who chased off an intruder by brandishing a gun:

Hall stared at him and thought, “I’m not going to make this easy for you.” She decided that if the man thought she already had the gun, she needed to use that to her advantage.

“The way the house was made, if I’d let him get any closer, I’d be trapped,” Hall said. “So I grabbed my daughter under my arm, like a football or a sack of potatoes, and then came around the corner and charged. I ran over him, through him, I don’t know what.”

Once upstairs, Hall reached high into a closet for the gun her father had given her several years ago, after an elderly woman who lived across the street was murdered. She grabbed a cordless telephone, too, and called 911 as she went back downstairs with the gun.

When Tompkins saw her, he fled back out the broken window.

Police responding to the scene spotted a suspect running through some yards in the neighborhood and arrested Tompkins, a native of Queens, N.Y., whose criminal record dates to 1992, with 12 cases, including robbery, simple assault, reckless endangerment and drug charges.

Tompkins told officers he was covered with cuts on his hands and face because he had dived headfirst through Hall’s window. When they arrested him, police found a 7-inch black-handled knife and a 4-inch metal crack pipe.

He turns out to have stabbed a homeowner in a previous burglary. This reminds me of an earlier incident in Pittsburgh a few months back, when an armed woman shot a serial rapist who had been eluding police. Good thing this wasn’t Britain, or Ms. Hall might be dead now.

Yeah, I know, this is a lot of gun posts today. I guess the Washington Monthly piece got me noticing this stuff again.

UPDATE: Ahh, why fight it? Here’s a story on the Orange County Pink Pistols.

IT NEVER STOPS: No sooner have we seen the many flaws in the Washington Monthly’s water-carrying piece for the Violence Policy Center than it’s time for. . . The New Republic’s water-carrying piece for the Violence Policy Center. At least this piece admits where the story comes from, but still. . . .

I’m tired of Fisking these things. Somebody else will have to do the heavy lifting on this one. But here’s just one tendentious passage, typical of the genre:

When I left the gun store, I drove for ten minutes to a parking lot outside Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport with a clear line of sight to a dozen or so planes waiting at the terminal. . . . Unlike a terrorist, I, of course, hadn’t bought a .50-caliber rifle at the store a few miles away.

Actually, a more accurate phrasing would be “Exactly like every terrorist in the world, I, of course, hadn’t bought a .50-caliber rifle at the store a few miles away.” The VPC, and the journalists who carry its water, would have us believe that Osama shops at gun shows and gun stores. It’s not true. I’m not against trying to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and terrorists — but, honestly, is gun control the first, or the fiftieth, line of defense against terrorism? Or is this just political opportunism of the first order? I link, you decide.

It’s in the linked post, but for your convenience I’m going to post my decoding of gun-control groups’ classification of firearms here:

“Saturday Night Specials” (cheap handguns) = Bad, must be banned

“Military Style Handguns” (expensive handguns) = Bad, must be banned

“Assault Weapons” (inaccurate, short-range rifles) = Bad, must be banned

“Sniper Rifles” (accurate, long-range rifles) = Bad, must be banned

There’s a definite pattern, isn’t there?

UPDATE: Democratic Blogger SKBubba emails:

I’m proud to say I bought my 1911 Colt .45 Commander at the same store (Buck’s in Daytona, after the required background check and waiting period of

course) where Bernard Goetz bought his handgun. I did not, however, encounter any targets of opportunity on the drive home. Dammit.

We need more Democrats like him.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Robin Roberts emails:

The journalist pretending to worry about a terrorist using a .50 BMG rifle on aircraft is hilarious since we know from the Nairobi attack on the El Al airliner that real terrorists already have Soviet era SAM’s.

Yes, there is that. Here’s a link to an article on that subject, which I found on Roberts’ blog.

UPDATE: TAPPED doesn’t like this post. But, you know, when you write stories that uncritically recycle advocacy-group claims, people will say that you’re in the tank, and I don’t think there’s anything unfair about that. As for the rest of TAPPED’s post, well, I think it’s pretty much self-Fisking. Just imagine what TAPPED would write if Ann Coulter said “just because no Arab Americans have set off nukes in major cities doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start cracking down on them now, while there’s still time. . . .” I don’t see TAPPED’s invocation of box-cutters as a very compelling argument for more gun control, either.

In truth, there might, somewhere, be a plausible argument for different regulation where these guns are concerned. But it wouldn’t be couched in hysterical advocacy-group language of the “Osama’s gonna get you!” variety. Osama doesn’t have to worry about the Brady Act, as those storehouses in Afghanistan showed. He had tanks and howitzers.

Terrorist control is what we need. Gun control is just politics.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Suman Palit takes up the challenge. Flit, on the other hand, thinks there’s something to the TNR story. But, as I say above, regardless of whether there’s a reasonable argument to be made here (and I rather doubt there is), that story doesn’t make it. Bruce and I had an interesting email argument last night, in which he said that if you don’t draw the line somewhere, it’ll be 20mm sniper rifles next. But, actually, the line is already drawn (by ATF regulation, I think, not by statute, though as we’ve already established I’m not only no Michael Barone, I’m also no Dave Kopel) at .50 caliber.

BIG WIN FOR BIG ENTERTAINMENT: The Supreme Court has upheld the Bono Act. Here’s the quick story, and there’s lots more at Howard Bashman’s site.

MORE EVIDENCE that we may need to apply gun control to police, first:

FORT WORTH – Police acknowledged Friday that an undercover officer was masked and brandishing a gun when she was shot by a store clerk who believed that he was about to be robbed. . . .

Bao Nguyen, son of the store owner, said the masked officer never identified herself as a police officer as she entered the business at 968 Elmwood Ave. He also said he did not see any police insignia on the officer’s raid jacket — only a “dark figure” with a gun — when he pulled his .380-caliber handgun and fired once.

“In my mind, I knew if I didn’t shoot this person, they’re going to shoot me first and then my dad,” Nguyen, 28, said.

Police said they are investigating whether the officer followed proper procedure when she walked into the store wearing a mask and carrying a gun, instead of waiting for the suspect to exit.

What’s sad is that stories like this one, or this one are not all that unusual. Of course, there are those who would argue that the solution is to ensure that nobody but police officers can have guns. Given that approach’s dismal failure in Britain, though, I think that a better solution is to teach police officers that it’s really dangerous, and usually stupid, to go into homes or businesses unannounced and with weapons drawn. How hard can that be? Apparently, it’s a challenge.

UPDATE: Reader Jim Dewey makes an excellent point:

Since when do cops wear masks? The Lone Ranger was a vigilante using silver bullets to maim his victims, not a role model.

Cops don’t have to follow the Geneva Convention, but this SAS-model of masked cops is an unsafe deception on the American public. Who are we supposed to trust?

Yep. Though in his defense, the Lone Ranger (1) didn’t do drug raids; (2) worked for free; and (3) was a good shot.

My EARLIER POST about a Washington Monthly article on guns and John Muhammad apparently generated a fair amount of critical email to the Monthly, leading to a reply from the article’s author, Brent Kendall. I’ve appended the reply to the original post, so that everything’s in context and so that preexisting links to my post will also lead to the reply, but I’m posting a note here because it’s long since scrolled off the main page. Bottom line: I’m unconvinced, but you can read the reply and decide for yourself.

UPDATE: Kopel has replied to Kendall. Same location.

YOU KNOW THAT NPR IS IN TROUBLE when it gets this kind of criticism for bias in Boston, and in The Boston Globe:

The near-capacity crowd of about 900 who gathered at Boston’s Temple Israel on Monday night for a debate on Middle East media coverage (mostly NPR’s coverage) sided largely with the prosecutors. Staunch supporters of Israel, they applauded loudly when Zelnick or Tobin assailed what they saw as anti-Israel bias or shoddiness in public radio’s reporting of the Palestinian-Israeli bloodshed. . . .

The battle over public radio’s credibility is a serious one. In the past few years, supporters of Israel have effectively targeted NPR as the poster child for egregious anti-Israel bias. WBUR, the local outlet, has lost more than $1 million from underwriters who have suspended funding. The advocacy group CAMERA, or the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, has built a constituency by publishing harsh critiques of NPR’s work. And when protesters chant, as they did on Monday night, that ”NPR distorts the news, covers up attacks on Jews,” it’s a sign that animus against public radio is reaching toxic levels.

To their credit, Klose and Christo have sought, via much community outreach, to make peace with their detractors. But Monday’s discussion – in which they relied on an unconvincing blend of deference, obfuscation, and condescension – revealed that they don’t have a coherent strategy.

Er, maybe because the charges are true? Here’s the conclusion:

If public radio is willing to wage a public battle on this issue, Klose might try a new tactic. He might explain – without semantic gymnastics – exactly why NPR thinks its Middle East journalism is fair and right.

That may not win any converts, but there didn’t seem to be any at Temple Israel either. And at least NPR will extend to its detractors the courtesy of leveling with them.

NPR didn’t seem to have any trouble deciding who was right and who was wrong in Bosnia. I wonder why the Middle East is so much harder for them?

MORE ANTI-AMERICAN TWADDLE from a Dutch journalist who’s quoting Napoleon in support of anti-imperialism.

His email address is at the bottom of the page. Honestly, you read this kind of stuff and it’s enough to make you think that they’re CIA stooges sent to discredit the antiwar movement. God knows, they’re doing the job regardless of who’s paying them.

UPDATE: Nelson Ascher emails: “Napoleon may have been right or wrong. But what future do people like this Dutch gentleman have, people who, besides having no sword, do their best to keep proving day after day that they don’t have a mind either?”

STUART TAYLOR WONDERS if the FBI will ever be up to the job of dealing with terrorists. So do I. Well, actually, I’m wondering less and less. . . .

“THE HOTTEST DAY OF THE SUMMER so far was drawing to a close and a drowsy silence lay over the large, square houses of Privet Drive … The only person left outside was a teenage boy who was lying flat on his back in a flowerbed outside number four.” That’s the opening passage from the new Harry Potter novel, now scheduled for publication June 21.

Plus, Larry Tribe emailed the other day that the long-awaited second volume to the third edition of his Constitutional Law treatise will appear about the same time. It’s going to be a big summer around the InstaPundit household.

CELEBRATE DIVERSITY! Heh.

KEN LAYNE delivers a Frisco Fisking — or should that be a “Frisking?”

ARE YOU PAYING (FOR) ATTENTION? My TechCentralStation column is up.

MICKEY KAUS discovers press bias against welfare reform.

THOREAU WITH A BLOG. Well, sort of.