INTERESTING NEW INTERNET TACTIC, from Howard Dean — he’s getting his supporters to donate money to other Democratic candidates. Dave Cullen notes: “What a clever way to win the undying love of one of the most powerful Dem politicians in the critical state 47 days before the caucus?”

AARON’S RANTBLOG HAS PHOTOS from the Luvya Dubya rally in Hollywood last night, held in response to (and across the street from) various entertainment-industry folks’ “hate Bush event.”

It’s a topsy turvy world, when something called “Aaron’s Rantblog” is showing more love than a bunch of Hollywood types. Or maybe it’s not. . . .

TOM PAINE HAS A PROPOSAL for dealing with increasing amounts of anti-semitic violence in Europe: “What would the political effect be of several hundred American, Australian, New Zealand and English Jews being deployed in key continental cities to patrol neighbourhoods where attacks on Jews have taken place?”

FOR THE SECOND YEAR IN A ROW, InstaPundit has been voted both the “most overrated blog” and the “best blog overall.” Hey, it’s not logically inconsistent. . . .

I MEANT TO LINK TO THIS TERRIFIC DAVID BROOKS COLUMN earlier today, but got distracted. I won’t excerpt it — just read the whole thing. And note how much of it is explicitly shaped by what he’s read via soldiers’ weblogs.

DNA EXTRACTION: Now via a kids’ toy.

HERE’S AN EARLY BLOG REVIEW OF THE RETURN OF THE KING:

The audience was made up of jaded film critics and theater owners, and had only about 50 people in attendance. But spontaneous applause and cheering broke out three times and I myself got misty in more than one place. That might be the film just reminding me of the great scene in the novel, but I still give Jackson some props for getting the emotions right.

Read the whole thing.

MICKEY KAUS continues to watch Hillary Clinton like a hawk.

JEFF JARVIS ON HOWARD DEAN:

He’s going to meddle in news. He’s going to decree who can and can’t own media outlets. He’s going to break up companies for sport and political pandering. He’s not concerned with the First Amendment. He’s not concerned with the realities of the media business today.

I predict that Howard Dean’s relationship with the media is about to turn stormy.

JOE KATZMAN:

Staring at their shattered idols, they all blame the same set of demons for the destruction of their gods: capitalism, modernity, the bourgeois mentality. And what do you get when you cross all 3? Symbolically, you get Jews… and you get America.

Indeed. But that’s an unwise choice of enemies.

BLOGGER BRIAN O’CONNELL is quoted in The Telegraph too, as well as in the New York Post as mentioned earlier.

A LUVYA DUBYA RALLY at the Beverly Hilton on Wilshire Blvd? Yep, and it’s tonight. I wonder how many will show up.

GHOSTS OF OCCUPATIONS PAST: Another interesting story from the 1946 New York Times:

U.S. PRESTIGE DROPS AFTER GI PROTESTS
By DREW MIDDLETON By Wireless to THE NEW YORK TIMES.

The recent protests in Frankfort on the Main, Berlin, and elsewhere in Germany in which United States troops clamored to be returned home, have done more than anything else to lower the prestige of the United States in the eyes of the German population and weaken the authority of the military government, according to a high-ranking United States officer here.

Read the whole thing. Observation: “In our idealization of the past, we sometimes forget how bad and messy things got on the ground.”

MICHAEL NOVAK writes that people are always misunderestimating Bush. I think that they’re falling victim to his strategery.

Actually, I do think that.

OLIVER WILLIS IS REPORTING a comfy-chair counterrevolution. Hmm. I haven’t seen this in my area, but if Borders pulls its comfy chairs, then I won’t have any reason not to buy all my books from Amazon, will I?

Oliver’s take: “It sucks.” I agree.

UNFORCED ERROR, INDEED: This article in The New Republic says that U.S. policy is costing us influence in majority-Muslim Suriname (“while Islam is the majority faith in this nation of 450,000, there are significant minorities of Christians, Jews, Hindus, and animists”). I’m entirely prepared to believe that we’re blowing the diplomacy, but the CIA factbook shows this breakdown of religions:

Hindu 27.4%, Muslim 19.6%, Roman Catholic 22.8%, Protestant 25.2% (predominantly Moravian), indigenous beliefs 5%

That would make Islam the third-largest religion in Suriname (or fourth if you count Catholic and Protestant as separate), and nowhere near a majority. (And this figure seems consistent, based on Google. Even the rather, um, optimistic Ummah.com claims only 25% Muslims for Suriname, and pretty much everyone else is at the CIA figure.). The rest of the analysis may well be true — I’m no expert on Suriname — but this doesn’t exactly build confidence. I once made a similar mistake with regard to Malawi, but then, I’m not a Soref Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and I wasn’t holding myself out as having, you know, actual firsthand knowledge of Malawi. Then again, Suriname isn’t in the Near East!

IT’S EASY TO MAKE FUN OF THIS AS A “FRENCH QUAGMIRE,” BUT IT’S ACTUALLY BAD NEWS:

For a second day, French soldiers fired tear gas and stun grenades into the crowd, which started gathering on Monday at the base in Ivory Coast’s commercial capital, Abidjan.

Pro-government militias also delivered an ultimatum on Tuesday to the French: French peacekeepers had until 8pm on Tuesday to withdraw from the West African nation’s ceasefire lines.

If not, militia leaders and youth groups said, their fighters would open attacks on the estimated 16 000 French civilians and 4 000 French troops living in Ivory Coast.

“All that is French will be attacked,” pledged Narcisse N’Depo, a youth leader outside the French military base.

I’m pretty sure that this is a bad thing.

UPDATE: Reader Phil Beckman wants his schadenfreude, and he wants it now:

Not only is it easy to make fun of this as a “French Quagmire,” it is actually enjoyable. Now understand that I have great sympathy for the people of the Ivory Coast and wish them only the best, but the French are supposed to be (by their own admission no less) this ancient, experienced, wise culture which has achieved some kind of transcendent state where problems are solved through peaceful negotiations rather than through brute force. And despite the fact that for some apparently inexplicable reason they keep failing, they never adjust their philosophy, strategy or view of themselves to the reality they face.

It is amazing that a nation like France that has achieved so much in the arts, sciences, philosophy and other fields could be so utterly incompetent in the field of international affairs (and so blind to this fact). One of these days they are going to learn from their mistakes; until then, I will enjoy the entertainment value they provide.

Well, making fun of the French is always appealing — to all sorts of people — but I think that this is a good time and place to resist the temptation. I will admit, however, that the poor French reception in the Ivory Coast tends — as does history in general, as Beckman rightly points out — to call French expertise into question. But it’s possible to point that out without gloating at genuine misfortune. The only thing I’m not entirely sure about is whether the French are in the right here. I think that they are, but I’m not familiar enough with the facts on the ground to be sure.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Snarky reader Nicholas Tortorelli sends this link and suggests a contradiction. I don’t see why. In the earlier post I was suggesting that we dilute French influence in the area. That’s not the same as hoping for a humanitarian crisis. Frankly, encouraging armed action against the French would be justifiable in my opinion, given that they’re doing the same thing against us in many places. So far, it’s one-sided proxy war. But even if it became two-sided I wouldn’t gloat over it. As Abraham Lincoln said, “War’s a bummer, man. So don’t you be gloating about it, dude.”

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: D’oh! It seems I completely missed the point of Tortorelli’s email. He writes again:

I wasn’t implying a contradiction or anything, and it never even crossed my mind that you would want French death in order to expand U.S. influence. I was just trying to show, with your earlier help, how the French got themselves into such a sticky situation in the first place.

Excuse me if I sounded “snarky”, I was just trying to be brief.

Yeah, I have that problem occasionally myself. As Abraham Lincoln said, “Blogging and email are hard. I’m glad they haven’t been invented yet.” Or was it Caesar who said that?

EUGENE VOLOKH ON LIBRARY PRIVACY:

I sympathize with objections to the government gathering library or bookstore records, especially without a warrant and probable cause. Such practices can indeed deter people’s reading what they want to read.

But what about the government interviewing a suspect’s friends about what he said or wrote to them, or subpoenaing them to testify or bring their records? That would deter people’s saying what they want to say, and e-mailing what they want to e-mail — at least as much exercises of one’s First Amendment rights as borrowing a book from a library. And people are in fact sometimes deterred this way.

Read the whole thing. One big difference is that librarians and booksellers are organized in a way that conversationalists are not. That’s not necessarily bad — it’s as likely to be a sign that conversation is underprotected as that reading is overprotected — but it’s a difference worth noting.

DONALD SENSING wants to be a victim. Sorry, Donald, you don’t have the character for it.

JAMES LILEKS OFFERS thoughts on statuary.

STEVE VERDON IS analyzing Howard Dean’s economic package and is unimpressed.

On the other hand, fellow Democrat Dick Gephardt is spotlighting his package for the electorate, and, well, I think a lot of people will be surprised at just how impressive it is. . . .

WESLEY CLARK / WACO UPDATE: Be sure to read the update to this post on the claims that Wesley Clark was involved in the Waco massacre. As I suspected, those claims appear to be bogus, and Clark’s involvement minimal.

SOUNDS LIKE GOOD NEWS:

U.S. troops may have killed or arrested Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Saddam Hussein’s top former deputy suspected of leading the anti-U.S. insurgency, an Iraqi official said Tuesday. Officials of the U.S.-led coalition in Baghdad said they had no information on the report.

Al-Douri — the highest-ranked Iraqi fugitive after Saddam — may have been arrested or killed in a U.S. raid in Kirkuk in northern Iraq, a senior Kurdish official in Kirkuk said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The sourcing seems a bit thin on this one, so stay tuned. I certainly hope it’s true.

UPDATE: This Reuters story seems a bit more certain that it’s true.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Looks like it’s not true after all. Remember: initial reports are usually wrong.

ANOTHER STUDY (this one from Canada) says that gun laws don’t reduce crime:

Vancouver, BC – Restrictive firearm legislation has failed to reduce gun violence in Australia, Canada, or Great Britain. The policy of confiscating guns has been an expensive failure, according to a new paper The Failed Experiment: Gun Control and Public Safety in Canada, Australia, England and Wales, released today by The Fraser Institute. . . .

Disarming the public has not reduced criminal violence in any country examined in this study. In all these cases, disarming the public has been ineffective, expensive, and often counter productive. In all cases, the effort meant setting up expensive bureaucracies that produce no noticeable improvement to public safety or have made the situation worse.

Here’s a link to the study itself. Add this to the CDC study mentioned here earlier (which “found no conclusive evidence that gun control laws help to prevent violent crime, suicides and accidental injuries in the United States”) and the case for gun control seems to be growing steadily weaker.

UPDATE: Michael Last has posted a critique of the Mauser study. I don’t know much about the statistical criminology stuff, but I believe that Mauser is a reputable guy. Last is apparently a statistician, but admits he didn’t read the whole study — he stopped when he saw a graph whose layout looked deceptive to him. Read it and draw your own conclusions. The fact that I haven’t gotten an angry email from Tim Lambert, however, suggests that the study’s probably pretty strong overall. . . .

BLOGGER BRIAN O’CONNELL gets a mention in the New York Post.