WHERE DIPLOMACY IS NOT SO SUCCESSFUL: Reader Jake Kreutzer sends this link to a story suggesting that the North Koreans are even stupider, and more suicidal, than I thought.

JOE KATZMAN looks at the diplomatic defeats that France has suffered and doesn’t credit the United States. He says that they have Tony Blair’s fingerprints all over them.

There’s something to this — but it’s not the whole story nor, as I will note in a later post, would the Administration fail to deserve substantial credit even if Katzman’s perspective were one hundred percent correct.

READ THIS POST by Dave Kopel over at The Corner on the latest Rave Act developments. And read the post below it, too.

JEEZ, a new traffic record. Over 112, 000 pageviews today already. Go figure.

IRAQI SPIES IN THE U.S.? That’s hardly surprising, given that we’re basically at war. But this Daily News report offers some surprises, though of course I can’t confirm its accuracy.

BROBECK, PHLEGER IS NO MORE. This won’t excite the non-lawyers, but it’s big news.

UNILATERALISM, MY ASS! (CONT’D): All I can say is, Advantage: Rumsfeld!

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP)–The “new Europe” raised its voice Thursday, as eight of its leaders praised U.S. resolve in disarming Iraq and indirectly chided the traditional powers, France and Germany, for opposing U.S. plans for military action against Saddam Hussein.

But that’s old news. Now, though, the “gang of eight” is a “gang of ten:”

Some of Europe’s newest democracies have expressed the strongest support because of past U.S. economic and political support of their struggle to escape communism.

Albanian Prime Minister Fatos Nano, in a letter to Bush made public Thursday, pledged “total and unconditional” support in the showdown against Iraq. Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda of Slovakia called the declaration “the clear, right word at the right time,” and said he agreed with it.

The article goes on to minimize (if that’s possible) the military importance of Albania and Slovakia. But that’s not the point. The point is that — despite (or because of) their diplomatic anschluss — France and Germany are now isolated within the E.U. Indeed, there is now talk that the E.U. may splinter as a result of their anti-American efforts.

That probably won’t happen, but it’s a far cry from the “United Europe” stance that Chirac and Schroeder had in mind. Why, it’s almost as if they were lured into this position.

PARIS CORRESPONDENT NELSON ASCHER EMAILS:

Hello.

This is very important:

Though a minimum of 157 signatures was needed, by now more than 160 Euro Parliament representatives have signed the request demanding an investigation into how the Palestinians have been using the money given them by the European Union. Great for the very day the “gang of 8” published its pro-US letter. Maybe things are begining to change this side of the ocean — and, by the way, this is also, and quite officially, the “hole in the head” Chris Patten was in need of.

Another diplomatic success. Heh.

READER ALAN CAMERON POINTS OUT that AOL’s $99 billion loss was close to double Iraq’s total GDP. Heh.

In the words of Jack Palance, “I crap bigger’n you.”

Almost twice as big, though admittedly, that was an unusually large crap. . . .

HMM. SCHWARZKOPF WAS SKEPTICAL, BUT NOW HE’S CALLING BUSH’S SPEECH “COMPELLING.” You don’t think the whole thing was scripted, do you? Surely not.

NO ANTI-SEMITISM HERE. Publish that cartoon with an obviously Arab figure and you’d be charged with “hate speech.” Heck, they might even advertise to find people who were offended.

UPDATE: No hate crime here, either!

I WAS JUST BEING HONEST: My comments on Gary Locke’s performance responding to the State of the Union got quoted in the Seattle Times.

Oh, well, I was nicer than Oliver Willis, who called Locke’s presentation “long and limp.”

DONALD SENSING identifies Bush’s most important sentence.

HERE’S A FIRSTHAND BLOG REPORT of Iraqi chemical weapons.

READER GABRIEL MENDEL POINTS OUT that even though the New York Times is basically ignoring the European leaders’ letter, the robots at Google News — handily outperforming the humans at the Times — have put the story up top.

UPDATE: Better late than never! The Times has it now.

PROFESSOR DAVID MOSER OF BELMONT UNIVERSITY has posted a defense of the Eldred decision on the new Belmont University faculty blog. (A great idea, by the way).

Meanwhile, Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin suggests that under Eldred, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is unconstitutional.

FRANCE’S BAD WEEK: I reflect on the failures of Franco-diplomacy over at GlennReynolds.com, where I also suggest that the Bush Administration is playing a diplomatic game that goes well beyond Iraq.

Meanwhile, in response to the letter from 8 European leaders supporting the United States, reader Jim Campbell emails:

After reading the stunning op-ed letter in the WSJ this morning (to see the words “American bravery” in a letter signed by the heads of 8 European nations briefly stopped my heart), I thought of Bush and Chirac and Schroeder, and a movie scene immediately popped into mind – the scene at the end of Twelve Angry Men, where Henry Fonda looks at Lee J. Cobb and says, “You’re alone now.”

I like it.

UPDATE: Here’s an article that provides some insight into what’s going on:

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – A joint letter by eight European leaders backing the United States on the crisis with Iraq highlighted the European Union (news – web sites)’s divisions on Thursday, rubbing salt into the wounds of its stumbling foreign policy. . . .

The move appeared aimed at isolating France and Germany, which had publicly argued against a rush to war, and building a pro-American caucus within the 15-nation EU.

“This looks like Rumsfeld’s Europe,” one EU diplomat said, referring to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s dismissal of France and Germany last week as “old Europe.”

Buwahahahaha!

HERE’S A NICE PIECE ON NANOTECHNOLOGY and Bill Joy’s fears by Freeman Dyson, who invokes Milton’s Areopagitica.

UNILATERALISM, MY ASS! Jim Miller notes that the New York Times and other anti-war papers don’t seem to be giving the European leaders’ letter of support any play.

If the letter had been one of condemnation, want to bet it would have made the front page? I can’t even find it on the page that supposedly provides “complete coverage” of the war with Iraq.

Meanwhile, Juan Volokh is condemning French unilateralism.

THERE WILL BE AN ONLINE FORUM on affirmative action and diversity in higher education at the Chronicle of Higher Education’s website starting