SAVE THE CHILDREN RANKS COUNTRIES on a “Mothers’ Index.” Power Line looks at the numbers and is unimpressed:

The problem with rankings of this sort is that advocacy groups nearly always put their thumbs on the scale by including factors that are mostly political. Thus, the data show the U.S. ranking 4th on the “Children’s Index,” but only 13th on the “Women’s Index.” (The two are combined to form the “Mothers’ Index.”) Why this difference?

It doesn’t take long to figure out. In the “Women’s Index,” along with such logical items as “percent of pregnant women with anemia” and “adult female literacy rate,” Save the Children includes a “political status” column, measured by the percentage of seats in the national legislature held by women. This accounts for most of the difference between the U.S. and European countries like Sweden, Norway and Switzerland, which rank at the top of the index and have more women in their legislatures.

There is also a sneakier reason. The “Women’s Index” includes infant mortality as a factor–as it should, given the purported purpose of the study. But the infant mortality rate is measured as the “lifetime risk of maternal mortality.” That language puzzled me for a moment, until I realized what was going on. The birth rate in the U.S. is much higher than in European countries like Sweden and Switzerland. By adding up the total “lifetime” infant mortality risk, instead of assessing the risk on a per-baby basis, as would be logical, Save the Children is penalizing American mothers for having more children. This can hardly be unintentional.

Save the children — from bogus claims!

UPDATE: Dawn Olsen has a different take, to put it mildly.

SOME IRAQI INFORMATION MINISTER CLASSICS have been sampled and turned into a song entitled “I Can’t Believe What I’m Hearing.” You can hear it here.

SOME BLOGGERS HAVE BEEN POSTING MACHINE-MADE BLOG POETRY, but I’ve got the actual, hand-crafted stuff:

I’m a San Francisco State University student who’s taking a creative writing class that deals with the craft of poetry right now. Just for kicks, I used several of your entries from 04/29/03 to make a “found poem.” (One takes bits and pieces from a book, another poem, or basically anything that involves text, and makes a poem out of it.) So here is the result:

INSTAPUNDIT

the Democrats’ efforts
can be
an interesting thought experiment
OUCH

I hear from homesick Knoxville expatriates
in favor of censorship
taking over the 2004 Presidential Campaign
Jacques Chirac needs
this comment:
censorship is over

“Now I am a free man”

and now
tourists
have gone missing

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

One of the teachers’ assistants, who doesn’t like W and was anti-war, actually liked it. (I thought this was rather amazing, but I guess the poet overrode the liberal inside of him.)

– Sarah Navarro

All I can say is, “Heh.”

IT’S ENTIRELY POSSIBLE, OF COURSE, THAT THEY’RE BOTH TELLING THE TRUTH:

A FULL-BLOODED Italian political row echoed across Europe yesterday as the Italian Prime Minister and the President of the European Commission traded accusations of corruption. . . .

Signor Prodi and Signor Berlusconi are due to meet at the Salonika summit on June 20, as Italy prepares to take over the EU presidency from Greece. A breakdown in trust between the European Commission and the country holding the presidency would make it almost impossible to conduct business.

Interesting.

SINA MOTALLEBI UPDATE: He’s still in jail, and the mullahs are pondering a China-style Internet firewall. Yeah, that’ll make them more popular.

BOTH ORIN KERR AND I HAD QUESTIONS about an AlterNet story involving a “Patriot Act Raid.” Chris Kelly has looked into things a bit and is inclined to find the story credible.

I should note, too, that several readers with law enforcement experience wrote to say that the raid didn’t sound obviously fishy. Here’s the key passage of Kelly’s post:

The ACLU is mainly working with the press to get the story out, and they feel that [aside] from relatively minor disciplinary actions related to taunting by the police, there was nothing about the raid that was illegal.

That doesn’t surprise me, though many readers might be surprised to learn just how much police conduct is legal — and, sadly, was so long before the Patriot Act was passed.

UPDATE: Richard Aubrey emails:

It appears, even though the story of the raid might be otherwise credible, that the actual reason for running it, posting it, dissecting it, and lamenting it, disappeared.

The original point was how awful the Patriot Act is. Since we now know the Patriot Act had nothing to do with it, the story is useless for its intended purpose.

Whether the raid was good or bad, overdone or appropriately done, is a separate set of questions, none of which would be hitting the blogosphere if the Patriot Act piece hadn’t been inserted. There are lots of raids. Why be concerned about this one?

Well, yes, the Patriot Act angle does seem to have died. I, of course, was concerned with this stuff before the Patriot Act existed. But the point is taken.

UPDATE: Orin Kerr has more thoughts along these lines.

GARY HART SAYS HE WON’T RUN FOR PRESIDENT: I hope he’ll keep up the blog.

UPDATE: TalkLeft is bumming.

THE NINTH CIRCUIT IS DIVIDED OVER THE SECOND AMENDMENT — which is news, actually, since it used to be united. Howard Bashman, whose legal blog is so indispensable that it’s hard to believe it’s only one year old today, has the scoop and links.

UPDATE: The opinion is so popular, I guess, that I can’t seem to download it. But Eugene Volokh reports that: “Judge Pregerson, one of the most liberal judges on the Ninth Circuit — and perhaps in the whole country — dissents, saying that the Second Amendment secures an individual right.”

I look forward to reading it, whenever I can.

THOSE IRAQI FILES just keep coming:

MOSCOW (AP) – A likely appointee to the interim Iraqi government said Belarus should be called to account for allegedly providing military aid to Saddam Hussein in violation of United Nations sanctions.

“We have documents about this, and in any case we will raise this question in the U.N. Security Council and demand punishment for those Belarusian bureaucrats who took part in violating sanctions,” Iyad Allawi, leader of the Iraqi National Accord, was quoted as saying in an interview published Tuesday in Vremya Novostei, a liberal independent daily.

Some European politicians may come to regret the development of transnational prosecutions in human-rights cases. Meanwhile things aren’t all rosy for Russia, either:

Allawi said some of Iraq’s $12 billion debt to Russia was for illegal deals and would not be recognized.

Allawi pointed in particular to former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, whom he accused of defending Saddam “for personal profit.” Primakov, a Middle East expert, Soviet-era diplomat and spymaster who was a Pravda newspaper correspondent for the region during the Cold War, knew the Iraqi leader for decades. Russia dispatched him to Baghdad several times to try to avert war – first in 1990, then this year.

“We have almost full certainty that Primakov received certain sums from Saddam for this (defending him),” Allawi said, without elaborating.

The interview, conducted in Baghdad, did not say what Allawi’s allegations were based on.

Rumors about Primakov’s alleged self-interest in Iraq have floated around for years. Russian Foreign Ministry officials, including Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, have vehemently denied them.

Interesting.

JAMES LILEKS SPEAKS FOR ALL OF US, with this advice:

Note to people who feel compelled to begin talk-radio conversations with “long-time listener, first-time caller” – no one cares. Least of all the host. Nor should you say “as I told your screener . . .” because A) it eats up time and B) reminds everyone of the process that weeds out long-winded dullards, and C) how this process has failed.

Yep.

BRITISH ANTIWAR MP GEORGE GALLOWAY, accused of taking bribes from Saddam Hussein, has been suspended from the Labour Party pending an investigation:

Mr Triesman said the suspension, effective immediately, would remain in place “pending internal party investigations”.

Mr Galloway immediately hit back at the suspension, saying it was prejudicial to his libel action against the Daily Telegraph over allegations that he took money from Saddam Hussein’s regime. “It is completely unjust,” he said.

The Labour Party made clear that Mr Galloway was not suspended over the Telegraph allegations, but comments he made during the Iraq war.

A Labour Party spokesman said that the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards is to also launch an investigation into Mr Galloway and that there may be further investigations involving the Charity Commission and others.

Interesting. Here’s the cover of Private Eye magazine.

UPDATE: And Galloway is facing another investigation:

The Charity Commission has said it is to undertake “further fact finding” into the misuse of funds from the Mariam Appeal founded by Labour MP George Galloway.

According to the Attorney General’s office, the Charity Commission will be looking into claims that charitable funds may have been used for non-charitable purposes.

Stay tuned.

DANIEL DREZNER WRITES THAT “A benevolent hegemon needs to be benevolent, and the U.S. can do better.”

HERE’S MORE ON OLYMPIC-ATHLETE TORTURE under Saddam Hussein. Excerpt:

Tramping through the ruins of the Olympic building, one finds charred letters to Uday from senior officials of the International Olympic Committee, including Juan Antonio Samaranch, the Spaniard who was long its president.

They show no trace of any effort by the international committee’s headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, to distance itself from the Iraqi committee and its head, despite years of reports by Western human rights organizations that the Baghdad building was being used for torture and killing.

Right up to the Winter Games in Salt Lake City last year, the correspondence from Lausanne was about the need for Iraq, like other countries, to prepare for the new “disciplines,” like the women’s bobsled competition, being introduced at the Utah Games.

One letter, from the International Olympic Committee’s Fair Play Commission, spoke of the “universal humanistic sports values” of the Olympic movement; another of the “global society” that would be represented by the Olympic Village at Salt Lake City.

As president of Iraq’s Olympic committee, the president’s son was the country’s sports czar. According to several accounts from players, he turned his sadistic obsessions on the national soccer team. . . .

A series of poor passes, carefully counted, could result in a player’s being forced to stand before the president’s son in the dressing room, hands at his side, while he was punched or slapped in the face an equal number of times.

But those were the lesser miseries. Some players endured long periods in a military prison, beaten on their backs with electric cables until blood flowed. Other punishments included “matches” kicking concrete balls around the prison yard in 130-degree heat, and 12-hour sessions of push-ups, sprints and other fitness drills, wearing heavy military fatigues and boots.

And yet there are still some people who say that removing Saddam from power was somehow immoral. But then, Harry Belafonte is still defending Castro, as are quite a few others.

Are there any dictators with bad facial hair that the Left doesn’t support?

UPDATE: Matthew Yglesias puts me in my place for this snide remark. Touche. Note, however, the stirring defense of Saddam Hussein’s “dashing” facial hair in the comments. Heh.

DONALD LUSKIN, in (yet again) savaging Paul Krugman, makes me realize that my earlier comments about Bush appearing in military garb may have been overstated. At least, he produces a photo of a similarly attired Bill Clinton.

I still think that Presidents just shouldn’t dress that way, and I don’t think that Clinton’s having done it makes it better. But it does make the problem more widespread, something that I didn’t realize when I posted on Bush.

HOWARD KURTZ has a Bill Bennett roundup. Meanwhile Richard Bennett — who complains that his good name is being dragged through the mud — says that the real disgrace is that Bennett (Bill, not Richard) was playing the slots, which he regards as a lame-o form of gambling.

UPDATE: Porphyrogenitus notes that this has all been anticipated by The Simpsons:

Homer: You know, Marge, for the first time in our marriage I can finally
look down my nose at you. You have a gambling problem!

He’s got the whole bit, which seems entirely apt.

GAY MARRIAGE: Coming to Canada?

AT LARRY LESSIG’S REQUEST — delivered with some force — I’ve changed the RSS feed from 20 words to 50. Enjoy!

CELEBRITY CHEFS: Evan Coyne Maloney explains why he’s not boycotting irritating stars.

ARROGANT UNILATERALISM:

The French government secretly supplied fleeing Iraqi officials with passports in Syria that allowed them to escape to Europe, The Washington Times has learned. . . .

The passports are regarded as documents of the European Union, because of France’s membership in the union, and have helped the Iraqis avoid capture, said officials familiar with intelligence reports.

The French support, which was revealed through sensitive intelligence-gathering means, angered Pentagon, State Department and intelligence officials in Washington because it undermined the search for senior aides to Saddam, who fled Iraq in large numbers after the fall of Baghdad on April 9.

“It made it very difficult to track these people,” one official said. A second Bush administration official said, “It’s like Raoul Wallenberg in reverse,” a reference to the Swedish diplomat who supplied travel documents to help Jews escape Nazi Germany in World War II. “Now you have the French helping the bad guys escape from us.”

“Like Raoul Wallenberg in reverse.” If that’s not a good summation of French foreign policy in the 21st century, then I don’t know what is.

There’s also this story, less serious but still symptomatic:

The European Commission accused the French yesterday of a “lamentable” record in enforcing European Union law and pledged tough action to bring member states to book.

Despite being zealous advocates of closer European integration, the French are facing 220 open cases involving systematic violations of EU laws and are guilty of the most flagrant foot-dragging of any EU state when implanting new rules.

The long list of violations include a refusal to obey the law on biotech patents, for maintaining an illegal ban on food additives, and using obstructionist measures to prevent lawyers from other EU countries working in France. . . .

In many instances, the commission has already won the case in the European Court but has to launch a second set of proceedings under the EU’s tortuous system before fines can be imposed.

Typical.

DR. MANHATTAN IS BACK after what must have been a very restful two-month hiatus.

IAIN MURRAY has some interesting poll data suggesting that British attitudes are swinging in favor of America, and against France, Germany, et al.

DONNA SHALALA DOES THE RIGHT THING: Eugene Volokh has the story.

HERE’S AN INTERESTING APPROACH TO ATTACKING ANTHRAX:

Another antibiotic approach pits a virus against anthrax. Rockefeller University microbiologist Vincent Fischetti identified an enzyme from a virus that infects only anthrax-causing and closely related bacteria. In test-tube experiments, the enzyme kills about a hundred million bacteria in two minutes or less. “It drills a hole in the cell wall, and the organisms explode,” Fischetti says. He adds that the treatment should boost the power of existing antibiotics against anthrax, as well as kill resistant strains of the bacteria. His group is currently performing animal experiments to test the enzyme further.

Very cool. (Via DefenseTech).

HERE’S ONE I MISSED OVER THE WEEKEND:

Germany reacted with dismay yesterday to America’s decision not to return the 17,000-strong 1st Armoured Division to Germany, accelerating plans to relocate its troops to eastern Europe. . . .

Chancellor Gerhard Schroder has repeatedly shrugged off the prospect of a withdrawal of US forces, but officials around Frankfurt and Heidelberg, where troops are stationed, are concerned at the loss of millions of dollars which the soldiers and their families bring in each year.

(Via Vincent Ferrari).

YALE PROFESSORS DEFEND FREE SPEECH: Unfortunately, they could only get their defense published on a blog. Oh well, you still get to read it.

(Via OxBlog).