DONALD SENSING has an interesting look at francopessimisme and latent pro-Americanism. I hope his analysis is correct.

ABC SEEMS TO HAVE THE STORY on the letters from Iraq:

an e-mail to ABCNEWS today, the commander of the battalion, Lt. Col. Dominic Caraccilo, said the “letter-writing initiative” was all his idea.

Caraccilo said he circulated the form letter to his soldiers to give them “an opportunity to let their respective hometowns know what they are accomplishing here in Kirkuk. As you might expect, they are working at an extremely fast pace and getting the good news back home is not always easy. We thought it would be a good idea to encapsulate what we as a battalion have accomplished since arriving Iraq and share that pride with people back home.”

Caraccilo wrote that his staff drafted the letter, he edited it and reviewed it and then offered it to the soldiers. “Every soldier who signed that letter did so after a careful read,” he said. “Some, who could find the time, decided to send their own versions, while others chose not to take part in the initiative.”

Caraccilo was unapologetic, saying that the letter “perfectly reflects what each of these brave soldiers has and continues to accomplish on the ground.”

Interestingly, ABC seems to agree with that part, saying that things really are better in Kirkuk. It would be better, of course, if the words were actually those of the soldiers.

But then, there are rather a lot of people who speak in public words that they didn’t write.

UPDATE: The former LT Smash comments.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader James Rudolph emails:

I’m surprised that the press has make any issue at all about the half dozen or so form letters from Iraq. Anyone who has been involved with the environmental impact process can attest to the hundreds or thousands of form letters with only a signature, cut and pasted letters, hand written letters using canned paragraphs, etc. that are received. Environmental groups are particularly active in using this approach to generate lots of mail. I would guess that newspapers, news magazines, and politicians all receive the same sorts of thing. If anyone is going to treat such letters from troops in Iraq as suspect,
then they also need to challenge political and environmental groups when they claim that 20,000 letters were received by Congress demanding an end to logging or some such.

Yeah, I’ve seen plenty of those.

THE SUPREME COURT will hear the Pledge of Allegiance case.

WINDS OF CHANGE has a roundup of Korea stories that is rather comprehensive. There’s also a roundup of war news, and a roundup of Iraq news, there, if you missed ’em.

ARMED LIBERAL NOTICES that the State Department has left Israel off the map.

How can these guys implement a “roadmap” when they can’t even draw one?

UPDATE: Jim Hogue thinks this is a test:

Any bets on how long it will take to disappear or get fixed?? This isn’t an
idle question; it will be a good test of how effective bloggers are (or
perceived to be) by members in the federal government.

12 hours…. blogdom ROCKS!!
18 hours…. hey we paid attention but the web guy was off for Columbus Day
One day…. not bad
Two days…still not bad, they were busy defending Saudi Arabia first
One Week…. blogdom? Isn’t that a small middle Oceania island Kingdom ruled
by parrot worshippers???

For “federal government” substitute “State Department.” I’m betting on the Oceania thing. . . .

JOHN LOTT has a post in response to the Mother Jones piece I mention below, on his website.

THE DESERET NEWS HAS A STORY ON CHIEF WIGGLES’ TOY DRIVE that’s worth reading. Sounds like he’s figured a way around the Army’s shipping problems, using a host of volunteers. And that’s pretty impressive, as you’ll see if you read the story.

BUSH’S POLL RATINGS ARE UP, reversing the recent slide. Meanwhile a substantial majority of Baghdad residents want U.S. troops to stay. The latter result is more significant than the former, I suspect. But here’s the best part of the Baghdad poll story:

When Gallup set out recently to poll Baghdad residents, the biggest surprise may have been the public’s reaction to the questioners: Almost everyone responded to the pollsters’ questions, with some pleading for a chance to give their opinions.

“The interviews took more than an hour to do, people were extremely cooperative with open-ended questions,” said Richard Burkholder, director of international polling for Gallup. “People went on and on.”

This suggests to me that the natural reticence brought about by totalitarian dictatorship has ended, and that people feel more confident about the future.

It also reminds me of the hermit in Life of Brian, who wasn’t about to shut up even for a minute once his vow of silence was broken . . . .

CHINA’S NEW FRONTIER: My TechCentralStation column is up. It’s on China’s space program, and what that implies for China’s political stance.

Meanwhile, Chinese travel agents have reportedly spilled the “secret” launch schedule.

MAYBE THE ISRAELIS WILL BOMB IT, and save the world a lot of trouble:

TEHRAN/VIENNA, Oct 13 (Reuters) – An Iranian opposition group with a proven track record said on Monday Iran was hiding another atomic facility, just two weeks before a U.N. deadline for Tehran to come clean about its nuclear ambitions.

The October 31 deadline, set by the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency in a tough resolution last month, requires Tehran to prove it has no secret weapons programme as Washington alleges, or face possible U.N. Security Council sanctions.

There would be a lot of private sighs of relief, despite public criticism.

PAT ROBERTSON CLARIFIES: Joel Mowbray didn’t say “nuke the State Department,” — Pat did. That was actually the way I heard it all along.

There’s a reason why Pat Robertson was one of the original models for the term “idiotarian.” As you know, I’m no fan of the Saudis, or of the State Department with which — as Mowbray has pointed out — the Saudis have far too much influence. Sadly, however, Robertson’s dumb remarks, and Mowbray’s failure to chastise Robertson (however futile such chastisement would surely be) only serve to strengthen the State Department’s position.

KEVIN SITES is blogging from Iraq again. He’s no longer under CNN’s thumb, and is working for the more blog-friendly MSNBC.

IT’S BLOGALICIOUS: The Carnival of the Capitalists is collection of business and economics-oriented posts from around the blogosphere. It’s worth visiting — especially for InstaPundit readers, as those are issues that I tend not to spend much time on.

THEM’S FIGHTIN’ WORDS AT TAP: David Adesnik says that Matthew Yglesias is quietly moving to the right on Iraq.

I think, by the way, that Yglesias is a good addition to TAPPED, — which I also think has been improved by the move away from anonymity.

MARK STEYN is dissing CNN’s election coverage.

Meanwhile, over at GlennReynolds.com, I note Ed Asner’s historical myopia.

JEFF JARVIS has discovered where Andy Rooney gets his ideas.

And scroll down for his comments on presidential-campaign blogs.

NEUROCOMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE? Why not?

MATTHEW HOY has more on the Tony Snow / Jay Rockefeller face-off, and what it reveals about anti-war revisionism.

UPDATE: Doh! His permalinks are bloggered. Just go here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s more on Rockefeller, who seems to have problems with either memory or reading comprehension.

VACLAV HAVEL reminds us of Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi:

There are many politicians in the free world who favor seemingly pragmatic cooperation with repressive regimes. During the time of communism, some Western politicians preferred to appease the Czechoslovak thugs propped up by Soviet tanks rather than sustain contacts with a bunch of dissidents. These status-quo Western leaders behaved, voluntarily, much like those unfortunate people who were forced to participate in the massive government rallies: They allowed a totalitarian regime to dictate to them whom to meet and what to say.

Read the whole thing, as they say. (Via Boomshock.)

MATT WELCH on heroism in France:

Sabine Herold, to put it mildly, is not your typical Frog. Herold, the 22-year-old leader of Liberté, J’ecris Ton Nom (Freedom, I Write Your Name), has in the last few months emerged as the massively popular and highly photogenic leader of — zut! — a burgeoning pro-market, pro-American counterculture in France. Earning comparisons to Joan of Arc, Brigitte Bardot (!), and Margaret Thatcher in the panting British press, she represents something French politics hasn’t seen in years: a public figure eager to take on the country’s endlessly striking unions.

It is startling to hear any Parisienne, let alone a college student, drop references to F. A. Hayek in casual conversation, describe Communists as “disgusting,” or lead pro-war demonstrations in front of the American Embassy.

But, perhaps, one day it won’t be.

UPDATE: Read this, too.

CHRIS MOONEY has a good piece on the Lott affair in Mother Jones. Allowing for the fact that it has a certain Mother Jones slant, it’s not a bad summary, I think.

An example of the slant: Saul Cornell — identified only as an “Ohio State University historian who has written widely on guns” — makes too much of Lott’s importance, as one might expect now that Lott is facing criticism. Mooney perhaps should have noted that Cornell’s work is funded by the anti-gun Joyce Foundation. And perhaps he should also have noted that Cornell was a defender of Michael Bellesiles. (Though I should note that he no longer defends him). Neither, of course, disqualifies Cornell from having an opinion — but one imagines that a scholar who was funded by the NRA would have that affiliation noted in an article like this, and I don’t see why the same shouldn’t apply to those who are funded by anti-gun activists. We also hear about how many “gun deaths” there are, without learning how many — a majority, I believe — are actually suicide, which would seem relevant to me.

UPDATE: Clayton Cramer, a major figure in unmasking Bellesiles’ fraud, offers comments on the Mother Jones article, and on the similarities and differences between the two cases.

Meanwhile, Jacob Sullum writes on gun control’s shaky empirical foundation, and press slant on the subject:

In November 1988 The New England Journal of Medicine published a study that noted Seattle’s homicide rate was higher than Vancouver’s and attributed the difference to stricter gun control in Vancouver. Although the study had serious flaws, including the failure to take into account important demographic differences between the two cities, it received generous coverage in two major newspapers known for their sympathy to gun control.

The Washington Post covered the report in a 600-word, staff-written story on page A4 under the headline “Impact of Gun Control Indicated in Medical Study.” The New York Times story (“Gun Curbs Linked to Homicide Rate”) was about the same length, although it was by a stringer and appeared deeper in the A section.

The Times made up for those lapses with an editorial about the study later that month. Under the headline “Guns Do Kill People,” it said “the study appears to buttress common-sense wisdom about public safety [i.e., our position on gun control].”

This month, when a government-appointed panel of experts announced that their comprehensive review of the relevant scientific literature (including the Seattle/Vancouver study) had failed to find evidence that gun control works, The Washington Post gave the story about 200 words in its “Findings” column. The New York Times (D.C. edition) ran fewer than 150 words of an A.P. story on the bottom of page A23, under a tiny headline that gave no indication of the report’s conclusions.

No surprise, there.

UPDATE: Randy Barnett comments:

There are two additional thoughts that occur to me in the wake of this article. First, in their reworking of the data, Ian Ayres and John Donohue show no decrease in violent crime as famously claimed by Lott and say that the crime figures might even show a slight increase in violence. (Lott always claimed that right to carry laws were accompanied by a small increase in property crimes, which he speculated might be the results of deterrence caused by concealed weapons.) If confirmed, this is indeed a significant revision in the empirical evidence.

But even this data show that right to carry laws do not lead to greatly increased rates of violence as has long been claimed by opponents of such laws. Lott’s finding that violence declined in the wake of these laws was a welcome bonus for gun rights supporters, but debunking the hypothesis that violence would increase as a result of right to carry laws was highly significant as well. (Though, until an investigation is conducted by some nonpartisan group, I now place more stock in Ayres and Donahue’s results than in Lott’s.) This important conclusion seems to survive the controversy.

Second, while many academics claim the superiority of peer-reviewed journals over student-edited law reviews, this incident should give us pause. Lott’s initial figures were originally published in a peer-reviewed journal. So was Michael Bellesiles’ original probate survey that was subsequently debunked only when it was included in his high-profile book.

I think that’s right. One of the things that I found annoying when the Bellesiles scandal appeared was many historians’ dismissal of criticisms by law professors because “law reviews aren’t peer reviewed.” Peer review is good at some things, but one of them probably isn’t catching fraud, or even non-obvious factual mistakes.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tim Lambert, meanwhile, displays a rather cavalier disregard for the facts, in a comment on this post. Here’s what Lambert says:

Glenn Reynolds thinks that Chris Mooney’s piece is “not a bad summary” but opines that it is somewhat slanted. Reynolds thinks that the article should have noted that Saul Cornell’s work is funded by the Joyce Foundation. This is a curious complaint, since Reynolds earlier objected to opponents of Lott making arguments based on the fact that Lott was funded by the Olin corporation.

Here’s what I actually said:

Lott has been the target of many vicious smears and lies, which tends to make me reflexively doubt the latest charges by his many antigun critics. (For example, because he had an Olin Fellowship at the University of Chicago, antigun people said his research was funded by Winchester, a company the Olin family, which endowed the fellowships, once owned — which is sort of like saying that the Henry Luce Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale is “bought and paid for by Time Magazine.” I don’t think they ever apologized, either.)

I believe that this was hashed out rather thoroughly on an email list to which Lambert belongs, which means that he knows the truth here. This is sloppy of Lambert, at best.

Mooney, meanwhile has more on this on his blog, and has linked transcripts of his interviews with Lott.

MORE: Brian Linse comments: “Having been the first blogger to question Lott’s work, I am extremely gratified to look back on the role the blogs have played in bringing this issue to wider public attention.” Read the whole thing.

STILL MORE: John Lott has responded to the Mother Jones story on his website.

AND MORE STILL: Lambert has updated his post, fixing the Olin reference, and adding:

I meant to say foundation there. My point is that it is wrong to imply that someone’s opinion has been bought, whether that person is Saul Cornell or John Lott.

But the essence of the (false) charge against Lott wasn’t just that his research had been “bought” — itself absurd on the actual facts — but that it had been bought by a firearms manufacturer. When you say, falsely, that someone’s pro-gun work is funded by Winchester, that’s rather a smear, isn’t it?

I agree that people’s scholarship should be addressed on the merits, but that isn’t done here. In fact, when I’m interviewed by reporters I often get the third degree as to whether my research has been funded by the NRA. (No.) Hence my goose-and-gander point.

MORE: Saul Cornell emails:

As long as we are genuflecting toward accuracy, I note that you did not mention that I supported Jim Lindgren’s efforts and even went so far as to introduce him to my colleague Randy Roth. Despite the boasting of Clayton Cramer I think it is fair to say that it was their collaboration that played the key role in exposing the problems with Arming America. I also note that you did not mention that I responded quite promptly to the publication of the WMQ forum by withdrawing public support for Michael’s thesis and that I supported the Emory Report when the Wall Street Journal called for a comment. If you compare my responses to Arming America’s problems with the response of gun rights advocates to Lott, I think any fair reading would have to credit my response as faster. I would appreciate you correcting the record.

I wasn’t aware of the Lindgren support. Otherwise, I disagree on timing. By the time that the WMQ report came out, Bellesiles’ fraud had been made quite apparent in popular publications (one of which, by Melissa Seckora, came out even as Bellesiles received a prestigious Bancroft Award in early American history). The WMQ article came rather late in the game.

And there has been none of the snideness with which historians — including, if I recall correctly, Cornell — met critics of Bellesiles. Like Randy Barnett, I’ve called for investigation (and did so on the Firearmsconlaw list when Tim Lambert first raised the 1997 survey issue, long before it became public) but I’ve also admitted that I don’t understand the statistics involved. With Bellesiles, on the other hand, it was easy to understand the absence of visits to nonexistent archives. Nor have associations of right-wing scholars issued resolutions uncritically supporting Lott without even bothering to review the charges against him, as the (left-wing) American Historical Association did with Bellesiles.

I had hoped that this humiliation would lead historians to do more than “genuflect” toward accuracy, but perhaps not.

DANG. I wish I had been at this party.

UPDATE: More here and here.

CENSORSHIP AT RUTGERS: PALESTINIAN SYMPATHIZERS tried to stop Evan Coyne Maloney from covering their rally.

WHY IS THE STATE DEPARTMENT SO CLOSE TO THE SAUDIS? Joel Mowbray writes:

The gravy train dates back more than 25 years. In that time, it has created a circle of sympathizers and both direct and indirect lobbyists. But the most important–and most indirect–byproduct of lining the pockets of former State officials is that the Saudi royal family finds itself with passionate supporters inside Foggy Bottom. Which is precisely the intended effect. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, was quoted in the Washington Post: “If the reputation then builds that the Saudis take care of friends when they leave office, you’d be surprised how much better friends you have who are just coming into office.”

Shameful, but not surprising. Read the whole thing.

JOANNE JACOBS IS CALLING FOR MORE HOMEWORK, which demonstrates that she must not be planning to run for office anytime soon.

UPDATE: Mitch Berg disagrees.