I DON’T KNOW IF THIS IS GOOD NEWS OR NOT: Sonic Foundry has been bought by Sony Digital. I’m a big fan of Sonic Foundry’s Acid music software and Vegas video editing software. (I have DVD Architect, too, their pro-level DVD authoring program, but haven’t actually used it yet). Sony will take over all of those, along with some Sonic Foundry folks.

On the one hand it’s good: Sony makes great video cameras, but their efforts at video-editing software (Pixela and the much-despised Movie Shaker for micro-MV) haven’t exactly set the world on fire. But will Sonic Foundry make Sony better, or will Sony ruin Sonic Foundry? A couple of readers seem to think it’ll be the latter. I sure hope not.

RAMESH PONNURU HAS AN INTERVIEW WITH HERNANDO DE SOTO on Iraqi reconstruction. Interesting stuff. Excerpt:

But if the question is have you been doing a model study to taking over the property system of Iraq, no.

Let me remind you, though, that that’s what MacArthur did. The first thing he did was set up a property system. It’s very poorly documented. I was very interested [in this] when we had an up and coming politician [in Peru] named Fujimori. Why did they come to Peru and why did the de Sotos not go to Japan? What happened was that after 1945, what MacArthur wanted to do [was] to give the peasants and the poor people and the citizens the title [to land] and take it away from the feudal class.

[At the same time,] Chiang Kai-shek was suddenly losing to Mao Tse-tung . . . and the reason, as MacArthur understood, was that Mao Tse-tung had begun to title. It was collective title, but that was still closer to [the peasants] than the feudal title.

So [the Americans] had a massive title and they spread wealth enormously and millions of Japanese had property. And now it’s nine times wealthier than Peru. So you’ve done that before.

When you went to war in Vietnam — Ho Chi Minh was also a titler. And the lessons that you learned in Japan you forgot in Vietnam. So they basically out-titled you.

I wonder what De Soto would think of the Oil Trust idea? I’d be very interested to hear.

HERE’S A STORY that stands in stark contrast to the U.N. cafeteria-looting incident that I mentioned a few days ago.

MARK KLEIMAN has a lengthy post on the John Lott / Stanford Law Review stuff, and many other things Lott-related. He’s quite critical of Lott, but notes:

It seems clear that Ayres and Donohue detected a significant coding error in the response, just as Donohue had earlier detected significant coding errors in other work by Lott and Mustard. Moreover, in addition to putting a hole in Lott’s earlier work, Ayres and Donohue’s analyses of subsequent data suggest that the “more guns, less crime” hypothesis is, at best, true in some places and not in others, and even then to only a slight extent. There is no justification for continuing to claim that Lott has proven that liberalizing concealed-carry reduces crime.

At the end of the day, though, it’s pretty clear that if “shall-issue” increases gun violence at all, it doesn’t do so by very much. To that limited extent, Lott was right and the gun controllers were wrong.

There’s more, and you should read the whole post if you’re interested in this subject. I lack the expertise to judge on the coding error issue, and I haven’t looked at the data. Kleiman, I believe, has the expertise, but it’s not clear if he’s looked at the data or is just taking the word of Ian Ayres and John Donohue. I regard Ayres and Donohue as eminently trustworthy — in the sense of being honest — but that doesn’t guarantee that they’re right, of course. I’d like to see some other people looking at the data, which Lott has made freely available, and addressing this issue. Ayres and Donohue have, at the very least, raised doubts that I am not competent to address, and that need to be addressed.

EVERYBODY SAYS GARY HART’S BLOG IS BORING: Maybe if he channeled Ken Layne, as in this example from Russell Wardlow, things would be better. Or maybe he’s better off the way he is.

UPDATE: Or there’s the Gary Hart as cam-girl approach, with a webcam and wishlist. Go for it, Gary!

THERE MAY ACTUALLY BE GOOD NEWS where India and Pakistan are concerned:

NEW DELHI – After 16 months of stony silence, interrupted by the near outbreak of war last June, India and Pakistan are suddenly making all the right moves to start peace talks.

Monday, Pakistan raised the stakes by offering to get rid of its nuclear arsenal if India followed suit.

The reasons for this spring warming trend – initiated by India – are still coming to light. But they range from the swift US victory in Iraq and mounting concern over nuclear proliferation and terrorism to a legacy quest by India’s ailing prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee.

Interesting. Let’s hope it pans out.

UPDATE: Several readers suggest that this isn’t as good as it sounds. Here’s how Scott Draeker puts it:

Pakistan’s offer to India is not exactly good news. If taken at face value, it would leave China as the undisputed regional power — with nukes. Pakistan is a client of China, so it’s no surprise that they would extend this offer. It is in the US interest to see India emerge as a counterbalance to China in the region. However a non-nuclear India could not counterbalance a nuclear China.

With regard to proliferation, Indian nukes are not a problem. While the world would be a better place without Pakistani nukes, the proliferation concern is the same whether Pakistan fields them or not. I’m afraid they would continue to sell expertise, even finished weapons, at the right price.

There are only 4 countries in the world actively fighting Islamic terrorism: US, India, Russia and Israel. Those are the folks I’d like to see the US aligning with.

Yes, the India-as-counterweight-to-China issue is an important factor here, and I should have given it more attention.

JOE KATZMAN HAS SOME THOUGHTS on where the RIAA-vs.-customers issue is going.

WHY I HAVEN’T WEIGHED IN ON BILL BENNETT MORE STRONGLY: The ugly photographic evidence is in. Well, pictures don’t lie, do they?

ALGERIAN TOURIST UPDATE:

ALGIERS (Reuters) – Thirty-one European tourists held hostage in the Algerian Saharan desert by unknown assailants are soon to be released, Algerian state radio reported on Monday.

The adventure holidaymakers — 15 Germans, 10 Austrians, four Swiss, one Swede and one Dutchman — disappeared in late February and early March while traveling without guides in separate groups in the deep Saharan desert famous for its ancient grave sites. . . .

Government officials were not available for comment.

The area the tourists were believed to be heading is renowned for its archaeological sites, but also known for arms and drug smuggling and borders Libya, Mali and Niger.

After weeks of media speculation, the North African country confirmed for the first time on Sunday that the tourists were being held hostage and that officials were in contact with the kidnappers.

Authorities have declined to give the hostage-takers’ motives and demands. Algerian media have reported that the armed group was seeking a ransom. . . . Government and diplomatic sources suspect the hostage-takers are armed rebels or local bandits linked to rebel groups.

Some media reports suggest the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) may be responsible for the kidnappings. The GSPC is waging a bloody war against the authorities and is suspected of having links to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network.

I’m not sure we’re getting the whole story here, but I’m certainly happy to hear that these folks are likely to be free soon.

HMM. IF IT’S NEWS WHEN A MORALIZER TURNS OUT TO BE A HYPOCRITE, then why isn’t this story getting more attention?

New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer, an outspoken advocate of campaign-finance reform, has been hit with one of the biggest fines ever imposed on a member of Congress by the Federal Election Commission — for violating campaign-finance laws.

The FEC ruling, handed down in March, ordered Schumer’s 1998 senatorial campaign to pay a civil penalty of $130,000. The campaign was also ordered to return $120,455 in illegal contributions, bringing the total of fines and restitution to slightly more than a quarter-million dollars. The campaign paid the sum in April.

According to FEC records, only three cases involving federal candidates have resulted in higher fines than the one levied on Schumer’s campaign. No senatorial candidate has ever been so severely penalized.

I’m just, you know, asking.

UPDATE: Discount Blogger (Permalinks not working, scroll down, blah blah) says that I’m guilty of flawed logic here in comparing Schumer to Bennett, because Schumer, personally, didn’t do anything illegal.

But neither did Bennett. Right? That’s part of the comparison, I thought. Of course, if I wanted to plumb the depths of Schumer’s hypocrisy further I might note his support of the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, which imposes liability on corporate bigshots for wrongdoing by their underlings, and wonder why he didn’t support similar language regarding campaign-finance laws. “Accept an illegal contribution: go to jail — no ifs, buts, or maybes.”

Roscoe Shrewsbury captures things well via email:

There is certainly a keen sense of the ludicrous when one calls to mind a triptych image of Mr. Bennett, during the day penning sober tomes about character and virtue, but at night – rollin’ dem bones, a-callin’ out, “Yowzah! Baby need a new pair o’ shoes!” He says that gambling is simply what he does when he needs to relax, and conservative flacks leap to his defense, professing that they fail to see anything wrong or even unusual in his conduct. So he dropped $1.4 million on one especially adventurous foray into the dens of iniquity – some people feed pigeons, or even roller-skate.

But we find these Bennett exposés annoying and tiresome, because we all know that politicians who please the ruling Information Class are never held to this kind of accounting. The big media have yet to notice U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott taking money from Saddam’s henchman, and it’s hard to find even a passing reference to the firestorm in Britain over the cosmic hypocrisy of the rapacious George Galloway. Do we read article leads like, “Senator Kennedy gave his full support to the sexual-harassment legislation, even though observers have noted that within a square kilometer of his office he nails anything that moves,” or is it ever mentioned that Rep. Barney Frank, flawlessly correct on every issue of New Class interest, was wont to use congressional pages as sex robots? These, er, peccadilloes are at least a ludicrous and revealing as the video-poker tics and roulette-wheel trances of the crazed Bennett, but we don’t expect to read about them in Newsweek. So to hell with their articles about Bennett.

I don’t think that the Barney Frank sex scandal was about pages — I think Roscoe is confusing two different Congressional scandals here, as Frank’s was about a male prostitute of mature years, wasn’t it? — but the general point stands. Here’s the McDermott story.

UPDATE: The permalink works now: it’s here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Will Allen emails:

Glenn, I’ve also always found Bennett tiresome, since I am a vice aficionado (anything worth doing is worth doing well, as they say) , and don’t think blowing eight million on gambling is any worse than doing so on yachts, airplanes, buffalo herds, or anyway else that rich people choose to burn their cash. What is most interesting to me is the fact that apparently people in the casino industry acted against their stockholders’ or employers’ interests is giving documentation regarding Bennett to the press. Whales like Bennett are critical to the profit margin of an expensive-to-run, 5-star casino, so helping the media expose Bennett, and thus convincing him to become an ex-whale, harms the owners of the casino. It sounds to me as if the documents turned over to Newsweek were only available to executives fairly high up the food chain. Assuming that Bennett didn’t owe money to the house, which has not been asserted by anyone, somebody at these casinos may have violated their fidiciury duties, which, if I had any interest in such a casino, would irritate me a helluva lot more than anything Bennett has done. If one of the casinos is publicly owned, call the SEC!! I smell a stockholder lawsuit!!

Interesting. I don’t know where Newsweek got the documents, and neither does anyone else not directly involved, and a shareholder suit, while not impossible I suppose, seems unlikely to me. But it’s worse than Will suggests, actually: they won’t just lose Bennett’s business, but risk losing the business of any other high rollers who fear that the “what happens here, stays here” claims aren’t true. I have no idea how many people like that there are, but the revenue loss would seem likely to exceed any possible gain from releasing the documents.

SUSANNA CORNETT IS A BIT HARSH with regard to my dismissal of affirmative action as the cause for New York Times reporter Jayson Blair’s travails. But my source for the correction statistics is this week’s Weekly Standard, in a “Notebook” piece that isn’t online yet. But here’s the relevant passage:

Since Blair’s name first appeared in the Times on June 9, 1998, he has had 725 total bylines there. His 50 corrections therefore constitute a 6.9 percent discovered-error rate. That’s not so great. But it’s not nearly so bad as the factual strikeout average posted, to take one random example, by Times Washington-bureau stalwart Adam Clymer over the exact same period: 400 bylines with 36 corrections (9.0 percent). Or how’s about Times associate editor R.W. “Johnny” Apple Jr., whose 327 bylines with 46 corrections (14.1 percent spoiled copy) would seem to label him — the numbers don’t lie — less than half as reliable as the hapless youngster Howell Raines is now banishing.

So there you have it. A lot of people are jumping on the “it was affirmative action” bandwagon (Kaus is, and there seemed to be consensus on Howard Kurtz’s Reliable Sources show yesterday, too). And it might be — but you can’t prove it by saying that anyone with that many errors would have been fired if he were a white male. Because, sadly, the white males at the Times seem to be worse.

ORIN KERR WRITES THAT record company executives are risking serious jail time via their efforts to stop file-trading.

STILL MORE LOOTING:

SHIPPAGAN – Calm has returned to the fishing community of Shippagan after a weekend crab protest caused millions of dollars in damage. Rioters burned boats and buildings on Saturday, but police say the town was peaceful overnight.

Federal Fisheries Minister Robert Thibault says he was “shocked and saddened” by the arson and vandalism, but says his department bears no blame for the unrest.

The protest began on Friday night when a mob burned about 100 crab traps on the town’s wharf, and escalated on Saturday afternoon when about 250 people roamed the streets for nine hours burning boats and buildings.

The men and women were protesting Ottawa’s decision to reduce their snow crab quota and increase the number of licenses allowed to fish the lucrative species.

Thibeault says his department consulted extensively with local fishermen about the plan, and suggested another meeting with DFO officials might soothe the fears of traditional crab workers.

The RCMP, who are asking people to stay home and out of trouble, say they did not anticipate the violence, and did not have enough officers to stop the destruction.

Well, there was a war on, after all. Oh, wait. . . .

BILL BENNETT: The whole Bill Bennett gambling story is of no interest to me, but it’s sure eating up a lot of pixels over at Andrew Sullivan’s and Josh Marshall’s.

I’ve always regarded Bennett as something of a windbag. Now he’s a windbag who gambles a lot, which makes him, in my opinion, an idiot. But, heck, it’s his money. It’s not like he’s putting puppies in blenders or anything. Is he a hypocrite? Maybe. But the people who are jumping on this revelation with unconcealed glee don’t come off very well, either.

INTERESTING STORY ON THE FALL OF BAGHDAD from The New York Review of Books:

While I was talking to the looters I met Staff Sergeant Nicholas Clark of the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, who was making his way through the crowd, with his pistol drawn. He was smiling at them. I thought perhaps he would stop them, but he did not, and asked me to follow him so that he could show me why. Next to the Finance Ministry’s building was another warehouse, which a couple of Marines were guarding. Inside were crates of ammunition and mortar shells, tear gas, piles of rifles and other guns. Some of the boxes were marked in Arabic, some in English, and some with Cyrillic lettering. Some boxes were labeled “Jordan Armed Forces.”

Sergeant Clark then showed me another building that he said was crammed with ammunition, and then he took me to yet another warehouse a few minutes away, which was full of crates containing rocket launchers, hand grenades, and more than a dozen antiaircraft guns. To put it simply, he said, quite apart from the Marines’ not wanting to get into the “police business,” the problem was that local Iraqis had been asking the Marines to protect the many ammunition stores across the city. Fighting was still going on anyway, he said, and the Marines did not have the additional manpower to stop looters. They had to stop these guns from falling into people’s hands; otherwise the situation would get even uglier than it was already.

Surrounded by piles of weapons in one of the warehouses, I asked Sergeant Clark, who had grown up in Lansing, Michigan, and fought in the first Gulf War in 1991, if this war had been easier than he had expected. “Much,” he said. “He”—meaning Saddam Hussein—”promised us street fighting, but where we have encountered it, it has only lasted for twenty minutes or half an hour. I don’t think they are doing a very good job. For me, street fighting means holding this building, for example, until there is no more ammunition left.” Before I left, Clark took me through the neighboring Army Sports Club. At the bottom of the empty swimming pool was a sandbagged position from which weapons could be fired. In a small side room were trampolines, javelins, and ten white-finned missiles with red tips, each two yards long. Sergeant Clark told me he thought they were air-to-air missiles, but he said that it looked as though someone had been tampering with them, trying to adapt them for something else. He was waiting for the men from intelligence to come and inspect them. He laughed and said, “I don’t know if the UN reached this site.” . . .

Now some of Ahmed’s friends were surrounding us and giving their opinions on what was going on, about the future, and about what they thought of various exiled politicians, including Baqir al-Hakim, who is in Tehran, and Ahmed Chalabi, who has US backing, and was about to arrive with a number of his fellow exiles in Nasiriya. There were, unsurprisingly, many conflicting opinions. Hakim was a good man, some thought; Chalabi was, or was not, a crook, others thought; the Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani was a traitor for making a deal with the Americans, and so on. Ahmed said he hoped the Americans would set up a transitional government without these men, and with technocrats instead. “For example the minister of health should have experience in his field.” It struck me that it was a stunning event that this discussion, which already seemed quite normal, was now taking place in Baghdad. “When was the last time we could have talked openly like this?” I asked Ahmed. He took a while to reply. “When I was student in 1967,” he said.

I then asked Ahmed, “Do you feel as if your country has been occupied?” His reply was, “Definitely.” I said, “But you just told me you could not have talked openly like this since 1967, so don’t you feel that this is also a liberation?” He replied, “Well, yes.” “So perhaps there is an odd contradiction. Occupation and liberation both at the same time?” He and his friends argued about this. “Yes,” he said, “that is true.” “What next?” I asked, and he pointed across the street to where a house had been leveled, not by bombs but because someone had cleared away an old house. “That is where we are now. We need a shovel to build something new.”

Indeed. Read the whole thing.