TOM MAGUIRE WRITES that Kerry’s South Carolina gaffe is nothing new.

NETWORKING NATION-STATES: Jim Bennett has an interesting article in The National Interest.

THE DAY BY DAY CARTOON below makes fun of GOP E-Strategist Larry Purpuro, for dissing weblogs. Purpuro’s comments seem pretty out of touch to me, and about as strategically sound (though in a smaller setting) as Kerry’s dissing of the South.

Kevin Aylward, however, thinks that there’s method in Purpuro’s madness: He’s a media consultant, and blogs are competition.

UPDATE: Perhaps the GOP should hire Pejman Yousefzadeh, who actually has some useful thoughts on the subject of blogs and politics.

UP ALL NIGHT WITH A SICK KID. I’m staying home with her today, which means that blogging will continue if she doesn’t get sicker. It may, however, show the results of sleep-deprivation, so keep that in mind as you read. . . .

SPEECHCODES.ORG is a website that tracks freedom of speech — or the lack of it — at colleges and universities around America. If you or your offspring are applying to colleges, it’s a good resource to check before sending in an application — or an acceptance.

IN THE MAIL: Got the February issue of Wired today, which has a profile of yours truly. It’s nice to be called an “Internet rock star” by Wired, but I don’t think it’s really true — or, if it is true, it won’t be for long. In fact, although InstaPundit’s traffic continues to climb and although I have no intention of quitting, I think that InstaPundit will get steadily less important in the grand scheme of things as the blogosphere grows. My slice of the pie is getting steadily bigger, but the pie is getting bigger faster.

I’m okay on that — in fact, I think it’s a good thing. InstaPundit’s nice, and I enjoy it, but the blogosphere is more important than any blog, and I’m happy to see it growing, flourishing, and expanding.

JUST RECEIVED what looks to be a very cool book: Constitutional Law Stories, edited by Michael Dorf. Each chapter provides interesting factual background on a famous constitutional law case, along with some additional perspective. Volokh Conspiracy blogger David Bernstein writes the chapter on Lochner, which makes sense, as he’s written a rather well-received book on the subject of pre-New Deal labor law.

JACOB T. LEVY:

The “Dated Dean, Married Kerry” buttons don’t fully communicate the dynamic, not without some tweaking. After dating a fiery, passionate guy who now seems a little nuts, these voters are lovelessly marrying the nearest single guy who seems basically grown-up and stable– someone who is boringly familiar but at least a known quantity. Maybe that will be enough to carry Kerry to the nomination. But ultimately I think it’s the path to Bob Dole’s electoral fate.

Does Kerry talk about himself in the third person?

UPDATE: Powerline offers more problems for Kerry.

ANOTHER UPDATE: So which one of these guys is Kerry? Though in a way, they’re all “boringly familiar.”

MIRANDA is still good law. That’s not so surprising — but that the decision is 9-0, and in a drug case, is heartening.

KEVIN SITES has interesting reports, and photos, from Iraq. And Rich Galen has another good post up, too.

JUSTIN KATZ SAYS THAT EVERYONE’S MISSING THE STORY where David Kay is concerned, and notes this Kay statement that hasn’t gotten much attention:

I must say, I actually think what we learned during the inspections made Iraq a more dangerous place potentially than in fact we thought it was even before the war.

Read the whole thing. And read this Roger Simon post, too.

UPDATE: Read this, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Paul Miller:

Now, it looks increasingly likely that Tenet’s agency failed America again with a poor strategy of intelligence gathering and analysis toward Iraq. Tenet had a year-and-a-half to restructure his agency to avoid the failures that led to 9/11, and while the Iraq situation is different – the WMD issue was always just one piece of the argument, and a “better safe than sorry” stance required action even with what has been found by Kay’s team – the failures in intelligence it exposes are precisely the same: Lack of human infiltration into the enemy’s leadership and planning; and a failure by analysts to gather all the pieces and connect the dots.

A prediction: Much of the illegal oil money Saddam thought he was spending on weapons production is sitting in Swiss, Syrian, Jordanian, Saudi and other banks under the pseudonyms of various generals, scientists and Baath Party members. Some of them may well be tapping into those accounts now to fight the insurgency. Others are kicking back on the east shore of the Red Sea, confident they duped both Saddam and the U.S. CIA.

Meanwhile, Tenet remains director at CIA. Why?

Why, indeed?

I WONDER IF THEY’LL ASK HIM ABOUT THIS in South Carolina:

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., is discounting notions that any Democratic candidate would have to appeal to Southern voters in order to win the presidency, calling such thinking a “mistake” during a speech at Dartmouth College. . . .

“Everybody always makes the mistake of looking South,” Kerry said, in response to a question about winning the region. “Al Gore proved he could have been president of the United States without winning one Southern state, including his own.”

Um, no. Al Gore proved that he couldn’t win the United States without carrying one Southern state, including his own. (South Carolina political blogger Wyeth Ruthven, a Kerry supporter, thinks this is “damaging,” and suggests that people will continue to harp on it for quite a while.)

And for those who are already bored with New Hampshire, I have a collection of South Carolina political links over at GlennReynolds.com. I also note that you can’t blame candidates quite as much for gaffes like this, when you consider how they’re living.

UPDATE: Republican Ramesh Ponnuru says bring it on!

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT:

Deming, an associated professor of geology, says his troubles began in March 2000 when he published a letter to the editor criticizing a female colleague’s claim that all gun owners are potential murderers. He wrote that if her assertion is true, then one could argue that her “possession of an unregistered sexual organ made her a potential prostitute.”

The colleague filed sexual harassment charges against him that were eventually dropped.

Since then, he has written letters to local papers that were determined to be showing “contempt and resentment” toward the school. The letters were included in his personnel file in a situation he describes as “analogous to a professor stapling a student’s political letters to his or her examinations.”

More evidence of how bogus sexual harassment claims are used to silence unwelcome opinions — and of how thin the academic commitment to open debate often is, when those unwelcome opinions surface.

GIVING NEW MEANING TO THE TERM “COVERING THE NEWS:”

Just 48 hours before Lord Hutton delivers his verdict on the controversy surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly, the BBC has begun an advertising experiment that involves buying up all internet search terms relating to the inquiry.

Despite being one of the main players in the drama, anyone searching for “Hutton inquiry” or “Hutton report” on the UK’s most popular search engine Google is automatically directed to a paid-for link to BBC Online’s own news coverage of the inquiry.

No other news broadcaster or any newspaper has paid Google for this facility, leaving the corporation’s move even more conspicuous.

As one of the chief “interested parties” in the Hutton inquiry into the apparent suicide of Dr Kelly, the move will strike many as worthy of comment, not least because the BBC’s online news pages will not be the most obvious place to go for the most comprehensive coverage, which is bound to include painful criticism of the corporation.

Lame.

UPDATE: Several readers email to say that if the Beeb is doing this, it isn’t working. They seem to be right — when I googled “hutton inquiry” the first story that came up was the Guardian item quoted above! Hmm. Either The Guardian is wrong (no!), or the Beeb’s actions haven’t taken effect yet, or the Beeb pulled back when the story broke. We’ll see. Reader Grahame Young emails:

BTW: I don’t see any of the typical Google sponsored links (either at the top or on the right side). Did BBC/Google change something after this story? Can you buy “rank” from Google in the normal search results? Is it only serving “sponsored links” to UK residents (e.g. Google knows I’m Canadian when I search for “low air fares”)?

Any feedback from the UK?

Seems to be the same for UK searchers, based on a couple of emails, anyway.

BRYAN PRESTON looks at what David Kay is saying — and how it’s being treated by the media, and by John Kerry.

BOB NOVAK thinks that “Edwards may pull a rabbit out of N.H.” I noticed something along those lines the other day, though I’m not sure the polls really support it. Then again, the polls could be wrong.

MATTHEW HOY HAS A QUESTION FOR KERRY:

Sen. John Kerry again repeated his mantra that the United States went to war in Iraq with an “illegitimate coalition.” Kerry has also used the term “fraudulent” to describe the 34 nations that have sent troops to Iraq, including Great Britain, Australia and Poland.

Someone, anyone, please get Kerry on the record of what impact his description of Great Britain, Australia, Poland, et. al., will have on the relationship between the U.S. and these countries should he become president. . . .

Kerry should be forced to be specific about his comments. Kerry wanted France, at the least, Germany and Russia to be part of the coalition. Say that. Of course, it diminishes the impact of the charge (34 nations vs. three), and might cause it to disappear from the stump speech.

Good.

But why isn’t anyone in the media asking this question?

Beats me. Do they think that the absence of France makes a coalition “fraudulent?”

FREE SATELLITE TV: “A hit in a freed Iraq.” Hey, it would be a hit here, too.

ALPHECCA’S weekly survey of media bias concerning guns is up.

So is this week’s Carnival of the Capitalists, a collection of business- and economics-related blog posts. Enjoy! [We’ve got guns and money — all we need is lawyers! — Ed. What am I, a potted plant? But okay, don’t miss Howard Bashman’s roundup of legal news from Sunday’s papers.]

MORE FROM DAVID KAY:

The former leader of the U.S. hunt for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction said Sunday that intelligence agencies owe the president and the public an explanation for the failure to find large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons after the U.S.-led war.

It was obvious after 9/11 that a lot of heads needed to roll, at the CIA and elsewhere. They didn’t. They still need to. On the other hand, it seems clear that pretty much every intelligence agency in the world thought that Saddam had stockpiles of WMD. But aren’t our guys supposed to be better?

JAMES KIRCHICK offers pictures and reporting from New Hampshire. And yes, Chris Matthews was having a bad hair day. . . .

CATHY SEIPP’S monthly Maureen Dowd dissection is up. “I actually found ‘The Argyle General’ her least objectionable column in months. Wesley Clark’s plaids, Jimmy Carter’s cardigans, Michael Dukakis’s brown suede jacket…if Dowd wants to take us on a tour of candidates’ closets past and present, fine. At least she’s not being silly about Iraq.” Ouch.

JOHN KERRY IN 1971, courtesy of Doonesbury.

JOHN HAWKINS has an interview with David Frum posted. Excerpt:

The last thing America is, is an empire. My counter example is; we very badly needed and expected to have Turkish support in the war on Iraq. The Turks didn’t give it and that put a spanner in some of our planning. Now, imagine if this were the Romans. Imagine if the emperor Trajan were planning an operation in Mesopotamia and the Cappadocians told him he couldn’t use their territory. He would have lined the highways with crucified Cappadocians. That’s what empires do, they do not say, “Oh, we’ll respect what your parliament says and come from another direction”.

Indeed.