I’M ON TRAVEL FOR THE NEXT FEW DAYS and unlikely to be blogging unless something really big (e.g., alien invasion, atomic bombings, etc.) happens. Be sure to visit the many fine bloggers listed to the left in my absence. I’m taking with me an advance copy of Michael Barone’s forthcoming-in-May book, Hard America, Soft America, which looks to be very interesting.

This also means I won’t be checking email, so think long and hard before sending any while I’m gone — it probably won’t be read.

I’ll have a column up at TechCentralStation this morning. And Chris Muir’s Day by Day — which really deserves a big syndication deal — will have fresh cartoons. Enjoy, and see you soon!

WOOHOO! My brother’s book, Africa in World History, is reportedly selling like hotcakes on the textbook market.

MORE ON EVENTS IN SYRIA AND IRAN, from Eye on the World. (Via Oxblog, which as usual has lots of interesting stuff).

UPDATE: Photos and reports here.

HERE’S A REPORT that the Socialists in Spain were ahead even before the 3/11 attacks. Hmm. I’d like to believe that.

THE ECONOMIST: “Anxiety is turning to paranoia about jobs. Take a deep breath: most Americans have rarely had it better.”

UPDATE: Read this, too.

MY EARLIER POST about lawnmowers made me think about how I’ve underestimated Amazon. I loved them as a bookseller, but when they branched out into cookware, electronics, and even things like clothing and lawn furniture, I was deeply skeptical. But it’s obvious that they’re pulling this off. I’m not sure I’d actually buy a lawnmower from Amazon — though I might — but obviously people do. I guess this is why I’m not a dot-com gazillionaire.

UPDATE: James Lileks:

Our Hero Insty has been singing the praises of Amazon’s non book/CD/DVD aspects, and I have to agree. My wife and I came upon a toaster whose aspect and features pleased us greatly, but yea it was somewhat pricy for a bread-burner. I looked it up on Amazon the other day: two-thirds the price. I bought it. This is like going to the bookstore to buy a hammer. But hey: if it’s a good hammer, and it’s cheap, why not?

I thought he was joking when he mentioned milk — but I looked and, well, there it is!

HERE’S MORE ON THE KASS COUNCIL and its personnel changes. There’s also more background here, here, here, here, and here.

The big news, however, is this piece in the New England Journal of Medicine by former Kass Council member Elizabeth Blackburn, entitled Bioethics and the Political Distortion of Biomedical Science. Nothing new here, but Blackburn casts the council in a rather unfavorable light. So far, I have to say, Kass’s response to his critics has been unimpressive. More on that here.

I could be wrong, but this seems like a serious liability for the Bush Administration. I suspect that the damage would be worse if the terrorism and election news of the last couple of weeks hadn’t kept it off center stage.

JEFFERSON MORLEY SURVEYS THE EUROPEAN PRESS for the Washington Post and discovers that some realism is beginning to appear:

“Only a dreamer would believe that Germany will not be attacked,” say the editors of Bild, Germany’s best-selling tabloid. “Islamic terrorists are waging a war against the West, not just against individual countries.”

Sociologist Emilio Lamo de Espinosa says Europeans have been dreaming. Writing in Le Monde (in French), Lamo says Europeans have thought they would be spared because they haven’t supported the Bush administration’s policies.

“When the Americans declared war on terrorism, many of us thought they exaggerated. Many thought terrorism was not likely to occur on our premises, [inhabited by] peaceful and civilized Europeans who speak no evil of anybody, who dialogue, who are the first [to] send assistance and offer cooperation. We are pacifists, they are warmongers. . . . . Don’t we defend the Palestinians? Are we not pro-Arab and anti-Israeli?”

“Can we dialogue with those who desire only our death and nothing but our death?” Lamo asks. “Dialogue about what? The manner in which we will be assassinated?”

Yes. Like Auric Goldfinger, they don’t want us to talk. They want us to die:

Hussein Massawi, former leader of Hezbollah, summed it up very pithily: “We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you.”

You have to give them this much: they’re not hiding the ball here. It’s nice to see that some people are starting to catch on. Morley wonders whether Al Qaeda will try to influence the American elections with an attack. I don’t think such an attack would have the same result as the Madrid blasts. Neither does Virginia Postrel, but she notes that many Europeans think that a pre-election attack would lead to a Bush defeat.

Europeans don’t understand America very well, I guess. Unfortunately, neither does Al Qaeda, by all appearances — though apparently it does understand Europeans.

UPDATE: This article by Fareed Zakaria is worth reading, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis has thoughts.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: The CJR campaign blog notes a misleading story about terror and the election. Guess who it makes look bad. . .?

MORE: Hook, line, and sinker. Plus: War, dishonor, or both?

And read this, too.

MORE STILL: Richard Brookhiser: “Death and destruction pose the question “Whither Europe?” so much more forcefully than gray arguments over the European Union constitution, or even lively arguments over Franco/Anglo/American jockeying in the Security Council.”

He also observes:

The United States cannot do everything. Even things we could do, we might not do for the sake of prudence. But too many lives are at stake. Our goal should be to transform one malignant regime—by pushing it over, if necessary—every two years.

Who’s next?

MILITARY BLOGGER BOB ZANGAS was killed in Iraq last week. Here’s his final entry, with photos. I won’t excerpt it. You can leave your condolences here, as many others have already.

Why don’t I say more? Because his blog entry, and the condolence messages, say more than I ever could, and it would be presumptuous of me to try.

UPDATE: Here’s a new military blogger in Iraq, and his reactions.

“FBI ADDS TO WIRETAP WISHLIST:” Like pretty much the whole “homeland security” operation, this has more to do with bureaucratic wishlists than actual security. The big tipoff is that the DEA is behind this.

ANTI-WAR FOR OIL: Kenneth Timmerman reports:

MANY Americans are convinced even today that the war in Iraq was all about oil. And they’re right – but oil was the key for French President Jacques Chirac, not for the United States.

In documents I obtained during an investigation of the French relationship to Saddam Hussein, the French interest in maintaining Saddam Hussein in power was spelled out in excruciating detail. The price tag: close to $100 billion. That was what French oil companies stood to profit in the first seven years of their exclusive oil arrangements – had Saddam remained in power.

Saddam’s defenders: A coalition of the bribed and the bitter? (Via Stephen Green).

MORE REPORTS OF UNREST FROM IRAN:

I am listening to KRSI (Radio Sedaye Iran) right now. There are many Iranians calling (from Tehran, and Gorgan, etc.).

All reports indicate that almost every neighborhood in Tehran is on fire. People are throwing home-made bombs, Molotov cocktails, etc. into the homes of mullahs, and burning pictures of Khamenei in complete defiance of his recent edict to mourn during the month of Muharram.

Let’s hope it’s true. May the mullahs’ fall be fast and hard.

UPDATE: On the other hand, things look pretty quiet through these Tehran webcams for whatever that’s worth. Tehran’s a big place. (And for all I know these are images of last week, though I doubt it).

I DON’T THINK THAT HORSERACE POLLS MEAN A LOT this time of year, but Mickey Kaus notes some spin that’s more interesting than the underlying numbers. Captain Ed has more comments.

I think that the crucial swing voters are nowhere near making up their minds, making polls unimportant — but how they’re played in the press certainly shows who has made up their minds. . . .

DANIEL DREZNER ROUNDS UP commentary on the Spanish elections. Read this useful observation, too.

VIA ROMENESKO WE LEARN: “Democrats want TV network execs to immediately warn stations not to use the Bush administration’s mock news videos featuring actors posing as journalists praising the benefits of the new Medicare law.”

I guess if actual journalists stuck to journalism, and didn’t “praise the benefits” of laws on a regular basis, these ads wouldn’t work. The real problem isn’t that people issue video news releases, it’s that it’s hard to tell the real news from a video news release. But when the networks have been using “actors posing as journalists” for years, it’s hard to get much traction with complaints like this one.

SOME GENERALLY POSITIVE NEWS about the Iraqi economy. One good thing about Saddam’s policy of inept kleptocracy is that it makes it easy to improve!

INTERESTING GOINGS-ON IN IRAN: I wish there were more information available, from more sources. Here’s what I can find, though it’s pretty low-profile:

A report from Radio Free Europe on Kurdish uprisings in Syria and Iran:

Recent Kurdish riots in Syria and demonstrations in Iran are raising concerns that Kurdish minorities could follow the lead of Iraqi Kurds in pursuing greater independence and recognition.

My only concern is that it won’t succeed. I hope we’re supporting them. Syria and Iran have been sending weapons, money and fighters into Iraq, so we ought to return the favor in spades. Then there’s this:

TEHRAN, Mar 15 (Reuters) Three days of unrest sparked by the revision of results in February’s parliamentary elections have left dozens of people injured in a town on Iran’s Caspian coast, local media reported today.

The Etemad daily newspaper said 68 people had been hurt, six seriously, during clashes with police.

Protests began in the town of Fereydounkenar on Friday after the hardline Guardian Council, an oversight body with sweeping powers, annulled the votes cast in three ballot boxes, handing victory to the incumbent conservative member of parliament.

Protesters set fire to cars and attacked buildings including the home of the town’s Friday Prayer leader, the ISNA students’ news agency said.

I suspect that these stories are sanitized. On the other hand, the Syrian and Iranian exile websites may be taking an overly hopeful view of how extensive the unrest is. It’s just really hard to know.

UPDATE: More here.

MORAL NIHILISM: Andrew Sullivan is Fisking a Guardian editorial on the Spanish elections, and observes:

In Europe, there are no bad guys, even those who deliberately murdered almost 200 innocents and threaten to murder countless more. Ask yourself: If the Guardian cannot call these people “bad guys,” then who qualifies? And if the leaders of democratic societies cannot qualify in this context as “good guys,” then who qualifies? What we have here is complete moral nihilism in the face of unspeakable violence.

It’s not complete moral nihilism, alas. It’s not as if they show the same unwillingness to pass judgment where American actions are concerned.

SPINSANITY NOTES MORE BOGUS CLAIMS about the White House’s position on whether Saddam posed an “imminent threat.”

Bush administration statements from before the Iraq war continue to be misconstrued by journalists and liberal critics attempting to make it appear that the White House portrayed Iraq as an “imminent” threat.

Yes.

UPDATE: Reader Joseph Hrutka emails:

Its amazing how far the Iraq debate has been shaped by a press that seems unwilling to give any positive spin to the whole project. If I recall correctly, the administration had 3 main reasons for going into Iraq. The WMD angle was put into play because Iraq was not cooperating with UN inspectors and refused to give full disclosure. As a result, America had no choice but to asssume that something was wrong. This has been spun into the idea that Bush based the war on actual knowledge of WMDs. Whose fault is this, the press for trying to spin negative or Bush for failing to push back?

Both. It’s also interesting that before the war people were complaining that Bush was attacking too soon, when even he admitted that an attack wasn’t imminent — but now the same people are complaining that “Bush fooled us into thinking it was imminent!”

I think that people — like, say, Kerry — who supported the war last year but want to criticize Bush on it now have to claim that they were fooled.

Of course, that translates into: “Support me — I’m gullible!” Which doesn’t sound like much of a slogan.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here, charging the Kerry Campaign Blog with doctoring quotes to misrepresent the Bush Administration’s positions.

IT’S TURNING INTO A LOVELY SPRING DAY, but I’m busy enough today that I’m not likely to see any more than can be seen out my office window, alas. So in lieu of fresh pics from today, here’s one from about this time last year. That’s looking at the patio in front of the Law School from the sidewalk. (Here, also from the archives, is another angle on the same location).

If it’s nice where you are, don’t follow my example — try to get out and enjoy it. Life’s short.

TIM ROBBINS AND LYNDON LAROUCHE: Terry Teachout notices a connection.

IS JOHN KERRY being too defensive?

OF COURSE, IT WAS AN HONOR JUST TO BE NOMINATED, but InstaPundit has won the 2004 “Bloggie” Award in the category of “Best Weblog About Politics.” Thanks!

DAVID BERNSTEIN on the Kerry “foreign leaders” flap: “Even if the Globe reporter’s correction is on the money, it’s no wonder Kerry never denied the foreign leaders quote–it’s exactly what he meant. ” Yes, that seems plain from context. As Michael Demmons points out, “Why would Kerry be talking about ‘Americans Abroad’ if he wasn’t in fact, talking about his ‘endorsements’ from Foreign Leaders?”

It’s impossible to read that passage any other way. But the backtracking on this illustrates how far the press is willing to go to save Kerry from himself. Scroll down or click here for more.

UPDATE: Heh.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here: “Kerry knows the original story was false, and can be shown to be false.”

RICH, BLOGGY GOODNESS: This week’s Carnival of the Vanities is up, full of posts from all sorts of bloggers you may not have visited before. Check them out — you may find someone you’d like to visit again!