EUGENE VOLOKH has thoughts on John Kerry, terrorism, and prostitution:

But what remarkable analogies Kerry started with: prostitution and illegal gambling. The way law enforcement has dealt with prostitution and illegal gambling is by occasionally trying to shut down the most visible and obvious instances, tolerating what is likely millions of violations of the law per year, de jure legalizing many sorts of gambling, and de jure legalizing one sort of prostitution in Nevada, and de facto legalizing many sorts of prostitution almost everywhere; as best I can tell, “escort services” are very rarely prosecuted, to the point that they are listed in the Yellow Pages.

These are examples of practical surrender, or at least a cease-fire punctuated by occasional but largely half-hearted and ineffectual sorties.

Indeed.

TOM MAGUIRE has your Plame update taken care of.

MORE REPORTS FROM AFGHANISTAN, with photos. (And scroll down for more reports.)

I CALLED KERRY’S ABORTION ANSWER IN THE DEBATE “very good” — which got me flak from pro-life readers.

But they’re not the only ones who think I was wrong. William Saletan writes:

I know something about abortion politics, so I can tell you how effective Kerry’s answer was. It was awful. He defended public funding of abortion, which most Americans oppose, while at the same time he managed to convey ambivalence about the legal right to abortion, which most Americans support.

Hey, I call these things as I see ’em, not necessarily how you see ’em. But I don’t think that Kerry’s answer was bad at all, for the reasons I mentioned below. (But Hugh Hewitt agrees with Saletan, and disagrees with me.)

I also don’t agree with Saletan’s overall assessment: “Kerry blows the second debate.” I think that Bush won, but I don’t think that Kerry blew it. But, as I say, my opinions on this stuff are notoriously unreliable — or, at least, not necessarily shared by large numbers of other people.

NOW THAT THE X-PRIZE IS DONE WITH, it’s time for the X-Prize Cup! This gives the other contestants a chance to show their stuff and perhaps attract investors, or buyers for their technology.

Yeah, this stuff is pretty smart.

HERE’S MORE on the legislative struggles regarding space tourism.

INTERESTED IN NANOTECHNOLOGY? The Foresight Conference on Advanced Nanotechnology is just two weeks away.

Howard Lovy has highlights.

ROBERT TAGORDA HAS A ROUNDUP ON THE AFGHAN ELECTIONS, and notes a number of positive reports, including this one from the BBC reporters’ blog:

It was a celebration today. There was a tremendous buzz of excitement at the polling stations.

I genuinely got the feeling that this was the people’s opportunity and that’s why in Kandahar the problem with the ink is being laughed out of town.

Good. Even Reuters agrees:

Afghan Polls Fair Despite Ink Fiasco -Monitors

There’s also a positive report from ABC News:

The Taliban vowed to turn the Afghan election into a day of bloodshed, but the rebels mounted only a smattering of small-scale attacks on police and civilians and a larger clash that left many of their own dead.

After months of what proved to be empty threats, military commanders and ordinary Afghans said Sunday the vote was a serious setback for the holdouts of the hard-line Islamic regime that was driven from power by U.S. bombs almost three years ago for harboring Osama bin Laden.

“Yesterday was a big defeat for the Taliban and a huge defeat for al-Qaida,” Lt. Gen. David Barno, the top American commander in Afghanistan, told The Associated Press. “It shows that the political process is overwhelming any influence they may have.”

Voters also said the Taliban had been exposed as weak.

As I mentioned earlier, thing seem to have gone much better than the critics feared. This certainly sets a good precedent.

UPDATE: And here’s more from the BBC:

Observers approve Afghan election

International observers have endorsed Afghanistan’s first presidential election, rejecting opposition calls for a new poll amid reports of fraud. The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said demands by 15 of the 18 presidential candidates to annul the poll were “unjustified”.

The local Free and Fair Elections Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA) said the poll was “fairly democratic”.

Maybe the Afghans can send advisers to Palm Beach County!

Scroll down, or go here and here, for more, including photos from InstaPundit’s Afghanistan photo-correspondent.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Interesting to compare these reports with this claim. (Via Ichiblog).

MY DAD invited us to come out to the lake for dinner — he said he was having “a few people over” — and to spend the night. So I got there, and the first person I saw when I went out on the deck was perennial InstaPundit “fave” Cornel West, along with Jeffrey Stout and a host of other philosophers, political theorists, etc., one of whom was a delightful woman from Chicago who I believe is Daniel Drezner’s Dean. We had a very nice time, then hung out over brunch with my father this morning. Just got home; regular blogging will resume later.

UPDATE: Drezner informs me that she is a colleague of his, and she is a Dean at U. Chi., but not his Dean. He agrees, however, that she is delightful.

GIVEN LAST NIGHT’S TALK about Supreme Court appointments — and notwithstanding George W. Bush’s foolish omission on that subject — it’s worth noting this symposium on Supreme Court appointments from Legal Affairs. Mark Tushnet says it doesn’t matter. (“It’s one thing for a President to nominate his ideal candidate for the Supreme Court. It’s quite another to get that person confirmed.”)

I BOUGHT MY COPY of <a href=”John Fogerty’s new album, Deja Vu All Over Again, earlier today. But I haven’t listened to it yet. Eric Olsen has a review.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON weighs in on last night’s debate: “As the night wore on Bush seemed the more human, the more real, Kerry the Boston Brahmin—smug, sanctimonious, self-righteous, and ponderous. Where Bush seemed genuine and vulnerable, Kerry appeared peeved, fussy, and smart-alecky. Kerry ended almost every one of his shotgun blasts of facts and figures with ‘I have a plan’—though no plan was ever detailed or discussed.”

Judging by these poll results, he wasn’t the only one to feel that way. Heh.

JOURNALISM: Heal thyself.

MICHAEL BARONE joins with David Brooks in writing that media headlines are underplaying the Duelfer report:

But these headlines conceal the real news in the report of Iraq Survey Group head Charles Duelfer. For the report makes it plain that George W. Bush had good reason to go to war in Iraq and end the regime of Saddam Hussein. . . .

Duelfer also reported that Saddam asked subordinates how long it would take to develop chemical weapons once sanctions ended. One Iraqi chemical weapons expert said it would require only a few days to develop mustard gas. Former Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz said that Iraq could have had a WMD capacity within two years after the end of sanctions.

If the weapons inspectors had been given more time to conduct inspections, as John Kerry has on occasion advocated, we now know they would not have found any WMDs. Nor does it seem possible that they would have uncovered Saddam’s attempts to maintain WMD capability. There would have been heavy pressure then from France, Russia, and China—whose companies were given kickbacks and windfall profits from the Saddam-administered U.N. Oil for Food program, Duelfer reports—to disband U.S. military forces in the Middle East and to end sanctions. And once sanctions were gone, there would have been nothing to stop Saddam from developing WMDs.

In other words, we were facing a brutal dictator with the capability to develop WMDs and the proven willingness to use them. A dictator whose regime had had, as the 9/11 Commission has documented, frequent contacts with al Qaeda. We have no conclusive evidence that he collaborated with al Qaeda on 9/11—but also no conclusive evidence that he did not. Under those circumstances, George W. Bush acted prudently in deciding to remove this regime. He would have been imprudent not to have done so.

Indeed.

AFTER WHAT THE AGE CALLS JOHN HOWARD’S “THUMPING VICTORY” in an Australian election that was run in no small part as a referendum on the war, it’s interesting to see how little play it’s getting in U.S. media.

If Howard had lost, however, I suspect it would be getting a lot of attention, and advanced as evidence that the war was going badly, Bush can’t keep allies, etc., etc.

UPDATE: Australian blogger Tim Lambert says the Australian election didn’t have anything to do with the war. “No, the election was not about Iraq–it was hardly an issue.”

Hmm. But another Australian blogger wrote last week: “The hysteria that the Australian press has been whipped into, most significantly over Iraq, has radically altered the shape of the coming election.”

And Tim Blair (hey, he’s Australian, too, and even a journalist!) observes: “That’s why many voted for him … although the New York Times, having earlier decided that War Plays a Role in Elections in Australia, now believes that Iraq remained in the background during the campaign.”

I think it’s Lambert who — along with the NYT — is doing the spinning here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tim Blair writes that Lambert is wrong.

I’M SHOCKED, SHOCKED TO HEAR THIS: Roger Simon says the New York Times is spinning oil-for-food in order to help Kerry and hurt Bush.

Elsewhere in the Times, though, David Brooks has it right. Spin in the news articles, facts in the opeds — it’s bizarro-world over there. . . .

MORE AFGHANISTAN PHOTOS from Major John Tammes. His description of the photo on the right:

Here is a voter receiving instructions before going to the booth to select
his choice.

And his description of the photo below:

This fellow is keeping the ballot box at a school in Dasht-e Robat (we had a Los Angeles Times reporter and photog accompany us!)

Tammes also forwards this Word version of the Afghan electoral law, and this Powerpoint presentation on the process.

There have been a few complaints:

[O]pposition candidates claimed the polls were unfair because the ink used to mark people’s thumbs so they vote only once rubbed off too easily.

I’d be shocked if there weren’t some fraud, of course — but given that the United States still doesn’t require photo identification, or mark people who have voted with indelible UV ink, etc., I don’t suppose we’re in a position to point fingers unless it’s fairly significant. At any rate, given that critics were predicting that the elections would be derailed by chaos and mass violence (even worse than this!), complaints about insufficiently-indelible ink seem like a pretty good sign to me. I expect media stories to play up the fraud complaints and to downplay what a colossal achievement — and rebuke to those critics — this was. Read this for more background.

And from the look of these photos, the Afghans are already ahead of us in ballot technology!

UPDATE: Related thoughts here. (“Who can simply accept the results anymore? These days, there must be an elaborate, contentious post-election phase to magnify the losers’ discontent. The only hope to avoid that is a wide margin of victory. That hope seems better in Afghanistan than in the U.S.”) We’ve successfully exported American-style democracy already!

VARIFRANK has a beautiful new blog, beautifully designed by the beautiful Stacy Tabb. And that’s a beautiful thing.

RASMUSSEN: “The latest Rasmussen Reports Presidential Tracking Poll shows President George W. Bush with 50% of the vote and Senator John Kerry with 46%. Today is the first time all year that either candidate has hit the 50% mark in our survey.”

JOHN HOWARD is claiming victory in Australia. (This response is pretty funny.)

UPDATE: Tim Blair: “Never again will I doubt the wisdom of Australians.”

Margo Kingston: “It was a landslide . . . I’m taking a month off.”

The Belmont Club has thoughts. He also takes note of Bremer’s recent comments on troop levels in Iraq.

INSTAPUNDIT’S AFGHANISTAN PHOTO CORRESPONDENT, Major John Tammes, sends this picture from the Afghan elections and reports, “These men are waiting to vote in Dasht-e Robat (Parwan Province). They were very good natured about waiting and they seemed to be proud of what they were doing.”

THE MSNBC STORY by Monica Novotny on bloggers and the debates, featuring yours truly, Scott Johnson of Powerline, and Kos, is now up over at GlennReynolds.com. Mickey Kaus makes a cameo.

SUM UP: Overall, a pretty good performance by both guys, neither of whom is a stellar orator. As I’ve said before, my judgment on these things isn’t to be trusted — I thought Carter beat Reagan — but it looks to me like a pretty solid Bush win here for two reasons. First, the expectations were low, and he was drastically better than the previous debate, especially in the closing statement. Talk about beating the point spread. Second, he stayed focused and on-message, and looked firm instead of exasperated. As some talking head said, Bush came to play tonight. He wins the comeback prize, and the momentum shifts.

That’s my take, but as I’ve said my judgment is suspect. We’ll see what others think.

On the debate as a whole, well, it was pretty good and pretty substantive. A high point in the campaign, I’d say.

Hugh Hewitt: “No way to call this other than a big Bush win.” Of course, he said that last week.

N.Z. Bear: “Bush connected with the audience with humor (self-deprecating and otherwise), while Kerry utterly failed to do the same. It was Bush’s room: Kerry was just visiting. Combining that with solid answers which hammered Kerry on his weakest points made tonight a clear win for Bush on points, if not an utter knockout.”

Bush is getting good reviews from the Hardball crowd.

Polipundit, which unlike Hugh Hewitt called the last debate a major defeat for Bush, thinks this was a big win.

Tom Maguire says Kerry abandoned Israel.

Power Line: “I had underestimated Kerry. I’ve always thought of him as a rather dull-witted stiff. But that’s wrong. . . Two, Bush was much better tonight, more animated and energetic. He had several good spontaneous moments, one or two of which were funny. Did he ‘win’? Beats me. But he did fine; he certainly didn’t lose any ground tonight.”

A reader emails:

I think Bush did so much better this time around because of the audience.
The first debate had the audience mostly invisible, and I don’t think Bush
is comfortable if he doesn’t have people he can see and try to connect to.

Interesting point.

Spoons:

My initial impression was that both candidates did a pretty good job. Bush was dramatically improved over his performance from the first debate.

I think Bush was the clear winner, although Kerry did okay. . . .

I thought Charlie Gibson, and the audience, both did great jobs.

In contrast to a few of my questioners, I thought the overwhelming majority of the questions were fair. Most of the Bush questions were tough on Bush; most of the Kerry questions were tough on Kerry.

I think Gibson did a good job, too.

TalkLeft: “John Kerry won, hands down. He had concrete answers. He was Presidential. He showed his knowledge and exposed Bush’s mistakes.”

Robert Prather: “Bush won. It was an unambiguous win. I wish he hadn’t waited until tonight to sound this articulate.”

Hillary Clinton on CNN: “Senator Kerry hit it out of the park tonight.” Says Bill thought so, too.

Roger Abramson from The Nashville Scene: “Bush wins, but only because he made up for last time.”

Ann Althouse: “I think both men performed well in terms of style and getting their statements across. There is little basis for going on about who performed better tonight. People will have to pick between the two based on substance this time. . . . Ah, wait. One key style point. After it’s all over, Bush plunges into the audience and interacts warmly and enthusiastically with the people, while Kerry goes over and hangs around with the moderator and then hugs his wife. Bush is posing for pictures with people. Where’s Kerry now?”

Election Projection: “President Bush hit at least a triple tonight. He clobbered Senator Kerry on substance and even bested him on style. I thought the questions tonight were solid, fair, and impartial – way to go Charles Gibson!”

Kathryn Lopez: “Bush and Yankees win.”

Jeff Jarvis — who was liveblogging — “Draw. Which is to say nobody wins, including us. More lively. Both were more in command. Come to think of it, if it’s a draw, then it’s a Bush victory, since this time, he was coming up from behind.”

Alarming News: “We had two French reporters covering our party from Radio France, for a show called Interception. I talked to them for a little while, they’re against the war in Iraq, pro-Kerry and they thought that Bush obviously won.” French reporters are never wrong!

Andrew Sullivan: “A draw.”

Ann Coulter on CNN: Bush beat a Democrat on Democratic issues. Paul Begala: Close, but Kerry won.

Pundit Guy, meanwhile, thinks both candidates lost. “I think tonight, we saw the death of the town hall meeting format.”

Joe Trippi on Hardball: The online polls aren’t scientific, but the fact that Kerry’s winning them proves he’s ahead. (Huh?) He thinks the town hall format was a big success. I’m inclined to agree with him about that latter point — though I don’t know how town-hallish this really was. But I think it was a good debate.

Joshua Zader: “There was a clear winner in tonight’s debate — and it was Ronald Reagan.” Heh. Yeah, he did get bipartisan props. . . .

Reader Shivan V. Mahendrarajah emails: “I live in NYC: limousine liberals hated Guiliani publicly, but voted for his reelection because they trusted him to keep them safe. I think the same phenomenon exists with GWB, and he reminded voters why they should vote for him. . . . Finally, some talking hairpiece on CNN called it a draw, so it must be a Bush win!”

Josh Marshall: “I thought it was basically a draw.”

Note that ABC apparently nailed Kerry on the Shinseki story.

And so, after fighting a migraine for two days, to bed.

UPDATE: Soxblog observes:

Kerry was himself last night, which is to say he was a condescending jerk. Mickey Kaus points out the following: How could he tell looking around the room that none of the people there made more than $200k a year? Did he stroll around the parking lot and see nothing but Corvairs and Pintos? Did he do a quick scan and see no hair coifed by Christophe? Did he sneak a peak at the questioners’ cuticles and note the pitifully unmanicured state of their sorry digits?

He also says I “blew it” with my analysis of Kerry’s abortion remark, below.

And echoing what was reported above last night, the Euro-press is calling it a Bush victory.

Transcript and web video are available here. Don’t you love that?

Meanwhile, the spin wars are going on. And hey, they worked last week:

Newsweek’s Evan Thomas and NBC’s David Gregory conceded on Imus in the Morning this week that they thought George W. Bush won the debate last week, but changed their mind in the face of the media line. “I was quickly informed I was wrong and that Kerry had won,” Thomas quipped Monday morning. Thomas said that while “Kerry did well,” he “didn’t think that Bush was as terrible as everybody else did.” Gregory stated that he “initially” saw Bush as the winner, but then “there was kind of a debate in the press corps, those of us who were watching in the main filing center where we were watching the pool feeds, as opposed to watching some of the other networks that had the reaction shots and the split screens.”

As I noted on Kudlow & Cramer yesterday, even Joe Lockhart called it a draw after the debate, but by Monday it had morphed into a crushing defeat for Bush. It’s as if the press wants Kerry to win!

WHAT THREE MISTAKES HAVE YOU MADE: Bush dodges this. I’ve made a lot of mistakes he says, but on the big questions — Afghanistan, Iraq, I’m right. When they ask about mistakes, they’re asking — did you make a wrong decision going into Iraq? No.

Kerry: The mistake was Iraq, and rushing to war. (Over a year? That was a rush?) [LATER: Read this]. Quotes more Republicans.

Bush: He complains about troop equipment, yet he voted against the $87 billion, then said I voted for it before I voted against it.

Saddam Hussein was a risk to our country, and he’d still be in power if Kerry had his way. Kerry recycles his line from the previous debate, starts talking about Halliburton and tax cuts, sure sign of pressure.

ABORTION QUESTION: I think Kerry’s answer here is very good — I won’t legislate what’s a matter of faith for me. As a President I have to represent all the people. You can take that position and not be pro-abortion.

I think this is Kerry’s best answer so far.

Bush: A shorter and simpler answer: We’re not going to spend taxpayer money on abortion. Moves to partial-birth abortion ban, and parental notification, “unborn victims of violence act.” “Every child protected by law and welcomed in life.” This sounds focus-group-tested.

Kerry: It’s not that simple.

I think this is a place where nuance will play well, actually, and I think he handles it well.

Bush: It’s pretty simple. You vote yes or no on banning partial-birth abortion, you voted no. You can run but you can’t hide.

UPDATE: Reader Kevin Menand says that as a pro-choice “secularist” I just “don’t get it” on the abortion issue, or I wouldn’t like Kerry’s answer so much.

Could be, but I call ’em as I see ’em. Your results, as always, may differ.