AIRLINE SECURITY GOINGS-ON: Jeff Jarvis has an interesting roundup of developments regarding cancelled flights, etc.

UPDATE: More here and here.

GAY PALESTINIANS finding a refuge in Israel? No surprise here, I guess, but it’s an interesting story.

INTERESTING OBSERVATIONS from StrategyPage:

While soldiers were guarding the site, two cars full of men dressed as journalists (wearing jackets with “PRESS” printed on them) drove up and fired on the troops. One car was later found and the occupants arrested. But Reuters says some of its Iraqi employees were arrested in error. Iraqi journalists have a long tradition of working for the highest bidder and doing what they are told. Worked for Saddam, and before him as well. The Baath party may well be paying Iraqi journalists working for Western media in order to perform additional services. This sort of thing is no longer a secret because the American informer network is now revealing all sorts of interesting stuff.

I wonder why Western journalists aren’t loudly protesting these tactics on the part of the Baathists? If American troops, or CIA agents, were using “journalistic cover” they’d be screaming to high heaven.

REP. RALPH HALL (D-TX) has switched to the Republicans. Is this evidence of how the wind is blowing, too?

UPDATE: Reader James Somers emails:

You should have seen CNN Headline News last night when they reported this story. As the reporter was talking about Hall’s switch to the GOP, the CNN headline at the bottom of the tv screen read “A Traitor to His Party.” I’m not joking. Gee, do you think CNN ran that same headline when they were reporting on the decision of Jim Jeffords, Man of noble Yankee rectitude, to leave the GOP back in 2001? Somehow, I doubt it.

I missed that, but I can’t say it comes as a complete shock. Meanwhile, reader Bill Burton notes that Hall’s defection is opportunistic. I think that’s right — though he does say that he’s turned off by all the Democratic presidential candidates — but that’s not my point. Just as with the Iraqi sheiks mentioned below, this is not just third-party analysis, but someone with a strong personal stake in getting things right who’s decided which way the wind is blowing. He could be wrong, of course (Jeffords was!) But for people who wonder about whether there’s a realignment going on, it’s a useful data point.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Bryan Preston thinks that this switch is a big deal. And a couple of readers think that the “traitor to his party” line was a quote, though they don’t say from whom, and when I searched ralph+hall+traitor on Google news I couldn’t find anyone saying that. At any rate, putting that sort of thing in a crawl, even if it’s a quote, seems a bit biased. Reader T.C. Stentz emails:

I have noticed that CNN, MSNBC, etc., have been using their news tickers as another subtle platform for their biases. This has probably been going on for a long time, but something I have only recently paid attention to. A couple of weeks ago, MSNBC ran one that said something to the effect of “Bring Them Home – Poll shows 40% of Americans want troops out of Iraq.” In an alternate universe, the ticker would have read, “Stay The Course – Poll says 60% of Americans want troops in Iraq.”

Or something like that.

STEWART BAKER:

There’s a quiet scandal at the heart of Sept. 11; one that for different reasons neither the government nor the privacy lobby really wants to talk about. It’s this: For two and a half weeks before the attacks, the U.S. government knew the names of two hijackers. It knew they were al-Qaida killers and that they were already in the United States. In fact, the two were living openly under their own names, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. They used those names for financial transactions, flight school, to earn frequent flier miles, and to procure a California identity card.

Despite this paper trail, and despite having two and a half weeks to follow the scent, the FBI couldn’t locate either man—at least not until Sept. 11, when they flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: A number of readers think that there’s more to the story than Stewart Baker’s Slate piece tells, and this email from William Aronstein is representative:

Don’t you think it is remarkable that the bankrupt, collapsing Soviet Union could buy both the CIA’s head of anti-Soviet counter-intelligence AND the FBI’s head of anti-Soviet counter-intelligence for less than a million dollars, and we never hear of ANYBODY that the Saudis have even approached — with all their billions? What chance is there that Prince Bandar’s boys have not at least tried to buy control of the FBI and CIA Middle East desks — just as they already own State? Wouldn’t they be derelict in their duties if they didn’t at least try? So we can assume it’s been tried. But with what success?

The record is highly suggestive that pro-Saudi agents in and around Washington are very active and very successful.

This is entirely speculative, of course — though the FBI field agents on the Moussaoui case did wonder of Osama had a mole in FBI headquarters — but it’s certainly a subject that would seem well-suited for investigative journalism. And maybe for more Congressional investigations, as well.

HAD AN INTERESTING CONVERSATION with Henry Copeland about which way the blogosphere, and the Internet, are going. More on that later.

THIS SEEMS LIKE GOOD NEWS:

MOSUL, Iraq – A dozen former leaders of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party have handed in weapons caches in northern Iraq to curry favor with the U.S. military and claim a role in a new Iraqi leadership, the commander of the Army’s 101st Airborne Division said.

“They’re coming to us, saying they want to be part of the new Iraq,” Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus said Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press. “It has slowly sunk in that Saddam isn’t coming back.” . . .

On Monday, some of the men — whose names have not yet been made public — will publicly renounce their participation in the Baath Party at a regional headquarters of the 101st Airborne’s 1st Battalion in Talafar, south of Mosul.

Petraeus said he doubted the former leaders had taken a direct role in aiding the five to 10 anti-U.S. guerrilla cells operating in the region, and he characterized their decision to cooperate with the U.S. military as an opportunistic move to regain stature.

Sounds like more evidence of which way the wind is blowing.

ALIENS CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING: Another speech by Michael Crichton.

ANOTHER LOOTING SCANDAL:

Four French soldiers are accused of robbing a bank in Ivory Coast they were supposed to be guarding, sources say. The men have been placed under judicial investigation, one step short of formal charges, say judicial and military officials in Paris.

They are accused of taking 58,000 euros from the bank in the northern rebel-held town of Bouake.

I blame Paul Wolfowitz, and the unmitigated greed that marks American culture.

ROGER SIMON HAS more thoughts on what’s going on with the UN’s “oil for food” money.

MIKE KINSLEY seems to agree with what I’ve said before about journalistic confidentiality and the Plame affair:

A very distinguished New York Times writer once told me that if the Times ballet critic, heading home after assessing the day’s offerings of pliés and glissades, happens to witness a murder on her way to the Times Square subway, she has a First Amendment right and obligation to refuse to testify about what she saw.

So put it all together and you get: (1) the anonymity of Novak’s sources must be protected at all costs for the sake of the First Amendment, and (2) The White House leakers must be exposed and punished at all costs for the sake of national security. Unfortunately for the striking of heroic poses, these two groups are the same people. Either we think they should be named, or we think they should not be named. Which is it?

Of course, for a lot of people the answer is, “whichever will hurt Bush.”

But Novak’s not legally entitled to keep quiet if subpoenaed. And I don’t think he’s ethically entitled to, either.

UPDATE: Hmm. It also may be that the Plame leak wasn’t illegal. As I suggested yesterday, that may explain why we have a special prosecutor, since if Ashcroft concluded that many would accuse him of whitewashing.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here from Megan McArdle.

CELEBRITY POKER? I’ll pass.

POST-CHRISTMAS FOLLOWUP: The Digital Blue kids’ video camera that I mentioned earlier is a big hit. The Insta-Daughter has been making and editing videos with great pleasure, and it’s very user-friendly. Comes with a fair amount of stock footage and audio, too.

The quality is about like Super-8 — not great, but not terrible. I haven’t looked yet to see if there’s a way to export the files to a Video CD or DVD, but I imagine I can figure out a way. Right now she’s so busy playing with it that I haven’t had the chance. Definitely a hit.

She didn’t get this toy (and, apparently, neither did anyone else), but the big loser of the season seems to be Liam, of the Flavas line of dolls. Liam’s supposed to be a hip metrosexual, and carries what’s either a purse or — to be charitable, since there’s no associated DJ stuff — a record case. The Insta-Daughter and her friends all pronounced him a “girly-boy” and when we visited the toy store yesterday, the largely bare shelves still boasted a full complement of Liams. Here’s more evidence that Liam isn’t flying: “While Liam fancies himself the Flava equivalent of Eminem, his wussy man-purse and questionably ‘hip’ fashion choices reveal him to be more Vanilla Ice than Slim Shady.” Ouch.

MICKEY KAUS says that Howard Dean is “cluelessly pre-Clinton” on race.

Ouch. You know, the conventional wisdom is that the Democrats do better with a Southerner, and the unspoken assumption is that it’s because a Southerner will appeal more to those confederate-flag-pickup guys that Dean mentioned.

But I wonder if it’s really because Southerners are less likely to say damnfool things about race and defense, the Democratic Party’s two big weak points?

UPDATE: Robert Tagorda has more thoughts.

CARBLOGGING from the Detroit Auto Show.

Meanwhile the Stryker Brigade has a blog — and it’s not to be confused with SgtStryker.com.

DON’T LISTEN TO THEM, THEY’RE JUST THE VOTERS:

The BBC recently gave its radio listeners a chance to express their will, but did not want to hear the result. The great unwashed mass, who cough-up the license fees which pay the Beeb’s freight, were asked to suggest a piece of legislation to improve life in Britain, with the promise that an MP would then attempt to get it onto the statute books.

Listeners to BBC 4’s Today program (the very same show which claimed that intelligence on Iraqi WMDs had been “sexed up”), reposnded with a suggestion that would allow homeowners to defend themselves against intruders, without facing legal liabilities. The winning proposal was denounced as a “ludicrous, brutal, unworkable blood-stained piece of legislation” – by Stephen Pound, the very MP whose job it is to try to push it through Parliament.

It’s out of touch, they are.

David Carr has more: “The result of the BBC poll gives lie to the whole facade. People are losing faith in the ability (and even willingness) of the state to come to their aid in time of crisis.”

MARK STEYN LOOKS AT THE STATE OF THE WORLD in this new year, and finds it surprisingly good — but he concludes with a warning.

I THOUGHT EDITORS WERE SUPPOSED TO PREVENT THIS SORT OF THING: Here’s a roundup of howlers from the Los Angeles Times.

100,000 MARCH FOR DEMOCRACY IN HONG KONG: As they should. (Via Sullivan/Drezner, where you can also see some interesting observations about the Bush Administration’s successful multilateralism).

HOBBS ONLINE is now a BillHobbs.com, with a spiffy new design.

BRIAN DOHERTY COMMENTS on the near-uselessness of the Terror Alert Levels. He does, however, make this generally positive observation:

Still, even the most imaginatively fearful can’t help but notice that if our nation is indeed crawling with al Queda sleeper agents with the desire and ability to pull off murderous assaults on our way of life, they are sleeping suspiciously soundly. It seems most likely that America really isn’t acrawl with such enemies, and if it is, they are singularly unimaginative and incompetent. Any random gang of Soldier of Fortune-reading teenagers could land serious blows to America’s infrastructure every day if they didn’t care if they lived or died.

I think he’s right about that, and I think it’s a good thing.

A RATHER QUIET NEW YEAR’S EVE HERE: We played “Crazy 8s” and I went out and brought back frozen yogurt. Then it was a special holiday edition of Spongebob Squarepants until everyone else went to sleep. I graded exams until about 11:30, then cracked a split of Asti (too sweet) and had a glass while I watched the CNN coverage and read an Honor Harrington novel. That’s life at Stately InstaPundit Manor. If the house is a rockin’, don’t bother knockin’! (Hey, it was wilder than Jeff Jarvis’s New Year’s. Well, maybe. Obviously, both of us needed more explosives to properly ring in the New Year.)

The CNN coverage was interesting, as the tone — at least of the part I saw — was quite unabashedly patriotic. They spent a good deal of time with a young man who was about to go off to Fort Benning, and many flags were in evidence. I noticed that the ceremonies seemed rather patriotic in tone, too, right down to the playing of “Proud to Be An American” just before midnight. You wouldn’t have seen that a few years ago. . . .