BOOK THEFT: So Ken Lasson’s new book, Trembling in the Ivory Tower, showed up today, but the InstaWife got to it first. Good thing she’s a fast reader, because I won’t get it until she’s done.

CAN YOU SAY HASHEMITE RESTORATION? I knew that you could.

Once again, though, this story is about the possibility (slim in my mind) of a Juan-Carlos-like transitional role in Iraq. The real Hashemite Restoration may be in formerly-Saudi Arabia, if the Saud family doesn’t clean up its act. I think they’ve figured this out, actually. . . .

OVER AT GLENNREYNOLDS.COM, I’m talent-scouting for the New York Times. With a little help from the OxBlog crowd.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT:

A Weld County man is suing Greeley police for seizing the computer on which he publishes an online newsletter called The Howling Pig, which takes satirical barbs at a vocal university professor.

Thomas Mink, of Ault, a 24-year-old English major at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, said police have warned that he likely will be charged with criminal libel because The Howling Pig makes fun of Junius “Jay” Peake, a Monfort Distinguished Professor at UNC and a specialist in financial markets.

The Howling Pig, online at www.geocities.com/thehowlingpig/, says its editor, founder and spiritual leader is “Junius Puke,” an apparent play on Peake’s name. The newsletter describes Puke as a former roadie for the band KISS who is taking time off “from his well-earned, corporate endowed sinecure at a small western university in order to assist in the publication of The Howling Pig.”

A disclaimer states that Puke is not Peake. It goes on to describe Peake as “an upstanding member of the community as well as an asset to the Monfort School of Business where he teaches about microstructure.”. . .

According to Mink’s lawsuit, Greeley police arrived at his home Dec. 12 with a search warrant because Peake complained to police after the third issue of The Howling Pig appeared.

This seems quite absurd to me. The ACLU, happily, is on the case. I think that the United States Department of Justice should look into this to see if civil rights laws have been violated.

UPDATE: First Amendment expert Eugene Volokh says that the statute in question is almost certainly unconstitutional, and observes:

[M]y sense is that these sorts of criminal libel prosecutions, seizures, and arrests almost invariably involve favoritism on the part of the government. Seriously, what do you think the average Joe’s chances would be of getting the police to seize a computer that was being used to say nasty things about him?

Indeed.

THE BELMONT CLUB comments on Thomas Friedman’s latest:

But absent from Friedman’s article (let us see what the four remaining parts bring) is a realization of how close-run President Bush’s effort is. He forgets that the natural conclusion from the premise of intractable Islamic hatred is that the West may be forced not so much to befriend its tormentors so much as destroy them utterly. Friedman’s own article is proof of how steadily, yet imperceptibly, the tides have risen in the course of the war itself. What would have been unprintable in any major American newspaper in November, 2001 — immediately after the attack on New York city — now seems so hopelessly weak that one cannot but wonder how close the crisis point is. And it is Islam, not the West, that is skirting the edge of the abyss.

This is why I see success in this war as so important.

ROBERT NOVAK IS UNDER FIRE for calling American Indians “election thieves.”

THIS SEEMS LIKE A BLOW TO THE “BUSH LIED” CROWD:

Former US president Bill Clinton said in October during a visit to Portugal that he was convinced Iraq had weapons of mass destruction up until the fall of Saddam Hussein, Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso said.

“When Clinton was here recently he told me he was absolutely convinced, given his years in the White House and the access to privileged information which he had, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction until the end of the Saddam regime,” he said in an interview with Portuguese cable news channel SIC Noticias.

This is consistent with the other Clinton statements on the subject, of course, going back to 1998. And this doesn’t answer the “where are they?” question. (Syria? Lebanon? Vaporware by Saddam’s scientists?) But this does blow the popular Bush-made-it-up theory, and it suggests that if there’s an intelligence failure here (certainly possible — the CIA famously blew the collapse of the Soviet Union, after all), it didn’t originate with the Bush Administration

CALL ME CRAZY, but this sounds a bit too much like the Al Gore / Naomi Wolf earth tones episode:

Gen. Wesley K. Clark has begun to show a softer side.

Gone are his navy blue suit, red tie and loafers, replaced by argyle sweaters, corduroys and duck boots. . . .

The efforts are intended to lessen a potential vulnerability for the general. Even as he is rising in national and New Hampshire polls, his advisers say women significantly trail men in support for the four-star general and former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO.

I don’t think this is good for Clark, and I wonder if the storyline didn’t originate with some staffer blabbing to a reporter.

MICKEY KAUS has a long and thoughtful assessment of Howard Dean’s campaign. It’s a must-read.

UPDATE: Austin Bay offers an assessment of his own.

MICHAEL TOTTEN WRITES on what’s at stake.

I DIDN’T SEE IT, but The Yeti says NBC did a hatchet job on Howard Dean.

UPDATE: Then again, maybe it’s Howard Dean who’s wielding the hatchet:

They’ve got him trashing the Iowa caucuses, praising Bush, putting down Gore, etc… It’s like every other candidate wrote the script…

Ouch.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Howard Kurtz has more on Dean, who seems to be getting Strange New Respect from some quarters.

But not from the Club for Growth. Message to Stephen Moore: Don’t you be running down my sushi and lattes. And my sister drives a Volvo!

STEVEN DEN BESTE offers something else to worry about. At least he has pretty pictures.

REPORTEDLY, BUSH WILL PROPOSE MISSIONS TO THE MOON AND MARS: But Rand Simberg isn’t impressed.

THE ONLINE JOURNALISM REVIEW has an article about imprisoned Iranian blogger Sina Motallebi who credits weblog-generated pressure for his release from jail:

“The community of bloggers came together and helped me, and spread the news around the Web, and became united,” he told me by phone from Holland, where he lives with his wife — who is also a journalist — and 15-month-old son. “There was a petition with more than 4,000 signatures on one site. And there was coverage of the story in the foreign media. And there was pressure from other countries that were concerned with human rights. I think they found the cost of arresting me more than they thought before.” . . .

They didn’t expect the pressure from Webloggers and foreign media in my case. They think I’m an individual [freelance] journalist and not affiliated with any political party, I’m not an insider. So they think that when they arrested me, there wouldn’t be strong pressure to release me.

But the community of bloggers came together and helped me, and spread the news around the Web, and became united.

Let’s hear it for blogosphere solidarity!

EARLIER TODAY, a reporter called me to ask about the “free speech” zones set up when Bush visited town. I said I don’t mind keeping protesters where they don’t pose a security threat, or block traffic, but that I don’t like the “free speech zone” approach, especially when it really means relocating protesters to the boonies. This is America, I said. That’s the free speech zone.

Now I notice that Kim Du Toit is saying the same thing. To be fair, this goes back before Bush — the Secret Service has gotten steadily more officious and intrusive since Reagan was shot, and I remember reports of them towing away whole streets’ worth of cars when Clinton attended parties in Georgetown. Naturally, it’s gotten worse since 9/11.

But there has to be a limit, and ultimately, it’s Bush who’s responsible for the Secret Service’s behavior.

UPDATE: Bill Quick observes: “Bush seems to be moving closer and closer to the line where I’ll no longer be able to excuse his excesses in the name of national security.”

Meanwhile, Bill Hobbs is defending Bush, and Donald Sensing is responding in the comments.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here, plus some historical perspective.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s a letter from Congressman Matt Salmon complaining about Secret Service behavior in 1997:

The First Lady was in Arizona yesterday to raise money for the Democratic Party. Nothing wrong with that. But consider the following, reported by Tribune Newspapers of Arizona in today’s editions (emphasis added):

“Reporters at the Monday afternoon speech were kept at arm’s length from the first lady by Secret Service agents, who warned the press not to yell out questions.” . . .

The Secret Service is paid to protect the President and his family from physical harm, not to protect them from tough questions from Sam Donaldson and Helen Thomas.

The abuse of power continues…

As I say, it’s been an issue for a while. And although there are legitimate security concerns in wartime, it’s important to be sure that what’s going on is about security, not censorship. Donald Sensing has more, here. On the other hand, reader Bob Rogers says I’ve got this backwards:

It seems to me that “the whole country is a free speech zone” is a good defense of the Secret Service. They limit speech in a very small space for a very short time. It’s a great big country out there, say anything you want. But of course, the protestors don’t want to say their piece on the mall or any of the other places that our government maintains in part to facilitate protest. They want to protest in the president’s face. Why? Because there is “news value” in disrupting the president’s speech. (Meaning that it makes for “good” TV pictures, not that it is really news.) The idea that anyone should stand for this type of political theater in the name of free speech is absurd. If someone tries to disrupt your class with placards and chants, what are you going to do? You are an employee of the state Tennessee. Is your situation different from the presidents?

Hmm. Well, it’s certainly true that the protest is, in a sense, parasitic on the President’s visit. But preventing disruption is fine. What’s not fine is using security as an excuse to shut people up. People have a right to peaceably assemble, and to petition their leaders for a redress of grievances, and that suggests to me that speech in the vicinity of leaders, so long as it’s non-disruptive, is specially protected.

JAMES LILEKS interviews a terrorist.

IF YOU PUMP RATS’ LUNGS full of nanotubes, they will suffocate.

HERE’S SOME GOOD NEWS:

WASHINGTON – The dawning new year has been witness to good news from a number of the world’s most protracted conflicts and dangerous trouble spots.

Promising developments are suddenly marking the global landscape: between nuclear powers India and Pakistan; in Sudan, where rebels this week reached an agreement with southern rebels that could end Africa’s longest civil war; in Libya, which recently announced it would give up its unconventional weapons programs to reenter the community of nations; in US-Iranian relations, with Iran agreeing to international inspection of nuclear sites; and even in North Korea, which this week offered to freeze its nuclear programs.

While foreign-policy experts generally remain cautious about linking these events too closely or about assigning them a common catalyst, they do see some common threads.

Let’s hope it’s a pattern.

BUSH WAS IN TOWN. SKBubba was protesting.

A PACK, NOT A HERD:

Dr. Earls and his colleagues argue that the most important influence on a neighborhood’s crime rate is neighbors’ willingness to act, when needed, for one another’s benefit, and particularly for the benefit of one another’s children. And they present compelling evidence to back up their argument.

Will a group of local teenagers hanging out on the corner be allowed to intimidate passers-by, or will they be dispersed and their parents called? Will a vacant lot become a breeding ground for rats and drug dealers, or will it be transformed into a community garden?

Such decisions, Dr. Earls has shown, exert a power over a neighborhood’s crime rate strong enough to overcome the far better known influences of race, income, family and individual temperament.

I’m not surprised to read this.

WOW, NASA’S LATEST PROBE has been on Mars for just a little while, and it’s already found something that people have been looking for for years.

OKAY, MAYBE I WAS WRONG: I’ve said before that I thought Democratic candidates were doing a much better job on the Web than the Bush Campaign. I guess it depends on your metric: this poll suggests that Bush is doing better than I’ve given him credit for:

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean’s extensive use of the Internet to raise tons of money and drum up early support for the Dem presidential nomination led to his reputation as the favorite son among techies.

But his special appeal to higher-tech voters may be fading, according to the latest WASHPOSTABCNEWS poll.

Dean does no better against President Bush among Americans who say they get their political news from the Internet than those who don’t, trailing Bush by 20 percentage points among both groups.

That doesn’t mean the the Internet hasn’t been a useful tool for organizing Dean supporters — it obviously has — but I guess it means that it hasn’t been a dramatically effective tool for winning new converts.

CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM doesn’t seem to be working.

HERE’S AN INTERESTING, and rather lengthy, article on nanotechnology from Small Times.

A READER ASKS why I haven’t weighed in on Bush’s immigration plan. The answer is that I don’t really know what I think about it. I generally favor open immigration for people who want to become Americans. I do think that illegal immigration should be treated differently than legal immigration (because it’s, you know, illegal) but I don’t have strong feelings on what ought to be done, specifically.

Anyway, the blogosphere is a big place, so go read this post by LT Smash, who does know what he thinks, and who links to a lot of other people, too.

UPDATE: Just noticed (I’ve been busy) that they’ve been all over this story at The Corner, too.