JESSE WALKER LOOKS AT First Amendment hypocrites.

DAVID BERNSTEIN’S BOOK, You Can’t Say That! The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Antidiscrimination Laws, is now out in paperback.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER:

The centerpiece of John Kerry’s foreign policy is to rebuild our alliances so the world will come to our aid, especially in Iraq. He repeats this endlessly because it is the only foreign policy idea he has to offer. The problem for Kerry is that he cannot explain just how he proposes to do this. . . .

He really does want to end America’s isolation. And he has an idea how to do it. For understandable reasons, however, he will not explain how on the eve of an election.

Think about it: What do the Europeans and the Arab states endlessly rail about in the Middle East? What (outside of Iraq) is the area of most friction with U.S. policy? What single issue most isolates America from the overwhelming majority of countries at the United Nations?

The answer is obvious: Israel.

In what currency, therefore, would we pay the rest of the world in exchange for their support in places such as Iraq? The answer is obvious: giving in to them on Israel.

No Democrat will say that openly. But anyone familiar with the code words of Middle East diplomacy can read between the lines.

I think he’s probably right.

MICHAEL BARONE’S LATEST COLUMN is on the polls, and he looks at the Steven Den Beste analysis I mentioned earlier. His conclusion differs from Den Beste’s:

My tentative explanation is this. Bush’s most effective opposition this year has come not from Kerry and the Democrats but from Old Media, the New York Times and the news pages of the Washington Post, along with the broadcast networks ABC, CBS, and NBC. Old Media gave very heavy coverage to stories that tended to hurt Bush—violence in Iraq, Abu Ghraib, the false charges of Richard Clarke and Joseph Wilson, etc. And during the first eight months of the year Bush did a poor job of making his case.

Then, suddenly, that case was made with maximum effectiveness at the Republican National Convention in New York—by John McCain and Rudolph Giuliani, by Zell Miller and Arnold Schwarzenegger, by Laura Bush and Dick Cheney and George W. Bush himself. Bush was able to get his message out unmediated by Old Media.

Interesting theory. And — as always when Barone writes about polling and elections — you should read the whole thing. Meanwhile, Robert Musil has thoughts of his own on polls.

THEY HIRED OLIVER WILLIS AND ATRIOS — but I never thought they’d buy off Frank J. I guess George Soros must really be throwing around a lot of cash.

HATE MAIL OF THE DAY:

Pro-homosexuals like you never bring up issues such as these, and this (1 in 3) is just violence in LGBT relationships, doesn´t even go into numbers about outside relationship violence and harassment, since homos and pro-homos are too dishonest to talk about that, when the perpetrators are homos and bisexuals and the victims are heterosexuals. To how many of these GBLT battererer´s and rapists did you clap at in the latest Pride parade?

Alas, I missed the Pride Parade. I’m more of a Love Parade kind of guy, I guess. . . . Looks like fun, though!

CLONING DEBATE AT THE UNITED NATIONS:

UNITED NATIONS – Britain staunchly defended the right to use human embryos for medical research while the Vaticanbacked a complete ban on human cloning as U.N. members Thursday began two days of debate on the highly contentious issue.

The U.N. General Assembly’s legal committee will meet again Friday to discuss two competing resolutions:

Costa Rica’s draft calls for a treaty banning all cloning. Belgium’s draft calls for a treaty banning the cloning of babies but allowing countries to decide on using embryos for research, which many scientists believe may lead to new treatments for diseases.

Britain’s U.N. ambassador Emyr Jones Parry said his country was among the first to ban human reproductive cloning when it passed such an act in 2001.

“However, we cannot support any attempt to ban or unreasonably restrict cloning for research purposes, known as therapeutic cloning. We are convinced that therapeutic cloning holds enormous promise for new treatments for serious degenerative conditions that are currently incurable,” he said.

Good for the British — though, in fact, I don’t support a ban on reproductive cloning, either. Meanwhile, Kofi Annan actually gets it right:

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on Thursday fired another shot across the bow of US President George W. Bush in backing cloning for medical research, which the United States wants to ban worldwide.

The announcement by Annan, a regular critic of Bush policy, came as the UN’s legal committee opened debate on human cloning with hopes of drafting an international treaty to address the divisive issue.

I wonder whether this is on the merits, or just another anti-Bush move? Regardless, Annan’s right, and Bush is wrong, on this one. Here’s a column I wrote on the subject a while back.

UPDATE: Nikita Demosthenes says I’m wrong about cloning.

CHECK OUT THE IRAQ DEMOCRACY PROJECT at Spirit of America. If you’re so inclined, make a donation. I did, as I think it’s a worthy cause.

IT’S BUSH V. KERRY in the Hip-Hop Debate. Bush is currently winning, 56-44. Go figure.

IT’S STILL NOT TOO LATE: If you want to attend this weekend’s First Annual Conference on Advanced Nanotechnology: Research, Applications, and Policy.

UPDATE: And if you miss the D.C. conference, here’s a University of Tennessee conference on nanotechnology in Knoxville next week, cosponsored with Oak Ridge National Lab.

SOME NICE COLORADO PHOTOBLOGGING by Karol Sheinin.

SHOCKINGLY, the film Stolen Honor got a positive review in the New York Times. “It should be shown in its entirety on all the networks, cable stations and on public television.” This has inspired some thoughts from Scott Koenig.

UPDATE: More here.

BOIFROMTROY DEBATES KERRY AND BUSH: Advantage: BoiFromTroy! But you knew that, right?

I’VE UPLOADED some of the photos of the UT Campus that I posted earlier this week to the Exposure Manager gallery.

CATHY SEIPP reviews the limited success of The Guardian’s Clark County project.

REASON’S PRESIDENTIAL POLL IS UP: I’m in it. So is a guy who illustrates, I think, why libertarianism isn’t selling well with the public:

2004 vote: I never vote. I don’t wish to soil my hands.

2000 vote: Had I been forced to cast a ballot for president in the 2000 election, I might have died of septicemic disgust.

Most embarrassing vote: I voted only once in a presidential election, in 1976, and I did so on that occasion only so that I could irritate my left-liberal colleagues at the University of Washington by telling them that I had voted for “that idiot” Gerald Ford.

This isn’t an attitude that’s likely to pave the way to political success. And I say this as a guy who’s never been overwhelmed with the quality of the choices given me, and who’s voted Libertarian for President three times.

UPDATE: Gabe Posey emails:

I think the primary reason for mainstream American not grasping hold of Libertarianism isn’t that the party doesn’t have great ideals or spokespeople, but primarily that the same upper crust elitism seen so profoundly in the Democratic party is rampant in the academically pious Libertarians. The party that demonstrates they are the party of the people is usually the party that wins. For the last two presidential elections it hasn’t been the Greens, Libertarians or the Democrats. I still have hope for the Liberty Caucus of the Republican Party.

As the folks at The Guardian have learned, letting people know you think they’re idiots isn’t an especially effective way of winning their votes.

More thoughts here. And reader Edward Clark emails:

I would like you to explain a little more on your impressions of libertarianism. I consider myself a libertarian, and not just because of my name. But listening to the libertarian party today leaves me with one reaction. Huh?

Their isolationist stance on security and foreign policy just doesn’t make any sense in today’s world. It is like surrending for the sake of liberty, which means liberty would end. On most other issues I pretty much agree with them. But on most of those issues they are closer to Republicans (but not very close) than democrats. Why would so many on Reason’s poll be mixed between libertarians and democrats? It seems some people just claim to be libertarian because it sounds so independent and thoughtful.

I wish there was a party more along the lines of the Ayn Rand Institute. True Libertarianism. Call it the Objectivist Party.

I’m not an Objectivist, myself, but I have noted that they seem more realistic on foreign relations.

MORE: Here’s an Objectivist take on foreign policy and the election.

OLD MEDIA LOSING INFLUENCE? I notice that Evan Thomas has revised his 15 percent estimate downward:

KURTZ: You’ve said on the program “Inside Washington” that because of the portrayal of Kerry and Edwards as young and dynamic and optimistic, that’s worth maybe 15 points. That would suggest…

THOMAS: Stupid thing to say. It was completely wrong. But I do think that — I do think that the mainstream press, I’m not talking about the blogs and Rush and all that, but the mainstream press favors Kerry. I don’t think it’s worth 15 points. That was just a stupid thing to say.

KURTZ: Is it worth 5 points?

THOMAS: Maybe, maybe.

I should note that when Newsweek’s Steven Levy interviewed me a few weeks back he seemed quite unhappy with my frequent reference to Evan Thomas’s earlier 15 points statement, and rather vehemently stated that Thomas didn’t speak for Newsweek as a whole. I don’t know how he’d feel about the 5 point line. . . .

SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT:

American teens have spoken, and they want George W. Bush for president. Nearly 1.4 million teens voted in the nation’s largest mock election, and the Republican incumbent wound up with 393 electoral votes and 55 percent of the total votes cast. . . .

In an exit poll taken after making their pick for president, teens weighed in on the issues most important to them. A majority of respondents– 44 percent– said that the war in Iraq was the most important issue facing the candidates today. The economy was the first priority in the minds of 22 percent of teens, followed by education (14 percent), national security (12 percent) and health care (8 percent).

No great surprise.

TOM MAGUIRE: Channeling Wonkette?

BLOGS BLOCKED: I’ve had that problem a time or two, and now Eric Muller is discovering that his blog is being blocked some places. He’s trying to survey the extent of blog-blocking in general.

BRUCE CHAPMAN WRITES IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:

BAGHDAD, Iraq–Basking in the sun by the Al Hamra Hotel swimming pool, a Spanish journalist complained to me that “all my editors want is blood, blood, blood. No context. No politics.”

Such editors are cruising to be scooped by such local Iraqi blogs as Iraq the Model, which last summer debunked a Los Angeles Times story on the departure of Coalition Provisional Authority head L. Paul Bremer. The Times told its readers that Bremer had fled abruptly, “afraid to look in the eye the people he had ruled for more than a year.” In fact, as Iraq the Model reported, Mr. Bremer before leaving delivered a television address that gave a moving account of his tenure and his hopes for the new all-Iraqi interim government.

The bloggers had heard it, the L.A. Times reporter had not. The paper ultimately had to correct its account, though never acknowledging the indignant Iraqis who caught its snide oversight.

Read the whole thing, which profiles a number of Iraqi bloggers.

UPDATE: Yes, the “blood, blood” without context bit above is exactly the kind of thing I was complaining about in this post. Interestingly, I got this email from a Big-Media reporter whose name you’d probably recognize, though I’m asked not to use it:

Personally, I’d never feel so comfortable in my certainty on matters such as Iraq if I hadn’t ever been to the place; indeed, even Andrew, who I presume gets his information about Iraq from the MSM, has often turned on a dime and accused those very same news sources of revealing clear biases in their eporting. And it’s been apparent from reading reports from many independent sources on the ground – not least the soldiers themselves – that the situation looks far better than it is portrayed in the mainstream press. Look, I don’t know what to think, though I’m cognizant of the very reasonable possibility that in 20 years Iraq may be a thriving democracy, that the Middle East may be far less a source of radicalism and terrorism, and that we will all be talking about the miraculous accomplishment of the U.S.-led coalition, which managed to do the job in a couple of years with “minimal” casualties. That’s the most optimistic way to look at things right now, but it’s also a viewpoint that takes historical perspective into account. It’s frankly impossible to imagine what might have happened to FDR’s presidency if WWII was covered the way the various news media do the job right now. Someone in the blogosphere recently pointed out that 750 American troops died in a training accident during preparations for D-Day. Can you imagine that? Today such an occurrence would have an almost apocalyptic impact in this country, if you consider the way it would be conveyed to the public through television. (Bear in mind that I’m part of the MSM, so I think I speak with a modicum of authority here.) If the blogosphere has a weakness, it is in its tendency to amplify the significance of current events, often without any sense of proportion or perspective. . . .

Well, though it leads some people to suggest that I “lack fire,” I do try to maintain that degree of historical perspective, and to avoid excessive excitability and shrillness. Sometimes I succeed. Meanwhile, I do think that the excitability — and outright, dishonest partisanship — of many Big Media outlets in reporting on the war is doing incalculable damage at home and abroad, and I think that the FDR example is a good illustration of why. The “zero defects” approach to war is, I think, born of a combination of military ignorance and partisanship.

MORE: Related thoughts here.

GAYPATRIOT is doing investigative journoblogging. (Via Stephen Green, who finds the Log Cabin Republicans’ democratic connection unsurprising).

UPDATE: The Log Cabin Republicans’ response.

ANOTHER UPDATE: GayPatriot replies here.

IN HIS LATEST COLUMN, Stephen Green introduces some people to ABC News.

I’M SKEPTICAL of the idea that the Red Sox victory will affect the election. But hey, what do I know?

JIM LINDGREN LOOKS AT antisemitism in the 1930s, while David Bernstein looks at antisemitism today.