IT’S LAST-CHANCE BOOTY-BLOGGING TIME over at the DeanBlog.

OVER AT THE TYPEPAD TEST BLOG I mentioned bandwidth as an issue for bloggers. I just looked to see how much bandwidth InstaPundit has used this month — so far it’s 216 gigabytes. Your results are likely to vary, but you should certainly take bandwidth, and the likelihood that it will grow, into account when you choose hosts.

UPDATE: Tom Smith thinks my house looks tidy. Er, parts of it. Don’t look in the study, where books, manuscripts, MIDI cables, and assorted bits of hardware are strewn everywhere.

BREATHALYZER INTERLOCKS FOR CARS look a lot like fingerprint locks for guns, observes Eugene Volokh, who is surprised that people are more exercised over one than the other.

I THINK SHE JUST MIGHT HAVE A CASE:

A New Jersey woman, one of the hundreds of people accused of copyright infringement by the Recording Industry Association of America, has countersued the big record labels, charging them with extortion and violations of the federal antiracketeering act.

I think they’re vulnerable on a variety of legal fronts, not just this one.

UPDATE: Sorry, I was imprecise above. I meant that I think they’re more vulnerable on other fronts — also under RICO — than this one.

IF NADER RUNS, I think he’ll pick up a fair number of former Dean supporters. Here’s some evidence in support of that proposition.

UPDATE: Reader Don Byrd emails that these quotes are unrepresentative:

I’ve met probably 500 Dean supporters one time or another during the last year in Nashville, and I can count on one hand the number of them who say they voted for Nader. At a meetup (attended by about 150 Dean supporters) I hosted in September, I introduced one of those guys, thinking he could speak to the job we’re doing trying to entice greens into our efforts…but to my shock (and missing the point) he was roundly booed by the crowd when I introduced him as a Nader voter. Dean supporters are anti-Bush Democrats, but Democrats nonetheless.

Well, we’ll see, won’t we?

COLOR ME UNSURPRISED:

The Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan has been demonized in the West for selling atomic secrets and equipment around the world, but the trade began in Europe, not Islamabad, according to court documents and experts who monitor proliferation.

The records show that industry scientists and Western intelligence agencies have known for decades that nuclear technology was pouring out of Europe despite national export control efforts to contain it.

Many of the names that have turned up among lists of suppliers and middlemen who fed equipment, materials and knowledge to nuclear programs in Pakistan and other aspiring nuclear nations are well-known players in Europe’s uranium enrichment industry, a critical part of many nuclear weapons programs. Some have been convicted of illegal exports before.

The proliferation has its roots in Europe’s own postwar eagerness for nuclear independence from the United States and its lax security over potentially lethal technology. It was abetted, critics say, by competition within Europe for lucrative contracts to bolster state-supported nuclear industries. Even as their own intelligence services warned that Pakistan could not be trusted, some European governments continued to help Pakistan’s nuclear program.

Perhaps this explains the different degree of enthusiasm for international agreements on the part of Europe and the United States — the United States actually worries about having to comply with them, while the Europeans, unfettered by any such concerns, are free to posture.

UPDATE: And, in a related matter, we have this:

The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency has found undeclared advanced uranium enrichment centrifuge parts in Iran, sources familiar with an inspection report told CNN Thursday.

The information will be included in a detailed report to be presented March 8 at a meeting of International Atomic Energy Agency governors in Vienna, Austria.

The report will say that the centrifuge equipment, found on an Iranian air force base, is not of a type that works with equipment found at nuclear sites that Iran has declared.

The report marks the first time Iran’s nuclear program has been linked directly to its military. . . .

The diplomats also said the design matched drawings of enrichment equipment found in Libya that was supplied through the network headed by Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan.

It would, I think, be very desirable for the Mullarchy in Iran to fall before it acquires nuclear weapons. I wonder if anyone else feels that way?

HOWARD KURTZ ASKS THE BIG QUESTION:

Does “electability” still work as an argument for Kerry if a CNN/USA Today poll has Edwards beating Bush 54-44, almost the same margin as Kerry’s 55-43 edge over the president?

It’s also a big question for the Bush campaign, of course.

HOWARD’S END: My thoughts on the Dean campaign and the Internet are up over at GlennReynolds.com. Excerpt: “I think it means that the Internet is a powerful tool, but no tool is better than the hand that holds it.” LT Smash, meanwhile, has a roundup of blogosphere responses to Dean’s departure.

I’ll actually miss him. I’m pretty sure that he would have been a disaster as a President, or even as a general-election candidate. I disagreed with him on most stuff, I think, and certainly about his signature issue, the war. But he did have a genuineness that the other candidates lacked, and I liked him for that.

UPDATE: The Wall St. Journal calls Dean “the most consequential loser since Barry Goldwater.”

HERE’S AN INTERESTING STORY ON IRANIAN BLOGGERS:

As Friday’s parliamentary elections approach, however, there’s a distinct tone of worry that conservatives expected to regain control of parliament would step up pressure to censor the Internet.

“It will be the end of the blog era in Iran,” said a Tehran-based blogger who operates pinkfloydish.com, the name indicative of her love of Western music.

But thus far, the Internet has managed to avoid the hardliners’ choke hold on media, which has silenced dozens of pro-reform newspapers and publications since the late 1990s.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Iranian bloggers have some thoughts on the U.S. Presidential election, too.

CONSERVATISM AT YALE LAW SCHOOL: A report from the Yale Daily News.

UPDATE: David Bernstein has some firsthand experiences to report.

ANOTHER KERRY SCANDAL, this one from the Los Angeles Times:

Sen. John F. Kerry sent 28 letters in behalf of a San Diego defense contractor who pleaded guilty last week to illegally funneling campaign contributions to the Massachusetts senator and four other congressmen.

Members of Congress often write letters supporting constituent businesses and favored projects. But as the Democratic presidential front-runner, Kerry has promoted himself as a candidate who has never been beholden to campaign contributors and special interests. . . .

Asked what he did to repay the money, Kerry’s campaign said Wednesday he had donated $13,000 to charity on Feb. 9 — which was two days before Majumder’s guilty plea.

Capt. Ed observes:

As in the Liu Chaoying case, which is mentioned in this article but curiously doesn’t mention Liu or her status as a spy, there is no indication that Kerry was aware of DR. Majumder’s illegal activities. However, this clearly demonstrates the extent to which Kerry can be bought.

In this, he’s not terribly different from some other politicians. But he’s claiming to be.

UPDATE: Reader Dave Perron notes that this story has been around for a while. True enough, but Kerry’s now campaigning — absurdly, as Howard Dean pointed out — as the anti-special-interest candidate. Presumably, that’s why the Los Angeles Times thought the latest developments were big news.

And read Shannon Love’s comment to Capt. Ed’s post, which captures a sad truth about money in politics: “I am less upset that politicians can be bought than I am that they come so damn cheap.”

“I WAS KIM JONG IL’S COOK:” As the reader who sent this link from the Atlantic Monthly observes, it’ll curl your hair.

I’M A PRETTY MELLOW GUY, which means that I found a recent preachy screed by the CJR campaign blog trivial, and didn’t bother to try to refute it. I generally like the blog, and jumping on other bloggers isn’t usually my thing. But if I had tried, I probably wouldn’t have done as good a job as Jay Rosen has done.

I’ve been pretty critical of the “ethics establishment,” and the way in which its pronouncements tend to be rather transparent shields for self-interest. The journalistic ethics establishment certainly falls into this category. Ethics are important. Ethics authorities, however, usually aren’t.

But in one sense I think that Jay misses the important transitional role the CJR blog is playing. Many among the more hidebound segments of the press are scared of blogs, or ignorant of them. Institutional blogs like CJR’s will help to introduce them to the blogosphere. Wonkette can come later.

Kinda like starting with Pat Boone, and ending up with Elvis.

PEOPLE KEEP SENDING ME THIS STORY FROM NEWSMAX: McCain: Hanoi Hilton Guards Taunted POWs With Kerry’s Testimony. I agree with Mudville Gazette, though, that the headline misrepresents the facts actually laid out in the story. While there’s evidence elsewhere that the North Vietnamese used Kerry’s testimony to demoralize some U.S. POWs (“Paul Galanti learned of Kerry’s speech while held captive inside North Vietnam’s infamous ‘Hanoi Hilton’ prison. . . . During torture sessions, he said, his captors cited the antiwar speeches as ‘an example of why we should cross over to [their] side.'”), there’s no evidence that this ever actually happened to McCain, and the story doesn’t actually say that once you get past the headline.

ANIL DASH asked me to try out TypePad and see what I thought. I like it. Here’s my take-it-for-a-spin TypePad blog.

NANOTECHNOLOGY is progressing so rapidly that even experts are having trouble keeping current.

ANOTHER ONE OF WOLFOWITZ’S DOMINOES is teetering:

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) – Syria has sent messages to bitter foe Israel via Turkey offering to restart stalled peace talks between the two countries, Syrian Vice President Abdul Halim Khaddam said Wednesday.

The messages carried by Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul expressed “Syria’s readiness to resume peace talks from where they broke off” in January 2000, Khaddam said.

Heh.

UPDATE: Hmm. Interesting juxtaposition of stories here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Britain is closing its embassy in Syria, according to a report on the Free Arab Forum blog.

MORE: Here’s a news story on the embassy closure. The slant is a bit different from the post above.

STILL MORE: War critic Michael Duff is surprised to see that the Bush doctrine is working:

I don’t really like the Bush Doctrine, okay?

After 9-11, I thought we should confine our efforts to the Al Qaeda organization. Instead, Bush decided to condemn half the Middle East with his Axis of Evil speech and roll tanks into Iraq.

It bothered me. It still bothers me. But dammit, if you look at the patterns, it seems to be working. The Middle East thinks Bush is batshit crazy, and their governments are afraid of us. Do you get that? The bad guys are afraid of us, because against all logic and common sense, we went into Iraq and we took Saddam down. . . .

In 2001, New York was burning and we were afraid. Today, there are American flags flying in Baghdad and our enemies are afraid.

Indeed. Read the whole thing.

MORE STILL: Here’s another perspective, tying together events in Syria with events in Iran.

NOT EVERYONE HAS GIVEN UP on the Kerry infidelity story. Eric Scheie notes that over at the John Edwards campaign blog some of Edwards’ supporters are still hoping to give the story legs.

UPDATE: My goodness, the first comment posted below Scheie’s entry is a truly shocking example of Bush-hatred. People said this sort of thing about Clinton, too, of course, but I don’t recall it being regarded as acceptable in polite society, as Bush-hatred clearly is.

And speaking of such things, I highly recommend this article by University of Texas law professor Doug Laycock, entitled Vicious Stereotypes in Polite Society, which originally appeared in Constitutional Commentary, a faculty edited law review published out of the University of Minnessota law school.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader thinks that this story is relevant.

MORE: Polite society responds. More from the same source here.

In a later comment, Scheie says that the guy who posted the Bush-hatred stuff is normally a nice guy, and just lost it. That can happen to any of us, of course, and happens to most of us at one time or another. But it’s when people aren’t (politely) reminded that they’ve crossed the line that things tend to spin out of control. I appreciate the people who criticize me on matters of tone, when their own tone is such as to make those criticisms credible.

JEFF JARVIS: “The most amusing phone call of coming days will be Al Gore trying to endorse Kerry or Edwards.”

WIRED NEWS has an interesting story on Blogads and campaigns.

THIS PASSAGE FROM HARDBALL seems like it deserves more attention. James Hoffa of the Teamsters is explaining why he supports Kerry:

MATTHEWS: How about ANWR? You guys want to see ANWR because you want to see guys working in your business. I guess there‘s a lot of Teamsters jobs up there lined up and organized, if you could put a pipeline up to the Alaska wilderness. He is against that.

HOFFA: Well, we talked about that.

He says, look, I am against ANWR, but I am going to put that pipeline in and we‘re going to drill like never before. . . .

MATTHEWS: But he is against drilling up there. What are they going to run through the pipeline?

HOFFA: Well, they are going to drill all over, according to him. And he says, we‘re going to be drilling all over the United States. And he says that is going to create more jobs. . . .

MATTHEWS: It just seems amazing that he has turned around on NAFTA, turned around on WTO, turned around on ANWR, anything to get the Teamsters.

HOFFA: Oh.

Oh, indeed. This seems like big news to me, if it’s true. And Hoffa certainly seems serious.

UPDATE: Apparently it only seems serious in print — from the context you can tell he’s kidding, as reader Steve Jennings emails:

Limbaugh played the excerpt from Hardball with Hoffa today. After Hoffa made those statements that Kerry was in favor of drilling there was an outburst of laughter from others on the show. Hoffa doesn’t believe that and no one believed him.

Thank goodness that Rush Limbaugh is clearing up what could otherwise be an embarrassing moment for Kerry.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Roger Simon emails: “A reader of my blog just posted he or she) saw the show and that Hoffa was definitely NOT kidding. Matthews looked incredulous.” Stay tuned. Did anybody TIVO it? (Link to Simon post here).

MORE: Reader Paul Hrissikopoulos emails:

Hoffa seemed serious to me. It seemed to me that the people on the Hardball panel laughed because Matthews’ jaw almost hit the ground when he said it.

He blogged it here. And another reader emails:

Hoffa was dead serious. The laughter from the panel was in response to Matthews’ shock at Hoffa’s statement. HOFFA WAS DEAD SERIOUS.

Why doesn’t some enterprising reporter ask Hoffa — and Kerry — about this? Personally, I hope the story’s true, as it would suggest a measure of realism regarding energy policy.

POTHOLES: Will Collier asks a war critic “what’s wrong with this picture?”

THE FUTURE OF BLOGGING: In my TechCentralStation column today.

WINDS OF CHANGE has a China news roundup that, like all such, is worth your time.

HUGH HEWITT played John Kerry’s 1971 Senate testimony on Vietnam on his radio show yesterday and remarks:

I played John Kerry’s 1971 testimony on the radio program, and the response was intense. The first two hours brought scores of calls and e-mails which denounced Kerry for his slander of the military that served in Vietnam and for his understanding of the war. Kerry has thus far successfully dodged a discussion of the specifics of his testimony, and it was very hard to find the audio –it took my producer Duane considerable digging to find the tape.

The impact of actually hearing Kerry slander the military–his accent is unbelievable, and his tone of arrogance and condescension repulsive– is powerful, and I do not believe he can serve successfully as Commander-in-Chief given the reactions I heard from veterans and currently serving military.

Hewitt links to a text version, but unfortunately the audio isn’t available. I hope that someone will put the audio online so that more people can listen and decide for themselves.