I WRITE A LOT ABOUT NANOTECHNOLOGY HERE, and if you’re interested in that you might want to consider attending the Foresight Institute’s annual conference in Palo Alto, May 14-16 this year. Foresight is the preeminent nonprofit thinking about nanotechnology and the future (I’m on their Board.) What’s more, they’ll give you a discount — just register at the long-expired “super early rate” and put “INSTAPUNDIT” in the comments field, which will save you $200. (Just another perk of reading InstaPundit.)

SOME SURPRISING PEOPLE are coming out in favor of abstinence-only education — but I still don’t think it’ll work.

A CANADIAN PAPER POINTS TO lots more dirty laundry at the United Nations.

A bunch of politicians, with money and power but no accountability — the big surprise would be if there weren’t scandals hiding under every desk. Which is why U.N. -worship is so hard to understand.

IS THE INTERNET BAD FOR DICTATORS? The New Republic says no. Jeff Jarvis responds: “In this century, the Internet means freedom.”

I actually have an article on this very topic, in the latest issue of The National Interest. It’s not online yet, but it will be soon.

UPDATE: BTW, you can get a free 4-week subscription to TNR Digital by clicking on the ad to the left. In exchange, I give all their readers free access to InstaPundit!

OKAY, I HAVEN’T SEEN ALL THE OFFICIAL BUSH CAMPAIGN ADS — but this freelance effort is better than all the official ads that I have seen.

HERE’S A STUDY FROM HARVARD AND UNC saying that downloads don’t hurt music sales.

IT WAS JUST AS TRUE BEFORE THE CORRECTION, but whatever.

DID I MISS LAST WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE VANITIES? I think I did. Anyway, here it is, in case you missed it.

SPRING HAS SPRUNG. Along the lake, near Cherokee Boulevard. This is the route I take to work in the morning, when I have time.

LT SMASH reports firsthand on lobbying Congress on behalf of members of the Guard and Reserves.

More here.

SEX-IN-THE-CATHEDRAL SHOCK JOCKS OPIE AND ANTHONY ARE COMING BACK: No doubt Howard Stern will rejoice at this victory for free expression.

Personally, I prefer “sex in the cathedral” to “murder in the cathedral,” but that’s just me.

UPDATE: Kevin Aylward says that Opie and Anthony won’t regain their former glory. I’ll bet they’ll get as many stations as Al Franken, though!

MELANA ZYLE VICKERS reports that the 9/11 Commission has, in fact, uncovered serious and costly errors in the war on terror:

The hearings presented a Democratic record on terrorism that is marred by fundamental policy fumbles and ultimately fatal misjudgments. Of course, some of the errors in fighting terrorism in the 1990s could have been — and were — made or repeated by the Republican administration of George W. Bush. But a top-five list drawn from the testimony before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States and the reports prepared by commission staff, reveals errors that stemmed from what might be described as the post Cold War, Democratic world-view. They include:

Unwillingness to use force to retaliate against terrorism or pre-empt attacks.

Inaction in the face of legal obstacles

Animus toward the intelligence community

Fear of unpopularity in the court of domestic and foreign public opinion

Failure to improve the effectiveness of bilateral relations with Arab states and Pakistan.

This world-view would be unlikely to change as the party’s foreign-policy mantle changes hands from Clinton-Gore to Kerry. . . .[V]oters who wonder “how would a Kerry administration prosecute the war on terror?” need to look no further than this list for some idea of the answer. Unless, of course, Kerry disassociates himself from the policies of his Democratic predecessors, or criticizes them as forcefully as his fellow Democrat on the 9/11 commission, Bob Kerrey, did last week.

Read the whole thing. I wonder if Sixty Minutes will devote an hour to these findings?

The Kerry strategy team certainly should.

JOE BIDEN is talking tough to Europe. Meanwhile Jeff Jarvis is talking tough to Americans: “This is war. It’s not an encounter session. It’s war.”

LARRY LESSIG, who is guestblogging over at GlennReynolds.com, has some thoughts on how Amazon helps free culture.

By the way, I should mention that he’s giving his new book away for free over there, and it seems to be helping his sales. Given the InstaWife’s experience along these lines, I’m not surprised.

INTERESTING BIT from the IOWA ELECTRONIC MARKETS: The graphic at the right is a crop from their graph showing Kerry vs. Bush since February 1st of this year (follow the link and scroll down for the whole thing). Despite the general sense that it’s been a rough period for Bush, his lead over Kerry has grown steadily since about the time it looked as if Kerry was going to get the nomination.

I think that IEM is generally more accurate than snapshot polls, but this is interesting to me — despite my deep skepticism regarding Kerry, it doesn’t seem to me that it’s been an especially good month for Bush. What information are the market participants taking into account that the conventional widom is missing?

UPDATE: Jim Miller notes that he predicted this. And another reader observes that despite the short-term damage inflicted by the 9/11 Commission hearings, they have ensured that this election will be about the war and terrorism, which benefits Bush. Could be.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The other possibility is that things haven’t been as bad for Bush as media reportage makes them sound.

I wonder if the Richard Clarke affair is Martha Burk all over again? (Via NBL).

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: This makes sense:

I think we’re seeing a difference in focus rather than information. The futures markets focus on the eventual outcome, while day to day jostling drives the conventional wisdom.

If we accept the Feiler Faster Thesis, frequent reversals of fortune are par for the course these days, which means that any one setback is largely irrelevant. Barring an unlikely knockout punch (e.g. the Dean scream), this back-and-forth will continue right up to election day.

The markets have taken that into account, and they’re discounting the tactical advances and setbacks as largely irrelevant. Unless a clear longer term trend emerges, they’ll continue to reflect the underlying economic reality (pretty good, actually) and projections for the situation in Iraq (which I for one expect to be a lot calmer 6 months from now).

Sounds right. We’ll see.

BLOGGING MAY BE INTERRUPTED: The new Eric Flint book is enroute from Amazon. And following that is the new Neal Stephenson book. Good. I’ve been working too much lately.

THIS IS INTERESTING:

LONDON — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, al Qaeda’s purported operations chief, has told U.S. interrogators that the group had been planning attacks on the Library Tower in Los Angeles and the Sears Tower in Chicago on the heels of the September 11, 2001, terror strikes.

Those plans were aborted mainly because of the decisive U.S. response to the New York and Washington attacks, which disrupted the terrorist organization’s plans so thoroughly that it could not proceed, according to transcripts of his conversations with interrogators. . . .

Mohammed then decided to conduct two waves of attacks, hitting the East Coast first and following up with a second series of attacks.

“Osama had said the second wave should focus on the West Coast,” he reportedly said.

But the terrorists seem to have been surprised by the strength of the American reaction to the September 11 attacks.

“Afterwards, we never got time to catch our breath, we were immediately on the run,” Mohammed is quoted as saying.

He also casts doubt on Moussaoui’s guilt — er, at least in terms of what Moussaoui is charged with. Read the whole thing, but note this warning: “The transcripts are prefaced with a warning that Mohammed, the most senior al Qaeda member yet to be caught, ‘has been known to withhold information or deliberately mislead.'” Those murdering terrorists are bad that way.

UPDATE: Roger Simon has related questions. I love this one: “[A] ‘counter-terrorism’ expert? Is that someone with an Internet connection (preferably broadband)?” If so, there are a lot of us. . . .

MICKEY KAUS writes that welfare reform is working, and worked right through the recent recession: “The rolls didn’t rise in the recession because single mothers kept on working. That’s a good thing. Advantage: Reformers!”

COUNTERTOP CHRONICLES is photoblogging the DC Cherry Blossom festival.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Ann Althouse is making sure that I’m not the only hometown-photoblogging law professor around.

IF THIS IS TRUE, then why are toddlers sick most of the time? “Picking your nose and eating it is one of the best ways to stay healthy, according to a top Austrian doctor.”

WALTER IN DENVER has the Rocky Mountain Blogger roundup posted.

I LOVE MY tiny NEC laptop — so when the “I” key quit working, I was bummed. But I called ’em over the weekend, got a return box delivered this morning, and it’s already en route for warranty repairs. They sent a prepaid return airbill — and even a strip of plastic packing tape to seal the box with. Very nice service.

I THINK THAT CONDI RICE SHOULD TESTIFY, in spite of the Administration’s reasonable concerns, which all Administrations have, about that sort of thing. But when she testifies, I think she should open with this:

This administration came into office to discover that al Qaeda had been allowed to grow into a full-blown menace. It lost six precious weeks to the Florida recount – and then weeks after Inauguration Day to the go-slow confirmation procedures of a 50-50 Senate. As late as the summer of 2001, pitifully few of Bush’s own people had taken their jobs at State, Defense, and the NSC. Then it was hit by 9/11. And now, now the same people who allowed al Qaeda to grow up, who delayed the staffing of the administration, who did nothing when it was their turn to act, who said nothing when they could have spoken in advance of the attack – these same people accuse George Bush of doing too little? There’s a long answer to give folks like that – and also a short one. And the short one is: How dare you?

As I’ve said before, I’m willing to let bygones be bygones before September 11, despite the Clinton Administration’s limp record on terror. (Cluelessly limp. Remember Clarke boasted in 1999 that our response to the 1993 WTC bombing was scaring Al Qaeda, which is proof of cluelessness beyond contradiction.) But the Bush Administration, to its credit, figured out that we were at war after September 11. Its critics keep trying to deny that fact, except, curiously, when they switch from attacking Bush for doing too much, to attacking Bush for doing too little. (Via Steven Antler).

UPDATE: Yes, yes, I know that Clarke refused to testify under oath.

ANOTHER UPDATE: On the other hand, this is the best reason for Rice to keep quiet that I’ve heard yet: “Rice Withholding Testimony for Her Own Book.”

STUART BUCK UPDATE: His wife, Farah, has posted a condition report on his blog.

CLARKE-O-RAMA: Tom Maguire has a roundup of Clarke links, as well as another episode of Clarke v. Clarke. Stop the fight, ref!