IF YOU CAN’T BEAT ‘EM, JOIN ‘EM: My TechCentralStation column looks at media and campaign finance.

LITIGATION AS A MILITARY TACTIC: Eugene Volokh has thoughts on habeas corpus for enemy combatants.

HERE’S SOME INTERESTING CAMPAIGN PHOTO-BLOGGING from a South Dakota Indian reservation.

THE PATH TO SUCCESS IN THE BLOGOSPHERE: Have the Rittenhouse Review issue an abortive delinking fatwa against you! Since that happened, Wonkette has been featured in the New York Times, on Slashdot, and countless other places, and seen her traffic soar. She’s even on TV!

Who will be the next lucky blogger to receive a “Capozzolaunch?”

GEOFFREY NUNBERG HAS THOUGHTS on blogging, and Edward Boyd has thoughts on Nunberg.

“MERCENARIES AND SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE” working for the United Nations? Say it ain’t so!

CHIEF WIGGLES HAS MOVED to a new, improved site.

UNSCAM UPDATE: ABC News has more on the unfolding U.N. oil-for-food scandal:

April 20 — At least three senior United Nations officials are suspected of taking multi-million dollar bribes from the Saddam Hussein regime, U.S. and European intelligence sources tell ABCNEWS.

One year after his fall, U.S. officials say they have evidence, some in cash, that Saddam diverted to his personal bank accounts approximately $5 billion from the United Nations Oil-for-Food program.

In what has been described as the largest humanitarian aid effort ever undertaken, the U.N. Oil-for-Food program began in 1996 to help Iraqis who were suffering under sanctions imposed following the first Gulf War.

The program allowed Iraq to sell limited amounts of oil, under supposedly tight U.N. supervision, to finance the purchase of much-needed humanitarian goods.

Most prominent among those accused in the scandal is Benon Sevan, the Cyprus-born U.N. undersecretary general who ran the program for six years.

In an interview with ABCNEWS last year, Sevan denied any wrongdoing. . . .

But documents have surfaced in Baghdad, in the files of the former Iraqi Oil Ministry, allegedly linking Sevan to a pay-off scheme in which some 270 prominent foreign officials received the right to trade in Iraqi oil at cut-rate prices.

“It’s almost like having coupons of bonds or shares. You can sell those coupons to other people who are normal oil traders,” said Claude Hankes-Drielsma, a British adviser to the Iraq Governing Council.

Investigators say the smoking gun is a letter to former Iraqi oil minister Amer Mohammed Rasheed, obtained by ABCNEWS and not yet in the hands of the United Nations.

There’s much more. Read the whole thing.

STUART BENJAMIN thinks that the FCC’s efforts to regulate broadcast content more aggressively are likely to backfire.

ED MORRISSEY HAS A LENGTHY POST on the CPA memo mentioned in the Village Voice article discussed below, and subsequently made available on the web. Morrissey writes:

The subhead of the article, in fact, reads “A Coalition memo reveals that even true believers see the seeds of civil war in the occupation of Iraq”.

However, in reading the actual memo, the author points not to an inevitable civil war but instead to the numerous opportunities surrounding the CPA to improve its performance and its position with the Iraqis, the vast majority of which want to see the US succeed. . . .

The Village Voice cherry-picked a bit to write its analysis, but give them credit for releasing a near-complete text of the memo for everyone to analyze on their own. In truth, people use bits and pieces of this memo to support a number of political stances. However, when one reads the memo in its entirety, the inescapable conclusion is not that the writer has given up on American efforts in Iraq, but that only American efforts will solve the problems.

Yes, the memo’s insights won’t be exactly shocking to blog readers. Read the whole thing.

DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY UPDATE: DPreview has just posted reviews of five 8-Megapixel digital cameras.

SOME PEOPLE COMPLAINED about the Israeli body painting and Love Parade photos I linked not being work safe. So here’s a beach picture gallery by the same photographer that should be work safe anywhere outside Saudi Arabia, and maybe the offices of certain FCC Commissioners. I think, however, that you’ll find it worth your time.

THE MYSTERY LEG FROM OKLAHOMA CITY is bothering Eric Scheie.

EVAN COYNE MALONEY has added a blog to his site.

HERE’S AN ARTICLE ARGUING FOR THE PARTITION OF IRAQ: I still don’t know what I think about this, but you can read it and see what you think.

UPDATE: Jonathan Gewirtz thinks it’s a good idea.

CATHY SEIPP WRITES on junk science in the media. Breasts are involved.

UPDATE: Will Wright emails: “Two words to describe media: Anxiety pimps.” Harsh, but not without some basis in fact.

ATTENTION homesick Knoxvillians and University of Tennessee alumni: I’ve uploaded a collection of photos from campus previously shown on InstaPundit into a handy gallery on Exposure Manager. Enjoy!

NEAL BOORTZ:

I know that many of you are fond of pinning the responsibility for the new, draconian FCC on George Bush and those evil Republicans. So … this reminder. The FCC Commissioner who is pushing the hardest on all of this so-called “indecency” is Michael J. Copps. Copps is the former chief of staff to South Carolina’s Democratic Senator Ernest Hollings, a Democrat. Hollings has never been known for his defense of first amendment rights for broadcasters. Copps is a Democrat, not a Republican.

Turning this into an anti-Bush move was a major mistake for opponents of the FCC push.

JEFF JARVIS IS PROPOSING a “Citizens’ Media Association.” Sounds good to me!

JOE GANDELMAN WRITES that John Kerry is sitting on a political time bomb by not releasing his military records.

I’ve certainly heard some talk-radio people making hay out of this issue already, and I suspect that — like Howard Dean’s sealed gubernatorial documents — there’s no upside for Kerry in keeping this stuff close to the vest.

UPDATE: Zach Barbera emails: “Maybe someone over at the DNC finally figured out that the rope-a-dope has worked very well for Bush and is now trying to play the same game with Kerry’s military records.”

Could be.

DAVE CULLEN has an interesting article on the Columbine killers up over at Slate.

A WHILE BACK, I reprinted an email from a reader about problems at the CPA in Iraq. Now the Village Voice has an article based on a purported CPA internal memo that suggests that the problems are quite severe indeed. I don’t know how much credence to put in this, but it definitely deserves further inquiry ASAP, both from the press and from the Bush Administration’s higher-ups.

UPDATE: Reader Michael Midura emails:

I read the article and it’s pretty depressing. So what’s the fallout? Well, it’s a memo that’s seems to have a bunch of well-thought out solutions to serious problems facing the CPA in Iraq. Therefore, the media will ignore it.

As long as the right people pay attention, that’s okay.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Alexander Sudnik is skeptical:

Forgive me for being skeptical, but where’s the full memo? Why doesn’t the Voice print the whole thing, so we can see for ourselves what it says? Why do we have to take this reporter’s characterization of what it says?

Any decent blog would link to the whole thing. We should expect no less from the Voice. Moreover, I see that the piece is “web only” – so it’s not for a lack of space in the print version.

Good points. And it’s true — this memo may be bogus, or it may be wrong. But I want to ensure that things like this aren’t ignored, or swept under the rug.

More comments here. Meanwhile a reader who prefers to remain anonymous emails: “I don’t think the situation is an any way irretrievable, and I still think the invasion was a good idea – but if the Administration doesn’t get its act together, then that could change fast.”

UPDATE: By popular demand, they’ve put the memo on the Web in redacted form. This doesn’t prove it’s genuine, of course (not that I have any reason to doubt it), but it’s helpful to have it. No smoking guns on a first read, really — it’s consistent with a lot of things we’ve been reading on American and Iraqi blogs. That tends to suggest it’s authentic. I certainly hope, at any rate, that the Bush Administration is paying close attention.

AID AND COMFORT: Cox and Forkum slam Michael Moore for likening terrorists to Minutemen.

A PROPOSED VICTIMS’ RIGHTS AMENDMENT is coming up for a vote in the Senate, and I agree with Bruce Fein that it’s a bad idea:

To forgo the VRA is not to cherish victims’ rights less, but to venerate the brevity and accessibility of the Constitution more. Amendments are appropriate only when flexible and adaptable statutes would be insufficient to achieve a compelling objective; or, to protect discrete and insular minorities from political oppression. Neither reason obtains for the VRA.

As Fein notes, Congress has the power to do what’s necessary (if anything is necessary) by statute. This is just election-year grandstanding.

WINDS OF CHANGE has its Central Asia news summary posted.