HUGH HEWITT WRITES that when Old Media fail to credit the blogosphere it’s a form of plagiarism.

To me it’s more like the sincerest form of flattery. . . .

UPDATE: In a related post, Virginia Postrel has a request for campaign journalists:

I don’t have to spend my time tracking down sources who might be able to shed light on John Kerry’s claims about his adventures in Vietnam and Cambodia.

I don’t have to do these things because I don’t want to and because they are not my job. But there are a lot of fine journalists who do have the job of political reporting, they are not doing it when it comes to Kerry’s past, and they are making our whole profession look bad. Come on, folks. If you can’t find out any independent sources on Kerry’s own story, at least report the “he says-he says” allegations. And help out your audience with some context: Dig up some more-or-less unbiased (or at least nonpartisan) sources to provide some historical context for the bizarre Cambodia story. Never mind John Kerry specifically, what were U.S. operations during that period? Are any of his various accounts plausible and, if so, which ones? Or give readers some background on the procedures for awarding medals during Vietnam. There was a lot of medal inflation and, presumably, some politics in how medals were awarded. What, if anything, does the broader context tell us about Kerry and his critics?

Yes, the Big Media folks, with their alleged reserves of professionalism and research, haven’t exactly covered themselves with glory on this story. It’s as if they don’t want to know the truth.

IRAQI BLOGGERS ALI AND MOHAMMED from Iraq the Model are cranking it up a notch by running for the Iraqi National Assembly.

(Here from Kausfiles? See the update at the bottom.)

THE INSTADAD ON KERRY: My dad’s a Kerry supporter, an Iraq war opponent, and a rather devoted Bush critic. But when we were talking the other night, he offered his worries regarding Kerry.

He thinks that Bush will cut and run in Iraq within six months of the election. (I disagree, unless it’s via Tehran). But — though I stress he still supports Kerry — he says that his big worry about Kerry is that Kerry will be like LBJ, anxious to prove his manhood through greater military involvement rather than risk looking weak by withdrawing.

When we had this conversation a couple of weeks ago, I was skeptical. And I guess I still am. But lately, I’ve started to wonder if he isn’t on to something. (He often is.) People in the pro-war camp worry that Kerry will pull a cut-and-run. And it’s true that Kerry has been known for his anti-war sentiments, and actions.

But it’s also true that Kerry really wants to be known as one badass mofo. Look at the secret hat. (“He pointed his finger and raised his thumb, creating an imaginary gun. . . . He smiled and aimed his finger: ‘Pow.'”) The war stories. The combat home movies. The constant photos of Kerry with Harleys, guitars, guns, and soldiers. The military posture of the DNC acceptance speech and salute. If Kerry were a Republican, the bargain-basement Freudians among the punditocracy would be having a field day. (As Joan Vennochi wrote: “Clearly, ‘modest hero’ will not be his epitaph.”)

So what does this mean? Lyndon Baines Johnson was another President with a silver star and a short combat career who seemed to feel that he had a lot to prove. Might Kerry’s rather clear desire to be seen as a tough guy make him a surprisingly resilient warrior? Or might it backfire, as it most likely did with LBJ?

I don’t know. A tough-guy presidency under Kerry seems unlikely to me, but then so did a major George W. Bush commitment to nation-building four years ago. Should people in the anti-war camp be worrying that a President Kerry won’t pull a cut-and-run? I don’t really think so, but it’s just perverse enough to seem plausible. . . .

UPDATE: Oliver Willis seems to think that the above post means that I think Kerry is “too tough.” Er, no. Read it again, Oliver.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Donald Sensing has related thoughts. He also notes: “Harkin himself claimed to have battled Mig fighters over North Vietnam while a Navy pilot. He was a pilot, but never went to Vietnam.” Funny, I haven’t seen that mentioned anywhere else in relation to Harkin’s recent remarks.

SPECIAL KAUS UPDATE: Mickey Kaus is linking to this post in reference to LBJ’s Silver Star. I think he meant to link to this post instead, which cites this column by Roger Franklin drawing a Kerry / LBJ connection, and this lengthy CNN assessment of LBJ’s Silver Star.

I will note, though, that even if Kerry’s harshest critics are taken as true, his Silver Star isn’t in the LBJ league in terms of bogosity. The CNN narrative is quite interesting, though, and there are parallels in terms of behavior, as opposed to military record, between the two.

There’s even a reference to “rare home movies, from a camera Johnson carried on that tour.”

So why didn’t I just tell Kaus to fix the link? Because judging by his post yesterday he’s driving across Utah at the moment. I, on the other hand, am comfortably ensconced in my study. I’d rather be driving across Utah!

OUTSOURCING AND EMPLOYMENT: Daniel Drezner looks at talk of a skills deficit.

TWO AMERICAS: Two bicycles.

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh comments: “Poverty, people say, causes crime; but what many people miss is that crime causes poverty.”

MORE PLAME SUBPOENAS at the New York Times.

THE WHITE HOUSE is bloggier than I had realized.

A SERIOUS LOGO ERROR: Heh.

Or perhaps I should say D’oh!

VALEDICTORY: Colby Cosh’s goodbye to Walter Cronkite is cruel.

JOHN KERRY VS. BOB KERREY: Some people have trouble telling the difference:

The ”band of brothers” was organized by Kerry, according to this book. It tells of a 2003 telephone call to Adm. Roy Hoffmann, who commanded swift boats in Vietnam, telling him he was running for president. Hoffmann, mistakenly thinking it was former Sen. Bob Kerrey, ”responded enthusiastically.” Once the admiral realized it was John Kerry, ”he declined to give Kerry his support.”

Apparently, even some people at the Kerry Campaign are having trouble, as they’re crediting John Kerry with Bob Kerrey’s service as Vice Chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

Fortunately for everyone, we didn’t wind up with a Kerry/Kerrey ticket — though at least then such confusion would matter less. . . . And hey, if it were a Kerrey/Kerry ticket I might even vote for it.

I’VE BEEN MEANING TO POST SOMETHING on this item by Bjorn Staerk about the growth of anti-Islam comments on a lot of blogs.

As I was posting shortly after September 11, there are lots of different flavors of Islam. It’s actually playing into the hands of the Ladenites to assume that Wahhabi extremism represents the authentic face of Islam. Islam has many traditions, and Wahhabism is actually a fairly recent one, and it is rather more extreme than it is authentic.

That said, it would be useful if those more moderate Muslims would take a more aggressive role. Some are — see, for example, the Free Muslim Coalition Against Terrorism — but we could use more of that, no doubt. But to the extent that these people encounter comments urging that Islam be “banned,” they’re likely to feel less, rather than more, motivated toward reasonableness.

UPDATE: More thoughts from Eugene Volokh.

MORE TERROR ARRESTS IN BRITAIN: And look at the charges:

Eight men arrested in anti-terror raids have been charged with conspiring to commit murder and launch radioactive or chemical attacks.

One of them was also charged with having plans which could have been used as the basis for a terror attack on the New York Stock Exchange, the IMF in Washington and Citigroup in New York.

The men were among 13 arrested on August 3 in a series of raids by the Anti-Terrorist Branch and MI5 in London, Bushey in Hertfordshire, Luton in Bedfordshire, and Blackburn in Lancashire.

I believe this is fruit of the Khan arrest / deception program.

LOTS OF READERS are sending me links to this story on Walter Cronkite, in which he warns of those awful Internet folks who are ruining journalism with their carelessness and willingness to smear the innocent via unfounded accusations.

Cronkite — as is typical of old journalists when they talk about the prevalence of fact-free smears on the Internet — doesn’t fortify his claim with any actual examples. But let’s look at the golden age of journalism at Cronkite’s own network, back before this newfangled Internet thing ruined it, as recounted by Dungeons and Dragons creator Gary Gygax:

So it goes for a couple of years, gets really popular, then in the early ’80s a backlash begins. People are saying that the game encourages devil worship and causes kids to commit suicide. . . .

In many ways I still resent the wretched yellow journalism that was clearly evident in (the media’s) treatment of the game — 60 Minutes in particular. I’ve never watched that show after Ed Bradley’s interview with me because they rearranged my answers. When I sent some copies of letters from mothers of those two children who had committed suicide who said the game had nothing to do with it, they refused to do a retraction or even mention it on air. What bothered me is that I was getting death threats, telephone calls, and letters. I was a little nervous. I had a bodyguard for a while.

Goodbye, Walter. Journalism is unlikely to suffer in your absence.

(Second link via John Cole, who observes: “At least 60 Minutes has maintained their standards throughout the years.”)

UPDATE: Unsurprisingly, Cronkite’s piece is getting a generally poor reception throughout the blogosphere.

JEFF JARVIS: ” I drank Coke all my life. I’m not fat. And I’m 50. Nya nya nya.”

MY TECHCENTRALSTATION COLUMN is up. I confess error.

JAMES LILEKS looks at recent developments in fashion and predicts a recession: “Does this make you want to spend money? No, didn’t think so. Sell your Marshall Field’s stock. The fools are back in charge.”

DAM BREAKS: The L.A. Times has mentioned the Kerry Christmas-in-Cambodia story. On the other hand, according to Times- watcher Patterico, “The article is pro-Kerry spin, pure and simple. The strategy of the article is apparent: before actually setting forth a single detail of the Swift Boat Vets’ allegations, the article carefully lays the groundwork to prepare the reader to be skeptical.”

He has an extensive critique of the article, which is well worth reading. What’s interesting is that this explicitly pro-Kerry oped by Joan Vennochi in the Boston Globe is actually more honest and straightforward in its reporting of the facts:

Kerry’s statements about Cambodia do have traction for opponents. He has referred to spending Christmas or Christmas Eve 1968 in Cambodia and coming under fire. At the time Cambodia was neutral and supposedly off-limits to US troops. “I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia,” Kerry said in 1986 at a Senate committee hearing on US policy toward Central America. “I remember what it was like to be shot at by the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there, the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared — seared — in me.”

The Kerry campaign now says Kerry’s runs into Cambodia came in early 1969. “Swift boat crews regularly operated along the Cambodian border from Ha Tien on the Gulf of Thailand to the rivers of the Mekong south and west of Saigon,” Michael Meehan, a Kerry adviser, said in a statement last week. “Many times he was on or near the Cambodian border and on one occasion crossed into Cambodia at the request of members of a special operations group.”

Answers like that aren’t good enough. Kerry put his Vietnam service before voters as the seminal character issue of his presidential campaign. He should answer every question voters have about it — and he should answer them himself.

It’s an interesting commentary on the state of journalism, when partisan opeds provide less spin — even on behalf of their own team — than ostensible “news” stories do.

More thoughts on the L.A. Times coverage here: “Incredibly, the LAT ignores the fact that the Kerry camp has already admitted that Sen. Kerry has ‘misremembered’ the dates of his alleged forays past the Cambodian border.”

It’s hard to keep up with your guy’s latest spin points in this Internet era. I’m not surprised at the spin myself, but spin is better than a blackout.

UPDATE: More in the Houston Chronicle:

The same news media that demanded George W. Bush release his National Guard records — and went over them with a microscope — have shown an appalling lack of interest in John Kerry’s military service. And as it turns out, there are far more legitimate questions about the latter than the former. . . .

To those of you who say such questions are unseemly, consider that John Kerry’s principal claim on the presidency is that he served four months and 11 days in Vietnam. OK, fine. Let’s examine the records — all the records, which, unlike Bush and contrary to popular perception, Kerry has not released — and have a debate. We would be if it were George W. Bush. The media would see to it.

All Kerry has to do is to release the records. Why won’t he? And why isn’t the press calling him on it.

Okay, I know the answer to both questions, I guess.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt observes:

How odd for papers to carry opinion pieces relating to controversies that their readers have never read about in those papers, but which the opinion pieces presume they have heard or read about elsewhere.

In fact, the secondary nature of the old media is becoming quite obvious. Reporters, pundits, talking heads etc all know about the magic hat and the now discredited claims of Christmas Eve in Cambodia. . . . Other shoes will drop soon, and the papers are fighting the battle of two weeks ago. Very weird, but very revealing of why the papers are dying and why some of them, like the Los Angeles Times, cannot add market share even with a monopoly position in their markets –they have nothing to sell to anyone not part of their ideological world.

Ouch. No wonder Walter Cronkite is upset. Meanwhile Roger Simon says the L.A. Times article is a “more place holding than reporting,” and observes how far behind the curve they are.

MORE: Ouch!

GIVING UP ON NATION-BUILDING: Reader Bob Kingsberry emails:

Bush is bringing our troops home from Germany because he realizes American-style democracy will never succeed there. After freeing the German people from a brutal dictatorship and protecting them from Soviet tyranny for almost fifty years, Bush is finally willing to admit that Germans aren’t capable of contributing to the security and prosperity of the world.

I wish I could argue with this. . . . Related thoughts here. And Mickey Kaus thinks Richard Holbrooke needs message control.

JOHN KERRY ON CIVIL LIBERTIES: An analysis from Reason:

This isn’t the first time Kerry and Ashcroft have been at odds over civil liberties. In the 1990s, government proposals to restrict encryption inspired a national debate. Then as now, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and electronic privacy groups locked horns with the DOJ and law enforcement agencies. Then as now, Kerry and Ashcroft were on opposite sides.

But there was noteworthy difference in those days. Then it was Sen. John Ashcroft (R-Mo.) who argued alongside the ACLU in favor of the individual’s right to encrypt messages and export encryption software. Ashcroft “was kind of the go-to guy for all of us on the Republican side of the Senate,” recalls David Sobel, general counsel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

And in what now seems like a bizarre parallel universe, it was John Kerry who was on the side of the FBI, the National Security Agency, and the DOJ. . . . Responding directly to a column in Wired on encryption that said “trusting the government with your privacy is like having a Peeping Tom install your window blinds,” Kerry invoked the Americans killed in 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. “[O]ne would be hard-pressed,” he wrote, “to find a single grieving relative of those killed in the bombings of the World Trade Center in New York or the federal building in Oklahoma City who would not have gladly sacrificed a measure of personal privacy if it could have saved a loved one.” Change a few words, and the passage could easily fit into Attorney General Ashcroft’s infamous speech to the Senate Judiciary Committee in late 2001.

Read the whole thing.

HERE’S ANOTHER ARTICLE on Orrin Hatch’s dumb “INDUCE” Act:

INDUCE is supposed to target copyright infringement via illegal downloads, especially on peer-to-peer (p2p) networks like Kazaa and Grokster. The bill would create a new cause of action against anyone who “induces” such infringement — with “inducement” to be determined on a case-by-case basis, using an unspecific “reasonable man” standard to evaluate the presence of intent to induce a copyright violation.

The problem is, this concept has no real limits. Suppliers of any technology that allows transmitting, copying, or sharing of material protected by intellectual property law could be accused of “inducement.” That list is potentially endless: PC’s, broadband service, dial-up service, scanners, printers, mp3 file systems, CD recorders, and so on. INDUCE’s subjective standards of proof would have a dramatic chilling effect on the development, marketing, and distribution of new and existing technologies (once an accusation makes it to court, costs start to pile up quickly).

This doesn’t count as championing small government, does it?. Plus — at a crude political level, but one that’s apparently not crude enough to be obvious to the Republicans — this is a subsidy to an industry that consistently opposes Republicans. How stupid is that?

HUGH HEWITT continues to blog up a storm.

BEST OF THE WEB is back, after an extended hiatus.

MICHAEL BARONE’S LATEST COLUMN is about the Kerry Christmas-in-Cambodia story.

UPDATE: More columnists on the subject, here and here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Beldar says that the SwiftVets are pursuing a tar baby strategy.

DIGITAL CAMERAS AND LEGAL EDUCATION: Law school starts this week (though I’m on sabbatical this fall) and an incoming student who’s also an InstaPundit reader sends this email:

Since you have as a theme on your website the wonders and utilities of digital cameras, I thought you might find this particular use interesting.

I just got out of the morning session of orientation at UTK Law School (so you’ll be seeing me soon enough) and we all shuffled upstairs to the bulletin board. While all of my classmates were busy jockeying for position around the assignments, I just pulled out my Canon S400 and took snapshots of the board.

Instead of spending ten or fifteen minutes scribbling furiously, I spent my time outside sipping an ice cold Coke. Ahhh.

It pays to be an early adopter!

UPDATE: And here’s a blogging UT 1L, with more digital photography!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Related thoughts here.