ROBERT MUSIL notes some buried poll secrets.

MY GUARDIAN COLUMN for this week is up, in which I look at the prospects for a Kerry Administration.

SORRY FOR THE LIMITED BLOGGING TODAY: I had a coauthor in town and spent 12 hours on manuscript revisions.

JEFF JARVIS NOMINATES ME for President. If elected, I promise to nominate Eugene Volokh for the Supreme Court.

UPDATE: Reader Steven Wells emails:

I’m glad to hear that you would nominate Eugene Volokh to the Supreme Court if elected. I think he would do a better job than either of the nominees of the two major parties. Would you consider, though, Randy Barnett? I think his new book Restoring the Lost Constitution shows considerable promise for Mr. Barnett as a Supreme Court justice.

I like Randy as an Associate Justice, but I see Eugene as a better candidate for Chief — he’s more of a consensus builder. Meanwhile, several readers wonder if I can deliver the necessary Senate votes. My response is simple — in the face of the massive political breakdown needed to elect me to, well, any elective office at all, who knows? Anything’s possible!

MORE: Okay, this email is a bit scary:

I actually think I’m going to write you in for President. As I look at the Republican party, it just doesn’t look like me anymore. And the Democrats are even farther away. I consider myself fiscally conservative, socially libertarian (a practical, not loony one), and a hawk on the war on terror, and I worry that there is no one to represent my interests. We desperately need a party that represent these views at a national and local level. So, Glenn, I’m asking for your permission to write you in. I think with your following we can actually effect a small, but real change. If we didn’t believe this were the best path, we wouldn’t believe it at all. I’ll leave you with:

If not you, who? If not now, when? Stand up and unite us all of shared mind and principle.

When it comes to writing me in, I think the appropriate quote is “This calls for a really stupid, futile gesture. . . .” Sorry, but this election we’re stuck with the choices we’ve got, and denial isn’t an option. Even though I agree with the non-me-related part of the passage above.

ANOTHER UPDATE: What about this ticket? I’ll run on both of ’em. (Reminder via Jay Solo).

NEAL STEPHENSON answers readers’ questions over at Slashdot.

BLOGGERS TALK ABOUT blogging and objectivity.

UPDATE: More thoughts on transparency and objectivity here.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE is liveblogging Jim Lindgren.

A BUNCH OF PEOPLE have emailed me with the suggestion that Kerry is not qualified to be President under the 14th Amendment. I haven’t regarded that as worth blogging about, but Eugene Volokh has a lengthy and interesting post on the subject. The blogosphere: a thousand points of light!

SPEAKING OF BRANCHING OUT IN YOUR BLOG-READING, don’t miss this week’s Carnival of the Vanities.

AUSTIN BAY’S LATEST COLUMN looks back at the Zarqawi memo from last year:

Zarqawi’s intercepted message to his Al Qaeda comrades admitted that his terror band was “failing to enlist support” inside Iraq and was “unable to scare the Americans into leaving.”

Zarqawi lamented “Iraq’s lack of mountains in which to take refuge,” which many commentators read as an echo of his experience in Afghanistan with Al Qaeda.

Zarqawi’s document also suggested a strategic solution to his group’s failure: launch attacks on Iraqi Shias and start a “sectarian war” that he suggested would “rally the Sunni Arabs” to his cause. This war against Shiites, Zarqawi thought, “must start soon — at ‘zero hour’ — before the Americans hand over sovereignty to the Iraqis.”

Despite orchestrating scores of savage attacks, Zarqawi has failed to ignite that sectarian war. Early in the summer, suicide car bombers (presumably under Zarqawi’s aegis) began attacking Iraqi police and National Guard soldiers as frequently as they targeted Shias and coalition troops. This suggested to some analysts that Islamic radical Zarqawi was cooperating with elements of the “secular Iraqi resistance” — former members of Saddam’s regime and holdouts in the Sunni Triangle. If that alliance existed, it was one of convenience, not long-term compatibility. That terror offensive, however, has failed to deter recruits. Iraqi security forces continue to grow in size and strength.

Zarqawi lacks political support and is increasingly desperate. His declaration of solidarity with Al Qaeda is both an emergency plea for Islamist reinforcements from Syria and Saudi Arabia, and the shrill cry of a true believer just rational enough to recognize he’s caught in a political and military vise.

Read the whole thing. More evidence that the campaign isn’t working can be found in this quote:

One of those who survived the blast was a national guard soldier named Qusay Hassan. He spoke with anger following the death and maiming of his comrades, and his spirit seemed unbroken.

“I will not kneel before these terrorists,” Mr. Hassan said. “If I don’t join the army, who is going to defend the country from the terrorists?”

Indeed. More here:

Foreigners are mystified at how Iraqis continue to join the police and army, despite the car bombings and other attacks directed against them. It’s not just for the money. For many of these recruits, there is a dead relative, murdered by some Sunni Arab thug working for Saddam. It’s civil war, and the coalition wants to prevent it from turning into an orgy of revenge. What gets little reported in the West is the enthusiasm among Iraqis, and especially members of the government, for just bombing Fallujah into rubble.

That would undercut the “it’s Vietnam all over again” story line. And it’s not. Does this mean that everything’s hunky-dory in Iraq? Nope, and — as even the rather negative Andrew Sullivan notes, you don’t need me to tell you that, when every attack gets headline treatment. But stuff like this, which provides perspective, doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

As I wrote a while back, the problem with the constant barrage of coverage on the latest mortar attack or car bombing is that it’s not only a ceaseless assault of bad news, but it’s both unrepresentative (because it’s only the bad news) and, just as bad, it’s probably the wrong bad news. If there are serious things going wrong, they’re not so much that people who don’t like us are trying to attack us, as that more serious things (like the CERP matter I’ve mentioned here regularly) are going unaddressed. And the ceaseless negativity of the media treatment — coupled with the media’s rather obvious desire to make Bush look bad before the election — leads to this problem I discussed a while back:

To make an Amartya Sen sort of point, what’s unfortunate about the slanted (and lazy) nature of most of the reporting is that it doesn’t point out real problems in ways that can let them be fixed, and that will bring them to the attention of people who can fix them. When the coverage continues to come from the same tired Vietnam template, applied to a very different situation, it’s not terribly useful and I suspect that it’s largely tuned out by folks in the White House who assume (more or less correctly) that it’s intended to hurt them.

But that means that they have to rely on the reports of people in the chain of command, who have their own agendas. The press is supposed to be a check on that sort of thing, but it’s fallen down on the job in postwar Iraq. Fortunately, the Internet has taken up some of the slack, and is (I’m being hopeful here) spurring the Big Media folks to take a second look at what they’re doing.

Sadly, my hopes there have gone largely unfulfilled. Perhaps that will change after the election. More on these issues, and why I report the stuff I do here, in this post.

DUANE PATTERSON looks at the politics of NASCAR and the Bush campaign.

A NEW LAW PROFESSOR BLOG devoted to antitrust law. Very cool.

I MUST BE BIG MEDIA NOW: Howard Kurtz is hosting a discussion on the question of whether I’m biased. Here’s the answer: Yes! What’s the point of having a blog if you can’t spout your own opinions? And why would anyone expect anything else?

UPDATE: Reader Jose Sorzano emails:

Regarding the silly charge that you are not “objective”: I read you precisely because of a) your judgment. You selection of items to be highlighted is always interesting. It is obviously not “value-free” but the results of your choices almost always (one exception is nanotechnology) makes me want to follow the links to learn more about it. I can’t recall when I was disappointed. b) your analysis. It is also inevitably imbued with your values which is manifested in the resulting product which is clear, sober, balanced, rational, and a pleasure to read. Thanks for the effort you put into it.

I hope most readers realize this. Not everyone is likely to be as happy, but that’s okay, too, since there are lots of other blogs out there. I see the blogosphere as a pointillist painting where lots of people are putting up the dots. Or, perhaps, some better metaphor that makes the same point. . . At any rate, I don’t try for “balance” in the traditional sense because unlike a broadcast outlet or a newspaper, I’m not a quasi-monopolist, but one of millions of bloggers. You don’t like my take on things? When I suggest you go elsewhere, I’m not being hostile — well, usually. It’s just that there are a hell of a lot of good blogs out there, and if you don’t like mine there’s sure to be another one that’s more to your taste. And that’s a good thing. It’s why I’m always telling people to branch out. And I really mean that.

Meanwhile, I’m sorry to disappoint Andrew Sullivan by not being “more abusive.” But I’ve actually tried quite consciously to moderate my tone in the run-up to the elections, because I think that there’s quite enough abuse out there. I realize that this only serves to underscore complaints that I lack fire. To which I can only respond that if you’re coming to a blog written by a law professor in search of “fire,” well, you really need to read some other blogs. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Various people weigh in, here and here.

PEOPLE WONDER why I’m not writing more about the polls. The answer is that I don’t know what to think about them. I’m inclined to agree with Stephen Green: “The more I read the polls, the less I know. . . . I don’t know how this thing is going to pan out. Neither do you. But right now, I feel as though the electorate is going to play all of us pundits – amateur and professional – for fools.”

EUGENE VOLOKH has been increasingly critical of Slate, lately. Here’s his latest comment.

THE BLOGOSPHERE GROWS UP: First of two pre-election columns on this subject, over at TechCentralStation.

FEARMONGERING on Social Security and the draft: William Safire thinks the Kerry campaign is looking desperate. Then again: “Ethicists, pundits and other goo-goos can all tut-tut about scare tactics, but the big question for political strategists is: do they work? We’ll know in two weeks.” There’s then a rather odd segue to the Judith Miller case.

Read this column, too. The trouble with stuff like this is that if it does help Kerry win, it leaves him in a weak position. Kerry’s platform consists of a few things he probably can’t deliver on, like national health care, and of one big thing: not being George W. Bush. Neither is likely to wear well over the course of a term in office.

UPDATE: It seems the Kerry campaign has discovered the strategic uses of vaporware: “Now it turns out that some of the Kerry commercials are being written, edited, produced and put on satellites for the purpose of generating news articles. They have not actually aired on any network or local station — except in reports about the Democrat’s campaign.”

As many tech companies have learned, this works best when you have cooperative folks in the press.

UNSCAM UPDATE: Claudia Rosett finds Kofi Annan’s huffy denials of corruption unpersuasive:

In dealing with Saddam, Mr. Annan no doubt had a lot to keep track of. There are many questions yet to be answered about Oil for Food before final blame is parceled out. But if the idea is to save the U.N. itself from becoming the world’s biggest banana institution, there are serious and important questions to be asked about why Secretary-General Kofi Annan finds it “inconceivable” that in the U.N.’s core debates, rampant graft might matter.

Indeed.

BILL STUNTZ WRITES on terrorism and the Mob:

By now, everyone in America knows that John Kerry has compared fighting terrorism to prosecuting organized crime figures for gambling and prostitution. The comparison has attracted a lot of criticism. Actually, it’s a pretty good analogy — but it leads to a different lesson than Kerry believes.

Read the whole thing.

JOHN HAWKINS has a Kerry quote roundup that’s very interesting.

JOHN KERRY’S BAND, THE ELECTRAS, has a new music video out, featuring John Edwards.

LOOK WHO SEEMS TO BE MISSING AND UNACCOUNTED FOR. I’m not shocked, but it’s surprising that we’re not hearing this kind of analysis from Peter Jennings.

WEB VIDEO AND THE ELECTIONS: Some thoughts over at GlennReynolds.com.

SPEAKING OF ALTERNATE HISTORY: SunnyBlog looks at a world where we hadn’t invaded Iraq:

Democrat Presidential nominee John Kerry delivered a speech today condemning President Bush for failing to invade Iraq in the follow-up of military action against the Talaban and Al Qaeda in Afghanastan. “Leaving this tyrant in power in contravention of numerous United Nations resolutions is unconscionable,” Kerry told the Veterans of Foreign Wars. “He has left available a base of operations and a source of supply and money.”

Kerry went on to criticize the war against terror as “stalled” while the real threat to America, “Saddam Hussein’s Iraq goes untouched.” Kerry said, “People are murdered daily in Baghdad and throughout the country. Rape rooms are a tragic reality. Torture chambers are full as Saddam’s sons carry out their sadistic impulses on the helpless and hapless victims of this regime. President Bush has done nothing as this brutal dictator takes the money from the Oil for Food to build palaces while his people go without food…

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: More alternate history, here.

EFFORTS TO KEEP STOLEN HONOR off the air would seem to be backfiring: “John Kerry Tried to Stop You From Seeing This Film.”