AN IRAN ROUNDUP over at OxBlog. There’s a lot going on, and it’s just possible that another one of Wolfowitz’s dominoes is teetering.

Meanwhile Dale Amon notes more good news.

I’M FEELING BETTER ABOUT BUSH’S SPACE PLANS: Rand Simberg reports that they’re using prizes to promote private efforts. More of that, please.

EVERYONE SEEMS TO AGREE that spending is out of control. Here’s a suggestion on what to do about it.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Photon Courier points to some shameful budget-number fudging.

CARIBPUNDIT offers a roundup of Caribbean news.

MAARTEN SCHENK OFFERS the world’s shortest Fisking.

PHIL CARTER has a post on the Bush-desertion charges. So does MilBlog The Mudville Gazette, which references this post by an Air Force reservist blogger. And Bill Hobbs, who has been on this for a while, has a long post. And here’s one from SgtStryker.com, too.

UPDATE: Bryan Preston says that Kerry is smearing the whole National Guard.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Neal Boortz smells a double standard, and is taking no prisoners:

[T]he same people were trying to convince us in 1992 that Bill Clinton’s draft-dodging was no big deal. Surely the Democrats don’t think we’re that stupid. . . . What a bunch of lying, hypocritical phonies.

Expect more of this sort of thing.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: A Guardsman writes: “Every time a Bush hater attacks his military service record, they are slandering my dead comrades, people who died in military aviation serving their country.”

I think that the Democrats are mistaken to take this tack.

WHERE CORPORATE SCANDALS COME FROM: An “us-versus-them mentality” that’s all the fault of those strutting, insensitive men, writes Shoshana Zuboff.

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll emails:

Geez, Shoshana Zuboff is a professor at Harvard Business School? And people wonder why the enrollment of men in colleges is down.

Yes. One cannot make sweeping negative generalizations about women, as doing so is proof of bigotry, and would create a hostile environment besides. Men, it seems, are fair game.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Some lengthy comments from a female reader in Silicon Valley. Click “More” to read them — they’re very much worth reading. There are also some trenchant comments from Anne Haight, an IT professional who also sees flaws in Zuboff’s analysis.

(more…)

THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR POLICY ANALYSIS says that outsourcing is good for the American economy.

ANNE APPLEBAUM WRITES ON NORTH KOREA’S CONCENTRATION CAMPS and why hardly anyone seems to care.

A RESPONSE to the widespread crushing of dissent in America? It’s called the Academic Bill of Rights. I don’t actually approve of this approach, which just takes the “hostile environment” stuff that the Left uses to silence its critics and turns it around.

It might, however, inspire many academics to become enthusiasts for free speech and academic freedom once again.

SALON has a rather critical article on anonymous bloggers like Atrios and MWO. (Is MWO a blog? I guess.)

I understand anonymous blogging — and pseudonymous blogging — and I don’t think that they’re necessarily illegitimate. But it’s certainly true that I tend to take stuff from named bloggers more seriously. With a sufficient track record, that can change, of course. It does seem, though, that anonymity often affects the tone of a blog. Posting under your real name probably does encourage a certain additional degree of civility, in most people at least.

IT’S FULL-BORE GAY MARRIAGE IN MASSACHUSETTS:

“The history of our nation has demonstrated that separate is seldom, if ever, equal,” the four justices who ruled in favor of gay marriage wrote in the advisory opinion. A bill that would allow for civil unions, but falls short of marriage, makes for “unconstitutional, inferior, and discriminatory status for same-sex couples.”

The much-anticipated opinion sets the stage for next Wednesday’s constitutional convention, where the Legislature will consider an amendment that would legally define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. Without the opinion, Senate President Robert Travaglini had said the vote would be delayed.

The soonest a constitutional amendment could end up on the ballot would be 2006, meaning that until then, the high court’s decision will be Massachusetts law no matter what is decided at the constitutional convention.

I’m fine with that. Obligatory horserace pundit point: It probably won’t help John Kerry to escape the Massachussetts Liberal label — though he did, in what he himself describes as “an act of courage,” vote against the Defense of Marriage Act, so presumably he’s just as fine with it as I am!

UPDATE: Here’s a link to the opinion letter.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Darren Kaplan thinks this is bad news for Kerry. Maybe yes, maybe no.

A CONFLICT OF INTEREST DOUBLE STANDARD? (“What about when the chief spokesman of the U.S. State Department is dating and marries CNN’s Chief International Correspondent? Where were the pundits and academics then?”) It does seem as if Maria Shriver is being treated differently than Amanpour was.

As Peter Morgan and I argued in The Appearance of Impropriety, such double standards are extremely common within the “ethics” establishment.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE VANITIES IS UP! Don’t miss the many interesting posts from bloggers you may not have known about.

HMM:

A 7-pound block of cyanide salt was discovered by U.S. troops in Baghdad at the end of January, officials confirmed to Fox News.

The potentially lethal compound was located in what was believed to be the safe house of Abu Musab Zarqawi, a poisons specialist described by some U.S. intelligence officials as having been a key link between deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and the Al Qaeda terror network.

Cyanides salts are extremely toxic. According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory, exposure to even a small amount through contact or inhalation can cause immediate death.

Just how toxic, I believe, depends on which cyanide salt it is.

Meanwhile the Senate ricin is confirmed as just that, though the source appears to be domestic.

THE WOLFOWITZ DOMINO THEORY SEEMS TO BE WORKING:

DAMASCUS, Syria – More than half a million Syrians demanded political and economic reform in a petition to be handed to President Bashar Assad, a human rights group said Saturday.

Some 600,000 citizens, including intellectuals, lawyers and human rights activists, have already signed the document, the Committees for the Defense of Democratic Liberties and Human Rights in Syria said.

As they say: faster, please.

THE COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW BLOG is defending the Bush Administration against charges of record deficits: “As a percentage of the gross domestic product — which many economists consider a better measure than simple dollar amounts — the currently projected deficit, at 4.2 percent according to the Congressional Budget Office or 4.5 percent according to the Bush administration, is equal to or smaller than those recorded in six years during the 1980s and 1990s.”

I’d still slash nondefense spending if it were up to me, but this is useful perspective.

BLACKLISTING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN? John Rosenberg points to news accounts that the University is threatening contractors who support the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative. If true, these are deeply upsetting.

UPDATE: According to this report, the University of Michigan denies that this is going on.

JACK O’TOOLE: “Howard Dean appears to have spent approximately $207 for each vote he’s received to date.”

JIM PINKERTON ON THE FCC:

These points won’t satisfy the Repressive Right, but even the FRC and other right-tilting authoritarians ought to remember that its Republican/conservative friends won’t always be running Washington. Someday, maybe sooner than we know, it will be the Politically Correct Left that is reviewing all shows. And when the political/ideological wheel turns, the same state machinery that the FRC wants to use to wallop its foes will be used instead to wallop the FRC and its friends. As Ronald Reagan said many times, “A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take it all away.”

Indeed it is.

THE BBC — one week after Hutton:

The pre-recorded interview came to an abrupt end when Mr Westwood removed his earpiece and walked out.

Mr Westwood complained to the BBC that the interview had been “edited misleadingly” and gave the impression he was trying to avoid answering difficult questions.

After investigating the complaint, the BBC admitted it had acted wrongly and issued an apology.

Progress? Let’s see.

MICKEY KAUS:

Rep. Billy Tauzin’s decision to resign his congressional chairmanship to accept a highly lucrative position as lobbyist for the big drug companies–this just after he helped write the Medicare prescription drug bill–stinks so badly I think he just might be shamed into giving up the job.

Hmm. I’m shorting the Congressional-shame market myself, but you never know. . . .

PAKISTAN NUCLEAR NEWS: This is interesting:

The disgraced founder of Pakistan’s nuclear programme has informed investigators that he supplied rogue states with nuclear technology with the full knowledge of the country’s ruling military elite, including President Pervez Musharraf, a friend of the nuclear scientist was reported as saying yesterday.
Abdul Qadeer Khan has confessed to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea, senior officials said on Monday.

Many analysts and most Pakistanis suspect the government of seeking to pin the blame on Mr Khan for a potentially lucrative trade of which, they say, the country’s all-powerful army chiefs must have been aware.

According to an unnamed friend who spoke to the Associated Press, the nuclear scientist last week told government investigators: “What ever I did, it was in the knowledge of the bosses.”

On the one hand, he’s a disgrunted former employee. On the other hand, I suspect he’s telling the truth. . . .

GOOD GRIEF: I blinked, and now the Post is showing Clark ahead in Oklahoma, with Edwards just behind and Kerry trailing in third. I think Jarvis is right — the race will be open enough to keep the pundits happy for the next week.

UPDATE: John Ellis thinks that Edwards is the big winner in the all-important Media Primary tonight.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Looks like Ellis is right. And Jarvis, too! Kerry’s the big winner. Edwards has done very well — a win in South Carolina, a strong second in Missouri while everyone else is in the dust, and either first or (as it now appears) second in Oklahoma. Clark’s alive, but just barely. Dean can last another week — and if he wins, he’s back in the game. Otherwise it’s probably over for him.

In that vein, read this post by Clay Shirky on the Dean campaign.

KARL ROVE CALL YOUR OFFICE: Right after you read this advice from Virginia Postrel:

If Bush loses the election, it will be because he doesn’t talk to the American people often enough or in enough detail. Hiding in the White House and issuing the occasional cliche does not constitute making your case. He lets his opponents shape not just the high-level discussion but the shorthand ideas that filter down to the general public: Hence “Bush lied” has become conventional wisdom. Or take the immigration-reform program, which addresses a serious issue in a serious way. When the only person you sell the policy to is Vincente Fox, people naturally think you’re at best pandering to Latino voters–who, incidentally, have a much greater interest in citizenship than President Fox, who doesn’t want to lose constituents.

Indeed.

UPDATE: On the other hand, here’s a different view of Bush’s strategy.