MORE ON GAVIN NEWSOM and the San Francisco gay marriage issue: Larry Solum has a post on some of the issues raised, and Jacob Levy has a piece in The New Republic on the Federal Marriage Amendment.

UPDATE: Arthur Silber points to (and summarizes) this brief in support of the San Francisco position. I’m off to a faculty meeting and haven’t had time to read it, but you may find it interesting.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s a link to the brief for the other side.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Justin Katz disagrees with Levy.

OKAY, THE GUY WHO INTERVIEWED ME FOR THIS STORY was nice enough, but I questioned then whether his characterization of InstaPundit was right:

The stance is a departure from that of most conservatives, a division that supporters of gay marriage hope to exploit.

“I don’t see the response to gay marriage as unified at all on the conservative side,” said Glenn H. Reynolds, a supporter of gay marriage rights and publisher of the generally conservative blog Instapundit.com.

If you support gay marriage, drug legalization, and legal abortion — but you also support the war — then you’re a “conservative,” I guess. That seemed to be his position, and it seems to be a lot of people’s. As Art Leff said, all definitions are permitted to the definer, so long as they’re clear.

UPDATE: Paul Boutin comments.

JEFF JARVIS notes that Iranian weblogs are probably more important than the American blogs that we hear more about.

INTERESTING PIECE ON SYNESTHESIA: I’m interested in this. I’m quite a synesthetist myself, experiencing sound in visual terms. (Based on my experience, this is true of most sound engineers, and many musicians). The sound of falling rain “looks” like polkadots. A kick drum hit looks kind of like an overstuffed pillow, with the shape and size varying according to tone. Electric guitars look like multicolored spaghetti.

I suspect that this is actually useful, allowing more brain processing power to go to work on a problem. I can “see” differences in sound (like the difference between two nearly-identical delay times) that I can’t really hear directly. I think lots of people who work with sound have similar experiences, though I wonder whether this is developed through the work, or whether people with those characteristics tend to go into such things. Perhaps some of both, though I’ve experienced sound this way since I was a kid.

HERE’S A LENGTHY BLOG-DISSECTION of the Associated Press’s coverage of the National Guard flap, in which the Associated Press comes off quite badly indeed. Of course, that should be no surprise to people who have been paying attention.

SCRAPPLEFACE:

Democrat National Committee (DNC) chairman Terry McAuliffe today said that presidential candidates John F. Kerry and John Edwards have gone AWOL from the Senate, missing almost every Senate vote in the past three months, and perhaps longer. (2/5/04)

Al Kamen, today, in the Washington Post:

Seems staff for Democratic front-runner Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, created quite a fuss by demanding that a Meredith Broadcasting TV crew be thrown out of a hearing in which Small Business Administrator Hector V. Barreto came to testify on the president’s budget. . . .

So why all the static from Kerry’s committee staff? Was this to prevent video footage of Kerry gone AWOL?

Once again, Scrappleface’s Scott Ott is writing the lines. Kerry’s just living them.

THE 1000 FIGHTING STYLES OF DONALD RUMSFELD: My favorite is “Hidden Monkey Hands.” (Via Tim Blair).

UPDATE: Don’t miss Crouching Tiger, Hidden Defense Secretary, either. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Several readers point out that Rummy does not use the Shaolin Buddha Finger. Hey, you have to hold something in reserve.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Oops, I was wrong. He does!

HERE’S AN INTERESTING history of Presidential space initiatives, recommended by Rand Simberg.

KAUS has your roundup on post-Wisconsin spin. Plus, bonus digs at Joe Conason! Meanwhile Wonkette isn’t impressed with the way Kerry interrupted Edwards’ speech: “Something Gore would do.” And the question on everyone’s mind: “Did Dean bow out? We’re not sure because his speech was so schizo.”

UPDATE: Moderate voice: “What seems to be happening is this: the more voters see of Edwards, the more they seem to like him.” And Sean Hackbarth has been looking at the exit poll data in more detail.

KERRY’S BEHIND BY A BIT at the moment, but Fox just projected him the winner in Wisconsin. Even if that holds up, I think that this keeps Edwards very much in the game, which will make Doug Weinstein (who’s big on Edwards, not so big on Kerry) very happy.

Even more importantly, it will keep pundits happy, which is why I’m sure that this will be spun as an Edwards victory, regardless.

UPDATE: Lots of pundits are hinting darkly that the Democrats may be glad to have Edwards if “something” comes up to derail Kerry. Is this what they’re talking about? Or is there some other shoe that may drop?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Moxie has started Republicans for Edwards — that means he’s got the “big Mo!”

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: We’ll be hearing a lot about “delegate-rich states” over the next few weeks. And it occurs to me that although Howard Dean was talking tonight about moving the agenda on the war, in fact he demonstrated that being loudly antiwar gets you a distant third place in the Democratic primaries. Not much there.

The Kerry spin is that he did better among committed Democrats, and Edwards did better among Independents and Republicans. Er, okay — but which votes will a Democrat need to pick up in order to win in November? I’m just, you know, asking. . . .

Kaus has more.

BEN CHANDLER WINS IN KENTUCKY: Dodd Harris says it was a lock all along, but I think it’s entirely because of the blogads!

UPDATE: Reader David Russell emails:

I wouldn’t give all the credit for Chandler’s win to Blogads. I would give Chandler’s advantage to name recognition, he was in a shortened ten week race against a state senator . Chandler ran for Governor in November and lost, and was previously the state’s attorney general for eight years and state auditor for four years before that.

The credit for the win doesn’t go to blogads but to the simple fact that people are familiar with Ben Chandler’s name.

Er, I was kidding about the blogads. But they didn’t hurt! And note that Chandler has already updated the ad to reflect his win. (“The blogosphere has set the stage for the 2004 elections.”)

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hey, what a coincidence — Josh Marshall is crediting blogads, too! (“The campaign budgeted about two grand for blog advertising. And my understanding is that by today they had raised close to $100,000 from contributors who linked through from those blogs on which the campaign was advertising. . . . Now, obviously that’s exciting news for proprietors of blogs looking to open up revenue streams from advertisers.”) No conflict of interest here. . . .

AIRBRUSH AWARD: Ed Driscoll catches the BBC in a rather major unacknowledged revision. Not unusual for the Beeb, but quite startling when something has been quoted in so many other outlets.

This example seems to be getting major attention.

HAITIPUNDIT has lots of news from Haiti. Unfortunately, it’s nearly all bad.

ANDREW SULLIVAN IS FISKING JOHN KERRY in The New Republic:

I think we have an answer here: no war in Iraq; no war anywhere; just law enforcement measures and cooperation with the French, Russians, and Germans. All the problems of the world stem from U.S. policy. Nowhere does Kerry say anything about the threat of Al Qaeda, or the designs of the Syrians or Iranians, or of Islamist terror-states more broadly. These real threats just don’t seem to register on his radar screen. If this is the Democratic candidate’s recipe to tackling the nexus of global terror, then he will be creamed in the fall. And he’ll deserve to be.

Read the whole thing. I’d desperately like for Kerry, or whoever the Democratic nominee is, to put forward a strong enough stance on the war that I don’t have to be a single-issue voter. Looks like I’m doomed to disappointment.

JAMES LILEKS has been reading the papers from 1992:

And in the back of the A section, day after day: Iraq. Iraq. Iraq. Iraq blocks inspectors, Iraq admits inspectors, Iraq blasts food-for-oil program, Iraq fires on US planes, Iraq protests to Security Council, Iraq, Iraq. If anyone seriously thinks Iraq never had WMD, you need to go back to 1992 and read the stories about UN press releases concerning the newly constructed “mustard gas incincerators,” OKAY? There was even a story about Iraq promising to institute democratic reforms. It quoted Qusay. He was quite hopeful about giving the citizens a voice. (Of course, that voice said ARRRRGGHIIIIEEEE Turn it off I confess! ) There was a story about Kuwaiti citizens hoping Bush won, because they were, you know grateful. There were stories about Iraqgate, too. You remember that. US loan guarantees to Iraq might have been diverted to the Iraqi nuclear weapons program. The Democrats wanted a Congressional investigation.

You want to know why we invaded Iraq in 2003? Go back and read the papers in 1992. And you’ll find this quote:

“’If they’re such whizzes at foreign policy, why is Saddam Hussein thumbing his nose at the rest of the world?’”

Albert. Gore. Junior.

Read the whole thing.

THIS STORY says that Cheney’s got the VP slot for 2004.

I still think that Condi Rice would be better.

ED CONE says that the Democrats are ahead in blogging.

EUGENE VOLOKH DISAGREES with the Roy Moore / Gavin Newsom comparison set out below. On the other hand, Jacob Levy has a different position.

DEMOGRAPHY AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: Daniel Drezner has some interesting observations.

ASPARAGIRL IS BACK, and with her husband Scott Ganz has a new blog, the “Protocols of the Yuppies of Zion.”

AN INTERESTING DATUM: My Constitutional Law class today was devoted to gay marriage — following up on yesterday’s treatment of the Bowers v. Hardwick and Lawrence v. Texas sodomy cases, I assigned the Vermont and Massachusetts gay marriage cases. At the beginning of class I asked for a show of hands on whether gay marriage would be generally available within ten years. The answer, almost unanimously, was “yes.”

I don’t know how valuable this is as a predictor of what will happen, but it’s an interesting indication of what people think will happen.

UPDATE: Clayton Cramer emails:

Since 60% of the population disapproves, I suspect that what your class thinks will be the law reflects either their belief that judges take precedence over majority rule (which is actually the case), or their hopes and aspirations. Even among young people, there isn’t overwhelming support for gay marriage–and I would suspect that many of those young people, as they age, will become quite a bit more conservative on this subject–just as I have done.

Well, I asked people what they expected, not what they wanted. I’m pretty sure my students are more supportive of gay marriage than the general population, though I don’t know how they stack up against law students, or twentysomethings, generally. But I’m very much aware that gay marriage does worse in the opinion polls than it does in elite opinion. (Or mine!) What I’m not sure about, though, is the intensity of that opposition. If it’s intense, this will be a big election issue. If it’s not, it won’t. So far, it’s not looking that intense — but it’s early yet.

ANOTHER UPDATE: On the poll, reader Jim Chandler emails: “Perhaps they simply wanted to agree with your stand on the subject, for obvious reasons.”

Well, I suppose that’s possible, though I don’t see any particular tendency of students to tell me what they think I want to hear (our grading is anonymous, which reduces the rewards of sucking up), and I actually wound up defending Scalia’s point (in Lawrence) that legislatures don’t have to carry their positions to their logical conclusions, as courts do.

I STILL PREFER THE OLD NAME of “Metabolic Dominance.”

ERNEST SVENSON has a lengthy report from last week’s “digital democracy teach-in” at the Emerging Technologies conference.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS’S SCOTT LINDLAW is at it again. After the NASCAR debacle, which the Columbia Journalism Review blog called a “cheap shot” and a “stretch,” you’d think he’d have more sense than to go out of his way to fill a purported news story with gratuitous Bush-bashing. Obviously, he doesn’t.

Does AP?

UPDATE: Ah, look who Lindlaw is hanging with: “Veteran journalists Helen Thomas and Daniel Schorr join Associated Press reporter Scott Lindlaw in a lively discussion on how covering the White House has changed over the years.” Um, it’s gotten worse? Meanwhile Dave Hill emails:

Bush has been visiting military bases (including NG bases) for some time. That’s one of the duties of a president in wartime.

Now, suddenly, it’s become de rigeur to remind everyone of the Bush AWOL meme every time he interacts with the NG, reframing the visit as trying to “move beyond” the story (as opposed to simply continuing an already-established pattern).

“The president’s visit is bound to serve as a reminder of a story that consumed the White House last week ….” Well, yes, it’s *bound to* if you keep *reminding us* of it.

This is unusually transparent partisanship, even by the not-very-demanding standards of Big Media in an election year. The good news is that it is transparent.

But hey, maybe Lindlaw will do a story on Kerry: “There were women in the room where Kerry spoke, something bound to serve as a reminder of a story that consumed the Kerry campaign last week. . . .”

At any rate, Lindlaw’s coverage goes beyond the sort of institutional bias that The Note pointed out last week. This is just campaigning against Bush, in the guise of reporting.

MORE: Reader Eric Rochelson emails:

It is amazing how he manages to both bring up Bush’s guard service yet again AND work in a Kerry quote on how he (Kerry) will support the military better than Bush. The online story had 5 paragraphs of guard service and 4 paragraphs of Kerry propaganda out of 23 total paragraphs. So 40% of the article about the President visiting a military base was “Bush bad/Kerry Good” and had nothing to do with the visit itself.

What’s really sad is that this undoubtedly went through editors first. So it’s not just Lindlaw who’s campaigning here.

STILL MORE: Military blog The Mudville Gazette isn’t impressed with Lindlaw’s reporting — or his writing.

Like I said, what’s really sad is that this undoubtedly went through editors first.

MORE STILL: Jim Miller looks at the polls and suggests that the National Guard issue has actually helped Bush. Meanwhile Michael Ubaldi says that Lindlaw wasn’t always this biased.

AND EVEN MORE: Hey, the link above now goes to a different (and somewhat more balanced) story by Terence Hunt. But you can still read the Lindlaw story here.

AND EVEN MORE STILL: The Lindlaw story above seems to have been edited, according to an email from Greyhawk, and I think he’s right. Here’s what seems to be the original version.

BUT I THOUGHT NANOTECHNOLOGY WAS IMPOSSIBLE — AND YET:

It’s useful to remember, though, that nature was nano before nano was cool. The latest evidence for this comes from researchers who have discovered that some cells create nanotubes to connect with others.

The researchers, from the University of Heidelberg in Germany and other European institutions, observed what they called tunneling nanotubes among embryonic human kidney cells and normal rat kidney cells.

The structures were 50 to 200 nanometers in diameter (at the upper end, about one 100-thousandths of an inch) and up to several cell diameters in length. Time-lapse videos show that the tubes form in several minutes when a slender protrusion from one cell contacts another cell.

Interesting. And in a self-replicating system, no less! Somebody tell Mark Modzelewski!

UPDATE: Speaking of this stuff, I’ve been remiss in not mentioning that Robert Freitas’ latest book on Nanomedicine is out. Volume I got a very positive review in The Lancet.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Phil Bowermaster writes: “Five years away is a reasonable time frame to start thinking about business applications. The Nano Business Alliance in general, and Modzelewski in particular, are running out of time to get their thinking straight on this issue.”

It’s not because people haven’t brought the matter to their attention.