RAJAN RISHYAKARAN has a link-rich Darfur news roundup.

JEFF JARVIS ON THE 9/11 COMMISSION:

Turns out that the Commission members “do not get involved in staff reports,” Kerrey said yesterday. So this report did not come from the “Commission.” It is shocking that the commission would allow this to happen. It is another indication of the Commission’s incompetence and the politicization of 9/11 it has allowed and fostered.

Safire gives five suggestions for how the Commission can regain its nonpartisan credibility.

Horse. Barn. Gone.

The Commission should be tripping over itself to try to set the record straight but I have no hope of that.

Ouch.

MELISSA SCHWARTZ LIKES the new Metallica documentary.

EUGENE VOLOKH calls Slate’s “Kerryisms” column “increasingly surreal.”

Maybe they’re just trying to make the “Bushisms” feature look fair by comparison. . . .

STILL MORE ON DARFUR, from Greg Djerejian.

“Don’t worry — we’ve got plenty of lawyers working on it now!”

Call me crazy, but sending some special forces trainers and a bunch of guns to stiffen the resistance would seem more likely to do some good.

UPDATE: A somewhat more positive take on the situation, here.

I’LL BE ON THE HUGH HEWITT SHOW in a few minutes, talking about Judge Guido Calabresi. Go here to listen online.

TACITUS OFFERS INSTRUCTION on White House PR activities.

DARFUR UPDATE: Here’s a roundup of newspaper editorials from the Center for American Progress. Meanwhile here’s another troubling news report:

Over one million non-Arabs have been displaced within Darfur, predominantly by attacks conducted by Arab Janjawid militias, who are reportedly allied to the government. The government denies involvement in the attacks. Up to 200,000 people are estimated to have fled to neighbouring Chad, while estimates of numbers killed vary from between 15,000 and 30,000.

The US Agency for International Development recently warned that a further 350,000 might die over the coming months from a combination of hunger and disease.

On Sunday, the head of the African Union (AU), Alpha Oumar Konare, flew into Darfur on a two-day assessment of the situation. Sudanese television reported that President Umar Hassan al-Bashir met Konare in Khartoum to discuss the situation. Bashir had earlier ordered security forces to disarm all groups, including the Arab militia blamed for perpetrating atrocities in Darfur, known as the Janjawid.

Progress is slow, if it exists at all. Bashir’s government is behind the massacres, and any cooperation we get from it will be forced, and will last only as long as the pressure is on.

THE U.N. AND ANTI-SEMITISM: Some pointed comments from Anne Bayefsky.

ONE REASON WHY I WOULD RATHER BE AN ACADEMIC than a federal judge is that academics can say whatever we think, and can make outrageous-but-clever points without worry, even if our logic goes astray. Judges can’t do that without risking their own reputations, and harming that of the federal judiciary.

This is something that my former law professor, now judge, Guido Calabresi, should have thought about more deeply before making remarks comparing Bush to Mussolini. From an academic, these remarks would have been unimpressive but unimportant. From a Senator, they would have been unfortunately overwrought and divisive.

From a federal appeals judge, Guido’s remarks (assuming they have been correctly reported) are not only tendentious and inflammatory, but will serve to further encourage those who call the federal courts politicized and overweeningly liberal. He’s a smart and thoughtful guy, but he should have been smarter and more thoughtful here.

(Via Andrew Sullivan).

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh delivers a much more vigorous spanking here.

It’s deserved, I’m afraid.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here, in response to Calabresi’s call for Bush to be voted out of office:

It is hard to take Calabresi’s structural argument seriously; the argument is a political one. . . .

In the past, I have advocated according judges broad free speech rights. I retain this position. In general, I think more harm comes from muzzling judges than from letting them freely speak, even on topics that intersect with politics. What constitutional issue does not have a political dimension, after all.

But Judge Calabresi’s remarks go too far. His speech constitutes an unambiguous violation of the Code of Conduct. He has improperly publicly declared opposition to a specific political candidate (and thereby implicitly endorsed another). Such brazen politicking from members of the federal bench cannot be tolerated.

Read the whole thing. In a later post, Eugene Volokh observes:

It’s possible (though far from certain) that, given the Supreme Court’s decision in Republican Party v. White (2002), that Judge Calabresi can claim his speech is protected by the First Amendment, notwithstanding Canon 7. Nonetheless, even if Canon 7 can’t be legally binding for that reason, it is (as I understand it) a pretty authoritative ethical judgment about how judges should behave, and thus an important ethical constraint. It seems that the comments at the American Constitution Society meeting transgressed that constraint.

It is my fond hope that a transcript will demonstrate that Calabresi was misquoted.

MORE: Jonah Goldberg observes:

Calabresi’s argument for ousting Bush seems like a silly and partisan rationalization for his desire to oust Bush. And, I should say, that demanding a popular uprising to “cleanse” the decadent democratic system in order to sweep your side into power is itself an argument a great many fascists would find very familiar.

Indeed.

STILL MORE: Howard Bashman has a related report.

PROF. BAINBRIDGE has taken a long and close look at Air America’s financial troubles. He thinks that we may see actions for fraud.

BILL HOBBS has annotated Maureen Dowd’s latest column with hyperlinks. The result is quite interesting.

Meanwhile Ann Althouse wonders what’s happened to Dan Rather: “Did Barbara Walters tutor him on how to do celebrity interviews? At my house, we were laughing quite a lot at Rather. He was speaking in an extra-slow, extra-sensitive way that might have been appropriate for addressing a child.”

Maybe he was trying to maximize his Amazon referral fees. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

THE SPACESHIP ONE LAUNCH WAS A SUCCESS:

A rocket plane soared above Earth’s atmosphere Monday in the first privately financed manned spaceflight, then glided back to Earth for an unpowered landing.

SpaceShipOne pilot Mike Melvill was aiming to fly 62 miles above the Earth’s surface. The exact altitude reached was not immediately confirmed by radar.

The ship touched down at Mojave Airport to applause and cheers at 8:15 a.m. PDT, about 90 minutes after it was carried aloft slung under the belly of the jet-powered White Knight. . . .

Burt Rutan, and the project was funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who would only describe the cost as being in excess of $20 million.

“Clearly, there is an enormous, pent-up hunger to fly in space and not just dream about it,” Rutan said Sunday. “Now I know what it was like to be involved in America’s amazing race to the moon in the ’60s.” . . .

NASA also is interested, said Michael Lembeck, requirements division director of the space agency’s Office of Exploration Systems.

“We need people like Burt Rutan with innovative ideas that will take us to the moon and Mars,” he said from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration headquarters. “Folks like Burt bring a different way of doing business.”

Rand Simberg was at the launch and has numerous posts about it.

Woohoo! Phil Bowermaster has numerous posts, too. And apparently they did pass the 100km/62mi mark that’s often used as the demarcation point between the atmosphere and outer space.

And Space.com reporter Leonard David has filed his report from the scene.

MORE: Dale Amon has another firsthand report.

I WONDER IF CLIPS OF THIS INTERVIEW will make it to America:

Bill Clinton loses his temper with David Dimbleby during a BBC television interview to be broadcast this week when he is repeatedly quizzed about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

The former American president, famed for his amiable disposition, becomes visibly angry and rattled, particularly when Dimbleby asks him whether his publicly declared contrition over the affair is genuine.

I suspect that they will.

EXTREME ECONOBLOGGING! This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up.

SYRIAN JAILED FOR INTERNET USAGE:

Abdel Rahman al-Shaghouri, 32, received a two-and-a-half year sentence for “publishing false news that saps the morale of the nation”.

He had been arrested in February 2003, and his computer equipment seized.

Four other Syrians are facing similar charges in cases which their lawyer, Anwar al-Bunni, said were “aimed at keeping Syria backwards”.

Indeed.

PRIVATIZING FOREIGN POLICY: Well, the State Department could certainly use the help.

FEATURE BLOAT: A microwave oven with a built-in voice recorder?

GUERRILLA MEDIA AND THE FUTURE OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT: Over at GlennReynolds.com.

JAMES LILEKS: “I ask my Democrat friends what they’d rather see happen – Bush reelected and bin Laden caught, or Bush defeated and bin Laden still in the wind. They’re all honest: they’d rather see Bush defeated.”