THERE’S SO MUCH GOOD STUFF OVER AT WINDS OF CHANGE TODAY that I can’t decide what to link to. Just go there and keep scrolling.

AUSTIN BAY: “Amsterdam helps explain the stakes in Fallujah — the Amsterdam of Nov. 2, 2004, where an Islamist radical murdered Dutch libertarian filmmaker Theo van Gogh.”

DEFENSETECH has been bought out by Military.com. Another blogger takes the Boeing. Congratulations!

DOUG KERN HAS A COLUMN responding to former CBS correspondent Eric Engberg’s claims that blogs aren’t up to CBS’s standards of accuracy.:

Speaking of droll endings, here’s mine: I’ve made it through this entire fisking without breathing a word about Rathergate. Two months ago, the blogosphere handed your former employer a humiliating and richly-deserved lesson in journalistic integrity. Yet despite CBS’ stupefying display of incompetence and negligence, and despite the fact that CBS still hasn’t formally disavowed those ridiculous forgeries, I haven’t rubbed your nose in that fiasco. I deserve a medal.

Read the whole thing.

HUGH HEWITT continues to side with Specter and thinks that the pro-life anti-Specter forces are shooting themselves in the foot.

SALON is pouring cold water on the stolen-election claims emanating from the nuttier sectors of the left.

UPDATE: More cold water, here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: And even more cold water, here.

DUTCH BLOG PEAKTALK REPORTS on Theo Van Gogh’s memorial service.

UPDATE: Related thoughts here and here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here, from the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: More here, from The Telegraph.

MORE: The Dutch appear to be getting tough. Well, you can’t have a tolerant country if you’re not willing to get tough with the intolerant.

STILL MORE: Bjorn Staerk writes:

When the US was attacked on 9/11, it struck many of us how few reprisals there were against American Muslims. There were some attacks, but for a country of 300 million, who had just experienced the largest terrorist attack in history, the display of restraint was encouraging.

I’m correspondingly discouraged by how the people of Holland have dealt with Theo van Gogh’s murder – one death in a country of 16 million. There’s been vandalism and arson, pig heads nailed to doors, the bombing of an Islamic school.

Nothing breeds that sort of freelance violence like the perception that the duly constituted authorities aren’t willing to protect the citizenry. People in the United States didn’t doubt that; people in the Netherlands have had reason to. As John Ashcroft retires, that’s a point that’s worth noting. Perhaps, given the tougher government response linked above, the Dutch government has noted it.

DEAN ESMAY HAS POSTED A RESPONSE to the John Perry Barlow post on the election that I noted yesterday.

UPDATE: Read this post, too.

JONATHAN LAST: “Hugh Hewitt is right: Leave Specter alone.”

WEEKEND AT YASSER’S: It’s been that way for a while, I think.

MICHAEL MCCONNELL AS CHIEF JUSTICE: Mike Rappaport thinks he’s filibuster-proof.

I still prefer Eugene Volokh, though.

SOME INTERESTING THOUGHTS ON THE SECESSION MEME, over at ChicagoBoyz. The analysis is based on Jim Bennett’s new book.

UPDATE: More on secession-talk here.

RANDY BARNETT TO REPLACE ASHCROFT? Sounds good to me. He’s got prosecutorial experience, a stellar reputation as an academic in constitutional law — where he’s been compared to a rock star for his reception at law schools — and he’d certainly reassure people that there’s no theo-con coup in progress.

DANIEL DREZNER writes on the Iranian Internet crackdown.

GEORGE W. BUSH: Militant secularist.

IT’S GEEKALICIOUS: A photoshop contest for tax lawyers.

PHIL CARTER REPORTS ON A DARFUR SUCCESS STORY: “I’m heartened that the U.S. has decided to commit what it can to the Sudan operation — even if it’s not enough in my opinion. Moreover, this model demonstrates that you don’t always have to go in heavy to make a difference.”

I’VE MENTIONED JAMES WEBB’S NEW BOOK BEFORE, and now I notice that Tom Wolfe is suggesting that Webb’s observations shed some light on the elections.

I finished the book and I thought the strongest chapters were the ones at the end, about his personal experience as a Vietnam veteran at Georgetown Law School.

SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT CLAIMS OF VOTER FRAUD, over at GlennReynolds.com. And I should have included a link to this response to Keith Olbermann’s overheated fraud-talk from the Yale Free Press.

UPDATE: More on Olbermann’s claims here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Soxblog chimes in with more on Olbermann.

HOW HILLARY WON AND KEPT THE PRESIDENCY, in this look back on the 2008 and 2012 elections.

UPDATE: Of course, she’ll have to beat a tanned, rested, and ready John Kerry!

MORE ON WEB VIDEO: Adam Keiper (who did the videoblogging from the Foresight Nanotechnology Conference I mentioned earlier) emails in response to the post below:

I know your interest in web video extends beyond liveblogging. Can I make one prediction and one observation?

First, the prediction: In the 2008 presidential election, the number of political video advertisements made by ordinary citizens and distributed online will equal or exceed the number of ads officially released by the campaigns. Not because of ad contests, like the MoveOn.org contest that resulted in the notorious Bush-as-Hitler ad, but just because ordinary people will be frustrated with slow pace of the parties’ and campaigns’ ad teams. With election-related footage easily available (thanks to C-SPAN, ifilm, the campaigns’ own websites, and other sources) and easy-to-use video editing software freely available, it will be hard to resist. (Some of this already started this year. After that footage of Edwards fussing over his hair and Bush giving the finger to the camera hit the Internet, ad-like parodies quickly appeared online, like this one set to the song “Rawhide,” and another one that I made in about an hour.) These ads will appear faster than the officially sanctioned ads; they’ll be funnier than the official ads; and they won’t be limited to the TV-commercial length of 30 or 60 seconds. And of course some candidates and some FEC officials will be very unhappy.

Second, the observation. Building on what they did with Jon Stewart a few days ago, Amazon now has launched Amazon Theater, “a series of five original short films available exclusively at Amazon.com as a free gift to our customers.” These little films have been made in cooperation with Ridley Scott’s production company, and in fact it looks like Ridley Scott’s brother, daughter, and son each directed one of the films. The first of the films, starring Minnie Driver, debuted today. And these films aren’t just little dramas to bring traffic to Amazon’s site: they are each exercises in intense product placement, and during the closing credits you can click to buy the products featured in the film. I don’t think any other online retailer could pull off something like this today, but in a few years this sort of intense product placement could become much more common online and on TV.

Interesting stuff.

IN 2004, IT WAS THE DASCHLE V. THUNE BLOG: But for 2006, there’s already the Dayton v. Kennedy blog. Talk about getting out of the gate early.

ECONOBLOGFEST: This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up.

JOHN HOOD:

Interestingly, while Bush slightly improved his standing among frequent churchgoers, by about a point in 2004, his support grew by 3 to 4 points among those attending seldom or never.

Yep, it was the atheist vote that really put Bush over the top in 2004.

I guess that’s why he’s always careful to speak respectfully of those who “choose not to worship.” More of Karl Rove’s genius!

IT’S THE ANNIVERSARY of both Kristallnacht and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Strangely, though, these events don’t seem to be what’s exciting the German media.

UPDATE: Some people remember.