RANDY BARNETT: “In hindsight, I think that the creation of the Libertarian Party has been very detrimental to the political influence of libertarians.”

VARIOUS BIG-MEDIA TYPES have been suggesting that it’s time to ask some tough questions of bloggers. Frank J. is leading the charge.

HERE’S A COOL PHOTO from SKBubba.

FREE LEBANON PROTESTS in Los Angeles: The Lebanese expat community is large, rich, and spread around the globe. If they get behind this cause, it’s bad news for Assad.

UPDATE: BoiFromTroy has a photo of the L.A. protest. Will we see more of these?

HEALTHCAREBLOGGING: This week’s Grand Rounds is up.

IN THE MAIL: David Bollier’s Brand Name Bullies: The Quest to Own and Control Culture, about intellectual property overreach and the threat it poses to culture.

INSTAPUNDIT’S AFGHANISTAN PHOTO CORRESPONDENT, Major John Tammes, sends this report:

I went out with some of the 3/116th Infantry on a patrol today. When we got to Gojurkhel, the village elder told us that there was “some ammunition” by a field. I was thinking we were going to find some cartridges, or maybe a box of ammo somewhere. Wrong. Someone had dug out a tank round and dragged it over to a tree and left it there. We got the EOD team out to the village and got everyone well out of the way for what the old cartoon character, Marvin the Martian, would have described as an “Earth-shattering Kaboom.” The village was thankful we got rid of a very dangerous item, and we were glad to be rid of some IED fodder. Talk about win-win…

STEPHEN GREEN ISN’T SOLD on Bush’s Social Security reform plans: “Really, I should be easy to sell on SS reform. . . . And as a libertarian crank, I understand that me having control over more of my money is just plain right.” But he concludes, “Bush isn’t serious enough.”

Yeah, I’m with him on principle, but still in the “we’d all love to see the plan” phase on practice.

TIM BLAIR HAS A SCOOP, on White House media manipulation.

AUSTIN BAY SAYS THAT MARK STEYN IS WRONG ABOUT EUROPE:

Great writing –absolutely brilliant writing– BUT, wrong conclusion, unless you’re like the French and you think “Europe” is another word for “France.” . . .
The Iraqi election smacked Monsiuer Chirac and Herr Schroeder. The Chirac-Schroeder axis smells defeat and their “western front against America” is folding. The Iraqi people’s Jan 30 electoral show of force sealed Chirac’s defeat. Even in the benighted Bastilles of Paris and Berlin, those ink-stained indicators of democracy in the line of fire – purple fingers – point the way to the future.Besides, Chirac and Schroeder’s “Greater Europe” is simply too divided, as I point out in my column this week.

Read the column, too. I certainly hope that he’s right.

UPDATE: Reader Kjell Hagen emails:

Many Americans discuss this. My input as a European (comment also left on Austin Bay´s comment section):

As a pro-US, pro-Iraqi liberation European, I would say both are right, but mostly Steyn. Yes, it was a defeat for Chiraq and Scroder. And, yes, Chiraq is corrupt and unloved even by the French. But, the French and a large part of Europe envy and resent the US and its power, just as much as Chiraq does. This will go on. Europe will never play together in any significant way militarily, with the US. And Europe will never build any worthwhile military capacity, given the political, economical and technological limits that Europe faces.

NATO´s big idea was to stop the Soviets. It worked, and it is finished. What is left is the girlfriend-like rhetoric, that Steyn points out. I think we will see an environment which is more like pre-WWI, with each larger power playing as best it can in its own interest, and with alliances shifting on a case-by-case basis. E.g., we see that in Lebanon, the US and France are allied to get the Syrians out.

Sigh. I would hope for more maturity from Europe, but there’s not a lot of history in support of such hopes.

DEMOCRACY IN LEBANON: Jim Geraghty notices Lebanese crediting the U.S. invasion of Iraq for jump-starting interest in liberating Lebanon from Syrian influence:

“It’s strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq,” explains Jumblatt. “I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world.” Jumblatt says this spark of democratic revolt is spreading. “The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it.”

Those damn idealistic neo-cons. Don’t they realize that Arabs don’t care about democracy?

UPDATE: Via The Belgravia Dispatch, we get this:

I must say, that those who mock haven’t been paying attention to the empirical data that’s been piling up. First, we had the Afghan election last fall with this extraordinary turnout. Then we had the Palestinian election. Then we had the Iraqi election. We’re going to have a parliamentary election in Afghanistan in the spring. So this isn’t a theory anymore, this is actually happening on the ground in the Middle East and it is absolutely revolutionary, these free and fair elections.

It’s true, of course, as I’ve noted before, that democratization is a process, not an event. But the process is under way. We need to be sure it keeps going.

CHRIS MUIR 1, TED RALL 0.

Plus, Chris Muir can draw.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF EDUCATION IS UP, featuring education-blogging from all over.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE VANITIES IS UP: Branch out in your blog-reading.

MY BIONIC WIFE: Discussed in this week’s TechCentralStation column. She”s up and seems to be doing well this morning, with just Tylenol for pain. Now I get to take my daughter to the pediatrician for an ear infection followup . . . .

ED MORRISSEY AND THE DEACON are rejoicing in their recent choice of enemies. Just make sure they get the URL right . . . .

ANN ALTHOUSE is writing about fat and sin over at GlennReynolds.com.

“BLOGGERS RALLY FOR JAILED IRANIANS:” Nice that people are noticing. I hope it does some good.

MARK STEYN:

But, in the broader sense vis-à-vis Europe, the administration is changing the tone precisely because it understands there can be no substance. And, if there’s no substance that can be changed, what’s to quarrel about? International relations are like ex-girlfriends: if you’re still deluding yourself you can get her back, every encounter will perforce be fraught and turbulent; once you realise that’s never gonna happen, you can meet for a quick decaf latte every six – make that 10 – months and do the whole hey-isn’t-it-terrific-the-way-we’re-able-to-be-such-great-friends routine because you couldn’t care less. You can even make a few pleasant noises about her new romance (the so-called European Constitution) secure in the knowledge he’s a total loser.

Heh. The conclusion, however, isn’t funny at all.

WILL THEY CLAIM A FIRST AMENDMENT PRIVILEGE? More people are saying that CNN broke the law in the course of doing a story on guns. Given the complexity of federal gun law, that could easily be done with innocent intentions, of course. But it’s certainly an embarrassment — and perhaps more than that.

OUT OF THE EAST: Arthur Chrenkoff notes some significant developments in Eastern and Central Europe.

JEFF GOLDSTEIN IS ASKING for help.

HELEN, WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DISCHARGED ABOUT 2, is now home, having been discharged a bit after 8. This was a paperwork issue — as some people have observed: “So, paperwork takes time to fill out and you enter the world where everything seems to move like molasses (what happened to all that fast action you always see on ER? … sue Hollywood).”

I went over there after my class, waited until I had to go pick up my daughter, then went back after dinner. More waiting.

But she’s home now, propped up in bed checking her email on a laptop. She’ll have 4-6 weeks to fully recover, but she’s glad to be out of the hospital. So am I.

UPDATE: Docs hate the paperwork, too. The InstaWife, herself a health-care provider, of course, despises HIPAA.

POWER LINE remembers George Washington’s birthday, which is easy to forget these days. (It’s not even a holiday at my university). Still, there’s some revival of interest in Washington, spurred by Richard Brookhiser’s biography Founding Father, which I thought was excellent. I also recommend David Hackett Fischer’s recent book, Washington’s Crossing, which uses the famous painting as a way of exploring society’s changing attitudes.

MAN BITES DOG: A pro-Bush protest in Germany, scheduled for tomorrow.