SEVERAL PEOPLE think that this post, making fun of Sullivan for his “Bush suck up watch,” was badly done. On looking at it in the morning, I decided they were right, and have taken it down. Suffice it to say that I think a “suck up watch” ill befits someone who once praised Bush far more lavishly than the people currently being pointed to. I decided long ago not to try to analyze the reasons for Sullivan’s shift, and that was clearly the right approach, which I regret departing from.

A RINGING DEFENSE OF JIMMY CARTER:

As to whether or not Carter’s comments provide rhetorical cover for the terrorists—of course not! Carter is simply voicing his dissent, and if a former US president can’t openly criticize his government—publicly, overseas, during wartime, and on the basis of a narrative of events that an investigative panel has already concluded simply does not represent the facts on the ground—well, then the terrorists have already won.

I’m convinced.

HOWARD DEAN blames Bush’s right-wing Supreme Court for the Kelo decision. “A poster at Kos was stunned, saying: ‘There’s simply no way that Dean’s comments can be spun to make them even remotely defensible.’”

ANOTHER JOURNALIST UNHAPPY AT BEING QUOTED: This kind of turnabout will only get more common, of course.

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll:

Thomas’s meltdown–staggeringly ironic, as it comes from someone who spends her days praying for (and preying upon) similar gaffes from the president and his press secretary–is only the latest in a string of examples of reporters who specialize in playing “gotcha games” with their interviewees, and acting like hypocrites if the tables are ever turned.

Indeed.

AUSTIN BAY writes about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. My grandfather, who walked across Europe only to be shipped to the Pacific for the invasion of Japan, was deeply relieved by the atomic bombs.

UPDATE: Much, much more here.

INDCJOURNAL looks at infighting over stem cells in the GOP.

FUNERAL FLAG-BURNING UPDATE:

FAIRFIELD, Ohio — Two teenage boys were charged Thursday with burning 20 small American flags set up in honor of a soldier who died from injuries suffered in the Iraq war.

Police said the boys apparently did not know the significance of the flags they took from the yard and set afire under a car belonging to the soldier’s sister-in-law. The vehicle was destroyed.

So I guess they just thought they were burning flags, and a car, belonging to an ordinary patriotic American, rather than the family of a dead serviceman. I guess that’s somewhat less disgusting. It’s possible — though not clear — from the story that this was apolitical vandalism, though (contra Rehnquist in the flag-burning case) I think flag-burning, like cross-burning, is pretty much always meant to send a message.

UPDATE: On the other hand, here’s a characterization of the event as “a confluence of youth and stupidity.” I guess I shouldn’t underestimate the power of that combination. . . .

And this observation seems spot-on: “I can only guess that the parents are thinking about looking to move to another county right about now.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Bryan McBurney emails:

If these idiots had burned a cross or spray painted a swastika on a Jewish Community Center they would surely get some kind of politically correct re-education/sensitivity training. In fact, others at their school (assuming they attend school) who had nothing to do with it might get the same treatment. I am not generally in favor of that stuff but, if we must have it for racially/ethnically motivated stupidity, why not mandatory patriotism re-education for anti-American or anti-military stupidity? I am not entirely pleased with myself for coming up with this idea, but if we have one why not the other?

I’m against both, but the door has certainly been opened. And those who are creeped out more by one or the other might ask themselves why.

RENEE BLODGETT has a lot of roundups from the BlogHer conference. Just keep scrolling.

DAVID BROWN IS SOUNDING THE BIRD FLU ALARM in the Washington Post.

Public health officials preparing to battle what they view as an inevitable influenza pandemic say the world lacks the medical weapons to fight the disease effectively, and will not have them anytime soon.

Public health specialists and manufacturers are working frantically to develop vaccines, drugs, strategies for quarantining and treating the ill, and plans for international cooperation, but these efforts will take years. Meanwhile, the most dangerous strain of influenza to appear in decades — the H5N1 “bird flu” in Asia — is showing up in new populations of birds, and occasionally people, almost by the month, global health officials say.

If the virus were to start spreading in the next year, the world would have only a relative handful of doses of an experimental vaccine to defend against a disease that, history shows, could potentially kill millions.

Read the whole thing. And then worry a bit.

UPDATE: Reader Jim McMurry emails:

The worries about bird flu are past the realm of “could be a threat” and have entered the phase of the ticking time bomb and we cannot see the time marker, nor know when it will go off in the USA. I am betting on October 2006, but it could come sooner.

Well, we don’t know. A major flu pandemic is pretty much inevitable sooner or later. On the other hand, many of the casualties from the 1918 flu were people who were weakened by TB, meaning that perhaps lethality won’t be as bad this time. But I certainly think that we need to be working hard on antiviral drugs, and protocols for the rapid production of new vaccines, not only to be ready for bird flu but to be ready for all kinds of potential natural and unnatural outbreaks.

SHOULD WE ELECT SUPREME COURT JUSTICES? That’s the proposal floated by Richard Davis in his new book, Electing Justice: Fixing The Supreme Court Nomination Process.

As you can see from my just-published review of the Davis book, I’m somewhat skeptical.

ABA JOURNAL: MedMal Ruling Leaves Doctors Reeling:

As any constitutional law student knows, rational basis review is the lowest of the low.

But it was high enough for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to wipe out as an equal protection violation a cap on some medical malpractice damages. And it was enough to leave the state’s medical establishment reeling.

The court also cut off federal appeals by deciding the case solely under the Wisconsin Constitution, effectively painting physicians and their legislative allies into a corner as they pondered a fix.

I keep telling people about the growing importance of state constitutional law. Here’s more evidence.

I’VE BEEN QUITE CRITICAL OF SECURITY CAMERAS in the past. Now Heather MacDonald takes the opposing view.

SPACE LAW PROBE is a blog about space law that’s worth your time, if you’re interested in that topic. And you should be!

People have occasionally emailed to ask when Rob Merges and I plan to update our space law textbook, Outer Space: Problems of Law and Policy. He and I have talked about it, but it probably won’t be for a few more years. Things have changed, but not quite enough for a new edition.

FIGHTAGING: “The frustration of Jason Pontin, editor of the MIT Technology Review, over the inexplicable reluctance of A-list bioscientists to deliver a good scientific critique of Aubrey de Grey’s Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) has born fruit.”

UPDATE: Related post here.

ALPHECCA NOTES a victory for civil rights in the Senate. And Countertop Chronicles has more.

THE CARNIVAL OF NEW JERSEY BLOGGERS IS UP!

So is the Carnival of Cordite!

UPDATE: And don’t miss this week’s BritBlog Roundup!

MUGABE’S GENOCIDE: Gateway Pundit has a letter from Zimbabwe.

MICKEY KAUS: ” Everyone’s saying that welfare causes terrorism! Does polygamy cause terrorism too?”

BRUCE ROLSTON:

I’m concerned about the quality of history teaching at Stanford. David Kennedy’s piece likening the current American army to the Hessians is, simply, completely uninformed on the topic of Hessians.

Enlightenment follows. And there’s this: “PS: Kennedy’s description of the adventurism of Napoleon as an example of the threat posed by standing armies is historically illiterate, as well. . . . If anything, the Napoleonic period shows the dangers to the world of countries that mobilize their entire citizenry, which is what Kennedy appears to be arguing for.”

MICHAEL FUMENTO reports on press negativity about Iraq, and tells me something I didn’t know:

One of the reporters who was gnawing on Yost’s right leg and working her way up to the pelvis, Knight-Ridder Baghdad Bureau Chief Hannah Allam, challenged him to go to Baghdad, adding facetiously “it might be too far for Mr. Yost to travel (and I don’t blame him, given the treacherous airport road to reach our fortress-like hotel).”

So she’s admitting she stays in a heavily protected hotel, which means she’s also in the safety of the Green Zone. She doesn’t say that all civilians taking the airport road travel in a vehicle that’s so heavily armored it would take a nuclear improvised explosive to stop it.

As it happens, I did go to Iraq. I was embedded with the Marines at Camp Fallujah in hostile Anbar province, nearly lost my life, and returned with a colostomy bag as a souvenir. But before that I walked and drove through the streets of Fallujah, which for some odd reason fell off the media map right after the major blood-letting ended. I reported back on progress in reconstruction of buildings and providing electricity and water to parts of the area that NEVER had it. And I can’t begin to count the e-mails I got from soldiers and Marines thanking me for telling it like it is.

Yost was right; media coverage on the war is terribly slanted – such that it may threaten our ability to win. This was much more clearly shown in the reaction to his piece than in the column itself.

Read the whole thing. (Via Faces from the Front, who manages to get outside the Green Zone).

ANN ALTHOUSE isn’t happy with Pajamas Media — she likes Henry Copeland’s blogads better: “I don’t like pajamas anyway. I want to blog naked. With Henry.”

I’m pretty pleased with Pajamas myself, and have agreed — subject to clearing up a few fairly minor issues — to join them. I’ve already been giving them some informal advice on editorial issues and my big interest — lining up actual blog-reporters in remote places. But I think the blogosphere’s big enough for lots of different approaches. Even the naked ones. Now that’s a way to build traffic.

TURMOIL IN CARACAS: Miguel Octavio has the scoop.

SHAREHOLDERS ARE SQUEEZING CISCO over human rights in China.

MY EARLIER POST ON RAY KURZWEIL is engendering some skepticism from Tom Smith:

As a religious person, I believe some weird shit, but I just don’t believe that in 50 to 100 years, humans are going to fuse with machines and be a trillion times more intelligent. I. don’t. think. so. If that were in the cards, I think we would have already developed a cure for back pain, lo-cal ice cream that tastes good, an automatic way to both write and grade exams, a cure for baldness, and television worth watching. And yet, no, we have not.

I was reading one of these “the singularity is coming” guys the other day, and he said in the future, we will have wireless modems planted in our heads so we can be plugged into the internet at all times. . . . Do I really want the thought planted in my brain every five minutes that my penis needs to be bigger or I need to tell some Nigerian my bank account and social security number?

I think if we could ask the great coming post-human intelligence whether the singularity is coming, It would say, uh, no, I don’t think so. But do I have a low interest re-fi for you.

You’ll know the Singularity is here, Tom, when your penis really does start getting larger . . . .

MARTYRDOM AS ART, and plans for world conquest. Trey Jackson has video and a transcript of a speech by Iranian President-Elect Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad.