AN AFGHAN BLOG: Via Jeff Jarvis.

IRAQI MERCHANTS BOYCOTTING SYRIA — this is interesting:

After what we’ve seen on TV, we thought that it’s totally unpatriotic to trade with that country; the Syrian government is benefiting from trade with Iraq and using the money they get to fund the criminals who slaughter our people. Not only that; the ordinary people themselves started to prefer products from other origins over Syrian products so we thought that it’s better to search for alternatives for the boycotted items.

This is bad news for Assad, I suspect.

UPDATE: It’s especially interesting in conjunction with this observation from Michael Young:

One should also observe the pragmatism of the Syrian business class. The Assads and Makhloufs are not indispensable to its survival, and any movement away from the regime will have to pass through the private sector at some stage. With the economy searching for a lifeline, and privatization and banking reforms hardly advancing at all, there is surely disgruntlement there. I’m not suggesting a coup is in the offing (who knows?), but the pillars of the Assad regime are eroding: the Alawites are worried; the business class, particularly Sunnis, were disturbed by the Hariri assassination and are, clearly, making less money today; and the political elite as a whole may soon lose a very profitable venture in Lebanon.

Hmm.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: “The Issue the GOP Simply Must Get Right.”

IS DAVID HOROWITZ RECYCLING AN URBAN MYTH? Deadtree organs do that all the time, but that’s no excuse.

UPDATE: Apparently, it’s not Horowitz who’s being inaccurate, here.

VIRGINIA POSTREL:

the spat between Susan Estrich and Michael Kinsley over whether the LAT runs enough women op-ed writers (a.k.a. enough of Estrich’s friends) keeps getting nastier. Estrich has revealed herself as a poorly read, though well-connected, hack–people who are interested in ideas know who Charlotte Allen is–while Kinsley has demonstrated why magazines are generally more interesting than newspapers: Magazine editors (and Kinsley is one, despite his current job) are paid to have vision and confidence, not to bend to pressure groups.

Be sure to follow the link, and read the “pink boxes” stuff.

UNSCAM UPDATE: This isn’t inspiring confidence that the Volcker Report is getting to the bottom of things:

The committee probing the Oil-for-Food (search) scandal says it will correct omitting the name of a U.N. official involved in the international controversy who has a close relationship with the executive director of the panel.

It’s well known that the Volcker commission’s executive director, Reid Morden (search), and Louise Frechette (search) have had a “longstanding professional relationship” for 30 years, according to the Independent Inquiry Committee — dubbed the “Volcker commission” after its chief, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker (search).

Morden was Canada’s deputy minister of foreign affairs in the 1990s. Frechette is U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s No. 2 at the international organization. But Frechette also was Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations at the same time Morden was her boss.

Hmm.

TOM MAGUIRE ON BANKRUPTCY AND LEGAL ACTION:

Guided by the notion that sunlight is the best disinfectant, here is a simple suggestion that left and right ought to be able to accept, if not lovingly embrace: require credit card issuers and consumer lenders to prominently disclose information about (a) penalty rates and fees, and (b) the proportion of clients currently paying those fees.

For example, suppose the next letter you received saying “You are Pre-Approved” also told you, on the front of the envelope, that the penalty rate was 30%, that monthly late fees were $35, and that 8% of current card-holders paid late fees or penalty interest at some point in the last three months. Suddenly, that tired old financial planning advice to be near a wastebasket when you go through the mail sounds very sensible.

And for the credit card issuers with a “kinder, gentler” marketing strategy, there will be an incentive to waive a few fees, and to be a bit less aggressive in collecting penalties, if the benefit will be monthly numbers with better consumer appeal.

Interesting.

UPDATE: More here. I’ve noticed the silence of people like Dave Ramsey and Clark Howard, myself.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Rick Brady emails that Dave Ramsey hasn’t been silent:

Glenn, I heard Dave Ramsey a couple of nights ago rail against the bill as being bought and paid for by predatory lenders. He had very harsh words for the Republican Party in falling for it and accused them all of having their votes bought. He’s not exactly silent on this issue.

Glad to hear it, and glad to be wrong. I listen sometimes, and haven’t heard him mention it, and I couldn’t find anything on his website. I wonder if Clark Howard has weighed in?

MORE: Ask and ye shall receive. Reader Brian Kerth emails: “I heard Clark Howard do his own little rant on the Bankruptcy Bill on Thursday. He is definitely not a fan and urged his listeners to be cautious of the outcome. He hasn’t posted anything on it that I could find.”

Me neither. These guys need to get blogs!

ROB SMITH’S MOTHER HAS DIED: Please send your condolences.

PUBLIUS HAS A LEBANON NEWS ROUNDUP posted.

CULT UPDATE: My earlier post brought a lot of suggestions, but most people agreed that the iPod Shuffle is fine for audiobooks. And quite a few people reported that their 9-year-olds had no trouble with the interface. Some recommended an iPod Mini now that the price gap has closed, but I don’t think it’s shock-resistant enough to ride in a 9-year-old’s backpack. I like the flash-memory aspect, and the cheapness, of the Shuffle. And, yes, there are other alternatives, but my daughter is fully indoctrinated into the cult, now, so they’re not really alternatives at all . . . .

ASK AND YE SHALL RECEIVE: Here’s the link to this week’s Carnival of the Recipes.

MORE TROUBLE FOR WARD CHURCHILL:

University of Colorado officials investigating embattled professor Ward Churchill received documents this week purporting to show that he plagiarized another professor’s work.” . . .

Dalhousie began an investigation after professor Fay G. Cohen complained that Churchill used her research and writing in an essay without her permission and without giving her credit. Although the investigation substantiated her allegations, Cohen didn’t pursue the matter because she felt threatened by Churchill, Crosby said.

Crosby said Cohen told Dalhousie officials in 1997 that Churchill had called her in the middle of the night and said, “I’ll get you for this.”

Sheesh.

UPDATE: This may scuttle a buy-out deal:

Allegations that University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill plagiarized and threatened a professor in Canada scuttled negotiations Friday for a financial settlement that would have ended Churchill’s employment at CU. . . .

The News has also learned that a prominent American Indian artist told law enforcement authorities in New Mexico that Churchill threatened violence against him.

There’s much more in the article. And there’s more coverage in the Denver Post. (Via Cliopatria.)

ANOTHER UPDATE: Dave Kopel writes:

For all the ink devoted to the Ward Churchill case, the Denver dailies have done virtually nothing to investigate the dysfunctional campus academic culture which led to the Churchill fiasco.

He goes on to raise a number of questions that he thinks deserve answers.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF CORDITE — a collection of gun-related posts — is up. And was there a Carnival of Recipes this week? Nobody sent me the link.

MYSTERY POLLSTER OFFERS AN ANALYSIS of Gallup’s new poll on blogs. Key bit:

No, the collective reach of blogs is nowhere near that of television or print media, but focusing on the relatively small percentages misses the rapidly growing influence of the blog readership in absolute terms. The 12% that say they read political blogs at least a few times a month amount to roughly 26 million Americans. That may not make blogs a “dominant” news source, but one American in ten ads up to a lot of influence.

All the more so when you look at which ten percent it is.

LAW PROFESSOR MIKE RAPPAPORT has thoughts on filibusters.

DANIEL DREZNER WONDERS why Jeffrey Sachs’ plan for ending global poverty at a cost of $150 billion per year isn’t getting more attention.

PROTEST PHOTOS FROM KYRGYZSTAN — the protesters get extra points for turning out in such frigid weather.

HUGH HEWITT:

After two days of conversations in DC with leading conservatives and officials, it is clear to me that the GOP is the party of expertise and achievement abroad and innovation and new ideas at home, always the superior position in politics. The only serious danger to its leadership is a split over immigration –the sort of split that destroyed Peel’s Conservative Party over the Corn Laws and Gladstone’s Liberals over Home Rule for Ireland and Chamberlain’s theories of imperial preference. The president’s plan will stir a lot of passions, and would best be coupled with an extraordinary push for southern border security in the form of a border length fence and an easy to patrol highway along its length.

This is an issue that doesn’t get much coverage in Big Media, but if you listen to the second- and third-tier talk radio shows you’ll hear a lot of anger on the topic. I think that Hugh is probably right.

TANGLED BANK is a blog carnival focusing on science, nature, and medicine.

MORE LATER ON MY SPEECH (I’M BLOGGING FROM THE CAB) but in answer to a question afterward, I’m not necessarily against any regulation of campaign finances. But I think that current election law is quite bad, and that the FEC is a poor choice of regulatory instrument. More details later.

UPDATE: Wizbang is going to post a transcript and video later, so I won’t try to recreate the whole thing from memory. So a few high points:

Scott Thomas, chairman of the FEC, spoke before me. He opened with some rather uncharitable remarks regarding fellow commissioner Brad Smith’s comments on FEC regulation of blogs, but followed up with a discussion of FEC intent that, although it was supposed to be reassuring, actually left me thinking that the FEC was thinking more seriously about regulating blogs than I had previously believed. I wasn’t reassured at all, and the complexity of the reasoning he outlined just illustrated how much discretion — and how little real guidance — the FEC has on these kinds of questions.

That led me to open by saying that Thomas’s remarks were the most cogent argument I’ve heard for the abolition of the FEC. And they were. If you think that there can be objective, predictable, and unintrusive regulation of political speech, well — read the transcript of his remarks and see if you still think so.

Among other things, though, I noted a regulatory problem. Another agency, the FTC, has had its head handed to it when it has tried to impose intrusive regulations on industries that are dispersed across every Congressional district (like funeral homes, or used car dealers). I noted that bloggers have the same characteristic, with politically plugged-in bloggers everywhere.

My suggestion, following from this (and not in the speech) is that bloggers ought to contact their Representative and Senator and suggest legislation that will protect them from FEC regulation, just in case Thomas’s assurances turn out to be inadequate. I think it’s worth a thought. If you call them, and tell them that you’re a blogger/constituent who’s interested in this topic, I suspect you’ll get a hearing.

To be fair to Thomas — as I did note — he’s in charge of administering a dreadful statute, one that the FEC didn’t write, and whose administration is sure to be difficult.

ANOTHER UPDATE: By the way, you can read some thoughts of mine on campaign finance regulation in the Newsday column from 1999 that’s reproduced here.

Meanwhile, for an alternate view, here’s Mike Krempasky’s take on the event.

MORE: Rex Hammock has some pungent thoughts.

FREE SPEECH FOR ME, but not for thee. A look at federal election law.

TOM MAGUIRE turns lemons into lemonade on the bankrutpcy bill, but I’m still sorry it worked out this way. Apparently, the amount of bipartisanship here was surprising all around.

I’VE JUST SIGNED ON TO THIS BLOGOSPHERE LETTER TO THE F.E.C. on regulation of political blogs.

DRAMATIC DEMOCRAPHICS: Here are the blogads reader survey results, which suggest that the people reading blogs are a pretty desirable demographic.

REGISTAN has a collection of firsthand reports from Kyrgyzstan posted.