DVD-BLOGGING: The Insta-Daughter was watching Mulan II, which we picked up at Target today. I was busy cleaning — the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser is great at getting scuffmarks off hardwood floors, so great that I wound up doing a lot more than I meant to when I started — and didn’t pay much attention to the plot. (Something about how it’s important to get to marry who you want, I think.) But the DVD autoplays — no menu to navigate unless you want to, just stick it in, and it goes.

I wish they were all like that. I’m frequently annoyed when whoever programmed the DVD menus was so anxious to show off all the features that I have to actually think about what to do to get it to simply play the damn movie. And fancy menus often confuse kids. Disney’s got that figured out, but I wish they all worked that way.

UPDATE: Forget DVD-blogging. The theme for this post is obviously cleaning. My former student Heather Hubbard emails:

I cannot believe you are blogging about the magic eraser. And, I especially cannot believe that I am writing to you about it! Ned’s mom gave me some magic erasers as stocking stuffers for Christmas in 2003, and they have changed my life. I have those experiences all the time when I end up doing way more cleaning than I intended. The magic eraser is excellent at getting up scuff marks off of Ned’s white linoleum kitchen floor. I start with one little spot, and end up cleaning the entire floor! (In fact, I think I’ll go clean right now!) And, since they are kind of expensive, Ned is under strict orders not to use them himself.

Another cleaning product that is great is Tilex soap scum remover. I discovered that one in college. But, one warning: do not combine Tilex soap scum remover with the power of a magic eraser. The Tilex will completely eat away the magic eraser.

Also, I have been meaning to email you about the cult of the ipod and my one problem with my ipod. I love my ipod, and I want everything to be perfect with it, but it is not perfect. I am training for the Country Music Marathon, and I thought that the ipod would make my Saturday long runs go by much faster. (I even have a Marathon training playlist with all of the high-energy songs.) However, I am disappointed everytime I run with it because it freezes up after 1-1.5 miles of running. Then, I have to stop, lay it flat, and press the “select” and “menu” buttons at the same time for six seconds, and it works again. But, it ticks me off so much that now I have switched back to my old armband radio. I am using the ipod in my car and at work (with some great little speakers Ned gave me for Christmas), and that is it. Any suggestion on how to get my ipod to stop freaking out on me?

I hope all is well at UT. I miss being at law school. It was a whole lot more fun than actually practicing law.

Quite a few people feel that way, alas. And if you have any iPod advice for Heather, send it my way and I’ll pass it on.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Everybody seems to agree that the problem is caused by the iPod’s inability to tolerate a lot of bouncing. Most people recommend an iPod Shuffle or some other flash-based player instead. Some say that carrying the iPod by hand will work. (I use this armband and haven’t had any problems, but my running may be less bouncy).

On cleaning, many people endorsed the Magic Eraser. And reader Julie Carlson weighs in on her favorite device:

My latest favorite is the Clorox Bleach pen. I needed to clean the grout in my kitchen floor tiles. We remodeled a few years ago and I noticed the peachy-colored grout was getting dingy. The bleach pen gets the bleach where I want it, and there is even a little scrubber thingy on one end. Grout looks like new!

Mmmm. New grout.

UNSCAM UPDATE:

The sense of an organisation unwilling to acknowledge the nasty realities of a changed world has been much in evidence this week after the publication of the first of Paul Volcker’s reports on the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal.

Mr Volcker, the 77-year-old former chairman of the US Federal Reserve and no enemy of the UN, stated: “We are not here to tear down, we are here to restore.”

Whether that is possible has become the crucial question. With the US television networks and senior congressional figures feasting on the detail of the report yesterday, there was a sense that the inquiry may be getting out of hand.

This week’s interim report was commissioned after detailed allegations surfaced following the 2003 Iraq war suggesting that Saddam Hussein’s regime had perverted the UN-run scheme by raking off cash that should have gone to Iraq’s sick and starving.

An estimated $1.7 billion (£900 million) was skimmed off the $64 billion programme and used by the Iraqis to win favours from 270 influential figures abroad.

As the report drily noted: “It is evident that the Iraqi regime attempted to gain favour by granting oil allocations to persons the programme did not recognise as oil purchasers.”

Read the whole thing. And read this, too.

UPDATE: Fingers are pointing every which way:

LONDON (Reuters) – Former U.N. head Boutros Boutros-Ghali refused to take all the blame for Iraq’s scandal-tainted oil-for-food program on Saturday, pointing the finger at his successor Kofi Annan.

Heh.

JIM LINDGREN WRITES on academic freedom and the Kalven report.

UPDATE: On the other hand, Richard Posner has these observations on academic freedom, inspired by Larry Summers:

But no one who has spent much time around universities thinks they’ve ever “encourage[d] uncircumscribed intellectual explorations.” The degree of self-censorship in universities, as in all institutions, is considerable. Today in the United States, most of the leading research universities are dominated by persons well to the left of Larry Summers, and they don’t take kindly to having their ideology challenged, as Summers has now learned to his grief. There is nothing to be done about this, and thoughtful conservatives should actually be pleased. As John Stuart Mill pointed out in On Liberty, when one’s ideas are not challenged, one’s ability to defend them weakens. Not being pressed to come up with arguments or evidence to support them, one forgets the arguments and fails to obtain the evidence. One’s position becomes increasingly flaccid, producing the paradox of thought that is at once rigid and flabby. And thus the academic left today.

Indeed. (Via The New Editor).

ANOTHER UPDATE: Related story, from UNLV, here.

THE BLOGOSPHERE GETS FEISTY: It’s Jonah Goldberg vs. Juan Cole, with Justin Katz chiming in.

Meanwhile, contradictions are noted in other remarks. Moore, Churchill, and Chomsky don’t represent the Left — even when it agrees with them most of the time!

UPDATE: Jon Henke emails to suggest that it’s odd to see Max Sawicky complaining about guilt-by-association, when Sawicky himself ran a contest to associate me with the most objectionable thing said by anyone on my blogroll.

Henke observes: “I guess he had a change of heart.” I guess he did. Funny, though — you shouldn’t have to scroll past Alterman’s name before figuring out that a place on my blogroll isn’t necessarily an endorsement, anyway.

ANOTHER UPDATE: David Bernstein sends this link as his contribution to the Cole-fest.

MORE: A reader suggests that Sawicky has succumbed to obsession. Heh. Wouldn’t be the first time.

STILL MORE: From someone who pays a lot more attention to Sawicky than I do.

MORE STILL: The Belmont Club on the Cole/Goldberg fracas: “But it was the declining vigor of Marxist thought coupled with new conservative ideas that poured the most fuel on the flames. Discourse between Left and Right could only remain civil for so long as Conservatives remained meek or had no counter-pulpit. . . . What has changed is that, with the decline of the MSM, there is nothing which prevents incivility from becoming a two-way street. And I’m not sure either the Left or the total system can contain the stress.”

IT’S A FAIR COP:

Manolo says, the Manolo he has little interest in the politics, and tends not to give much attention to the doings of the politicians. but here he must curse the memory of the American President JFK, for having the great head of the hair, and for the killing of the practice of the wearing of the hat.

Except among the hat-wearing elite, whom Manolo calls “the man who is not afraid to wear the hat, and as the consequence, wears the hat well.” Indeed.

Interestingly, if you look here, there’s not even a category for hats. And if you search for them, you get a page of baseball caps, cowboy hats, and toboggans. Manolo and Roger have a lot of work to do.

UPDATE: More on hats, from the hat man.

TOUR THE INDIAN BLOGOSPHERE: This week’s Blog Mela is up.

HEH.

GAY MARRIAGE IN NEW YORK:

NEW YORK (AP) — A judge declared Friday that a law banning same-sex marriage violates the state constitution, a first-of-its-kind ruling in New York that would clear the way for gay couples to wed if it survives on appeal.

Gay rights activists hailed the ruling as a historic victory that “delivers the state Constitution’s promise of equality to all New Yorkers.”

(Via Howard Bashman). I haven’t seen the opinion yet, so though I support the outcome I don’t know whether the reasoning is persuasive.

UPDATE: Here, via Joe Carter, is a link to the text of the opinion.

A CALIFORNIA RESIGNATION:

Besieged Secretary of State Kevin Shelley resigned today in the face of multiple investigations of his political and professional conduct.

Arnold will appoint his successor. (Via California Mafia).

UPDATE: John Baker emails: “The LA Times never mentions Mr. Shelley’s party affiliation. Is it safe to assume he is a Democrat?” Yes, it is.

ANOTHER UPDATE: BoiFromTroy has more.

UNSCAM UPDATE: The Economist reports on the Volcker investigation:

Mr Volcker’s interim report answered some, though by no means all, of the questions surrounding the scandal. According to the report, Saddam-era Iraqi documents indicated that the programme head asked Iraq to allocate oil to a company called African Middle East Petroleum (AMEP), represented by a friend of Mr Sevan’s, Fakhry Abdelnour (who is also a distant cousin of former UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali). In return, Mr Sevan fought to allow Iraq to buy spare parts for its oil infrastructure, as opposed to food and the like, with its oil-for-food proceeds. In doing so, said Mr Volcker, Mr Sevan placed himself in a “grave and continuing conflict-of-interest situation”.

Both Mr Sevan and Mr Abdelnour had claimed to have been in contact just once, at a 1999 conference. But a search of Mr Sevan’s office found two of Mr Abdelnour’s business cards with different addresses, and telephone records showed repeated calls, both directly between the two men and probably through an intermediary. Shown the records, Mr Sevan admitted developing a friendship with Mr Abdelnour: “I came to like the guy. He’s an interesting character, you know.” And Mr Sevan’s explanation of bank deposits totalling $160,000? From an aunt, now deceased, he said. The committee found that she had lived modestly in a plain two-bedroom flat in Cyprus, purchased for her by Mr Sevan.

Read the whole thing. I agree that this is just the opening round.

PAMELA BONE:

The great silence by left-leaning Western feminists, and other large parts of the left, to human rights abuses carried out in the name of Islam is, to see it as its kindest, caused by an overdeveloped sense of tolerance or cultural relativism. But it is also part of the new anti-Americanism. Look at American Christian fundamentalism, they say.

Dislike of George Bush’s foreign policy has led to an automatic support of those perceived to be his enemies. Paradoxically, this leaves the left defending people who hold beliefs that condone what the left has long fought against: misogyny, homophobia, capital punishment, suppression of freedom of speech. The recent reaffirmation by Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie has been met by virtual silence; as has the torture and murder in Iraq of a man who would be presumed to be one of the left’s own – Hadi Salih, the international officer of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions. The hard left these days is soft on fascism, or at least Islamofascism.

The religious right in America would, if it could, wind back access to abortion and some other women’s rights. But as far as I am aware, no Christian fundamentalist in the US has suggested banning women from driving cars, or travelling without their husbands’ permission, or forcing them to cover their faces. Contrary to popular opinion, one is not the same as the other.

This isn’t quite fair. Western feminists were happy to condemn the Taliban until it looked as if someone was going to do something about them. And they’ll happily condemn the Saudis whenever they look like our allies.

Of course, there are some true Christian theocrats out there. “Christian Reconstructionist” Gary North, for example, supports capital punishment for children who curse at their parents:

Reconstructionists provide the most enthusiastic constituency for stoning since the Taliban seized Kabul. “Why stoning?” asks North. “There are many reasons. First, the implements of execution are available to everyone at virtually no cost.” Thrift and ubiquity aside, “executions are community projects–not with spectators who watch a professional executioner do `his’ duty, but rather with actual participants.” You might even say that like square dances or quilting bees, they represent the kind of hands-on neighborliness so often missed in this impersonal era. “That modern Christians never consider the possibility of the reintroduction of stoning for capital crimes,” North continues, “indicates how thoroughly humanistic concepts of punishment have influenced the thinking of Christians.” And he may be right about that last point, you know.

Strangely, North is sometimes featured among antiwar “libertarians.”

FILI-BUSTED: I think people have pointed out this Chemerinsky flipflop before. It’s okay to change your mind, of course, but it’s better to acknowledge it.

ON JANUARY 30, TOM MASON BLOGGED THIS:

I want to point out something to everyone who is bashing Senator Kennedy for calling for an immediate withdrawal of 12,000 troops following the elections. That was the Bush administration plan all along, except for the “immediate” part. U.S. forces were increased by 12,000 in the last month or two in order to help with security for the elections. So we will see the troop levels decrease by 12,000 in the very near future. I wonder if when the troops start coming home, the MSM will say that Bush realized that Kennedy was right after all?

Senator [Kennedy] is not stupid. He made a prediction on an event he knew was going to happen. Now he’s hoping that everyone will be too stupid to notice.

And voila! Kennedy’s plan works.

Of course, timing is everything. By calling the war lost, and calling for the withdrawal of troops, right before the Iraqi election, Kennedy was being tactically “smart” but also giving heart to the enemy. Except that they’ve probably learned by now that he’s not a reliable guide to American political opinion.

IF YOU CAN’T DANCE, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.

Fortunately, the Iraqis can. And I love the Nietzsche quote.

MICKEY KAUS is slagging Howard Kurtz for ignoring the Eason Jordan scandal, once again invoking Kurtz’s CNN connection as a conflict of interest. And over at my new GlennReynolds.com post on the Jordan scandal, I note Kurtz’s silence too.

But on the other hand, if Kurtz’s relationship to CNN is what’s keeping him quiet then why is almost everyone else in the news media keeping quiet, too?

The real problem here is institutional, I think, and focus on things like personal conflicts of interest merely serves to obscure the larger problem.

UPDATE: Shannon Love has a legislative proposal.

THE ARTFUL WRITER is a blog for screenwriters. Excerpt:

Senator Feinstein may pretend to be a liberal, but all politics is local, and corporate Hollywood has her in their pocket. Indeed, there wasn’t one single senator who felt big business didn’t deserve these latest new protections.

That’s good for those of us making a living in this industry.

I’m not so happy.

BUSH IS SUBTLER THAN I THOUGHT: Vik Rubenfeld notes that the “Syrian Accountability Act” that Bush invoked during the State of the Union speech was originally introduced by Barbara Boxer, back when she was taking a somewhat more hawkish line.

UPDATE: Another blast from the past: Harry Reid used to support Social Security reform: “Most of us have no problem with taking a small amount of the Social Security proceeds and putting it into the private sector.”

Interestingly, so did FDR: “In a written statement to Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plans should include, ‘Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age,’ adding that government funding, ‘ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.'”

Now that’s a real blast from the past. Is it “ultimately” yet?

ANOTHER UPDATE: It looks as if FDR was talking about a different portion of the Social Security plan. This would have involved, essentially, a sort of government-supplied 401k plan.

EVAN COYNE MALONEY AGREES that Ward Churchill shouldn’t be fired:

We find these comments reprehensible. But we also believe that the best way to combat Professor Churchill is by opposing him with more speech. Creating an environment where tenured professors can be fired for controversial remarks is a dangerous precedent to set. Academic freedom provides a wide berth, and that’s by design. Sometimes, controversy is merely the result of childish, mean-spirited remarks, but it’s also true that many of mankind’s most brilliant thinkers aroused controversy in their day. If they’d been silenced because others were upset by what they had to say, then we’d all be poorer for it. To ensure that professors can safely pursue the most innovative thinking, academic freedom should be respected.

Shoddy scholarship–not a knack for generating controversy–is the primary reason Professor Churchill shouldn’t be holding his professor position. Still, the University of Colorado should have noticed that and acted when Churchill initially came up for tenure. Instead, low standards on the part of the university allowed him to gain tenure and even to chair a department. By giving Churchill tenure, the university made a tacit promise to stand behind him in the face of controversy. The university should respect that promise and protect his job.

We suspect the University of Colorado is acting not out of principle but a desire to quell a public relations disaster.

This is why tenure decisions are so important. And universities who tenure bad people should have to live with the consequences.

UPDATE: Sounds like they feel differently. Colorado blogger Bob Hayes reports: “I think the University of Colorado is about to sell Ward Churchill down the river. ” He reproduces an internal C.U. email that he got, which does sound like it’s laying the groundwork for that. I agree with Hayes, and Maloney: They shouldn’t have hired him, but they shouldn’t take the easy way out now that he’s gotten controversial, either.

HISTORY CARNIVAL #2 is up, with history-blogging on a wide variety of subjects.

MORE ON EASON JORDAN: “I notice CNN is no longer using the ‘bloggers are taking his comments out of context’ line. Now we are told, ‘he was not clear enough in explaining his assertion.'”

There’s supposed to be video. And why isn’t David Gergen talking?

UPDATE: Here’s some context for the Eason Jordan affair.

IN THE MAIL, from Oxford University Press, a copy of my colleague Robert J. Norrell’s book, The House I Live In: Race in the American Century. It looks quite interesting.

THIS IS INTERESTING: Amazon’s Achilles’ heel has always been shipping costs. But now they’re offering a sort of frequent flyer club where you get unlimited free shipping for $79 a year. (2-day air — overnight is just $3.99).

I’m sure that would save me money, and it suggests to me that Amazon is trying to get more business from people who are already heavy customers. (It also suggests to me that they have enough buying power to squeeze a hell of a deal out of their carriers.) Is this also a preemptive measure against up-and-coming competitors like Overstock.com? People keep telling me that they like Overstock, but I haven’t used it much. But though I like Amazon a lot, I’d certainly be happy to see them face competition.

ED CONE ON WARD CHURCHILL:

I loved my friends like brothers. They died at the hands of terrorists. Their memory is insulted by this guy. They were not imperialists, or even imperialist dupes. But you know what? The slandering bastard should be allowed to speak.

Yes. Though I think it’s the criticism that speech will bring, rather than the speech itself, that University administrators don’t want to face.

IN PLENTY OF TIME FOR DINNER: This week’s Carnival of the Recipes is up.

ETHNIC WARFARE at San Francisco State University.