CORI DAUBER EXPLAINS what to do when the polls don’t go your way: Interview people who’ll say what you want!

HENRY COPELAND:

Now you can tell your pajama-bashing friends that the data from last week’s blog reader survey indicates that 70% of blog readers are influentials, those articulate, networked 10% of Americans who set the agenda for the other 90%. (RoperASW, the folks who wrote the book on Influentials, have more information on the definition on influentials here.)

I guess the CBS guy just forgot to mention that those pajamas are silk, not rayon.

I’m guessing these.

EUGENE VOLOKH is covering Slate mercilessly.

NIKON D70 UPDATE: As I mentioned a while back, sent the D70 back to Nikon for a minor but annoying problem. It came back yesterday, and now seems to be working fine, though the problem is intermittent enough that it’ll be a while before I’m completely sure. They were pretty quick, and the process was painless enough.

Meanwhile, the Dell has the same screen-flicker problem noted here. It’s rare, and rebooting seems to solve it, but I could live without it. Otherwise, I remain quite happy.

THE CAVALRY IS COMING. In Kyrgyzstan.

JAMES Q. WILSON IS DEFENDING LEON KASS, saying that the Bioethics Council is a model of procedural fairness: “I have served on several national commissions and chaired a couple of them, and so I bring some perspective to the matter. I have never encountered a more fair-minded chairman than Kass nor a Council composed of so many truly gifted (though philosophically divided) Council members.”

GREYHAWK writes on the role of email in damaging media credibility.

RONALD REAGAN:

If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals–if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.

(Via this piece on “saving the marriage.”)

MORE CRITICISM OF LEON KASS:

When debating the views and opinions of Leon Kass, chair of the President’s Council of Bioethics, it’s rather hard to get past the point at which he says he wants to use government power to ensure medical technology for healthy life extension is never developed or used.

Dubbing Kass’s approach “legislated murder” seems rather hyperbolic to me. On the other hand, it’s very difficult to call Kass’s approach “pro life” either.

IN AN INTERESTING CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION FEATURE, four scholars — including my Tennessee colleague Jeff Norrell — look at misunderstood concepts in their fields.

SOME TIME AGO, I had mentioned that science fiction writer Andre Norton (real name: Alice Mary Norton) was ill. Now comes word that she has died at 93. I was quite a fan of her books when I was a kid. She remained productive to the end, and has a new novel, Three Hands for Scorpio, about to come out.

ASTROTURFING CAMPAIGN FINANCE “REFORM:” Ryan Sager has a column and links to video on his blog.

IN THE MAIL: A copy of Jim Powell’s Wilson’s War: How Woodrow Wilson’s Great Blunder Led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin & World War II. Upside: Amusing blurb by P.J. O’Rourke. Downside: Blurb by the rather dubious Thomas Woods. Not that there’s much that’s good about World War I, a disastrous episode from which Europe has never really recovered.

READER JEREMY CHRYSLER sends this link to a very cool panoramic photo of a Lebanese freedom protest.

MORE RED-LIGHT CAMERAS SHUT DOWN: Ed Cone notes what he calls a real “mess.”

I’VE GOTTEN A LOT OF EMAILS about a possible coup in Syria, but without much backup. Now Publius reports that it’s not true.

HENRY COPELAND talks about blogs, advertising, and more, in an interview by John Hawkins.

STRATEGYPAGE:

Iraqi popular opinion has turned against terrorism in a big way. Apparently the key event was the revelation that Osama bin Laden had appointed Abu Musab al Zarqawi as “Emir” (leader) of al Qaeda efforts in Iraq and commanded him to go forth and kill big-time. But as suicide bombing attacks increasingly failed to reach American targets, and killed Iraqis instead, it appeared that a Saudi (bin Laden) was telling a Jordanian (Zarqawi) to kill Iraqis. This attitude never made headlines, but it slowly spread among Sunni Arab Iraqis over the last year. . . .

A big story that the media missed was that American troops operating outside the fortified camps (like the Green Zone) were a lot closer to what was going on than your average reporter (who doesn’t get out much because of the danger). The combat troops, and many of the non-combat troops, deal with the danger, and Iraqis, on a daily basis. The troops saw the change in attitude among Iraqis. They also saw, in neighborhood after neighborhood, the sharp decline in attacks on coalition and Iraqi forces.

What’s more, the article notes, firsthand reports from the troops via email, etc., have undermined the press’s reputation, as the problems with its reporting have become apparent. Indeed.

UPDATE: This post almost immediately caused a reader to forward me a very interesting email. I don’t know the sender, but it’s certainly consistent with other things I’ve seen, and goes well beyond the general media coverage outside places like StrategyPage. Click “read more” to read it. [LATER: And to read an email from reader John Lucas about his son’s experience returning to Baghdad.]

(more…)

MICKEY KAUS: “People I trust tell me NPR’s behavior in this matter is beginning to stink. Shouldn’t NPR President and CEO Kevin Klose (FY 2003 compensation: $377,999**) convene a staff meeting at which he brandishes a stuffed moose?”

EUGENE VOLOKH: “I am being perfectly serious, by the way. I like civilization, but some forms of savagery deserve to be met not just with cold, bloodless justice but with the deliberate infliction of pain, with cruel vengeance rather than with supposed humaneness or squeamishness. I think it slights the burning injustice of the murders, and the pain of the families, to react in any other way.”

The notion that civilization equals squeamishness is not supported by history.

UPDATE: According to Jon Henke, Volokh sounds downright Jeffersonian.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Notorious Gandhi-quoting liberal Clayton Cramer is disgusted by Volokh’s comments.

IT’S A NEW AND IMPROVED FRIENDS OF DEMOCRACY blog. Check it out.

TREY JACKSON is asking for video advice. I find MPEG files a bit large.

“ELISABETH” — White House mystery woman? Somebody tell Atrios! I’m sure he’ll be right on it.

UPDATE: A reader suggests that it may be Elizabeth Becker of The New York Times, who coauthored this story on Wolfowitz’s appointment, which has passages like this:

President Bush said today that he would nominate Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense and one of the chief architects of the invasion of Iraq two years ago, to become president of the World Bank.

The announcement, coming on the heels of the appointment of John R. Bolton as the new American ambassador to the United Nations, was greeted with quiet anguish in those foreign capitals where the Iraq conflict and its aftermath remain deeply unpopular, and where Mr. Wolfowitz’s drive to spread democracy around the world has been viewed with some suspicion. . . .

Despite the displeasure of some diplomats who had hoped that the administration would appoint a person without the almost radioactive reputation of a committed ideologue, they said that they expected Mr. Wolfowitz to receive the approval of the World Bank’s board of directors in time for Mr. Wolfensohn’s departure in May.

Indeed it does. And note that this article isn’t even captioned “News Analysis” — it’s supposed to be, you know, straight reporting.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Fred Kaplan writes that “Wolfowitz is not so bad a choice for World Bank boss.”

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Eric Pfeiffer says it was Elisabeth Bumiller, not Elizabeth Becker. I guess Becker’s just guilty of shoddy pseudo-journalism, not press-conference preening. Or maybe it’s her coauthor, David Sanger? Doesn’t sound like him, really, but who knows?

Stephen Hayes also credits (if that’s the word) the question to Bumiller, and has some observations on Wolfowitz’s surprisingly strong base of Democratic support:

Biden said he believes Wolfowitz will enjoy strong support in Europe. “I’ve had a lot of talks about Paul in European capitals. They know him as a serious intellectual and an engine of change.”

Although some Democrats have criticized the selection, notably House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, others have praised the pick. “I know him to be an extraordinarily intelligent, creative thinker who has the potential to do a good job at the World Bank,” said Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, regarded as one of the Senate’s most partisan members.

But, apparently, less partisan than the two Elis(z)abeths!

MORE: Reader P.S. Malloy observes: “Maybe they are two different people, but if so that just compounds the mystery. They both used the phrase ‘chief architect’ of the Iraq war. Is that a coincidence or is there some collusion among NYT writers as to how to characterize administration personnel? Does the Times pass around among its reporters suggested monikers for public figures it does not favor?” Probably came from a MoveOn email.

STILL MORE: Related comments here: “Where is Jeff Gannon when we need him?” It wasn’t just Bumiller engaging in gratuitous attacks disguised as questions. “If reporters are going to preface questions with a long, hostile preamble, is it too much to expect them to get their facts right?” Yes, it is.

MORE STILL: Showing his usual deft political judgment, John Kerry is opposing Wolfowitz, which gets this rather harsh reaction:

Senator Kerry’s diatribe boggles the mind. The nonsense about “Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz’s repeated and serious miscalculations about the costs and risks America would face in Iraq[,]” is ironic, to say the least, on two obvious levels.

First, Senator Kerry himself has made “repeated and serious miscalculations about” every important strategic issue in the last 30 years – wrong about the Vietcong, wrong about Latin America, wrong about the Soviet Union, wrong about defense spending, wrong about terrorism, etc. If he is bent on attacking someone, I’m not sure track record is the way for him in particular to go.

Second, one thing I left off the above list is Iraq – Sen. Kerry was spectacularly wrong about that, too. And Paul Wolfowitz was right. . . . But while Sen. Kerry spent months arguing with himself about Saddam Hussein, Dep. Sec’y Wolfowitz was busy winning the war and holding fast in the belief that Muslims living under tyrannical terrorist regimes yearned for freedom just like everyone else, and that helping them achieve it was the best guarantor of American national security. We are now watching that vision transform the Middle East.

Ouch.

STILL MORE: Several readers note that — although the Becker link above still works — the Times is now fronting its International page with this, more muted version of the story, which omits most of the cheap shots.

Is the NYT going to a blog-based model — publish, then edit?

WELL, WHY NOT: The Carnival of the Carnivals is up. If you want to diversify your blog reading-list, this should do the trick.

I’D RATHER HAVE THE BMW, I think. Even a Bangle-designed one.