HANDING OUT CHEESE, BRATWURST, AND KRINGLE: But what about beer?

I’M SHOWING THIS FILM in my Constitutional Law class today. I don’t generally like to show films, but as I noted last year, unlike most movies involving the law, this one does a surprisingly good job of capturing the legal issues, and strategies, involved. I wish there were more like it.

I COULD SCREAM is a new blog looking at the plight of Islamic women.

MORE ON CENTRAL ASIA: StrategyPage is not optimistic:

Uzbek President Islam Karimov and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazabayev are concerned that they will be overthrown like Askar Akayev in Kyrgyzstan. Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have both been plundered by their presidential families. Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan all suffer corruption, unemployment and sluggish economies. All three conditions are linked by the greed of the presidential families and the politicians that support them. In all three countries, the support for the leadership is so narrow, that the police and army cannot be trusted to open fire on large demonstrations of angry citizens. But first, Kyrgyzstan has to sort out who is in charge. If this is done in such a way that most corrupt politicians are out of work, then Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan could be next. But for the moment, a lot of the crooked Kyrgyz bureaucrats may be able to buy their way out of this mess, and the “Tulip Revolution” may end up on the mulch pile.

Stay tuned.

LASHAWN BARBER IS EVERYWHERE! I mean, everywhere!

ZIMBABWE ELECTIONS: Publius has a roundup of news on how things are going. And Will Franklin has photos. Meanwhile, Zimbabwean bloggers report goalpost-moving:

Reports reaching us from a number of activists in different locations around the country indicate that, contrary to the electoral ground rules set down by zanu-pf, presiding officers are now being instructed not to publish the results of poll immediately following the completion of the vote count at each polling station. Instead presiding officers are now under instructions to convey the results to the constituency centers and to await authorization from the Harare command center before releasing the results to the public.

Our informant in Binga reports that presiding officers in that constituency have been ordered to lock the polling stations at the close of polling and withdraw all means of communication from agents to ensure that nothing is communicated. This means that the results will not be published at the polling stations when the vote has been completed. The presiding officers are under instructions not to communicate any information about the poll until the consolidated result for the whole constituency has been verified and announced centrally. This is a major departure from the electoral procedures laid down by law.

So are the foreign election observers complaining? Hmm. Stay tuned.

AMBER ALERT: Jason van Steenwyk notes another missing headline.

LA VIDA ROBOT: This is a great article from Wired about “How four underdogs from the mean streets of Phoenix took on the best from M.I.T. in the national underwater bot championship.”

HERE’S A LIST OF BLOGNASHVILLE REGISTRANTS: It’s not too late to register yourself.

HANGING UP THE BLOG: I’m not in this place, but I understand. When it’s not fun anymore, it’s time to quit.

HERE’S A NEW POLL showing Iraqis rejecting theocracy. Good for them.

TINA BROWN joins the Stasi.

ON THE EVE OF ELECTIONS, Zimbabwe’s opposition is acting optimistic:

Supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change now openly flash their party’s salute in many places across the country. And yellow MDC T-shirts abound. MDC candidates have held hundreds of public rallies – a first – and have even had some access to state-controlled media. It’s all part of an election campaign that has been relatively calm – despite previous years marred by political oppression, including beatings, and even murders. Ndira himself has been been arrested 19 times and was once beaten so badly he nearly lost his arm. . . .

But opposition members and diplomats are hopeful that, win or lose, the election will hasten the end of the Mugabe regime. So for now, “There’s jubilation everywhere,” Ndira says.

I certainly hope it works out that way. I’d like to see more vocal support for democracy in Zimbabwe from South Africa and from Western nations.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ARTHUR CHRENKOFF, who just celebrated his first anniversary blogging — and who has accomplished quite a lot in that year.

HOW SAD HAVE THINGS GOTTEN? The New York Post cries enough. Robert George writes on hate mail and death threats on both sides of the Schiavo business, and says it’s the worst acrimony he’s ever experienced in decades of dealing with controversial issues. Meanwhile, Bryan Preston of Junkyard Blog emailed me the text of this post with the observation: “I obviously expect that the JYB has enjoyed its last instalanche, so this email isn’t a troll for a link.”

Well, JYB has been a bit mean to me, and doesn’t seem to grasp the point of my argument — which has been that passing Congressional legislation designed to influence the outcome of a particular case doesn’t fit well with notions of federalism. Mickey Kaus can airily say “federalism, schmederalism” and note that if it were up to him he’d get rid of states and divide the country into ten convenient administrative districts, but one doesn’t expect to hear similar sentiments from conservatives. Bryan sees this as libertarians telling conservatives what to believe, but I think it’s more a case of libertarians being disappointed to see that what they thought of as common ground wasn’t so common after all. It’s not hypocritical for liberals like Kaus, or Bill Clinton, to ignore federalism, because they’ve never cared about it. I thought that conservatives did.

As for the rest of the personal attacks in the earlier post, well, they’re not worthy of Bryan, but this is one of those episodes that seems to bring out the worst in people. That’s why I didn’t really want to weigh in to begin with — I knew that I was unlikely to persuade anyone, because very few people seem to care about the facts, or about arguments.

That Bryan thinks that he’s somehow now under some sort of lifetime link-ban simply illustrates how inflamed this has become. But I’ve tried to keep my head, even as those around me are, all too often, losing theirs. How well I’ve succeeded is for readers to judge.

UPDATE: Nice observations here and here from Soxblog.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I have more thoughts in this column — though I’m labelled a “conservative,” which is a misnomer, and more obviously so these days.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Patterico emails to ask if I’m saying that people who disagree with me can’t handle facts or logic. No — though if you read the incredibly nasty emails I’ve gotten the last few days, hoping for the InstaWife to suffer Terri Schiavo’s fate, etc. — you might forgive me for taking that position. But I know that emailers aren’t a representative sample: The best may not lack all conviction, but the worst are always full of passionate intensity.

However, the fact that so few have bothered to read what I’ve actually written is disturbing. I’ve been accused of wanting to see Terri Schiavo die out of some twisted love for death, when I actually wrote that if it was up to me I might well put the tube in and turn her over to the family. But what I’ve been writing about isn’t outcomes, it’s about process — and contempt for the Constitution and the responsibilities of different branches of government — and I’m absolutely appalled at the people who posit deeply implausible judicial conspiracies, or say that they don’t care about the Constitution if it stands in the way of getting what they want. I’m not prone to hold grudges of the sort that Bryan fears, but I’m deeply disappointed to hear a lot of folks acting like the lefties they usually complain about.

Among those I’d include Jonathan Last, who accuses me of a campaign for Terri’s death, and of agreeing with Andrew Sullivan about the threat of “theocrats” even though I explicitly posted my disagreement with Andrew on that point. Hugh Hewitt, whom Last quotes, seems to understand the concept of “cordial disagreements among friends.” But to some others, any disagreement on any part of the party line makes you one of the enemy, it seems. As I say, a lot of people are acting like the worst of the Left on this one. I think that Jonah Goldberg, et al., are whistling in the dark when they say there’s no crackup here. Will it last? That depends on how people act afterward, I guess. [LATER: How off-base is Last? Far enough that Bryan Preston is defending me against Last’s charges.]

FINALLY: Heh. This seems about right:

DON’T MISS this week’s Carnival of Education.

MORE LEAKAGE FROM THE VOLCKER COMMITTEE: The case of the Main Mentor.

IT’S BLOGGERRIFFIC! This week’s Carnival of the Vanities is up!

NORM GERAS has a firsthand report from inside Zimbabwe. Things aren’t pretty.

And I’ve got more on Zimbabwe’s upcoming elections over at GlennReynolds.com.

RAND SIMBERG has thoughts on arms control in outer space. I wrote something on that topic myself, a while back.

KIM DU TOIT is a proud winner. But, really, it’s an honor just to be nominated. After that it’s just a popularity contest. . . .

BLOGGING LEGISLATOR UPSETS LEADERSHIP: I’m guessing, though, that overall the leadership has more to lose here.

ONE OF THE SIDE EFFECTS OF THE RAZORBLOGGING is that lots of purists have been telling me that I absolutely must get one of these for my lawn. It’s safer than a straight razor!

RUMORS OF CIVIL WAR IN VENEZUELA:

The army is unhappy about the cozy relationship between Chavez and leftist rebel groups in neighboring Colombia. Venezuelan troops have been operating more aggressively along the Colombian border. This is officially a crackdown on the smugglers who always have operated there. But the Venezuelan troops are accused to really going after the Colombian rebels, or supporting them. Take your pick. No one is sure exactly what is going on.

To top it all off, Chavez is now organizing a new army, one loyal to him personally. This is part of his plan create “Bolivarian Circles of Venezuela Frontline Defense for National Democratic Revolution.” These are political clubs all over the country, particularly in poor areas, where Chavez has the most support. Chavez expects to have 2.2 million members, who will be the backbone of the “democratic revolution unfolding in Venezuela.” What upsets the armed forces is Chavezs decision to pass out infantry weapons to these political clubs, so that his new political clubs can use force to “defend the revolution.” There are believed to be Cuban advisors involved in this effort. This sort of mass organization has been used before in Latin America, by both leftist and rightist dictators (pro-fascist Juan Peron of Argentina, and communist Fidel Castro of Cuba.) But by passing out guns to his most dedicated followers, Chavez is angering the military, making the middle class even more nervous, and setting the stage for a bloody civil war.

We’ve heard this story before, and it never ends well.

DEMOCRACY IN BHUTAN: Everybody Wangchuk tonight!