THE KOS/TEACHOUT STORY has made Slashdot, where it has inspired considerable discussion.

MORE CAMERABLOGGING: SKBubba responds to this post from Fletch on the virtues of Nikons vs. Canons. Bill Hobbs has thoughts, too.

TIM WORSTALL: ” I must have missed that lesson at the Blogging Academy where it is pointed out that I have to respond to every passing crank, especially when there are other posts here which explain exactly my views on such matters.”

Heh. Though I kind of like the idea of a Blogging Academy. Not quite as cool as the Starfleet Academy, it’s true, but still . . . .

UPDATE: Reader Scott Llewellyn emails: “I assume someone already wrote in that the Blogger Academy should be named ‘Blogwarts.'”

Heh.

HERE’S AN INTERVIEW WITH ANDREW BREITBART, coauthor of Hollywood, Interrupted, in which, among other things, we learn that Bush’s inauguration isn’t sitting well with most folks in Hollywood.

THE NEW “HISTORY CARNIVAL” is a roundup of, what else, history-blogging. Here’s the first installment.

SCALIA, BREYER, AND INTERNATIONALIZING CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATION: I mentioned a Power Line post on this yesterday. Now Prof. Kenneth Anderson has much more on the subject, and says that Breyer was misquoted by the press:

I was one of the organizers of the Scalia-Breyer debate – I’m a law prof at AU law school – and although the AP quote was, so far as I could tell, accurate, it was taken sharply out of context. Justice Breyer was speaking in a very specific exchange with Justice Scalia about the narrowly judicial act of interpreting legal texts, and it is quite unfair to take that remark about who participates directly in the process of interpreting legal texts that have already been informed by constitutional and legislative and other democratic institutions – judges, lawyers, law students (and it was obvious to the live audience that he included students as a courtesy to the audience of law students) – as being somehow antidemocratic. He was just noting the fact that legal materials, once they have been created through various democratic mechanisms, then become subject to interpretation by the interactions of lawyers and judges. It was nothing more insidious than that.

There’s much more to his post, and I highly recommend it. He also has a post with comments by Prof. Jamin Raskin — though I think that Raskin makes far too much of the Declaration of Independence’s language about “a decent respect for the opinions of mankind.” In the context of the Declaration, that merely meant that we would explain ourselves clearly, even as we undertook an enterprise that the leaders nearly all “civilized” nations found horrifying.

Ann Althouse, meanwhile, TiVo-blogged the debate, (a specialty of hers) and also rounds up some press reports.

I’VE BEEN VERY LAME REGARDING SPACEBLOGGING OF LATE, but maybe this post will make up for some of my omissions. First, Jeff Bezos is coming out of the closet regarding Blue Origin, his commercial space operation:

Bezos’ Seattle-based Blue Origin suborbital space venture is starting the process to build an aerospace testing and operations center on a portion of the Corn Ranch, a 165,000-acre spread that the 41-year-old billionaire purchased north of Van Horn, Texas. Over the next six or seven years, the team would use the facility to test components for a craft that could take off and land vertically, carrying three or more riders to the edge of space.

Blue Origin’s team has been laying the groundwork for the hush-hush project from a 53,000-square-foot warehouse in Seattle, but this week’s announcement fills out a puzzle that previously could only be guessed on the basis of isolated rumors. Blue Origin has been the most secretive of several space ventures bankrolled by deep-pocketed private backers — a club that also includes software pioneer Paul Allen (SpaceShipOne), Virgin Group entrepreneur Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic) and video-game genius John Carmack (Armadillo Aerospace).

I love it that we’re seeing competition — and I hope that they all succeed. Meanwhile, the Huygens/Cassini probe is a success, with a landing on Titan. Miles O’Brien is blogging it.

This is a big deal, and deserves more attention than I’ve given it, but I’ve been a bit busy this week. Sorry. I’ll try to have more later.

SOME THOUGHTS ON JOURNALISM, HUMILITY, AND RATHERGATE: Over at GlennReynolds.com.

ADAM PENENBERG looks at the problems of journalist bloggers.

MYTHS AND FACTS ABOUT BLOGS: Frank J. offers a guide for the perplexed.

KRAUTHAMMER ON RATHERGATE

The independent investigation — clueless, uncomprehending and in its own innocent way disgraceful — pretends that this fiasco was in no way politically motivated. . . .

To what, then, does the report attribute Mapes’s great-white-whale obsession with the story? Her Texas roots. I kid you not. She comes from Texas and likes Texas stories. You believe that and you will believe that a 1972 typewriter can tuck the letter “i” right up against the umbrella of the letter “f” (as can Microsoft Word).

Did Mapes and Rather devote a fraction of the resources they gave this story to a real scandal, such as the oil-for-food scandal at the United Nations, or contrary partisan political charges, such as those brought by the Swift boat vets against John Kerry? On the United Nations, no interest. On Kerry, what CBS did do was ad hominem investigative stories on the Swift boat veterans themselves, rather than an examination of the charges. Do you perceive a direction to these inclinations?

Read the whole thing.

CASHING IN on the tsunami.

ANN ALTHOUSE: “I hate fascism, too. You know like when Sylvester Stallone’s mother, aka Brigitte Nielsen’s ex-mother-in-law, shows up unexpectedly.”

READER GINGER TAYLOR WANTS CAMERA ADVICE:

So I know that you are always reviewing them and I thought you might be a good source.

I am the mother of an absolutely beautiful autistic little boy. Getting pictures of him actually looking at the camera is difficult as his eye contact is poor and when he does look at the camera it is only for a second.

The digital I have, as well as every friends’ camera I have used, all take too long to snap the pic. The only one I have tried that is quick enough was a friends Nikon D100 which I fell in LOVE with, but I don’t have a grand or two to drop on a camera.

Any suggestions for me? I want to be able to get a good picture of my boy more than a few times a year.

She sends a picture, and he is very cute. Here’s the reply I sent:

Sadly, speed pretty much equals price. But all cameras are getting faster. My Sony DSC-93 is MUCH faster than my earlier camera, and it’s about $300. I suspect that newer Sony cameras (like the DSC100) are faster still. If you visit the DPreview or Steve’s Digicams sites on the right of my page under “recommendations,” they have a lot of reviews and usually mention speed.

But I don’t really know a cheap and especially fast digital camera that’s especially good for taking pictures of kids. Anybody got any special recommendations?

UPDATE: Reader Greg Stasiewicz writes:

I got the Canon PowerShot S1 for Christmas, and have been experimenting with it quite a lot. With the right settings it is quite good for quick shutter shots. I don’t know how it compares with the cameras you mentioned, but priced between $300 and $400, it also has excellent resolution, zoom, and image stabilization as well as the ability to record movies with sound as well which I think Ms Taylor might also appreciate for taking pictures of her son. I picked up a 512 MB flash card as well, and at 2048×1036 superfine, I’m still able to store over 300 pictures.

And another one reader sends:

I sell cameras (among other things) for a living, and this is the, hands down, number one request. Most of the newer generation of cameras are very very fast compared to even last years models. Therefore, in no particular order, my recommendations: Fuji E550 (but not the E500 or E510, which are much slower) Casio Exilim EXZ55, Konica Minolta X50,, Konica Minolta Z3, (if an ultrazoom is required), and one of the sleeper hits of the century, the Sony DSC-W1.

The Fuji is my favorite, but it was real battle of the features between that and the Sony. The Fuji won out mainly on dynamic range and lens issues, (being both wider angle and more telephoto) but the Sony has a low light focus assist lamp and a 3:2 aspect ratio mode, plus it’s a bit easier to carry around and feels slightly better built.

The best advice for her is to go to a camera shop and try them all out. Most good shops will keep a powered display with memory, ready for use.

Sorry for the absence of links to all of these; I’m going to bed now and just don’t feel up to finding and adding them. I’ll try to add them tomorrow.

UPDATE: Links added now; sorry, but I was just wiped out last night.

Several readers email to suggest that she try a film camera — still widely available, cheap, and with no lag. And you can get the pictures put on disk at the one-hour place when they’re developed. Not a bad thought.

DEROY MURDOCK:

Name the greater risk to national security: patriotic military translators who happen to be homosexual or anti-American Islamofascist terrorists who happen to be homicidal. If you picked the latter, thanks for putting U.S. safety first. Alas, the Pentagon disagrees.

According to new Defense Department data, between fiscal years 1998 and 2003, 20 Arabic- and six Farsi-language experts were booted from the military under President Bill Clinton’s 1993 “don’t ask/don’t tell” policy. These GIs trained at the elite Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif. Had they graduated _ assuming 40-hour workweeks and two-week vacations _ they could have dedicated 52,000 man-hours annually to interrogate Arab-speaking bomb builders, interpret intercepted enemy communications or transmit reassuring words to bewildered Baghdad residents.

Read the whole thing. As with Lincoln, I just don’t care where they put their wing-wangs. I wish the Army didn’t, either. (Via Evan Coyne Maloney).

UPDATE: Message to Andrew: After this post, I don’t want to hear any more complaints about “wing-wang.”

POWER LINE NOTES some troubling comments by Stephen Breyer about foreign sources of law.

Breyer may or may not be accurately quoted, but I’ll note a more general point. The “internationalization” of constitutional law is often seen as a liberal project, but it shouldn’t be. Even if “international” is a synonym for “European,” the consequences of importing, say, European law on abortion wouldn’t be so liberal as the rules there are much stricter. I think that it’s a bad idea in general, but I don’t think we’ll see much more than rhetoric in this area.

A RATHERGATE POP QUIZ from WizBang.

I’VE OPENED THE BLOG ETHICS POST BELOW for comments.

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal has picked up on the Teachout/Kos story. It’s a free link.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Closed now. I deleted the worst comments, but the trolls were getting out of hand. Lots of excellent thoughts, though, from a lot of people.

LARRY KUDLOW SURE IS OPTIMISTIC about the economy. I certainly hope he’s right.

YOU KNOW, THIS is actually worse than my hatemail. That’s no small accomplishment.

UPDATE: On the other hand, I got this today, in response to my “thank you” for an Amazon donation:

It was long overdue. I’ve loved your blog for awhile now. You wrote previously that donations offset a lot of hate mail that you get, and considering how outrageous and hateful the posters at thepoorman.net were in response to your post about Iran contra/El Salvador, I hope my donation makes a difference (almost halfway there to the new iPod Shuffle!).

Best,

Bryan Smith
Stuck in Madison, WI and eternally grateful for you and Althouse!

Stuff like that makes it worthwhile.

I LINKED TO SOME POSTS CRITICIZING JOHN LOTT over at The Volokh Conspiracy a while back. Now Eugene Volokh has posted a response by Lott.

UNSCAM UPDATE: Greg Djerejian points to this Financial Times story saying that the U.S. was aware of oil-for-food fraud in early 2003 but did nothing. (Well, not exactly nothing — we invaded a couple of months later . . . .)

Greg is somewhat skeptical about this story, but I guess we’ll just have to see what turns up. Was Marc Rich involved somewhere?

JEEZ, HOW LAME: Charles Johnson reports that CBS has altered the PDF on their report to prevent copying and pasting. I suppose this could be a technical glitch of some kind (some bloggers have an HTML bug that does that) but it’s kind of hard to give those guys the benefit of the doubt at this point.

UPDATE: More from Captain Ed.

MORE: Jonah Goldberg: “Maybe there’s some other explanation, but if someone actually told a web-lackey ‘make it harder for the blogs to make fun of us’ then, well, then that’s just sad.”

STILL MORE: Wizbang has a handy HTML version that’s easy to link and to cut-and-paste.

MATT DUFFY writes that the Columbia Journalism Review is “hopelessly out of touch.”

UPDATE: Jay Currie agrees.

PRIVACY SPOT is a blog about privacy.