SCOTT GALUPO looks at movie math and box-office hype.

If I were a Republican legislator wanting to cause trouble, I’d sponsor a bill setting uniform and transparent accounting rules for the motion picture and record industries.

EUGENE VOLOKH IS SAVAGING RICK SANTORUM for his dumb Hitler remarks. “The precise nature of the equivalence with Hitler, I regret to say, escapes me. And in the absence of such equivalence or at least a very close similarity, it seems to me to be both unfair and in bad taste to compare your adversaries to Hitler, even when the analogy — a rather weak analogy, as I mentioned — is simply to his hubris rather than to his atrocities.”

Meanwhile, Tom Maguire notes a different kind of partisan excess.

TOM FRIEDMAN continues the theme I mentioned yesterday:

The greatest respect we can show to Arabs and Muslims – and the best way to help Muslim progressives win the war of ideas – is to take them seriously and stop gazing at our own navels. That means demanding that they answer for their lies, hypocrisy and profane behavior, just as much as we must answer for ours.

It’s interesting to see this idea taking off. Thanks, Newsweek!

UPDATE: And it just keeps spreading:

As a Muslim, I am able to purchase copies of the Quran in any bookstore in any American city, and study its contents in countless American universities. American museums spend millions to exhibit and celebrate Muslim arts and heritage. On the other hand, my Christian and other non-Muslim brothers and sisters in Saudi Arabia–where I come from–are not even allowed to own a copy of their holy books. Indeed, the Saudi government desecrates and burns Bibles that its security forces confiscate at immigration points into the kingdom or during raids on Christian expatriates worshiping privately. . . .

The Saudi Embassy and other Saudi organizations in Washington have distributed hundreds of thousands of Qurans and many more Muslim books, some that have libeled Christians, Jews and others as pigs and monkeys. In Saudi school curricula, Jews and Christians are considered deviants and eternal enemies. By contrast, Muslim communities in the West are the first to admit that Western countries–especially the U.S.–provide Muslims the strongest freedoms and protections that allow Islam to thrive in the West. Meanwhile Christianity and Judaism, both indigenous to the Middle East, are maligned through systematic hostility by Middle Eastern governments and their religious apparatuses.

The lesson here is simple: If Muslims wish other religions to respect their beliefs and their Holy book, they should lead by example.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Varifrank is cool with this meme.

ANOTHER UPDATE: So is President Bush:

“These people are motivated by a vision of the world that is backward and barbaric,” Bush told reporters in the Oval Office where he met with the prime minister of Denmark, Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Progress continues apace.

JOHN COLE notes Jane’s Law in action as polls show Republicans increasingly viewed as out of touch:

Again, Democrats should not take this as a sign that things are turning their way, because the poll shows disgust at them as well. But, as a life-long Republican, I have never been as disgusted with my party as I am right now, and I would have a hard time voting for the national Republican party right now.

To understand why, see his checklist of Republican principles abandoned by the party.

WITH PLENTY OF TIME TO SHOP FOR DINNER, this week’s Carnival of the Recipes is up!

SUBTLE HE IS, THAT GEORGE LUCAS: PunditGuy looks closely and wonders if the movie wasn’t really scripted by the Ratzinger faction.

ED DRISCOLL has MORE ON THE NEW STAR WARS MOVIE: “The first Star Wars, in 1977, was a fun little hot rod of a movie, appearing in the middle of a decade worth of great, but typically dark, cynical films. The majority of this film creaked and stumbled as badly as Darth Vader’s first steps when he emerges in his black mask and costume at the climax of the film.”

For some more positive takes, scroll down.

JIM GERAGHTY ON NEWSWEEK: “Call that whatever you like. But don’t call it journalism.”

Meanwhile, Michael Ubaldi emails:

I think we all know how likely it is the MSM emptied the warehouse of anything and everything related to detainees.

There’s no logical connection, but I suddenly remembered Michael Spann.

You won’t be hearing much about him, the next few days.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, some unanswered questions remain.

MORE STEM CELL GOOD NEWS:

State lawmakers yesterday rebuffed Governor Mitt Romney’s latest bid to bar scientists from cloning human cells and once again approved a measure that broadly endorses embryonic stem cell research.

The Legislature also rejected three other changes the Republican governor proposed. By large margins, lawmakers refused to take out wording defining when life begins, rejected his call to further limit what women can be paid for donating their eggs, and turned down his proposal to strengthen a ban on fertilizing eggs for research. Both the House and Senate reaffirmed the bill they approved last March and sent it back to Romney’s desk.

As I noted earlier, there’s a lot at stake here. I think that this opposition will backfire on Republicans.

UPDATE: Daniel Moore emails:

I’m not usually one to give politicians passes on what they try to do for political reasons, but Romney had to know that he had no chance of winning this. I suspect it was more of an attempt to show some conservative credentials as he moves towards a 2008 Presidential run. It’s hard to call Romney an ultra-right wing conservative in the vein of Pres. Bush, so he really doesn’t have to worry too much about that from the left. What he will have to worry about is making it through the primaries and having enough conservative credentials for it.

I agree that it’s mostly posturing.

The bind for the Republicans is that if stem cell research creates promising treatments or cures, they’ll look like they held them back. And if it doesn’t do so, they’ll be blamed for preventing it.

MICKEY KAUS:

Isn’t the most significant sentence in David Corn’s report–on the International Committee of the Red Cross’ claims of Gitmo Koran abuse–this one (quoting Reuters)?

“The U.S. government took corrective measures and those allegations have not resurfaced,” [ICRC spokesman] Schorno said.

Depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. (Emph. added).

HOW WELL DID THE STILLSUITS WORK? I gather that they produced liquid, but that nobody really wanted to drink it. I guess you’d have to have spent a while in the desert, first.

DEMOCRACY IN CUBA? Not yet, but this is promising:

Citizens from 365 groups across the island are gathering this weekend to hammer out a compact for the creation of a free post-Castro Cuba. This Assembly to Promote Civil Society in Cuba is meeting for the first time under the most incredible of conditions — inside communist Cuba. It could make history. . . .

The new assembly could create a Cuban Charter 77, the document that served as a road map for the post-communist Czechoslovakia under Vaclav Havel. And the group’s reasonings about how to design the new society it believes will happen resemble the deliberations of America’s Founding Fathers.

But risks are high. On Monday night, government henchmen pounded on the door to arrest one Society delegate, and several others were roughed up by Castro’s goons. As fear grows, there will be more thuggery before the week is done. But Society members vow not to quit, no matter what Castro tries.

I hope that this will get more attention.

I HOPE THIS REPORT of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan is better-sourced than Newsweek’s. Or maybe I don’t.

UPDATE: John Cole emails:

You have to know that this is going to be the most misinterpreted quote in blog history by tomorrow noon:

“I HOPE THIS REPORT of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan is better-sourced than Newsweek’s. Or maybe I don’t.”

I have been reading you since virtually day one, so I know exactly what you mean- you hope it is thinly sourced and thus the story is bullshit, because it is so damned disturbing.

Of course, you can be virtually assured that someone like James Wolcott or Atrios will by noon be claiming torture doesn’t matter to you, and only media bashing does…

Right now you are laughing because you know I am right.

On all counts.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Something you probably won’t hear from Wolcott and Atrios:

The paper’s lead story is a lurid account of the vicious treatment of two Afghan prisoners by U.S. soldiers — events that occurred in December 2002 and for which seven servicemen have been properly punished. Let me repeat that: December 2002. That’s two and a half years ago. Every detail published by the Times comes from a report done by the U.S. military, which did the investigating and the punishing. The publication of this piece this week is an effort not to get at the truth, not to praise the military establishment for rooting out the evil being done, but to make the point that the United States is engaged in despicable conduct as it fights the war on terror. In the name of covering the behinds of media colleagues, all is fair in hate and war.

If the news media policed themselves as well as the military does, Newsweek wouldn’t be in this kind of trouble. (Emph. added).

MORE: Bruce Rolston notes that punishment hasn’t actually happened yet, as the trial process is still underway. Fair point, but it’s not like the NYT is breaking news here.

RON BAILEY looks at some promising new Korean research and says we’ve entered the age of therapeutic cloning. Sounds good to me. Here’s more from the Financial Times:

Scientists have cloned embryos for the first time from patients with serious diseases and injuries. The research at Seoul National University in South Korea demonstrates the principle of “therapeutic cloning” producing stem cells genetically identical to the patient, which could repair any damaged or diseased tissue.

Hwang Woo-suk, the study leader, called it “a giant step forward towards the day when some of mankind’s most devastating diseases and injuries can be effectively treated through the use of therapeutic stem cells”.

As Bailey notes:

The House of Representatives has twice voted to criminalize precisely this research, proposing to toss therapeutic cloning researchers into prison for up to ten years and fine them one million dollars. In fact, if this effort to criminalize research on cloned human stem cells were to succeed, Americans who go abroad to seek cloned stem cell treatments, say, to cure their diabetes, could be jailed for up to ten years for illegally “importing” cloned stem cells. The Bush Administration was also pushing the United Nations to adopt a treaty to outlaw both cloning to produce transplants and reproductive cloning.

The Bush Administration is wrong on this, and they’re likely to get politically steamrollered if they make a fight of it, once people realize that they, or their family, are at risk of dying from otherwise curable diseases if this kind of legislation passes.

THE NEW NIKON D70 FIRMWARE UPGRADE 2.0 is out.

INTERESTING POST ON BUSH AND LEBANON, by a Lebanese blogger.

DAVE KOPEL ANALYZES Florida’s new self-defense law. It may well be coming to your state and, let’s hope, one day to Britain.

MARTIN PERETZ ON NEWSWEEK, IN THE NEW REPUBLIC:

The journalistic establishment is circling the wagons, of course. Journalists usually blame themselves last and forgive themselves first. They are taking special umbrage at the White House’s indignation about Newsweek’s iniquity and insisting that this is the pot calling the kettle anti-Muslim. It is certainly true that the Bush administration, at Guantánamo and at Abu Ghraib, is responsible for a good deal of anti-Americanism in the Muslim world (see Noah Feldman, “Ugly Americans,” page 23). The Bush administration is not perfectly qualified to give lessons in transparency. But, if Scott McClellan should not be allowed to hide behind Michael Isikoff, neither should Michael Isikoff be allowed to hide behind Scott McClellan. The subject this week is not the misdeeds of government. The subject this week is the misdeeds of journalism. No wonder many editors and editorialists want to change the subject.

“We feel badly”: With those insultingly wan words, Whitaker thinks that he has wrapped things up. All of Newsweek’s penitential protestations notwithstanding, what emerges from this episode is the image of a profession that is complacent, self-righteous, and hopelessly in love with itself. Is this a terrible generalization? Well, there are 17 people who lost their lives because of the state of journalistic practice at a U.S. magazine. When American journalists do not think of themselves as heroes, they think of themselves as victims; but here they are neither. They are–I mean Isikoff and his editors–simply scavengers.

“Complacent, self-righteous, and hopelessly in love with itself.” Ouch.

SAW THE NEW STAR WARS MOVIE this afternoon with some colleagues (including one who, beneath her cool professional exterior, is such a stone geek that she and her friends in college tried to manufacture Dune-style stillsuits). My take: (1) The political angle is way overblown. In fact, the Kenobi “Only a Sith thinks in absolutes” line is deeply ironic, since immediately afterward Anakin/Vader plays the moral relativism card, responding that while Obi-Wan may think Palpatine is evil, that’s all a matter of opinion: From his point of view the Jedi are evil. The NYT editorial board couldn’t have done it better! (2) Unfortunately, the movie nonetheless stinks. My dean’s comment was that it would have played better as a silent movie, and he’s right — you might as well be reading the dialogue off of cards, because the actors sure sound like they’re reading the dialogue off of cards. Exacerbating this problem, the audio stunk. Actors’ words didn’t always sync perfectly with their lips, nobody even tried to capture room ambience to match the settings, and the lines often sounded dubbed — delivered as if into a microphone while reading hurriedly from a script, as they probably were. 90210 had more convincing acting.

The effects were great, but I couldn’t bring myself to care all that much. Really, nothing special, and, of course, drastically inferior to the original movies.

UPDATE: I like this from Chris Suellentrop:

What’s great about Star Wars—and one of the reasons I think it has greater appeal—is its acknowledgement, even celebration, of the irrational, the mystical, the religious. More than one friend of mine—OK, me and one friend of mine—sat in our separate backyards as children trying to move rocks with our minds. Star Wars isn’t political, but liberals are now trying to adopt it as their own, by claiming that Revenge of the Sith is an allegory for the Bush administration. Um, does that mean that Osama Bin Laden is a Jedi?

The whole thing is amusing.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Will Collier calls it “story-rich and emotionally engaging.” Boy, he saw it differently than I did.

MORE: Hmm. I should have taken Ann Althouse’s position. But who would pay me $500 for this review? Not even via tipjar . . .

MORE STILL: Speaking of economics (sort of), Tyler Cowen offers a Public Choice analysis of the Jedi Council, which explains why the Galaxy was doomed to go to pot.

Meanwhile, reader Aaron Azlant emails:

You’re right about the unintentional irony in the fact that Anakin/Vader plays the relativist card soon after the “only a Sith thinks in absolutes” line. I’d argue that the irony is further deepened by the fact that Obi-Wan’s line is itself also an absolute statement.

Indeed.

STILL MORE: Complexities abound: “The movie’s only voice of tolerance and relativism was Palpatine, advising Anakin that the only way to be truly great is to understand all aspects of the Force!”

I also agree with this bit:

Star Wars revolutionised special effects in 1977 because it used giant, highly detailed models of ships that looked real because they were. It’s why the opening shot of Star Wars was recently voted the #1 special effect of all time. Unfortunately Industrial Light and Magic has abandoned its roots and the opening of Episode III looks more like the dodgy Babylon 5 television show. There is no physicality to the proto-Star Destroyers in this movie, so no matter how many there are in the battle above Coruscant, there is no sense of awe because it just feels like a video game.

I think that when you work with CGI stuff too much, you lose sight of what looks real. On the other hand, Tai Vokins takes a more positive view:

The new Star Wars (Revenge of the Sith) rocked my socks off last night. I can’t wait to see it again. And I also can’t wait to hear the loosers complain about it. I’m already reading reviews that critcize the acting, and the writing. But what the hell did you expect?

And I like this bit: “What really pisses me off is a lot of these people who complain about star wars are going to see it again! Its like the movie will somehow change and get better.”

Malaysian blogger Sandalsilver liked it, too: “The final episode of the saga, Revenge of the Sith was worth the wait.” He thinks the acting was bad, though. But this Malaysian blogger wasn’t impressed: “Revenge of the Sith tanked and stank to high heaven.”

Kevin Dangoor calls it “Excellent,” but is disappointed that Jar-Jar Binks didn’t meet a gruesome end.

Scott Rushing writes: “Revenge of the Sith was much better than I had hoped for. The CGI has improved tremendously, even in just the last three years. The acting was not as stiff as I had feared.”

And Lovelain calls it “The Passion of the Christ for Star Wars fans,” which is weirdly appropriate, in a way.

SyntheticLife, meanwhile, gives the guy who sat next to him a pretty harsh review: “I would’ve said something but then I got scared when he started talking to the characters in the movie.”

THIS IS A PARODY, RIGHT? Please let this be a parody. (Via The Zero Boss).

THE BELMONT CLUB has thoughts on the political turmoil in Canada.

I AGREE WITH KOS:

Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, who runs the liberal blog Daily Kos, told Salon that he’ll stop linking to Times Op-Eds once the new policy goes into effect. “I think this is the best way they can become irrelevant,” he said.

“If my readers can’t read it, why would I link to it? The key to blogging is that readers can look at the source material and make up their own minds.”

Absolutely.

DONALD SENSING offers advice on successful public speaking and cultural sensitivity to the President of Pepsico: “Rhetorically, Nooyi’s speech was a mess. More than that, it was insulting to the graduates. She talked down to them and sought to impart a sense of shame where they had done no wrong.”

SOME PEOPLE, APPARENTLY, weren’t paying attention during the Eason Jordan affair. This has John Cole, who has been defending Newsweek, depressed. More background here.

RAND SIMBERG NOTES that ABC News is rewriting history on filibusters and the Civil Rights Act.