NEWSPAPER WEB VIDEO: A while back I observed:

I did some interviews of my own, using the video function of my Sony digital still camera. It’s not television-news quality, but it was done on the fly with a camera that cost $300 and fits easily in a pocket.

Tools like this are the future. If I ran a newspaper, I’d give one to each of my reporters, and encourage them — in the most meaningful way possible, with bonuses — to conduct video interviews and reports that could run on the paper’s website, the better to fend off the kind of challengers I link above.

Now the Knoxville News-Sentinel seems to be following that advice. (They’re even using the same camera. No word about the bonuses part, though . . . .)

Here’s their first video, from a shooting range, and it turned out pretty well, I think. They’re also open to citizen journalism: “Do you ‘vlog’ around Knoxville? Send us your stuff; we’ll add it to our collection here.”

HUGH HEWITT writes that we’re in the midst of an Information Reformation.

I’ve made a similar observation.

BOMB ARRESTS IN BANGLADESH indicate an Al Qaeda connection. Gateway Pundit has a roundup.

EUGENE VOLOKH uses some speech of George Galloway’s as a jumping-off point for a discussion of treasonous speech and the First Amendment. ” Imagine that Galloway was American and was tried in America, and that a jury concluded that Galloway’s intention wasn’t just to criticize the war, but actually to get Arab listeners to help our enemies in Iraq, and to get some of them to join the insurgents. . . . Under U.S. law, this would constitute treason: Aiding the enemy with the intention of aiding the enemy. Would the First Amendment nonetheless protect such speech?”

UPDATE: I don’t know much about the British law on treason, but this case might fit:

The Government is facing demands to close down a London-based radio station broadcasting calls for attacks on British troops in Iraq.

Al-Tajdeed Radio, which is run by a prominent Saudi dissident, has close links with a website carrying films of terrorist bombings and beheadings. It also carries songs calling on Muslims to join the holy war against coalition forces. . . .

He has lived in London since first seeking asylum there in 1994. He has frequently declared that British troops in Iraq are legitimate targets.

It seems reasonable to me that those seeking asylum should be required to show some loyalty to the country they’re seeking refuge in. And it seems reasonable to me that the civilized world ought to be taking action against those who agitate on behalf of terror, regardless of whether it is done through treason prosecutions or other means.

OF TWO MINDS ABOUT THE ECONOMY: A reader notes this amusing juxtaposition in the New York Times. From the Editorial Page:

But the overarching explanation [for public concern about the economy] is that people are feeling insecure because they understand that today’s economy is built on shaky fundamentals. Average Americans may not sit around fretting about America’s outsized budget and trade deficits, and its unprecedented foreign indebtedness. But many of them — as buyers, borrowers and employees — are concerned about the increasingly bubbly housing sector. The economy’s shortcomings are nowhere more obvious than in the job market… job growth is still substantially slower than in previous recoveries. Wages for 80 percent of the work force are barely keeping pace with inflation… Because Mr. Bush fails to acknowledge the lackluster job and wage growth, he fails to respond appropriately. The administration’s insistence that the economy is getting better all the time… only intensifies the anxiety that people feel.

From a news account, the same day:

Emboldened by rising wages and better job prospects, American consumers headed to car dealers by the thousands last month to take advantage of Detroit’s deep discounts, and helped empty bulging warehouses. A series of economic reports released yesterday showed rising retail sales, lower initial unemployment claims and continuing low inventory levels. Economists say the three reports confirm what many of them have been saying: the economic expansion is picking up its pace… The economy has added 190,000 jobs a month on average so far this year, up from 180,000 jobs a month last year. The unemployment rate was at 5 percent in June and July.

Yeah, when you fail to acknowledge the real state of the economy, it can hurt your credibility . . . .

ISRAELI BLOGGER GLORIA SALT offers two scenarios for the post-Gaza-pullout era.

UNSCAM UPDATE: Claudia Rosett writes: “Since the Oil for Food program came to an end in 2003, it has been described–accurately enough–as oil for palaces, oil for terror and oil for fraud. Now it turns out the U.N. relief program in Iraq was also oil for Enron.”

Maybe that’ll be enough to get Paul Krugman interested! (Via Newsbeat 1).

DR. TONY is surprised to discover that the cat I gave him is a reprobate.

Why, exactly, this surprises him I don’t know . . . .

THE BRITISH POLICE are under fire as their story on the Menezes shooting breaks down. I agree with Bill Quick that everybody loses on this one.

DONALD CRANKSHAW has a roundup on the coup in Mauritania and its aftermath.

IN THE MAIL: Lindsay Robertson’s Conquest By Law: How The Discovery Of America Dispossessed Indigenous Peoples Of Their Land.

I wonder how things will be different in the next installment of Eric Flint’s alternative history.

JAMES LILEKS has thoughts on the Presbyterian Church (USA).

But they’re not anti-Semites. Heavens, nay. Don’t you dare question their philosemitism! No, they looked at the entire world, including countries that lop off your skull if you convert to Presbyterianism, and what did they choose as the object of their ire? A country the size of a potato chip hanging on the edge of a region noted for despotism and barbarity. By some peculiar coincidence, it happens to be full of Jews.

Odd.

CENSORSHIP UPDATE: Blog-City is being blocked in China.

MASSIVE GAS LINES IN CHINA: Gateway Pundit has a roundup with some striking photos.

UPDATE: Hmm. This may explain the lines. Full service!

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL looks at personal finance blogs. (Free link) Which reminds me that I neglected to link to this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance. Sorry!

HOMELAND SECURITY REMAINS A JOKE:

WHILE most of the Bush administration has been fighting against increased unionization of security-related positions since 9/11, the federal Transportation Security Administration is headed the other way. In a small case with national implications, TSA doesn’t just break with the Bush administration position; it reverses its own stated policy. . . .

What’s going on? Well, some in Congress would like to see those private firms take over from TSA at more airports. The agency seems to be out to hamstring its competition. . . . Unionization could easily chew up the private security companies’ already thin profit margins — thus locking in TSA’s near-monopoly control.

It’s all about pork. My impression of TSA screening at airports is that it’s not any better than things were before, nor is it any faster or better organized. Certainly on this last trip, the security — and the immigration — folks at the Atlanta airport seemed poorly organized and inefficient. I nearly missed my flight because people who were supposed to be organizing the lines were standing around talking instead.

My predictions about the whole Homeland Security enterprise seem to have been borne out, alas.

GAYPATRIOT NOTES A GROWING SCANDAL involving misspent 9/11 funds in New Jersey.

CARNIVAL-O-RAMA: The bird-blogging carnival is up. So is the Carnival of the Vanities. There’s also the latest Carnival of Education, and, of course, the latest Carnivals of the NBA, of Liberty, of the Clueless, and of the Liberated.

UPDATE: There’s also a Carnival of the Podcasts!

MORE on the bombings in Bangladesh. One of the targets: “The Grameen Bank is a micro-development lender. The attacks on Bangladesh’s legal institutions are the ‘political message.'”

UPDATE: Kjell Hagen emails:

Grameen bank is not only “a micro-development lender”, it is THE micro-development lender. It pioneered the industry, and has been very succesful in especially starting women up with their own small businesses to provide income for their families.

An obvious target for Islamofascists, I guess. God forbid enterprising women have their own income or business success.

Keep ’em poor and stupid is the approach.

BEWARE the Quotidian Miasma of Discrimination.

UPDATE: Is this a case of learned helplessness?

TIM BLAIR:

Where are leftists John Pilger, Tariq Ali, Stephen Kenny, and Tony Bunyan gathering to bitch about Western immorality? In an 18th century Florentine palace, natch.

But of course!

MICKEY KAUS:

WaPo’s Robin Wright, who has been sneering from the sidelines throughout the Iraq war, recently co-wrote a much-noticed article, “U.S. Lowers Sights on What Can Be Achieved in Iraq.” Am I the only person who found it thin and unconvincing?

No, and I meant to post something, but was still in post-vacation semitorpor and let it by. Kaus, however, has taken up the slack admirably.

At most, I think this article boils down to some people realizing that democratization is a process, not an event, which is scarcely news to InstaPundit readers.

Related post on constitutional-convention problems, here.

UPDATE: Reader Ryan Kelley emails:

That article from Wright on 8/14 had the oil production at 2.22 mil bpd. According to this article from 8/15 the total just went up to 2.3 mil bpd just for -southern- Iraq. It’s another 400-550k in Northern Iraq.

That puts it between 2.7 and 2.85 mil bpd which is higher then the pre-war high cited by Wright of 2.67 mil bpd. Significantly higher if it’s at the high end.

Interesting.

DAVEY CROCKETT, KIA AT UT? “Hell, they might as well change the name of the team from the Volunteers to the Oppressed Draftees.” For the record, I have nothing to do with decisions like this.

ALONG THE LINES OF THIS POST, I plan, as soon as Angelina Jolie becomes pregnant, to immediately deny responsibility.

JAMES LILEKS: “Some people think that any time you argue back, you’re Stifling Dissent.”