MARK STEYN on the Paris riots, the Jordan bombings, and more. Excerpt:

I do think that what’s pathetic about all Western countries, including the United States, including France, including Canada, and a lot of other countries, is that they make these sort of high school sophist arguments about terrorism, as if it’s some sort of theoretical debate. It’s not. We’re dealing with a very difficult situation here. And if you accord to terrorists all the rights of somebody who gets arrested for holding up a liquor store in Des Moines, you are going to lose to the terrorists, because when you accord them the full rights of somebody who is a criminal, you make it impossible to prosecute this as a war, which is what it is.

Read the whole thing, which is another of those handy instant transcripts from the Hugh Hewitt show.

HOWARD KURTZ SPANKS MARY MAPES: Ian Schwartz has video.

Mapes does a pretty good job of discrediting herself, too.

JONAH GOLDBERG WEIGHS IN on the McCain bill.

GIVING AL FRANKEN the credit he deserves.

BREDESEN 1, SCHWARZENEGGER 0:

Nissan Motor Co. announced Thursday it is moving its North American headquarters and nearly 1,300 jobs from California to the Nashville area to take advantage of the lower cost of doing business in the Southeast.

“The board of Nissan decided to relocate our North American headquarters, and we’re coming to Tennessee,” Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn said at a news conference at the state Capitol attended by Gov. Phil Bredesen and other top state officials.

The headquarters, which has been based in Gardena, Calif., will relocate to Williamson County, a suburban area south of Nashville. . . .

Ghosn cited lower real estate and business taxes as major reasons for the move.

“The costs of doing business in Southern California are much higher than the costs of doing business in Tennessee,” he said.

Plus, housing is much cheaper for employees, and there’s no state income tax.

UPDATE: Reader Daniel Aronstein emails:

Your title – and take – on the Nissan relocation from California to Tennessee is unfair and inaccurate.

Nissan left for reasons that Ahnold has been trying very hard to change.

And the Democrats and unions have stopped him.

An accurate and unbiased title would have been “BREDESEN 1, Kalifornia Democrats & unions 0.”

I wasn’t really picking on Arnold, I just thought that was cute. But a fair point.

ANOTHER UPDATE: SKBubba emails:

Small correction to your Nissan post (which is great news, by the way). There IS an income tax in Tennessee. It’s called the Hall Tax. Check it out. It particularly sucks for small business people like me
and the Mrs. who organize as Sub-S corporations. It isn’t mentioned in the chamber of commerce brochures. Not sure why Tennessee penalizes small businesses, who create about 80% of the jobs here.

Yes, the Hall Tax sucks though it probably has no relevance to decisions like Nissan’s.

LARRY KUDLOW:

Why Republicans don’t say more about the tax-cut related economic expansion is beyond me. And whether Tuesday’s disappointing election results provide a wake up call for the GOP remains to be seen. But they need a wake up call. Young Turks in the House like Mike Pence, Jeff Flake, and Marsha Blackburn should be represented in the House leadership. Ideas matter. Dick Armey was a great idea man. Speaker Dennis Hastert doesn’t seem to be a great idea man. The Tom DeLay period is probably over. New blood in the leadership is essential.

And speaking of new blood, where exactly is the White House proposal for budget cutting? Last week Bush said he was open to deeper budget cuts. But no new budget-cutting list has so far been unveiled by the OMB. The White House is not using the bully pulpit to lead the effort. . . .

Specific policies will beat inertia. But without specifics, the Democrats will gain more ground simply because the Republicans now running government are failing to meet taxpayer expectations.

This is a real problem. It ain’t going away.

Nope.

PLAME UPDATE: Tom Maguire has questions for, and about, Andrea Mitchell.

JORDANIANS TO ZARQAWI: “Burn in Hell.” Sounds good to me.

He’s not much at winning friends, but he sure has managed to influence a lot of people.

ANOTHER JUDICIAL-PICK DROPPED BALL? When I heard that there were two candidates for the Ninth Circuit named Smith, I figured that surely one of them had to be San Diego law professor and blogger Tom Smith. But, alas, I was wrong.

JOANNE JACOBS’ BOOK has certainly rocketed up on Amazon. She’s in the three-digit rankings now. I hope it’s a bestseller.

MICKEY KAUS:

Are you impressed that TimesSelect has attracted “approximately” 135,000 paying customers?** At $45 a head (halfway between the introductory price and the regular price) that’s $6.1 million. Bigger than Arianna! But if someone–say, Richard Mellon Scaife–had come along a year ago and offered the NYT $6.1 million to radically limit the reach of its (largely) liberal columnists, would the paper have taken the deal?

Good question.

LANCE FRIZZELL IS BACK FROM IRAQ, and posts a request.

OUCH!

WHY THE REPUBLICANS SHOULD BE WORRIED, and the Democrats should be seizing opportunities: Driving in to work this morning, I heard this guy talking on the Hallerin Hill show, and he noted that he votes for the Republicans because of their stance on money and taxes, but that he agrees with the Democrats on a lot of other issues. If the Democrats would just lose their hostility to the idea of people getting rich, he said, they’d have his votes and millions of others.

I think that’s probably right — and I’d guess that Gene Sperling does too. That’s why, as I suggested in my column yesterday, it’s important that the pro-growth Democrats get a hearing. And while Republicans might prefer that they lose out, the truth is that sooner or later the Dems will be back in, and we’d rather see them sensible on economic matters when they are.

Of course, there’s still the whole national-security issue, which for me is more of a dealbreaker than the economics. But I’d like to see more sense on that front, as well. Karl Rove may prefer the Democrats to chase the Democratic Underground vote and marginalize themselves, but I think the country would be better off if they moved in the other direction.

CATS AND DOGS, LIVING TOGETHER? Well, it’s Mike Krempasky and Kos on the same side:

The campaign finance regulation lobby is trying to muddy the waters by offering a sham alternative to the Online Freedom of Speech Act. Their bill is HR 4194, and they’re trying to convince the Congress that it provides protection for online speech.

Not so. For details on why, check out Adam Bonin here.

In response – the Online Coalition is asking the 3000+ bloggers and activists that signed on to our early comments to the FEC to light up the phones on Capitol Hill – and send a trackback to this post.

Even more significant, in a “didn’t think I’d see that” kind of moment – Markos and I have co-signed a letter to every Member of the House this morning. It’s below the fold – and useful for communicating with Congress.

Remember – in order to get the bill we WANT – we need to kill the sham substitute. HR 4194 does NOT protect speech, and it DOES increase regulation of the web. This time, let’s not let them have the field all to themselves, eh?

Follow the link to read the letter.

KURDISTAN THANKS AMERICA: Gateway Pundit has the story, with video.

Check out the Kurds’ website, too, for links to several TV ads they’ll be running in America to say thanks.

STEVEN DEN BESTE IS BACK BLOGGING, over at RedState.

Various people are happy. Including me.

PUBLIUS ROUNDS UP French and British media reaction to the French riots.

HAPPY 230TH BIRTHDAY to the Marine Corps.

ANDREW ROTH:

The House is voting on the “Deficit Reduction Act of 2005” today. It is arguably the biggest vote of the year.

Read the whole thing to find out why this is so important.

GOOD QUESTION: “Why are we supposed to believe the Times about stories to which they are not a party when the paper so boldly lies about a story the facts of which are 100% within its control?”

UPDATE: Ron Coleman thinks this question is unfair:

To the contrary, in the law at least — and I think in life, too — we expect almost everyone with an interest in a situation to be biased, on some level, as to how they report it. It is a presumption that colors how a finder of fact weighs the testimony of an interested person. In contrast, when it comes to “stories to which they are not a party,” peoples’ bias has to be proved, either directly or by implication.

Certainly, nobody thinks the Times is unbiased here. But stuff like this — or, more notably, the bit about not being able to reach Miller for comment on a story about her departure — the New York Observer seemed to manage — is pretty hard to ignore.

OOPS, MY BAD: I misread Joanne Jacobs’ email, and I wasn’t supposed to plug her new book on education reform until today. Oh, well.

INTELLIGENT DESIGN: Non-science, or just bad science? Uriah Kriegel examines the question.

A HUGO CHAVEZ / VICENTE FOX CATFIGHT? More from Miguel Octavio and Venezuela News. I’ll just add to the fun by pointing out that Chavez seems to be packing on the extra pounds.

JOSEPH BRITT has more on Zimbabwe.