DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY UPDATE: Reader Jim Herd notes that DPreview now has a review of Canon’s new sub-$1000 8-megapixel digital SLR. Actually, it’s well under $1000 — $899 on Amazon.

Nikon’s not to be left out for long, though, as it announces the long-rumored D50, too.

IS WARREN BUFFETT GETTING A FREE PASS regarding the AIG scandal? Not entirely.

MICHAEL TOTTEN IS REPORTING FROM LEBANON, and some people are finding it inspiring.

YEARS AGO, when I was interviewed for an article on pro-Second Amendment scholars for The Chronicle of Higher Education, I was given the third degree by a reporter who found it hard to believe that so many constitutional scholars and law reviews were publishing “pro gun” articles without getting paid by the NRA.

So it’s worth noting that antigun scholars and law reviews are getting paid by the Joyce Foundation.

I agree with Eugene Volokh that there’s nothing particularly unethical about this. But I also agree that it’s worth noting that it’s going on, and has been for a while.

ED MORRISSEY is still on top of the Canadian scandals, which are getting more attention — thanks in part to his efforts.

MORE WARNINGS ABOUT AVIAN FLU: I still hope this will be an overrated threat, but I’m pretty worried.

UPDATE: Here’s a fact sheet from the CDC and here’s the WHO page.

THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE: What if they had a Tet offensive and nobody came?

POWER LINE has more on anti-semitism at Columbia.

UPDATE: Roger Simon: “Unfortunately, however, the Columbia situation is more serious than intermittent cultural relativism at the NYT or any other publication.”

IN THE MAIL: Jasper Becker’s Rogue Regime: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea.

WATCH OUT, DRUDGE: Sploid has arrived, courtesy of Nick Denton.

If you scroll all the way to the bottom, you’ll see that Ken Layne is an editor. Which explains a lot!

DICK MORRIS ON SANDY BERGER:

Berger has admitted that he stuffed top-secret documents into his pockets, shirt and pants, and why he sliced some up with scissors, destroyed them and then lied about it. Until he gives a credible explanation for this behavior, we are all entitled to make the logical inference — that he was hiding something to protect himself and his old bosses. . . .

Berger would also have us believe he “inadvertently” cut up and “inadvertently” destroyed the documents — that he had no intention of concealing anything from the commission. And then, I suppose, he inadvertently lied about what he’d done.

Come on. With a shabby explanation like that, Berger invites speculation that he is covering for himself or for the Clintons.

Back in the ’90s, I found Berger consistently unwilling to act vigorously against terror-sponsoring nations. When Sen. Al D’Amato proposed sanctions against Iran, Berger tried to get Clinton to veto the bill; it was only after much public pressure that he signed it.

Berger was on a fast track to be the next Democratic Secretary of State. He risked that in stealing those documents. Now he has destroyed his future career by pleading to a criminal misdemeanor — admitting what he did while still concealing why he did it.

Read the whole thing.

HOW MUCH BETTER ARE THINGS IN IRAQ? Compare the situation today with this post from a year ago.

On the other hand, violence seems to be on the upswing in France:

On March 8, tens of thousands of high school students marched through central Paris to protest education reforms announced by the government. Repeatedly, peaceful demonstrators were attacked by bands of black and Arab youths–about 1,000 in all, according to police estimates. The eyewitness accounts of victims, teachers, and most interestingly the attackers themselves gathered by the left-wing daily Le Monde confirm the motivation: racism.

Some of the attackers openly expressed their hatred of “little French people.” One 18-year-old named Heikel, a dual citizen of France and Tunisia, was proud of his actions. He explained that he had joined in just to “beat people up,” especially “little Frenchmen who look like victims.” He added with a satisfied smile that he had “a pleasant memory” of repeatedly kicking a student, already defenseless on the ground.

Another attacker explained the violence by saying that “little whites” don’t know how to fight and “are afraid because they are cowards.” Rachid, an Arab attacker, added that even an Arab can be considered a “little white” if he “has a French mindset.” The general sentiment was a desire to “take revenge on whites.”

Will France improve as much in the coming year as Iraq has in the past year? Doubtful.

PRAWFSBLAWG is a new blog by “youngish law-professor types.”

A WHILE BACK, I joked about buying one of these. After spending the morning screwing around with my allegedly reliable Honda, I’m getting more and more tempted.

UKRAINE UPDATE: Some thoughts on Yushchenko’s visit.

MEDBLOGATHON: This week’s Grand Rounds is up!

UPDATE: And don’t miss the Carnival of Education, a collection of — you guessed it! — education-related posts.

DEFINING VICTORY IN THE WAR ON TERROR: Austin Bay has an email from a Senior Military Official giving the view from Iraq.

“HOW MANY MORE MUST DIE, BEFORE KOFI QUITS?”

Here, too, is Annan’s faxed response – ordering Dallaire to defend only the UN’s image of impartiality, forbidding him to protect desperate civilians waiting to die. Next, it details the withdrawal of UN troops, even while blood flowed and the assassins reigned, leaving 800,000 Rwandans to their fate.

The museum’s silent juxtaposition of personal courage versus Annan’s passive capitulation to evil is an effective reminder of what is at stake in the debate over Annan’s future: when the UN fails, innocent people die. Under Annan, the UN has failed and people have died.

His own legions have raped and pillaged. In two present scandals, over the oil-for-food programme in Iraq, and sex-for-food in Congo, Annan was personally aware of malfeasance among his staff, but again responded with passivity.

Having worked as a UN human rights observer in Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti and Liberia, there are two savage paradoxes for me here. The first is that, while the media and conservative politicians and pundits have suddenly discovered that the UN has been catastrophically incompetent, this is very old news to anyone with the mud (or blood) of a UN peacekeeping mission on his boots. . . .

The second searing irony for me is that the American neoconservative right has occupied the moral high ground in critique of Annan, outflanking the left, which sits on indefensible territory in his support. But if prevention of genocide and protection of the vulnerable are not core priorities on the left, then what is? If anyone’s values have been betrayed, it is those of us on the left who believe most deeply in the organisation’s ideals.

And yet, the UN keeps being held up as a symbol of civilization and lawfulness by those who should know better.

HOWARD KURTZ HAS PICKED UP ON THE CANADIAN SCANDAL STORY, making it officially news for the American media:

Yes, our democratic neighbor to the north, which lacks a First Amendment and has a somewhat narrower view of press freedom, is cracking down on an American blogger for reporting on a corruption investigation that apparently has to do with advertising contracts being steered to politically connected firms. The blogger is Ed Morrissey of Captains Quarters, and this London Free Press story brings us up to date:

“A U.S. website has breached the publication ban protecting a Montreal ad executive’s explosive and damning testimony at the federal sponsorship inquiry. The U.S. blogger riled the Gomery commission during the weekend by posting extracts of testimony given in secret Thursday by Jean Brault.

“The American blog, being promoted by an all-news Canadian website, boasts ‘Canada’s Corruption Scandal Breaks Wide Open’ and promises more to come. The owner of the Canadian website refused to comment.

“Inquiry official Francois Perreault voiced shock at the publication ban breach, and said the commission co-counsel Bernard Roy and Justice John Gomery will decide today whether to charge the Canadian website owner with contempt of court.”

He’s got much more.

MORE BLOG CARNIVALS: Tangled Bank is a carnival of science-blogging. Meanwhile, Proverbs Daily is hosting the latest Christian carnival. And I somehow missed last week’s Carnival of the Liberated. There are so many now that I can’t keep track!

DEREK LOWE’S BROTHER HAS DIED: Please send him your thoughts and prayers.

RYAN SAGER RESPONDS TO HIS CRITICS: I think that, once again, he comes out on top.

Meanwhile, I don’t even have to respond to mine, as someone else has done it for me.

SAUL BELLOW HAS DIED: I join Roger Simon in offering condolences to his son Adam, who was involved with my last book.

LIKE ANN ALTHOUSE, I found time to wander campus for a little while this afternoon. And, like Ann, I found student electioneering underway, though without the rock’em-sock’em approach.

Skateboarding is not a crime, as we’re often told. You see less of it on campus than you did a few years ago, though.

Professors still hold class outside on nice days.

Outdoor snacking is also popular.

Though in an earlier post, I noted that it was mostly women who seemed to be walking and chatting on cellphones, men do use them — though this guy is a Physical Plant staffer, not a student.

It does seem, though that most of the people walking around and talking into cellphones are women. I certainly hope that cellphones don’t turn out to cause cancer or something. If they do, the gender imbalance that Ann notes on college campuses is likely to be reversed in future generations, because my casual observation suggests that female college students get several times the RF exposure from cellphones that men get.

I tend to think that the cellphone-danger bit is overblown. I certainly hope I’m right, because if it’s not, things are going to turn out badly.

CORNYN CLARIFIES:

As a former judge myself for 13 years, who has a number of close personal friends who still serve on the bench today, I am outraged by recent acts of courthouse violence. I certainly hope that no one will construe my remarks on Monday otherwise. Considered in context, I don’t think a reasonable listener or reader could.

As I said on Monday, there’s no possible justification for courthouse violence. Indeed, I met with a federal judge, a friend of mine, in Texas just this past week, to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to protect our judges and courthouse personnel against further acts of violence. And like my colleague from Illinois, I personally know judges and their families who have been victims of violence and have grieved with those families.

But I want to make one thing clear: I’m not aware of any evidence whatsoever linking recent acts of courthouse violence to the various controversial rulings that have captured the nation’s attention in recent years.

My point was, and is, simply this: We should all be concerned that the judiciary is losing the respect that it needs to serve the American people well. We should all want judges to interpret the law fairly – not impose their own personal views on the nation. We should all want to fix our broken judicial confirmation process. And we should all be disturbed by overheated rhetoric about the judiciary, from both sides of the aisle. I regret it that my remarks have been taken out of context to create a wrong impression about my position, and possibly be construed to contribute to the problem rather than to a solution.

Our judiciary must not be politicized. Rhetoric about the judiciary and about judicial nominees must be toned down. And our broken judicial confirmation process must be fixed, once and for all.

So there. Though if there are no links, why did he raise the subject? Or, as Ann Althouse notes: “Politicians know the spiciest part of a speech is the sound bite. Edit it out if you don’t mean it.”