TOM MAGUIRE: “President Bush’s speech has jolted the the NY Times editors into contact with reality.” Tigerhawk notes a different jolt.

THIS WEEK’S TANGLED BANK science carnival is up.

IN THE MAIL: Tara Ross’s new book, Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College. It looks quite interesting.

NOBODY’S PERFECT: My TechCentralStation column, about the Planetary Society’s mission failure, is up.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG has a piece on the White House’s Supreme Court nomination process. I think it’s doomed to failure, as the names “Volokh” and “Kozinski” are conspicuously absent from the short list.

I HAVEN’T DOWNLOADED IT YET, but the new version of iTunes appears to make podcasting much more user-friendly.

ED MORRISSEY finds editorial reaction to Bush’s speech predictable.

VIRGINIA POSTREL is feeling sorry for Steven Levy, who’s suffering at the hands of a clueless boss. She’s right that Levy’s Hackers is a great book, and she’s also right that it’s painfully obvious that Levy’s boss has no idea — even at the Amazon-blurb level — what it’s about.

UPDATE: In an update to Virginia’s post, Levy defends his boss. But that produced this email from reader Paul Snively:

I’m a former Apple employee and have made my living writing software or supporting other people who do (Macintosh Developer Technical Support at Apple) my entire career. I’ve met Steven Levy, although he wouldn’t remember it. . . .

From this we learn that Mr. Levy is just as clueless as his boss is, if not more so. The unwritten secret is that all of us who can write software and have had to learn the vagaries of the various operating systems and networks that we work on “CAN break into computers.” The various reasons that we don’t are the same as the various reasons other people don’t steal, assault people, rape, murder, etc. (It literally never occurs to us, it occurs to us but we believe it’s wrong, it might be tempting but we’re afraid of being caught, we wouldn’t mind getting caught but jail is a boring place, whatever).

We’re a lot like locksmiths. The reason you can feel reasonably physically secure behind locked doors is that locksmiths do a reasonable job of guarding the knowledge that would make it possible to subvert all but the highest-grade industrial locks. Magicians– escape artists–basically study the same materials that locksmiths do and then build a show around it (Erich Weiss, aka Harry Houdini, was a former locksmith’s apprentice).

None of this would be worth noting at all, except for one thing: it seems to me like yet another instance of a disturbing general trend to fail to distinguish among classes of people according to what they do, as opposed to what they can do. Levy’s comment means that it’s OK to call both MIT’s Tech Model Railroad Club of the mid 1950s and Kevin Mitnick “Hackers” because both “CAN break into computers.” That’s a ludicrous, and dangerous, conflation of definitions.

All definitions are permitted to the definer, if clear. But I can see why computer professionals would object to this choice.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Lowell McCormick emails:

Hi Glenn, I read the book “Hackers” back in 1987(?). It is very entertaining, informative and full of computer history. I loved it. I loaned it out back then and never got it back. I bought another copy in the last couple of years and read it again. It was just as good as the first time. I highly recommend it.

Yes, I’ve assigned it in my Internet Law class before. It’s excellent.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF EDUCATION is up.

THOUGHTS ON IRAQ AND DEADLINES, over at GlennReynolds.com.

And David Adesnik has some related thoughts.

UPDATE: The MSNBC folks have now added video of Austin Bay’s appearance on Kudlow & Company — just scroll to the bottom of my GlennReynolds.com piece.

MEGAN MCARDLE’S POST on making markets in the political economy should be must-reading for Democrats.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Jonah Goldberg thinks that the market for “compassionate conservatism” has peaked. “Let’s have no more of that.”

I HAVE AN “OPPOSING VIEW” PIECE in Wednesday’s USA Today: “I think that reporters’ privileges are a dubious idea, but if we’re to have them, let’s have them for everyone who reports news, not just professional journalists.”

JEFF JARVIS: “Well, bravo, at long last, major media concedes that the agenda it has set in Iraq — of unrelenting doom — has another side. But they can’t leave it at that.” Indeed.

AUSTIN BAY REPORTS FROM AFGHANISTAN: Here’s a short report on A-10 missions using video Austin emailed me. Quicktime version is here.

WELL, THAT HITLER THING was getting sooo passé: The first known comparison of Bush to the BTK Killer. Jeez, Rove’s stooges are everywhere.

MY EVIL PLAN seems to have worked. Heh.

ED MORRISSEY will be liveblogging Bush’s speech. No time-travel involved.

UPDATE: More liveblogging here: Just scroll up.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Saw all but the first couple of minutes. A good job, I thought, though Bush’s delivery is never impressive. (And he had that “Jeezus I can’t believe I have to explain this stuff again! — don’t you guys read Den Beste?” expression from time to time. Okay, I was kidding about the Den Beste part. Kind of.) He made the key points, though, and — which is more important — I suspect that the Administration will keep making them in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, Mickey Kaus has an observation on deadline-fever.

MORE: Ian Schwartz has the video of the President’s speech.

STILL MORE: Lorie Byrd: “I agree with Mort Kondracke that tonight’s was one of George Bush’s best speeches. (Transcript here.) It was clear and concise, and obviously heartfelt. The President made a strong, if familiar, case for the importance of the Iraq War to the general war on terror. He also made a good case for the contention that we are making progress and we will prevail.”

Donald Sensing: “Overall, I don’t rate this speech very high – no better than a ‘B’ and maybe B-minus. . . . The speech reads betters than it hears. I think that Bush’s delivery, never stellar, was below even his par tonight.”

John Hinderaker: “There was nothing in it that we and our readers didn’t already know, but the message is one that many rarely hear.”

Brendan Loy, on the other hand, was considerably less impressed.

MORE STILL: Smash liveblogged it, too. And Hugh Hewitt observes:

That is the key point in the speech, the key point in the debate, and the president’s clarity in making it made it a very successful speech. Over and over again he and his Administration, his supporters and the military must make that point again and again: It is all one war.

Reportedly, David Gergen is offended at the mention of 9/11. Perhaps if Gergen’s media friends mentioned it more often, Bush could mention it less . . . .

Kaus, on the other hand, thinks that Bush’s speech was “too Presidential.”

FINALLY: Thoughts on Jefferson and Trotsky.

THIS WEEK’S GRAND ROUNDS IS UP, including Dr. Tony’s unusual encounter in the E.R.

AUSTIN BAY, just back from Iraq and Afghanistan, will be on Hugh Hewitt’s show shortly.

UPDATE: Austin’s thanking his readers.

TOM MAGUIRE FINDS THIS BURIED TREASURE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES:

Senators Laud Treatment of Detainees in Guantánamo

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: June 28, 2005
WASHINGTON, June 27 – Senators from both sides of the aisle competed on Monday to extol the humane treatment of detainees whom they said they saw on a weekend trip to the military detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. All said they opposed closing the center.

“I feel very good” about the detainees’ treatment, Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said.

That feeling was also expressed by another Democrat, Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

On Monday, Senator Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky, said he learned while visiting Guantánamo that some detainees “even have air-conditioning and semiprivate showers.”

Another Republican, Senator Michael D. Crapo of Idaho, said soldiers and sailors at the camp “get more abuse from the detainees than they give to the detainees.” . . .

One senator, Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, has come under criticism and apologized repeatedly for comparing reported abuses at the camps to treatment in Soviet gulags or Nazi concentration camps.

Buried, that is, on page A15. I wonder why? Maybe because good conditions at Guantanamo are old news?

A LAPHAMIZATION SIGHTING for the AP on Bush’s speech.

IT’S HARD TO KEEP good capitalists down: Kelo mugs and t-shirts.

IT SEEMS THAT PRESIDENT BUSH’S STRATEGY ON IRAQ IS MORE POPULAR than a lot of people seem to think:

As President Bush prepares to address the nation about Iraq tonight, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that most Americans do not believe the administration’s claims that impressive gains are being made against the insurgency, but a clear majority is willing to keep U.S. forces there for an extended time to stabilize the country.

The survey found that only one in eight Americans currently favors an immediate pullout of U.S. forces, while a solid majority continues to agree with Bush that the United States must remain in Iraq until civil order is restored — a goal that most of those surveyed acknowledge is, at best, several years away.

52% think our presence in Iraq is good for America. That’s up 5% since earlier this month. Interestingly, this coincides with a major outbreak of Vietnam nostalgia from the left. Or maybe it’s not a coincidence. Whenever the war opponents start talking, Bush seems to do better. Somewhere, Karl Rove is smiling.

JONAH GOLDBERG: “Thank goodness this country still produces heroes like me.”

Indeed.

HEH:

Could a hotel be built on the land owned by Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter? A new ruling by the Supreme Court which was supported by Justice Souter himself itself might allow it. A private developer is seeking to use this very law to build a hotel on Souter’s land.

Justice Souter’s vote in the “Kelo vs. City of New London” decision allows city governments to take land from one private owner and give it to another if the government will generate greater tax revenue or other economic benefits when the land is developed by the new owner.

On Monday June 27, Logan Darrow Clements, faxed a request to Chip Meany the code enforcement officer of the Towne of Weare, New Hampshire seeking to start the application process to build a hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road. This is the present location of Mr. Souter’s home.

Clements, CEO of Freestar Media, LLC, points out that the City of Weare will certainly gain greater tax revenue and economic benefits with a hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road than allowing Mr. Souter to own the land.

The proposed development, called “The Lost Liberty Hotel” will feature the “Just Desserts Café” and include a museum, open to the public, featuring a permanent exhibit on the loss of freedom in America. Instead of a Gideon’s Bible each guest will receive a free copy of Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged.”

Did I say “heh?” I hope the project moves ahead.