SO DRIVING HOME FROM THE GYM I turned on the radio and got Bush giving a really first-rate speech on foreign policy and the war to the National Endowment for Democracy. Notable features — besides its overall clarity — are the naming of Iran and Syria, and his willingness to talk about a war against Islamic terror, not just generic “terror.” Maybe he’s been reading Bill Quick’s critiques!

UPDATE: So on the drive into work, I heard Neal Boortz blasting Bush for “sugarcoating” Islam. I guess you just can’t win.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More on Bush’s speech here.

MICKEY KAUS takes on John Carroll.

JIM PINKERTON WRITES on politics and art.

THE SENATE HAS PASSED a bill setting standards for treatment of detainees regardless of whether they’re covered by the Geneva Convention or not. The White House is resisting.

This resistance seems to me to be a mistake. First — as Lamar Alexander noted on the Senate floor, in a passage I heard on NPR earlier this morning — it is very much the Congress’s responsibility to make decisions like this; the President might do so in the first instance, but we’ve been at war for more than four years and Congress is actually doing its job late, not jumping in to interfere. If the White House thinks that the Senate’s approach is substantively wrong, it should say so, but presenting it as simply an interference with the President’s Commander-in-Chief powers is wrong. Congress is entitled, and in fact obligated, to set standards of this sort. It’s probably also better politically for the White House, since once the legislation is in place complaints about what happened before look a bit ex post facto.

Perhaps current practices are producing a treasure trove of intelligence that this bill would stop, but I doubt that — and if I’m wrong, the Administration should make that case to Congress, not stand on executive prerogatives. And this bill seems to be just what I was calling for way back when — a sensible look at the subject by responsible people, freed of the screeching partisanship that has marked much of the discussion in the punditsphere. That should be rewarded, not blown off.

UPDATE: The Mudville Gazette has a link-rich post full of factual background that’s a must-read on this topic.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Belgravia Dispatch has much more.

MORE: Juan Non-Volokh writes:

I do not know whether the standard adopted by the Senate is the best approach, but I nonetheless view the vote as a positive development.

If anything, this newfound Congressional willingness to address the rules of detention is long over due. While I certainly believe that the Executive Branch is due a fair degree of deference from the courts in its execution of war-related activities, the Constitution confers the ultimate responsibility for such matters to the legislature. Article I, section 8 explicitly delegates the power “to make Rules concerning captures on Land and Water.” Congress also has the power “to make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces.” Viewed in this light, Congress is not interfering with executive power. It is exercising a responsibility the Constitution explicitly places in the legislature’s hands.

Absent Congressional enactments specifying how military detainees are to be treated, the precise limits of the executive’s authority are necessarily ambiguous. This ambiguity may give the executive some measure of leeway — a leeway the White House and military apparently want to preserve — but it also has unfortunate consequences. Among other things this ambiguity encourages legal challenges to military operations and invites the courts to second-guess decisions that should be made by the political branches. Insofar as the legislature sets clear rules, there will be less room for the judiciary to interfere. If one fears excessive judicial meddling in the conduct of the war on terror, as I do, one should applaud this development.

Yes, and members of Congress will be responsible for how things work out, not just after-the-fact critics, which is also a good thing.

THOUGH HE’S BETTER KNOWN AS A BLOGGER and musician, Doktor Frank has also got a novel coming out. He’s a 21st century Renaissance man!

THE DARPA GRAND CHALLENGE seems pretty cool.

AL GORE IS GOING ON ABOUT “DIGITAL BROWNSHIRTS” AGAIN, and Brendan Nyhan wonders why.

SUDDENLY EVERYBODY’S PILING ON IRAN: Hmm.

JONATHAN GEWIRTZ has more thoughts on the Florida gun law that I mentioned earlier.

A SPY in the White House:

Federal investigators say Aragoncillo, a naturalized citizen from the Philippines, used his top secret clearance to steal classified intelligence documents from White House computers.

In 2000, Aragoncillo worked on the staff of then-Vice President Al Gore. When interviewed by Philippine television, he remarked how valued Philippine employees were at the White House.

“I think what they like most is our integrity and loyalty,” Aragoncillo said.

Officials say the classified material, which Aragoncillo stole from the vice president’s office, included damaging dossiers on the president of the Philippines. He then passed those on to opposition politicians planning a coup in the Pacific nation.

“Even though it’s not for the Russians or some other government, the fact that it occurred at the White House is a matter of great concern,” said John Martin, who was the government’s lead espionage prosecutor for 26 years.

He worked for Cheney, too.

OVER AT LEGAL AFFAIRS’ DEBATE CLUB, Richard Posner and Geoffrey Stone are debating the Patriot Act and related matters.

HEH.

RESPONSES TO GEORGE WILL’S COLUMN ON MIERS, here and here.

THIS SOUNDS LIKE GOOD NEWS:

BAGHDAD — Recent polling shows widespread support for a new Iraqi constitution to be voted on Oct. 15, even in strongholds of Sunni Arab groups that are fighting to derail the charter.

Mehdi Hafedh, director of the Iraqi Center for Development and International Dialogue, said his latest survey showed that Iraqis are exhausted by the continuing violence and that most are hoping the new constitution will be a first step toward the restoration of order.

(Via ATC). In other news, the Iraqi parliament, fearing Ann Althouse’s wrath (as all must), has removed a controversial provision on ratification.

IN RESPONSE TO MY COLUMN, reader Don Bosch sends this on telecommuting and energy savings. He also sends this story on Rep. Frank Wolf’s efforts to increase telecommuting within the Federal government.

UPDATE: Another response here.

SAY, I WONDER IF THIS GUY is making any hay off the Tom Delay indictments? I know I keep thinking of him every time the subject comes up.

HOLMAN JENKINS looks at NASA’s latest plans with a skeptical eye — and notes the impact of spacebloggers and space advocates:

There’s now a popular constituency for space policy that does more than just tune in for the blast-off extravaganzas. Blame the Web: We told you last year how seething space fans had kept Congress’s feet to the fire and ended up saving a bill designed to speed development of private space tourism.

The same folks are also a source of critique of NASA’s Exploration Systems Architecture Study, issued last month, mostly in consultation with the usual suspects — the giant aerospace contractors, who’ve been NASA’s primary iron triangle sounding board since Gemini. Now there’s an effective peanut gallery, their voices magnified by the Web, which has sprouted numerous sites devoted to criticizing and kibitzing about NASA.

The critics won’t be flyswatted away for one big reason. NASA’s “return to the moon” efforts over the coming decade, as budgets bloat and deadlines are missed, will take place against a background of much faster progress in private spaceflight endeavors. . . .

NASA’s moon plans are a budget bluff — at best, a cipher for a space policy to be named later, once the political landscape has shifted and it will be possible finally to pull the plug on the shuttle, the space station and NASA’s whole failing model of human spaceflight.

What will cause this shift in the landscape? Successful private space endeavors — which, despite setbacks, through trial and error and animal spirits, will begin to show that men and material can be moved off the earth and into orbit affordably by spreading the cost over many flights, routinely undertaken. Only then can the next stage of manned space exploration really start.

Hence a powerful line of criticism aimed at NASA from the non-usual suspects. NASA’s program has a “fundamental unseriousness about it,” complains Rand Simberg, a former aerospace engineer, at his Web site Transterrestrial Musings. “A serious program would be based on a foundation of an infrastructure that would dramatically reduce the marginal costs of getting to orbit, operating in orbit, and getting to the points beyond low earth orbit.”

Adds the Space Access Society’s Henry Vanderbilt: NASA should “let go of controlling their own space transportation from start to finish” and “put the entire ground-to-orbit leg of their new deep space missions out to bid.”

Says consultant Charles Lurio: “Instead of ‘pork from space’ we see the prospect now of practical industries from space, developing on their own.”

We put these views in the paper as a public service. NASA can be expected to dismiss them. Most of the media, bound up in its notion of legitimate “sources,” reports only the views of NASA, the lobbying sector and the congressional delegations whose main interest is keeping the pork flowing.

My thoughts on the subject can be found here.

POLITICS AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: Some interesting thoughts at Impearls.

IS BUSH LIKE TRUMAN? Michael Barone has comments in response to Bill Stuntz.

THIS WEEK’S TANGLED BANK science blog carnival is up.

TIM BLAIR has more on the latest Bali bombing reactions.

IN THE MAIL: Lee Epstein and Jeffrey Segal’s Advice And Consent: The Politics of Appointing Federal Judges. You couldn’t ask for better timing on a book like this . . . .

GEORGE WILL makes an important point on why the Bush Administration’s “trust me” argument is falling flat:

In addition, the president has forfeited his right to be trusted as a custodian of the Constitution. The forfeiture occurred March 27, 2002, when, in a private act betokening an uneasy conscience, he signed the McCain-Feingold law expanding government regulation of the timing, quantity and content of political speech. The day before the 2000 Iowa caucuses he was asked — to ensure a considered response from him, he had been told in advance that he would be asked — whether McCain-Feingold’s core purposes are unconstitutional. He unhesitatingly said, “I agree.” Asked if he thought presidents have a duty, pursuant to their oath to defend the Constitution, to make an independent judgment about the constitutionality of bills and to veto those he thinks unconstitutional, he briskly said, “I do.”

My emailers are invoking this very thing, and it’s illustrative of the way that the Miers nomination is upsetting the base in ways that go well beyond Miers herself, or the usual hot-button issues like abortion.

UPDATE: Mystery Pollster has the numbers from Gallup and the base seems displeased.

I’M WATCHING MY GRANDMOTHER (my sister has her during the week, but she had to go out of town today) and on the drive out to her place I heard Mike Gallagher talking about this Florida legislation:

Sen. Durell Peaden, R-Crestview, and Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, have filed bills that would permit workers to have the guns on the employer’s property as long as the weapons remain locked in their vehicles. Both proposals included provisions that shield companies from lawsuits in case an employee committed a crime with the gun they had been storing in their car.

The proposals resemble an Oklahoma law that drew attention when a number of major companies, including ConocoPhillips and Halliburton, sued to have it overturned.

Supporters of such laws say they prevent companies from forcing workers to give up their constitutional right to carry firearms.

I think the bill is probably a good idea, and it’s unlikely to do any harm. But the discussion was the sort of thing that makes law professors tear out their hair.

Gallagher kept saying that employers were violating Second Amendment rights by banning firearms. But the Second Amendment — like the rest of the Constitution, except for the 13th Amendment — doesn’t apply to private actors. Banning firearms on private property is no more a Second Amendment violation than banning videocameras on private property is a First Amendment violation.

That doesn’t make the bill wrong, of course. Legislation to stop employers from doing things seen as socially harmful is commonplace. The Constitution doesn’t prohibit racial discrimination by private employers, but state and federal legislation does, because we think it’s a bad thing.

There’s nothing in the proposed Florida law that’s either required or forbidden by the Constitution (and if Florida, or other states, wanted to make employers and businesses that have no-firearms policies strictly liable for injuries caused by criminals on their premises, that wouldn’t violate the Constitution either). But Gallagher’s discussion illustrates how quick people are, even on the right, to constitutionalize all sorts of arguments that aren’t really about the Constitution at all.

MORE PHOTO ANALYSIS.