IS THIS A CIRCULAR FIRING SQUAD, OR WHAT? While out running errands at lunchtime, I heard Rush Limbaugh calling Harriet Miers an underqualified affirmative-action candidate, and reacting angrily to being called an “elitist, sexist conservative” for being critical of her choice. Similar acrimony is evident in many quarters of the blogosphere.

Whatever Miers brings to the table, there’s no doubt that this nomination was a mistake politically, and that it’s been badly handled. What possible benefit could Bush get from the Miers nomination that makes it worth sowing this much dissension within the ranks of his supporters?

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: So I’m reading the manuscript for Joel Miller’s forthcoming book, Size Matters : How Big Government Puts the Squeeze on America’s Families, Finances, and Freedom, and it’s pretty depressing. Like my book-in-progress, it starts out with beer, which is not depressing, but Miller’s story is how absurd regulation nearly killed Pete’s Wicked Ale before it got to market. Following is a litany of bad regulation and wasteful spending (mostly the former) and how it damages both the economy and the ability of the government to do things that actually matter.

Miller’s conclusion is a bit grim — he just doesn’t think the problems are bad enough to produce the needed drastic action, yet. But my own feeling is that it’s a matter of degree. I’d like to see structural reforms that would make pork and overregulation less likely, but I agree that the electorate isn’t mad enough for that. Yet. On the other hand, even the modest pressure we’ve been able to generate over the past month has done some good, as Dennis Hastert’s reversal last week demonstrates. At the moment, it’s a game of inches, but inches matter.

UPDATE: Joel Miller emails:

I guess the book is a bit depressing. It certainly ends somberly.

You’re right about degrees, though. A person cannot sit by and do nothing. In doing something—even if it appears meager—people might actually have significant effect. Gladwell was right about this: All it takes is the right set of people and circumstances, and big things can happen. So the question is: What’s the tipping point on Big Government? The Porkbusters effort seems to be doing a lot of good. I can’t remember a time when this much on-the-ground discussion has occurred on federal spending. The results are impressive.

Well, you gotta start somewhere.

ROB SMITH, whose blog I’ve liked for a long time, is dying. Please send him your thoughts and prayers.

AUSTIN BAY LOOKS AT ZARQAWI’S LOSING STRATEGY in Iraq, and he’s got more background on his blog.

BIG MEDIA copying blog entries without permission.

UPDATE: Then there’s this example of blog-theft, by some columnist at a restricted website that nobody can read.

MORE: “I always enjoy being lectured on my ethics by a pack of thieves.”

TODAY’S THE TRADITIONAL COLUMBUS DAY: Jim Bennett has some thoughts, over at Albion’s Seedling.

I, FOR ONE, WELCOME OUR NEW ROBOT DRIVERS: My TechCentralStation column is up.

“SAUDI ARABIA — FRIEND OR FOE IN THE WAR ON TERROR?” That’s the question the Senate Judiciary Committee is asking. The answer, I think, is “yes.”

I HAVEN’T READ LOUIS FREEH’S NEW BOOK, My FBI : Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror, but it certainly seems to be creating a stir.

DAFYDD AB HUGH: “Laura Bush did not call Miers opponents “sexist.'” He says Reuters blew the transcription.

UPDATE: Video here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Patterico weighs in.

JAMAAT UL FUQRA IN VIRGINIA: Interesting report. (Via The Belmont Club). Related developments in Britain here.

THE FIRST OPINION OF THE ROBERTS COURT has been released.

AN AMUSING Oprah-Fisking. (Via guess who).

EXPLAINING THE DAVIS-BACON ACT to defenders who admit they don’t understand it: “Preserving Davis-Bacon may endear Democrats to the AFL-CIO’s construction unions, but it’s a slightly trickier case to make to voters–‘Hey, this will really slow rebuilding and make it way more expensive for taxpayers!'”

IRAQIS REACH DEAL ON CONSTITUTION:

Iraqi leaders reached a breakthrough deal on last minute changes in the constitution Tuesday, and at least one Sunni Arab party said it would reverse its rejection of the document and urge its supporters to approve it in next weekend’s referendum.

I can’t say I’m entirely surprised at this development, but I’m pleased.

UPDATE: Publius has much more. Bottom line: “The Iraqis have worked out a very good deal amongst themselves.”

DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY UPDATE: Reader Jim Herd notes that DPreview has reviewed the new Canon super-studio-model 16.7 megapixel 35mm SLR. The review’s quite strong, though the camera’s just a bit pricey for an impecunious law professor such as myself, especially one who’s too busy slaving over a hot word processor to get out and take pictures anyway — which certainly describes me at the moment.

UNSCAM UPDATE:

PARIS (AP) – France’s former U.N. ambassador has been taken into custody as part of an investigation into allegations of wrongdoing in the Iraq oil-for-food program, judicial officials said Tuesday.

Jean-Bernard Merimee, 68, who also was ambassador to Italy from 1995-98 and to Australia in the 1980s, is suspected of having received kickbacks in the form of oil allocations from the regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. He was also a special adviser to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan from 1999 to 2002.

The noose tightens. And reader Bryon Scott, who sent the link, observes:

The interesting thing to me is the Guardian is now stating “Saddam manipulated the program” as a forgone conclusion. No longer is the press treating this as if it “alledgedly” happened. One wonders how long it will take the MSM to make the connection between the lucrative income generated by this scam and the “international resistance” to the war in Iraq.

I’m guessing a while, but I’d love to be wrong.

CBS NEWS IS TAKING QUESTIONS ABOUT ITS IRAQ COVERAGE, in case you have any.

Maybe someone should ask them about this.

A WHILE BACK I mentioned Chris Mooney’s new book, but the story’s not quite as one-sided as that may make it seem. Sebastian Mallaby observes that despite all the criticism of the Bush Administration:

Consider the case of dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, on which the Bush administration is marginally better than the European Union.

DDT, to give that chemical its more familiar name, works miracles against diseases that are spread by insects. During the Second World War, vast quantities of the stuff were dusted over troops and concentration-camp survivors to kill the body lice that spread typhus. Later, DDT was used widely in Latin America to beat back dengue and yellow fever. But the chemical’s noblest calling is to combat malarial mosquitoes. In the early 20th century, Dunklin County, Missouri, had a higher rate of malarial mortality than Freetown, Sierra Leone. Between 1947 and 1949, DDT was sprayed on the internal walls of nearly 5 million American houses, and at the end of that process malaria had ceased to pose a significant threat in the United States.

DDT also helped to eliminate malaria in Europe and parts of Asia, and in 1970 the National Academy of Sciences estimated that the chemical had prevented 500 million deaths. And yet, despite that astounding number, DDT has all but disappeared from the malaria arsenal.

The reasons don’t have much to do with science, he says. (Via Ron Bailey).

PICKING UP NASA’S SLACK: Some thoughts over at GlennReynolds.com.

B RELEVANT REPORTS:

I’m officially freaked out.

According to reports from Atlanta’s NBC affiliate WXIA-TV, a plane stolen from St. Augustine, Florida has mysteriously appeared right hear in my hometown of Lawrenceville, GA. (To watch video of the report, click here.)

What is particularly troubling is that police have “narrowed down” the plane’s arrival time at Briscoe Field in Gwinnett County to between 9:00 PM Saturday and 6:30 AM Sunday. That is a mighty big window of time. How is it possible that we can’t say more precisely when this plane landed?

Briscoe Field may sound familiar to you. It should. Two of the hijackers who crashed airliners into the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001, trained at Briscoe Field. Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi did flight training at the Lawrenceville airport about eight months before the attacks.

Hmm. This is odd, and when you put it together with the bomb incidents at Oklahoma, Georgia Tech, and UCLA plus the New York subway scares and this odd story from San Diego, it sounds like something odd is going on. But is it — or are we just noticing more odd events in the wake of the New York subway scare? It’s hard to say. If this is the much-ballyhooed “Ramadan offensive” by Al Qaeda, then by all appearances it’s awfully lame. Of course, it could be a series of distractions, but that seems unlikely, too. I’m going with “chain of coincidences” for the moment, pending some reason to think there’s a connection, as a lot of readers seem to.

UPDATE: The NY subway threat appears to have been a hoax.

ANN ALTHOUSE: “I’ve mellowed on Miers.”

Professor Bainbridge, however, remains unmoved.

UPDATE: On the other hand, Rich Lowry reports that Miers hasn’t been fully vetted, which seems rather seriously risky.

I WAS AN EARLY FIGURE IN RAZORBLOGGING, but it has now been taken to the next level, with an entire blog devoted to the subject!

GOOD NEWS for the Miers nomination:

The Gang of 14’s centrist Democratic and Republican senators met and gave preliminary approval yesterday to Harriet Miers as President Bush’s nominee to replace Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court.

Emerging from a meeting at the offices of Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said, “This nomination didn’t set off any alarm bells with any of us.”

The significance of this provisional endorsement, though presented in a low-key fashion, could be huge, for it means that unless damning evidence emerges during the Judiciary Committee’s as-yet unscheduled confirmation hearings the nominee is unlikely to be filibustered, and a party-line vote would mean confirmation. A party-line vote is far from assured because conservatives have not welcomed the nomination.

If there’s trouble, it will come from the right, I guess.

IBM VS. THE INDIAN BLOGOSPHERE: Global Voices has more.

UPDATE: Sorry — that was a bit too telegraphic. For the IBM connection it helps to have read this post by Amit Varma that I linked yesterday.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader who works for IBM thinks I’m unfair, and makes a pretty good argument:

As an IBM employee I was very interested to read about IBM vs The Indian Blogosphere, however if you read Gaurav Sabnis’s post you’ll see that isn’t actually the case, or at least it shouldn’t be. Rather it’s a case of IIPM – The Indian Institute of Planning and Management – and their reprehensible tactics in attempting to silence a critic. As far as I can tell much of the brouhaha on this issue re:IBM has arisen from the article you linked to on Global Voices posted by Neha Viswanathan. That article excerpts Gaurav Sabnis’s blog post where he announces that he’s resigning from IBM, however it does so without mentioning why he left, loyalty.

It seems that the Dean of IIPM contacted Lenovo (IBM) and threatened them with a student protest where IBM Thinkpads would be burnt in front of the IBM offices in Delhi. In the face of what could only have been a public relations disaster Lenovo demanded that Gaurav do…nothing. No pressure was brought to bear, no demands were made, there was no “counseling session” where it was darkly hinted that any failure to mollify the demands of IIPM would go on his permanent record, nothing.

In fact Gaurav decided to resign because out of appreciation and a sense of loyalty to IBM. He wrote, “The second thing dear to me is IBM’s well-being. IBM has been a good employer to me. I have no complaints about them. Even in light of these events, they did not pressurise me to go against my principles and hush the matter up. Yet, IBM was being dragged into this unnecessarily. It was being made a target of bizarre pressure tactics. If even one Thinkpad laptop was actually burnt, it would cause a lot of bad press and nuisance for IBM. So I did not want IBM’s well-being to be compromised in any way.”

To me that is the big story, that any corporation can still inspire such loyalty in it’s employees that they’d rather leave the company than see it get hurt is, these days, nothing short of wondrous. That there are still people like Gaurav Sabnis who stick to their principles, even when it means making the tough decisions, is marvelous. I’m sorry I never got a chance to meet the man, or work with him, as he’s exactly the kind of person we need to keep.

I guess I felt that IBM shouldn’t have accepted his resignation, and should have shown more backbone, but maybe that was too harsh. At any rate, it’s certainly true that IBM isn’t the prime bad actor here, and fortunately the prime bad actor, IIPM, has probably learned that it’s a bad idea to tangle with the blogosphere.