THIS ISN’T VERY PROMISING: “A phalanx of secret police” at the World Summit on the Information Society.

More on WSIS here.

A BACKLASH AGAINST NGOS:

Peacekeepers are increasingly encountering a new kind of problem; feuding NGOs (Non-Government Organizations). We should have seen this one coming, but many were surprised when over 300 NGOs showed up last January, in the wake of the December earthquake and tidal waves that killed over 160,000 people in Aceh (the westernmost area of Indonesia.) Many of the NGOs were soon working at cross-purposes, arguing with each other and, in some cases, being a threat to those they were there to help.

Some of the more established NGOs are now calling for regulation.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: “What do you have to believe in order to keep alive your conviction that the Bush administration conspired to launch a lie-based war?”

I HAVEN’T PAID MUCH ATTENTION TO THE ABLE DANGER STORY, but here’s a column by former FBI Director Louis Freeh that suggests I should be paying more.

JOANNE JACOBS’ NEW BOOK, Our School, gets a nice review in the Wall Street Journal. Excerpt:

In “Our School,” Ms. Jacobs brings to life the experience of particular kids and teachers but also, rightly, raises the big questions about charter schools: Do they work? Do they divert resources from conventional public schools?

Judging from the review, she should be talking about selling the movie rights.

CANADIAN MILITARY BLOGGER BRUCE ROLSTON debunks the white phosphorus idiocy.

UPDATE: More here.

MORE: Reader Jeff Medcalf emails:

It seems to me that the Left’s position is inconsistent: if WP rounds are WMD, then Saddam clearly had massive WMD stockpiles, and the war was justified.

Heh.

STILL MORE: Milbloggers are doing some serious pushing-back. The Mudville Gazette has a roundup, and here’s a post at Blackfive, too.

MICKEY KAUS AND HUGH HEWITT were discussing the Woodward revelations last night. Here’s a transcript.

UPDATE: Here’s a Wall Street Journal article (free link) on the Woodward story.

More here from the Post. I think it’s premature to make too much of this, but stay tuned.

ORIN KERR has thoughts on the Patriot Act compromise: “This is a win-win bill, but on the whole it’s more of a win for the Administration.” Read the whole thing for his views on specifics.

MICKEY KAUS looks at divisions in the Clinton camp.

And don’t miss this video from Ian Schwartz.

THE OPEN SOURCE MEDIA LAUNCH went well. I’m a bit tired — I sent the book revisions back to the publisher Monday night, sent corrected page proofs of an article back to a law review Tuesday, and read rough drafts of student papers on the plane up here last night, sending them back to my secretary via FedEx this morning for distribution to the students tomorrow. Hey, I can use time efficiently, it’s just . . . tiring.

But Ed Driscoll (“Unlike Jeff Goldstein, I’m actually here.”) liveblogged it, as did Dave Johnston and LaShawn Barber. I would have, but they had me seated right down front, where it would have been too obvious . . . .

More later, but Senator Cornyn said all the right things about bloggers and McCain-Feingold and reporters’ shield laws.

And though it’s a light-blogging day for me, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to read. Check out the Carnival of the Vanities, the Carnival of Feminists, the Carnival of Education, the History Carnival, the Carnival of Liberty, and the Carnival of the Liberated. And I think I forgot to mention the Carnival of the Capitalists earlier, too.

UPDATE: More blogging from the OSM event, here, by Pamela of Atlas Shrugged.

TOM MAGUIRE is all over the Woodward story.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Andrew Roth reports that the Bridge to Nowhere has been defunded.

As he notes, it’s a small victory, really. But it’s a victory nonetheless, and in this battle you take ’em where you find ’em.

UPDATE: More here. Hey, I said it was a small victory.

Now if Ted Stevens keeps his promise to resign, it’ll be a big one. . . .

HUGH HEWITT is slamming Senate Republicans for going wobbly on the war. And rightly so. He’s got a big roundup. It’s almost as if the Republicans want to go back to being the minority party.

GOD HATES SHRIMP: I think I may have linked this before, but it’s worth a repeat.

CHECK OUT MICKEY KAUS AND ROBERT WRIGHT at Blogging Heads.

HOW BIG CAN SMALL GET? My TechCentralStation column is up.

MORE ON THE FRENCH RIOTS:

The unrest buffeting France the past three weeks has further undermined the already weakened presidency of Jacques Chirac, but he is far from alone on a continent with pressing problems and few strong leaders to tackle them.

Britain, Germany and Italy also have troubled governments, leaving the European Union in limbo as U.S. President George Bush’s administration increasingly shows interest in a cohesive Europe to help with difficult diplomatic tasks in the Middle East and elsewhere.

“The whole Western world lacks leadership at the moment,” said Guillaume Parmentier, director of the French Center on the United States. “I cannot see any leader who can seize the mantle of the EU and move it in this or that direction.”

I guess Europe is the sick man of Europe, now. This is actually a very bad thing, but I don’t see any quick remedy.

I’LL BE AT THE OPEN SOURCE MEDIA conference today, debating shield laws with Judith Miller. I’ll try to blog during the conference, but I’m not sure about the logistics. Here’s an AP story on Open Source Media. Live audio/video streaming of the conference starts at 10 a.m. Eastern, here.

UPDATE: The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Daniel Rubin seems to think that Jeff Goldstein’s report is serious. Er, it’s not.

ANOTHER UPDATE: With the speed of the blogosphere, Rubin has updated his post, and I’ve updated mine to reflect that. He’s liveblogging the webcast.

THE HARVARD LAW REVIEW is now available online in PDF format. Cool.

HMM. THIS certainly sounds like news:

Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward testified under oath Monday in the CIA leak case that a senior administration official told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the agency nearly a month before her identity was disclosed.

In a more than two-hour deposition, Woodward told Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald that the official casually told him in mid-June 2003 that Plame worked as a CIA analyst on weapons of mass destruction, and that he did not believe the information to be classified or sensitive, according to a statement Woodward released yesterday. . . .

Woodward’s testimony appears to change key elements in the chronology Fitzgerald laid out in his investigation and announced when indicting Libby three weeks ago. It would make the unnamed official — not Libby — the first government employee to disclose Plame’s CIA employment to a reporter. It would also make Woodward, who has been publicly critical of the investigation, the first reporter known to have learned about Plame from a government source.

(Via Ed Morrissey). Tom Maguire, call your office! And don’t miss the Pincus angle.

CLAUDIA ROSETT: Why dictators are cheering the U.N.’s Internet turf grab.

UPDATE: But they have to be disappointed about this:

A summit focusing on narrowing the digital divide between the rich and poor residents and countries opened Wednesday with an agreement of sorts on who will maintain ultimate oversight of the Internet and the flow of information, commerce and dissent. . . .

Negotiators from more than 100 countries agreed late Tuesday to leave the United States in charge of the Internet’s addressing system, averting a U.S.-EU showdown at this week’s U.N. technology summit.

Good.

IS THE FBI ABUSING NATIONAL SECURITY LETTERS? Orin Kerr reports.

TODAY THE WHITE HOUSE IS fact-checking the New York Times.

These things just keep coming. Did they hire Ken “fact-check your ass” Layne or something? We’ll know if one of these White House posts concludes: “We have computers. It is not difficult to Find You Out, dig?”

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Matt Welch is dissing me and Stephen Green for having the temerity to suggest that it’s wrong for the press to peddle falsehoods about the war. I’m literally on the plane, waiting for them to close the door and make me shut off the computer, so my response will have to be brief. But first, I think my prediction that press irresponsibility and bias would have repercussions for press freedom has been borne out. The Times, still thinking (as in so many things) that it’s 1978, initially expected a huge pro-First Amendment backlash on behalf of Judy Miller, and was surprised when it got no more from its repeated editorials than Howell Raines and Martha Burk got in the way of protesters at Augusta National. Why? People don’t think of the press as a secular priesthood of truth any more, even if some segments of the press still do. As for my linkage to a blog post on how the military sees the press’s role in the war, well, a more diplomatic, but not that different, take can be found in this article from Parameters, the journal of the Army War College, where the media are referred to as “simplistic,” “pejorative,” and biased, and generally regarded as an obstacle to getting the job done right.

As I’ve said here before, I don’t mind reporting about problems. (I’ve done it myself, with regard to the war crimes originally reported by Zeyad, problems with CERP, etc. Reporting on things taht are actually going wrong, without the “see, Bush is horrible!” spin, and false facts, that we’re getting elsewhere, is actually helpful, and we could use more of it. It would, however, be work, and it might help Bush out, which is apparently unforgivable.) Reporting that is dishonest, or deliberately misleading — and there’s a lot of that — is different. By treating complaints about dishonest and politically motivated reporting as the equivalent of complaints about simply reporting bad news, Welch is attacking a straw man.

REMINDER: The House will vote on ICANN tonight, in a way that, I hope, will displease those hoping for a U.N. takeover of the Internet.

“INHERENT AUTHORITY” TO USE FORCE against Saddam? Sounds like she just might turn out to be “the most uncompromising wartime President in the history of the United States.” Hillary 2008!