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March 3, 2005

HENRY COPELAND’S BLOG READERS’ SURVEY seems to be working fine now. Please take if if you have time (it’s just a couple of minutes), and enter “InstaPundit” as the referring blog.

MORE BAD NEWS FOR ASSAD: Saudis Tell Syria to Withdraw From Lebanon.

ALREADY? A call for Howard Dean’s resignation. Seems premature to me.

QUITE SOME TIME AGO, I mentioned Abigail Kohn’s book, Shooters: Myths and Realities of America’s Gun Culture. I wound up liking it (and the Insta-Wife did, too), but I don’t think I ever posted any more on it. Here, however, is a review from Reason.

HOWARD KURTZ:

Are the Bushies at “war” with the Fourth Estate? Is there an insidious plot to weaken the media establishment, to carpet-bomb its credibility like the Saddam regime?

I wouldn’t go that far. People forget that every administration tries to neutralize the press. There was much hand-wringing about Clinton circumventing the White House press corps when he started going on Larry King and other talk shows. And much talk of stonewalling over the way his White House handled its various scandals.

I would argue that nothing the White House has done has damaged the media’s credibility more than what the profession has done to itself. Bush wasn’t responsible for the fraud by Jayson Blair or Jack Kelley, or for Dan Rather’s botched National Guard story (though I know some have theorized that the administration lured CBS into some kind of trap). Bush didn’t force the media to go overboard on Kobe and Michael. He didn’t force a CNN executive to make some ill-considered comments about the U.S. military targeting journalists. He didn’t force various journalists to keep engaging in plagiarism. He didn’t force Armstrong Williams to take $240,000 from the Education Department (though paying conservative pundits is one of the administration’s innovations). He isn’t responsible for declining newspaper circulation and network news ratings or the sinking poll numbers when it comes to trusting the media.

Nope. But it might be more comforting to blame him than to look at root causes. There’s some constructive advice here: “So take all that money and get yourselves some talented, hungry correspondents. A lot of them. They should be all over Africa, South America, the Mideast and Europe, with talented crews.” I agree. Actual hard-news reporting is the killer app for Big Journalism — if it bothers to do it. They’ve been retreating from that game for 20+ years. Read this post from Austin Bay, too.

Frankly, I think that everyone at CBS ought to have to read this book, and write an essay about the lessons it contains . . . .

YOU DON’T NEED NANOBOTS for working nanotechnology, reports the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology: “No one worries about an inkjet printer crawling off the desk and stealing ink cartridges. Molecular manufacturing systems will be no more autonomous than inkjets. . . . Both scientists and the public have gotten the idea that molecular manufacturing requires the use of nanobots, and they may criticize or fear it on that basis. The truth is less sensational, but its implications are equally compelling.”

WHY TORTURE ENDANGERS US: Thoughts from Gregory Scoblete.

THE SURPRISINGLY POTENT JAPANESE NAVY: With lots going on beneath the radar in east asia, this may become more important.

THE COMING CRACKDOWN ON BLOGGING: Declan McCullagh looks at efforts to regulate political speech on the Internet. (Via Ed Cone).

UPDATE: Rex Hammock is skeptical. PoliPundit has suggestions, just in case.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More thoughts, from Josh Claybourn. And Mike Krempasky has background.

MORE: Susanna Cornett has much more. And here’s a must-read post from Professor Bainbridge.

YOU KNOW, MUCH AS I LOVE the nonfiction books that publishers are sending me, I really like the advance copies of science fiction by authors I like. In the mail the other day I got this forthcoming book by Charles Stross, and I’ve still got Accelerando to read. My leisure-reading, alas, has taken something of a hit lately.

THE “RESTORE THE DRAFT” PROPOSAL seems to be getting a chilly reception from quite a few people.

NOBODY TELL TED STEVENS about this!

STRATEGYPAGE ON SYRIA’S BASHAR ASSAD:

The elder Assad’s untimely death put Bashar in command, but not in control, of Syria. His dad’s cronies control most of the bureaucracy, armed forces and security organizations. There is no agreement among all these chiefs about what to do to stay in power. Thus we have the bizarre contrast of Syrian police turning over Saddam’s half-brother and 30 of his henchmen, while Syrian agents facilitate the assassination of a prominent anti-Syrian Lebanese politician, and a suicide bombing inside Israel. All within two weeks. No senior Syrians will admit that no one is completely in control in Syria. It is feared that there may be a coup, as some of the senior generals and security officials push Bashar Assad aside and take over. Bashar is seen by his father’s old timers as too inexperienced. But the problem is that Syria is simply in a very bad situation. Like Iraq, Syria adopted the Baath Party to run the country decades ago. Like Iraq, the socialist dictatorship of the Baath Party led to corruption and economic decline. This has made enemies of Syria’s neighbors, and the Syrian people. The Syrian Baath Party has run out of credit, and credibility. The bill is now due, and no one wants to pay.

I hope the collapse is graceful, rather than deadly. But I certainly hope for the collapse.

UPDATE: Some interesting translations.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More trouble for Assad, from the Arab League. And Russia looks to be jumping ship, too.

MORE: Oh, this is a heartbreaker:

If the European Union follows Israeli recommendations this week and places Hezbollah on a list of official terror organizations, the economic consequences of sanctions would “destroy” the Lebanese terror group, Hezbollah’s leader told Arabic language television.

Heh. But will the EU actually follow through on this?

STILL MORE: The bandwagon continues to roll, with TigerHawk noting this report:

Russia and Germany joined an international chorus of demands for Syria to leave Lebanon, and President Bashar al-Assad was expected to travel to Saudi Arabia on Thursday for talks diplomats said would focus on a pullout.

TigerHawk also observes: “The anti-terror coalition that fractured over Iraq has needed an issue to rally around without offending domestic constituencies or the internationalist media. It is Bashar al-Assad’s enormous misfortune that Syria’s occupation of Lebanon has become that issue.”

ROLLING STONE:

The Online Insurgency

MoveOn has become a force to be reckoned with

They signed up 500,000 supporters with an Internet petition — but Bill Clinton still got impeached. They organized 6,000 candlelight vigils worldwide — but the U.S. still invaded Iraq. They raised $60 million from 500,000 donors to air countless ads and get out the vote in the battle-ground states — but George Bush still whupped John Kerry. A gambler with a string of bets this bad might call it a night. But MoveOn.org just keeps doubling down. . . .

But many party insiders worry that an Internet insurgency working hand in hand with a former Vermont governor will only succeed in pushing the party so far to the left that it can’t compete in the red states. “It’s electoral suicide,” says Dan Gerstein, a former strategist for Joe Lieberman’s presidential campaign. MoveOn committed a series of costly blunders last fall: It failed to remove two entries that compared Bush to Hitler from its online ad contest, and its expensive television spots barely registered in the campaign. One conservative commentator, alluding to MoveOn’s breathless promotion of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, branded the group the “MooreOn” wing of the party. All of which leaves political veterans wondering: As MoveOn becomes a vital part of the Democratic establishment, will its take-no-prisoners attitude marginalize the party and strengthen the Republican stranglehold on power?

I think that this insurgency will be around a lot longer than the one in Iraq.

UPDATE: Les Jones thinks he sees a consistent message.