A GRENADE THROWN AT BUSH?

The Secret Service was investigating a report Tuesday that a hand grenade was thrown at the stage during
President Bush’s speech in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

After Bush left Georgia on Tuesday, the Secret Service was informed by Georgian authorities of a report that a device, possibly a hand grenade, had been thrown within 100 feet of the stage during Bush’s speech, hit someone in the crowd and fell to the ground, Secret Service spokesman Jonathan Cherry said.

Apparently, it didn’t go off.

PAUL KRUGMAN IS DOUBLE-TEAMED by Tom Maguire and Mickey Kaus.

BUT DAVE, it was your behavior that was the problem, and pointing fingers at others and engaging in juvenile revenge fantasies doesn’t change that. It was the only dark spot on an otherwise successful conference.

In fact, your “moderation” of the civility session was anything but. You insisted on shutting people down, and repeatedly charged off the topic under discussion to make sure they knew you disagreed with them on peripheral issues. You embarrassed yourself, people have noticed, and the gentlemanly thing to do would be to apologize, not play the victim and accuse your critics of being confederate sympathizers.

UPDATE: Winer emails:

The other people in the room were trying to say something to you, but you were too focused on me to hear them. You’re just another Limbaugh ditto-head, I thought you were more than that. I thought you were MUCH more than that. You’re just another flamer. Too fucking bad. Dave

Um, okay, Dave, though I have no idea what you’re talking about here. But I thought that you were too focused on you to hear what people were saying. (My only comment during the session was to note, in response to a question from Dave, that I would have liked to hear what another audience member had been trying to say before Dave cut him off). And making what is fundamentally a question of personal deportment into a matter of political name-calling just illustrates the problem.

I don’t think that this whole affair is a big deal — though Dave’s email makes it a slightly bigger deal, at least to me — but I do think that when moderating a session like this, it’s best to make the session about other participants’ views.

On a more constructive note, here are some good suggestions for blogospheric conduct.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Actually, these suggestions are good, too.

NANOTECHNOLOGY AT THE PATENT OFFICE: The Patently-O patent blog has a report.

SOMETHING YOU’RE ONLY LIKELY TO READ over at Tyler Cowen’s blog: “Sex stops being fun when you do it to close a gap between your marginal utilities.”

UPDATE: Meanwhile, yesterday was Orgasm Day in Brazil. Shouldn’t that be every day?

Amusing discussion in the comments to this post.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Michele Catalano notes that it’s National Masturbation month.

IN THE MAIL: (Yes, I’ve gotten a lot of that lately). A reprint of an interesting article by Owen Jones and Timothy Goldsmith: Law and Behavioral Biology, from the Columbia Law Review. You can read it online for free here. I think we’re going to see a lot more people discussing these issues over the coming decade.

SAM JAFFE LISTS FOUR NEWS STORIES THAT DESERVE MORE ATTENTION: He’s right.

IN THE MAIL: A letter from a Tennessee judge:

Your postings and photographs on InstaPundit as to your wife’s recent surgery reminded me that I had gone several years without undergoing an exercise EKG. That test resulted in a triple bypass, from which I have just returned home. I am doing well, and hope that your wife is also.

I think I’ll put this down as “service to the bench and bar” on this year’s Faculty Activity Report.

BLAKE WYLIE HAS MUCH MORE, including a roundup of blog posts, on the “Real ID Act.”

I remain unconvinced that this massive federal power-grab will make us any safer.

MEDBLOG CENTRAL: This week’s Grand Rounds is up.

GATEWAY PUNDIT HAS MORE ON BUSH’S VISIT TO GEORGIA: Bush seems awfully cheerful lately. I wonder if he knows something we don’t?

IN THE MAIL: Zell Miller’s new book, A Deficit of Decency.

JOHN PODHORETZ on the new Star Wars movie: “It opens next week. I saw it, and here’s the thing: It’s unbelievably bad. . . . Even Yoda gives a rotten performance.”

UPDATE: Reader Dan Lovejoy emails:

I think Podhoretz’s review is in the tiny minority. The Tomatometer
has it at a whopping 92%!

Quite a few readers think Podhoretz is in the minority. We’ll all know, soon enough.

PUBLIUS NOTES THAT BUSH WAS A HIT IN GEORGIA, and has some thoughts on the wider implications of what’s going on in the region.

I’VE BEEN READING CHARLES STROSS’S ACCELERANDO, and I’ve discovered a political pigeonhole that fits me. I’m an Accelerationista!

WELL, THIS IS CHEERFUL. Forget the First Amendment — I’d invoke the Second, here.

UPDATE: Reader Michael Pate emails:

I don’t remember you saying about her what the American Spectator article said, but you did popularize the phrase “the most uncompromising wartime president in the history of the United States!”

Yeah. And a few readers didn’t realize that the whole thing is a cautionary spoof.

SECURITY EXPERT BRUCE SCHNEIER on the Real ID Act:

I’ve already written about national IDs. I’ve written about the fallacies of identification as a security tool. I’m not going to repeat myself here, and I urge everyone who is interested to read those two essays (and even this older essay). A national ID is a lousy security trade-off, and everyone needs to understand why.

Aside from those generalities, there are specifics about REAL ID that make for bad security.

The REAL ID Act requires driver’s licenses to include a “common machine-readable technology.” This will, of course, make identity theft easier. Assume that this information will be collected by bars and other businesses, and that it will be resold to companies like ChoicePoint and Acxiom. It actually doesn’t matter how well the states and federal government protect the data on driver’s licenses, as there will be parallel commercial databases with the same information.

Even worse, the same specification for RFID chips embedded in passports includes details about embedding RFID chips in driver’s licenses. I expect the federal government will require states to do this, with all of the associated security problems (e.g., surreptitious access).

REAL ID requires that driver’s licenses contain actual addresses, and no post office boxes. There are no exceptions made for judges or police — even undercover police officers. This seems like a major unnecessary security risk. . . .

And the wackiest thing is that none of this is required. In October 2004, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 was signed into law. That law included stronger security measures for driver’s licenses, the security measures recommended by the 9/11 Commission Report. That’s already done. It’s already law.

REAL ID goes way beyond that. It’s a huge power-grab by the federal government over the states’ systems for issuing driver’s licenses.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Orin Kerr thinks that Schneier is overstating the case against the Real ID act.

NIKON UPDATE: Reader Peter Gookins emails: “Based on your experience, and that reported by your blog readers, would you still recommend the D70, or the Canon?”

I don’t know of anyone else who’s had the autofocus problem I’ve had. More troubling is that the camera had just come back from being serviced for an autofocus bug, and they didn’t find it. The camera is otherwise superb, and still works fine in manual-focus mode. I cringe at the thought of sending it back again, though, particularly as it’s now out of warranty.

IT’S BEEN 100 DAYS SINCE KERRY PROMISED to sign his Form 180. Polipundit offers a suitable observance.

RAND SIMBERG ON NASA’S NEW SHERIFF:

New administrator Mike Griffin has apparently ridden into NASA town with guns blazing. Not surprisingly to anyone who’s been following his career, he’s a man in a hurry to break the nation out of the low earth orbit quagmire in which we’ve found (well, actually put) ourselves for the past three-plus decades, and he’s not wasting any time in redirecting the space agency in what he perceives to be the best manner to do that.

I wish him success.

THE FOLKS AT THE AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING COMPANY (Motto: Not the lame American ABC, the lame Australian one) receive a sound Fisking of the old-fashioned kind from Tim Blair, whose mastery of the form is frightening.

TREY JACKSON is asking for your help.

UNCLE WIGGLY IN GEORGIA: Some people are even calling him “Elvis-like.”

Which, in a way, makes sense. Not that it was a surprise to blogosphereans . . . .

FAKEHATE.COM: LaShawn Barber looks at fake hate crimes.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE CAPITALISTS is up.