AN EXPLOSIVE DEVICE found near UCLA.

PATTERICO ON MIERS: “I just don’t think we can afford to take chances any more.”

Radley Balko: “Judicial nominations, especially to the Supreme Court, were supposed to be the fruit, the reward to President Bush’s supporters for biting down and bearing the spending, the entitlements, and the growth of government. This should have been the bold pick, the Janice Rogers Brown, the pick that makes Democrats cringe, and that sets the court off on a new course.”

PoliPundit has questions. I don’t know that the Gore-donation thing is a big deal — after all, I worked for Gore in 1988. Then again, I’d probably be unacceptable to the Bush base as a Supreme Court nominee, too . . . .

MORE ON PROSPECTS FOR SPENDING REFORM:

The more than 100 conservatives in the Republican Study Committee in the House have documented $500 billion that could be saved over the coming decade.

And Sen. John McCain and other Republican senators want $85 billion saved by delaying for two years the new Medicare prescription drug benefit.

Bring it on.

GRAND ROUNDS is up!

MICKEY KAUS: “It is odd that Maureen Dowd hasn’t written a word about Judith Miller’s jailing and release, isn’t it?”

Jay Rosen has related thoughts.

UPDATE: “Welcome aboard, Captain Hazelwood!”

RALPH KINNEY BENNETT looks at razor wars and the evolution of technology.

That’s a topic that I’ve addressed before, more than once, to a considerable degree of interest.

CALIFORNIA YANKEE is rounding up ways to help Pakistani earthquake victims.

UPDATE: Daniel Drezner offers perspective.

WHY SO LITTLE COVERAGE of the Oklahoma suicide bombing?

MORE PROBLEMS ON THE WAY for the Miers nomination.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR: Lots of reporters, and the editorial board of the New York Times, called for an investigation of the Plame leaks. Now Jack Shafer says they may not like the result:

National-security reporters—none of whom have clearances—receive classified information for a living. If the government used espionage law to investigate government leaks to the press, the effect would be an unofficial secrets act criminalizing thousands, if not tens of thousands, of annual conversations between sources and reporters.

If Fitzgerald takes this approach, it’s likely to generate quite a fuss, on a number of fronts.

UPDATE: Mickey Kaus:

Lots of people in DC knew Valerie Plame worked at the CIA, after all. And it was a relevant detail if you were trying to come to a position on whether Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Africa, which was in turn relevant to the non-trivial public policy question of whether the country should go to war. Criminalizing public discussion of the CIA connection–unless the harm to U.S. security from Plame’s outing was immense, and the government was trying harder to keep her secret than it apparently was–is troublesome, no? … Before you say “Nah, lock Rove up,” imagine it was an anti-war State Department dissident who faced charges for pointing out that a Republican ex-ambassador who claimed to have evidence justifying a war was married to a not-so-covert CIA officer.

Indeed.

Also read Arianna Huffington and Tom Maguire.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Brian Leone writes:

I will be watching for what sort of proportionality we might see between the wrist slap that Sandy Berger received after stuffing highly classified documents in his pants and destroying some of them, as compared to what happens to various White House officials who discussed the identity of Ms. Plame who after all, as Kaus points out, was an open secret at least in Washington DC.

Of course, one must confess that the Plame affair has already vastly surpassed the Berger story in terms of numbers of articles written and demands for “protection” of our national security apparatus.
I wonder why that is?

I don’t.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tom Maguire emails to point out that Dale Franks made Shafer’s point back in July over at the QandO blog:

The truly amusing thing about jumping for the Espionage Act of 1917 is that, ironically, allowing the use of the Espionage Act to punish leaks is literally the last thing the press wants. Indeed, it should be the last thing that the Left wants, too, since its use would be a tool for repression of government whistleblowers every bit as powerful as the Official Secrets Act is in Britain. It would literally mean the end of any notion of open government. . . .

The thing is, that using the Espionage Act in this way means that the Administration can simply classify anything they don’t want the public to know about, and if it gets out, then all the parties involved get to spend a decade behind bars.

So much for the First Amendment and a free press.

Advantage: Dale Franks!

EARLIER, I MENTIONED JOHN YOO’S NEW BOOK, The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs after 9/11. Now the University of Chicago has posted an interview with Yoo where he talks about the book and its subject matter at some length.

A MIERS MELTDOWN? More and more, I have to wonder what the White House was thinking with this. First of all, when you’re already under fire for cronyism, and you nominate someone who’s, well, a crony, you ought to be locked-and-loaded in terms of response. They weren’t.

Second of all, they seem to have managed to convince a lot of people on the social right that she’s too liberal, while people on the libertarian-right worry that she’s too much a fan of government power. Third, their response to critics and complaints has been slow and weak.

I realize that the White House is busy — perhaps busier than we realize from news coverage — with a lot of war and foreign-policy questions. But if so, isn’t that more reason to go with a safe pick of the Michael McConnell variety? Whatever else she is (and she could, of course, turn out to be fine as a Justice) Miers wasn’t a safe pick. Republican Senators are underwhelmed, as are Republican bloggers, and John Fund — after doing some interviewing — has changed his mind and now thinks she shouldn’t be confirmed. Talk Radio host Michael Graham has started up a Stop Miers Now! website. And the White House, even if it’s spoiling for a fight with its base, isn’t up to the job, as Fund notes:

It is traditional for nominees to remain silent until their confirmation hearings. But previous nominees, while unable to speak for themselves, have been able to deploy an array of people to speak persuasively on their behalf. In this case, the White House spin team has been pathetic, dismissing much of the criticism of Ms. Miers as “elitism” or even echoing Democratic senators who view it as “sexist.” But it was Richard Land , president of the Southern Baptist Convention, who went so far as to paint Ms. Miers as virtually a tool of the man who has been her client for the past decade. “In Texas, we have two important values, courage and loyalty,” he told a conference call of conservative leaders last Thursday. “If Harriet Miers didn’t rule the way George W. Bush thought she would, he would see that as an act of betrayal and so would she.” That is an argument in her favor. It sounds more like a blood oath than a dignified nomination process aimed at finding the most qualified individual possible.

Read the whole Fund piece, which is just devastating. And then note that Miers is being opposed over at PoliPundit.

The fact is that Miers would probably agree with me on more issues than a candidate who would be supported by a lot of those who are opposing her. (I don’t shiver with horror when Sandra Day O’Connor is mentioned, though I prefer the O’Connor of South Dakota v. Dole to some of her later incarnations — but, then, I prefer the O’Connor of South Dakota v. Dole to a lot of alleged conservatives in Raich, too.) But her nomination looks like a major political blunder for the Administration, which has yet to provide any very convincing reasons why she belongs on the court more than any of several thousand other lawyers with similar credentials. What’s more, there are good reasons why the path from White House Counsel to Supreme Court Justice isn’t a well-trodden one, and there are more good reasons why it probably shouldn’t become well-trodden.

On the other hand, SkyMuse says that Miers nomination critics are missing the big picture.

What do you think? I’m opening comments on this post, so weigh in.

UPDATE: Comments don’t seem to be working. I’m not sure what’s wrong.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Fixed now. Comment away — be nice!

MORE: Some people are still having problems with the comments. Sorry — I’ll try to get it fixed.

LATER: Comments are open, but I’m having, for some reason, to approve them individually. So don’t re-enter yours when you don’t see it appear; I’ll get to it.

LATER STILL: Okay, it’s been over 24 hours, and I’m turning them off before the spammers move in.

TERRORIST BOMBS AT GEORGIA TECH? (Via Generation Why?).

CRUSHING OF DISSENT? Bloggers and IBM in India, via Amit Varma.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: “House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert is an old wrestler, and last Thursday night he used a classic move of his sport by quickly reversing positions. On behalf of the Republican leadership, Hastert went before his colleagues to embrace essentially the same package of spending that two weeks earlier he had scourged conservative House members for proposing. The change was a matter of necessity rather than choice.” Progress!

IS CONSTITUTIONAL LAW HARD? Orin Kerr responds to Hugh Hewitt.

I think it’s hard if you do it right. As I noted a while back in the Columbia Law Review, if even simple systems with clear rules can produce unpredictable results, we shouldn’t be surprised that constitutional law is complex and sometimes unpredictable. Certainly Justice Scalia seems to agree!

Some related thoughts on this can be found here and here.

IS DO-IT-YOURSELF PHOTO PRINTING ON THE WAY OUT? That’s what this report suggests.

I find that I print a lot of family snapshots at Walgreen’s now, because it’s easier to stick my memory chip into their machine, press “go” and come back to pick up the massive stack of prints later. On the other hand, I tend to print pictures I really care about at home, because I can tweak them in Photoshop, etc. (I tend to do my fancy enlarged photos — 11×14 or 20×30 — via ExposureManager, whose results are good, and whose prices are low).

Given that home printers are dirt cheap — I have this one, and it was $199, though I’d kind of like this one — I suspect that home printing will never be replaced, but that lots of people will follow a similar pattern.

And yes, I know I’ve been neglecting digital photography in my blogging lately, not least because I’ve been too busy to do much photography on my own. I’ll try to do better in the future.

BILL HOBBS is tired of politics.

HAPPY COLUMBUS DAY: Many in the West will demonstrate their fierce originality and intellectual independence today by condemning Christopher Columbus using the same shopworn cliches they used last year. For those of a different bent, I recommend Samuel Eliot Morison’s Admiral of the Ocean Sea : A Life of Christopher Columbus, which takes a somewhat different position. Here’s an excerpt:

At the end of 1492 most men in Western Europe felt exceedingly gloomy about the future. Christian civilization appeared to be shrinking in area and dividing into hostil units as its sphere contracted. For over a century there had been no important advance in natural science and registration in the universities dwindled as the instruction they offered became increasingly jejune and lifeless. Institutions were decaying, well-meaning people were growing cynical or desperate, and many intelligent men, for want of something better to do, were endeavoring to escape the present through studying the pagan past. . . .

Yet, even as the chroniclers of Nuremberg were correcting their proofs from Koberger’s press, a Spanish caravel named Nina scudded before a winter gale into Lisbon with news of a discovery that was to give old Europe another chance. In a few years we find the mental picture completely changed. Strong monarchs are stamping out privy conspiracy and rebellion; the Church, purged and chastened by the Protestant Reformation, puts her house in order; new ideas flare up throughout Italy, France, Germany and the northern nations; faith in God revives and the human spirit is renewed. The change is complete and startling: “A new envisagement of the world has begun, and men are no longer sighing after the imaginary golden age that lay in the distant past, but speculating as to the golden age that might possibly lie in the oncoming future.”

Christopher Columbus belonged to an age that was past, yet he became the sign and symbol of this new age of hope, glory and accomplishment. His medieval faith impelled him to a modern solution: Expansion.

Morison’s book is superb, and I recommend it highly as an antidote to the simplistic anti-occidental prejudice of today — which, as Jim Bennett has noted, has roots that might surprise its proponents:

This is primarily an effect of the Calvinist Puritan roots of American progressivism. Just as Calvinists believed in the centrality of the depravity of man, with the exception of a miniscule contingent of the Elect of God, their secularized descendants believe in the depravity and cursedness of Western civilization, with their own enlightened selves in the role of the Elect.

Indeed. Nonetheless, Bennett thinks that a different Italian deserves the real credit.

STRATEGYPAGE ON KOREA:

Negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program are, once more, stalled. The north refuses to allow inspections and disarm before it gets a nuclear power reactor (which would take several years to build). Meanwhile, signs of rot in the North Korean police state continue to appear. These include more crime, especially burglary and robbery. There’s more corruption, with even some secret police (the core force in keeping the communists in power) taking bribes. Discipline continues to decline in the army, as does readiness (because of little training with heavy equipment, and lack of spare parts for maintenance.) It’s looking more and more like Eastern Europe two decades ago. It’s not a question of if the north will collapse, but when.

That’s good — though the transition may not be.

JONATHAN LAST looks at the influence of elites on British and American history.

GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS ON AVIAN FLU, from Britain:

So, let’s see, we’ve had a Nobel Prize Winner in Medicine telling us that an outbreak of flu, a pandemic, is inevitable. We have a candidate in the current avian flu. And our public health authorities (one of the few justifications for Government that even the most rigid libertarian would support) do nothing for 8 months. Wonderful, what a stunning justification of the current system.

Ouch. Even if avian flu turns out not to materialize as a threat this time around, this is exposing problems that need to be fixed, as some sort of major disease outbreak is pretty much inevitable sooner or later.

BILL KELLER RESPONDS TO TIMES CRITICS: But gets an unimpressed response from Mickey Kaus.

RALF GOERGENS looks at honor killings, sexual abuse, and cultural alienation in Germany.